Winter's End

Cheers of encouragement rang through the air. The milky slush of melting ice flew by under the blades of my Red Berenson hockey skates. Pond ice threatened to give way at any moment as my legs churned frantically and kept me just ahead of disaster. Leaning in, I cut a little closer toward the center of the pond.

With a sucking crack, the ice under my right skate gave way, and I felt the sting of freezing water seeping into the boot. A charge of adrenaline and fear flooded through me at that same instant. There was no time to think, only the absence of any time and the need to keep my legs moving. I was on the verge of plunging through the ice into the freezing water, and worse than that, losing the game.

It was early March when George and I debated our options for the Friday evening that lay ahead of us. We were home from school and ready to get on with the weekend. Every free minute had been spent playing hockey. Old Man Winter had blessed us this year and frozen the ponds, creating a never-ending cycle of pond hockey games.

Each winter, as soon as the water in those ponds turned to ice, our season would begin. At school, talk buzzed as to where we would play and when. The NHL season was already underway, our heroes flashing back and forth across our television screens and red lights flashing as pucks slammed into the netting. Our living rooms were filled with the sounds of scraping skate blades and rattling boards. We could hear the occasional thud of fists as donnybrooks broke out on the red and blue striped rinks and announcers proclaimed it a ‘Barnburner’! Hockey was in the air, and we wanted to be a part of it.

All winter, snow, sleet, or shine, we were out there on the ponds. There were big ones and small ones, round ones and square ones. Some were open to the public in parks, and some were not, but we would find a way to take them over and play. We showed up in ones and twos right after school or right after dawn on weekend days, and we played into the dark, especially if the moon was out. If there was ice, we were playing.

Each of us had a stick and maybe shin guards. Ah, right, you’re thinking about the skates. Didn’t each of us have skates? The short answer was … No. Not all of us had a pair. And not all of us even had hockey skates, and some were stuck with a pair of figure skates. That did not mean those guys were great skaters, usually just the opposite. Even so, they were better off than the guys with no skates who were unceremoniously shoved into the makeshift goals set up at each end of our icy playgrounds. Those who couldn’t skate played goal,

Hockey players in shoes were at the bottom of the pond hockey hierarchy, not because they couldn’t skate but because they couldn’t shovel. Clearing the rink was almost a daily chore and not one that anyone looked forward to doing. Guys without skates had no traction and were worthless when it came to clearing snow from the rink.

Each day that winter, boys, alone and in clusters, hockey sticks and shovels over our shoulders, skates dangling, could be seen shuffling in daily procession toward a frozen pond. Teams were formed each day and sometimes stood for weeks or more or disbanded and reformed throughout the day as some had to leave and some arrived.

Hockey was seasonal for all of us in those days. There were very few ice rinks in town and more roller rinks. Some of us played roller hockey in the warmer months; none of us played much ice hockey as rinks cost too much. So we played on the frozen ice, wooden rinks, and even asphalt and concrete lots. No matter what surface was under our feet, the vision within our minds was the same as we took on the persona of our NHL heroes and made incredible plays causing imaginary crowds to explode in applause and amazement.

The weeks and weeks of shoveling and skating and occasional brawling had us in great physical shape and confident in our abilities. We played from dawn to dusk and beyond, only returning home when it was demanded. We played with the immeasurable energy of youth.

By winter’s end, George and I found ourselves skating laps on a half-melted circle of ice with Spring just a couple of weeks away. We were clinging to a lifestyle and we simply refused to let go of it. The snow had long disappeared from the brown grass on the banks. We had encountered no one on our walk to the pond from our house a mile or more away. We had gotten more than a few questioning looks from cars driving by as we walked with our hockey gear, minus the shovel. On that March day, we were the last of our breed.

With a quickness born of months of practice, I shifted my weight seamlessly onto my left foot and extracted my right skate from its position through the ice. I took a short stride back onto the right skate to avoid plunging through with the left and accelerated back up to full speed again. I could see the wave in front of me as I had to skate uphill to maintain levitation above the water. Another even louder cheer and a Holy *&%$ rang out from the bank.

Another close call. There is no hockey today and will not be again, barring an unlikely late freeze, until next season. Despite phone calls, our Winter friends have all declined to meet us here today. Today is only for the true believers or the carelessly foolish. No sticks. No gear. No extra weight. We’d emptied our pockets and dropped our gloves, hats, and jackets. We had to fly today.

The ice was soft and cracked and flexed like a trampoline when we stepped on it. Water seeped up through the cracks onto the surface as our weight would sink the ice. It’s thinner toward the middle, and that created the game. We alternated skating laps on the slush veering ever closer to the thin ice at the center.

Watching the other skater, we could see that we were skating in a bowl as the rubbery surface responded to our weight. There was a moving wave both in front of and behind as we flew around the ice. The game was to see how near the center you could venture without going through the ice. So far, it was a draw. George was a little lighter than me, but I was faster. We were brothers; neither one of us was giving up. I smiled at George’s premature victory yell.

Rounding out toward the thicker ice nearer the bank I stepped off in full stride onto the soft dirt and brown grass where my brother stood laughing. I managed to stop without falling as my skate blades sunk into the earth and looked at my brother with that smirk still on his face. Your turn.

Our game on the cracked melting ice continued into dusk and finally ended as the moon began an early rise into the dark blue sky. In the end, it was a draw, and we both smiled as we pulled off skates and stuffed our wet feet into boots for the walk home.

George and I stood for a last moment and gazed out over the broken ice. Watery holes tell the story of our game today that turned out to be better than any hockey we could have played. No one else will skate on this pond this year. We took care of that and all our buddies chickened out. This was one of those stories that would be told to friends and hopefully, never to our parents.

We decided to avoid the road and took a shortcut home across a neighbor’s field and then through the woods to our house. By the time we trudged into our yard, we looked like the Frankenstein brothers with ten-pound boots caked with sticky mud. Mom peeked out the storm door, shook her head, and directed us to clean up with the hose, in the grass!

George and I were tired but smiling. We were home-free as the final piece of our plan fell into place. Mom had focused on the mud and not where we had been. Rinsing off with the hose hid our wet pants.

Sleep came easy that night. The next day we went to school and told our story over and over and all those guys who chose not to join us wished they had. We went to the pond with friends that week and retold the story of each black hole punched in the vanishing ice. In the end, George and I became part of pond hockey legend.