Shaun Newman Podcast - #2 - Steve Newman

Episode Date: February 14, 2019

Today's guest is my father Steve Newman.  He is a Husband, father (of five), business owner, farmer and one of the greatest men I know. We discuss his early hockey & football days along with college shenanigans. We also talk at length about his playing days with the Hillmond Allstars (Senior Hockey).

to the Sean Newton podcast. Yeah. Yeah. I know you. In studio with me tonight is my father, Steve Newman. Scary thought. So I guess where I kind of want to go with this is just back to the beginning, maybe the late 60s, the early 70s, and talk about your time early on in high school. I know you did a lot of different things.

hockey being the mainstay, but then on to bigger skating, some football, probably some ball in there too. And so I thought maybe we'd start with, well, let's just dig a little bit into your football. I know it was, it's six-man football, not the 11 man that everybody knows. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that back in the day. Hillman had a great team probably four years before I came along and they won provincials and that sticks out in your mind because they had teams come from all over the province places you never heard of and they played in Hillmont if you can imagine and it was it was just totally different. So everybody wanted to play

football after that. But six men, not 11 man. Nope. Six. Which, from what I understand, six men was designed for small towns because he can't field. I don't know how many guys are on a football team, 40 some,

right? And so you got like six guys play the entire game or you got ten guys we had some on offense, some on defense, and the ones that were really good played both kind of thing so it just depended how your

how your game was going whether you got to play sort of thing yeah like it reminds me of like inter mirror football right like you hut the ball and then everybody tears off and they can rush five guys but if you just kind of

yeah it was like smear football and when we played in Helmon we played smear volleyball, smear basketball, and so football fit right in. Yeah, yeah. But it's no different than 11. It's just at a smaller scale.

Do you remember was it like the same size field and everything? It was the upper level where the school is now. So relatively the same size. For people who don't know where Helmand is, like relative. the same as an actual football field. Man, you get to your exercise in that. Yeah. Yeah.

For sure. And it went very well until one of the guys broke his leg, and then everybody went, ooh, maybe we should be not doing this. And I think the principal at the time said that was it. No more football. No more football, and they sold all the equipment. Now, did every team, like, was it Hillmon, Paradise Hill, Nealberg, or were you... I remember Maidstone, Nealberg, probably Lashburn.

I don't know. That's a long time ago. I do remember Nealberg because I had a family member playing against me, and we were trying to knock the crap out of each other. Competitive, right? Yeah, competitive. So, I mean, you're the big rugged football player. What position did you play?

First of all, I wasn't big, and I wasn't rugged, and I was a tight-in. You're a tight-head. Small and fast. Small and fast. I could run scared faster than they could run mad. I think Richard Hewitt described you as a pesky little Ford in the corners in hockey. Yeah, yeah. I think his exact words were, I don't think anybody knew where he was going.

going this way, that way. I probably didn't know where I was going. Actually, the one thing was skating, I could skate better than I could run. Yeah, just make sure we're fist away from that, Mike. Yeah. So you're playing football, you're playing hockey, you're doing a little figure skating. Yeah. So, from I understand, from the way Grammy used to talk about it, you used to be a pretty good figure skater.

I understand. I was mom's son. So I was the apple of her eye. So no wrong here. But she put me in figure skating, did lots of figures in, lots of summer school in at the new Civic Center at the time. And I stayed in Lloyd by myself at, it was a Giles. So it would be Neil Giles sister.

and I stayed there and walked across to the rink and we skated two, three times a day. Just to put that in a perspective, right? Like, how old were you in? Early teens. Early teens. And you had, when was Jay playing Midwest when you were 30? Yeah, probably. So 15 years later, you're driving once or twice a week to Maestown.

But at that age, they're leaving. even you in Lloyd because it's a far distance essentially. Well, and it was a neighbor's. So grandma newer, trust her. Yeah. You know, so. But we'd been figure skating in Hillman. And we, the pro there got me and Hope Carmody doing duets.

And then we ended up competing as a duet. and we competed in Alberta figure skating duels doubles and got second and got second I must tell you

there was only two sets but we got second and the record books will show you're number two in Alberta yeah that's cool that reminds me of

remember being at the Great Cup when Saskatchewan was playing in Toronto. One of the reasons I love Saskatchewan Rough Rider fans is we're at the Grey Cup we're getting sheled by Doug Flutie and the Toronto Argonauts. And any other fans, just look at the Oilers fans right now, right? Throwing their jerseys, booing, and we're down 4211 and the entire stand started chanting.

