Mr. Hockey My Story (4 page)

One lesson he taught me that stuck with me throughout my hockey career was not to take any dirt from anyone, because if you do they’ll just keep giving it to you. He wouldn’t take any dirt and he told me not to either. When I was a bit older we were playing pool one night at a tavern, and this guy kept bumping Dad’s hand when he was about to shoot. Dad gave the guy a warning, but the guy wouldn’t stop. Why this guy wanted to get my father going, I don’t know. One thing he should have known: My dad never hit with his fists in case he broke a knuckle. He used the heel of his hand instead. So this guy kept trying to get into it with Dad, bumping his pool cue, until Dad finally stepped back and drilled him. My father was a powerful man and the guy’s whole body cleared the
end of the table. The owner came over and said, “Ab, you better get out of here. I think you killed him.” The punch put the guy down for the count, but he turned out to be more or less okay. I’ll bet his manners around a pool table improved afterward as well. That was Dad. Don’t take any dirt from anybody.

When I played hockey and I’d go into the corner after a puck, my dad’s lesson was probably somewhere in the back of my head. Don’t take any dirt from this guy or it’ll keep coming all game long. I like to think some guys weren’t too keen to give me anything extra along the boards because they knew I wouldn’t be shy about giving it right back.

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T
he first time I realized I might be pretty strong I was maybe eight years old. I was on a teeter-totter with my brother Vic and an older kid pushed him off. Well, I was on the other end and slammed down pretty hard. My butt hurt when I got off the ground and I wasn’t too happy about it. I never liked bullies so I packed up a snowball with some cinders, reared back, and fired it at the kid’s head. It caught him square in the side of the face and they had to dig cinders out of his eye for about an hour. It didn’t end up doing too much damage, just a bit of irritation and he had to wear an eye patch for a while.

As you might expect, he didn’t take too kindly to what happened. He came to square things up not long after and found me in the school washroom. He was in the eighth grade and a pretty big guy. I had good size for my age, but I was only in the third grade. I remember thinking that the kid looked as big as my dad and I’d be lucky to get out of there with my life. He hauled off and swung at me, trying to hit me in the head, but I jumped and the
punch caught me in the chest instead. It didn’t really hurt. Maybe it was the adrenaline I had going, but I remember not feeling it at all. I swung back instinctively and wound up hitting him in the same eye that I’d nailed with the snowball. His hands went to his face and that fight was over. I don’t know if I was tough or not, but nobody really bothered me from then on, so I guess it worked out as well as it could have.

Growing up, I probably raised a bit more hell than I should have. I like to think I was a pretty good kid, but sometimes things just seemed like a good idea even though they probably weren’t. I remember once when I was in about second grade we made our own golf course near our house. We cut the grass as best we could, put a little sand on it to make it smooth, and that was our first hole. So we were out there playing some golf and having a great time, but there was a family that lived nearby that was pretty miserable. As far as they were concerned, nobody should ever have any fun. We were playing and suddenly the police showed up and told us we had to stop. The couple had called the cops on us. And this wasn’t the only time. Anything we did, even just playing ball, they’d tell us we couldn’t do it. We didn’t think we were bothering anybody so we didn’t think too much of them.

Some time later I was walking along and saw someone burning some old tires. Boy, did it kick up a vicious smoke. Well, I got to thinking about that and one day we decided to get a bunch of old tires together. We piled them up not far from that neighbor’s house and waited for the wind to blow just right. We had scrounged some gasoline and we poured it on the tires and lit the pile. So this thick, black smoke started billowing up and it blew straight into their house. They came running out, trying to put out the fire, but they couldn’t. We stayed out of sight and watched. I’m sure they
suspected us, but nobody ever came knocking on our door. I guess you could say we were mean little buggers, but it felt like maybe they had it coming.

We did some rough things, I suppose. One day, we were out near a golf course looking for stray balls, which we used to sell back to the golfers, and we started getting cold. We figured we’d warm ourselves with a little fire. One of the kids gathered up a bunch of dry grass and we lit it. Well, the fire started going like crazy and suddenly we had a thirty-foot wall of flames. We tried putting it out, but there was just no way. So we ran like hell, went over to the railroad station, pulled the alarm, and kept right on going.

