Winter On My Mind

I can't let go of the subject of ice skating. I hear that the South Jersey kids have been skating over their Christmas break and this has a huge nostalgic pull for me -- no wonder. I grew up in a house located 50 feet from a pond, so close that if my own kids lived that near to a body of water I'd be freaking out and telephoning daily to check on the whereabouts of the grandkids and imagining all sorts of horrendous scenarios (did my mother really not know we crunched around the edges of the ponds before they were completely frozen and checked for safety by an adult??).


These shots of our old pond are some of my Dad's from about 1954 or 1955. This below is a picture of my grandparents' house taken from one of the causeways. You can click on any of these photos to make them bigger.


This skating scene has to be about 1955 or so because I am the kid in the white boots on the sled.

Here I am on skates:

However, this is the skating attire I always visualized myself wearing:



Anyway, to a kid the world changed when the ponds froze and you had skates that fit. We played Crack-the-Whip, Freeze Tag and other chase games. Hockey, of course, but that was mostly the boys. I preferred to practice twirling about, pretending I was in the Ice Follies in a sparkling costume -- except I had to wear a wooly hat and mittens -- and baggy gray leggings. But if we could talk an adult into building us a bonfire, the day was perfect.

Since the temp here in Florida may shoot to 70 degrees today, I'd better leave my wintery memories right here for a while. Not, though, without posting this (very) rare shot of my Mom on skates (wearing the red gloves), along with two of my aunties, Ann on the left and Claudia in the middle. --cds