You're An Old Smoothie

"She lived in Hollywood, and she and her troupe came to the rink to practice for her tour," Richard says. "She saw the machine, liked it, and said she had to have one of her own."

Zamboni assembled Henie's machine behind Iceland. Then he took it apart, put the pieces into a trailer and hitched the trailer to the back of the same Jeep that would serve as the chassis. He began driving the Jeep east from Paramount.

"He was supposed to meet Henie in St. Louis, but by the time he got there, her tour had moved along to Chicago," Richard says. "He followed her there. I flew in and met him. We assembled the machine for her in Chicago Stadium, made sure it worked, then flew home together."

The invention didn't need a salesman. Henie took the machine on the road with her, which meant that arena managers throughout the country saw it. First, the Ice Capades ordered an ice cleaner. Then, rinks in Lynn, Mass., Dallas, Philadelphia and Asbury Park, N.J., wanted them, too.

The first 16 machines sold were Frank J. Zamboni originals. Each one was made by hand and each was different. Zamboni continued to experiment. One model had seven levers an operator had to shift to drive the machine and resurface the rink. The next one had four. The step up to big business came in 1954, when 10 orders were received. Piece-by-piece construction had evolved into quasi-assembly-line production. Zamboni incorporated and tried to register his company as the Paramount Engineering Co. The name was already in use. His second choice was a name he knew he could use. His own.

And what a name it is. Here comes the Zamboni! What? The Zamboni! The name is its own punch line. Why should the name of a machine that resurfaces ice make a person smile any more than a machine that presses pants or collects exact change? It shouldn't, but it does. Zamboni. Zamboni. Zamboni!

"I'll be in some strange city on business," says Richard, "and I'll have a few minutes to kill, so I'll just flip through the phone book to see if there are any Zambonis. There aren't a lot. There are pockets of Zambonis around the country, but it isn't a common name. I don't know what would have happened if a man named Smith had invented this thing."

The Paramount plant employs 35 people, and each year it turns out from 50 to 80 machines. There is a second plant in Canada and a distributor in Europe. All told, by the end of 1986, the company had sold 4,187 Zambonis. The name is so well known throughout the world that it has become a generic term for all ice-resurfacing machines.

Newscasters and sportscasters routinely use the name without explanation. Cartoonists have adopted it. "In case you're interested, there's a Zamboni headed your way," Charlie Brown has shouted from his pitcher's mound to Lucy in the outfield. Students at Michigan Tech University once formed a Zamboni Fan Club and held a Zamboni Day. A thoroughbred named Zamboni, offspring of Sweeping Beauty and Icecapade, won races in New York in the early '80s. Charity drives have been held to raise money to buy Zambonis, and parades to welcome the machine's arrival at local rinks.

Zambonis have been used to clean parking lots after snowstorms. Zambonis have been driven home for lunch. Zambonis have provided the background for between-periods interviews. Zambonis have changed the results of hockey games.