Like Father, Like Son

By pastorbillwalden

My first skateboard was home made.   It was made from an ancient contraption called a “shoe skate”. 

The old shoe skate attached to your shoe, and then you had a key to tighten it up so it squeezed on to your shoe.  It slid forward and backwards to adjust for the length of your foot.  That adjustment had to be tightened too.

I don’t know where my friends and I got the idea from, but we discovered that you could make a skateboard.  I disassembled an old steel shoe skate, hammered the attachment “squeeze”  parts flat, and then nailed the separated pieces on to a 2×4 piece of wood. I gave it a custom spray paint job, and I was off flying down hills with very little control, not to mention no flex in the board.  The smallest pebble would send you flying.

Then came the clay wheels with trucks and ball bearings.  We could steer now!  What a concept.  I spent many hours cutting out skateboard shapes from pieces of plywood, experimenting with different shapes to gain any advantage to help me have better control and do tricks.  The experimenting with “mini flake” spray paint continued.  The most tricks we ever did were slalom courses, wheelies, and 360 spins or 180′s.  We were the dinosaurs of skateboarding.

Fast forward from the 1965 to 2009.  Dad can still pull a 360, but son Jonathan can fly. The sport has come a long way, and I thoroughly enjoy watching Jon and his friends do their thing.  I have even gotten over the fear of them not wearing helmets.  I’ll jump on a new skateboard once a year, but I can’t imagine getting air and doing the kinds of tricks that Jon can do.

Still…it makes a dad proud.