Ice Skating In Michigan, 1900-1962
I never could ice skate.
Not because I never tried, but I couldn’t get the hang of it.
I had a pair of ice skates and would go down to a frozen pond somewhere in town with my neighborhood friends. They would put their skates on and off they’d go. I’d still be struggling trying to stand up on’ em…and I always ended up standing on my ankles. My feet just couldn’t balance on those darn thin blades. No matter how many times I attempted to ice skate, I just could not get coordinated enough to do it.
So I would sit on the bank and watch the others…they seemed to be enjoying themselves.
But I wasn’t.
I'm sure there must have been other kids like me in that minority, but where were they? I always felt so alone and ended up walking back home. Almost all the other kids could ice skate…they were lucky to have a good sense of balance.
Ice skating has been around for over four thousand years, when people of Finland began using a form of skate to trek through the ice and snow. In the 1110s, the British were using animal bones to glide across the ice. Ice skating started off as a necessity, then it became a fun pastime, and then an actual sporting event.
Then it exploded with the Ice Capades, dancing, Disney musicals…..ice skating was definitely no longer something kids would do when there was no school.
This is not intended to be a history on ice skating, but a precursor to a gallery of Michigan ice skating going back over 100 years. If you ice skate, I congratulate you on your sense of balance…I also salute the Michiganders you’ll see in the gallery below!
Ice Skating In Michigan
MORE FUN IN MICHIGAN: