Christmas in Muskoka 2016 On Being Canadian and Old, Cold Hockey Rinks

ON BEING CANADIAN AND PLAYING IN RINKS COLDER INSIDE THAN IT WAS OUTSIDE

FEET AND NOSE FROZEN - REMINDS ME OF MY YOUTH

Chilled to the core of my old creaking bones, I’ve just now arrived in the safe haven of a cheerfully bright and warm Birch Hollow.....and while the thermometer tells me with a wink of an oldtimer’s reflection, that it’s only minus fifteen, it has all of a sudden given me a flash of reminiscence. In my middle fifties now, I’m told by my senior cronies that it’s all right to have flashbacks and this teeter-totter of mid-life crazy.......and it’s not the preamble to a stroke or sudden senility. You tell me? If this blog reads a tad nuts, I’m okay; if it makes sense, geez maybe I am in trouble. I’ve often worked in opposites, or so I’m told by my editors over the decades.

It’s been almost a year since my father passed away. A year before he died I wrote a little tribute to Ed, about his unfailing determination to get me to my minor hockey games back in the early 1960's. It was a hit and miss situation from the get-go because nothing in my Burlington days, was within easy walking distance for an eight year old. And our car, a vintage “hit and mostly miss” Austin, was a lover of warm climes, and on so many occasions, wouldn’t start without a push or a boost. Our family didn’t have a lot of money, so paying for a tow-truck was out of the question, and most people we knew hated to see my dad coming through the snow flurries of a January morning......with that look in his eyes of anger, frustration and yet resignation the day wasn’t going to get much better. “Could you give me a boost Fred?” he’d ask. Fred was just one of a dozen names spoken on those occasions of battery failure.

When we did get going, it was usually to the outdoor Kiwanis Rink, and it was bloody cold out there at about 4:00 a.m., in mid-January, the only time our young team could get ice on weekends, in the crammed city league. Poor Ed was frozen and tired before he got to work that day....and all the other days he hauled his goaltender son to and from the rinks. When we moved to Bracebridge, in the winter of 1966, playing hockey was much different, as we had a marvelous old time arena and a modestly chilled playing surface. We also got to play, in what seemed to our family, as prime arena time, coming after eight in the morning on Saturdays. That was, of course, for the practices and the home games. Ed then had to deliver me, and a few team-mates to natural ice arenas, in Port Carling, Bala, MacTier and Baysville. It was a painfully cold experience as I remember, and a lot harsher than today’s minus fifteen.

The car heater seldom worked. Ed had to clean the windshield with a scraper every few miles, our feet would be frozen long before we made it to the rural arenas, and even then, with the exception of a heated lounge and dressing room, the dominating condition was cold and colder. I thought I was one of the first goaltenders ever to have my mask break a puck in two but I later found out this was pretty common on natural ice rinks. True enough. We had pucks break after that, just hitting the boards. I can remember being the back-up goalie on twenty below nights, and crying because of the pain in my toes. Of course, as the coach barked at me, “Currie, stop complaining,” and as I found out at intermission, warming frozen toes is twice as painful as having them nearly frozen. It was quite a scene at the end of the game, having won on the scoreboard but crying with pain in the dressing room, as the red hot stovepipe brought back circulation. Some kids actually burned themselves, putting their frozen toes right on the metal pipe, only to have part of their skin remain when yanked violently back when thawing commenced. Those old stove pipes branded a lot of hockey players back then, as the dressing rooms were not much more than bedroom size, for fifteen to eighteen kids and equipment.

The real crying came on the way home again, when frozen and thawed toes were frozen all over again, and by the time we hit the town limits, the heater had come on for a tad and provided a third thaw in the same night. My dad’s feet were frozen too, as he never seemed to have appropriately warm footwear even up to his last days. He was a tough guy but I know he suffered a lot, taking me to those games in colder than cold arenas. I never heard him complain about personal discomfort, just a few choice cusses when the car wouldn’t start, especially for the trip home. He hated to be late for work.

I don’t know whether he thought I had the right stuff to make the National Hockey League. My parents didn’t push me into hockey and I know they always had a hard time paying for the season’s registration in those days. They could get vocal and a tad critical of my play, especially if I let one of those long drifting slapshots in, that I should have stopped easily. By and large they weren’t crazy parent-fans, and they never approached the coach to beg more ice time for their special child. I appreciated that then, and now, because some parents made fools of themselves, and embarrassed the heck out of the kids, with their in-stand tirades. Ed just sipped at his hot coffee and talked with other fans about pro hockey, how he used to be a rink rat at Maple Leaf Gardens when Connie Smythe was the king of the city, and the big stars of the past he used to drink with at a local watering hole.

