Zamboni Thoughts #5
An installment series about driving an impossible vehicle
It was the night of my first shift at the ice arena, and I didn’t want to go.
All that morning, working remotely at my regular job, I had thought about having to work later. No nap after work today, I’d warned myself. Just gonna go from working here to working there, no nap. It’s fine. It’ll be fine.
I spent most of the afternoon lightly sulking, remembering for the first time in years the major downside of shift work – that feeling of taking up an entire day with the looming dread of going in.
By the time 4:45 PM rolled around, I’d had hours and hours to think about why I’d signed up to drive a stupid Zamboni around a stupid ice rink instead of staying home in my cozy house, watching the newest season of The Great British Bake Off with Davin.
It was already dark out, and snowing. Feeling sorry for myself, I began pulling my arms through my coat sleeves. Davin, I noticed resentfully, had already changed out of his “day” clothes; he was padding around the kitchen in his sweatpants and fluffiest socks, humming along to the radio. He looked very happy.
“What are you going to have for dinner?” I asked.
“I dunno!” he said cheerily. He opened the fridge. “I might make something.”
I scowled. I knew what that meant. One of Davin’s favorite things to do, on a night when he’s got the house to himself, is to make a GIANT cookie tray of nachos – the best nachos you’ve ever had, piled high with melted cheese and shredded chicken and chopped tomatoes and olives and guac.
Man. He was gonna have such a great night.
I stuffed my feet into my boots. “I’ll see you later.”
“Good luck, cutes! Have fun Zamboni-ing!” Davin pulled a big bag of tortilla chips off the top of the fridge.
When I got to the ice arena, the lot was packed. Thrown off, I drove in circles, looking for somewhere – anywhere – to park. What was this?? I had never been there at night; I’d actually never been there when there were more than two cars in the whole lot. Now it was jammed, a hive of activity. Everywhere, SUV doors were opening and slamming shut; teenagers with blond ponytails and huge bags were pouring out onto the pavement.
I parked at the edge of the lot. As I walked toward the arena, which glowed with a warm yellow light in the 5 PM winter darkness, I walked past noisy clumps of girls, all holding hockey sticks. They fell silent as I passed; I could feel their eyes on me.
“Hey,” I said to them, nodding.
“Hey,” one of the girls said, expressionless. She turned back to the group, and the chattering resumed.
That was weird. I went through the sliding front doors and immediately spotted Tom in the window of his office, sitting at the desk in his full winter jacket.
“Krista!” he bellowed, gesturing for me to come in with his catcher’s mitt hand. “You made it!”
Tom seemed more animated than usual. He stood up and came around the desk. “Let’s go meet Charlie* – you’ll be working with him tonight.”
We headed towards the Zamboni garage. At least, I thought we both headed that way. Tom got stopped every two feet by someone – a woman wrapped in a oversized sleeping-bag-style blanket walked up and said something urgent to him in a low voice; seconds later, an old man poked Tom playfully in passing and said something that made them both howl with laughter, clapping each other on the back; a small, delicate-looking kid tapped Tom’s arm and stood on the sidelines, twisting his hands behind his back, waiting patiently for him to be finished speaking with the other adults.
Tom’s face was lit up. His cheeks were two shiny apples, and I suddenly realized I was seeing him in his element: Hockey season was here, Tom had been the manager of the ice arena for decades, and right now, he was the king of Northfield.
I hung back, feeling shy, waiting for Tom to be done chatting and come get me. But this was a small town in Minnesota; I knew we could be here for 20 minutes, for 40 minutes, easy.
I tapped Tom’s shoulder. “Should I go find Charlie?”
Tom looked up from the intense conference he was now holding with someone dressed, head-to-toe, in an 80s windbreaker suit. His busy eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Oh!” he said. He’d forgotten me. “Yep. Go on in to the Zam, Charlie’s probably in there.”
This was such a strange job. So… casual. I had shown up on time, but Tom didn’t seem to care that much about what time I started working. Noted, I thought, heading towards the Zamboni garage.
There was no one in there. The Zamboni sat quietly on her steaming grate floor, a proud, red-shellacked queen, her flanks dew-dropped with water. I’d never been alone with her before, and I stepped up to rest my hand on her mighty side for a second.
My friend. My nemesis.
“You Krista?”
I jumped. A lean, rangy older man with glasses had come in from the other door.
“Yeah!” I said. Had he seen me patting the Zamboni????? “Are you Charlie?”
“I am,” he said, inclining his head once in that “milady” way. “You wanna come back to the office? That’s where we hang out when we’re not driving.”
“Tom’s office?” I said, following him like a duckling through a warren of back rooms.