We're number two. Yeah, we're number two. Yeah, that's rider pads for you. Well, that's what Hope and I were doing. We're number two. I did compete a little bit in singles too, but there was some really good guys. So I was a better watcher than I was a skater.

Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Well, let's switch over to a little bit of hockey. I mean, Canada hockey is just like they go together. Growing up, I've heard stories about you like training for junior camp and North Battleford for possibly the Barons. And you were skating on the curling rink and stuff like that. Like, is that true? Yeah, we, Steve Hart,

and I got an invite to North Ballaford, except we had no ice. The only ice we had was in the curling rink. And so dad would take us down there after school and we'd skate laps. There was two sheets of ice, so we'd skate down to the one end and jump over the boards and skate back. What did the curlers think? Well, they'd quit curling because it was soft enough that but they couldn't curl. And the ice was really soft in the skating arenas. So I don't think it helped us much anyway. So how was tryouts?

Do you remember much about him? Some big guys. And Steve and I were not very big guys. We were thin and fast. And the hockey we had played was not as much. together. I never really learned to play as a team until I hit college. And so a lot of it was individual. And you don't show up as, you know, you kind of show up, but you're not seeing the ice.

You're not passing to your teammates and stuff like that. Now, did they, was it a bunch of exhibition games and then, or was it just a little bit of Stirmage? It was a long time ago. But they just divided, they had a group of guys from all over, divided them into two teams and let's get at her. There was no testing to see if you could do crossovers or something. It was just throw a puck out there and let's go.

You laugh about it. But when I went to LaRange, we'd play our exhibition games. but we had the skill days where we had to do pivots and work on footwork and show the coaches that, right? Like that was part of tryouts back then. And, I mean, that's a while after you're trying all at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. But we just weren't big enough either.

Like we were... Described everybody how small you were. Well, probably five, six, and one, twenty, two. maybe on a windy day. I could skate fast, but nothing there to hit with. And back then there was lots of hook and hold and you had to break away from it. Were you wearing helmets? Yeah.

They were sort of like water buckets. Yeah. My favorite helmet was a... a toque if it's called a took if you don't know what a took is look it up online yeah t u k no it's t u i k was t u i k yeah terrible helmet they looked awesome but uh grandma almost she always put me in a i forget what it was called with earmuffs i looked really cute he didn't go to trouts like that did you no i guess i just i just i just i should should have because they would have stood around and went, well, look at that.

So then you don't make that team. No. You come back to high school? Yeah. Because you're 15, you said. And then instead of playing, I don't know, maybe. Well, we were probably 14 at the time. And then the next year we had a really good team.

as 15-year-olds. And we'd done well. We were the top of the league. And I tied with a nut brown from Nealberg for scoring. He ended up in the Saskatoon Blades. There's a picture of us. I'm like 5, 6 and 125. He's 6, 2, and a good 180.

So I could see why he went to Saskatoon. The boys who are listening out and Helmonde are wondering where your score and touch got lost on me. Yeah. I have a hard time breaking a couple goals in a year. Yeah, the figure skin really helped. That pirouette. Yeah, a pirouette. You could three jump over most guys.

So we were talking about it off air, but you're in high school. You're playing for the All-Stars now? And we're talking to home on the All-Stars who are the senior team. And I don't know why, but they were short players. And they'd won Saskalta three years in a row. And so they invited Steve Harbin and I to come and play partway through the season, halfway through the season. So the way we went.

How was that? Scared stiff. The old arena, let's talk about the old arena. Sure. The old arena had an office and inside the office was a big chair that the caretaker set it, which is Bill Noble and Dick Lunt. And there was a great big water tank that heated the hot water. water. So that office was smoking hot all the time. So when it was 40 below, it was a good place to be.

And then they tapped it out and they had a 45-gallon drum with some burlap out the back and it with a tap on it. You filled up the 45-gallon drum and that's how they flooded the ice. Oh, how times have changed. Well, and the word rink rat comes from all the kids would go out there and push scrapers and scrape the ice. And then you had to shovel the snow off the ice and then they would flood it with a 45-gallon drum. Now, you're talking old rink the silver dome. Silver dome. And to begin with, it was flooded with 45-gallon drum.

Well, and no fancy clock. So the bell? I think they had a, they did some writing on some score. But what I remember about, they had a little piece box it looked like that had 20 minutes on it. That was the timer. And then they held up on a board the score. and the buzzer for the beginning of the period and the end of the period was a tiller blade. So somebody banging on it?

