Hey Bucci,
Great to read your excerpts from Jack Falla’s works. Jack and I are contemporaries, having lived in adjacent towns, he in Natick and I in Framingham. While I left Framingham a few years before he moved to Natick, I’m sure we frequented many of the same outdoor venues. For an old-time hockey diehard, nothing beats good outdoor ice.
The readings bring back many memories. For me, hockey in the late 50s and early 60s meant Gleason’s Pond. Games involved everyone from old timers, college and high school players and anyone younger who could keep up. As a little kid playing with the big boys, I was the one who got sent out on the thin ice when an errant pass slid the wrong way. More than once they fished me out with tree branches or hockey sticks and drove me home soaked, including the first day I wore my brand new CCM Tacks. No one in town could have been happier when the big kids won the state championship for Framingham in 1961.
One vivid memory of Gleason’s: Freddie Keane got new hockey gloves for Christmas. The next day he fell in the partially frozen pond. Not wanting to ruin his gloves, he tossed them on a floating piece of ice and climbed back onto the solid sheet. That afternoon he returned to salvage the gloves. We chopped out a body-sized piece, and Fred lied down on it while we tied a rope around him. Then surfer-style he paddled out 50 yards to the gloves, grabbed them, and we towed him in.
As my friends and I got older, we graduated to the lighted outdoor rink at Bowditch Field. On winter nights the rink was reserved for public skating from 6-8 and then open for hockey from 8-10. My dad worked for the Park Department in those days, and his winter job was to tend the rink. If I had my homework done, he’d pick me up and get me to the rink by 8. After 10, I’d help him scrape and hose down the ice. Guys came from all over greater Boston to play there at night, and games often involved 15 on 15 or more. If a couple of goalies showed up, so much the better. During Christmas break many college players came to stay in shape. Listening to their stories was a real education. Here one learned to stickhandle in a crowd and look up to avoid collisions. More than once these games led me to the Framingham Union Hospital emergency room for stitches. Several years later I was the one telling college hockey stories to a new generation of high school kids.
As time went on, I had the opportunity to coach high school hockey. At least once a year, I would give our ice time to the JVs and take the varsity out to practice on a local pond. For some this was their only outdoor skating of the year. We’d set up boots for goals, arrange teams, and have maybe two or three games going at once, winners meeting for the Carver’s Pond Cup. Goalies always skated out. Practice ended with stops and starts around 100 yards in length. Today at alumni games former players often speak with nostalgia about those sessions as among their best recollections of the program.
These days I don’t get out as often as I’d like. Global warming or whatever limits outdoor ice, and outdoor rinks like Bowditch just aren’t around like they used to be. Even when the ice is good, a pond game is tough to find.
Several years ago my wife and I took a long-planned ski trip to Banff and Lake Louise. On a whim, I threw my skates in the suitcase and my stick in with the skis. Lo and behold, I found myself one cold sunny day involved in a serious game of 2 on 2 on the plowed-off lake behind the Chateau Lake Louise with three young hotel employees who had the afternoon off. As the sun receded beyond the glacier and snow covered mountains surrounding the lake, I looked around and wondered if hockey could ever get better than this.
Jack Falla would have loved it.
Friday, February 13, 2009
The Off Season
The Off Season
The house creaks and whines as the wind howls outside. Snow reflected in the street light blows horizontally as the adjacent houses become mere mirages on the ghostly white horizon. Trees bend, branches snap noisily, wires toss violently, while inside the lights occasionally dim and flicker. This is the sixth storm in the past five weeks.
Morning brings yet another blinding white landscape. Plows have created four foot piles at the end of each driveway. The morning paper will arrive late today, if it comes at all. The foghorn signaling “no school, all schools” sounds in the distance. A forlorn bird surveys the feeder hanging from the old oak out front, but the wind has emptied the feeder, and the seed is buried deep in the thick white comforter covering the ground. Even though Christmas is long past, the ornamental lighted deer and polar bear remain encased in their white bier next to the front steps awaiting the ground to thaw so that their stakes might be uprooted and they might return to their attic resting place for another year.
I bundle up in layers. Thermal underwear and heavy sweat pants cover my legs and L.L. Bean boots. An UnderArmour cold weather base layer, Duofold and Hot Chillies tops, a sweat shirt and old lined Adidas coaching jacket protect my upper body, while a ski mask, knit cap and jacket hood bury my head. Grandoe ski mittens complete the wardrobe. Now I’m ready to head out and shovel.
In an hour I’m done. Even with two layers pealed from head and upper body, sweat still pours profusely from my forehead despite the 15 degree wind chill. Entering the two car garage, I throw the shovel unceremoniously into the back corner next to my golf clubs.
Looking at the clubs, my mind begins to wander. I’m standing on the first tee, crystal clear blue sky, about 75 degrees with the late morning sun beating down, 400 yards of deep green manicured fairway rolling away in the distance, a shimmering water hazard forming its starboard boundary. After a quick gulp of ice cold Diet Coke, I pull out my driver and a tee, stride up to the white markers, carefully insert the tee into the lush turf using my Titleist 3 as a guide to get the correct height. As I wait for the foursome 275 yards ahead to hit their second shots (not that I’d be any threat to them), I sight two swans canoodling in the water hazard 175 yards out.
A giant icicle crashing down from the edge of the house roof suddenly ends my reverie. Unfortunately, I won’t be teeing it up for months. That’s when I have an epiphany.
