The Skating Rink

by John Casteel

A successful, happy, honorable, even exceptional, human being could do far worse than to leave this world with a legacy as good as the one left by my friend, Henry Minitar. This despite the fact that Henry was a small (no more than 5 feet, 3 inches tall, perhaps 145 pounds), homely, physically and mentally challenged man who never received a high school diploma; never made more than a few thousand dollars in any year of his life; never had an important job, although, as you will see, Henry’s experience may lead some of us to redefine our definition of the word “important”; never married; never had so much as a driver’s license; never owned anything except the clothes on his back; and rarely, if ever, left the remote county in which he was born, grew up, lived and died. Still, years after his death, Henry and his legend remain well-known and revered within the small geographical confines through which his life passed. For the forty-plus years he was the caretaker of the local skating rink, virtually everyone raised in this ruggedly hilly, heavily tree-covered and desolate plot of northern Michigan knew, and grew to love, Henry.

There are probably few places on Earth more appropriate than Michigan’s upper peninsula for a man to live whose very being is destined to become inextricably bound to snow and ice. The peninsula is formed by three surrounding Great Lakes: the frigid, awe-inspiring, sometimes frightening Lake Superior to the north and the majestic Lake Michigan and brooding Lake Huron to the south. The whole peninsula is well north of the 45th parallel meaning that it is all closer to the North Pole than to the equator. This northern location plus the massive amounts of surrounding water combine to produce long, harsh and dramatic winters across the peninsula and especially in those areas on the north side that run along the southern shore of Lake Superior. That is the location of Muskrat Bay, Henry’s, and my, hometown. Nearly every year, the first snow and below freezing temperatures arrive in October and then linger into May. Snowfall amounts for individual days commonly exceed one foot, reach eighteen inches frequently and approach or exceed two feet several times each year. It is not uncommon to have a score or more days in a row with measurable amounts of snowfall and the hearty people who reside here don’t consider anything less than four inches to be “measurable.”

Like much of the peninsula, Muskrat Bay’s heyday came and went decades ago. Its population, once as high as 23,000 during the heyday of the “ore rush”, leveled off at around 3,000 in the late ‘40’s and has remained in that vicinity ever since. Almost every family lives a paycheck-to-paycheck existence, eking out a living in the small paper factory that the town attracted during the its long, slow decline, working for the government maintaining the parks and roads, or working in the retail operations necessary in every town: the supermarket, hardware, gas stations, clothing stores and few remaining restaurants. Nobody has much money left for fun or “frivolous” activities so what recreation that exists is required to be of a type that incurs little or no cost. For the adults, this means primarily hunting and fishing for outdoor activities; pinochle and board games for indoors, Monopoly and Life being particular favorites.

The town’s youth, however, have two other primary types of recreation, both outdoor. In the summer, swimming is a constant activity, not in Lake Superior which even the heartiest descendants of the Fins who originally settled the area find to be unacceptably bone-chilling, but in the nearby Eagle’s Nest Lake whose sandy shores and comparatively warm waters invite natives and visitors alike. The predominant activity, this being the “winter wonderland” after all, predictably became ice skating. It has all the assets required in this peculiar setting. It is inexpensive; a pair of skates and warm socks being the only equipment needed. It has a long season, nearly always commencing before Thanksgiving, the traditional American holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, and lasting through March and occasionally into April. It is a healthy activity; good exercise and nearly everyone can do it with only a little practice. It was through skating, or more precisely through the skating rink, that I came to really know and love Henry Minitar and through which he established his enduring and endearing legacy.

