We skated at a public session soon after it opened. This rink suited the seedy town of Lawrence perfectly. It was the most bizarre ice skating facility I have ever seen. Supports held up the roof dividing the interior space roughly into thirds. One third held an irregularly shaped ice surface. It was long and narrow with an appendage on one end that fit around bathrooms framed as an afterthought in the front corner of the old store by do-it-yourself carpenters. Bright red paint covered the support posts and matching metal pipe railing that bordered the sides of the rink that were not abutted to a wall. A recreation center filled the rest of the cavernous space with a tacky, uninteresting miniature golf course; arcade; and a snack area consisting exclusively of second-hand vending machines. A long counter used for skate rental extended into the building from the front door. At the end, an old cash register stood like a weary but demanding sentinel. Skaters could lace their boots and parents could sit, watch and gloat at several battered round tables arranged along the periphery of the ice surface. The place was a cheesy operation from the first day its doors opened.
The owner himself was a braggart who flirted with me intensely, though I heard he was married, and he knew I lived with my boyfriend. He supposedly owned a seasonal outdoor rink somewhere in New England. Pete also supposedly owned a second string ice show that performed in Latin America. Additionally, he claimed to earn a living during the summer giving gymnastics lessons. I would have sooner believed that he and his motley troupe traveled with a carnival. Possibly Pete’s boasting originated with some element of truth, which had to be considerably less glamorous than he wanted all of the village bumpkins to believe.
Pete’s daughter, Gina, sat by the cash register when she was not hogging the already tiny ice surface that should have been made available for paying customers. A statuesque woman in her early twenties, she dyed her hair an implausible shade of red and wore dry rust colored lipstick that puckered her mouth. Her attempts to be friendly came across as artificial. Gina was as aggressive and full of baloney as her father. Like him, she focused very effectively on making money. She routinely cruised through the sitting area near the ice checking hand stamps to make sure no one sneaked passed the cash register. Once I became a regular at the rink, she eventually stopped pestering me. Gina dated a juvenile punk of a fellow who wore more earrings than I owned and spent hours sitting on the front counter drooling over with Gina, who seemed to adore his revolting attention. He never said two words to me and seemed very uncomfortable around people other than his girlfriend, yet he happily put money in the cash register while she occupied the ice or the restroom.
I never saw Pete’s wife. However, I did meet his skating partner, a petite brunette about half his age who skated in the questionable shows with him. Fern performed exquisite spread eagles, often as her first move after stroking around the little rink. Much later, I realized this was her only outstanding ability, but those eagles made her look like a champion to me. She rarely jumped, and her spins required constant attention. Blessed with the small stature of a pair skater, Fern made an ideal partner for Pete. They skated an adagio style, focused primarily on posing and dancing rather than lifts, throws and singles skills.
I came home early from campus the week after that first public session at Arctic Circle. On my way out of the rink, I had noticed a flier taped to the window by the front door announcing group skating lessons. I drove to the rink alone to inquire about the lessons. Although Neil never said an unkind word about my interest in skating, I feared he regarded it only as recreational exercise and not something worth pursuing on a more serious basis, like his photography. Gina told me she would be teaching the class one evening per week for eight weeks. The reasonable price included admission to and instruction during a public session, an additional weekly session for practice, and skate rental. The class started the next Wednesday. I quickly wrote her a check and returned home.
I did not tell Neil about my investment in skating lessons until the night before my first class. For several days I guarded the upcoming classes as a delicious secret, a dream so personal and sacred that I did not want to chance Neil soiling it with an immature comment. He might joke good-naturedly about building a trophy case for my medals or about the triple axel I would learn to do. When he asked if I wanted to have dinner with some friends from his department on Wednesday evening, I admitted my prior commitment.
“Well,” I began hesitantly, “I signed up for a group skating class. It starts tomorrow evening, so I can’t meet your friends. I hope you will go without me.”
“A skating class?” he repeated vacantly as though he had completely forgotten that I liked to ice skate. A smile broke on his face. Finally Kate had identified an interest worth a few dollars of her scant earnings. Neil might be liberated from some of the guilt he felt whenever gluttonously indulging his own whims. “Enjoy your class. I’ll see you afterward.”
I could not ascertain what Neil might have thought about my skating lessons, nor did I really care. At least he avoided making a patronizing remark about an impending Olympic competition. Neil pursued any fleeting fascination that tickled his interest. He abandoned most of these hobbies and the costly paraphernalia that accompanied them. Neil’s bedroom closet at his parent’s house offered testimony to his well rounded but short-lived experiences. Skating was not a momentary thrill for me. I had wanted to skate since first becoming aware of my free will as an individual. Following that ambition with no support from anyone, I experimented in a lonely garage trying moves I saw on television or in a crowded rink. I earned the right to treat myself to this class.
On lesson night, I was happy that Neil had other plans. He would have wanted to accompany me to the rink in an effort to be supportive and to take pictures. I preferred to be alone with my skating fantasy. Shoving my feet into the relatively new brown rental boots, I struggled to remember those first lessons long ago in Stockton. Unfortunately, most of the details except the wonderful ice smell of the rink had been lost. While I did not inquire about a class specifically for adults, the presence of several other mature people made me feel comfortable. A few kids laced up rental skates for the lesson as well as a couple of college girls, two middle aged women and a retired couple. All of the adults mentioned that they had wanted to skate as children. The retired people skated sporadically throughout their lives, but had developed an interest in ice dancing and wanted to learn some basic skills before investing in private lessons. I had not considered private lessons for myself until they mentioned the possibility.
