Welcome to The Dirt. In every issue, our anonymous writer will give you the dirt on your burning questions about the Amarillo area. Got something you’re just dying to know? Drop us a line at info@brickandelm.com, and our intrepid writer will dig up the answer.
How do they set up the Civic Center for hockey games? Do they just turn on a faucet and let it run for a few days?
While the Amarillo Wranglers may be lesser-known compared to the Sod Poodles, evidence of hockey’s place of honor in the local sports scene can be traced to the literal foundation of the Amarillo Civic Center. Where is the Civic Center hockey rink? Though it shines best when polished up for regional tournaments after being refreshed under a set of hoses, dear reader, it’s actually the coliseum’s default floor.
Hockey rinks are built with several layers of complex concrete and plumbing. At the very base is sand and gravel able to drain water, covered in a heated concrete slab that keeps temperature changes from damaging the ground or the rest of the structure. That heated concrete is covered with insulation, then topped with cold concrete containing a pipe network. Those pipes function like an open-faced refrigerator, circulating coolants like hyper-chilled salt water to keep the inch-thick layer of ice used by skaters frozen solid.
When the rink isn’t in use, other materials like turf or arena flooring are layered over to make a decent space for other sports. So, to the question: Yes, setting up the hockey rink does involve flooding the floor and freezing it over, because all the intricate engineering for its design has already been done. As it turns out, the real headache with setting up the hockey rink is sweeping aside all the dirt from the rodeo.
Wasn’t Matthew McConaughey supposed to be moving to Amarillo? What was the source of that rumor?
Life in the Texas Panhandle comes packaged with certain constants: breezes that fill the air with the pungent perfumes of feedlots 100 miles away, sunsets that are breathtaking in different ways, and the immutable desire to share a neighborhood with one of the state’s own Hollywood heartthrobs.
The rumor that Academy Award-winner and Texas darling Matthew McConaughey is looking to make a home in Amarillo has been recirculating for more than a decade. It didn’t start with a bragging real estate agent or McConaughey himself, but rather the sense of humor of one of Amarillo’s most well-known local writers.
Jon Mark Beilue made his career at the Amarillo Globe-News from 1981 to 2018, starting as a sports editor and ending up a general columnist. In the process, he received 16 statewide and national awards, published five books—and made a tradition of pulling the community’s proverbial leg every April 1st.
On April Fools’ Day in 2011, Beilue published a ‘report’ that McConaughey intended to move to Amarillo for the sake of family and fraternity brother Matt Martindale. Amarillo didn’t exactly get the joke, and clung to the story with an iron grip.
This likely wasn’t helped when the story got republished online in December 2014—long after April Fools’ Day—the same year McConaughey moved to Austin.
(Joking aside, Beilue still regularly writes for his Amarillo neighbors. These days he’s published by West Texas A&M University and right here at Brick & Elm, alongside The Dirt.)
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