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Situated 100 miles east of Toronto, Point Anne boasts two schools and three churches, but no bars, movie theater or shops. Now that MacDonald's general store has closed down for lack of business, people get their supplies at Belleville, five miles down the road. The population, according to Bobby's sister Judy, 20, is "about 1,000, if you count the dogs. And about 100 if you don't." The only industry is the cement plant. And the only dash of color in the grey landscape—since Bobby left—is a huge red, white and blue billboard that proudly proclaims: POINT ANNE, BIRTHPLACE OF BOBBY HULL, WORLD'S GREATEST HOCKEY PLAYER.
Come Home, Bobby. It was either that or the cement plant. All the Hulls learned to skate before they learned to read. Judy was such a hard-nosed hockey player that the boys around Point Anne once told her parents they wouldn't play with her any more because she was too rough. Dennis, 23, followed his older brother to Chicago, where he also plays left wing for the Black Hawks, and could some day make a name for himself. Bobby got his first pair of skates the Christmas he was four; by day's end, he was maneuvering on his own. "From then on," he recalls, "I went back every day and skated until I was exhausted. I would get up in the morning and put on the porridge pot, then go out to skate until breakfast was ready. I used to skate all morning and afternoon, and only come home for meals. After dinner, I always went out again, and Mum would have to send my sisters out to bring me home to bed."
One thing he remembers about that time was that he was constantly shoveling snow. "I was usually one of the first ones out there for a game of shinny," he says, "and it was up to the first arrivals to clear a skating area." By the time Bobby was eight, recalls Dr. Don Pringle, a childhood friend who now practices medicine in Montreal, "he had muscles rippling all over him," and Papa Hull was already spending hours on the ice, endlessly drilling his son on the technique of stick handling. "He was sometimes impatient," says Bobby, "but he liked to skate with me. 'Let's try it again, Robert,' he would say. 'Keep your head up. If the stick blade is angled properly, the puck will feel right on it.' "
From Bantam to Pro. In Canada, where hockey precocity is commonplace, Bobby Hull was a stick-out from the day he played his first Bantam League game, in Belleville, at the age of ten. There are seven levels of competition in Canada—Peewees, Bantams, Midgets, Juveniles, Junior B's, Junior A's and Professionals; Hull skipped the Peewees, Midgets and Juveniles. Officially. Actually, confides Pringle, who played against him in the Bantams, Bobby freelanced. When the Bantam game ended, he would tighten up his laces and join a Midget team in the next game. After that was over, he would skate back on the ice with the still older Juvenile League players. "He used to play hockey practically all Saturday morning," says Pringle. "Some mornings he'd score 25 goals in four different leagues."