In the winter of 1954, I was 12 years old and my brother Buddy Earl was 11. There wasn’t an ice-skating rink in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, but we did have a humongous cow pond. In a hard winter the pond froze solid. But that winter was mild, and in a mild winter you took your chances on the ice splintering apart.
We were not permitted to swim in the cow pond during summer, but come winter, it was a perfect place to play on the ice.
Having only winter boots as skates, my brother and I
