Back in the 70s when everybody was giving everybody else noogies and identifying the latest perma fry and remembering their after grad party and noting who was still an after grad people used to say talk to the hand the face don't want to hear it now people are talking to their hands in a different way looking down at the gadget in their palm I've seen couples on a bus sitting side by side listening to their tunes with their ear buds in texting each other and periodically catching each other's eyes smiling more recently I've seen people wired for sound and email making their way inexplicable to the transitway platform when no bus was visible or audible apparently OC Transpo's GPS told them the bus was about to arrive I've always enjoyed watching the double deckers cruising onto the horizon like ships in the mist I always thought talking to the hand was something chumps do but what do I know I can't even key my email

Squeak screamed like every other coach I had but somehow I don't think he was afraid of the four horsemen of the apocalypse even if he did remind me of ring wraith Nazgul with his smoker's hack and colourful vocabulary Squeak often entered the dressing room after the First Period and told us we were skating like old ladies and that our scoring production was horseshit and that we weren't hitting and it was hitting that won games because it tired the other team out to prepare for Squeak's training camp the Calgary Mustangs named after the car that was hoisted on a pedestal prairie public sculpture advertising art the way we called crude oil Texas Tea and it had nothing to do with the Beverly Hillbillies and sponsored by the local Ford dealership Maclin Ford then on McLeod Trail we took power skating with Howie Meeker's Hockey School at Rose Kohn Arena after that it was Deal Cassidy'sCalgary Booster Club Hockey School and g

but I knew Squeak after his glory days on the ice he had been a high scorer but whether he showed any hustle or was a cherry picker it made a difference but unless he used to dig for the puck he would never saw like Gordie Howe he had played right wing my position maybe like his politics and whether he used his elbows in the corners or winded defenders with the butt end of his stick to the solar plexus like Gordie nobody's saying now in those days I didn't know much about those things politics I mean except that if you lived in Calgary you were probably a So Cred and listened to Ernest Manning's evangelism on the radio and had been complicit in saving funny bucks and if you shifted your allegiances it was probably only as far as Herbert W. Armstrong or his son Garner Ted Armstrong and the World Wide Church of God The World Tomorrow today out of Pasadena California these were before the days when people were gone but not away Alberta ha

Squeak Leopold made the ice for the Stampede Corral in those days there were no Hitmen only the Centennials and Squeak kept the ice before that was fashionable he had been a junior hockey player before that Edmonton Oil Kings Calgary Stampeders Drumheller Miners Trail Smoke Eaters there were a lot of junior hockey leagues and teams at that time Canadian-American Western Central Professional Alberta Senior and I'm sure that was a factor in the job he got it might have helped that he had tried out for the Chicago Blackhawks 3 times when you're played with Stan Mikita getting cut is not a disgrace and in some circles was even quite respectable To be continued.