Tabishland

My car battery is giving me trouble, so I'm feeling too affectionate for the cold.

I do have weird sort of almost fond memories of my 4:45 am paper route in Indiana, walking through the snow and how quiet the streets of Indiana were.
 

It is colder than a witch's tit in a brass brassiere.
 

I wish I had a hot tub!
 

Nell, is the skating rink still at Mack Park?
 

Indiana's ice rink is now beside East Pike Elementary, part of the White Twp. Rec. Complex--3 baseball fields, large playground, a small walking trail, that sort of thing. The Indiana Ice Center has just been renamed the "S&T Bank Arena". Various hockey teams play there. There's now indoor golf, tennis and soccer as well. Today's ice rink has all the modern amenities and lacks the quaint ambiance of Mack Park's ice rink.
 

And the cow barns. I don't think I'll ever forget the cow barns.
 

Funny. As soon as Mack Park Ice Rink was mentioned I thought of the smell of the cow stalls and the straw.

I went ice skating on Saturday for the first time in probably 30 years (probably Mack or maybe the Monroeville Mall?). I can't say I was graceful, but I didn't fall down once.
 

I never had the nerve to ask anyone to skate with me, so I never made it to the cow barns.

I remember Jim Brown got to skate with Lisa Davis or Jennifer Williams or some other 7th grade goddess. Jeff Smith and I (were we all 6th St neighborhood friends) were so floored by that, that we withdrew into our geeky, jr high misogynist shells for another few years: "who needs girls, anyway."
 

Hey Joe, when I was in college we frequented the Schenley Ice Rink. Trudging up that hill was no picnic but skating outside in the cold was worth the hike.
 

Schenley's where we went. But we drove.
 

Thanks for the view from Indiana, Nell. Out in the Prairie here, we got 4-5 inches today and it's very cold and the roads were terrible, and finally it feels like old times in western PA. The kind of weather it may be even worth postponing "Earnest" for. I remember the old skating rink, the hot chocolate, and getting "benched" as a status symbol that I was unable to achieve.
 

The cow barns...ah the sensual/olfactory memories...I still have my old skates. I have used them in a couple of productions, ex) they hung on the wall of my set for YCTIWY when I directed it in OR.

Boz HAS to hold the record, along with my sis Pooh, for going to the Ice Rink every single night it was open during the winter of 74/75.

Who holds the record for going to the cow barns every night? Probably Greg Smith.
 

You mean Mark Smith? Or maybe Lenny Valenti?
 

I think I mostly went there with the same group.....curiously, I seem to remember the guys in that group more than the girls...but Gingey, I would swear you were one of them.

I drag my kids skating every now and then, I still love it. But the rinks around here are mostly small and mobbed. And no cow barns, but you know, I think I'm over that phase anyway. :-)