Every year for as long as anyone can remember, the city would prepare its skating rink, usually in early to mid-November. By then, there was almost always a sufficient amount of snow in the city square’s park to scrape around to form the borders of the rink. The snow would be shoveled around the edges forming a rectangle approximately one-hundred fifty by two-hundred feet. The town’s lone water-pumping fire engine would bring a full load of water and slowly and carefully saturate the snow which would, within a few hours, form an ice barrier that would define the rink for the rest of the skating season. Then the whole rink would be flooded, allowed to freeze, flooded again, allowed to freeze and so on, until an ice thickness of approximately 4 inches had been established, a process that took two days, give or take a few hours depending on the temperature of the surrounding air. The final stage was to attach a smaller hose with a fine spray attachment and mist the whole surface in order to finish with a glass-smooth, slippery surface. Beginning with the 1954 flooding and continuing through the season that began in 1995, the completion of that first misting would mark the point at which responsibility for maintaining the icy surface, except for the monthly re-misting, would fall exclusively to Henry.

During the previous skating season, Henry, then 16 years old, had decided he wanted to learn how to skate. A simple thing for most people, skating was a daunting challenge for Henry, somewhat illustrated by the fact that he had never tried it until he was 16. Most children in this area were skating by the time they were three or four and were proficient within two to three years after that. Henry showed up with his new skates the day after Christmas, 1953. Even though she had doubts, Henry’s mother, with whom he lived throughout his whole life, yielded to Henry’s wishes and bought the skates, the only present Henry had wanted or had received that Christmas. Henry came walking in the same way he always walked. He didn’t really shuffle but he walked bent slightly at the waist, leaning forward and taking short, quick steps that always gave the impression he was slightly out of control and was about to stumble over. His head faced slightly down and his eyes appeared to fixate on a spot about twenty-five feet in front of him. It was quite obvious that balance was not Henry’s strong suit, although no one ever remembers him actually falling while he was walking. Henry’s always clear, blue eyes sparkled a little more than usual that day and his mouth, always adorned with a small, pleasant smile was wider and noticeably more joyous. His brand new skates, laces tied together, were slung over his shoulder as he marched purposely into the warming cabin at the east end of the rink, the first time Henry had ever crossed the ice and entered the cabin. To Henry, this was his big chance to finally be normal, to join the generations of area children whose passage from child to adult always included countless hours and days skating on this rink, some playing an abbreviated form of hockey, some racing each other, some simply skating round and round and round in seemingly endless circles.
Sadly, though ultimately propitiously, it was not to be. Henry sat down next to me (I was 10 at the time), removed his boots and began to put on his skates.

“ I’m going to skate, Jamie,” he said, smiling in an even broader fashion. He spoke in his normal slow way, with a noticeable lisp that made “skate” sound somewhat like “shkate.” In longer conversation with Henry, there were always difficult to understand words and his companions had to consider the context to determine what he might be saying, a practice at which people who spoke frequently with Henry became very good.
“Good for you, Henry,” I replied. “I’ll show you how.”

Henry’s awkward fingers carefully laced and tied his skates, a process that would have taken me far less time even then. I waited patiently because, even though I did not yet know Henry well, I liked him and was impressed with his peaceful demeanor and kind actions toward everyone with whom he came into contact, especially children smaller and younger than he. When he finally finished he raised himself up from the hard, worn bench and began to walk on his skates across the bare wood floor to the exit door. At least part of the problem which would interfere with Henry’s ability to skate was immediately apparent. I, and the rest of the kids heading back out to the ice, walked directly over our skates, easily balancing on the blades. Henry, on the other hand, walked on the inside edge of the soles of his skates, his ankles bent inward as the sides of the blades bent toward the floor until the soles edges contacted the floor and formed two unstable platforms on which Henry walked toward the door. The problem exploded when we reached the ice. The wood floor had at least provided sufficient resistance to keep Henry’s legs together as he walked across it. The ice did no such thing. Henry stepped off the single step that separated the cabin from the ice, left leg first. The instant his blade touched the ice, his ankle caved again, the blade flattened, and the sole edge hit the ice and neither blade nor sole “caught” the ice, and both just kept sliding. His left leg slid forward until his calf nearly touched the ice. His right leg remained anchored to the wooden step. Henry came as close as he physically could to doing the splits, then fell over backward, laying flat on the unforgiving ice.

