One day many years ago, at a time when I still used to spend more than five minutes in the barber’s chair, I dashed into a local tire store, ran right past the tires and bought a hockey stick. Some guys I knew were getting up a game and I had nothing with which to bash the puck around, on the off chance it ever came to me.
I must have been in a hurry that day, as it seems I didn’t hang around the store long enough to buy any tape to use to bind up the blade. Or maybe the store owner told me I didn’t need tape, as the blade was covered in fiberglass and was already strong enough. All I know is, the stick remained tapeless that day. And every day for the next almost 30 years.
If I used my stick for hockey more than a couple dozen times over the next three decades, I’d be amazed. Nevertheless, despite its rare appearance in a hockey rink or on a pond, it became one of the few possessions with which I would not part as I moved from farm to town and from town to town over the years. Golf clubs got sold, my hockey helmet disappeared, even skates came and went.
But the stick stayed. It somehow even survived one of my moves which was to the province of Alberta, 2,000 miles away. In preparation for that momentous journey, I sold or gave away almost everything thing I had. Except, I guess, the stick.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t as if I took it bed with me every night. Many times its status was downgraded from hockey stick to just plain stick, as I grabbed it and stuck it here and there for various purposes unrelated to Canada’s national sport. To this day, it has two tiny nail holes in it, half way up the shaft, permanent reminders that it was once put to use in one of the renovation projects at my current house, to prop up something or other. In fact, I vaguely remember considering, from time to time, chopping off its blade to make it more useful as a construction tool. Somehow, it survived.
So, when I unexpectedly ended up on the ice a couple of years ago helping out with my son’s team of five-year-old hockey players, the old stick finally made a comeback in the role for which it was originally designed when it was made in a factory in Victoriaville, Quebec, back when Bobby Hull was still in the National Hockey League.
Somewhat embarrassed, I would line up my old stick next to the other trainers’ newer sticks in the rack outside the dressing room. Their sticks were well taped and shiny, with blades that curved gently and modernly. My blade was as straight as a wooden match stick. Beside the sleek, pricey sticks , mine looked like a rusty old pickup truck on a new car lot.
So I started looking around my tire store for a new one but could never quite settle on a replacement.
Then a strange thing started happening. Twice, in a short period of time, guys came rushing into the dressing room to ask, “Who owns that old stick outside?” Bashfully, I’d reveal my connection to it, until I realized that they actually thought this thing was a treasure, not an embarrassment.
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And before the season ended I had an offer from one of the coaches to take my stick off my hands. He said he’d replace it with any new stick of my choosing. This was at a time when a fancy new stick could cost hundreds of dollars. He wanted to mount it on the wall of his rec room which he had turned into at bit of a hockey shrine.
And here is where I was reminded of a quirk of human nature that never changes. In the instant that this other man expressed such an interest in my old hockey stick — a stretch of lumber I’d thought so little of that I actually drove nails through it at one time — its value in my eyes soared. The day before I could have lopped off the blade and used the shaft for a garden stake. Now, in light of the fact that someone else wanted it so badly, I would have lopped off my own arm rather than trade it away.
And here’s another funny thing. Where I’d pick up my stick anytime and anywhere and press it into service for any number of purposes from ice hockey and road hockey to propping open doors, I no longer wanted to use it anymore. And I didn’t want my son to either, though he used to have a ball dashing up and down the driveway with it.
One day around this time I stood aghast at the sight of my stick, now partially taped, leaning against a wall in the garage. My son had decided to dress it up a bit. But to me, in my newfound awareness of the old stick’s heightened value, it was as if someone had put shorts on the statue of David.
I have no choice now but to go out and buy a new hockey stick to replace the old one I won’t use, sell or trade away. The only thing I can do with it is mount it on my wall, of course, and forevermore worry that someone might steal it. Better yet, I should have it insured and tucked away in the attic where nobody can use it, see it or play with it, in the manner of all similar treasures and antiques.
With some things, it seems, it is only when they are of no use that they become of any value.
©2004 Jim Hagarty
