Huaco's Hijack

[Huaco Kid]

I was somewhere, right there, walking towards my car, and heard the most demonic screaming howl you ever heard. I ran to the cliff to see wtf.

It was a steam locomotive. Waaaay passed restoration. With some pullmans, waaay passed restoration. A huge rusting, inglorious, hulk, going 3mph.

I ran to get my camera, but it was around the curve by then.

[Huaco Kid]

Joey Chestnut, NYC's long-time hotdog champ, is not a big fat guido guy.

He might be a guido.

[Huaco Kid]

The BWP bat factory.

They make bats for a lot of of the MLB. You can take a tour, which I didn't. I looked through the windows and saw all the guys running the lathes.

You can hold the blanks, all custom, from which the MLB stars get their bats made. They buy them dozens at a time.

I bought a wicked-cool generic bat, off the shelf. Super thick varnished-up.

And the best story....

[Huaco Kid]

Some bat kid, said, "C'mon down! Pick one out."

He took me downstairs, where there was a warehouse full of bat racks in the basement.

But, going down the stairs, ten kids bolted passed, all elbowing us out of the way. Someone had seen a snake down there. They all grabbed a bat off the shelves. Just like the Furies.

It was under a 50gal drum.

I don't know how smart snakes really are, in central PA, but you probably don't want to be caught in a bat factory.

[Huaco Kid]

The MLB guys can pick which wood their bats are made of. They can even pick which area those trees come from. I guess they know.

The NHL guys probably do that too.

(In (the Smithsonian (?), is Babe Ruth's bat, that has a nail driven trough it, and hammered back. It was HIS bat.)

[Huaco Kid]

Some MLB guys get their bats in the hardest-hardest wood, and the softest-softest wood.

Depending on what they are about to do.

[Huaco Kid]

The NHL guys don't use wood, any more. I would. I wood (get it?)

They use whippy carbon-fiber.

Watch some goals, in slow motion, and watch what their sticks do. Sometimes they break, just drawing back.

When they whip right, they whip. That's where new slapshots come from.

[Huaco Kid]

I was playing adult hockey in NC. I needed a stick. (you never "need" a stick, you "want" a stick) (because your stick seems to be sucking)

In Raleigh, you can only buy sticks at the yuppie sports-stores. Cha-ching.

Amiss all the $90 sticks was a stack of $4 sticks. Russian words. Never heard of them. I was still looking.

And some guy walked up, and scooped up, a HUGE armload, ALL of the 40 $4 sticks, and walked off.

I probably should have got one.

[Huaco Kid]

In (Middle school?), I'd boil the blades of my sticks in Mom's stew pots.

"Why is my pot burnt and smells like you?!??"

I don't know.

[Huaco Kid]

And when it was melty, you'd jam the blade under the basement door, and jam a puck under it. Let it cool. And you'd have a 3" illegal curve.

Which worked a million games, until some kid skated to the spot, and pointed, screaming, "See? See? See?"

And then you get a penalty for an illegal curve.

I think I'm the only one that that, historically, ever happened to.

[tous]

20 minutes ago, Huaco Kid said:

The NHL guys don't use wood, any more. I would. I wood (get it?)

They use whippy carbon-fiber.

Watch some goals, in slow motion, and watch what their sticks do. Sometimes they break, just drawing back.

When they whip right, they whip. That's where new slapshots come from.

Al Macinnis was whacking 100 mile per hour slap shots from the blue line years before the carbon fiber twigs.

If he had had a whippy stick he'd have put one through the goalie.

Goalie guts are not pretty.

As a defenseman, i didn't need no stinking curve; just a stout twig to cross check those ***** forwards that dared to stand in front of my net.

[Huaco Kid]

If you give a, slight, cross into the chin-area, you need wood.

[Huaco Kid]

They said, in the olden days, the puck never came off the ice.

We learned that **** in Squirts. Aim for the goalie's neck.

They didn't have illegal sticks.

In the olden days, at Boston Gardens and NYC, they played on the ice, but didn't have walls.

If the puck and player came out, the crowd would push and kick you back into the game.

[Huaco Kid]

The puck never came off the ice.

Until Bobby Hull.

That ****** started it.

[Huaco Kid]

[Huaco Kid]

[Huaco Kid]

 

This is where all Horror Movies ever came from:

[Huaco Kid]

Our **** used to be made out of leather.

It would soak up sweat, and weigh 20lbs more,  and never come out until you retired.

I don't know what that guys got on his face.

It might protect your nose and cheeks.  But your eyes are getting pretty much much fucked up.

[tous]

I now declare this thread officially hijacked -- and it's all Huaco's fault.

Those NHL guys do a 40-second shift, come back to the bench and drink their bespoke magic hydration elixirs.

All through the game.

They can't go 40 seconds without drying out?

Heck, we had an old, rusty bucket and a tin dipper and if you got one swallow of tepid water you were lucky.

And no attendants handing out fresh, clean towels after  every shift.

But, we had fun.

[Huaco Kid]

I played backup-backup goalie.

One Super-Killer snow storm,  the goalie couldn't make (I could do a whole new thread on how bad Kittanning sucked.  They had chain-link for glass) and the backup goalie was in a ditch.  It was Me.

Our team didn't bring any goalie equipment,  but the rink had some stuff,  all moldy and misshapen,  where it had been stuffed under the stairwell, for the last ten years.

[Huaco Kid]

They warmed me up...

SLAP  SLAP SLAP KA-PWING SLLAP!!!

And then the horn went HOOOONNNKK!!!

Game on.

The one guy gave me a last easy slap,  that hit me right between the shoulder and neck.  This spot.   Made my whole arm go dead.

Then the horn went HONK HONK HONK.

Game on.

I played with a dead arm.  It wouldn't even move.  Dead.

I didn't really matter.

I'm a  bad goalie, anyway.

I got penalties being goal.  I'll do it again.

[Huaco Kid]

We had squirt-bottles of delicious Kittaning water.  Tasted like steel mill.  yum.

[Huaco Kid]

I never used the fat goalie stick to stop any shots,  I just used it to hit people.

It was 4" of hit-worthy.

You could get away with a lot,  but not all.

[Huaco Kid]

15 minutes ago, tous said:

They can't go 40 seconds without drying out?
 

I didn't know,  until Adult League,  where I worked for a Canadian company,  and they had ten teams...

One up. One back.

Americans don't know this.

You could skate, killer,  into their end, up,  and two seconds later, back to you end, back.

Change.

One up.  One back.

[tous]

I miss goalie fights.

Goalies skate to center ice, drop the masks, twigs and gloves, You wanna go? and they went.

Patrick Roy, Ron Hextall  and Mike Vernon used to do it a lot.

Heck, Patrick Roy could beat an opposing forward black and blue with his stick and blocker and no referee ever saw anything.

Professional hockey was more fun in the 1980.