Rick Platte's eyes went narrow as he steered the 3-ton contraption down a hallway inside the skating rink, then went wide as a child's as he rolled it onto the ice.
In his seat 8 feet in the air, Platte, 44, a contractor from West Laurel, spun the wheel of the Zamboni a bit too sharply, slid it into a fishtail, then straightened things out in time to complete a smooth turn and continue along the boards.
Not bad for a first time on the resurfacing machine of his dreams.
"That's exhilarating," said Platte, one of seven people who went to the Gardens Ice House in Laurel this week for a class on all things Zamboni, including time at the helm of the ice-making wonder. "It's like nothing you've ever done, I'll tell you that."
From public-session skaters to cocoa-sipping hockey moms, just about everyone familiar with winter sports knows the Zamboni, the boxlike apparatus on wheels that emerges periodically from the bowels of a rink, lays down a fresh surface in a pattern of ever-narrowing ovals, then returns from whence it came.
For a vehicle with an esoteric function, one that was invented in an obscure California industrial park decades ago, the Zamboni — not unlike the Philly Fanatic or the Pet Rock — enjoys a resonance in the public mind far out of proportion to its literal function.
"The thing is just so big. The idea of controlling something that massive and powerful is irresistible," said class member Susan Costenbader, 46, of Laurel, after completing her drive.
Platte called it "an awesome machine."
No less an eminence than Charlie Brown has weighed in with a comment.
"There are three things in life that people like to stare at," the "Peanuts" cartoon character once said in the strip. "One is a rippling stream, another a fire in a fireplace and the other is the Zamboni going around and around and around."
To Tom Hendrix, co-owner and general manager of the Gardens Ice House, the allure borders on sorcery.
"It takes something that's rough, travels across it and leaves something behind that's as smooth as silk," said Hendrix, who was teaching the class for the third time in the past two years. (The next one has yet to be scheduled.) "You see that and you want to know, 'How did they do that?' It's the magical side of life."
A handful of rinks in the Mid-Atlantic, including the Herbert Wells Ice Rink in College Park, have offered similar classes, but Hendrix decided to harness the magic two years ago as a way of promoting his favorite sport. Attendees pay $200 apiece, with all proceeds going to a program he runs in which kids new to hockey can try the game at little cost.
Unlike most conjurers, Hendrix enjoys sharing trade secrets. A self-described rink rat from upstate New York, he spent a half-hour teaching Zamboni history and mechanics.
"Ages ago, when I was a kid, do you know what ice-cleaning equipment usually was? It was a few guys with shovels, another few guys with 55-gallon drums of water," said Hendrix, a former minor league hockey player.
They hadn't gotten the news: A son of Italian immigrants named Frank Joseph Zamboni had already found a better way, and it was taking hold.
Back in the 1920s, Zamboni was in the block-ice business in Hynes, Calif., now part of the town of Paramount near Los Angeles. When it later became clear that electrical refrigeration was the wave of the future, he shut down his operations, built a new ice rink and put his cooling machinery to work.
He soon saw, though, that resurfacing ice by hand took far too long. Zamboni built a wood-framed vehicle that could scrape the surface of a rink; in 1949, he patented the device and mounted it on a jeep chassis. By the mid-1950s, the Zamboni Ice Resurfacer was essentially born. It turned a 90-minute job into a 10-minute task and has been the industry standard ever since.
The design basics haven't changed much. Hendrix dissected them as a hockey coach might his team's power play.
The most important component is the conditioner, he said, a steel box mounted on the rear that drags the ice, the driver lowering and raising it by lever as needed.
The lower front edge of that unit is a giant razor, a six-foot-wide, 80-pound stainless steel blade that rests on the ice. As the driver proceeds, it shaves bout an eighth of an inch from the top of the ice surface, removing chips and piled-up snow.
But that's just part of its job, Hendrix said. "Once Zamboni figured out how to do that, the question became, 'What do we do with all that [shaved] ice?' " The answer involved a series of interlocking innovations.
First, he explained, the inventor placed an auger inside the conditioner, the same kind of oversized screw that carries grain from farm machinery into bins. He lay it flat on the ice, perpendicular to the Zamboni's path.
But it was a special configuration. Zamboni created two half-augers, each one directing the ice shavings toward the center. There, a vertical auger scooped them up, bearing them into an upright chute.
That big box on the Zamboni's front? It contains a "dump tank," a repository for the scrapings. The vertical auger shoots the old ice inside, filling it up as the machine travels.
That which devours also creates. Another 200-gallon tank resides inside the Zamboni; operators keep it filled with hot water, and the Zamboni sprays it through tiny nozzles on the back of the conditioner, leaving a thin, fresh sheet of ice that fills cracks and crevices.
"That's your product," Hendrix said, adding that hot water "sets" better than cold.
The instructor can tell good drivers by the way they can steer with the left hand, looking back to check their work. Even at that level, though, mistakes are not uncommon. Most hockey fans know the fun of watching a driver at work and jeering when he or she misses a spot.
Class members found out it's not as easy as it looks.
Take Michael Barkett, 32, of Beltsville, the guy in the bright red, Russian-style winter hat that reads "Capitals" on the front. His girlfriend, Jennifer Galvin, gave Barkett, a men's league hockey player, the session as a Christmas present, and as he rode, an instructor told him that lingering in any one spot causes puddles.
"As a player, I've always wondered why you get those wet spots that make the puck stop," says Barkett, who says the Zamboni — which he learned maxes out at 10 mph — is "a lot more responsive than you'd think. You turn the wheel, it turns."
Students came for various reasons. Platte, Costenbader and Lisa Buchman of Hanover all have kids who play hockey and/or figure skate, so they've spent hours watching Zambonis do their thing.
For Costenbader, it was a voluntary imposed dare. "I'm taking on all the adventures I can," she says. "I joined a flash mob. I've sent recipes in to the Food Network. I want to be fun and fabulous, and I don't know anyone who has driven a Zamboni."
Buchman says she has always wanted to ride one. In fact, she says she'd like driving a Zamboni through the streets after a snowstorm. "Why not associate bad weather with something fun?" she says.
But for the Zamboni company, the rink business has proved more than enough. They've sold more than 8,500 units over the years, exporting them to dozens of countries. The brand is so popular that the name is often used to represent any ice-resurfacing machine, no matter who makes it.
The Zamboni company, now run by Frank's grandchildren, still custom-makes the machines in Paramount.
The Gardens Ice House has four, each of which costs about $75,000. "There are other brands," Hendrix said, "but we believe in tradition. Why not go with what works?"
Then there's that old Zamboni magic. Hendrix says the classes have helped him outfit many a youngster who would otherwise never have played.
And for the drivers, you might call the experience priceless.
"If they didn't make me get off," Buchman said, "I'd have stayed up there all day."