Michael Kirby's and frozen toes

If you want to claim you were part of the real Chicago experience in your childhood, then you had to freeze your toes off at least once at a Michael Kirby skating rink.  It was a badge of honor, frosty and cold, pinned to your parka.

The Simmerlings spent many a frigid day at Michael Kirby's.   The collosal effort to get everyone dressed, transported, re-dressed and ready to skate must have been worth it.   The rink had a magical attraction.  

The ice was opaque and milky-bluish white, filled with sharp cuts and snow cone shavings.  Stepping on to it for the first time, it was as exhilarating as seeing the grass at Wrigley or Comiskey.  But it did have its down sides.

My mother would lace my black skates so tight it was hard to tell if my feet were numb from the cold or from the lack of circulation.  It was probably both.  And the wool socks worn under our skates just made things worse; they were thick, stiff, and scratchy.   Worn right on our bare feet.  We didn't even know you could wear cotton socks under them.   I guess real skaters didn't.

Shivering between blue lips and chattering teeth, we had to watch my older sister pretend she was Peggy Fleming.  In her fluffy sweater and mittens, she would breeze past us, gracefully skating backwards and cutting sharp circles in the ice.   Showing off.   My brother and I knew it was just the skates.  

I seemed to always be sitting on the ice in a heap, hoping no one would skate over my fingers.  My skates were on too tight for me to stand up.

We had a pair of those skates with the double blades, which were usually placed on my poor brother's feet.  His glasses would fog up even before the tears began to flow. 

Great fun or not, it was certainly a lasting memory of the true Chicago experience.  

The only thing we were missing was Elizbeth Freckly Dawn Ron, locked in a great skating competition against Kristy Yamaguci.

Here is an article from the Chicago Tribune today on whatever happened to John Kirby's ice skating rinks in town.

"In the 1950s, Kirby, a Canadian national champion ice skater and member of the touring Ice Follies group, was lured to the Windy City by Sonja Henie, his well-known skating partner, and Arthur Wirtz, who owned the Chicago Stadium, where Henie's ice shows were a local favorite. After working with some of the world's best ice skaters, Kirby decided it was time to give average people a chance.

... He opened his first ice skating studio in River Forest, in a former garage near Lake Street and Harlem Avenue. At the time, there were fewer than 100 artificially refrigerated ice rinks across the country -- but that was about to change..."

See the link here:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-wht-micheal-kirby-skating-w-jan15,0,4271682.column