Blast from the past

“There were absolutely no snow blowers,” remembers Ranier resident Phil Williams. "We had to hand-shovel the rink when it snowed.”

Ranier resident Carl Brown said that about six boys at a time would work together as a shoveling brigade to clear the rink before a game.

In a heavy snow, Ranier resident Bernie “Spike” Woods said that his father would plow snow to the ends of boards and the neighborhood kids would shovel the snow over the ends of boards.

Williams said that the Minnesota & Ontario Paper Company would often leave scraps of left-over wood products and siding for use in the wood stove, but sometimes when that supply got low they would have to find their own wood in order to keep warm.

But the extra work did not stop the boys from spending their time at the rink.

“It could be 40 below zero — it didn’t matter, we were going to play hockey,” Williams said.

Another player and Ranier resident, Kim Lessard, agreed. “The weather wasn’t a big thing. When you’re young and you’re excited for hockey, it doesn’t matter.”

“We had such a blast at the Ranier Rink when I was growing up,” Williams remembers. “We had such a good time. Now, it almost brings tears to my eyes.”

And although several players admit that they were not the best technical hockey team, they say that the friendships and enjoyment of the sport made the time special.

“There were always at least 50 kids down on the rink,” Brown said, noting that a group of about 20 hockey players could typically be found at any given time.

At the time, there were two rinks — a pleasure rink and a hockey rink — and both were well-used during the winter, according to all accounts. Along with the two rinks, kids would sled or toboggan down a nearby hill, creating a winter playground for Ranier-area youths.

“Back then, we didn’t have games to play on the computer,” Brown said, remembering the countless hours spent playing hockey and gliding down the hill, and added that television was not as much a part of a child’s day as it is for many young people now.

And so, with fewer distractions, kids of the day often made their own entertainment — and for many of the Ranier kids, that meant donning skates and spending time on the ice.

“We lived there (at the rink). We got off the school bus, ate something, would go down to the rink and wouldn’t get back until we’d get hungry again,” Williams said.

“I couldn’t wait to get off the school bus,” he continued, saying that his mother would often tell him to stay at home to finish his dinner. “Nope, I’ve gotta go play hockey,” he would reply.

“There was always something going on down there,” Lessard said. “It was the center of activity for the kids in Ranier.”

Several of these men noted that the young girls, too, spent time on the pleasure rink or sledding down the hill.

Building the rink

Woods said that his father, Ed Woods Sr., had commissioned the rink to be built in 1956.

“He was, among other things, obsessed with getting a rink for the Ranier kids,” Woods said.

Woods said in the fall of 1955 his father got enough people on board to build Ranier Rink. The location of the Ranier Rink was the former site of an illegal “midnight dump” for trash, Woods said.

“My dad thought he could take that negative and turn it into a positive. So he went around and got people to volunteer to work and donate materials and everything.”

Most of the material and labor for the project were donated from members of the community.

Woods explained that the hoses used to flood the rink were from a horse-drawn fire wagon with a steam engine. An underground gasoline storage tank was donated and holes were cut around its sides so that water could flow in. Of course, the tank had to be dug below the frost line so that ground water could flow in.

Four 150-watt light bulbs, or 600 watts of light, was all that illuminated the original rink.

The hockey rink was originally positioned heading roughly north-south, Woods explained. Today’s rink goes east-west.

Hand-me-downs and special treats

This was also a time when disposable income was not easy to come by for many local families. So these men remember making their own team jerseys out of cut-out felt letters sewn on a sweatshirt. Pads were often improvised out of cardboard or other leftover materials. Skates and sticks were often exchanged — with kids trading their outgrown skates for those of an older sibling or neighbor. Pucks were saved (after the snow melted and buried pucks could be recovered) for the next year.

“Everything was a hand-me-down,” Lessard said.

Williams said that he only remembers getting one new pair of skates as a child when he joined the Falls Broncos hockey team. Other than that, he said he relied on the trading system to get skates that would fit each winter.

Woods said that his family had a skate sharpening machine at their home, and his father would sharpen the kids’ skates.

“A lot of the kids that skated were quite poor, as we were, and he would let the kids, girls and boys, drop off their skates and then take them home and sharpen them for free. He did that for many years.”

One luxury that Williams remembers is getting a snack and hot chocolate at times from the Ranier Women’s Club.

Woods, too, fondly remembers the snacks provided to the kids on occasion from the community’s women. He also remembers getting a special treat for helping flood the rink.

“The only nice thing about it from my point of view was that I always knew whenever I would help my dad flood the rink, and often times it was just the two of us, then he would take me to one of the stores in town ... and my dad would let me have like a candy bar and a bottle of pop, which were rare treats for me,” Woods said.

Making teams

Several hockey teams were formed from the group of neighborhood boys, including the Ranier Rink Rats and the PALCO Bantams.

The Bantam team was sponsored by the Paul Lawrence Co. in 1965-66 and was coached by Norman Seegert. He said that there were 13-14 kids on the team at that time.

