“I have recently taken up two new sports: roller skating and ankle spraining, in that order. I am getting quite good at both.”
Mother Nature has countered her rain of last week with splendidly beautiful days this week. It will be sunny and in the 60’s again today. Earlier, I was on the deck looking out over the yard. I always feel a bit like the lady of the manor when I do that.
When I was growing up, only girls seemed to have roller skates. It was okay to roller skate at a rink if you were a boy, but boys never roller skated on the sidewalk. I had those skates which tightened around my shoe with a key. I could even make them longer or shorter by sliding the middle then tightening the screw to hold them at just the right length. They had leather straps which buckled across the tops of my feet. The straps always held better than the clamps. Lots of times I’d have to walk and lift my foot high in the air because my skate had come loose from my shoe and was dangling by the strap. When that happened, the routine was always the same: undo the strap, take the key from around my neck, loosen the clamp, put my foot back on the skate and tighten the clamp again. It was best done while sitting on the curb. The key was kept on a string around my neck because a pocket just wasn’t safe enough. The worst thing to happen was to lose a skate key.
I loved the sound of my skates on the sidewalk. It was a crunch sound, almost as if I were walking on snowy ice, but when I’d hit a break in the sidewalk, my skates would click. Skates on tar had a gentler sound and an easier ride.
I’d fall, and I’d sometimes skin my knee, especially in sand. Blood trails running down my leg were evidence of a fall or two, but blood never stopped me. Only little kids ran home crying.
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
April 21, 2010 at 10:51 am
Snow and rain here today and even some sun at the moment. I think I´ll stay inddors as much as possible.
I don´t think I ever saw roller skates here when I was little, but I remember seeing them on tv programs from the US. We had them here too but only at rinks.
But later on when I was in my upper teens they got real popular again but only at rinks once again. Nowdays they can be seen everywhere and most stores has signs forbidding the use of them inside. I would like to have a pair, but they don´t work well on gravel roads 🙂 🙂
Have a great day now!
Christer.
April 21, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Christer,
I’m sorry you’re still in the grasp of winter. Here I think it is really spring, still chilly but no more frost.
We had our own skates and then we’d rent the shoe skates at a rink. It was a special treat to go to a rink, and we’d go in groups of friends.
I haven’t tried in-line skates. I figure I’m accident prone enough.
April 21, 2010 at 12:27 pm
I roller skated on driveways and around the basement. No helmets or pads in those days. Guess we were lucky we didn’t crack our heads or break our limbs.
April 22, 2010 at 12:14 am
Michele,
I always wonder how I escapes injury. I fell, scraped knees and elbows, got sand in my cuts and landed on my butt- never a bone despite as you said no helmets or pads.
April 21, 2010 at 6:41 pm
When we lived in New York ice skating was the most popular sport and rinks were everywhere. We boys even played hockey in the streets and but for a few pissed off cops, played all day. We just moved to the side when a car had to pass. Those are wonderful memories Kat. I had forgotten how much I missed winter because of all the fun playing Hockey. I never got into roller skating. I think that passed me by somehow even though Tennis was big as a teen, swimming of course, and driving Go Carts. We were crazy for those damn things and drove them mercilessly on old closed air fields. That was back when gas was .33 cents a gallon. Oh Carry Me Back to Ole Virginia!!! Those were the days!!
April 22, 2010 at 12:08 am
Z&Me,
We ice skated often at the swamp near our house and at the park on a rink they erected and flooded every year. We never had any go-carts, and only a few of us played tennis. We swam at the pool but were mostly softball and baseball players.
April 22, 2010 at 8:53 am
We ice skated on the lake or, if the lake ice wasn’t safe, on the brook out back. Sometimes the brook ice was a little thin and we’d break through but the brook was very shallow so it only meant getting soaked up to our shins.
Almost all of our roller skating was done in the middle of our street. It was a dead end and the only traffic during the day was the milkman and the bread man. No one had more than one car and those cars all went to work with the fathers every day. Our mothers had to walk everywhere or take the town bus.
April 22, 2010 at 9:15 am
caryn,
We were street skaters too a lot of the time, but we had an empty parking lot at the top of the hill, and it was our favorite spot. We skate a whip and the last person always went flying.
We had no town bus, only ones which went to other towns, so my mother walked everywhere too.