I certainly wish I had the patent for whatever wood is used for the skateboards

of today. My neighbor's board takes severe punishment daily but never seems

worse for wear. His curb is an unsightly mess of cracks and missing chunks of

concrete, but his board still looks brand new.

A few years ago, skateboard parks were the rage. There were two a short distance

from my house. But, for whatever reason, they have seemed to have fallen out of

favor with the young men of today who prefer curbs to ramps.

In the mid sixties, when our gang was skateboarding, we ignored the curbs in

front of our homes. Usually a car was parked there anyway. Truthfully, our

skateboards were not made for jumps and tricks. Jumping on one of our

skateboards would likely result in breaking it in two. And the only trick we

attempted was trying to avoid moving vehicles.

I guess you could say we were the pioneers of skateboarding. Maybe if you lived

in California you could buy one, but not in Baltimore. Even if they were on the

market, I doubt anyone in our gang would have put out the cash for one, not when

you could improvise and make one for nothing. Here's how it worked.

You'd get a 2" by 4" board and saw it down to about 18" in length. Then you'd

find a pair of roller skates (actually, you only needed one skate). Before I go

any further, let me say that the skates back then were not like the skates of

today.

In the sixties, the metal skates were adjustable and attached to your shoe. This

was done by using a key that tightened front and rear brackets to your foot.

Once the skates were attached to your shoes, you were more or less stuck with

them until they were loosened. If you misplaced the key, the skates became a

permanent part of your shoes. A good friend of mine was forced to throw out a

perfectly good pair of wing tips due to key loss.

But if you were to take a skate and disassemble it, nailing the two ends on the

front and rear of a two by four, you had a skateboard.

Could you do tricks with it? No. Could you maneuver it? Just barely. Could you

go down a hill on it? Yes. And there you had it. Our makeshift boards were good

for one thing; going from the top of a hill to the bottom of a hill.

If you tried to get too fancy on one of our boards, a trip to the local hospital

emergency room was likely in your future. In fact, just going down a hill was an

adventure.

In our neighborhood there were a few hills. Unfortunately they were called

streets. No matter what time of day one skateboarded, there was always the

threat of a car lurking behind a stop sign, or on a concealed side road.

With this in mind, we usually skateboarded in pairs. One of us would skate while

the other practiced traffic control. This was problematic in the sense that the

friend (or spotter) on vehicle watch, at the bottom of the hill, would usually

be easily distracted. More often than not a girl or a snowball truck would get

his attention just long enough for his skateboarding buddy to require stitches

or a cast.

We did find a loading ramp at the rear of Northwood Shopping Center department

store which provided some safety. But the walk to there was long, so, more often

than not, we took our chances in the traffic.

By the time the well made, maneuverable boards hit the market, we had moved on

to other dangerous activities like Vietnam and marriage. But it was fun while it

lasted.