Happy 5th Birthday

My mother wasn't at my 5th birthday party. She was at the hospital delivering a baby. At some point during the day I was told that I had a new brother. I remember a few days later she brought David home, sat me in a chair, and put him in my lap/arms and said "you got a brother for your birthday". I don't remember being impressed.

(No offense, Dave. You've grown on me since then!)

Ruthie McDonnell

Ruthie McDonnell - upper left in photo
In 1979 the Hanson Girls Softball 13-17 yr old team had a 6-8 record playing in the North River Girls Fastpitch Softball League. I was the head coach of this wild and crazy and diverse collection of teenage softball players. Many of the girls had unmistakable and strong personalities of various types. Some were shy or quiet and just sort of blended in without being particularly noteworthy, which is how I had tended to be as a teenager and young adult. But after getting talked into helping coach this team, and then becoming the head coach – I was forced to learn to interact in a more vocal and demonstrative way. These girls were the best thing to happen to me at that point in my life.
One of the best players and strongest personalities on any of the teams I coached over eight years was “Ruthie”. She was a big strong girl who could hit for power, had a cannon of an arm, and would gladly run over the opposing catcher if she tried to block home plate. AND, she would laugh about it the whole way – as if to say “I can’t believe you thought you were going to stop me”. In any moment of competition, Ruthie had a determined scowl which instantly gave way to a proud and beaming smile. She LOVED doing her job well. As a shortstop, she would throw so hard to first base that Nancy (our 1st baseman) would complain that she was throwing too hard. Ruthie hated pitching because she couldn’t throw as hard underhand as she could overhand. What she excelled at was being the catcher.
Stereotypically big and slow moving, and happily bossy, Ruthie at 16 and 17 years old was the field general. She would pump up the pitcher, wake up the infielders, joke with the umpire and batter, and let me know that I wasn’t really needed here – she had it all under control. Our pitchers quickly learned that their own head was directly in the line of fire when Ruthie tried to throw a runner out stealing second base. She would sternly remind them of that fact and warn them to be ready to duck – not to save their own lives, but so their head wouldn’t interfere with her throw. This public and confident announcement was sometimes enough to convince a baserunner NOT to try stealing second. On plays at home plate, she KNEW she had a size advantage over most girls and would practically DARE anyone to try to run through her to score. She knew she was big and strong and relished in being able to take advantage of her “physical talent”.At bat she was fearless and always grinned at the opposing pitcher – her way of trying to psych out the opponent, no matter how fast the girl could pitch.
In batting practice, she was murder. When Ruthie stepped into the batters box, most of our own pitchers were too scared (or too smart) to pitch to her, and because we didn’t have many girls who threw real fastballs (but many of the opponents did) I would throw a lot of batting practice so our own batters could practice hitting against speed. Ruthie had an uncanny knack of hitting line drives back through the pitchers circle – anywhere from head high to “just-below-belt-high”. She would have me ducking and leaping throughout her whole BP session, with the rest of the team laughing at my predicament and rooting her on. Every body loved Ruthie – you couldn’t help it, unless you were on the other team. She learned that her power zone was hitting towards right-center field, and that most teams weakest players were in right field. She needed to hit the ball into that gap, because Ruthie didn’t particularly run around the bases – she thundered around them. Team-mates good naturedly complained about earthquakes and thunder, and joked about the 3rd baseman running for cover as she huffed and puffed into 3rd base. She just smiled and laughed with them.
Playing down in Plympton, the opposing star player was also their catcher. Ruthie was on 2nd base and a ball was hit to the outfield. She rounded 3rd and headed for home –ready for a close play. The throw was high causing the catcher to leap. Ruthie – not one to be polite or to avoid a collision - went low and took the girls legs out from under her, and they landed in a heap. The umpire called “Safe”, the catcher got up looking for a fight, but Ruthie just casually got up and triumphantly walked away – beaming as always, and to a chorus of cheering from her impressed team-mates.That was Ruthie in all of her glory. Never to be a prom queen, she held court on 95 degree hot July afternoons, full catchers gear on, dirty, sweaty, and personally victorious no matter what the final score was. She was the hero of all the pretty girls who wished they were “ballplayers”, the shy girls who wished they were outgoing, and any other girl who simply marveled at the person who was “Ruthie”. She was a joy to coach.

When Lau laid down the Law

Laurie played hockey on Urann’s Pond for years with the neighborhood kids, so she knew how to play pretty well.

