I was fortunate to have grown up a mere block from a local city park. The park was at the foot of the great hill in the center of town that our old high school was built on, and there wasn’t a night of the year that the center of town didn’t glow from the flood lights.
Back in the day, summers at the park were filled with tennis players and little league games. As fall approached, the outfield fencing was removed and it became the practice field for the football team. The old shelter house there had a fire hose spigot, and once the temperature dropped, a couple of makeshift 2×4 tripods held the hoses that coated the entire field in a sheet of ice. The hill became the premiere sledding location for kids (and some adults, too) and the rink was packed with skaters.
The ice rink was the place to be for teenagers back then—not the youth center or other hangouts. Even the athletes that played winter sports would come down the hill after practice and put on skates and pads, since our hockey leagues weren’t fully organized and competitive at that time. Fans gathered to skate before high school basketball and volleyball games. Hot dogs and hot cocoa was the standard dinner for local kids from Christmas to March.
I didn’t learn to ice skate until I was in 7th grade, but once I did, my winter nights consisted of running home from school, grabbing my skates, hockey stick, and a quick bite to eat. I spent hours playing pick-up games of hockey and skating with my friends. As we got older, some of us volunteered to be coaches for the tot leagues, which drew more spectators than the high-school aged teams. The mementoes of skating still exist: I still have the scar where I caught a puck in the eyebrow, rough patches of skin from the perpetual frostbite, and fond memories of skating lap upon lap with my first girlfriend.
Nowadays, the term “homer” is slang for someone who is an ardent, passionate and unwavering supporter of something local. Poetically, the head of our parks department was a man named Homer—a real down-to-earth guy, jovial and friendly and totally committed to the ice rink. Every night, once the fields had turned to tundra, he was there moving the hoses to spray the water evenly until there were several inches of smooth ice for skaters. The rest of the department helped too, but it was mostly Homer.
Once the rink was finished, Homer was there nearly every night to turn the lights on and off, and to plow heavy snow off of the ice with his pickup. When some local parents and businessmen donated the lumber to build a simple hockey enclosure, he was there, setting up each of the boards, manicuring the edges and painting lines, and setting up the nets for the youth hockey leagues that now didn’t have to travel 30 miles or more to play.
The amazing thing about Homer was that he did all of this on his own time, winter night after winter night, year after year, until he retired. His son played in the leagues, but even on the nights when he didn’t play or practice, Homer was there, drinking his coffee and handing out shovels to skaters eager to clear a dusting of snow, tending to bruised knees and gashed eyebrows, mediating fights and breakups, and passing out hot cocoa to frozen five-year olds.
In recent years, skating at the park has been sporadic—the informal hockey leagues became competitive and moved to the local community college. A new teen center was built (unfortunately at the foot of the hill, blocking the best sledding lanes) and the old shelter house with the hockey lockers was torn down to make room for a skateboard park. A new high school was built on the edge of town and the old one mostly abandoned, shifting the epicenter of teen life in town.
As with most things in life, it’s not bad, but not the same as it used to be, and a big part of that is there is no more Homer.
The Holly Village Council recently approved the use of Community Development Block Grant funds to build a pavilion in Lakeside Park for a proposed ice-skating rink. This project is in collaboration with Holly Township, who will also be considering using block grant funds towards it. An ice rink is a relatively easy and low-resource project—some flat land, a fire hose on a tripod, and nature’s cold temperatures. There’s the risk that warm-snaps and blizzards could compromise the surface of the ice, but no one is expecting NHL quality ice anyway.
The labor is in the maintenance—a week or two worth of nights turning the tripods for even ice, respraying occasionally, clearing the rink during or after snow storms, and managing amenities like lights, music, or concessions. Even with the overhead pavilion, the ice will still require some care. Most of the usage of the park will likely be after school, evenings and weekends—not necessarily when the Village’s DPW is on the clock. The weather has no regard for anyone.
The ice rink is a great opportunity to bring the community together on a positive and beneficial project. Nothing enhances the small town appeal of Holly more than a local ice rink full of kids and families, and even with more details to be laid out, this is a project that the Holly community can be proud of. Even though our administrators must tighten our budget belts, we must also be conscious of opportunities to build and grow, to enhance our assets and keep us a vibrant community. We also need the community to step up, individually and as a whole, to support these kinds of initiatives that make Holly a great place to visit and live.
There’s no doubt that the Village and Township will find the answers to the management questions, but will we find a homer, our own Homer, to make the ice rink a truly remarkable community resource? I have a feeling we’ll ice that question, too.
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