• Tuesday-What'sUP December 7 - 07:36 am

Barb Bouwkamp was heading down the "Sixth Street Extension" in Calumet, when she spotted three young boys skating around and around in a circle on what looks like a frozen puddle in the field there, right by US41.

Barb said it made her think about how these youngsters were most likely future CLK hockey players in the making. They sure are dedicated to skating to have made a tiny rink, out of a frozen puddle. It's nice to see kids out enjoying the winter weather and having a good time in the fresh air. Best of all, other than having to purchase skates and winter wear, the entertainment was completely free!

We have reached the point where the average adult in the United States now watches over twenty hours of television each week....plus time on the computer...time once spent reading, physically exercising, gardening, worshiping, and communing outdoors with nature. Like to see the young ones doing things like this!!

So funny, I saw this Saturday morning and thought that it had to be the "worlds smallest" ice skating rink!

If they skate in a circle fast enough, they may just hit oil. :)
(Capt...Would that be possible if they go deep enough?)

I believe they have a better chance of striking "Red Gold" than the black variety, Alex. Actually, if they are where I believe them to be, those boys are not far from one of the old Hecla shafts (No. 3 if I recall....)

Looks like the smallest one 'circled' one time too many. In the 3rd pic, looks as though he's about ready to 'go down for the count'! Gormfrog, it's good to see we share the same feeling about TV-watching. Kids and adults really need to experience the great outdoors!

I remember way back, when we were kids, we had outdoor rinks everywhere in town......all kids, not just hockey players or figure skaters, could go skate around on a rink somewhere....for the entire evening. Think we paid a dime and if I was lucky, had a nickle for a candy bar. Best of all, we all walked to the corner rinks. None of the kids in my bunch of friends were fat. Nobody's mom gave anyone a ride to the rink.....we walked (just like we walked a mile uphill both ways to school)!!
I wish this corner had a regular real outdoor ice rink with a little change shack, a place where kids could go to just have fun for the evening. Bet it would be packed!!

Our local rink was a baseball diamond flooded with a fire hose by the night time janitors at Longfellow Jr. High. It was less than perfect, with bare dirt spots posing a constant hazard to those on "break aways"-one second you're flying down the ice, the next you are just flying through the air. It was also the place where I learned what a "high stick" was. Stayed out so long our toes had to be thawed out when we got home. It was great.

It was my understanding that many of the vacant lots
with depressions in them in the Calumet area, like
this one, are old mine shaft sites. You might
assume that the caps are in good shape. However, I
don't assume and would not let my children go
anywhere near them.

The guys are clearly having fun.

That's really good to know, thank you Jim (Keweenawpress). On a slightly different topic, perhaps, what are all of the depressions on the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge golf course? My Dad, Mom, husband, and I played that course many years ago, and my Dad's description of it was that there isn't a level lie; it's like playing on the surface of the moon, with all of the craters. Are those capped mine shafts, or what?

I think these three young lads might belong to the house in the background left of center in the first image. When the new addition was being built, these three were ALWAYS outside with their digger machines and bikes creating new holes or jumping piles of sand. Fun stuff !

Nope Marianne, just the natural hummocky landscape of that area. That I know of, there are no mine shafts around the Lodge or anywhere near the golf course, although it would make for an interesting golfing hazard..... ;-)

As soon as I saw the pic, I said "There's some Calumet boys"....The real Hockeytown isn't Detroit! I hate to tell ya! LOL

And Pat, Glenda and Shirley...how very, very true...folks, pull the plugs, shut off the electricity, put on a coupla layers and get outside! I walked in the backyard in the moonlight last night...and it is beautiful. The snow w/the moon's lite, and it's not even full...is so gorgeous...and I am so fortunate to live in an area with a huge backyard going to a tree line and then a gully....the beauty with the moonlight is unreal. The quiet...mmmm...until Mia..the neighbor's pitbull saw my shadow...LOL...THEN it wasn't quiet...she came running when she realized it was me, and dug around the treeline till she found a stick, and brought it over to me...tail wagging, huge smile, you could almost hear "Let's play".....The critters know the beauty of the outdoors......

We had a nice ice rink when I was a kid growing up in Lake Linden. It had a nice warming shack with a huge heater in the middle of the room. We'd all go in and throw our mittens on top, or take our skates off and throw them on top to warm up. It was so much fun. We spent so much time down there. And yes, we walked there and back. I think there's a senior building there now. I don't believe that Lake Linden has an outdoor ice rink any longer, though I could be mistaken about that. And that's such a shame.

I know out here where we live there's an outdoor rink that they try to keep nice during the winter. But we usually have so little time to use it because there are so many warm spells that melts the ice, makes it slushy, etc. Either that or the wind chills are 30 below and nobody wants their kids to go out in that. So you have to go to one of the indoor arenas in a town near here and you have to pay to skate. We NEVER had to pay to skate. I guess that's what they call "progress" in this country. So, in some cases, it's not that the kids don't WANT to do these things, but it's a matter of cost.

There's a nice ski hill about 15 miles from my house that has a nice tubing hill. Problem is, you again have to PAY to use it. There aren't many places to do that here. Our town doesn't have hills for this type of stuff. We could sled whenever or wherever we wanted to as a kid. Sometimes, kids just don't have that luxury where they live. Things were so much better when I was growing up!! When they talk about the "good old days", they truly were!

Sorry about the book!