Yes. Your grandfather. He was the timekeeper with Jim Sutherland. And this Tiller blade had broke on somebody. So it was a round Tillerblade that was missing a piece because it probably hit, a rock and they had it tied so that when they were standing there this thing was hung down from the roof and they would use a hammer and hit the tiller blade and it sounded like a dawn and that was their time's up hit the hit the tailor blade time to get the game going grandpa was uh big on

everything had to start on time. And so he would, as soon as it got 8 o'clock, he'd start hammering on that tiller blade and the teams would get out there and way we go. And we just bought, I think it was $12,000 clock for the rink. Or I shouldn't say we. We fundraised $12,000 for a brand new clock

that pretty much can comb your hair. Yes. Yeah. Now, this was probably donated because somebody hit a rock. And they were annoyed that they were banging two pieces of wood together or something. You talk about safety. You know, if the rope breaks, you get sliced in tube by a tiller blade, right? And while let's talk about the gold judges, at the one end it wasn't bad because there was a balcony.

and you stepped into the gold judge block. At the other end, there was this ladder that looked like the starway to heaven. And this ladder was on a rope and it would come down. And then you had to climb 15 to 20 rungs on the ladder and climb into this birdhouse box with no safety. And I remember going up there as a kid. and if we got caught up there, they'd just yell us. You kids get down there, you're going to kill yourself.

But we'd stick an adult up there. And he'd go judge the game. And it was the Howard brothers that they were twins. One did one in, one did the other. And in the office, they had two big black cushions. and so it started the game they grabbed their two black cushions

one each one go to the one end and if you can imagine the guy that went up the stairway had to haul up his cush and throw it in and then sit on it and it was

it was like sitting on this chair with a little bit of a board in front of you that looked down safety safety first kids and then then you had to

back down there at the end of the period right so yeah but it was actually there's a good story with one of the Howard they loved their hockey

they liked the all stars and the one time I don't know which one it was through his cushion at the ref because he didn't like to call did he get his cushion back He was sitting up in his box. But, yeah.

But so there wasn't a lot of people went to the rink all the time because it was a place to meet. And it didn't matter if it was snow on or cold. You always went to the rink. And then there was two dressing rooms at the time, the home and the visitor. And there was a wall between you and me. And if you were quiet, you could hear what they were planning. Gee boys did a little reconnaissance work. We go put our ear up against the wall.

Oh, yeah, they're going to do this. But the heat came from the office, and there was a great in each room about this size and that wide. Well, for the people listening, how big you're talking? Three feet by. Well, put it this way. There was a sheet of four by eight plywood that covered the grate. And if you were cold, you started pulling the sheet back so that more hot air come up.

And it would boil you. And there was a piece of plywood in heat, true. And so that's how they controlled the heat. They didn't have thermostats. It was controlled by plywood. I have fond memories of that room growing up, to be honest. Let's talk about the dressing room a little bit. Playing senior, you got to play when you were 15, 14.

We were scared stiff. Those guys were in their prime. They were probably late 20s, early 30s, very good team. big guys you got you got the priests the mackenzie's like just big tough farm boys and when we walked in there was a in the one corner the wall came down and so that's where harbored and i sat because we were small, hey? And we, you looked around and you looked all these men and you went, we're dead. And then we got dressed, went out and had warm up, came back in. Earl Priest was the coach. Well, he was the captain, any kind of captain coach. He never really coached. He was more of a,

Okay, guys, we got us smarten up. Let's go get out there and let's do it. And so here we got Steve and Steve, little bitty nothings. They can skate. That's all they know. And so Earl says, okay, so where are we going to put these two? And, you know, it's almost like the old boys go picking their toe, looking around. Nobody wanted us.

I mean, who was? Two wet noodles. Two wet noodles out there. And so Earl said, okay, I'll center him. I'll put him between me. And that's what he did. And so out we went. And we played with Earl.

And Earl was tough. Well, when I first walked in, I probably didn't know Earl that much. I knew of him. and Vernon and Donnie and Lyle, Lyle didn't play, but he was tough too. But Earl was missing a thumb. And I'm pretty sure I sat there and looked at that missing thumb and thought, he doesn't even have a thumb. Don't you tell the story, Earl is centering you? Yeah.

And one of you gets hit in the corner. and he goes to Rams? He, we were playing Paradise Hill. It was actually me. And Earl took a care of us, a real good care of us, both Steve and I.

George Palin, who was a big boy, big man, took a fairly hefty run at me in the corner, and I was lucky enough to just get out of his way. And then, the old days

we call it chicken wire they didn't have plexic glass they had this mesh wire mesh and he put his show where my head was into the mesh and I just got out of

the way and no sooner had he hit the mesh then Earl came up hit him put his arm against his neck shoved his head into the wire and said

said leave the kids alone. Did they come after you after that? Nobody touched us. Earl was great. He wore number eight, by the way, and was captain. Oh, cool. He, I called him coached from that day on. Called him coach.

