Joys of Pond Hockey.....by Charles McGrath

[JR]

He has captured the joy of outdoor skating and pond hockey...perfectly

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/17RPond.html

While it lasted, though, the ice was as good as it has ever been — as black and hard as a mirror. Your skate blades left marks like an engraving tool, and the surface was so free of ripples that if you looked down you could see plump orange carp cruising under your feet like submarines.

Anybody who's played on a freshly frozen pond on a bright, cold, sunny day knows there is no greater feeling in the world.

The ice is glass hard and the sound the skates make cutting through is like background music.

I used to play with my kids on a pond by lake Ontario. While you were playing, you could look across the lake and stare at downtown Toronto, no more than five miles away.

 

[ServeItUp]

Makes me wish I'd picked up the sport. Beautiful imagery. Candidate for BASW, for sure.

 

[DocTalk]

Nothing better than playing hockey on a backyard rink in the moonlight. The game never seems to end.

 

[Birdscribe]

Yeah, that didn't suck too bad.

Makes this California boy wistful. Playing roller-hockey behind the Albertson's until 3 a.m. on summer nights isn't quite the same.

 

[jgmacg]

Chip's the former editor of the NY Times Book Review; and for a long while before that an editor at The New Yorker. He's a writer of ease and simple grace - in the tradition of Mitchell and White and Angell - and skates the same clean, upright lines he writes. He's a writer-at-large for the NYT now, and young writers should seek out his work wherever it can be found. He's a model of clarity and purpose.

 

[JR]

The last thing I read by McGrath was his great obit on Mailer. And as jg says, a writer who's a lot like White & Angell.

And now I feel a little guilty.

I would never have thought that the former editor of the NY Times Book review and editor of the New Yorker would play hockey.

It's a Canadian prejudice, I guess. Or at least, my prejudice.

 

[ServeItUp]

Yeah, JR, you prejudiced MF. We do have a shinny down here every so often.

 

[jgmacg]

Chip's also a very nice man. And his son Ben now writes - and well - for The New Yorker.

And there's a shinny game at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan, M-F at noon, if you're ever in town and need a place to skate.

 

[JR]

Yeah, JR, you prejudiced MF. We do have a shinny down here every so often.

It's not that Yanks don't play shinny---and I know you do.

I figured that it would be above the editor of the NY Times Book review, that's all.

And jg, if I'm going to be in NY in the winter, I'll bring my skates

 

[Huggy]

No joy in Toronto pond-hockey circles: tourney called because of weather.

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/304509

 

[The Big Ragu]

Chip's also a very nice man. And his son Ben now writes - and well - for The New Yorker.

And there's a shinny game at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan, M-F at noon, if you're ever in town and need a place to skate.

Glad you posted this, jgmacg... I like Ben McGrath's stuff a lot. I would have never connected the father-son dots.

 

[JR]

No joy in Toronto pond-hockey circles: tourney called because of weather.

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/304509

I think the Kinsmen need to find a new event to hang their hat on. Holding a pond hockey tournament these days in the GTA is a bad bet.

 

[funky_mountain]

like doctalk, i am partial to nighttime backyard pond hockey. as teens, we used to play on a canal behind the house of a girl we went to school with -- just a blast. especially if you were able to warm up afterward with one of the cuties you were eyeing.