Hockey Games In Those Great Natural Ice Palaces

THE HOCKEY I KNEW - AND THE ARENAS WITH NATURAL ICE - OH BOY

WHEN WE CRIED TOGETHER, SUFFERING FROM FROZEN TOES AND WHITE FINGERS

     AT LEAST THREE TIMES A WEEK, SOMEONE I KNOW, WILL ASK ME POLITELY, WHAT'S WRONG WITH MY LEFT LEG. I SHOULD BE FLATTERED THEY CARE TO ASK, BUT MY RESPONSES CHANGE DEPENDING ON THE SITUATION. SOMETIMES IF I'M FEELING FULL OF BEANS, I ANSWER THAT I WAS "GORED, DURING THE RUNNING OF THE BULLS IN SPAIN." I'VE BEEN KNOWN TO ANSWER THAT, "I WAS IN A CAR WRECK WHILE RACING IN THE DAYTONA 500," AND EVEN, "MY PARACHUTE DIDN'T OPEN." THEY KNOW I'M KIDDING, AND THEY HALF SMILE IN RETURN. "WRITERS! THEY CHORTLE, WHILE THEY EXIT OUR CONVERSATION. THE FACT IS, I HAVE HAD SO MANY BODY ABUSES, FROM WORK AND SPORT, I REALLY DON'T HAVE AN ACCURATE ASSESSMENT, OF JUST WHAT INCIDENT IT WAS, THAT GAVE ME A PAIN IN THE ASS.

    YEAR'S AGO, WHEN I WAS GOING FOR ASSESSMENTS OF MY JAW, (AS I SUFFER FROM A SEVERE JAW DYSFUNCTION) WHICH INVOLVED SOME CHIROPRACTOR ASSISTANCE, RE-ADJUSTING THE SKELETON THAT APPARENTLY WANTED TO LEAVE THE REST OF MY BODY BEHIND, I WAS TOLD THAT ONE LEG WAS LONGER THAN THE OTHER. I MAY HAVE BEEN PANIC-STRICKEN FOR THAT MOMENT, THINKING, "MY GOD, I'M REALLY OFF-KILTER, AND SHRINKING TOO." I THINK QUITE A FEW OF US HAVE THIS KIND OF SITUATION, ONE LEG A TAD BIGGER AND LONGER THAN THE OTHER, AND FOR MOST, IT DOESN'T ADD UP TO MUCH OF A CRISIS. MY HOBBLING HAS BECOME A LITTLE WORSE THESE DAYS, AND SUZANNE BELIEVES IT'S ALL THE TIME I SPEND AT THE COMPUTER. SHE NOTICED THE OTHER NIGHT, HOW I HABITUALLY TUCK MY LEG UNDER THE CHAIR, POSSIBLY FOR SAFE KEEPING. I THINK RATHER, IT HAS BEEN A LIFE OF PHYSICAL STRESSES, AND NOT THE RESULT OF ONE TRAUMATIC, OR RECURRING INJURY. I DON'T HAVE SWELLING, OR ANYTHING, ANYWHERE, THAT EVEN LOOKS LIKE A DISORDER…..UNTIL YOU SEE ME COMING DOWN THE GROCERY STORE AISLE, LIMPING AND GRUMBLING, AND TELLING SHOPPERS TO GET OUT OF MY WAY….."CRANKY OLD BASTARD COMING," I YELL AS FOREWARNING.

