Today I want to share some adventures we had this past Saturday when Mr. Man participated in two library programs at two different libraries and the entire family attended our first Lehigh Valley Phantoms mi nor-league hockey game.
We started off our day by visiting the library that I work where Mr. Man had an appointment to read to a dog. Mr. Man’s dream was to read a Dog Man (by Dav Pilkey) graphic novel to a dog. On Saturday, his dream came true.
He also got himself a new Goosebumps book out of the book vending machine in the children’s department. Goosebumps are his newest obsession.
If you are worried about what Preschool Nugget did during this time, do not dispair, he petted a few of the dogs found some awesome trucks to play with in the children’s department,.
After that we all left the library and headed home for some lunch, Mr. Man and Mr. Katie visited our home library because I signed Mr. Man up for a Lego Building program. He had a great time with his father and he can’t wait to take me to the library soon to show me what he built on Saturday.
The fun did not end there. In the evening, we purchased tickets through Mr. Man’s school for a local, minor league hockey game. We saw the Lehigh Valley Phantoms play the Hershey Bears at the PPL Center in Allentown. It was honestly so much fun. I loved it more than I knew that I would. There were lots of interesting touches like a stage located in the stands that broadcasted on the Jumbo-Tron gameshow type contests and a musical performance between the 2nd and 3rd periods.
Though the PPL Center in Allentown is much more modern than the Cambria County War Memorial was in the mid-90’s when I was visiting it, I was reminded of my teenagerhood when friends and I used to go see the Johnstown Chiefs play in Johnstown, PA.
Also adding to the Johnstown Chiefs nostalgia was the fact that I saw a number of people wearing Chiefs jerseys at the Phantoms game. I was well into adulthood before I learned that the Chiefs have a certain amount of cultural cache because a fictional Chief team was the subject of the 1977 movie Slap Shot. The movie was filmed at the Cambria County War Memorial before the actual Johnstown Chiefs existed. The Johnstown Chiefs team that I saw as a teen was actually named after the team in the movie. Johnstown got its own minor league hockey team in 1987 and the team was named when locals participated in a contest to name the team.
Fun fact: Slap Shot isn’t the Chiefs only notable movie reference. The actual Johnstown Chief players acted as stand-ins for the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 1995 Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Sudden Death.
In conclusion, the experience of attending the Phantoms games was wonderful and maybe my family will make it an annual tradition to attend a game. We all had a good time.
One more thing that was really special about the hockey game is that Mr. Katie and I met at a Philadelphia Flyers game in early February of 2008. It was my first professional hockey game and I was invited to attend by my friend Jeremy S. Mr. Katie and Jeremy worked together and Mr. Katie and I hit it off that day.
In about a week, it will be 15 years since we that fateful hockey game and this fact wasn’t lost on me while we were at this game. It made it all the more special.
Wow. You guys had a busy Saturday. It sounds like it was all super fun!