REDZONIANS

Everybody get off to a good start so far this year? Shit, you can count on it here that I’ve done damned good-ok so far. Yupper and the year is only six days old, uh huh.

I pretty much figure that there were a few holiday tournaments that some of ya played in. You guys know how I feel about them. They’re right up there with pond hockey and road trips in my book (crap, over half of ‘em are road trips, ehh). Love every minute of them. Ya meet some cool folks and if ya get in a winning bracket you definitely get your share of games played. Hooie, maybe ya even play more then one game a day. Your gear doesn’t get a chance to dry and ends up smelling pretty ripe and all. You juggle your eating and sleeping habits a bit – all for some great days of playing.

I guess it doesn’t really matter throughout the year if it’s a holiday tournament, summer tournament or an invitational – they’re all good times. Ehh?

You win some but mainly you end up losing. It’s a select few that manage to hang together for the final victory and get to take home the trophy.

Hell, I’ve played in tournaments where we played in that final game only to lose. The teams that I’ve played on of course haven’t take losing lightly. On occasion, we’ve taken offense to that final handshake with just a smattering of fisticuffs instead.

Don’t shake your head at that. You know as well as I do that a good donnybrook is as memorable as a win. I’m thinkin that if ya disagree still, it just means that ya ain’t been there and ya ain’t done that.

Over the past few years I’ve done some researchin about why we have had so damn many losses along the way. More often then not there has been one team that just plain ass kicks tail on everyone else. Why? I mean, really, why? You know the usual responses that ya hear are “They’re a stacked team” or “They’re all former pros.” I’m sure you guys have heard the same questionable comments.

Yah, occasionally that may be the case.

But I’ve determined through some highly scientific analysis that that just ain’t true most a the time. If ya got just one particular team that just whoops on everybody, then ya got yourself a team of aliens playing in that tournament! No shit! No shineola! Aliens, dab-nab-it! And I ain’t talking about them illegal aliens that have jumped the fence to enter our borders. Nope. These dude’s are outer-space type aliens.

You’re thinking: that dude Jasper, has got a gear loose.

But I don’t. I’m tellin ya. I got the inside scoop on some classified government files that a friend of my brother’s friend’s friend, etc. managed to illegally extract off the internet. Its some valid honest to goodness shit.

These winning teams always show up and are registered from some far distant land that ya can’t even pronounce and have even less of a chance verifying. Like Skukumchuck, or Khatanga, or Olekminsk or maybe Thibaudeau. Where the hell are these places? How’d these guys get here to this hockey tournament, ehh?

I’m tellin ya that they aren’t from those places. They’re from someplace beyond our solar system. Guaranteed, that if you played in a tournament where one team overwhelmingly kicked everybody else’s ass then you’re also going to have some local reports of UFOs. Check it out. Do your own research, ehh. You’ll see.

According to the classified files, these weenies have been showing up for some years to compete in our sporting events. They like the competition I guess and as of late with all the identity theft issues and the modern security controls in place the tournaments are the only places that they can play. They’ve had a few guys that have played in the NHL over the years but they don’t really excel individually. This wasn’t discovered until Gretzky was in the league. The NSA thought that he might have been an alien that had been implanted in his family as an infant. Their reasoning for the study was that he was such a superstar yet was really a physical weakling (everybody knows that his upper body strength was always the weakest of any player on the teams that he played on). They couldn’t figure it out, but used him for some of the initial testing experiments.

The government has spent many years now developing an accurate test to determine whether someone is an alien or not. It used to be a blood test but most of the time you couldn’t get a decent blood sample unless there was a high stick injury or the results of an errant puck and a player’s face. I mean ya just can’t arbitrarily ask some one for a blood sample, can you? So they developed something else. Something that could be a little more indiscernible in its administration. They came up with a urine analysis.

All government employees and contractors that have security clearances now have to daily take this test to ensure that aliens haven’t infiltrated our secure ranks. The modern device is fairly similar to an EPT (early pregnancy test) and all ya have to do is piss on it. The chemical activation system on test strips, kind a like litmus paper, unfortunately, also indicates if you’re on steroids. If your piss turns the strip a shade of blue then, honey, you’ve been doing the juice. But if a red hue appears then you’re an f’n alien.

Like I said though, this handy little testing device is used within government ranks. When they want to check on the common public then they use a version that looks like a toilet bowl deorderizer. It comes in a couple of different forms: one with a wire hanger that can be hung over the edge of the bowl and one that looks like a hockey puck that is generally just dropped in urinals. Both version, prior to testing, are just a milky white color. But once they’ve been activated they either turn pinkish if an alien pissed on it or bluish if someone doing steroids whizzed on it. If I drizzled all over one of these detectors not a damn thing would happen.

