52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Week 41
Prompt – Sports
Saturday was Hockey Night in Canada.
My fondest memories were of those nights. Saturday night supper had
to be done so that nothing interrupted the game. My father (Jacob
Peters) loved watching hockey. He would lie on his stomach in front
of the TV. He would have a pillow below his chest and elbows after
all we had hard asphalt type tiles on our floor. In front of him was
a bowl of un-shelled peanuts, his coffee and of course his ashtray.
How he could eat, smoke and drink his coffee without choking I will
never know. He often had to shoo away the cat and dog who would
love to stand in front of him blocking his view from the TV. He
loved a good hockey game.
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| Bill Watching Hockey With My Dad. Circa 1974. |
As far as I know he never played
hockey. In fact on his attestation papers I discovered he played
“third baseman in baseball”. I never knew he played ball at all!
He loved watching his sons play hockey. I believe this is why he
made an ice rink of our entire back yard. From the back porch step to
the alleyway and from side to side. It was where I learned to skate
all be it in “boy's skates”.
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| 1984 Skating With Jackie at Neighborhood Rink |
How convenient to put on your skates
and step outside to skate. And when you were cold go inside to warm
up. Boot skating was just as fun though. My brothers got hockey
sticks every Christmas and loved playing hockey on our outside rink.
They would use my mother's “bluing” to mark the lines in the ice.
They would catch holy hell when she caught them. By the way bluing
is a compound that women used on their laundry to get their whites
extra white and the collars clean. I guess since they hung their
clothes outside on the clothes line for all to see it was important
to have the cleanest and brightest laundry. As I understand it,
bluing was replaced by bleach.
As a further aside; we had a Samoyed
dog at this time. He loved to run away since we did not have a
fenced in yard. We used a long chain attached from his collar to the
clothes line so that he could run up and down the yard. He did not
like the ice rink. It was kind of hilarious to watch him try to run
on the ice. His four paws went in all directions but forward.
My father bought Bill and I our first color TV. It was a 17 inch portable. They were visiting us at our
first Regina home during the hockey playoff games. Of course it was
a gift for our anniversary or because we had just bought our home,
but we all knew it was so he could watch his beloved hockey game in color.
A little time later on a visit to
Vancouver to visit my father's mother (Elisabeth Peters) I discovered
that Grandma was a huge hockey fan as well. She would listen to the
games on their radio. If you remember she was blind. She was going
deaf as well because the radio was always painfully loud when the
game was on. Who would have thought she enjoyed hockey? Was hockey
a huge thing in her earlier life? I don't know. But how interesting
to know that my Grandma Peters and my dad, Jake Peters ( mother and
son) shared a common love for the game of hockey.
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| Grandma Elisabeth Peters Enjoying The Hockey Game on Her Radio. Notice it on the table to her left. |
Wendy
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