FEBRUARY 28, 2021 – Though my dad was athletic, he was not into sports. In fact, he openly despised our culture’s obsession with sports. But he loved to ice skate, and he did so with perfection.
Each year he’d drive the family 20 miles down the (Mississippi) River Road to Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis, where a small lake cleared of snow served as a public skating rink. As a kid, Dad skated many hours there, and he loved to relive those days—with his family in tow. Inevitably, as we laced up our skates he’d tell about the barrel-jumpers of Powderhorn—skaters who’d accelerate down a long straight-away, then leap over a row of wooden barrels lined up side-by-side. He marveled at their skill and daring, and I, at Dad’s recounting of their exploits.
Once we were on the ice and Dad got warmed up, he’d head for a less crowded area and open up the burners. His stride was as graceful as it was powerful. I yearned for the day when I could skate like him.
Dad’s other contribution to family skating was a rink in our backyard. Nearly every night after supper he’d don his warmest clothes, hook up the hose, and add a fresh layer to our “home ice.”
Before the home rink years, I’d join neighborhood kids on the park rink three blocks away. That venue was intimidating. The skating part was fine and fun, but the warming house was decidedly not. The “house” was no more than a small, windowless hut with wood benches attached to the stud walls and a pot-bellied, wood-burning stove in the center. On a metal, folding chair next to the stove sat the ancient attendant, chewing his toothless gums, feeding the fire, and occasionally telling the ruffians to settle down.
The latter were the older kids—hockey players, all of them. Individually they were probably harmless, but as a pack they were loud, boisterous, and intimidating. It was in that setting that I learned how differently people act when they act . . . together, especially when armed with long, hooked sticks of laminated wood made in Finland. They never skated on the big rink where we younger kids skated freely. The ruffians skated endlessly within the sturdy confines of the hockey rink beside the “family ice.” Their racket was continuous—sticks slapping ice, puck smacking wood, blades scraping ice, bodies slamming boards, expletives filling players’ breath.
As the world turned, I wound up attending college in Maine, where the biggest sport by far was hockey. (In my junior year, our Polar Bears were Div III conference champions.) I skated a lot on rink ice but when a local ocean inlet froze as smooth as glass, a bunch of us skated there too and played a long—very long—game of hockey without boards but with ample “forever” between goals.
Now in my “progressive” age I skate every single day there’s snow on the ground—because all my skating is now on skis.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
