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IN THIS ISSUE

• Hugh Doherty recalls playing hockey in New Zealand
• Jean Sterling remembers her childhood during World War II
• Wendy Fisher writes about an article from the Spinner
• Tom Kyle shares a letter about an enterprising retiree
• The editor wrestles with a seasonal problem
• Marilyn Magid sends the story of a special dress
• Gerrit de Leeuw shares some golfing laughs
• Dick Monaghan´s list will appeal to former teachers
• Carol Hansen and Tom Telfer suggest websites

Hugh Doherty writes: With NHL hockey playoff season almost upon us, and responding to your appeal for personal memories, I recall the time when I became

A STAR ON ICE

In July, 1956, I joined an ice hockey team in Christchurch, New Zealand, where I was doing some postgraduate study. It was called the International Ice Hockey Club, and went by the name of the Dragons. The membership fee was ten shillings.

Now, ice hockey in New Zealand was a something of a novelty in those days. In Christchurch, a form of the game was played on roller skates on a hard surface, and of course, field hockey had been around a long time. But ice hockey? To begin with, there was no outdoor ice in Christchurch because the winters (June, July, August there) weren´t cold enough, and only one arena with facilities for making artificial ice. I had brought no skates or other ice hockey equipment with me, not expecting to meet up with my favorite sport in this southern hemisphere country. And one couldn´t find these things in the local stores.

Not to worry, said the ice hocky chums I had met. Come along to the arena for our first practice and we´ll fix you up. They were keen to enlist a Canadian who had actually played the game back in Canada for much of his life, thinking I would give their team a great advantage. So off I went.

First, the skates. They were lady´s white figure skates, about the only kind to be had in Christchurch since figure skating was more popular and well-known than ice hockey. Then, the pads - I had been a goalie in high school and university, so my chums figured that´s the position I should play for their team. But there was no such thing as proper pads and other equipment for an ice hockey goaler, probably in all New Zealand. Instead, I was outfitted with the the thin pads and gloves worn by wicket keepers in cricket.

Then, onto the ice. Only it wasn´t totally frozen; there was a thin layer of water over it. My chums explained this was done deliberately to speed up the game. No one could skate very well, or shoot a puck very hard, and they thought slippery water made things faster. It was certainly a a lot wetter.

Well, I sloshed around for a couple or so games as a goalie in my cricket pads, but it became obvious to me and my chums that even in my cumbersome gear, I could handle and shoot a puck better and skate faster than anyone else on the team. They were, after all, used to roller skates! So I became one of the Dragons´ forwards. At first things didn´t work out too well. It was those darn figure skates - I kept tripping over the toe-picks as they dug into the damp ice, falling flat on my face. But somewhere, my teamates found some men´s standard tube skates that fitted me, and insisted on lending them to me.

And then I became a star!

After eight years in Canada "between the pipes" trying to stop pucks, I was in goalie´s heaven! I whizzed wetly up and down the rink and scored lots of goals, often in bunches. One memorable game I set some kind of league record by potting 15 goals. At least, that´s the way I remember it.

Jean Sterling also responded to my request for personal stories:

MY MEMORIES OF THE WAR YEARS

I was born in late 1936, so as a child I didn´t know what it was like to not "have a war on". Here are a few things I remember.

Rationing: Lots of things were rationed - butter, gasoline, and shoes are items that stick in my mind. Cars had ration stickers on their windshields which determined how much gas you were allotted per week. I remember my parents grumbling about not having real cream to put in their coffee and having to use margarine instead of butter. Shoes could be a problem for kids who went through their growth spurt - the family down the street had to apply for special consideration when their teenage son outgrew all his shoes. My mother used to save bacon grease in jars and turn it in at the butcher shop for the war effort. It was a mystery to me how old bacon grease could help the war effort. Later I learned that it was used in the manufacture of munitions. During World War II civilians weren´t told to help the war effort by going shopping.

Stars in the window: Families who had somebody in the service put a banner with a star on it in the window. A gold star meant that the person had died "over there". The people who lived next to us had a son in the navy and had such a banner in their window. I remember when he came home on leave he looked very handsome in his sailor uniform. I wanted him to wait for me to grow up, but he didn´t.

Air raid drills: When the siren went off all lights were extinguished. A neighbor was the air raid warden for our block, and he would walk around in the dark to make sure that everybody complied. I remember once that we had a very long air raid drill in school. We spent an entire afternoon - even got out late - in the darkened hallways of the school. It was kind of fun, if a bit odd. I remember we sang songs and wondered what was going on. Years later I read that there had been much submarine activity off the coast of Long Island where I grew up, so possibly it had been more than just a drill. I recently learned that the east coast of Florida was dark every night because of German submarine activity off the coast.

