#1 2011-02-08 14:29:08

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#2 2011-02-08 15:35:21

LMAO!!!

The beginning took me back to when we were kids and skated on bogs...the rest is unreal!!

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#3 2011-02-08 15:51:07

Swedes are nuts. Then again, my favorite pastime here as a kid - after bog hockey - was ice floe hopping at waters' edge, where the tide broke the ice.

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#4 2011-02-08 18:49:04

My wife grew up in Dedham, on a dead-end street that ended at a swamp. She tells me about her and her two older brothers skating for hours and for miles in the maze of wetlands. And, of course, there was the pond hockey for the two brothers. Both of whom were all-state for Dedham High School as the 1950's turned into the sixties.

the older of the two brothers, Ozzie, went to West Point and was a center on their hockey team for four years; as well as being captain of the golf team. Old family photos show many of these games on outdoor rinks, which seem to be the current rage.

Unfortunately, Ozzie died in a car accident on Route 28 at the Falmouth/Mashpee line, about one year after graduating from West Point. The impact of that loss still weighs on family members.

Today. our grandkids are taken to play dates and other 'organized' events. Growing up, like my wife and her brothers on the swamp ice, I would disappear for hours with kids from one end of town to the other. No questions asked. Baseball from the first snow melt to the last leaf falling. Ditto football. Ditto B-ball in my driveway. Hasn't something been lost when parents now feel they need to be "helicopter' parents?


Bog ice. Swamp ice. Pond ice. There was a certain level of freedom, and personal growth in all of it, was there not?

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#5 2011-02-08 19:08:08

stewie wrote:

Bog ice. Swamp ice. Pond ice. There was a certain level of freedom, and personal growth in all of it, was there not?

Yep and it's true, there were many Darwin Award winners among my devil-may-care contemporaries, some lingering on till recently.

My nieces, nephews and grandkids are over indulged sparrowfarts but I try to keep such caustic sentiment to a minimum. The constant refrain in my household as a kid was, "Kill each other if you want but do it outside."

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#6 2011-02-08 19:36:42

Growing up on the Cape hockey was almost mandatory.  I was one of the maybe 3 girls playing in the league at the time.  Pick up games on frozen lakes/bogs was a no brainer.  It was as natural as pick up baseball games.  Being a girl didn't matter to the boys, I was expected to play at their level and wasn't treated any different. 
   Trying to outshine the boys one day on the Duck Pond in Sandwich, I fell through.  I wish I could say it was on purpose and with the help of a bottle of Vodka, but it wasn't.  I stayed off the ice for sometime but eventually found the gumption to go back on.  Although I am still weary of the ice, living on a pond presents the boundless oppurtunities to skate with the kids.  They love it.  I try to give them their space while maintaining my sanity. 
   I will have to say though, no amount of alcohol is going to get me to recreate the ending of the video!  But it was nice to "go back in time" for a moment!

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#7 2011-02-13 21:35:57

Growing up in the woods, in Wareham - we had a frog pond for hockey, cranberry bogs, too.  One of the best memories was skating behind where the boys and girls club is, the pkg. lot & the track on swamp ice, thru tree branches and almost down to the marsh.

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