So the next tournament that ya play in you might just be able to tell if you’ve got aliens or guys on steroids playing against ya by just checking in the can. If the NSA guys are on to some alien leads, and one team in the tourney is just creaming everybody else, then chances are you’ll notice the detection devices in use.

Word is, from that friend of a friend dude, that the government guys refer to the filthy rich pro athletes on steroids as “Bluebloods” because of the revealing color on the indicators.

“Redzonians”, apparently is the nickname that they’ve given to the aliens. The only time that I actually heard the term “Redzonian”, I thought he guy talking was referring to a guy on the ice that was playing just balls out with no fear. Guess I was wrong, ehh.

I pretty much believe all this shit and I don’t give a rat’s ass whether you do or not. But I’ve got one thing that I can’t figure out about these “Redzonians”. I mean they’re sure walking with wood, ehh? Kicking our asses from one end of the rink to the other. So here it is: How’d they learn how to play so damn good?

Jasper here walking with wood, but just bloody bewildered.

Wood to Smitty

We had some days of Indian summer and then winter came back with a vengeance. We had an ice storm first that took down the phone and power lines. I didn’t get any of that restored until just last night. So those of you who live and breath by my blog’s news and humor, I do wish to apologize and hope that this one’s a real good dinger for you.

I was snow bound for a couple of days but after that the roads got opened up and I was heading into town and catching some good hockey at my favorite watering hole. I did get to see the NCAA Division I final of the marketable Frozen Four series. Some really good hockey there. And I got to see some of the last games of the season that the NHL kicked out for us. Now were into Stanley Cup Playoffs which can only mean that I’ve got only about two more months to watch the sport that pumps my blood. Hang in with me folks – I can’t say that I have any favorites this year and as typical of my behavior I’ll be rooting for the underdogs in any game that I get to watch. I believe that a games going to be on in about an hour so I’ll see how much of this I can knock off before then.

If you read my blog on a regular basis you’ll notice this time that my north woods jargon is not being used. It may slip through if I don’t catch myself today but because this is such a somber work that I figured that I owed Smitty that much.

Being snow bound these past couple of weeks brought back the joyous memories of a time many years back where the snow and the cold and the woods had also held my vital spirit at bay.

Back in the ‘80’s I had a job that had me traveling a bit between here and there down in the lower forty-eight. Texas seemed to be one the predominate states that provided me with a survivable income. If it wasn’t San Antonio then it was Arlington or Houston where I set my bags down. The job was good but days out left me a bit drawn and in need of sober activities or I couldn’t face the next morning.

I had spent many a day in small communities doing my business and had discovered that the local Walmart was always a good place to meet and talk with the local folks. You guys know that I’m no uppity sort of guy so this level of socialization fit me just fine. Most of my heavy beer drinking and carrying-on happened when I was home and after a good skate. The metropolitan areas of Texas had their Walmarts too and my type of folks hanging around at them.

During one trip to the Houston area I hit up a short but good conversation with a sweet young thing working the cash register. Her name was Vickie and she was getting off work in about a half hour. I asked her if she’d join me for dinner at a barbeque joint up the street. She was a bit nervous I could tell and I just let it go when she said that she wasn’t sure if she’d be able too.

I took my purchase of a horror paperback back to my hotel and headed over to the BBQ joint figuring that she wouldn’t show but hanging on to the hope of her use of the word “able”.

I was about half done with my first fill-up of sweet tea when she showed up to my anxious surprise. She didn’t want to eat anything but would have some sweet tea too. We chatted for about an hour and I found out that she was only seventeen and dating a guy named Billy, a goalie for one of the New York teams. It seemed as though she was pretty much hung up on Billy but was seeking some fatherly advice from me because he was about my age. She had met him in the same sort of way that we met each other, but it had been in the off season when Billy was in town doing some fishing. Being the benevolent character that I am I was glad to counsel her. I don’t know why but the young ladies have always opened up this way with me. It must be my bear-huggish physique or something of that nature.

We chatted a few more times together during my stay and exchanged addresses and phone numbers. She knew that I played hockey too and said that someday she wanted to see me play. I’d looked her up every time that my travels brought me back to the Houston area. She was gorgeous but so young and wanted my great hug at the end of every visit together.

Vickie ended up marrying Billy and he gave her a son, Daniel Wayner Smith. Their marriage didn’t last too long though and she got pretty messed up over the crumbled matrimony. Our letters and phone calls were now more frequent and were much longer in length then earlier.

Billy was gone (the jerk) and she needed to support herself and little Daniel. The pregnancy had changed her body and she’d begun partying heavy. Her breasts had remained huge from the pregnancy and she decided that the only way she could make ends meet was to use what she’d got and started working at Little Ricky’s Cabaret. She tried using stage names of Robin the Hood and Nikita Kay but finally settled on Anna “Nickel”. My own thoughts now reminiscing: “Silver Dollar” would have been more appropriate.

