It’s Brier Time
An Homage to Chucked Granite
By Terrance Gavan
If you’re smart, you will not admit an addiction to the game of curling.
You will not tell your friends that you’re too busy to come out tonight because you’re home watching curling.
People give you a hard time.
They will say things like: “What are you serious? Curling? Do you actually have a life, or are you just a congenital moron?”
I can take the insults.
What I can’t handle are the attendant slurs aimed at the roaring game. People who feel obliged to spout invective about you and your preoccupation with curling never stop there. They like to enforce their opinion by saying derogatory things about the game itself.
I find this intolerable. Insult me, fine. Do not carry on with the pop and prattle about the grand old game.
People who know nothing about the nuance of the sport feel entitled to sputter vile bile and vitriol.
“It’s a stupid game … it’s boring … people who like it are morons … like you Gav.”
It’s okay.
I forgive them. Most of them are not that bright anyway. And they have no idea about the niceties and the subtle flow of the great and glorious roaring game.
I have a friend, Jamie McBlarney, who compares curling to moronic pastimes like Frisbee Golf. “Curling is the most boring sport ever invented. It’s like watching paint dry, and I can’t believe that you can just sit there and watch it, like some moony-eyed couch potato in the last throes of a degenerative brain disease. What’s next, the World League of Frisbee Golf?”
Hey hold on here. Curling is much more exciting than Frisbee Golf. There are no pink brooms in Frisbee Golf; no Teflon sliders; no granite. People do not yell “hurry hard!” or “no,no,never!” in Frisbee Golf. Good-looking people like Jennifer Jones, Kevin Martin and Jeff Stoughton do not play Frisbee Golf.
Also, and this is paramount. In curling we are not subject to the whim of the terrorist canine.
Like that border collie in Head Lake Park who continuously patrols the Frisbee Golf playing field, You’re on the tee at number three and let fly with a perfect Frisbee Golf drive, and then bam, all of a sudden, that little black and white S.O.B. is sky-bound, soaring high in the air like some seminal refugee from Alice in Wonderland, and lickety-split, in a wink, he grabs the Frisbee, and then disappears over the creek and into the distance. Frisbee Golf game is ‘Over by Rover.’
I explain this to my friend Jamie McBlarney. “What’s that got to do with curling? Are you a total idiot?” asks Jamie. Jamie is not fond of the quick cut and thrust, suave parlay, or the facetiously simplistic argument for that matter.
“Simple,” I explain. “It is unheard of in curling circles for a dog, even a very, very, big dog like a Great Dane or a Newfie or a St Bernard to wander onto the curling surface and make off with the tools of the trade. A: No dog is fond of fetching a 45 pound lump of granite; and B: Big dogs find it very hard to walk on ice… especially when carrying an 60-pound rock.”
This of course sets Jamie off. “You bag of hammers. First it’s 45 pounds and then 60? Which is it, you simpleton? Here’s a suggestion: Turn off the curling and give your brain a rest … it’s turning to mush.”
It’s what a lot of people say to me. And I could google rock weight, just to keep Jamie in the loop, but you only need to know that those rocks are very heavy. And that a very very very big dog would get develop a huge hernia if he decided to fetch one home.
I will continue to watch curling.
I watch it because I fell in love with curling as a youngster in rural Manitoba.
And also because I was there when my Auntie Alice brought full-contact to a bonspiel.
It happened at the Halcyon Golf and Curling Club back in 1985.
My 75 year old Auntie Alice was playing in an early A-Side round in the local year-end spiel. She and my Uncle Baldur, my cousin Radnur and his wife Cheryl were playing mixed doubles.
They just happened to get locked into a duel with the spiel favorites, a team of ringers skipped by my cousin and another of Alice’s nephews, Thor Bjornason - who just happened to be skipping a Halcyon men’s foursome that finished second in the Manitoba Provincial Tankard in 1985. Thor was a killer on a sheet of ice. A baby-faced assassin.
My Aunt Alice liked to have a few sherries during a game, but this was her third draw of the day. And the sherries had somehow morphed to tequila shots. Don’t ask.
In the fourth end, with Thor up 6-1, Aunt Alice began mumbling. Thor had a beautiful delivery and a seamless slide to release.
He was removing rocks with abandon, but always apologizing deferentially to Auntie Alice after every made shot.
Thor was nothing if not a nice guy and genteel competitor.
I was down at ice level taking some pictures when I heard Aunt Alice’s muttered refrain. “Look at Thor, that young bugger; he’s sliding past the hog line; he’s holding that rock too long, dammit.”
It was the tequila talking, and we tried to reassure her that Thor’s release was legal. She mumbled again. Her mind was set.
And sure enough, on Thor’s next slide out from the hack, as he slid effortlessly to the hog line, I remember clear as polished ice, this tiny little lady sliding from the sideboards, and then the sudden flash of Aunt Alice’s old straw broom as she shoved it between Thor’s delicately balanced legs.
The rock went south and Thor went north. And Aunt Alice watched with glee as Thor’s stone jammed hard into the sideboards. And then just before leaving she gave poor Thor two whacks to his backside with the old straw broom.
“Let go of that damn rock or you’ll get the same again,” Aunt Alice said to Thor, who was, to his credit, smiling sheepishly. And everyone in the old curling club was laughing.
Why?
Well, because Auntie Alice used to give hundreds of curling students in Halcyon a few whacks on the backside when she was teaching us all how to curl over her four decades of volunteer coaching at the ol’ Halcyon Golf and Curling club.
Auntie Alice never again switched from sherry to tequila shots at a Halcyon Bonspiel. And Thor?
Well he went on to win that game 10-4, but he never slid out more than 10 feet from the hack for the remainder of the contest.
That’s why I watch curling.
Because today, every time I watch a Kevin Martin, or a Jeff Stoughton sliding smooth and serene from the hack, my mind flashes back to 1985; and just for a moment I see Auntie Alice’s old straw broom, flashing.
And as rock is released, a smile.n
No comments:
Post a Comment