I called him coach. Yeah. He never taught me a thing, but thought you about life yeah yeah I'd love to stick on the all-stars

because there's so many good stories there well the other thing was our relatives have come from BC Danny and and Bob and

them and we'd watch Hockey Night in Canada there were six teams and the six teams there was only Toronto, Montreal, right? And so I can remember, I'm pretty sure it was Danny, was the Montreal Canadian fan,

and everybody else was Toronto. And Danny would sit in the corner, and the other, we'd sit on the other side of the room, and we'd watch hockey night in Canada. But when I was growing up, I didn't want to be an NHLer, I wanted to be Vernon Priest. And he wore,

Number five. Number five. Yeah. Well, for our listeners, it took me a long time to wear number five. Actually took me all the way back until I came to home. It took me a long time because I had to wait until Vernon quit. And as soon as he quit, I wanted five.

Isn't that funny? So growing up, I played my hockey and Lloyd. And you used to always talk to me about wearing number five. And I used to be like number five. I don't know, I'm wearing number five, right? And then I went out east, and I really wanted four. Yep. And I lost it on a coin toss to AJ Royce, to my demise.

And he played and played, and so I got number eight. Yeah. And I wore eight all the way through my college career, too. And then in Finland, they gave me Yari Curry, number 17, which made no sense as a defenseman, but whatever. And then I came back to Helmand. And all this time, Dad's pastoral me, right? Like, you should wear number five.

You should wear number five. Finally, I'm like, I'm in Helmand. The heck, I'll wear number five. Because number eight was taken by Jason Ross at the time. And that I never really thought about where number five came from. I did not know Vern Priest. Verne Priest won the scoring tired numerous years. Yeah.

Very good hockey player. Yeah. They always laughed that he's got universal joints for skates because he could just, you know, and he was just very good. He was kind of my idol. I didn't look at the NHL teams. I looked at the All-Star team. Yeah, I was, I was bugging Ken Rutherford on this last week about if he looked, like when he was a kid,

went and he was a volleyball player. When he went and watched volleyball at a young age, if there was a younger guy or an older guy that he watched that he liked. And he gave me some guy's name, but nobody in the school. And it's cool that you think Vern Priest, because for me growing up, I remember going to watch Border Kings

because the Hitman or the All-Stars weren't going anymore. And I remember the man brothers. And I remember getting to go in the dressing room there as a kid. Yeah. And going, holy crap. These guys are manhole, they're chewing in here and they're drinking in here and cussing in here. Yeah. And that was what senior hockey is or was and still is, right?

I mean, all those shenanigans go on. We went into the All-Star Room and these guys are chewing snuff. And I didn't even know what snuff was. I tried it once and that's probably it. But all them guys would come off the ice and chew snuff in between periods. And was there any smokers? There might have been a couple. Because when I first started with the hitman,

there was guys that would play a period, come in, go outside, and there'd be like three or four of them and go for a smoke in between periods and then come in and then play a period and then go around and do it again. And I remember thinking, you're going to do what? They were drinkers. They'd bring in a gunny sack of beer, or two cases, after the game, and walk through the whole crowd and walk in and sit there and have their beer after the game.

Well, that's still a tradition. That's probably where I had my first beer. It's still a tradition of senior hockey in our league especially, and I'm sure every other league, that the home team, provides a flat of beer for the opposing team, right? Like, I think that's been going on since your day or close to it, I would assume. Like, did you give the opposing team beer at that time? Yeah.

Yeah, so that's been a longstanding tradition then. For a long time, yeah. And they bash her. Well, that's another thing. So your grandpa and Jim Sutherland worked in the penalty box. Penley box wasn't much bigger than this room. So when you got into a tassel, I didn't because I wasn't big enough to throw anything around, throw gloves at a guy. They would have to sit together.

So if you had somebody like Ernal Priest that just beat the crap out of some poor guy, then the guy had to go and sit beside him in the pen. And then if they had a brouhaha and you had like seven players, I can remember Dad and Jim, kind of stuck in a little corner in their seven place. It was out next. Oh, yeah, you, get over. Well, it was a good old days, I guess. Now, after you graduate, you go to Vermilion in college.

Yeah, scared stuff. Again, I get to college, never been away from, home. You're given a roommate. So I was picking my stuff, hauled it into the room. I'm sitting there and I'm going, well, this isn't all that bad. And then this guy walks in, weighs two-fitty, hair down to his waist, and sits cross-legged on his bed with a water pipe. And I'll think, I'm dead again. And his name was Jim Miller. and he was great. Yeah.

