Georgeanne and I spent considerable time together, often enjoying a gourmet sandwich after skating at a little European café down the street before my friend taught afternoon lessons. I occasionally observed Georgeanne teaching, usually little children in plastic helmets. I guess she was good enough to hold a toddler’s hand and help him around the perimeter. Georgeanne once complained that she wanted to raise her rates, and I kept tactfully silent. She had recently passed a low-level moves in the field test and thought her expertise merited more money. While I did not know exactly what Georgeanne charged, I probably would have estimated a modest amount based on her qualifications. Regardless of what I thought of her skating capabilities, I genuinely liked Georgeanne and looked forward to chatting with her over a roll-up sandwich and Italian soda.
Hans Koenig himself was home from Florida, escaping the brutally humid heat that I did not like either while I lived in South Carolina. Poor Hansie, retired and widowed, he had nothing to do with his time other than hang around in his tawdry ice rink aggravating his customers. His dopey son, Timothy, appeared intermittently, but very often the old coot was there alone dosing by the cash register. Hans Koenig may have been an interesting skater in his day, but he had deteriorated into a grouchy old fart with nothing better to do than loiter in his own ice arena. And Hansie was painfully cheap. He kept the door to the ice surface locked until the clock struck the hour when the session officially began. He refused to dispense paper cups without purchase of a beverage from his fifties soda fountain. He cleaned the restrooms himself when Timothy was not around. Hansie rarely maintained the ice, usually leaving the chore for Georgeanne, Orry, or some other disgruntled pro. Due to old age and infirmity, Hansie probably could not mount the Zamboni anyway, which was apparently one of the earlier models the company made.
As long as the admission fee remained affordable, I continued to skate at Hansie’s zany establishment. None of these other peculiarities bothered me. There was usually a spool of toilet paper in the stall and I brought my own water bottle. However, Hansie’s vigilant eye annoyed me. He monitored every person in the place, as though afraid someone planned to steal something or sneak onto the ice a nanosecond early. I avoided Hansie by sitting at the back of the lobby next to the tacky poodle lockers. I averted his gaze by conversing with Georgeanne. Woe to the miserable soul who laced up alone! A solitary skater drew Hansie’s attention like a hummingbird to a red trumpet flower. Within minutes, he appeared, droning on about his performing days, his silly dogs, and goofy circus act. I had heard all of Hansie’s stories, some more than once. Max had also heard them, either when waiting to pick me up or during his own boyhood visits to Hansie’s rink. Hansie’s tales were ancient and did not become more fascinating with time.
However, the Ice Chalet was a place to skate, and everyone needs a place to skate, and more than one option is usually desirable. Hansie also liked to stand in the doorway to the ice watching people and reliving his coaching experiences by providing unsolicited advice. A lonely man, he no longer maintained a student clientele, but still enjoyed correcting technique and working with skaters. Some of the tips I received from Hans Koenig were genuinely valuable. He improved my camel-change-camel spin combination and a few other skills. Hansie may have been a pain in the backside, but he also possessed redeeming qualities.
I was not always receptive to Hansie’s spontaneous critiques. While I wanted to develop my technique, I also enjoyed skating for sheer joy. Since discovering adult mornings at Chestnut Valley, I had become a faster, more powerful skater and could easily fill Hansie’s little rink with back crossovers leading into a salchow or waltz jump. The place was nearly vacant and I rarely worried about colliding with another skater. This sharply contrasted the busy low freestyle sessions I attend twice weekly at the training facility. Oblivious to my mood, Hansie watched and barked comments. If I failed to respond or correct the mistake, he became irritable and belligerent. Trying to be polite, I often responded: “Thank you. I’ll try that” before darting off to the other end of the rink to resume entertaining myself with whatever struck my fancy.
The elderly coach was not deterred. He followed me and poked his head out the other door, at the end of the rink where I sought shelter from his prying eyes. The advice continued, at full volume, drawing the attention of anyone else who might have been present. At this point, I became exasperated. I lacked the frankness to tell Hansie I did not welcome his impromptu lessons. Instead, I would respond: “Thank you for your suggestions, but I am just having fun right now”, which I thought was a lovely way to handle the situation. Anyone less senile might have backed off and respected my independence and good manners.
As I worked on my flip, more fooling around than conscientious practice, Hansie finally erupted. He had been ignored and deterred long enough. “Your entrance isn’t straight,” he bellowed.
