We are vane
enough to believe the fans were actually cheering our performance, though we
have to recognize that many times the fans begin cheering somewhere between “free”
and “home of the brave” because they are relieved that the long national anthem
nightmare is finally over. This time,
there was one short screamy burst as we sang “free.” That soon died and the cheer didn’t pick up
again until we were well into “brave.”
As our “brave” got
lost in the cheers, I dared to really look up and around to see quite a few
occupied seats. People standing in front
of their seats, rather. My apprehension
resolved into elation. We were finished
and we had all sung our parts well.
Just how did I
happen to be standing at the end of hockey rink where the Colorado Eagles were
about to take on the Idaho Steelheads?
It was nearly a year ago when Rex mentioned the Eagles. The singers?
The Philadelphia Eagles? No, no,
the local hockey team. Oh.
We had just moved
into the area and I knew nothing about local sports other than the CSU
Rams. I had very little to do with
hockey. In my first sixteen years of
life, you could count on one hand (excluding thumb and pinkie) the number of
winters where we had the right combination of water and cold weather to make
ice-skating a possibility.
When I was in
junior high school, one winter the snow melted into great puddles that stayed
on the frozen ground and froze during the cold winter nights, probably late
February or early March. We didn’t have
skates, but on a couple of Saturday mornings, we were able to invent a suitable
puck and find clubs sufficient to hit it with.
We slipped and slid around as we attempted to whack the puck between to frozen
mud protrusions that served as the mouth of the goal. It was fun.
We had a junior
high basketball game on one of those Saturday nights. I remember limping a bit during the
basketball game because I had fallen on the ice that morning during our hockey
game and bruised my left knee.
I would be in
high school before we ventured to a neighbor’s pasture where his dam held enough
water to form a good-sized pond that froze pretty hard that January. That experience was fun enough that I parted
with $9 of my hard-earned summer wages to buy a pair of ice skates. I used them all of three or four times before
I donated them to the local thrift shop a year ago as we pared down our
possessions to move to a new home. That
would turn out to be about once every sixteen winters, I calculate.
My other hockey
experience would be via television. In
those olden times, the Game of the Week played on CBS (I think) with Dizzy
Dean, Bud Blattner, and later Pee Wee Reese on summer Saturdays. The Game of the Week would be replaced by ABC
coverage of a Saturday college football game.
Fall Sundays presented NFL football.
One year (1959?)
the Cleveland Browns played a series of Thursday night games. I watched all the football I could. Football was over New Years’ Day. Then Wes Unseld, Bob Cousy, and the Jones boys took
center court playing in the NBA. Wilt
Chamberlain was all elbows and knees as he dipped to toss a two-handed scoop
shot, trying his best to find a way to sink a free throw.
Oh yes, there was
an NHL hockey game sometime on Saturday or Sunday. If the weather was too bad to be outside, I
would watch that. The Avalanche would be
vying for the Stanley Cup before I would ever watch another hockey game on
television after I left high school.
So here I was,
basking in the cheers of the fans at a real live ECHL hockey game. Rex had sounded his pitch pipe at precisely
7:05. We had arrived at 5:15 to do a
sound check. That consisted of singing
the anthem into the two microphones with the only audience being Eagles
employees working to get ready for the game.
Otherwise, our harmonies echoed throughout an empty arena.
We had an hour and
a half to kill. We wandered around on
the cement pathway beneath the seats.
Here and there was an office or a janitorial closet. We dodged two mini blimps, one measuring
about twenty feet in length, the smaller maybe fifteen feet, both advertising
some product I am unfamiliar with, one a phone company maybe. About 6:45, a young man and a young woman
would lead the blimps past us, like some airy Clydesdales, out onto the ice and
the blimps would rise. Using hand held
controllers, the pilots would keep the blimps circulating around the arena spreading
their commercial message.
We pressed on,
looking for a room where we could sing a few songs without disturbing anyone. The room where the boys were wont to sing was
set up for a dinner for volunteers working with the Good Samaritan Society. So
we moved on.
Beneath the west
end seats, a soccer game was in progress in an unbelievably crowded field,
marred by seat supports and braces everywhere.
The ball came toward us and Dick fetched it a kick. “Hey, good shot,” a lad exclaimed.
