Good Times Then and Now

Winter 1992

I moved to a small Maine town in the fall and hadn’t yet had an opportunity to feel a real part of the community. When a friend asked me to attend a skating party it seemed a chance to get better acquainted with her and make new friends.

Looking back on it, I wonder what or who decided that the ice was safe. In those days it never crossed my mind but the young people who lived near the river had their own ways of knowing.

On the designated evening we collected our skates and bundled up against the cold. It was a beautiful moon lit night. As we approached the river a bon-fire lit up the moving figures gliding over the ice.

I’ve forgotten a lot of things about this time in my life but I remember the flashing skates, the cheerful young faces high lighted by the fire, moonlight and stars, ice like glass and the rhythmic music of skates on the ice.

I could hardly skate at all and was guided up the winding river as far as was deemed safe and back again. I seem to remember a black expanse of open water ahead. Back by the fire games of tag were in progress and the expert skaters were piling up logs to jump over. Jump over them they did, displaying so small amount of skill.

As I listened to the laughing voices, sometimes blurred by the heat of the fire, I realized that these young people from a small rural community in Maine had some-how come to know the secret of what it takes to have a really good time.

I don’t live close to the river anymore but winters still come on and the ice turns right for skating. Recently we bundled up against the cold and in broad daylight trekked off across the snow to find a place to skate. A small pond seemed big enough for tag and we deposited a blanket for sitting on, extra mittens and thermoses of hot chocolate. A hockey stick appeared and a puck. A game of tag got hot and heavy. Neighborhood children joined us. Brightly colored clothing formed a kaleidoscope as skaters flashed by. The sky was a heavenly blue and near evergreens and hardwood trees etched their limb against the snow and the sky.

If you want a bon fire now, you have to get a permit so we didn’t have one but we have the technology to blast the music of the Skater’s Waltz across the pond.

Being the senior in the three generations represented, wisely I didn’t don skates but dispensed hot chocolate and cheered the skaters on.

Things change quickly and one of the reasons that skating in the open air is so pleasurable is that conditions are so seldom right for it and one must seize the moment.

Not everything changes though. The girl that asked me to my first skating part fifty years ago remains my dear and good friend.

(My friend is Alice Bemis Best and the place is Fryeburg Harbor.)