     SO WHEN NICE FOLKS ENQUIRE ABOUT MY WEE HOBBLE, I SELDOM HAVE THE TIME OR PATIENCE, TO GO BACK TO WHERE IT ALL BEGAN. IN THE FRIGID, NATURAL ICE ARENAS WHERE OUR MINOR HOCKEY TEAMS HAD TO PLAY, IN MY VINTAGE OF ORGANIZED SPORTS. I WAS AMONGST THE LAST OF THE MINOR HOCKEY KIDS, WHO GOT TO PLAY IN THOSE BARN-TYPE STRUCTURES, THAT WERE ALWAYS COLDER INSIDE THAN IF WE HAD BEEN PLAYING OUTDOORS…..EVEN CONSIDERING THE WIND CHILL. THEY WERE RUSTIC AND WONDERFULLY TRADITIONAL, IN THE CANADIAN SENSE OF ROUGHING-IT-FOR-SPORTS. IT WAS THE CANADIAN WAY. TO FREEZE YOUR BODY PARTS FOR THREE PERIODS OF FRIGID HOCKEY, WHEN EVEN THE PUCK WOULD DISINTEGRATE WHEN SMACKED AGAINST THE GOAL POSTS. AH, THOSE WERE THE DAYS. I ACTUALLY HAD ONE SPLIT IN TWO, WHEN I GOT HIT WHILE WEARING MY NEWLY ACQUIRED JACQUE PLANTE MASK. THE REF DIDN'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL TO DO.

IT STARTED OFF WITH LEG DROPS AT THE RED WING HOCKEY SCHOOL

     Roger Crozier gave me a free pass to join the annual summer Red Wing Hockey School, at the Bracebridge Arena, in 1968 I believe. Roger told me many years later, that I was considered a rising star as a netminder……which would have been useful information at the time. I just thought they had some extra spots to fill, and that someone from town had mentioned that, short of going to reformatory, I should be put into the program for the town's well being. This is exactly what happened, because it was thought by local coaches, I could be all star goalie material by the time I made it to Midget age. So during this camp period, I had a goaltending coach, and with outside supervision from Roger and his partner, Ron Ingram, they had me doing leg drops, kicks, flops, the butterfly save (legs pushed out flat on either side), and quick jump-ups, from being flat on my face. For days, I never saw a puck in my crease. I just did these leg exercises, to improve my agility in the net. I hobbled home every afternoon. I enjoyed the camp, and I continued thanking Roger, from the time of the camp, to the mid 1990's, when I actually began working for his newly formed charity, the Crozier Foundation of Muskoka. I was public relations director for Muskoka, and curator of the Bracebridge Sports Hall of Fame, which the Foundation financed at the Bracebridge Arena. I think he got the message, eventually, that I appreciated his support way back when……and it was a nice break for a poor kid, from a family that could never have afforded to send me. I'm not saying that the leg drops and splits and all the other exercises hurt my leg and hip joint. I do think, that after many years, even through university and mens recreational hockey, I continued to beat on the same bones and tissue, that bother me today…..especially if I feel the urge to stop a puck coming my way…..or bad weather approaches. I'm like a human barometer. Cold damp weather adds to the discomfort, that's for sure. Doesn't happen too much these days, that I might face someone taking a snapshot, unless I run through a road hockey game, on the way to get the mail across the road, here at Birch Hollow.

     I think a lot about those old arenas though, and how many games I backed-up Tim Morrison (father of rising star comedian, Tyler Morrison), riding the frozen pine, in those incredible, frosted-over, tin-roofed, barns they called arenas; and when I get a little pain down south, it's the first thing that comes to mind. Frozen to the bench, or frozen stiff in the net. It could be brutal at thirty below. The ice itself would explode when we skated over it, and the puck was like a disc of lead, when it hit you in the groin…..which for me, was pretty typical…..the pain on top of pain thing. There are nights, here at Birch Hollow, when I step outside to walk the dog, that I get a whiff of frigid Muskoka air, and the scent of woodsmoke, from neighboring chimneys, and I think back to those hundreds of games, we played in the rustic ice palaces, in villages like Port Carling, Bala, MacTier, Baysville, Sundridge, and Powassan. The better appointed arenas of course were in Gravenhurst, which was definitely a step up from the others; Huntsville and Bracebridge were very nice rinks with normal heaters in the dressing rooms. I loved the game so much, that I never thought about the temperature prior to the game. That would have been distracting.