When I was a kid growing up in Detroit, my Dad (rest his soul) would build a rink in our backyard every winter. He would take the car back there and go over and over the whole area to "pank" it down, build banks of snow around it, then flood the whole thing with the garden hose. It was a HUGE project and one that was ongoing all winter. He'd be out there, every night when the skating was done, reflooding that ice for the next day. It was so fun to be THE house to go to for all the kids! Boys would play hockey, girls would figure skate. It was a great time and made for wonderful memories. Thanks, Dad, for taking the time!

JoAnne, sounds like you had a wonderful Dad who really knew what 'fun for the kids' was. As anyone can guess, while growing up in the south we didn't have a need for iceskates, just sleds. The street that we lived on was on the highest hill in and around Nashville, so there were always bunches of kids with sleds in front of our house. Of course we owned a sled too, and often took part in the fun. Someone in the neighborhood (teenage boy) made the mistake of building a bonfire with some of our fenceposts...needless to say, my mama visited his mama the next day!;} Winter was fun.....back then.:>

As a kid our street was frozen, for some reason, and we use to skate on the street in front of the house. Then my mom use to flood the backyard and that is where I learned to ice skate with a chair.

Memories.

Interesting mickill, but it must be awful hard to ice skate with only one chair strapped to your feet..... J

Capt. Paul, you can't imagine the vision that came into my mind when I read your post. LOL!;D

It's a monumental task to maintain an outdoor rink and I think that people (both adults and kids) just simply don't have the time to do that anymore. Things for adults have become so hectic and the kids are pressured by our school system to be academic achievers. There is still an outdoor rink in operation in Ahmeek Location.

My 10 year old son here in Atlanta would give all his Christmas money for a frozen puddle to skate on. Unfortunately, unless we're home for the holidays all his skating is also in a rink, and that rink is 52 miles from home.

Thank you, Capt Paul, for clearing up the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge Golf Course craters question. I have loved that place since the first time I saw it.

My younger two sons are into curling. My middle son, who is my special needs guy, curls once a week in a new league for special needs people at the Midland Community Center. My youngest son was very active in the Youth League here until he went UP to Tech. He's been too busy with broomball, the Pep Band, and the Winter Carnival to curl up there, but I'm curious what happened to the Curling group up near Calumet. I read that that mini-tornado tore the roof off their building with their curling ice, if I remember correctly. I'm curious, do curlers up there have a place to curl now, or are there plans for a place for them, or are they just out of luck now?

JoAnne Stefanac (Davejostef):
"When I was a kid growing up in Detroit, my Dad (rest his soul) would build a rink in our backyard every winter. …"

Ahh, childhood memories!

My dad, who yoosta be a neighborhood hockey star (like the kids shown above) maybe 90 years ago in Centennial Heights, did the same one year (or maybe twice) also in Detroit. A nice little skating rink, new skates for me … The only trouble: I couldn't skate worth a darn, and didn't want to. Hated it! — Sorry, dad! :-(

I never minded — even to some extent enjoyed — winters at Da Tech, or on the grandparents' dairy farm in Bruce Crossing, but winter sports — Skiing, skating, snowshoeing? Fuggeddabout it!

(I musta not inherited the "Finnish kids love winter sports" gene!)

So now I'm a veteran desert rat of 40+ years? Imagine that!

The good thing about that, FRNash, don't hafta worry about frostbite!
Marianne, curling was a BIG thing in ND....took me awhile to learn what that 'sport' was.:)

In 2008 the year of the monsoon and devastating floods that happened here, Eastern Iowa, we had 12 acres of our 20 acres under water that stuck around and froze over that winter. Such a waste of an awesome skating rink because I do not ice skate, weak ankles. 12 acres and 5ft. deep ice rink in my own backyard.

I grew up in east Houghton,near Tech. Every winter the City would haul in what we called "WPA sheds" as warming huts. They were overseen by some old city employee who probably didn't have Social Security. We kids did all the snow shoveling, ice scraping, and flooding. Did that with a fire hose and hydrant provided by the city. There were 3 rinks, East Houghton, central Houghton #near the old high school# and one in West Houghton. We spent hours there having fun and learning that if you wanted something there was a price to pay. Elbow grease. Couldn't do that today because if some kid got "high sticked" or a cut or bruise the parents would sue the city and anyone else they could name. I really don't blame the city for discontinuing that practise but those sure were "good old Days".

The Lake Linden Village does an ice rink each year now, run by community volunteers mostly, I think. I'm not sure when it opens or the times. It's right next to the bathroom building in the upper park, complete with lights and a changing room...they put walls around the concrete area where the picnic tables are in the summer, next to the bathrooms. So skating is still alive and well, in Lake Linden, Deb! :->

There was a ice rink behind the Tamarack school when I grew up. We'd walk there & have fun skating. Also we used to use big cardboard boxes to sled with down what we called DesTrampes hill near our house. Was that fun!!!! We used to build ice forts & play til dark. Our mothers used to have to call a few times for us to come in when it was getting dark. We'd hang our wet mittons & snowsuits on a line on Grandma's dining room wall to them to dry. And we'd stand right in front of the register for us to warm up. We had it great back in those days. I wish the kids now could have experienced our fun. Then they would know what REAL fun is.

Thanks for that info Mary! I didn't know that! That's awesome! We had so much fun as a kid. Cheryl's right. These kids today have no idea....

CAPT. PAUL; I just read your post and it put a smile on my face, 'Thank You'.;O)