Getting the puck out of there…

Rural communities have been bled white…no wonder they’re voting red

Quite frankly, I couldn’t care less about hockey.

I know it’s played on ice with a puck, a stick, and a lot of fisticuffs, but beyond that, it’s just a bunch of big guys on skates.

Small towns and rural communities…those I care about.

Eveleth, Minnesota, population 3,493, surely qualifies as a small town. Located out there among the mines and forests of the Mesabi Range, it’s also unquestionable rural.

Now when I think of Eveleth I think of two things…the Whistling Bird, best Jamaican jerk chicken on the Range. just a hop and a skip over in Gilbert, and the World’s Biggest Hockey Stick – hockey is a really big deal in Eveleth. Then again, hockey is a really big deal up and down the Iron Range, for that matter, hockey is a really big deal most places in Minnesota – the time and places I grew up in being the rare exception. In fact, hockey is such a big deal on Minnesota’s Iron Range they built the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame up there -- in Eveleth.

Now Halls of Fame don’t just get plunked down here or there at random. The Pro Football Hall of Fame is in Canton, Ohio, because that’s where the NFL was founded. Every Little Leaguer dreams of making it to Cooperstown, the place, legend has it, the first game of baseball was played. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland, Ohio, home of Alan Freed, the disk jockey who first called rock and roll “rock and roll.” The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is in Springfield, Massachusetts, the town where Dr. James Naismith nailed peach baskets to the wall at either end of a local gym, tossed in volleyball and, in 1891, a new sport was born.

It only follows that since hockey is really Canada’s national sport the original Hockey Hall of Fame is in Toronto. Establishing a U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame had nothing to do with tariffs, trade wars, or Canadian statehood … the U.S. and Canada were best buds back in 1973 when the U.S. Hall of Fame opened its doors. It was built in Eveleth because Eveleth and the other little towns on the Range cranked out more great hockey players for U.S. college, Olympic, and pro teams than anywhere else in the country. Iron Range winters meant a lot of ice time and not a whole lot else to do…it was a natural. Like having the Halls in Canton, Cooperstown, Cleveland and Springfield, having hockey’s Hall in Eveleth, on the Range, was also a natural.

Unfortunately for Eveleth, natural is far from the NHL’s dominant characteristic. For a sport played on a sheet of ice, there’s nothing natural about hosting teams in places like Florida, Texas, Vegas, and L.A. – places where the coldest day wouldn’t freeze a Popsicle. On top of that, the NHL championship games are played in June. I can’t help but think that lack of respect for what is and ought to be contributes to the fact that the board of directors of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame are giving serious consideration to moving the Hall from America’s hockey heartland to downtown St. Paul…simply because – tradition be damned -- there’d be more folks passing through the gift shop.

Once again, the powers-that-be are poised to take away something important and meaningful to folks living out in small town America. For the folks in the metro adding the Hall of Fame to the lobby of the Xcel Energy Center will be just one more thing to tie up traffic, nothing more than a merchandising ploy for pro sports – which characteristically exhibit a community loyalty worthy of Benedict Arnold.

On the other hand, for the folks living up on the Range, the Hall is a place of real local significance … not to mention economic importance. I’m indifferent to hockey, but still I have a visceral interest in this – a number of those dedicated hockey fans will take a short hop to Gilbert and help keep the bird whistling, that way, when I come to town, that great jerk chicken, pork, or shrimp will be waiting for me.

For more than a half century our small towns and rural communities have been bled white as the local economy shrank, local employers and retailers closed, and too many of the best and the brightest debarked for big city opportunities that just weren’t there in their hometowns. Feeling ignored, devalued, and disenfranchised, rural folks looked around and saw themselves as used-to-haves rapidly becoming have-nots all the while folks in the city seemed to be doing just fine. This is not sitting well, and these folks know exactly what they mean when they vote to make America great, again.

They know what they’ve lost.

They see what they’re losing.

It’s time to put a stop to it.