Stories
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
It was so thin that you could easily spike your skate heel straight through so the water came up. If you fell in, the ice would not be strong enough to support pulling yourself out, and you would have to break your way all the way to shore. Fortunately it never happened to me but I saw it happen to a friend once.
If the ice was too soft, as sometimes happened in a heat spell, you couldn't get any speed. And when the ice got too hard like in January, you couldn't get the good traction. So from the first day that we would get on the ice, we were on it all the time, from the minute we got home from school till supper, and then immediately back on the ice till nine PM; and of course all day Saturday and Sunday.
The channels froze first probably because the water was enclosed and maybe because it didn't ruffle so much with any breeze. We preferred the channels anyway, since being closer to the variety of shore-line was the illusion of greater speed. It was more or less lonely out on the lake in all that space. Lake and channel skating is different than rink skating. It is complete freedom. One has unlimited spaces. One can skate at any speed one wants either forward or backward without the worry of running someone over.
We liked to skate fast and could skate as fast backward as forward, so we needed a lot of room. Every day after school I or I and my brother would test the ice to see if it would hold us.
(4 of 12)
Next Page