Charlie laughed. “No, the office, the back office, haven’t you seen it yet?”
He pushed open a metal door, and there it was: my childhood.
Not “my childhood, which was spent in the back office of a hockey rink.” (Definitely not.) It’s just – it was 1993 in the back office. A time capsule, perfectly preserved. White-painted cinderblock walls. Shelves upon wooden shelves of rental skates. A heavily stained whiteboard calendar, its sides festooned with an old-fashioned manual pencil sharpener and keys dangling from grimy wooden batons.
The computer I learned to type on in middle school sat atop a metal desk, a battered rolling chair pushed up to it. A yellowing Pepsi clock crowned a sliding counter window that looked out over the arena.
I stared. There was nothing – nothing – in that office (except for the ceiling-mounted TV) that had been invented after the 90s. There were wooden cubbies for paper(!!!) timesheets. There was a sound system that only played CDs. There were electric switches everywhere, with Sharpie instructions written on curling masking tape slapped over each of them. There was even a Lost and Found box, stuffed with lonely mittens and forgotten hats.
“You can put your stuff down over here,” Charlie said. He flopped into the rolling chair. “I already filled the Zam, so all we have to do now is check the locker rooms and keep an eye on the clock.”
“Why do we need to keep an eye on the clock?”
Charlie eyed me. “Because the Squirts are getting on the ice now, and then we have the Bantam A game, and then the varsity team has practice.”
Gibberish. “Charlie, I need to tell you right now that I know absolutely nothing about hockey.”
He guffawed, leaning back in his chair. “Really? Tom said you didn’t have much experience, but I figured you were maybe a hockey person who’d just moved here or something.” He looked at me more closely. “How much don’t you know?”
“Like, I’ve never seen a game.”
A breath escaped Charlie’s lips. It was involuntary, a small whoo sound. He started to chuckle. “This should be good,” he said, shaking his head.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“No, this’ll be fun!” Charlie said. “I can’t imagine why you wanna work here, but… OK, so, the Squirts: that’s kids who are nine or ten years old. They’re on the ice now, and when they’re done with practice, we’ll do a resurface with the Zam.”
He must have seen my alarmed face. “I mean, I’ll do a resurface with the Zam.”
“Oh good,” I said.
“You’ll be sweeping the locker rooms,” he said. He glanced at the Pepsi clock. “But that’s not for an hour.”
“What do we do until then?”
Charlie laughed and opened his hands. “We shoot the shit! Whoops, pardon my French.”
“I swear all the time.”
“Great. OK, so yeah: We shoot the shit. I can teach you about hockey, if you want. There’s a game on later.” He gestured to the TV. “Or you can ignore me and do whatever you want.”
“For an hour? We can do whatever we want for an hour?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had never, ever, in the history of having a job since I was 14 years old, been told it was OK to do whatever I wanted while I was on the clock. “Like, I could read, if I wanted?”
Charlie chuckled again. “There are perks to working here.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll find out about the downsides when we close tonight.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“We gotta sweep the stands when everyone goes home,” Charlie added, bouncing his eyebrows up and down. “Wait’ll you see what they look like after a game.”
“Are they a mess?”
“Krista, we sell popcorn.”
“OK?”
“To kids.”
“Oh no.”
He smiled grimly. “Just you wait and see.”
IT'S ZAMBONI TIME!!
Loved it. Loved the narration. Loved how you probably didn't have to do all that much work to turn everyone into characters, precisely because everyone who works in small town hockey IS a character. The unexpected treat was the photos of the back office!! That's nostalgic. I feel like I've been there. Those hockey skates look exactly like mine used to. I could never get a figure skate to work for me because I needed the ankle support. I could still do some sick tricks in hockey skates, though. My dad, who was an actual hockey player (and grew up with someone who went on to be a gold medalist!), could do even cooler tricks in his AND on rollerblades. Alas, I've turned in my blades and wheels for the wheels of a rollator, so I doubt I'll get to relive any of this anytime soon, except through Zamboni Thoughts.
Also: small town girls hockey is weird. I never played because hockey is an injury-heavy sport, it's expensive, and I didn't have consistent health insurance growing up, but there's way more rules about how you can play as a "girl." When I was growing up, you weren't allowed to check, but the boys were. You weren't expected to get into fights like the boys did. The most petite girls who could be knocked over by the wind played on our girls hockey team; I didn't get it.
(I absolutely relished floor hockey during gym, though... I was always on defense and got way too aggro, LOL. I'd say "too aggro for a proper Minnesotan," but honestly, hockey is the one place where Minnesotans are allowed to have negative emotions.)
Love your work, as always! I can't wait to read more Zamboni Thoughts!!
The yellowing pepsi clock!!