Noisy news casts: My parents would listen to the news on the radio, and it was very noisy. Sometimes I could hear the sound of gunfire.

VJ Day: When the announcement came that the Japanese had surrendered, everybody went kind of berserk. I remember people driving around honking their horns. The way us kids celebrated was by throwing our mothers´ pots up into the trees so they would clatter and make a lot of noise. They made noise when they hit the tree branches but the clang when they hit the sidewalk was especially satisfying. I don´t know who thought up this idea, but I remember feeling as if I were adding to the celebration. Needless to say, the pots didn´t fare very well, but I don´t remember a single mother complaining the next day.

CORRESPONDENCE

Wendy Fisher, who publishes several online newsletters, writes: I put this article you let me use on my retirement website: http:// www.retirement-online.com/senior-citizen-scooters.html

I just searched google for the term "senior citizen scooters" and we rank #4 out of 174,000 hits. Just under the top few that are PAID ads, we are the fourth one down! It´s REALLLY good to be in the top ten! I am so surprised and thrilled.

ED. NOTE: And so am I - fame at last! ;)

Tom Kyle shares an e-mail he received from a Winnipeg friend, and asks

WHAT WILL YOU BE DOING WHEN YOU ARE A NONAGENARIAN?

David wrote: My eldest brother, Alex, who served in the RCAF during World War II, retired in the 1970s with over 30 years´ service. He had the rank of squadron leader and served around the world.So what does a guy like that do when he retires?

What else - he moves to the middle of nowhere in Alberta and decides to grow fancy lilies. I might be prompted to think that his flowers outranked his military career.

I am proud to say that my brother became one of Canada´s most famous propagators of specialized hybrid lilies. His bulbs show up for sale at many of the prestigious flower shows, like the one in Assiniboine Park.

Close to 90 years of age, he regretfully has had to retire from growing lilies as well. However, his lilies will go on. I am truly proud of him.

Please, if you will, go to the following website and view some of his lilies:

http://plantlilies.ca/album/v/eval/burnett/

The editor is looking forward to warmer weather:

THOSE SNEAKY TIGHTS

After having worn fleecy long jeans all winter until late February, I decided it was warm enough to graduate to tights to keep my nether regions warm.

The tights which I bought who-knows-how-long-ago are green, ribbed, and one-size-fits-all.

Getting into them is the first challenge. There is no back nor front until you put them on, being elongated tubes. However, the crotch gives you a clue as to where to start, and you carefully thrust one hand down a leg until you reach the toe. Just as carefully, you pull the bunched-up material over your foot, and pull it up to your knee and beyond, trying to keep the ribs straight.

If you have reached the limit and the crotch is in the right place, you lower the leg again until you can repeat the process with the other foot. This is where it gets tricky. You try to keep the ribs straight, but there´s a good chance you put a twist into it when you put your hand down to the toe. You´ll know when you get both legs pulled up to the crotch: if it is still in the right place and both legs have the ribs straight to the toes, you have won. But if there is a twist in one of the legs, you carefully turn the offending foot (of the tights, not your own!) 90%, and pull the the leg up again, still watching the stripes. With any luck, they are now straight on both legs and the crotch is in the right place.

I wonder if this is where the expression "Don´t get your knickers in a twist" came from?

Since they are made to encompass a variety of body sizes, tights may stretch up as far as your armpits. I pull them up to their full length and fold the excess material over a pair of pants with strong elastic.

Now comes the second challenge, and it lasts until you take them off at night.

Every time you look at your ankles, you see your tights have drifted down and have wrinkled around your ankles, so every time you sit in a comfortably low seat (the loo is just the right height), you carefully hoist the hose up as far as they will go and again anchor them with your pants. This happens every time you notice them, so it can keep you busy trying to maintain the look of Mary Martin in "Peter Pan" - despite having a shape that is nothing like hers, and having the advantage of many years on her.

I wonder if other women have these problems with tights? I don´t remember having this trouble with panty-hose, although I do have an uncomfortable memory of one golf game in which my hose kept wiggling downward. The crotch was getting uncomfortably close to my knees, so I kept trying to hoist them surreptitiously up while my golf partner was lining up shots, and was not being very successful.

This is at least one indignity that men escape since they gave up wearing tights in the Middle Ages. I wonder if they had the same problem? And if they did not, what was their secret? Suspenders under their doublets?

Marilyn Magid forwards the story of

THE DRESS

Jennifer´s wedding day was fast approaching. Nothing could dampen her excitement - not even her parents´ nasty divorce.

Her mother had found the PERFECT dress to wear and would be the best dressed mother-of-the-bride ever!

A week later, Jennifer was horrified to learn that her father´s new young wife had bought the exact same dress.

Jennifer asked her to exchange it, but she refused. "Absolutely not. I look like a million bucks in this dress, and I´m wearing it," she replied.