She was friends with many of the High School hockey team players, so she ended up playing in some of the pickup games at our outdoor rink. One day we had a number of high school kids, Eric and David, Uncle Mac and a handful of fathers all involved in a big game on a clear sunny day. Glen P happened to be the big body builder football player of my grade, but as he skated up ice with the puck, Laurie demonstrated the old adage of “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”. With a picture perfect legal hip check, Glen went down in a dramatic heap while Laurie (white figure skates and all) skated away with the puck – much to the very loud vocal amusement of everybody present. Well, every body but Glen’s father – who in an effort to get revenge for his shamed son started chasing Laurie in an obvious effort to even the score. Uncle Mac lived by the theory “mess with my family and you mess with ME!” so he started chasing Mr.P around to head him off before he got to Laurie. Glen tried to become invisible – hiding from the fact that he got decked by a girl and that his Dad was making a fool of himself and that a brawl was on the verge of breaking out over the whole deal. Cooler heads prevailed, Laurie became a folk hero, Uncle Mac was comfortable in knowing that he would have killed Mr. P if necessary, and Glen went on to lift enough weights to become as big as a house and compete in men’s body building competitions (where he would certainly never get shown up by a girl!). He eventually joined the Police Force where he could carry a gun and be really manly. That Christmas I bought Laurie shin guards on the theory that she would never get a date with shins black and blue from getting slashed in a hockey game.

How I started the Whitman-Hanson Youth Hockey program.

OK – so it took a little bit of initiative from some other people who copied an idea of mine and expanded it and improved it, and that led to the formation of the first WH youth hockey team (and I didn’t even get to play on it).

I was in high school and didn’t feel like walking over to Urann’s Pond just to skate. I had noticed how melt water would drip onto the cement back steps and freeze into a pretty thick layer. I thought if I could spray water onto the patio bricks, maybe I could form a good enough ice surface to skate on our basketball court. I had learned that an outdoor water spigot won’t freeze if you keep the water turned slightly on, so I did – and waited until after dark when the temperature dropped to below 32. Slowly and patiently I repeatedly sprayed a mist of water onto the backyard bricks. This would freeze rather quickly and I found I could re-spray about every 15 minutes until I had maybe a ¼ inch layer over the entire patio/court. This didn’t hold up well to skate blades, but after a couple of nights of diligent spraying, I had close to an inch of ice to skate on. Jim R. stopped by one night as I was skating and became intrigued at my home-made rink, and asked how I accomplished it. I demonstrated my spraying techniques, and a new idea was hatched in his head. Jim was friends with Charlie Oertel – the grandfather of my friend Russell Dean on West Washington St – who owned a large field across the street from his house and abutted by a small stream. Charlie gave his blessing and a bulldozer was brought in to scrape clean and level a spot for an outdoor hockey rink. Assisted by a borrowed generator and pump, we would take shifts spending a few hours late at night pumping water onto the rink. Before long we had a solid 2 inch ice surface surrounded by telephone poles layed flat for the “boards”. A good snow storm and a lot of shoveling it off to the sides made the boards a little easier to get checked into. Jim had a couple of goals built at his work, invested in the nets, and also bought some plywood for sturdier boards behind the goals. On our new rink, we would have pickup games with all of the kids (and a handful of Uncle Mac’s friends, who just so happened to have kids too). But Jim was friends with a guy from Duxbury who was involved in their youth hockey program. A scrimmage game was set up with them, so of course we needed a team to play against them. David and Eric were about the right age to participate. An assortment of 4th to 6th grade kids– basically anyone who claimed to have a clue about how to play hockey - were assembled. After a couple of practices, they didn’t look very formidable. Much to my dismay, because I was clearly too tall and old to possible sneak in, I couldn’t play. Even worse, Chipper Cane – who was in my grade – got to play, simply because he was very short for his age and a very good hockey player, therefore giving us a cheating chance at being competitive. A few games against Duxbury were played that winter, and not long after that The Hobomock Rink was built in Pembroke by George Gould (also a friend of Jim’s). The Whitman Hanson Youth Hockey organization was officially created, with Jim as the President, and along with Pembroke and Duxbury were the very first teams to play at Hobomock Arena. And to think it all started when I ingeniously iced the backyard patio brick basketball court at 30 Phillips St. just to save a few steps.

The Human Zamboni

Friday Night public skating at Asiaf Arena in Brockton was where we went to practice our skating skills when pond ice was not available. Nenna’s friend Jim would pack a bunch of us into his Thunderbird or Bronco and off we would go. David was about 8 years old and still just learning to skate. Learning to skate means falling down a lot. Before you master all of the maneuvers, you fall when you stop, when you turn left or right, when you skate backwards, when you get cut off, bumped, tripped. At a busy public skating session, all of these would happen and David spent a LOT of time “learning”. Actually we spent a lot of time watching him sliding across the ice – on his belly, side, or back. The ice would be pretty scratched up by so many skate blades, but every fall and slide would leave an 8 yr old sized swath of freshly cleaned ice. David “cleaned” the ice so often we started calling him “The Human Zamboni”. Smartly, Nenna always had him thickly dresses with layers of warm clothing , ski pants, gloves, and a hat. He never got hurt, or cold, and he just loved skating so he never minded the falls or the nickname. When we got home he would proudly tell mom just how many times he actually fell (Mom! I only fell 35 times tonight!), and we could gauge his improvement as the number shrunk.

David eventually became the most accomplished hockey player in the family – starring in Youth Hockey, High School, and still playing weekly 40 years after his Asiaf ice cleaning days.