The Rutland Recreation Department offered skating in the city as early as the 1940s. My time on skates began in the 1950s.
It was a popular activity and one that didn’t come with a high price tag.
For awhile Rotary Rink on North Street was the only place for public skating.
I don’t know the original rink size but according to the City of Rutland Report; that rink was enlarged in 1950 to a size of 130 feet by 206 feet. The weather back then was apparently as finicky as it is today. There was not enough cold weather for skating until late December. But once it opened, around 500 people used the rink daily. A new feature that year was a concession stand, which proved to be very popular. An interesting tidbit is that the late Sen. Jim Jeffords ran that stand during his teen years.
The layout at Rotary was definitely different because you skated out to the rink from the back door on the lower level of the building. Music played through speakers as you skated. That same sound system also served as a way to reprimand you when you skated too fast or started any trouble. I believe that the voice you heard through the speakers belonged to Ernie Cameron.
A popular fad that could get out of hand at times was “crack the whip.”
The skater at the “head of the whip” controls where others go as they all hold hands. The skater at the tail end of the whip feels the force of the speed the most and gets “dumped” as random direction changes are chosen by the lead skater. Kids were always trying to get in a quick game of the whip before the loud speaker voice told skaters to break it up. I was never part of that game as I was happy just twirling around and skating backwards.
Usually kids don’t pay much attention to adult skaters but many of us were in awe of Jim and Emogene Deering back in the ‘50s. They skated arm in arm with total grace and smoothness.
By the end of the ’50s there were a total of three public skating rinks in the city. The kids often walked from their homes to the closest one, carrying their skates. The girls always had white figure skates. The boys were more apt to have black hockey skates.
The second rink to open was the Meadow Street Rink in the middle ‘50s, followed by the White Rink, at the foot of Avenue B, in the late ‘50s. The locations could be compared to the points of a triangle…far apart from one another but quite close to nearby homes.
Neighborhood activities were important in that era as many families had only one car which the father usually drove to work. So kids often had no choice but to walk with their friends both to school and to their various activities.
The city rinks were open seven days a week both during the day and in the evening. I remember how much fun it was to skate under the lights. My cousin, Betty, lived near the White Rink, so I would get dropped off at her house and walk to that rink with several of her neighborhood friends. Just think of all the fresh air and exercise kids got “back in the day”! We would have been at the rink every night if our parents had allowed it. But school work came first!
Sections of the Rotary and Meadow Street rinks were set aside for children’s skating. Looking back I can see why that was a good idea. A child could get “wiped out” if the whip skaters got too close.
Apparently speed skating became popular in the ’60s and championships were an annual event. Entries doubled from the first to the second year. The competition was held at the Meadow Street Rink.
By the mid-70s plans were underway for a skating rink at Giorgetti Park. The rink, which is now completely enclosed, had three open sides and a roof back then.
The skating days with my friends ended after high school. But in the late 1970s my husband, Peter, and I tried our hand at this activity at the Giorgetti Rink. It didn’t take long to figure out that after 15 years of not being on skates it was an accomplishment for me to just remain upright and get around the rink. Peter didn’t fare much better!
If the two of us got on skates today we would not look like the Deerings from the 1950s. Rather, we would probably look like a two-person comedy act, only we wouldn’t intentionally be trying to get laughs!
