Grand Change by William Andrews Page A

gifts and showing them off, finally eating goose, mashed potatoes and jimmies, topped off with plum pudding to the point of a groan. Then we sat and listened to Uncle Jim tell about town goings-on, and him discussing politics with The Boss while The Boss whittled a plunger for a cut goose quill so the children could shoot potato plugs. But I had other things on my mind.
    I stuffed my pockets with lumps of fudge and the hard candy from my sock, grabbed my new fleece-lined leather mitts from under the tree and headed for the porch. I threaded my hockey stick through the spaces in my skates and swung them over my shoulder. There was a steady drip from the icicles on the eaves of the porch; a few drops fell down my neck as I stepped out into the cold, bright freshness again.
    Across the sparkling fields of snow, I could see the banks of the cleared ice patch below Joe Mason’s house rising above the white glare. Wally, hidden below the knee, was skating limp-legged and laboured. He was pushing a board nailed to a two-by-four, with support sticks, for a scraper.
    Jenny and Shirley Mackie were on the ice, too, skating straight-backed, straight-armed and tottery, sweeping in a forward slant, taking a stride and daring to take another, coasting for the rump-waggling, sidewise stop, with… whoops!…there goes Jenny!
    As I trudged with my feet plunging through soft-crusted snow, I saw others come wading, their breaths puffing and swirling around their faces and cap lugs.
    We came to sit on our sticks, with their rags of tape at the blade. We blew on our chilled fingers between the tightening of waxed laces and the usual hockey banter. Finally we rose like wounded birds scattering from a roost with the ever-present stick for support. Then it was pick sides, drop the puck and drive ’er, with spaced boots for nets, no refs and no offsides. And there were the rip and swish of rust-pitted blades cutting and swerving, the whacks of clashing sticks, the cheers of the score. And somewhere outside the white banks, the cares and defeats of life skulked like defeated dogs, and until early winter shadows grew long before distant trees, the world was on hold.
    The banter was somewhat subdued as we sat on our sticks again. Steam wisps rose from our hands as we pried the laces loose from their castings of sprayed ice and hauled off the skates and stuffed our feet into stiff boots where they would grow hot. Feeling the ice strange to our feet without the fight for balance, we said our “see yas” and saw the first flickers of lamps in distant windows punctuating the peace of Christmas night.

Prelude to
Winter on Hook Road
    From the first big storm, except for the hockey, skating and coasting circuses, the scenes along Hook Road pretty much included a horse and sleigh. In milder days—after limp-foot lugging seventy-five– or one hundred-pound bags of Green Mountains or Sebagos up the stone steps of gloomy cellars—the farmers rocked and swayed with the pitches, perched on the buffalo-covered wood sleigh loads, sometimes in a string.
    At mid-afternoon, on sleighs returning from the potato buyers, the scholars of the old schoolhouse rode, perched on sleigh sides like multi-coloured birds chirping on telephone lines. And there were songs in chorus and jokes, which sooner or later evolved into push-offs and laughing and foot-skipping races to catch up, with slung school bags swinging in flurries of flying snow until the driver’s rein slapped the horses into a jog, resulting in pushing, foot-slipping, laughing races to catch up. And sometimes a speed comment from a passing sleigh would bring on a foot race, and the cheers and jeers of a racetrack, until they hit a heavy run of pitches.
    At other times, the fanners rode their wood sleighs on the trails to woodlots in skeleton, with the sides and bottoms removed, stakes stemming from the bunk holes, the drivers standing spread-foot sideways on two bunks.
    There the