Grabbing a step ladder, I climb up into the garage attic. Yeah, it’s still here … 40 feet of rolled up contractor’s netting. The netting is five feet wide, with grommets every 2 feet along the sides. This might work. Since the joists of the attic floor are almost ten feet above the garage floor, I cut the netting into four 10 foot lengths. Then I locate a bunch of small screw-in hooks in the leftover hardware box. Quickly I insert the hooks at two foot intervals in one of the joists and hang one length of netting from them. With some rope I attach one more length to the original, looping the rope through the grommets to create a floor to ceiling, ten foot wide net. Then I similarly hang the other two lengths at 90 degree angles to the ends, once again using rope to tie them all together. From the basement crawl space I salvage a decrepit old 3x8 carpet remnant, and voila … an indoor driving range.
For the next hour, as the wind creates monster snow drifts against the side of the garage, I face Tiger in match play at Augusta National. He spots me two strokes a hole and still wins. But with each whack at the practice ball, I loosen up and feel more comfortable. Eventually I get up the nerve to use a regular ball. Yes, the net holds up, giving slightly to the impact of the ball and letting it drop harmlessly to the garage floor. Finally, my hands beginning to blister, I quit for the day. I remove the rope from the sides of my new range and roll up each section back up into the joists where they remain held in place by short bungee cords.
Fast forward three months. After hitting balls in my garage three or four times a week since that fateful day, I step out on the course for the first time. What a difference! Only once in the past had I broken 100. Today I shoot 90! This improvement continued throughout the season. Rounds in the 80s became the rule rather than the exception. Who knew that the breakthrough in my play would come not at a high-priced, week-long golf school but on a snow-filled early January morning in my own garage?
The house creaks and whines as the wind howls outside. Snow reflected in the street light blows horizontally as the adjacent houses become mere mirages on the ghostly white horizon. Trees bend, branches snap noisily, wires toss violently, while inside the lights occasionally dim and flicker. This is the sixth storm in the past five weeks.
Morning brings yet another blinding white landscape. Plows have created four foot piles at the end of each driveway. The morning paper will arrive late today, if it comes at all. The foghorn signaling “no school, all schools” sounds in the distance. A forlorn bird surveys the feeder hanging from the old oak out front, but the wind has emptied the feeder, and the seed is buried deep in the thick white comforter covering the ground. Even though Christmas is long past, the ornamental lighted deer and polar bear remain encased in their white bier next to the front steps awaiting the ground to thaw so that their stakes might be uprooted and they might return to their attic resting place for another year.
I bundle up in layers. Thermal underwear and heavy sweat pants cover my legs and L.L. Bean boots. An UnderArmour cold weather base layer, Duofold and Hot Chillies tops, a sweat shirt and old lined Adidas coaching jacket protect my upper body, while a ski mask, knit cap and jacket hood bury my head. Grandoe ski mittens complete the wardrobe. Now I’m ready to head out and shovel.
In an hour I’m done. Even with two layers pealed from head and upper body, sweat still pours profusely from my forehead despite the 15 degree wind chill. Entering the two car garage, I throw the shovel unceremoniously into the back corner next to my golf clubs.
Looking at the clubs, my mind begins to wander. I’m standing on the first tee, crystal clear blue sky, about 75 degrees with the late morning sun beating down, 400 yards of deep green manicured fairway rolling away in the distance, a shimmering water hazard forming its starboard boundary. After a quick gulp of ice cold Diet Coke, I pull out my driver and a tee, stride up to the white markers, carefully insert the tee into the lush turf using my Titleist 3 as a guide to get the correct height. As I wait for the foursome 275 yards ahead to hit their second shots (not that I’d be any threat to them), I sight two swans canoodling in the water hazard 175 yards out.
A giant icicle crashing down from the edge of the house roof suddenly ends my reverie. Unfortunately, I won’t be teeing it up for months. That’s when I have an epiphany.
Grabbing a step ladder, I climb up into the garage attic. Yeah, it’s still here … 40 feet of rolled up contractor’s netting. The netting is five feet wide, with grommets every 2 feet along the sides. This might work. Since the joists of the attic floor are almost ten feet above the garage floor, I cut the netting into four 10 foot lengths. Then I locate a bunch of small screw-in hooks in the leftover hardware box. Quickly I insert the hooks at two foot intervals in one of the joists and hang one length of netting from them. With some rope I attach one more length to the original, looping the rope through the grommets to create a floor to ceiling, ten foot wide net. Then I similarly hang the other two lengths at 90 degree angles to the ends, once again using rope to tie them all together. From the basement crawl space I salvage a decrepit old 3x8 carpet remnant, and voila … an indoor driving range.
For the next hour, as the wind creates monster snow drifts against the side of the garage, I face Tiger in match play at Augusta National. He spots me two strokes a hole and still wins. But with each whack at the practice ball, I loosen up and feel more comfortable. Eventually I get up the nerve to use a regular ball. Yes, the net holds up, giving slightly to the impact of the ball and letting it drop harmlessly to the garage floor. Finally, my hands beginning to blister, I quit for the day. I remove the rope from the sides of my new range and roll up each section back up into the joists where they remain held in place by short bungee cords.
Fast forward three months. After hitting balls in my garage three or four times a week since that fateful day, I step out on the course for the first time. What a difference! Only once in the past had I broken 100. Today I shoot 90! This improvement continued throughout the season. Rounds in the 80s became the rule rather than the exception. Who knew that the breakthrough in my play would come not at a high-priced, week-long golf school but on a snow-filled early January morning in my own garage?
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