Читать книгу Eavesdroppings - Bob Green - Страница 15

7 Tink Clark Dazzles Leafs

When I was a boy, the chance of seeing a National Hockey League team at training camp was remote. So when Wes Lillie said, “Let’s go down to the arena and watch the Toronto Maple Leafs work out,” I thought he was kidding. But he said it had to be true because his father, Frank, had heard it from Abby Kilgour, the Galt arena rink supervisor.

So down we went on a Saturday morning: Wes, his sister, Lois, and half a dozen boys from Lowrey Avenue. No trouble getting in. No security, no passes. Wes just spoke to Abby, and he said sure, but not to be pests and no autographs. We seemed to be the only spectators, and for our exclusive viewing, spread out before us like the players on one of those tabletop hockey games, were the Leafs, including Syl Apps, Dit Clapper, Gordie Drillon, Red Horner, and Turk Broda — names that Foster Hewitt hollered at us all winter.

We crouched like field mice behind the glass at the southeast corner of the rink, just below the gondola where, twenty-two years down the road, Wes Lillie, like Foster Hewitt, would call the play-by-play radio account of the Galt Hornets chasing the Allan Cup. During a skirmish, one of the Leafs’ players broke a stick and kicked it to the boards. Immediately, a youth leaped from a gate, skated madly down the rink, picked up the stick, and streaked back, stopping in a great spray of ice chips like Rocket Richard.

“That,” said Wes, “is Tink Clark.”

His real name was Ernie, but everyone called him Tink. He didn’t belong to the Leafs. He was one of Abby Kilgour’s “rink rats.” As such, he helped Abby water the ice (the Zamboni machine had yet to be invented), clean up the aisles and washrooms, and lead with a baton the Grand March on roller-skating nights.

A lot of kids made fun of Tink because he wasn’t what you would call a Rhodes Scholar. He just wasn’t cut out for school. Tink was born to tend that rink and did so superbly for more than thirty years, long after the Leafs there that day had retired.

The following Saturday we crept in to see the whole Maple Leafs team sitting on the boards watching what appeared to be a power-skating demonstration. It was Tink Clark clearing the ice with his wooden scraper. He was really flying and grinning from ear to ear. It had to be his finest moment, clearing that ice surface faster than any man alive while all the Leafs watched and marvelled. When he finished, one of the Leafs’ players took the scraper and had a try pushing it. He shook his head. The Leafs didn’t know it, but they had just had a preview of Eddie Shack.