Henry had not hurt himself badly, though his left leg and both sides of his groin were strained and sore. I and a couple of other young skaters helped Henry to his knees from where he crawled back into the cabin, struggled up to the bench, removed his skates and put on his boots. That one unfortunate incident had shattered his eagerness to skate, and never again did Henry try to skate and never again did anyone see Henry with those brand new skates.

On such unforeseeable incidents do legends and legacies begin. When we left the cabin, the park supervisor, who had witnessed Henry’s failed attempt at skating, was standing on the ice, apparently waiting for us. When Henry saw him, his always bent head bent further toward his chest, his shame at his pitiful skating attempt overwhelming him. But the supervisor had a purpose entirely different from the one Henry was imagining. He walked toward us, stopping and kneeling directly in front of Henry. He put his hands on Henry’s shoulders and looked directly into Henry’s dry but sad eyes.

“ Henry,” he said, “Would you like to help me clear the snow off the ice?”

Henry’s head straightened as he returned the man’s steady gaze. An odd look crossed his face, one I could not quite identify. It looked like a mixture of confusion and hope and emerging delight. Then that broad smile that had been displayed on Henry’s face only minutes, but in some sense a lifetime, before returned.
“Yes,” said Henry, in that very precise, drawn-out way he always used to affirm his intentions but with an obvious additional touch of gratitude.

Tom, the supervisor, rose to his feet and put his arm around Henry’s shoulder. The two men (It seems to me, looking back through decades, that Henry had passed from child to man at that very instant.) began the long walk back across the ice to the shed on the other side where the old Ford tractor with the five-foot snow blade was stored.

For the rest of that skating season Henry rode that tractor with Tom, virtually every day. Tom taught Henry everything about its use, and Henry proved to be a willing student, doing things over and over again until his fragile brain retained them. He learned how to start the tractor, a small thing but one that still took Henry a couple of days worth of attempts to master. He learned to depress the clutch, shift into the lowest gear and then to simultaneously and gradually release the clutch and depress the throttle. This was a particularly painful learning because the clutch/throttle activity required a coordination of his feet that was excruciatingly difficult for Henry. He did it repeatedly, grinding gears and stalling the engine, Tom patiently coaching at his side, until he finally could comfortably accomplish it, a process that took a significant part of the rest of the season. He learned to maneuver the tractor across the icy terrain, an activity that was far more difficult than it otherwise would be because the tractor could not use any traction devises, like tire chains or studs, in order to prevent damage to the pristine surface. For this same reason, the snow could not be allowed to accumulate to more than six inches or so because the traction the tires could deliver was insufficient to push snow weighing more than that. All of which meant that the snow would be removed several times a day during those frequent days that the snow fall exceeded six inches or a foot or two. He learned to keep a ledger of how many hours he drove the tractor so he knew when to notify the county mechanics that it needed an oil change or tune-up. He learned to push the snow evenly in all directions so that it formed a uniform, ever growing border around the rink and did not pile up in one area and infringe on the skating surface. By the end of that season, near spring of 1954, Henry had cleared the ice himself, with no help from Tom, probably more than fifty times.

