Oh for the glory days of the Philadelphia Flyers, the Broad Street Bullies, who brought the Stanley Cup to Philly in 1974 and 1975. Bobby Clarke, Gary Dornhoefer, Bill Barber, Reggie Leach, Bernie Parent... Dave Shultz... the Watson brothers… Kindrachuk-Clement-Kelly-MacLeish… Kate Smith (feel free to chime in, here).
The same friends who suffered through the Joe Namath all-day trip with me made a pilgrimage into center city with me to gape in awe at The Grail, er, Cup in its dented glory (one has to wonder, given its size and colorful history, if it was ever used as a team denture holder).
We used to play ice hockey on the Yardley Pond or on the Delaware Canal. We called ourselves the Yardley Yuks (my father insisted our initials stood for "Why? WHY???). I don't know if we chose the name because it rhymes with "nyuk-nyuk-nyuk", or "puck", or "duck" (because the Yardley ducks are so famous they have their own license plate), or because, well, let's not go there. I'll spare you the (non) poem we co-wrote about the Yuks, but suffice it to say, we were the proud co-owners of a floating puck (Can you imagine?! The wonders of modern technology!). Trouble is, once it floats underneath the ice, a floating puck is as gone as if it sank. It never showed up floating after the ice melted. Sometimes I still wonder about that puck. Maybe a duck ate it.
Playing hockey in the great outdoors was, at times, quite exciting, particularly on the canal. If one wore a wig instead of a hat, for example (wigs were cool at the time), when one got bodychecked into the overhanging bushes, one wound up on one's (now freezing) butt with one's wig dangling overhead from a bramble. After a prolonged cold spell, the powers-that-be would lower the canal's water level (presumably to prevent the expanding ice from wrecking the berm), leaving us with a concave rink. This made for some interesting shots on goal, not to mention the challenges the slope presented to our less-than-NHL-level skating. At this point it's imperative for me to pay tribute to the friend/Yuk who played ice hockey despite one major disadvantage. She couldn't skate. Not even with skates on her feet. (And you thought the floating puck was amazing?)
Not all of us could afford our very own hockey stick, either. One Yuk used a broom quite effectively. She might have been an Olympic Curler in a previous life. The NHL should look into brooms. Maybe using brooms instead of lethal weapons, er, hockey sticks, would cut down on the denture boxes in the locker rooms. Brooms could also sweep away ice shavings, eliminating the need for halftime (what do they call it in hockey? "Third time"?) Zamboni entertainment. But then what would the fans do between periods? Don't we all wait for the day the Zamboni driver misses a spot? Well, needless to say, we couldn't afford our very own Zamboni, either, so the broom--and our tushes--did double duty. Glory days, indeed!
