Dedication
![Ollie on transition](skatehair.jpg)
Once I learned how to ollie, my name magically became
synonymous with skateboarder. Everybody knew what had to be done: quit all
other sports and anything not affiliated with skateboarding. No more baseball,
no more soccer, and God knows, no more tennis. All my collared shirts were
trashed and I made my trip to the thrift store to buy work shirts and pants
that were “large enough to fit Jaba the Hut'” as one high school colleague
claimed. To be a skater, one had to be devoted and it didn’t hurt to embrace
the image.
Dedication and devotion are completely necessary to become
even a half-way decent skateboarder. Unfortunately, however, the first step in
developing my skateboarding technique would require me to engage in deviant
activity. I needed something to skate on and my small town took no steps to cultivate this need. The reality was clear; I would have to
take things into my own hands by making my own pseudo-skate park in the
neighborhood.
Thankfully, I had faithful friends that helped me “borrow”
wood from construction sites and construct ollie-boxes, pyramids, rail-slides,
and various other skateboard toys.
After these were constructed we would set them up on the
corner of Farmstead Lane and skate. I quickly realized that one person’s fun is
another’s annoyance. Cars would drive by our little pseudo-park and blow their
horns and yell at us. Others even threatened us. This didn’t make a whole lot
of sense to me at the time, but it did successfully add fuel to the fire
within. If these jerks wanted to spoil my fun, I would just make sure that I
kept having more of it!
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