Liz Manley, Coach Powers, and Bob, the chameleon I can't help loving.
Some skate and some skate around the truth.
From the memoir project…
One of the other places where my loser stench didn't follow me was the ice rink. When I was 10 or 11, my mom and dad signed me up for figure skating lessons. I already knew how to skate and had been trying tricks on the town's free rinks for years. My sister had also bought me a skating Barbie for Christmas. She had to be propped up, locked upright in her skate, which would trace a figure-8 on a reflective plastic platform. I named her Barbara because I knew she was a classy lady, destined to bring home the gold. Eventually, she ended up with a bad haircut, naked and facedown in a shoebox like the other dolls. Still, her initial poise inspired me to reach for the skating stars.
The other inspiration came from real life in the form of a blonde pixie named Elizabeth Manley. Canadians don't get to point to a lot of "we did that first" or "we're the best at that" kind of things. For the last 50 years or more, Americans have been winning many world contests on whatever stage they're held. The Olympics are no different. Sure, there are certain events where other countries excel: the Jamaicans and their sprinters, the English and their rowers, Australians and their swimmers, but there are a lot of events that the U.S. just plain dominates. So you can imagine that all the Canadian kids watching the 1988 Calgary Olympics were expecting the worst when our skaters took the ice.
Nobody expected Elizabeth to medal. All the announcers wanted to discuss was the rivalry between the graceful East German beauty, Katerina Witt, and the American star, Debi Thomas, who were skating to the same song. Yet, Manley came out in her hot pink dress and skated like she knew the whole country was holding its breath. She just kept jumping, landing, spinning, and grinning. I remember her finish, the open mouth, the look of astonishment and joy as she clutched her short, curled hair. An image I can still visualize to this day, in my early forties. Liz Manley won a silver medal that night in Calgary. The announcer on the CBC spoke for all of us as he cried out, "And all Canada might well love this young lady. She is our skating queen tonight!"
I felt something akin to that same joy and exhilaration when I skated. After school, I'd walk through the greenbelt to the North of the school, past the video rental shop and corner store to the Stan McGowan Arena, a peacock blue block of metal siding with no windows. Inside, you either walked down into the reek of the hockey change rooms or up the stairs to the heated viewing area with its concession bar and rows of wooden bleachers. I'd lace up my skates and wait for the warmup music: Jump by Van Halen. There were usually less than 20 of us, circling the rink, picking up speed, shivering from the cold, and reveling in the feeling of flying.
Besides Coach Powers, the rink was a welcome escape from school day cares. Mr. Powers was a grumpy fellow with a salt and ginger beard. When he'd bark instructions to us, his rum-tinged breath would hang, a sour-sweet mist in the air. He barked a lot at Carla. Carla loved to joke around and never tried very hard. Practices with Carla were fun. She knew she wasn't going to the Olympics, and we loved her for it. But when, after a goofy, half-hearted effort at a new skill, she tripped on her pick and fell on her face one day, she got no sympathy from Mr. Powers. His sudden roar of disapproval bounced off the ice and shook the fiberglass. In hockey, when two players are about to fight, they throw their gloves on the ice and start to circle each other. I'm pretty sure Mr. Powers would have tossed his mittens on the ice at that moment if it weren't for the crowd of parents watching on the other side of the glass. While Carla cried, cradling her sore face, Mr. Powers skated back and forth, railing against all the lazy girls in the universe, especially us.
Figure skating is a strange sport. You get up at the crack of dawn, zip around on a cold, hard sheet of ice on thin, sharp metal blades, and fling yourself into the air over and over. I had a personal coach named Lynn for a few years. She always looked like she needed one more cigarette and an extra cup of coffee when she'd skate over to me to review my program, the skating routine I would perform in competitions, and at our winter carnival. I was never a graceful spinner or dancer on the ice, but I was a tenacious jumper. At first, jumping was a breeze. Lynn would show me a new jump, and I'd just throw myself into it and land it. No problem. She and all the parents watching marveled at how quickly I caught on. I remember hearing a few whispers about my burgeoning potential.
Then I went through puberty. And as if that wasn’t rough enough, I started falling. While I don't have a scientific explanation for why I began landing on my skinny butt instead of my blades, I have wondered if my center of gravity changed. Lynn couldn't understand it either, and she even bought me a cheap, pink stuffed monkey and told me it was my good luck charm, hoping to flip the negative juju. It didn’t work, and I certainly didn't apply any sincerity to the mindfulness exercises she suggested. I had more faith in the idea that the universe was conspiring against me, somehow literally dragging me down.
From the bookshelf…
Reading Bob Dylan’s 2004 autobiography, Chronicles: Volume 1, hasn’t helped me to know who he is. I keep picking it up and when I put it down, I’m just as puzzled. He manages to say so many things while still concealing so much. The dates and names and minute details are there, but his relationships aren’t fleshed out, they’re flimsy in the telling.
It’s what I should have expected, I guess. His writing is rambling and impressionistic, it lands like poetry, much like his music. Because I’m a fan, I’m reading on. But I keep wondering whether this is just another American legend he’s spinning and he’s too comfortable being just out of reach.
If people want answers from him, or signs that he holds some kind of cosmic master key, they’ll be disappointed. He obviously got burned out on that back in the ‘60s when people wanted him to step into the role of protest song poster boy. This recollection of his feelings about that time are revealing:
“Truth was the last thing on my mind and even if there was such a thing, I didn’t want it in my house… It was a cruel horror of a joke. So much for the truth. I was gonna talk our of both sides of my mouth and what you heard depended on which side you were standing. If I ever did stumble on any truth, I was gonna sit on it and keep it down.”
It sounds like another reminder (as if we needed one) that fame is a formidable beast and few people can tangle with it and come out whole.
That’s all for today, friends. Until next time, peace.