But never being away from home, you thought, oh. Yeah, you're... And it was actually the best two years of my life, the people you met, still friends with him. A lot of fun. Now, you told me something new that I did not know before we got on here. You played football at college. Yeah. Now, just a short stint, or...

I played part of... The last half of the year, before hockey started sort of thing, and then kind of got tailed into hockey sort of thing. But they had a good team. They had lots to pick up, you know. Was that 11 man? Yeah, that was 11. That was the big thing.

Yeah. And did you enjoy football? Again, you're not big enough to, other than I could run fast, probably catch the ball. but it's a big man sport or a tough man sport. I don't know how tough I was. I think you're pretty tough. I think you're selling yourself short.

Telling you before, they had one guy, his name was J.R. James Robinson. And a little bit crazy, he'd do anything. And they'd dress them up in a grilla suit. And they'd pull into, I think it was Bonnyville. and they tie him to the bus. And then the whole game, he just throw himself against the bus and growl and roll around. And all the players, everybody would be looking at them like,

what is that? So they have a guy in a gorilla suit tied to the team bus. Yeah. Chain to the team team. Yes. Yeah, this big logging chain. Yeah, holding the back. And did it mess with teams?

I think it did because he never stopped performing. The whole time he was chained there, he was banging against the bus and yelling and growling. What did your team think of it? Oh, they loved it, you know. But they parked the bus where they knew everybody was going to watch. Everybody was going to watch. So everybody was focused on that, not the football game. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you played college hockey as well. Now, did you get picked up by that team, or are you just going to college? No, I was going to college. They had tryouts, and so just a whole bunch of us went to the tryout, and then they picked from there. And did you guys have a good team? We ended up winning the lead. Now, stop here.

You won the league, but it was a men's league, right? It wasn't different colleges? Yeah. It was called the Central Hockey League, Centennial Hockey League. Centennial Hockey League? Yeah. I don't think it's even a league anymore. Who would you be going around playing, though?

We played Vagerville, Lacklubish, Elk Point, two hills, team out of Vermilion. And you get one rookie of the year. year that year as well. Yeah, that came as a big surprise. I started off pretty slow because my game, I would say, was skating and stick handling. It wasn't playing as a team. And so when I started, I was just busy trying to go around everybody. And then we had an excellent coach, Owen Klauston. and he worked with me, and he was a very positive guy, and he got me working with my line, I guess. And then he started working on me and says,

you've got a really good shot. Why don't you use it? And I'm going, well, I don't have a good show. Yeah, but all of a sudden I had a good shot. Most of my goals and stuff were deaking. I wasn't shooting much at all. Which goes back to the, in the old All-Star days, when they broke a stick, when you break a stick now,

it's right in the middle of the shaft. When the All-Stars broke a stick, it was in the blade. So if the blade was this long, half of it would break off. That was the weakest part. Yeah. And so you'd had a blade about that long.

And so all the kids would go down. And after we scraped the ice, we'd go grab these broken sticks, which had the shaft and a little bit of blade like that. And could you ever shoot with that? You couldn't stick handle, but you could just fire the puck. You could pick top corner

because you only had that much hitting the ice or hit in the pocket, and you got really good. And that's probably where you learned to shoot, eh? Yeah, we didn't want full, we didn't want full blades. Just give me the half. Well, I got to ask, Dustin mentioned something about a humidifier story in college, I don't know what the heck he's talking about. They were always playing.

They talk about hazing and all that stuff. In the back of the bus, they call it a tape job. They strip you down and they give you a tape job, and then they help you take the tape off. And so this one guy, He was dead against it, George Bowser. And he fought it a lot. And so when they got together and they said,

we got to get George, how are we going to get George? His roommate played on the team. His nickname was Turkey. And so they snuck in his room when he wasn't there. and peed in his humidifier. Because it's humidified. He lived by his humidify. If you talk of a health nut maybe or something,

everything about him was, you know, humidifier, clean air, all this stuff. And our room was two doors down. And you could hear down those hallways, everything that was going on. So they peed in its humidifier and they waited. And Turkey said every night you could set your watch. George would get into bed, get out of bed, turn his humidifier on, get into bed. And it would only take about 10 minutes and the room was yellow. And you could hear the yelling and the screaming.

But they got them. And that was probably worse than a tape job for George because he lived and died by his humidifier. He lived in a bit of fire. Yeah. College was fun. A lot of fun. We had brawls, which I'm not a fighter, but we had some good guys on there. We had guys that also played on the wrestling team, and the wrestling team won Alberta.

that year as well. So they were good guys. I got pictures of them. They taped their ears back. And there's like a rabid dog. And so we go into Laclabish. And we might have mooned him on our way in. I can't remember.

