21 April 2008
Cherchez les Bon Temps
San Jose? Anaheim?
I have been to both towns, and like them. There is a sort of la-la air of heaven about the first, and a sort of gritty sun-drenched determination about the latter.
I am always surprised to find that they have hockey teams, even though the gritty Ducks won Lord Stanley’s Cup last year, with my old industrial-grade Russians of the Red Wings dispatched abruptly along the way.
Detroit is post-gritty, of course, and with all that water surrounding the state, the skies are often gloomy and ice is common enough almost all year round. Columbus, Nashville and Phoenix, though? Hockey in Arizona?
They all have teams, and presumably fans. They even tried to establish a hockey colony in New Orleans. It is hard to grasp, so improbable that my attention is roused only by the beginning of the run for the Cup, as it is briefly by March Madness in NCAA basketball. The Masters is blissfully brief, and tips northern Virginia into the Spring.
Walking into the hockey movie this late in the running leaves me bewildered. The Ducks are out; the Red Wings and Rangers advance over teams where ice may be an unnatural event.
I’ll try my best, and recite by rote to remember on the way to work: the local Capitals are down 1-3; the last time any team came back from a deficit that great was two decades ago, when we had emerged from the energy shock of the ‘70s and everything was go-go and greed.
Cherchez les bon temps- “look for the good times! Roll on!”
The emergence from the gloom was a positive tonic, and we have been quite tipsy ever since. The Soviets just rode out the rough spot then, just as the Russians are now, because they are an energy giant in their own right.
Never mind that if trends continue the population will be equal to that of Yemen by 2050. That might not happen if the Russians start to enjoy the good times and start reproducing again. A lot can change in a few decades.
Thirty-five years ago we used to watch hockey all the time, sprawled on the ancient leather sofas in the library of the vast disintegrating Fraternity House in Ann Arbor. One of the club chairs was always smoldering from the improvised ashtray someone had carved in the padded arm.
It was an education of its own, we thought, at least the equal of that available on campus. The best times of all, maybe the best times of a life, was watching what came to be called the Summit Series. It was the first shoot-out between the Soviet and Canadian national hockey teams, a more muscular and bare-knuckled version of ping-pong diplomacy. We were all honorary Canadians that September, a status conferred by Mad Max, our friend from Montreal.
The French doors were thrown open to the gentle night breeze that gently moved the odors of stale beers and old cigarette butts over the flickering television.
Canada won the series 4-3 with one tie, and every game held the prestige of the northern latitudes in smelly leather hockey gloves.
The French-Canadians were a major factor, of course, and being so close to Canada we could get the CBC version of the broadcast in French by Rene Lecavalier and Gilles Trembly. They called it La Série du Siècle, the Series of the century.
I think I lost my honorary Canadian citizenship at the Lake Placid Olympics in 1980, when the plucky Americans beat the Russians on the ice 4-3. Mad Max had been deported, or at least had his green card ripped up, and the last I heard from him he was living in an abandoned DEW Line radar station in Labrador.
I cannot directly attribute the laissez-faire attitude of government that started with the Reagan Administration to the victory at Lake Placid, though the coincidence is tempting. Depending on how you translate it, the phrase can mean “leave to do,” formally, or “never mind” in the vernacular.
We are paying for all the cherchez le bon temps that went on, exactly like a Mardi Gras hangover. Whatever were we thinking? There was even an attempt to have a hockey team in the dank swamps of lower Louisiana. The New Orleans Brass played five seasons there before they went broke in 2002. Everyone knew that the only place for ice in the Big Easy was a hurricane glass.
This morning, the purveyors of gloom are saying that we are at peak oil production, and with all those energetic Indians and Chinese it is the beginning of the Great Decline of the West. Things like hockey rinks in the desert are going to be just the first casualties, right before Australia.
I don’t know if I agree with them, since surely there must be some sacrifices we can make before it comes to that. Maybe someone will come up with a good idea to get us through this little rough patch of bad sledding.
There has to be a way to skate out of this, don’t you think?
There is a Cup to be won. Go Wings. Laissez les bons temps rouler.
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com