Arriving at the park the next day, I found it to be empty. Which is always a welcome sight for anyone who loves to ride freely without dodging 3475634830 little kids on razor scooters… Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy seeing the kids have endless fun. I just don’t like when they’re having so much fun they coast aimlessly in front of me while I’m going full speed.
After a quick warm up of carving around the smooth surface, I made my way to the bowl. Properly named “The Opossum Pouch,” taking its name from the park itself being called Opossum Creek… The bowl, for those who haven’t skated one, is much like riding an empty swimming pool. The walls are not quite as steep, and the lip, (the rim or top) is trimmed with a steel pipe instead of traditional pool tile. This allows the skater to lock on with his or her trucks and grind without mercy…
Bettie and I rode for a while. The free floating airs and weightless vertical carving opened my mind to memories, people and places that had come before this day… Skating has always been a vice for me and others in my generation of X-Kids. But when we were coming up it was not nearly as accepted by the masses. There were no X-Games, or Jackass, and Tony Hawk was certainly not a household name.
Me and Bettie finished our ride… Taking a break, I laid on the cool transition of the Pouch and looked into the cloudless sky. I thought back to all the years that had drifted by since I first stepped on a skateboard, and how much things had changed since the late seventies early eighties… For all the bitchin’ older folks have done about the next generation or just society as a whole. It’s probably more real and down to earth than it ever has been. Yes it has its faults. But I could have never imagined all of the public skate parks that are up and thriving now. And Bettie could have never fathomed something like the Suicide Girls… Or the tattooed skin that seems to be more accepted in the work place. Or the freedom to publish your writing or art, or music without having to be enslaved by a contract, and to what the next move will be by a bunch of corporate types. Soccer Moms have been replaced by Skater Moms… More Moms than ever are joining Roller Derby leagues or riding in surfing contests while dad and the little ones cheer from the sidelines… Things have changed quite a bit in the last 30 years… For the most part changed for the better…
But before these times of safe places to skate, you had to be on a constant lookout for what was around the corner… Not just the thugs of society but it seemed like 99.9% of the people you came in contact with wanted you to skate far away from them. We would try to do just that. Going out of our way to find secluded spots to skate. But sometimes this would backfire…
One afternoon as darkness started to fall on what was left of the last light of day, a few friends and I decided to go skate a church not far from home. The grounds were full of winding sidewalks which led to a corridor with red brick ledges. It was a perfect place to do various tricks on. Pulling into the church we saw someone getting in their car then drive away. Thinking nothing of the car leaving, we parked and popped our trunks to retrieve our skate gear and boards. We started our session, making our way to the corridor to skate and get lost in the moment…
Suddenly a dozen or so men dressed in black, pointing AR-15’s at the three of us were shouting commands, to not make any sudden movements. I think all of us wanted to make a certain movement but not the running kind…
Marching us out at gunpoint, hands laced behind our heads to our cars, we soon learned that they were the local swat team that were usually called in for major drug busts… The car that was leaving when we were pulling into the church belonged to the janitor. Of course seeing three longhaired guys and two old cars pull in and pop their trunks could have only meant a major drug deal was about to take place…
One of the swat members asked if he could search our cars… I said, “You can if you want, but it’s pretty dirty in there.” He opened the door to a spillover of convenient store cups, and other signs of convenient store grazing… Old t-shirts and clothes were on the seats. Skate and surfing stickers covered the dashboard in a multicolored collage of free living… The Swat guy seemed put off by our less than normal lifestyle. But what really pulled his brow together into an expression of complete confusion was a 5 foot by 4 foot painting of 2 ducks flying over a pond that covered the back seat of my car. A few weeks earlier I had bought it at a yard sale for 25 cents. Looking back at me in frustration he asked, “Do you live in this car?” Smiling back, I answered, “Nope…”
Then the commanding officer arrived on the scene. He told his men to drop their weapons and then started to chuckle, “This is the big drug bust? This is what we came all the way out here for? Congratulations fellas. You caught, The Skateboard Bandits…” He had seen us around town for years. He told us to go home and not come back. We did just that…
Bettie and I decided we'd had a long enough break. It was time to ride the bowl again. As I took the last few runs of the day, dripping in sweat and memories of times gone by, I came to the conclusion that I was happy to be among a small group of skaters, surfers, artists, and all around do it yourselfers that helped pave the way for the next generation… And Bettie? Well, I’m glad she was along for the ride…
 |
| Photo By Jason E. Hodges. The playing card displays the artwork of Olivia De Berardinis |
That's awesome.
ReplyDeletequite a ride, Jason!
ReplyDelete