Dedication

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!