Jennifer told her mother who graciously said, "Never mind, sweetheart. I´ll get another dress. After all, it´s your special day."

A few days later, they went shopping and did find another gorgeous dress.

When they stopped for lunch, Jennifer asked her mother, "Are you going to return the other dress? You really don´t have another occasion where you could wear it."

She just smiled and replied, "Of course I do, dear. I´m wearing it to the rehearsal dinner!"

Now I ask you - is there a woman out there, anywhere, who wouldn´t enjoy this story?

In anticipation of the opening of the golf season, Gerrit de Leeuw sends these

LAUGHS FOR GOLFERS AND NON-GOLFERS

A gushy reporter told Phil Michelson, "You are spectacular. Your name is synonymous with the game of golf. You really know your way around the course. What´s your secret?"

Michelson replied, "The holes are numbered"

A young man and a priest are playing together. At a short par-3 the priest asks, "What are you going to use on this hole my son?"

The young man says, "An 8-iron, father. How about you?"

The priest says, "I´m going to hit a soft seven and pray."

The young man hits his 8-iron and puts the ball on the green.

The priest tops his 7-iron and dribbles the ball out a few yards.

The young man says, "I don´t know about you, father, but in my church when we pray, we keep our head down."

Police are called to an apartment and find a woman holding a bloody 5-iron standing over a lifeless man.

The detective asks, "Ma´am, is that your husband?"

"Yes," says the woman.

"Did you hit him with that golf club?"

"Yes, yes, I did." The woman begins to sob, drops the club, and puts her hands on her face.

"How many times did you hit him?"

"I don´t know. Five, six, maybe seven times ... just put me down for a five."

A golfer teed up his ball on the first tee, took a mighty swing and hit his ball into a clump of trees. He found his ball and saw an opening between two trees he thought he could hit through. Taking out his 3-wood, he took another mighty swing; the ball hit a tree, bounced back, hit him in the forehead and killed him.

As he approached the gates of Heaven, St. Peter saw him coming and asked, "Are you a good golfer?"

The man replied: "Got here in two, didn´t I?"

This is for all the ex-teachers among us. Dick Monaghan forwards more examples of

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES OF TEACHERS

You might be a teacher if you believe the playground should be equipped with a Ritalin salt lick.

You might be a teacher if you want to slap the next person who says, "Must be nice to work from 8 to 3:30 and have summers off."

You might be a teacher if it is difficult to name your own child because there´s no name you can come up with that doesn´t bring high blood pressure as it is uttered.

You might be a teacher if you can tell it´s a full moon or if it´s going to rain, snow, hail - anything - without ever looking outside.

You might be a teacher if you believe "shallow gene pool" should have its own box on a report card.

You might be a teacher if you believe that unspeakable evils will befall you if anyone says, "Boy, the kids sure are mellow today."

You might be a teacher if when out in public, you feel the urge to snap your fingers at children you do not know and correct their behavior.

You might be a teacher if you have no social life between August and June.

You might be a teacher if you think people should have a government permit before being allowed to reproduce.

You might be a teacher if you wonder how some parents MANAGED to reproduce.

You might be a teacher if you laugh uncontrollably when people refer to the staff room as the "lounge".

You might be a teacher if you encourage an obnoxious parent to check into charter schools or home schooling and are willing to donate the U- HAUL boxes should they decide to move out of district.

You might be a teacher if you think caffeine should be available in intravenous form.

You might be a teacher if you can´t imagine how the ACLU could think that covering your students´ chairs with Velcro and then requiring uniforms made out of the corresponding Velcro could ever be misunderstood by the public.

You might be a teacher if meeting a child´s parent instantly answers this question, "Why is this kid like this?"

You might be a teacher if you would choose a mammogram over a parent conference.

You might be a teacher if you think someone should invent antibacterial pencils and crayons ... and desks and chairs for that matter!

You might be a teacher if the words "I have a college debt for this?" has ever come out of your mouth.

You might be a teacher if you know how many days, minutes, and seconds are left in the school year!

THIS WEEK´S SUGGESTED SITES

This cool video is a peek into the future. We were promised flying cars a long time ago - I´m still waiting for mine. But the delivery date might be closer than you think. Terrafugia is an aviation company started by a group of MIT graduates. They have developed the Transition, a vehicle with a prop and folding wings. They call it a "roadable aircraft." The Transition took its first flight recently. To learn more about the project, watch the video at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smGmrpn2Vrk&eurl

ED. NOTE: Can you imagine the joy the aircraft traffic controllers would have with flying cars?

Tom Telfer forwards this URL for important information about secure sites on the internet:

http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/https.asp

Speaking of cars, have a look at this site:

http://www.flixxy.com/zero-pollution-automobile.htm