A Prairie Tale

I didn't want to be a figure skater. Mom wanted me in the class, and Mom, she was in control. She had to be. She had four boys.

I don't know how old I was, probably four or five, and I don't remember an awful lot. I know it was 10 to 12 weeks of lessons, and at the end they had what was called a "carnival." It was like a recital, where you went through a routine skating to the music. We had skits with costumes, and all the girls were dressed in white cartons of milk. I was dressed in brown like chocolate milk. Why? Because I was the only boy in the class.

It was extra ice time, I guess, and when I look back on it, it was probably a good thing for me. The kid that plays for the Carolina Hurricanes now, Jeff Skinner, he was a figure skater, and he's an unbelievable skater. But if you wanted to be a hockey player like I did, you didn't want to be a figure skater. Back then, you were the wrong gender if you were a figure skater.

I wanted to play on an organized hockey team, but that idea went up in smoke when the Foam Lake Skating Arena burned to the ground. The rink was directly across the street from our house, so I vividly remember the flames that night. My brothers, they remember hosing down the side of our house to keep it from getting too hot. Everybody in the entire neighborhood was afraid, Mom and Dad included, thinking we were all going to lose our houses. The rink was so close we would actually put on our equipment at the house and skate across the street. The roads were all gravel, and they didn't plow them, so it would get icy. It didn't matter if your skates were dull or not in those days. Who had a skate sharpener anyway?

I was a little kid, but I do remember how the fire crushed us all, because this was our organized hockey. This was the place in town where everybody hung out in the wintertime and now all of a sudden it was gone. In our neck of the woods, the closest rink was at least 15 miles away. Where were we going to play hockey now?

The debris from the Foam Lake Skating Arena was cleaned up and the ground was left vacant for several years before some housing was eventually built on the property. But before the homes went up, we played baseball in the lot. That was our summer activity. When you're from a small town, you learn that if you don't make up games to pass the time, your life will be extremely boring. There was only one channel on TV, so most of the time there was nothing to watch, especially during the day. Video games weren't invented yet, but even if they were, Mom would have kicked us out of the house anyway.

The alternative was always sports. We played kick the can, hide and seek, and we'd even invent games that only we could figure out. We left the house in the morning, came home for a quick lunch, and were back out doing something else until suppertime. And the funny thing? We never got bored. That was our life in Foam Lake.

The twins, who are three years older than me, were by far the best athletes in town, from the time they started school all the way through high school. Every time there was an award, whether it was the most valuable player on the basketball team or the volleyball team, or track and field, you name it, my brothers, one or the other, won them all. The other kids in the school would boo when my brothers won. It got to the point where my mom didn't even want to go to the award ceremonies because it was almost embarrassing. Since my dad was the secretary/treasurer of the school district and signed all the checks for the teachers, and my uncle was vice principal of the high school, and my other uncle was the algebra teacher, everybody thought we had everything rigged. But it really wasn't; they were just that good.

Because there were not a lot of boys my age around, I was forced to play with my older brothers, Ron and Don. Actually, they were forced to play with me. The twins were always hard on me, trying to make me cry all the time, because that's what older brothers do, right? But I think the fact that my brothers kept pushing me down was a good thing because it made me fight back. I thought that since Mom and Dad were forcing them to be with me and they didn't want me, I was going to make sure that I could prove myself. I wanted to show them that I was their equal. I think all of that motivated me, and I always felt that I had to compete at a higher level.

Whatever we played, I caught on quickly. I've always said that I've been really blessed that way. If you want to, let's say, play darts, even if I've never played darts, chances are in a very short while, I'm probably going to beat you. I think there are certain things that you're blessed with and certain things that you work for. They asked me that question at the Hall of Fame: What's your biggest attribute? I think mine was my sense and my awareness. I could see everything around me and adjust. It wasn't just peripheral vision, I could sense someone coming up from behind me. I could see where I should pass the puck before someone was there. I think playing a sport that's moving all the time, I was able to anticipate a lot of what was going to happen. I had good vision, and like I said, it wasn't just hockey. Heck, I could see a golf ball way underwater and tell you the make of the ball and what number it was.

Because the rink burned down, my dad would flood the backyard so that we had a place to skate. My brother's friends would always come over after school to play pickup games, and when they drafted teams I was always the last pick. I'd score most of the goals and the next day we'd play again and I'd still be the last pick. I was always somewhat sensitive with that stuff, but at least I still got to play.

Growing up, I noticed that there were a ton of pictures of Ron and Don around the house, but there weren't a lot of me — and by that I mean there were none. Finding a baby picture of me was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. They were twins and they were the first born, so I guess the novelty just wore off when I was born. That was a standing joke in our family, and I remember bugging my mom about it all the time. I even used to ask her if I was adopted. Another thing I was always confused about was how she got "Bernard" for my first name. Somehow she came up with common names like "Ron" and "Don" and later "Ken" with my younger brother, and in the middle of this you get "Bernard?" How do you name your kid "Bernie?" See, I must have been adopted. She always laughed it off but never really explained why, other than to say she liked the name. Trust me, she must have liked the name, because she was the one who picked and she was in charge.

Mom was the brawn behind everything. She and dad...