It’s funny how one moment, you’re shivering while the dog has its morning constitutional, and something strange, like a childhood recollection of frozen toes, will all of a sudden become the all encompassing state of the union. I could close my eyes and see it all, as if I was at that very moment getting ready to step onto the ice for a minor hockey game, in a tin ceiling arena, which was often said to be colder inside than out. While I didn’t haul a thermometer around with me, I’m pretty sure that analysis was true. God bless the fans who stood out along those rickety boards to support us. Ed watched from the crowded viewing area, in the lobby, having a cigarette or a dozen, running out to start the car every half hour or so, to get a head start on emergency planning before the final buzzer. We usually had two to four players in each car, and it added a more serious responsibility to the task. Ed and I had been stuck all over God’s half acre, and survived to tell the story. But he sure as heck didn’t want to have parents worrying at home, that there had been an accident on the highway. For all those years of minor hockey, Ed didn’t have much time to enjoy the game. I grew up knowing the importance of having plans “B” through “Z”, to employ when the first plan failed as we expected it to.....but never missing a beat to seek the alternative and the one after that. We had a lot of fun out there. But our cars sucked!

The saddest time for Ed was when our car wouldn’t start at home, in Burlington, and by time we called for another ride, everyone had already headed out. In this pre cell phone dark age, there was no other option, considering we didn’t have any loose coins for a taxi. He was always devastated when his backup plan failed. Trundling my equipment back up the stairs was far more of a let-down for him than me......I could stay home watching the Saturday morning funnies while he had to drive for an hour to work, thinking about the way he’d let his son down. I suppose in retrospect, I milked it a little, and on most occasions, he’d leave a few dollars behind so that I could at least buy some hockey cards at the variety store. What I didn’t realize was that he was giving up his lunch money but he didn’t want me to be totally disappointed with the day I’d looked forward to all week.

I have written a number of pieces about my old hockey days, and dear old dad, and it’s funny now to think back on those years, and ponder if he really did think I was N.H.L. bound. As a matter of some irony, many years later, my boss at the time, Roger Crozier, a great former netminder of the Detroit Red Wings.....working then for the American Bank, MBNA, told me that I was considered the next Bracebridge kid to get a shot at the big leagues. We’d been talking, during breakfast, one morning in Wilmington, Delaware, that one of the reasons I’d been given a free week at his Red Wing Hockey School, (late 1960's) in Bracebridge, was due to the reports from my coaches that my future looked pretty bright, if I could change some of my bad habits. I still have a few of those but I’m no longer a goaltender. I remember coming home to Muskoka, and meeting up with my dad, and being so happy to relay the news........that I had been actually considered professional material way back when. He just smiled and said, “Ted, a lot of people thought you had what it required to go on in hockey......coaches, managers, fans. There was only one who disagreed.” “Who was that, Ed,” miffed by anyone then, on this new information, who wouldn’t have seen all my prowess budding forth. “You,” he answered. “You decided to play hockey because you enjoyed it.....not because you had your heart set on a professional career. We wouldn’t have changed a thing. You loved hockey. Pushing would only have frustrated you.....and ruined the fun you were having otherwise.”

When I asked Roger, one day a few months later, whether he would like to be best recognized and remembered, in a biography I was working on, as either an all star hockey player, or as a banker, as he was in the period before his death in the mid-1990's, he responded without any hesitation..... “I’d like to be known as a banker, Ted!” I though this was pretty profound coming from a former professional hockey star, who had achieved acclaim at every level of his minor and junior hockey, up to and including milestones with the Red Wings, Buffalo Sabres and the Washington Capitals. “It was a job,” he said. He often said that he enjoyed the game when it was over, not during. For me then, I think I made the right decision. My first choice of professions was to join the media, of which I’m still a member, and as an antique collector /dealer, an adventure that has run parallel to writing for well more than thirty years.

I owe Ed a lot. He understood me even though I would have argued the opposite. While I think he might have liked to have a pro player as a son, he seemed to like telling folks his offspring was editor of the local newspaper. I hope this was the case. But regardless, I do very much credit his patience and determination with giving me a damn fine childhood.....even though frozen toes are the most poignant memories at this moment of thawing.