Frozen Field of Dreams (standard:other, 361 words)
Author: rogman66	Added: May 13 2007	Views/Reads: 2784/2	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
This is a story about carefree childhood days in Canada, and also a tap into the pulse of Canada's hockey pride.

Frozen Field of Dreams 

Growing up as a child, dreaming of fame and glory in far away distant
places, I was Guy LaFleur swooping down the right side of the frozen 
pond in the middle of the cow pasture.  This was a place where 
everybody was a superstar, regardless of your ability or skill level. 

Like ghostly images materializing out of the surrounding snow banks, we
would descend upon the ice and be instantly transformed into hockey 
players of lore all, past and present.  ON THAT FROZEN CHUNK OF POND IN 
THE MIDDLE OF THAT COW PASTURE, WAS THE ABSOLUTELY UTMOST UNDISPUTABLE, 
ABSOLUTELY UTMOST UNBEATABLE, ABSOLUTE AND DEFINITABLE GREATEST 
ASSEMBLYMENT OF HOCKEY TALENT OF ALL TIMES! 

We had Guy, Darryl Sittler, Phil Esposito, Ken Dryden, Gordie Howe,
Bobby Hull, Maurice “The Rocket” Richard, and they were all playing for 
the sheer love of the game. Just for the exultant joy of deftly dashing 
around a sprawling, hopelessly beaten and resigned foe, then sliding a 
hard slab of rubber between two frozen boots, doing so with the 
image-etched style that is in the furthest recesses of our brains of 
the player with the hockey stick raised in the air high above by one 
arm in the universal triumphant goal scoring salute, whilst decreeing 
at megaphone volume, “HE 
SCOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” 
 A cry that was so loud and with such reverence, we didn't need the aid 
of television broadcast to be heard from coast to coast. 

But the reverberations of our triumphant bellows reached far greater
distances that that, further than even the greatest distance science 
could measure, distances that had reached beyond the boundaries of 
infinity itself.  You see, those joyful echoes reached the very core of 
our soul. 

Hockey played casually, not without the slightest lacking of intensity,
by rag-tag motley crew gangs of youth in tattered, hap-hazardly taped 
equipment, with boundless abandon, flocking to any given patch of ice 
whence the very moment it achieved frozen state is to the heart of 
Canadian cultural being as is apple pie to Americans.  Without it, a 
significant portion of our identity would vanish.  And without it, so 
would a significant portion of our soul. 


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