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Family Stories
A potpourri of stories about various family members or events
Skating
Many people who grow up in Minnesota learn to embrace the (sometimes) long winter. Some common ways of doing this: ice-fishing, downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, skating, hockey, snowmobiling, and more. We did all of these except ice-fishing and hockey. Skating was the most social of these activities.
We often skated as a whole family or in groups. We would go to St. Cloud and skate at Lake George, which is near downtown and Tech High School. The nice thing about skating there is that they had (still?) a warming house where you can change from shoes to skates and conversely. Also, to warm up. We also sometimes made our own rinks near the house. Sometimes it was made east of the house in the field across the fence, or alternatively, in the field just south of the house. In both cases, we built up an embankment of dirt around the perimeter and then waited until it was below freezing, and we would let a hose fill it up. Sometimes the field was leveled in preparation for building the embankment. We would sit on the steps by the back door to change into skates and then walk over to skate. Of course, there were times when we had to shovel the snow off the rink first.
Preparing a skating rink
The photo above shows Ken, Keith, and me working on “leveling the skate pond” (as annotated by Dad on the slide). This location is just south of our house. I am not sure what Keith was pulling behind the tractor but it helped knock down the weeds. It looks like I am leaning into a shock of corn, but I don’t remember shocking there. Note Ken’s coat. It made a good work coat, but it probably would not be worn in town.
Skating on Lake George
The photo above shows (LTR) Sylvia, Pat, Jesse, Edna, and Edmund Hibbard skating on Lake George in 1937. As you can tell by the background, there were a lot of people skating, which was a common pastime. The nice thing about skating, as shown here, it was often a family affair.
More skating on Lake George
This photo shows Jolene, Marcia, and Nona Hopkins skating on Lake George in 1963. For them, it was a 6-block walk from their 818 9th Ave home. This photo is mostly looking north. Another link on Lake George is here.
When we moved to Notre Dame, IN, of course we brought our skates. In our first winter there (which I often called the land of many winters since the temperatures fluctuated so much), we decided to go out looking for a skating rink. We knew where some local parks were, and we assumed we would find a rink since that is how it was in MN. After trying 3 or 4 parks, we finally asked someone about which park has an outdoor rink. The answer was "none", but there is an indoor location, but it costs to enter. It didn't compute that we would have to pay to go skating. Eventually, we learned that there was an indoor rink at the athletic facilities at the University of Notre Dame (where I was a student at the time), and we skated there.
Published 2021-01-16. Revised 2025-06-08.
If you find any error(s) in the text, please let me know. Thanks. Contact me with errors or comments using hibbardac@gmail. [Back to the top] [About the author, Al]
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