In autumn of 1954, Tom, knowing that Henry no longer attended school, the local school no longer possessing the capability to teach someone with Henry’s special needs, asked Henry, after confirming with his mother that it was alright, if he would like a job (“A REAL JOB!” Henry thought excitedly upon hearing the query). It would pay $.65 an hour, (a wage which would incrementally increase until it reached $5.25 during Henry’s last season) and Henry would be solely responsible for making sure that the ice never remained snow covered for long. Tom was confident, having witnessed Henry’s progress during the previous season, that Henry could perform all the tasks required. He did have some concern about whether or not Henry could handle the responsibility of doing this job with very little supervision, making the right decisions about when to show up and when to remove the snow. Little was the concern merited. For that winter, and the forty-one that followed, Henry showed up every single day at 7:30am, usually walking the ¾ miles home for lunch with his mother, then coming back and staying until 9:00pm when the rink closed. He did this from the rink’s November opening until the spring thaw. There were only two times that anyone remembers when Henry failed to show up and keep that ice free of snow. One, for two days, was when his mother was suffering with pneumonia and Henry stayed home to comfort her and take care of her every need. The second, when Henry was gone for nearly two weeks, was caused by Henry dropping a heavy log, intended for the warming cabin’s stove, on his left foot breaking the middle toe and making it too painful for Henry to depress and manage the tractor’s clutch. Henry, by the way, outlasted that tractor and the county bought him a new, smaller, more modern John Deere model which he used for his final twenty years beginning in 1975.
I skated every day I could, which was most winter days, from that winter, when I was 11 until the spring of ’61 when I was 17. Henry and I became fast friends. I would follow Henry around, he on his tractor and me on my skates, whenever it snowed enough to require clearing. Rarely did the snow ever get more than 2 to 3 inches deep on the ice surface, so diligent was Henry at his vocation. Other times we would sit in the warming cabin and play kids games, like finger wrestling and “I Spy.” Henry’s favorite game in the warming house was arm wrestling an activity that Henry legitimately won until I was about 14 at which time I began to let him win, so Henry could say that he “always” won. I observed Henry’s interaction with everyone. He was intuitively masterful with all kids, but especially with the young learners. That one inelegant fall of his implanted a never-ending sympathy within Henry for the learners who stepped on the ice and immediately splayed to the ground. Henry would watch as their parents helped them back up, only to see them fall again. Then Henry would go and encourage each child, calling them by name and saying “You can do this!” to each one as they struggled back to their feet after their most recent fall. Legions of kids who passed through this initiation remember Henry shouting with glee the first time they made a few successful strides on their perilous new skates. Legions of parents remember Henry hugging their child when he or she returned after their first successful voyage. More than a few parents remember hugging Henry, tears of joy in his eyes for the success of their child. More than a few of those remember tears of love in their own eyes, tears summoned by their admiration and appreciation for this broken little man who somehow, miraculously, inspired every child with whom he came into contact to keep trying until they ultimately succeeded. Later on, my own four children were among those that Henry inspired. They all became expert skaters and each remembers those first few strides that ended with a hug from Henry and tears in their father’s eyes.
Henry was, without doubt, the happiest, most fulfilled person I have ever known, a belief shared by nearly everyone who spent enough time with Henry to get to know him.

The skating rink gave meaning to Henry’s life and inspired in him a discipline to his task which could be favorably compared to any highly successful person in any field. His rewards were bountiful in the form of admiration and affection from generations of children and their parents. And, his memory has only become more and more revered with the years that have passed since that sad day in 1996 when Henry went to sleep and did not wake up, shortly after that skating season had ended.

There is no need anymore for anyone to remove the snow from the ice at Muskrat Bay’s skating rink. You see, one of the young skaters who was not much more than a toddler when Henry had inspired him to keep getting up each time he fell, had become more than just an expert skater. He had left Muskrat Bay in his adolescence and had moved, first to Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario and then to Minneapolis to play advanced junior hockey. He then moved on to the National Hockey League and became one of the league’s highest scoring right wings. His skill and fame brought fortune and his fortune he decided to share with his hometown, Muskrat Bay. Upon learning of Henry’s death, he donated $2 million to the community, money designated to build a nice, but modest, indoor skating rink. The site, the same site where the outdoor rink had been located for decades, was donated by the city. About half the labor was donated by the local people. The Henry Minitar Memorial Community Center quickly became known as “The H.” Inside, beneath a photograph of Henry riding his Ford tractor during a mid-60’s winter squall, is a plaque bearing the following inscription:

“ In memory of Henry Minitar: friend, inspiration and unofficial, beloved patron saint of Muskrat Bay.”

Copyright © John Casteel