On the team bus. On the team bus. The hockey? Yeah. Yeah. And then we were up on them 10-5, something like that, and then it got Western. And that's when the wrestlers came in. Out in the stands.

Yeah. And we had great support, great support. They'd have a bus for us and then a bus for all our college. And like the college would fill the bus and they had a great big drum. And it was like a bunch of natives. There'd be like six of them beating on the drug. And their favorite saying was giver, one, two, three, giver. And actually in two hills, we ended up with the cops coming in because they had a brawl.

That might have started when one of the college people streaked the ice. But it's that two hills that the same arena that you just, just finished playing. We played them in the final, and they'd won the league three or four years in a row. They were a very good team. And we were down eight to two in game five, and we came back and beat them in overtime. I remember that. Yeah, I bet you the bus ride was a bit of a blur. Oh, yeah. And And there was another guy. We called him Wally Unusual. His name is Wally Musial.

He'd meet the bus at the top of the river hill as we were coming into town. Every time we were coming back, wearing a buffalo robe with nothing underneath it. He'd walk out in front of the bus. The bus would stop. He'd flash us. And he'd say, how'd you do, guys? We won. Good job.

And he'd walk away. And you'd go. Where's this guy go? Every game. Yeah, he was there to meet us. We ended up winning the next games and won it at home. And then there was a gigantic party. Just, it was a lot of fun.

Senior hockey now, well, actually, going to Meadow Lake and playing this year and maybe it's the deeper you get into Saskatchew and the more it's like that but the fans in Meadow was unbelievable it was pretty cool to play and something like that but you don't see that a ton much more like is that just it's easier to get around

so people are yeah I don't know when we played Laspburn Paradise Hill it was jam packed. Like you're talking stand room only. Wall to wall. Laspburn stood on the far side. Hillman stood on our side. And they'd yell and scream.

It was just a con, it was packed, jam packed. And lots of people knew people from, you know, Paradise Hill and Lashburn and stuff like that. actually one time we're playing uh i want to say it was lashburn and joey carmett he brought his pet skunk in and he let it go on the lashburn side and it'd been descended and i think he called it pedal or something like that like that i don't know we're on the bench there and all of a sudden you see the people on the far side they stand up and then every single you're all the same you see the people on the far side they stand up and then everybody starts going as fast as he can that way and we're going

what is going on and like you can only go so far in the silver dome and then you hit the end and so they ran all the way down to the end and joey just let his skunk go and then and then and the skunk thought this is fun so he just followed them and then joey walks down there and oh There you are, pedal. Picks up his skunk. Takes a bat. That's probably a story for a different damn why a guy has. A skunk is a pet.

I know. Yeah. I don't know. That's Joey. So you play college hockey. Yeah. You get rookie of the year. Yeah.

That was a surprise. We were having dinner. I had no idea. and I guess probably voted on by the teams I don't know and they just announced it over the loudspeaker at dinner at college in the middle of classes and it just a big surprise me I didn't expect that

that's cool so you played one more year after that played one more year after it and then hung it up and got your pilot license no actually I more or less hung it up the year after we won it and went after my pilot's license and I was dating a certain redhead

and I was a little bit twidderpated and yeah so you get your pilot license yeah and you hang up your skates and you're dating a woman and then you have some flying shenanigans

out here too yeah yeah Yeah. I skated better than I flew. No, I knew you had your pilot license, and I've heard the odd story. I've heard that, well, maybe you can elaborate on it. T-Ping, Helmand, I think, correct? The which? T-Pee and Helmand?

T-Pee. T-Ping. Toilet paper. Oh, yeah, yeah. Grandma tell you that? Well, maybe. That was initiation. They were trying to make me,

I think put peanut butter on the toilet paper and sell it to people or something. So I thought, what I should do is I'll just grab the end of the toilet paper and throw it out into the crowd. And it went all the way to the back. Yeah, it didn't go well. So what was going on down below? Oh, and the plane? So you're flying over?

No, that was initiation. No, plane, we were over at Nobles, and we said, we'll find you deer, so I forget who was with me. It might have been Ardell. And we were flying around, found some deer, and tied some toilet paper with a little map on it to a rock and dropped it. Delta. And did it work? Yeah. And we flew around over top and the deer, we could hear them because they were noisy.