Gina led our mismatched group onto the irregularly shaped rink. Only a few public session skaters glided around the perimeter craning their necks to observe the class. I realized immediately that I probably did not belong in a class for absolute beginners. Many of my contemporaries had trouble standing on skates much less following Gina across the ice. The class itinerary included basic skills, the most basic of which was falling safely. The little kids already experimented with this before Gina called the session to order. I found most of the skills to be an excellent review, assuming I already knew how to execute them properly.
I rarely bothered with exercises such as sculling, a method used by beginners to move across the ice without lifting their feet. The skater simple pushes and pulls his feet together then apart in an undulating motion. Slalom is more advanced version resembling slalom skiing in which the skater keeps his feet together but pushes with his edges in a serpentine pattern. We learned different ways to stop from the most fundamental snowplow to the more difficult hockey stop. Gina taught us basic forward and backward stroking, simple edges and turns. We tried spirals, crossovers and a two-foot spin. The students demonstrated various degrees of success with each element. The little children, oblivious to danger, progressed more quickly than the tentative adults.
The top student in my class, I did have some experience as an essentially self-taught recreational skater. Being the best of this group did not require an exceptional level of talent. I certainly was not a good skater compared to anyone but an unmistakable beginner. However, Gina’s format forced me to try turns in the opposite direction. I had never done a three-turn on my left foot. A left forward outside three-turn rotates counterclockwise, which contradicts my natural equilibrium. I stood in the “T” position, ready to push off onto my left outside edge. I hesitated for a long time like a child whose training wheels had just been removed from his bicycle. Able to do the turn at speed on the right foot, I could not even begin to feel the edge on my left. Crossovers in the opposite direction presented similar difficulties. As a teenage roller skater, I never even attempted to skate backwards around the garage the other way. Deejays at roller rinks used to announce brief periods of clockwise skating. I savored this time when many social skaters left the floor to get a soda because they did not want to be seen falling trying to do a forward crossover with their left foot. Meanwhile, I happily executed a three-turn and hot-dogged around the rink backwards, taking a short cut through the unoccupied center to land a salchow. I enjoyed lining up an outside Ina Bauer right down the middle of the rink, back arched with both arms curved overhead. Bauers on quad skates are easier than on blades. The wheels grip the floor securing the precarious position.
The class covered a wide range of skills taking a capable student from his first fall to highly sought-after backward crossovers. I practiced all of the skills, usually favoring my natural rotation direction. Pete watched me from the shiny red railing during an afternoon public session. I turned easily on my right foot.
“Bend your knee!” the rink owner called, “You’re doing a three-turn on a stiff knee.” He stepped onto the ice to demonstrate. Pete flourished his right arm leading into the turn. He moved like a dancer with confidence and style.
I bounced on my knee getting used to the feeling then glided into the turn mimicking his showy gesture. Instead of snapping the three-turn, it flowed and cut into the ice leaving a well-rounded numeral “3” on the smooth surface.
“The tracing should look like a butt,” Pete stated with a flirtatious grin.
“That’s a pretty big butt,” I joked. Only a dirty old man like Pete would compare a tracing skillfully carved into clean ice to a pair of butt cheeks.
Pete laughed and left the ice, back to his business.
With a class of a dozen people, Gina had not stressed my three-turn deficiencies. Satisfied that I could at least do the turn, she moved on to other more challenged students. Of course, she demonstrated it correctly with graceful knee action, too subtle for me to detect. Her constant reminder to “bend your knees” did not register because I believed I could do a three-turn and had no idea that it did not look as lovely as hers. I experimented with these newly discovered movements on my left side. The left forward outside turn still felt wooden and awkward. I literally had skated for years performing improvised three-turns in whatever manner my body allowed them to occur. My form had been wrong and I never developed ambidexterity.
The class may have been slightly too basic for someone who could already skate around a rink, but it did help to correct technical errors such as toe pushed strokes, scratchy crossovers and stiff turns. These problems did not vanish, but I became aware of my weaknesses. In spite of a demanding academic schedule, I never missed a skating lesson or practice session. Conserving my spending money, I bought no new clothing, fabric or trinkets in an effort to afford an extra public session or two every week after school.
To my utter disappointment, the Arctic Circle closed for the summer early in May. Pete and his entourage left Lawrence, supposedly to teach gymnastics and dance in a summer training program. I finished the semester and vacationed in New Orleans with Neil.
Shortly after the beginning of the spring semester, Neil and I drove around the back of the Lawrence shopping mall intending to park near the food court entrance. My eyes widened as we approached the empty tire store that had closed months before. People were working inside, renovating the place. I sensed the birth of a rink. I can detect rinks while sleeping in the passenger seat of a car during the dark of night. My heart began to beat quickly with excitement. Opening my mouth, I nearly announced my premonition but instead asked Neil to pull up to the building. It was indeed a rink. This small southern town grew around a few minor manufacturing facilities, hardly the type of place where one would expect to find an ice arena. A freshly painted sign had been installed above the building that read: “Arctic Circle Ice Skating Rink”. Fortune seemed to be smiling upon me.
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