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Pond Hockey

Minneapolis has been hosting a Pond Hockey tournament every winter.
Teams come from any place where it is possible to buy hockey skates 
to go out onto Lake Nokomis and play hockey the way God intended it
to be played:  in freezing weather, on a lake, with the snow shoveled back,
not a Zamboni in sight, and with cases of good cold beer somewhere
out there to warm and gladden the heart when the fingers are gone.  


To hold the number of casualties to an acceptable proportion,
the city puts up a temporary warming shed, not so much for its warmth
as for its relief from the northwest wind.  Pond hockey is not so much
a sport as it is a chance to go through puberty once again, and to
pretend, once again, that had the pucks been dealt differently, had the
ice on the lake cracked fairly, one might be playing for the Red Wings.


I calculated, two or three years ago, that I had walked at least 3,000 miles
around Lake Nokomis, mostly in the morning dark just as it is bracing itself
for the thundering dawn "out-a China, 'crost the bay, on the road to Mandalay".
I quit that route when another old codger got his face overhauled by
frustrated, failed hockey players who gave up skating for early-morning-mugging.

Maybe they never had been hockey players.  Probably not.  But they were
out in the cold and ice, body-checking old codgers, stealing their pucks
and their wallets and smashing in their faces, and my mama didn't raise no fools.
I put my pride aside, and walk at the Mall when it is dark.


These long winter's nights do odd things to those who love the seasons.
We do not live in San Diego because San Diego does not have seasons,
unless you call the morning fog a season.  The rest of it is all pleasure,
and traffic tie-up, and seasonal fires.  We stay here where we know that
January will not last forever; surely not past April!  We know that 
had God intended for water to remain free and flowing, he would have
invented water hockey, with balloons where there are blades, now,
and pucks that float.  God keeps us here, by devaluing our houses.

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