While cleaning out my mother's house to sell it a few years ago, I found all sorts of things in the attic.
Anything valuable had been removed years earlier. But there was still a lot of interesting junk up there: old records, aluminum garbage cans, some of my Dad's old college books, an old bait box, a bucket, some milk crates, some 'Fool's Gold' (a souvenir of our 1965 South Dakota trip) a First Federal Savings of Lorain frisbee, and a few baseball bats.
And a backyard ice skating rink.
The box was very old and falling apart, and the lid (above) split into a few pieces when I opened it. It contained a huge piece of plastic and a roll of corrugated aluminum – all unused.
How old was that thing?
I looked for an old newspaper ad that might have given my parents the idea of having a backyard rink. There was only one year – 1957 – when a few ads ran.
Here's one that ran in the Lorain Journal on December 19, 1957.
A backyard ice rink for my sister (an only child at the time) probably seemed like a fun thing to do. So what happened to throw cold water on the whole idea?
I'm not sure but I think my parents just forgot about it. Between three boys being born in short order, and two moves to new houses – all in winter months over the span of only a few years – I'm guessing they were just too busy.
The ice rink ended up in the attic during the last move, remaining there for more than 50 years.
I think this sort of thing happens a lot. A few similar ice rinks have turned up on eBay – unused, like ours.
So maybe other families thought it sounded good as well, but for a variety of reasons ended up putting the idea on ice.
I did finally learn to ice skate at Ohio State, where I took it as a physical education requirement (where you either passed or failed). I passed, but was no
Hans Brinker. And aside from one visit to
Winterhurst in Lakewood in the 1990s, I haven't hit the ice since.