     When we get upstairs to the dressing-rooms, some of them had stove-pipes running right up through the floor, and positioned in the middle of the tiny room. Very few of our players, left these natural ice arenas, without being branded, on assorted parts of our bodies. I used to back into the sucker just about every game, usually with a bare back. We all left a lot of skin on those red hot stove pipes. Back in those days, I played on minor hockey teams with chaps like Wayne Sander and Paul Duff, and every time I run into these lads today, I automatically think about being piled into one of our father's vehicles, half frozen, driving through snowstorms around the lakes, just to play that "good old hockey game."

     I can remember in the dressing rooms, after the games, when most of us began crying, because of the immense pain, from the stove-pipe heat, that was thawing out our toes. It was excruciating pain. The same with our white-frosted finger-tips. If Tim Morrison and I split the game, I always wanted the second shift, because if you were wet with sweat, and had to sit on the bench for long, you were going to become a popsicle before the final buzzer. The trick, while riding the pine, was to never stop kicking your feet, back and forth, and up and down, to keep warmth generating within…..and blood circulating. The iced bench was a little rough on the behind, but that's a story we won't delve into. But I had many games that my feet were so cold, while playing net, that I wouldn't be able to feel a snapshot to the toes. I often got to the dressing room, to find out, after removing my skates, that my sock was bloody because of an injury. Back in my day, the second string netminders didn't get team issued goalie skates. The town provided the pads, but not the skates. Goalie skates have steel toes made to withstand shots. Ordinary hockey skates then, didn't have much protection at all. Even my goalie pads were too small, so I took a lot of shots and sticks to the upper leg, when I was in a slide, and my pants bunched-up a tad. My mask was too small, so I got hit in the fleshy part of the head a lot. This however, doesn't explain my limp.

     Over the decades, I was injured a lot playing Canada's national sport. The biggest cut I ever had, was on the forehead, when I got into a fight with an opposition forward, and he yanked my helmet off, and started beating me with it……the steel mesh….which left an interesting grid on my face. The near-death injury, was a slap shot to the throat, and no one connected with the team knew what to do, other than tell me, 'Come on Currie, you bum, shake it off." So when I'd take a slap shot on the inside of my leg, or a stick slash to the hip, where there was absolutely no padding, I gave up hobbling to the bench, because most of the time, I was the starting and only goalie. As I've written about many times in the past, minor hockey was brutal back in my vintage of the 1960's onward. I can remember a kid having his front teeth knocked out by high stick, and the coach yelling at him, for falling out of the play, while trying to pick up the remnants scattered on the ice. "But coach…..my teeth…..they're all over the ice." You know, I've watched the movie "Slapshot," about a half dozen times, because there are certain scenes in the film, that remind me of my younger days in hockey, with lads like the Hanson Brothers, that were rough even in the dressing room. Our coaches liked "tough," and "never say die," attitudes, and so did my parents; thus there was no point complaining to them, that a brawl broke out in the dressing room, over the disposal of someone's underwear down the toilet.

     When someone asks me why I limp, I try to come up with something anecdotal, because to get into the decline of my body, in the pursuit of sports excellence, isn't something I can consolidate into a couple of sentences. So I just offer explanations like, "I fell off my horse at the Kentucky Derby," or "I twisted my knee, while climbing Mount Everest." It seems that by limping, I've created quite a stir around here, and there may even be a pool, or bet, about how it happened, that I became suddenly injured. Maybe it was caused when Suzanne finally threw me out of the house, into the hedge, for being argumentative……one too many times. Or maybe it's just the result of playing too hard, in too many extreme conditions, for way too long. So we'll just leave it at that. So the next time you spot me, dipping and doodling all over the place, between the bananas and the turnip bin, just whisper amongst yourselves…….it was hockey that felled the man. God bless him for playing Canada's National Sport…..till he finally could play no more.

     Thanks so much for joining today's blog, written from "close to the hearth," here at Birch Hollow……on a dark and stormy night. Geez, it looks like a night that my dad would have had to drive five or six of us hockey lads, to MacTier, through white-outs, in a rickety old car, with failing windshield wipers, and an intermittent heater. But we survived. Just a little worn around the edges. See you again soon.