As it turned out, there were 2 sheds, cheek by jowl, and 2 doors upon a high wooden porch. The door on the right led to the locker-room, and the other one to the warm-up room equipped with the electric skate grinder and a stove made of a wide iron barrel. The hot fire crackled in the stove to warm your frozen hands or dry up your mittens. You had to look out though to take your mittens off the stove in time or they'd stink with singed wool they're knitted of. Yehk!
No words could ever describe my desire to become a skater. How deliciously crunched the ice under the skates! And you didn’t run, but flew like a winged swift shooting ahead of the crispy crunch of your steely blades!.
I started learning with double-bladed skates, which had strings to tie them to boots, and I was laughed at for using such kindergarten playthings. “Snegoorki” came in their place, the round-nosed skates of one blade each, but also with the strings for tying. And nothing came out with them either, no flight, no joy, just some odd iron pieces on my felt boots. Finally, Mom brought from someplace real “half-Canadians” riveted to the shoes of their own.
With those real skates hung over my shoulder, I hurried to the locker room at the skating rink. I put them on and went out on ice. All I could get there was an awkward hobbling back and forth. The skates did not want to stand evenly, they kept falling in or out, giving painful twists to my feet. I had to return back to the locker-room walking the snowdrifts around the skating rink, where dense snow kept the skate blades upright which prevented them from breaking my tortured ankles out.
The final attempt occurred in the evening after Dad came home from work and had his supper. At my request, he tightly laced the “half-Canadians” making them one with my legs. I went out the door and clattered down the flights leaning onto the handrail. From where the railing ended I walked to the entrance door with my hand to the wall. The outer wall of the house supported me on my way around the building. Farther on, there were auxiliary snowdrifts, but the road I had to cross fluttering my hands like a tightrope walker.
At last, I got to the skating rink to see that the uptight lacing brought no improvement, the skates again were breaking my feet in and out even though cinched by Dad… I stood there for some time, in pain and envy to the crowd of wing-footed ones happily rushing around me, before to start the endless hurtful way back.
(…and never more in my life tried I to skate.