And the deer were going, what is going on? And they were long gone before the guys ever got there. And I kind of, we'll move on for your fly. But I got to ask, dive bombing in the far past trash? No, it was out in. one of Olson's fields. And at that time they had Argos, which were six-wheeled or tracked,

and they go through water and mud and all that stuff. And Ardell and Peter, and there was three of them with a whole bunch of guys. And they were out screwing around on a early spring on a field, chewing up mud and just having fun. And Danny Snyder and I were in a two-seater. and said, there's Oli, let's scare him.

So we were at about 1,000 feet, cut the motor, put the nose straight down right on them, and just let her go. And she just kept building up speed until your tachometer goes, or your speed, goes green, yellow, red.

If you go to red, the wings fall off. So we got it into the yellow and thought, well, that's probably good enough. Fet it the full power, pulled back on the stick. The motor revved up, but nothing happened. The nose came up, and we were going so fast that it just kept mushing and mushing and mushing and mushing towards the ground. and supposedly until the wings catch lift and the wings caught lift about 11 feet off the ground and shot us back up there like a slingshot scared the crap out of us scared Ardell and all them

guys everybody went home they went home we went back oh I didn't do that again but that's why probably shouldn't fly. That's awesome. Yeah. And then Gerald Weighill was my teacher and one time it's the old Lloyd Airport

we're taxing out and Nelson Lumber had a U-2 they called it. It's a twin engine, wings above, and a big belly on it. And they came in and forgot to put the landing gear down and landed on their belly in front of us.

Everybody was okay. Everybody was okay. Lots of sparks. And Gerald says, and remember to put your landing gear down. Yeah, don't get it. So you win rookie of the year.

You kind of play a year after that. You get your pilot license. Now you start having kids. You go back to the farm. arm. Yep. Then you start playing senior again? Yeah, yep.

That was about the time probably Gord came back. Came back. What was it like having a guy who was, what, a step away from the show? Oh, yeah, Gord was a pro. When he came back, he was just above us. And he could skate, shoot. check and he was just that much faster than everybody and his hits were demoralizing to the other team because he would hit a guy and it was just devastating

but I was talking to him the other day something about a shot we play hockey at 1030 in the morning and he says ah my shot was never good and I said well I remember when you came back and Freddie Pepper was the net and you stood on the dot in one of the circles and told them I'm going to put it right here and you did it four times in a row and Fred knew it was going there and there was nothing he could do about it so he was it was pretty darn good when he came back when when I'm at the time in my life now where I got two little kids under well almost three now she's almost three when you were having kids and still playing senior

at what point did you go I just don't know if I can keep doing this like was there a moment I had too many kids that was my problem by the time we had Harley then I was getting into coaching

Jason and all and it was just getting too much that and I started losing my mind I feel that every once in a while now. Yeah. I got a short fuse on ice at times. Yeah. Well, I've gone through all my hockey where when they hit you, their elbow is at your ear.

And they would just say, well, you're not tough enough, eh? Well, I got to the point I just had enough of that. And then it boiled over. And so I was just getting too angry, too fast, too easy. And I thought, eh, I just, and I was coaching kids, and they were just going 100 miles an hour. And went from there. I'd love to go down the coaching rabbit hole,

but we could probably be here for another hour. So maybe we'll leave that for a different time. what I was wondering, and I'd talked to the siblings before, you took a little bit of hiatus from playing hockey. Probably, I would assume, roughly in your mid-40s when you started trucking long haul. Yeah. To, I don't know, you mid to late 50s.

Yeah. What was it like? Because now you talked about Skate McGord Redden the mornings now you're skating with a group of guys around your age where you're the young guy again yeah um you just went and played in a never sweats tournament right with a over 50 yeah over 50 like what's that been like going where i almost thought you couldn't or you didn't think you could play anymore like and then all of a sudden finding this group and getting back into it And maybe what's that experience been like?

First of all, the guys, a great bunch of guys. That makes a total difference. If you were, you know, if there was whacking and hacking and all that, you wouldn't do with it. But the other thing, too, as you get older, well, especially when I hit 60, I was sore all the time, and I thought, boy, if I get on skates, it's going to be a wreck, eh? And I was surprised that when I got on skates, it felt really good. And it all come kind of back to you, eh?

and there was no pain. So I'm sore before I play, while I play, it's great, and I get off the ice and I go, oh, that's sore. But now playing three times a week, and it's a lot of fun. And it's, I'm not losing my mind. When I quit, I was losing my mind, eh? Because you just had a lot of anger in you from it. When I started, I quit when I was 18.

So at 18, I remember working at Westcan and being like I'm done. I've been told too many times at junior camps that I was too small. Like, I'm just tired of that. Being tired, told you're not good enough, essentially. And then I got the call from Larry, as we all remember. Or maybe I should explain, I got a call on a Friday, saying, hey, you want to come play hockey out in Ontario? And by Monday morning, I was gone.