Well, I knew that. Preston had invested plenty of lesson time in my curved jump approaches. I understood the problem and was trying to correct it, and it had improved considerably. “Yes, I know,” I shot back, stroking powerfully across the rink into another flip jump.
In a moment of senior citizen melodrama, Hans Koenig grasped his temples, ready to rip fragile strands of gray hair out of his scalp. “My God! You can’t even skate straight!” he exclaimed, frustrated and appalled. I guess it was a pretty lousy flip taken from an unacceptably curved backward inside edge. Hansie continued to mutter to himself and shake his weary head.
To my horror and astonishment, the old man came out on the ice in his street shoes and demanded “get over here” so he could show me the proper method. I wanted to drill a hole in the ice and bury myself in the underlying bed of sand. Cornered and alone (Georgeanne was not around to rescue me), I stoically endured Hansie’s instruction, demonstrating the move until he finally exhausted himself and returned to the cash register. Too rattled to finish the session, I left the ice.
Oddly, I had learned something about the flip jump from Hans Koenig during that awkward encounter, yet I did not appreciate his intrusiveness. He intimidated and frightened me. I did not need that from a sport that was supposed to provide fun and exercise. That summer afternoon, I left Hansie’s for the last time. Over the years, I occasionally skated a session at the Ice Chalet, though Hansie no longer remembered me and I rarely crossed paths with Orville. I had outgrown the place and set certain limits of personal tolerance.
When Maxwell returned from work that evening, I told him that I had had my fill of Hansie’s stupid little patch of ice.
“Good,” my husband agreed definitively. “I’m surprised it took you this long to get sick of Old Hansie and Broken Timmy.”
I immediately began to giggle. “Broken Timmy?” I had never heard anyone refer to Hansie’s middle-aged son by that nickname, though it certainly was appropriate.
“Sure. The poor bastard was never the same after he slammed into the boards.”
Nobody had ever told me this story before. Of course, I did not feel comfortable asking, and the information was not exactly publicized on the corkboards. However; Maxwell, his brother, and their neighborhood buddies skated regularly on Friday evenings and weekend afternoons at Hans Koenig’s Ice Chalet during their youth. A much younger Hansie was then training his son for competition. Apparently, Timothy ranked among the promising junior skaters of the time. Years before Canadian, Vern Taylor, landed the first official triple axel in competition during the late seventies, Timothy Koenig was preparing one at a little studio-sized rink in Connecticut. During a send-off exhibition, Timothy tried the jump in his father’s rink before a group of students, parents, and coaches. Too close to the cinderblock wall of the converted truck garage, Timothy failed to complete the rotation and opened too early. His legs flailed reaching for the ice, more concerned with self-preservation than success. The young hopeful crashed to the frozen surface and careened head first into the wall.
The accident ended Timothy’s skating career and resulted in mild brain damage. His father gradually withdrew from the coaching profession and retired to Florida, leaving Timothy with a shoddy ice arena to manage.
Max Svenssen was just a boy when this happened, but Tim returned to the rink as soon as possible assuming the role of skate guard. Hansie and his wife taught their son how to run the business over the next several years, often leaving Timothy alone in the rink to deal with customers and rowdy children like my husband and his coconspirators. Like his father, Timothy lacked social skills, and was justifiably bitter about his misfortune. This endeared Tim to no one, and the people who frequented his family’s skating facility generally disliked the young man. His unpleasant behavior earned him the nickname “Broken Timmy” from rotten kids like Maxwell Svenssen, future savior of domestic animals.
As an unencumbered free spirit, I skated four or five days per week, including both Hansie’s and Chestnut Valley on my schedule. During the summer, the wonderful adult mornings at Chestnut evaporated to be replaced with freestyle sessions and camps for both hockey and figure skating. Reservations had to be paid in advance, and unused ice was essentially money down the toilet, unless the client notified the skating director’s office in writing at least a week in advance. A conscientious and frugal individual, I may have quit my job and poured money into lessons with Preston Reece, but I did not want to waste precious ice time when Maxwell and I vacationed in Maple Terrace. I only contracted a couple of sessions each week at the Chestnut Valley club and continued to skate at Hansie’s Ice Chalet on the other days. I knew Orville’s schedule and worked around encountering him. Hansie’s was cheap and relatively empty, the parents of younger skaters preferring to enroll their upcoming talents in summer training programs.
Chapter 77 posted 8/2/03
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