ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 6, 1996 TAG: 9602060055
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
... MAKE A HOCKEY RINK. That's what Dale Kratt and his 10-year-old son, Daniel, did in Southwest Virginia's inclement weather.
Dale Kratt loves the cold - he grew up outside Detroit. When winter came, he and his brother would open up a fire hydrant and build a rink for ice skating and hockey in the park across the street from their home.
The father of two didn't expect that sort of weather when he brought his family to Roanoke from California three years ago.
"People said, 'It hardly ever snows,''' Kratt said.
But when arctic air started blowing into the Roanoke Valley last weekend, Dale and his 10-year-old son, Daniel, got to work on a backyard rink. They got help from Dale's brother, David, who recently moved to Roanoke from Michigan - thinking he was moving away from the cold.
The back yard of the house on Golfview Drive Northeast slants a bit, so they took snow and mashed it down at the low end to build a flat platform. Then they wet it with a garden hose and leveled it off. Then more snow, more leveling, more water. Lots more water.
Dale stayed up until 5 a.m. Sunday working on it, putting on hourly applications of water. "I stayed up till, like, 1,'' Daniel Kratt said.
Then Dale was up until midnight Sunday putting on the final touches.
By Monday morning, the rink was ready. Daniel had a day off from school, and Dale took a vacation day.
The rink is a rectangle, 14 feet by 24 feet, with a low wall of packed snow surrounding it on all sides. Two beach chairs sit off to the side in the snow.
"We wanted to get it done quick," Dale said Monday. "Because we knew we only had a couple of days" - a couple of days, that is, before the temperature returns to a more Virginia-like level.
But he figures that even in the event of a thaw in the next couple of days, it's only a matter of time until the weather turns frigid again. The surface has a few ripples. But as the word spreads around the neighborhood and more kids skate on it, Dale said, "it'll flatten out."
Daniel plays Pee Wee hockey; Dale coaches. There's only one indoor rink in the valley - at the Roanoke Civic Center - so it's hard to get practice time. Now, with their own rink, they're going to get in as much ice time as they can.
"We're some of the few people around here who really like the cold," Dale said. "We look at Minnesota - we kind of envy them a little bit."
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: WAYNE DEEL/Staff. Dale Kratt and his 10-year-old son,by CNBDaniel, square off in a game of backyard ice hockey after a
laborious effort to fashion an ice rink. They say they are among a
proud few in Southwest Virginia who really enjoy
cold weather. color.