Ice Hockey Diary

While eating a drumstick at Boston Market, looking out at the drab, windy Chicago day that felt more like winter than spring, I had no choice but to think since I did not have a newspaper to read. I thought about the fiction stories I post weekly at www.blackhumouristpress.com blog and how all of the stories are mostly fictional accounts of everyday people who have something extraordinary happen in their lives. I thought about how I could incorporate the sport of ice hockey into my fictional writing and somehow came to this; stories about amateur or recreational ice hockey players and situations that transpire on or around the ice. My hope is that it will be interesting to some or most of you. I promise not to write exclusively about myself and what I feel as much as what I observe that I think may be interesting to fellow hockey players both male and female.
Aside from writing humor/social fiction, I play a genre of music called Ska. If you’re not familiar with Ska, take a Reggae album and find an old phonograph and set the 331/3 to 45 revolutions per minute. The Reggae will speed up into what is known as Ska.
Ska was born in Jamaica shortly after independence from England. Local musicians who strained to pick up radio stations from America’s gulf coast, were trying to emulate the Fat’s Domino sound and screwed up the on beat, making it off beat and creating a new sound. The Ska I play with two bands, Skapone of Chicago and Superdot of Detroit, is a hybrid of Rock, Soul and Blues mixed with Reggae. None of this has a thing to do with ice hockey but I will say that a perfect day for me is usually getting up early to play a pick up game at a local rink, get something to eat, grab my bass and amplifier and head off to a gig at night. For me, that makes the fast paced, hectic, Protestant work ethic, life in America, much easier to deal with.
I began ice hockey after figure skating. It wasn’t a choice of mine to figure skate. My paternal grandparents signed me up to learn to skate at a rink that was solely for figure skating. I had black little skates with toe picks that I could not take to the park with me for fear of being beaten or laughed at. My CCM Bobby Hull autographed, synthetic leather skates with metal tube holders, were my first pair of hockey skates. I was given a Northland stick with a right curve even though I shot from the left. I played every day after school and weekends with two French Canadian/Swiss brothers who everyone called the Rothlesburgers. The Rothlesburgers made ice in their backyard and their father maintained it for us. Many days I could remember walking home to dinner after playing for hours and not being able to feel my feet beneath the ankle. I may have played 30,000 pick up and league games since those days but those early days will always stay in my mind. Looking at the school clock slowly pass to 3:00pm so that I could run home and get my equipment and head over to the Rothlesburger’s to play. No matter how much I play, I still never get bored of the sport. Since the days of playing in the Rothlesburger’s backyard, I went on to coach mites through midgets as well as high school. I owned three hockey pro shops in municipal rinks in north suburban Chicago and raised two children that played both Division I and minor league ice hockey. I have many hats that I wear in my life as most people do. My smelly Bauer 5000 helmet is one that I still wear four to five times a week, when I’m not writing or playing music.

This should be enough of an introduction. I leave you with this; The Detroit Red Wings defeated The Vancouver Canucks in overtime this past week with .01 left in the game, off of a back handed goal by Henrik Zetterberg. More astounding was two goals scored within five seconds during that same game by the Detroit Red Wings. Both are things you don’t see every game. See you on the ice.