Seegert said that although he had never worn a pair of ice skates in his life, he coached the team that his son, David, played for. Seegert said that he had a station wagon that was big enough to take the team to 5 a.m. practices in Fort Frances.

He called the team “an enthusiastic bunch.” “It didn’t matter if we won or lost, they all had a good time.” He said they rarely gave him trouble about being up early.

Williams said that one of the low points in his hockey career was being cut from the Broncos hockey team in the late 1960s based on what he called the political game of who you were in town. He said that several of the cut players from Ranier formed a team, and a highlight was beating International Falls that year.

Woods remembered that in the 1961-62 season, when he was a senior at Falls High School, the Broncos hockey team would come to the Ranier Rink once a week to play boot hockey. The Broncos went undefeated that year and won the state hockey tournament. He said that many of the kids from Ranier would come and watch this morale-building weekly outing from the sides of the Ranier Rink.

“These were their heroes, the high school hockey players ... It was a real thrill for the kids around Ranier to watch that on Wednesday nights.”

Several of the players remember other adult supervision from neighborhood parents who would take turns making sure that the rink ran smoothly.

One of the great things that they all remembered about the local Ranier teams was that everyone got to play.

“Everybody had a chance to play and we all got along well together,” said Lessard.

The teams would play against the likes of Falls High School, Indus, Fort Frances, Crystal Beach and other neighboring teams.

“We weren’t very good,” Lessard said, remembering that he often started the game as a wing but switched to wherever he was needed on the rink. “We kind of played all over the ice.”

Rough and tumble

“That was the best bunch of hooligans who ever played on that ice,” said Williams.

Williams remembers the group as a fun-spirited but tough team that would often bend, or break, the rules of the game.

Williams recalls that, “We were animals on the ice. We had so much talent.”

“If we couldn’t trip ‘em, we’d high board ‘em or put them in the net,” Williams said of their rough-and-tumble style of play.

Lessard noted that a few players got in trouble for minor rule infractions — like swearing or smoking — and got sidelined. But most of the time, everybody got along and enjoyed the game.

“We never ever did anything to hurt anybody,” Williams said. “We were one happy family. There was never a fight and nobody argued.”

“It was an organized confusion, but it was fun,” said Lessard. “(For matches,) we had a referee — it depended where he came from how the game would go.”

“There were a lot of cheap shots,” said Lessard. He said that often games would start that the puck could not be raised off the ice, but by mid-game that would change.

Woods can’t forget a specific afternoon on the ice.

“One time Bob Fulton, good guy, a couple years older than me, he had just bought a brand new stick at Harry’s store, and we had a hockey game going,” Woods said. “Bob was on a different side than me ... it looked like he had a sure goal. We had agreed to play to 10 and maybe the score was 9-9. And Bob was going down the ice ahead of everybody else and he was going to score for sure, so I threw my hockey stick along the ice and it caught the puck and knocked it in the corner, which was a clear rule violation ...

“He got so mad because he had this breakaway ... he came after me and swung his stick at me, and I got scared and I got into sort of a fetal position ... And kids didn’t have a lot of money then. Sticks cost $1.75 then, but that was a lot of money when you consider a big candy bar cost a nickel. And he broke his stick over me and then he got mad all over again because he broke his brand new stick, and he hit me again and it broke it again. Bob never lost his temper — he was a good guy — but he lost it that time. So, yea, we would take our hockey pretty seriously.”

And some more heated moments on the ice have led to the players having lasting reminders of their time playing hockey.

Williams said he still has problems with his knee, where an errant puck once smashed into his leg.

Brown broke his leg in three places in the 10th grade, he said, when he slid into the boards. His leg was in traction in a hospital for three months, ending his hockey career. He said that when he walks a lot when he goes out hunting, he still favors that leg.

But over all, it was a well-intentioned group of young men, they agreed.

“Everybody had something to do and everybody looked after each other,” Lessard remembers.

The rink today

Today, the rink is a lot cleaner and more efficient, said Lessard. There are employees who work the rink in the winter. The buildings have all been updated with heat, seats to warm up and put on skates, tidy bathrooms, fresh drinking water, and even beverage and candy machines.

No longer do the players have to haul pumps and hoses from the community building or shovel the rink by hand. Modern conveniences have made upkeep simpler for the kids.

Ranier City Clerk Kim Nuthak said that this is the first season that the city of Ranier will be running the rink, which was previously managed by the Ranier Recreation Club. City maintenance personnel Teddy Pearson will oversee the rink, and will be assisted by three part-time workers this winter season.

After several floodings, the rink opened in mid-December for the winter season. The rink is open from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekends and holidays.

But Woods said that something is missing now from the time of old.

He said growing up he could hear the pucks and the sticks and the kids from the porch of his childhood Ranier home, but he can’t hear that any more even though he lives next door to the house he lived in then.

“Today, Ranier’s only got seven or eight kids,” he explained. “Back then there was like over 150 kids in Ranier, most of whom spent their time at the Ranier Rink.”