The one thing I did that maybe bothered me the most came a few years later. In those days, none of us could really afford anything. One day a bunch of us figured we wanted to have a big corn roast, but we didn’t have any good supplies so we decided we’d try to get some. We went out back of Livergant’s store and staged a fight. I was one of the fighters and we had a bunch of guys make a big racket, cheering us on. We were out there going at it like crazy, pretending we were serious, until the folks inside got curious enough to come out and check on the commotion. When that happened, a guy ran into the store and stole a pound of butter. Afterward, we went out to a cornfield, helped ourselves to a few heads of corn, and boiled ’em up over a fire. Borrowing from farmers was pretty common. Sometimes it was corn, other times it was carrots or potatoes. So we were having this corn roast and it was delicious because we had the butter, but something about it didn’t quite sit right with me.

I knew another fellow, a pretty good hockey player actually, who needed a shoelace once. He didn’t have the money for it, so he took a wire hanger, straightened it out, and made a little hook on the end. Then he went into a store and tried to lift a lace off the
wall using the hook. Well, he got caught. That little lace kept him out of the United States, because when he applied for a green card eventually, the theft was on his record. He couldn’t go anywhere. Knowing what happened to him put a pretty good scare into me. The deal with the butter, I can tell you, was the beginning and the end of my career as a juvenile delinquent.

Most of the time we weren’t getting into much trouble, though, just running around looking to play whatever sport was in season. I had a big group of friends and we did everything together. We’d go from hockey to football to soccer and then to baseball. We loved getting on the ball diamond in the summertime. And we played some pretty good baseball in Saskatchewan. At the start of my career in Detroit I was still going back to Saskatoon to play semi-pro ball in the summers. That stopped in about 1952, when Jack Adams, the team’s general manager, became too worried that I might get hurt. That wasn’t ever a thought when we were little.

Playing sports was a pretty big deal to all of us. It might have meant even more to me than most. I was a shy kid and I can’t say I was a great student. Kids were pretty rough on me around school. Sometimes they called me “Doughhead,” which wouldn’t make any kid feel great. I ended up failing third grade and that really hurt. I was pretty broken up over it. I went to summer school and devoted a lot of time to learning something there. I knew I wasn’t lazy, but I always had a tough time with spelling. It comes easy to some people, but words always gave me some trouble. I was better with numbers. I never really talked to people too much about it, though. Years later, my son Marty was diagnosed with dyslexia when he was just little. It’s occurred to me that I might have something like that myself.

As an adult, I’ve done crossword puzzles my whole life to help me with my spelling and vocabulary. They’re also a great way to kill
time when you’re traveling to away games. I’ve actually come across my own name in crosswords a number of times. It’s quite a thrill. I’ve seen Bobby Orr’s name as well—and it’s even easier to spell.

Any problems I might have had in the classroom seemed to go away when I was playing sports, especially hockey. I was able to pick up skills quickly, and I found that once I was on the ice I could outplay the kids who teased me when we were off it. Hockey became sort of a sanctuary, I guess. You didn’t have to talk too much; you could just play. Any time I could play, I would.

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O
ne day I was skating on the sloughs with a friend, Frank Shedden. We’d skate along, walk over the roads, and skate some more. Sometimes the water in the sloughs would be four or five feet deep. If you felt the ice start to give a bit, you’d have to skate like crazy to make sure you didn’t break through. I was ahead of Frank and we could feel the ice start to soften, so we were skating hard until suddenly I heard a crack and a splash. I turned around and saw that Frank had fallen through the ice. The water had even gone over his head for a second. I pulled him out eventually, but we had about a mile to go to get him home. It was freezing cold that day and we were both scared for him. Have you ever seen a clothesline in a high wind with a pair of long johns flying on it as stiff as a board? That was how Frank looked when we staggered into his house. He got awfully sick after that, probably with pneumonia.

