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The Skating Rink
Mildred Lee, il. Ilse Koehn (cover)
1969, The Seabury Press
One thing stood out,
raw and bitter, in his mind: he was his father’s son and doomed to failure, no
matter what he undertook.
Tuck Faraday, 15, is a poor country kid in rural southern
Georgia. Alienated by a stammer that’s
evoked constant ridicule from family and classmates since he was little, he’s
ready to quit school the moment he turns 16.
Then he meets Pete Degley.
“Degley’s the name,”
he said. “Pete Degley.” His handshake made Tuck feel older than his
fifteen years and he liked the feeling.
Pete Degley told Tuck he was going to put a roller-skating rink here
beside the highway, confiding in him so naturally that it wasn’t till
afterwards, when he thought the whole thing over, that Tuck saw anything
unusual about it.
The rink is going up close to Tuck’s bedraggled house, where
his bitter father Myron is struggling to keep a chicken farm going and his
exhausted stepmother, Ida, labors every winter over a foully smelly and
recalcitrant oil stove. Tuck, staring at
this despairing failure every day, is drawn to Pete’s optimism and the sense
that his dream, his skating rink, could actually succeed.
Pete has reasons of his own for talking to Tuck. His young wife, Lily, is a wonderful skater
and Pete, with a bum knee and a couple decades on him, wants a young male
skater to pair her with, as an exhibition to draw crowds and to give skating
lessons. So he trains the two in secret.
Curiously, as Tuck gains skill and confidence, he also gains
insight. He finds compassion for his
teasing little sister Karen, loutish brothers Clete and Tom, and even his
parents.
About the Author
1908-2003
Mildred Lee Scudder was born a Baptist minister’s daughter
in Alabama and spent her childhood travelling around the rural south, a region
that appears in most of her books. She
worked as a librarian at the University of Alabama, and married James Scudder
in 1947. It also appears that she had
married Edward Schimpff in 1929, and had 2 children.
Other Books
The Invisible Sun (1946)
The Rock and The Willow (1963)
Honor Sands (1966)
Fog (1972)
Sycamore Year (1974)
The People Therein (1980)
The Bride Of the Lamb
Links
UA list of Alabama authors
Other Editions:
Interesting, the metamorphasis from the first edition to the paperbacks. Tuck seems to go from being a kid to being a big teen to being John Travolta.
