Amsterdamians in the 1950s and 1960s enjoyed skating every winter at Hasenfuss Field on Midline Road just beyond Locust Avenue.

Many of the skaters walked there from the adjacent Rockton section.  Rockton is the area off Lyon Street, Clizbe Avenue and Locust Avenue near the now demolished Upper Mill of Mohawk Carpet Company.

“The skating rink was actually in front of (what is now Isabel’s) ball field between WCSS radio station and Burza’s bar,” recalled Gail Buchner Breen, who today lives in Schoharie and works in Amsterdam as Executive Director of the Fulton, Montgomery, and Schoharie Counties Workforce Development Board.

Hasenfuss Field was named for the first soldier from Amsterdam to die in World War II. Army PFC William Hasenfuss, Jr. of the 22nd Materiel Squadron died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Breen said she believed the fire department came and flooded the field in winter and it was lighted for night skating.

Breen and the other Buchner kids—her sisters Lee and Becky and brother Rocky—hurried through homework, dinner and dishes so they could go skating.
“We didn’t care how cold it was, and I remember skating until I lost all feeling in my feet,” Breen said.

Cars would pull over to watch the skaters.

“There was a cement block warming house, with bathrooms and benches,” Breen said. “You could check your boots at the counter for (I think) five cents. Some kids saved money by tucking their boots under the benches. You could also buy hot chocolate and candy at the counter.

· “Most of the girls wore windbreaker-type nylon parkas with layers of sweaters underneath. We all made pompoms from colored yarn for our skates – usually as close a match in color to the parka as possible.

“I remember that when we were younger skaters, my father always filed off the lowest tooth from our figure skates, convinced that otherwise we’d trip and fall. Actually, I did take a real spill once when I was nine or ten, but in my grandmother’s backyard--which was also occasionally flooded--emulating someone I had seen on the Ice Capades. That resulted in a number of stitches in my chin and a lasting scar.”

Breen and her family lived on Finlay Street in Rockton. Her parents—Gladys and Malcolm Buchner—have lived at the family camp in West Galway since 1982. Malcolm and his brother Lewis formerly operated Buchner Brothers Painting and Decorating.

· “In regards to the skating itself, we frequently used the scabbards from our skate blades as a way to hold onto another girlfriend,” Breen said. “If it was a boy, scabbards were abandoned for real handholding.”

Scabbards were rubber protectors that fit over the blades of the skates. Breen explained that when two girls skated together each would hold one end of the scabbard. There was some flexibility to the scabbard and it was not as clumsy as holding hands through thick mittens.

“We skated in long chains of kids, frequently ‘snapping the whip’ – which could be terrifying if you were on the end,” Breen said. “The person on the end of the whip frequently landed in a snow bank. I don’t think this was encouraged by the skating rink people.

· “In back of the ball field (facing the direction where Wal-mart is now) was Suicide Hill. It was very steep and when it got icy, some of the kids would try to go down it on their skates. Others went down on sleds and toboggans.

· “Some of the Rockton kids’ names I remember skating were Buchner, Bellinger, Hanna, Doak, Tomlinson, Reitema, Thompson, and McNaughton.”