\u201cWatson get out of the water! You\u2019ve got your new clothes on! Your father is gonna kill you!\u201d<\/p>\n
These were the words we heard before we could even see the dam and river. But, I\u2019m getting ahead of my story \u2026 you have to understand certain things first!<\/p>\n
In Sussex from at least the 1930\u2019s to the early 1950\u2019s the favourite unofficial rink in Sussex was a stretch of quiet water above the filtration plant dam on Trout Creek. The dam created a deep pool about 30 feet wide which, because it was not as free-flowing as other river channels within the town, was always the first to freeze over in late fall..<\/p>\n
It was the rink where most of us in that area got our early hockey instruction from older kids, no coaches or referees, seldom an audience. My apprenticeship began at eight when my grandfather bought me my first pair of tube skates. That was 1942; until then my skating had been done with bob-skates on garden patches of ice.<\/p>\n
Like most everyone who played on \u2018the river\u2019 in those years I couldn\u2019t afford a pair of shin pads or hockey gloves until my final years of high school. Just buying a stick and an occasional puck bent my budget and most of us still have bumps and scars as reminders of those happy days when we\u2019d play from early morning to after dark Saturdays and Sundays and almost every afternoon after school when the weather permitted.<\/p>\n
It was pick-up hockey with usually ten or more aside but with a number of those always \u2018temporarily winded\u2019 or recovering from minor injuries \u2018off ice\u2019 it made the number on each side usually just about right\u2026a couple of defense men, a goalie and a number of forwards. Anyone coming late to \u2018the game\u2019 was picked up alternatively by the sides.<\/p>\n
The big problem with the location, however, was losing pucks. All we ever had at the dam end as a barrier were wide planks on their edges and pucks lifted over a foot high that missed the net went over the dam and were usually not retrievable until the ice broke up in late March or April and water levels dropped. Those who took the time to fish them out became the suppliers of pucks the next fall but that stockpile usually ran out as all of them, of course, could ever be found, washed downstream and under banks. I remember one year retrieving 38 of them myself and others found some as well.<\/p>\n
But the biggest thrill of all any fall was to be \u2018first on the ice.\u2019 You sort of felt you owned that river rink for the next few months if you were. But qualifying for that honour was not without its dangers as some found out. Thankfully there was never a fatality, but there were nail-biters.<\/p>\n
I lived on Magnolia Avenue from 1939 until a couple of years after high school, a street that at our mid-stretch, had only a government yard and shed \u2026 a long tin covered structure housing bridge materials and road maintenance machines \u2026 between it, the river and dam. Winter Street which parallels Main in that part of Sussex ends right across from where the filtration plant and the dam once existed.<\/p>\n
One afternoon I was walking home from school with Delbert Thorne, a friend in my class who lived on what was then the far end of Magnolia Avenue in the last of what were, originally, identical houses called the Seven Sisters. When we reached the end of Winter Street Delbert said suddenly: \u201cIt\u2019s been pretty cold the last few nights, lets see if the river has iced up yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
As it turned out his sudden thought proved providential. We crossed the Avenue, walked along the side of the filtration plant and rounded the end of the tin shed to see a sight that afterwards the four of us would laugh about but could have easily ended in tragedy. Paul Watson who lived nearby had broken through the ice and was holding on to the edge. He was a grade younger than we were and his next door neighbour, a year younger than him, was running around yelling \u201cWatson, get out of the water! You\u2019ve got your new clothes on! Your father is gonna kill you!\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, Delbert and I quickly got a plank from the lumber piles in front of the shed, and between the three of us we were able to get Paul out, dripping and cold but uninjured. Paul\u2019s father owned a fairly successful hardware and had taken him and his brother to Saint John recently for new winter outfits, one of which Paul was wearing. As the neighbour, who was his constant companion in those days, said he\u2019d been so concerned about what Paul\u2019s father was going to do to him he just hadn\u2019t thought about helping him get out and, well, he knew Paul was a good swimmer.<\/p>\n
That was the big danger of being \u2018first on\u2019: the dream of being that year\u2019s celebrity could result in a quick cold splash back to reality. And if any of us had, unfortunately, gone through and came up under the ice we would have met the same fate as the young hockey player in Stephen King\u2019s Dead Zone. If you\u2019ve read that book or seen the movie that scene may already have come to mind.<\/p>\n
My own icy water baptism occurred a couple of years later but not during a try at being the \u2018first on.\u2019 When it snowed we\u2026 us kids\u2026would shovel off our river rink but when a thaw came and the river refroze with shale and ridges, as it sometimes did, we\u2019d borrow a force pump with hoses from the filtration plant and flood the tennis court across the river in O\u2019Connell Park.<\/p>\n
One Saturday morning, after a late Friday night of hockey by moonlight I overslept, wolfed down breakfast, pulled on a jacket and hat, grabbed my skates, stick, a couple of pucks and ran across the open space\u2026where the new Sussex Public Library now stands\u2026which led directly to the river a few hundred feet upstream from the dam, jumped down. Unfortunately a few days of higher temperatures had weakened the ice under the snow and I was in water up to my waist before I knew it and still sinking. Luckily my reflexes were much faster then than they are now and I was able to catch an overhanging tree limb and pull myself out.<\/p>\n
Then it was a fast run back to the house, dripping water all the way, a quick change of clothes and footwear and I was off again on the longer but safer route around by Main Street\u2019s turreted bridge. And really thankful to find, on reaching our tennis court rink, that no one had witnessed my drenching or my dripping exit from the river<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve often thought that my two sons, who were transported in heated vehicles to indoor rinks with dressing rooms and toilets facilities during their dozen school years in organized hockey and never played a skirmish game on an open pond or river, missed so much in physical conditioning! All the fun of walking a couple of miles to play other area teams and often helping shovel an outdoor rink when you got there for a game at which we\u2019d be lucky to have a referee, never even expect a linesman. It sure helped built self-reliance, certain survival skills and endurance, though, if nothing else!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Playing Hockey On ‘The River’ Could Be Hazardous! \u201cWatson get out of the water! You\u2019ve got your new clothes on! Your father is gonna kill you!\u201d These were the words we heard before we could even see the dam and river. But, I\u2019m getting ahead of my story \u2026 you have to understand certain things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-86","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockshoreidyll.ca\/gerrytaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockshoreidyll.ca\/gerrytaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockshoreidyll.ca\/gerrytaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockshoreidyll.ca\/gerrytaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockshoreidyll.ca\/gerrytaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rockshoreidyll.ca\/gerrytaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":645,"href":"https:\/\/rockshoreidyll.ca\/gerrytaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/86\/revisions\/645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockshoreidyll.ca\/gerrytaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}