Third of a winter series
There was plenty of action and competition in the 1870s and 1880s, even before the advent of school-sponsored sports. W. J. Langen (1869-1960) like many other boys, ice skated near Hokah on a 30-acre lake, which at the slightest spell of cold weather, would provide fine skating ice. Boys would gather evenings, often for a game of “shinny.” A block of wood four or five inches in diameter was placed onto a fire until it was “burning well.” The players, “armed with clubs,” would try to hit the “flaming missile” across the goal line. As long as it was kept in motion, the wood would continue to burn. “The real fun began when the block became so badly charred that it broke apart. Then before we knew it, there were two games going.” Another game was Cross Tag; “the good skater, who could cut short circles, was never “it” very long.”
Langen recalled one spring when high water raised the lake about two feet. “The ice was fine, so we took a boat, paddled up to the ice and skated a whole Sunday afternoon.” They also attempted many imaginative stunts, such as skating over obstacles or skating backward. Their version of figure skating involved skating very fast and then stopping and spinning. When it was windy, they would tie a stick to each side of a blanket to fashion a sail, which might transport them across the lake by wind power.
His claim to speed on ice came on a small hill near the school, where for sliding, there was a plank, which one day was covered with smooth ice. Langen decided to skate down the plank, and halfway down, one skate broke. “I fairly flew down that hill on my back, Did I see stars!”
One winter, there was two feet of snow, which thawed on one warmer day before freezing on the next frigid night. Everything was frozen over with ice strong enough to support a person. On Sunday morning, Langen and some friends skated from Minnesota to La Crosse where they attended church and then skated back home, a round trip of about 11 miles. But all was not smooth skating; one boy, while sliding down a hill, broke his leg above the knee.
One early spring day, Langen and a neighbor boy decided to take a shortcut through the Mississippi River bottoms on their skates. They progressed across a few lakes before reaching the Mississippi, where the ice was mostly rough, except along the ends where it was very smooth.” They skated awhile unaware the ice had formed during the night and was very thin. Coming home, they noticed the sun had melted the previously nice ice. They followed the river until they found a large log in the river. They crawled on it back to land and arrived home still quite dry after all.
Young Langen had three pairs of skates, the first of which had wooden tops and screwed into the heel of the shoe and strapped on across the front of the foot. Then there was his cast iron, ”half-club” skates, slipped on and strapped across the front of the foot while plates were put onto the heels. Finally, Langen was especially proud of his “club” skates, still in his possession as a senior citizen, which had been an 1884 Christmas gift from his grandfather. They were not for speed skating, but were great for cutting circles. These “club” skates had double clamps, while most of the other boys still had cast iron skates.
Double-clamp skates cost $1.50, which in 1884 had the value as $45 in 2022. They were strong enough to last a lifetime. Langen used his every year for 30 years (1884 to 1914) and then occasionally thereafter. His last skate was at age 76 with his grandchildren. “I got along quite well, although I wasn’t in danger of being arrested for speeding.”
The next innovation were lever skates, which instead of being tightened with a key, required only pulling a lever. “Soon everyone had lever skates, and I was out of style with my key skates. I never saw shoe skates until the girls began skating, about 1890.”
Source: Memoirs of W. J. Langen on early sports, published in “Caledonia Pride.”
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