Lacing on your skates

I've noted before that I grew up in Michigan with its 2 weeks of summer and 50 weeks of ice.  Skating at the fairgrounds was the thing to do - perhaps the only thing to do - and I can remember it, the warming shed with the pot-bellied stove, wood floors and benches, and the one employee sitting near the only window keeping watch.

Next to him was a phonograph that played, via loudspeakers on the roof, a lot of polkas and Lawrence Welk.  We didn't pay it much mind although if you were going to ask Carol or Barb for a few turns around the ice hand in hand you were careful to ask them for a song that lasted more than 2 minutes.

My local town has a rink and it has music but I'm not sure if it is town music or some local FM station piped in or nothing at all.  I'm going to go on a crusade to get appropriate ice skating music there.  I'm not really but these kids (and adults) should have the opportunity to remember skating a half century later, hand in hand with the apple of your eye, the cold ice, blades making those shavings and gentle scraping noises, the lure of the warm shed and the stove and the sounds of Mr. Welk.