The next day I went over to see how Frank was doing. Things weren’t good. His dad said he’d be out of commission for a while. Mr. Shedden was a really nice man. He asked me if I was trying out for the Peewee hockey team. I was about eleven years old, and although I played on outdoor rinks and ponds all the time,
I’d never played in a real game of organized hockey. To do that you needed proper equipment, and my family just didn’t have the money. I told Mr. Shedden that I wasn’t trying out because I didn’t have the right gear. He went into the house, rounded up all of Frank’s equipment, and handed it over. Frank would be laid up for a few months, he said, so I might as well make use of the equipment to try out. Well, I ended up making that team and Mr. Shedden let me keep some of Frank’s things. His skates had nickel-plated blades. I’d never worn skates so nice in my life. They were beautiful. I could really fly with those blades. Half the time I was on the ice, I just wanted to look down to admire them. I’m sure Mr. Shedden never understood exactly what he did for me that day, but I’ve never forgotten it.

As I look back on growing up, one thing I know for certain is that nobody ever makes it anywhere on their own. I was lucky enough to have folks like Mr. Shedden looking out for me along the way. I’m very grateful for that. And he’s not the only person I wish a young Gordie Howe could go back and thank.

I’d guess that every hockey fan (and probably almost every Canadian) knows the story of how Wayne Gretzky learned the game as a boy on the backyard rink that his dad built. My family didn’t have a rink, but a number of families in Saskatoon, like the Hodges, did at the time.

The Hodges had two sons who played hockey and they kept a nearly full-sized rink in their backyard. They didn’t mind too much who was over there playing or when, as long as you were respectful. I spent a lot of time there. Sometimes we’d play shinny and other times it would just be me. I’d go over in the morning and if it had snowed overnight I’d shovel the rink off and skate before school. I’d make up drills for myself and go around and around the rink
stickhandling and shooting. At night, I’d stay there until after it got dark. It would be freezing on some nights, but for some reason I never really felt the cold that much when I was playing.

Equipment was always a big problem for us as kids. We’d hang around the rink and scrounge some of the beaten-up stuff that older players threw away. I’d find old shin pads that were just like a few bamboo poles, all ripped up with pieces missing, but I didn’t care. I’d wrap them around my legs and put rubber bands around my pants to hold it all together. Sometimes I’d make homemade shin guards out of magazines. I’d even use stuff that other rink rats had found, used, and thrown away again. I’d take it home, sew the heck out of the gloves or whatever else, and use it until it fell apart. I remember that my mother, who gave our neighbor a few dollars for my first pair of skates, also got me my second pair. A man brought them to the door and she traded him a pack of my father’s cigarettes for them. I’m not sure how Dad felt about that. I know I never asked.

We treasured our sticks, as well. We’d do anything to keep them usable. We’d use glue, tape, tack a little metal onto them, whatever we could do to keep them together. Eventually, though, they’d wear down from playing in the street. You’d be playing with a toothpick, just hoping it would make it through the day. When it finally went for good, it would break your heart.

There wasn’t much money to go around during the Depression, but folks still looked out for local kids. I remember a fellow by the name of Roly Howes. He owned a hardware store and he was pretty good to me. His store sold sporting goods and one day Mum took me there to buy me a hockey stick for my birthday. He knew my team was in the playoffs against another town, and he told me that if I scored a hat trick in the next game, he’d give me a pair of hockey
gloves. We used to count the number of rolls on the back of the gloves to determine how nice they were. Cheap gloves didn’t have any rolls; they were just one solid piece. Five rolls was the ultimate.

Mr. Howes knew how we dressed. He saw us playing in regular street pants with pads underneath held on by rubber bands, so he knew how much equipment meant to us. The playoff game came around and I ended up getting 12 points: 4 goals and 8 assists. I went back to the store and Mr. Howes told me that since I’d exceeded the hat trick, he’d decided to throw in a pair of shin pads as well. The gloves he gave me had four rolls on them. I loved those gloves.

I owe a lot to folks like that growing up. My sisters were also really good to me. We grew up together in an old house that was heated with wood and coal. You always kept your socks on at night, because when the fire went out the house would get cold. There was frost everywhere by morning. Dad used to staple plastic around the windows or stuff felt along the inside of the window edges to try to keep the cold out. We didn’t have indoor plumbing and we used to take a lot of our baths at school. Still, my sisters and my mum found a way to keep me in hockey equipment and make sure I could travel to games. They’d come and cheer, too. When you’re a kid, I don’t know if you appreciate everything that people do for you, but looking back on those days, that’s what I think about. I spent a lot of time on the ice practicing, and I worked hard, but it would be wrong to think that I got to the NHL on my own.