“I thought we came
to see a hockey game,” Rex said.
“We have to warm
up,” another fellow replied.
“That’s right,”
Rex said. “You can’t be on the ice now.”
“Nope. So we warm up playing soccer.” So that was the Eagles hockey team, eh? They sure were young, just out of high school,
maybe.
We came to a
curtain drawn across the cement path, extending from the outside wall to the where
the seats came down to ground level. We could go no further without going
through that curtain. A man and a woman
sat in chairs in front of the curtain.
Can’t go in there. That is the
cheerleaders’ dressing room. Oh.
Anywhere we can
sing a few to warm up without bothering anybody? The employees break room right here. They will all be out of there in a few
minutes.
We chatted with
the folks in the break room as they left to go to their jobs. The room resembled a locker room, with
lockers on two sides, a counter top with a wall mirror along one side, and
chairs all around the perimeter.
When they all
left, we practiced a few numbers we plan to sing in upcoming Christmas
programs. At 6:30 we made our way up to
the turn styles where the lady attendant shot the barcodes on our complimentary
tickets. Then she shot the turn style
and it counted us without our having to go through the line.
Up we went to
find our host, who took us back down and around the arena below the seats, the
way we had come. We stood waiting our
time, watching, trying to talk above all the buzz of the pregame.
We would take to
the wall as the reeled-in blimps passed us on their way back to their stables and the Zamboni left the
ice and crossed the oval track to its garage.
The members of the visiting team were introduced without fanfare. The Eagles milled around on our end of the
arena. They looked a lot different in
their hockey gear then they did playing soccer under the grandstands.
We watched each
player skate to our right and then to center ice as his name and number were
announced. We could barely hear the
announcer with all the noise and cheering of the hometown heroes.
We could see
some folks just above us sitting at a bar set up about eight feet above the end
zone. Pretty good seats, but I would
want to be sure there was a safety screen between me and the ice. That puck comes flying, and it doesn’t stay
in the rink.
The players,
having all been introduced, removed to their box on the sideline. Down went the carpet. Our man carried the two microphones out onto
the edge of the mat. We followed him and
took our positions in front of the mikes.
“Ladies and
gentlemen, please rise and remove your head gear for our National Anthem, performed
by “Four the Good Times.”
Rex’s cue. He blew a “G” on his pitch pipe. The echo of the “G” died away in the far
reaches of the arena. The mikes had
picked it up.
For a second there
was silence. We glanced at each other in
affirmation of the pitch. We turned to
the mikes and breathed in simultaneously.
“Oh-oh-say can you see. . . .”
How do you describe
the feeling when you hear your voice in concert with three other voices
amplified and filling the vast hall, the roistering fans silent and listening,
waiting for the end of the song to burst into cheers?
Briefly we stood
and accepted the cheers. As I turned to
leave, a voice above me shouted, “Way to go!”
I looked up, waved to a lady in the stands to acknowledge her
comment. Then we were off the ice and
back under the seats again as we made our way around to the turn styles once
more and up to our seats.
As we passed
employees beneath the seats and fans on the stairways and in the stands, we
heard ”Good job, boys,” “Nicely done.”
One guy even told us we did a better job than any of the other performers
singing the anthem. He was in the
lounge, where we went after watching the game for a minute or two.
In the lounge, we imbibed a celebratory
beverage and watched the game on a huge television screen. We went through the cafeteria line where
there was roast pork and a very nicely done salmon. The wait staff treated us like royalty. We sang a couple more numbers for them and
the bar patrons during the intermission.
The Eagles were ahead 2-0 going into the third period when we left.
It took a while for the adrenalin to subside
that night. How much more could I ask
for? To be part of a team, a team that
functioned well; to have your effort appreciated; to feel you accomplished
something and did it well.
There remains
only one tiny cloud on the horizon. The
Eagles sometimes send the performers a video of their appearance as a thank you. Unedited recordings can magnify the warts and
blemishes of a performance. The tape may
tell a story different from the memory.
We will see what we see, I guess.
No matter. I will always have the memory of the cheers
and the compliments. No, they can’t take
that away from me. That memory will outweigh the pre-performance apprehension I
seem to always face.
Hmmm, I wonder
if the Rockies might be interested in a fairly good version of our national
anthem?
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