As I mentioned, our religious beliefs restricted us for dancing, drinking or playing cards. Dad did treat us to an evening in Denver once a year at the Ice Capades.
We put on our Sunday best, even though it was Saturday evening. Dad was a farmer and mostly dressed in navy or grey work shirts and pants during the week. He had a nice suit with a vest that included a watch pocket, crispy starched white shirt and big wide ties for Sundays. My brother Alan still carries that watch that dad had for his watch pocket. Dad always wore one of those fedora hats. This was one of those days for dressing up for all of us. Alan probably looked a little like a clone of his dad with a suit jacket, pants, shirt and tie and shiny shoes. Nancy and I wore dresses with our hair all combed neatly plastered down with wave set. Nancy probably wore nylons, but I still had little white socks with patent leather shoes. Mom had put on her Sunday dress, jewelry and carried a hand bag with a fresh lacy handkerchief.
We would all pile in the car to go to Denver. There were no super highways at the time so we wound through all the little towns like LaSalle, Platteville, Fort Lupten and Brighton on a two way paved road. You could tell that Mom would always get nervous if dad decided to pass a car. You had to accelerate to beat any on-coming traffic. Sometimes the crest of the hill didn’t provide you with enough visibility to see very far.
We might stop at a restaurant to have a special dinner before the show. I’m sure it was not a fancy restaurant, but to us it was grand to go to a place with thick cushy carpets, table clothes, and heavy silverware. I don’t remember what I ate, but dad usually ordered fantail shrimp.
When we got to the coliseum, the place was a busy with people. We walked through the concrete corridors with the flow of the crowds looking for our portal for our seats. We settled in for an evening of entertainment. Dad would have bought a program that we all read while we waited for the show to start. I looked through the program at the photos that depicted what we would see. The star of the show was on the cover. At the time, in the early 1950’s, I think Sonja Henny was a big ice skating star. It seems she also won a gold metal in the Olympics. She or some other beautiful star was on the cover of the program. I was enamored with the pose this skater had in the photo. I was little and it just seemed that with her arms and head throw back that she just didn’t have any boobs. I tried as I might to figure out where her normal body parts were. I was used to women with a little meat on their bones, not just skin and bones in tight costumes. It is amazing what a person remembers.
The skating started and we watched in amazement at the coordinated efforts as they skated around the arena. I particularly liked the finale where they would start with a foursome spinning in a circle in the middle of the rink. Then gradually they added on a person at a time until all the skaters were skating around like spokes of a car. There was always a straggler who couldn’t quite catch up with her place in the line. We would all root for her to clasp hands with her team mates. Such is the simple life of entertainment.
On the way home dad might stop for gas in Brighten. This was when the gas station attendants came running out to pump the gas, check the oil, wash the windows. There were no rest stops invented yet so if you really had to use the rest room it was at the gas station and usually not the tidiest.
We ice skated from time to time when Darling’s lake would freeze over. One of the neighbors would blade off the snow and then we all gathered in our warm woolen coats, hats and gloves for a afternoon of skating. The big kids skated in circles around the lake while the little kids skated on wobbly ankles trying to learn to skate. Boys used brooms or sticks for a makeshift game of hockey. The ice was bumpy from the wind blowing across the water while it was freezing solid. We didn’t care as we just skated over the bumps and crust.
When we moved to Swanson’s house from the Tipton farm, my dad let the washing machine water flood the side of the yard for a little skating rink for me when I was a teenager. There was a tetherball pole right in the middle of the rink. I would skate around and imagine what the real skaters would do with jumps and all those pretty graceful gliding poses. I could almost turn around and skate backwards, but that was about it.
When I went to CSU they had a requirement for 3 quarters of sports. I chose ice skating and found there were actually techniques to skating figure eights and other such feats. I could skate to pass the course, but still never excelled to greatness in that sport. All I remember is that the rink was right outside the student union. I would need to wear my outdoor skating clothes to all my other classes on skating days. My fellow students probably wondered why I wore the same outfit every day to class.