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The best and sometimes only skating was directly after the first freeze. From the first day it would only become less ideal. It was the texture of the first freeze. Then the maybe after a few days the ice skim sticks after-which each day it gets a little thicker. A number of factors were necessary to be in confluence and these convergences would affect the quality of the freeze. The temperature must get down below 32 degrees and hold in the following daytimes. If it were windy on the night of the first freeze the ice might be rough and lumpy and not good skating. The beginning was in the morning where one would see a very thin frozen skin on the surface of the channels. Often the channels froze before the lake. If this did not melt in the daytime and the cold temperatures held on, the second day the ice might be doubled in thickness.
The thickness meant thick enough that it would hold you if one kept moving without cracking, but you might fall through if you fell down. Skating in terms of time was so limited, that even though I had fallen off the monkey bars at school in the sixth grade and broke my wrist and had it in a cast up to my elbow for six weeks, I skated anyway with my arm in a sling. The thing was not to fall down and I didn't. Skating on ice so thin, you learned to skate without falling. If you fell moving fast the slide would not allow a break through. If you fell straight down the concentrated weight might break the ice straight through.
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