I was down there. I never looked back. And now you look at it. And geez, that's a pretty fateful call that Friday, right? But now what I hear at 32, there's a lot of guys in the league call me an old boy. Yeah. The refs call me old boy. And I keep going like, geez, I don't feel that old.

And I look at you playing hockey at 62 now, enjoying it the way you are. You talk about Des. Yeah, McMillan. McMillan. He's 70. When he played with the old Darth Stars, he probably won a couple of championships. With Helmand, yeah. And he was a good player.

Yeah. And he's now 70. He's 73. 73 installed plant. And has great stories. Actually, you should do this with him. Do this with him. Well, let's see if I can get him on.

Because he went from the All-Stars to Fort St. John. I believe he went to Weyburn. And he was in the system for a while. He said he wished, he kept his first check. I want to say it was 17. dollars but I don't know but he's tons of stories absolutely next time you see Gord Redd you should shake his hand and thank him because all the stuff that you do in your hockey was what I learned from him learn from Gord yeah so the stuff behind the net the countering

all that stuff came from Gord came from Gord yeah just to go back to the time you took off. Is that maybe one thing you look back on and go, man, I wish I hadn't put the equipment down? I mean, you had five kids. Heck, I just talked to Ken Rutherford and he's got five kids, right? And I don't know how the heck he finds time to do half the stuff he does. Yeah. But with five kids and we were, Jay was 10 and I was born essentially, right?

Like 76 to 86, you got 10 kids, you got 10 kids and you're 30. So I'm sitting at 32 and I got two. Like I'm a little bit behind you. I actually don't know how we had the last two because we spent all our time coaching going to games and mom would go one way and I'd go the other. And then when we had five, it just made it just that much more. And then you guys were playing ball and like probably didn't have time. it was it was pretty constant and you guys did really well in all your you know between the hockey and ball there's a lot of provincials and stuff like that yeah but it all takes time you got to

give up something yeah and uh i know that day's coming you're right everybody asked how many years i got left and i go i want to play until i frank trombly what 20 years yeah yeah but i look at des and i go maybe I shouldn't look at it like I got to quit playing I got to quit playing playing senior probably at some time but playing hockey can go until you're 73 and in that case I got like 40 some years left I would say don't quit senior until you'll know when when guys start passing you I mean you know I mean I hacked you because I couldn't catch you anymore

A funny little story for the listeners is this is probably three, four years ago at Christmas, the Newman family rents ice at the home on rank, and we go down and we skate for an hour. Started out with five and now there's like... About ten, I think. Ten? Family's getting bigger. We're all competitive. And I remember Lee Simons tells me every time I sees it.

But essentially I went around down. Dad, I just come off playing college hockey, right? And Dad, I stick me in the face, and we almost had a scrap there at Center Ice. Dad goes one way, I go to the other. Jay comes up to me after me. And goes, you know, maybe we need to calm this down a little bit. We're not going to have a Christmas if we keep playing these games.

Yeah, I was always competitive. Even when I took you guys down the rink, like mom would be tired of kids being around so we she had the key so we'd go down the rink and just cut loose for like four hours and uh go see in the morning and go who chewed up the ice a small town hockey when you can squeeze into the rink and nobody knows but yeah don't your body starts to give out, don't quit until you can't do it anymore.

Well, it's cool to see you playing again. I mean, I did notice it at the family skate this year. We didn't come to blows, but I couldn't get around you. Two of the guys that we skate with are 83. Yeah. And not that they're doing a lot, but they're out there. Yeah. Yeah, that's, I think you have to, I mean.

Yeah. And it's a fellowship. Just, it's just good to see the guys every time you get there. Everybody's happy to see everybody. Yeah. Whereas, you know, 30 years ago, you were trying to run each other into the boards, eh? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm going to leave it there.

I want to thank you for coming on. I've really enjoyed this. I think we need to do it again, because, I know the siblings want me to talk to you about coaching because he coached with how many people, but I want to give it to do. I coached with the best. I coached with Gord, who's just a wealth of information. I coached with Dave McLean, and he's just a wealth of it. I couldn't have tied myself to two better guys.

Yeah. And just learned a time. I was just a big sponge. Well, we're over an hour. So I think what we'll do is we'll table that for the next time. I'll have you back on. And we'll talk about some coach and stuff. And maybe if you enjoyed that more than playing or maybe go down that rabbit hole and see where it leads us.

When you're winning, it's a lot of fun. Winning solves all problems. That's right. A win is a win as a win. That's right. Okay. Well, thanks, Dad. Yep.

Thank you.