You Sure Are Wobbly Grandpa

My brother Tom and I awoke early that Christmas morning. I was 10, he was 9, but taller then me.

We raced down the stairs to the balsam fir Christmas that my dad always perched at Wenner's Hardware store in town. He would drill holes and refit nature's work to my mom's specifications by putting branches in gaps with his brace and bit, down in the basement before setting it up in the dining room.

We found under the tree that early Christmas morning for each of us a pair of tan and black hockey skates, probably purchased at Jim's summertime bike repair, winter time new and used skate sales and sharpening shop, located in St Cloud, Minnesota, boyhood home of my dad, he long gone now, me sixty-seven.

Five AM we laced them up right under the tree, walked out the back door, then walked and slid three blocks to the back side of our grade school.

We sat on our haunches, knees outstretched, using our skates as rudders, slid down the embankment to the volunteer fire department water flooded ice rink, kept clear of snow by Clarence Schmidt, the town maintenance man.

It was dark and cold that long ago Christmas morning, but Tom and I didn’t notice.

We skated away many Minnesota winter evenings on that lighted pond. Great fun, going to the warming house, a concrete block building with a wooden floor, benches all around the perimeter with a pot belly wood stove in the middle, all the walls filled with happy young skaters.

I got fairly good at racing through the tag line, and playing a rudimentary form of hockey, for the next four winters before moving on from the skating rink to 14-year-old interests, a job spotting pins at the bowling alley.

At age 60 I took my grand baby to the heated indoor ice pavilion in Portland, were a carousel of wooden ponies danced overhead and the ice was maintained by a Zamboni.

She soon skated off leaving me clinging to the railing, until I finally got my stride, arms and legs synchro-meshed bending low in case of a fall, and feeling good about myself as I skated around at good speed.

Grand baby skated over to me and said

YOU SURE ARE WOBBLY GRANDPA

Aunty, Grandma and Jewell