Sarah Palin and I have several things in common: we both have roots in Alaska; we were both photographed by the Mendenhall Glacier, and we were both hockey moms.
My life as a hockey mom got started when my son, Robert, was about six. He started playing in roller hockey in Brooklyn, skating at a rink at 53rd Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway. Joey Mullen, one of the best American born ice hockey players ever, got his start at that same outdoors rink. It was cold, gloomy and had no place to sit. You had to stand to watch. The only refuge from the cold was a pizza place across the street.
A year later, Robert was playing at Sky Rink in Manhattan. The “old” Sky Rink on was on the 16th Floor of 450 West 33rd Street, not far from the equally famous Cheyenne Diner. Hockey players, cabbies, clubbers, mobsters, hookers, parents, European tourists hit the Cheyenne for coffee and breakfast at 4 and 5 am. I miss the old Sky Rink: it was grungy, unfashionably painted a hideous blue, and stunk of hockey just like a skating rink should.