It wasn’t until much later that I would realize the road that this divergence would be taking her and to her eventual demise and my pain. But still being quite young at heart at the time I too also enjoyed and partook of the lifestyle she had now taken on. But she still has such down times and I had the opportunity to lift her back up on occasion. One such time was that that is the one of this story.

She had finally decided that she had to see me play so I booked her a round trip ticket for a two game weekend. She got her mom to watch little Daniel and I picked her up at our local airport on Friday afternoon with hugs and kisses. We drove back to my cabin in the woods and I got her settled in. We were playing the Skukumchuck Selects at 7:30 so we didn’t stay long before heading off to the arena.

The Selects were a pretty fair team and gave us a good game. I checked for her in the stands at each time my defensive pairing went out on the ice and was pleased to see that she was both watching the game and seemed also to be fitting in good with the other gals. We won when Jingle’s tipped in a cross ice pass from Bronzy with a little over a minute left to play. Those brothers of mine have always played so well. I can’t believe how much I’ve enjoyed the fact that they decided to play hockey instead of becoming professional wrestlers or tennis players as part of their athletic skills.

Terry’s Tavern was cooking after the game and I can’t believe how stinking drunk Vickie and I each got. It was a wonder that we got back to the cabin without crashing somewhere along the way. She rode all the way back in my pickup snuggled up against me. Good wood was on my mind and she wasn’t acting in any way negative to the notion.

Yup, though strong desires and too much alcohol don’t allow fruition sometimes we crashed that night without any action only to wake up to the start of a hell of a snow storm. A real doozie of a storm had swooped in down from the Bering Sea and by the afternoon was just pounding us. By 6:00 pm when I like to leave for my games we had taken over three feet of fresh snow. With the wind blowing the way it was I knew that some of the low areas from the cabin to the main road would be completely drifted in maybe seven or eight feet or more. I figured that the game would be called because no one would be able to get out even in town and I wasn’t too worried because I kept the cabin well stocked and had plenty of fire wood.

Vickie was a bit worried though not being from the North Woods. So I did my best to alleviate her fears not realizing that in doing so I was also rousing her libido. Need I say more then for the next few days being snowed into my cabin we shared some of the greatest love making and pure sex of my life. She revealed to me her stage presence “Anna Nickel Smith” and just drove me nuts. We enjoyed each other for those few days and we joked with each other so much. She kept whispering in my ear “Come on Jaspy give some wood to Smitty,” taking on her own secret hockey player nickname with me.

Oh those days were wonderful! After one really tender moment she grabbed an empty Labatt bottle and spit some backwash into it, sort of recapped it and quickly set the bottle outside where it was about sixty below. She said that she wanted to preserve it for maybe future use. I laughed and said “Vicki, you are so nuts!”

She said, “Jasper, you have so many great qualities but I’m not ready for another baby. You’re getting old and when I’m ready again you might not have it. I’m going to keep that on ice until then and when I’m ready again for another child I want it to be yours.”

I just laughed it off but when she was finally able to head back to Texas she repacked that bottle in dry ice and had UPS send it to her gynecologist after a lengthy phone call. He said that he’d store it in a sperm bank for her.

We stayed in touch over the years but her lifestyle continued to change as she got famous. She ended up marrying some really rich guy that was way older then me. He died several years back and Vickie’s been fighting with his family over the inheritance. She called me once and said that it was time. My seed in cold storage was still viable and she was going to give it a try. I was pretty worried because she had now gotten way overweight and was doing some awful drugs due to the stress in her current life. She got way strung out and then wasn’t talking with me anymore. But she did have a baby girl; Danielynn she named her. I thought well maybe she is mine. Maybe it worked. I figured that I could be a good dad this late in my life; as opposed to earlier when I too was a party animal. She wouldn’t talk to me, she wouldn’t substantiate that I was Danielynn’s daddy. I kind of let it go, a little hurt but our flame I realized had burned out a long time ago. Never having a lot of money myself, I never considered trying to prove paternity.

Daniel Wayner Smith, her son died at twenty while in the Bahamas. Vickie completely fell apart after that and died of an overdose within the same year. She had become so famous and so rich that her death filled many a news report. Danielynn’s paternity became big news too because of this. I guess the courts finally ordered identification of her father and I became awfully anxious folks, let me tell you. Ends up it wasn’t me. I guess my little soldiers lost their oompf over the years.

Yeah life’s a bitch and then you die.

Sad for Vickie … sad for Anna Nickel Smith … sad for Smitty.

Sad for Daniel Wayner and Danielynn her kids.

Sad for Jasper Wheats for a short little bit.

But I’m still walking with wood. No doubt about that folks – no sirree! Ehh?