Week 6 - Our Dogtown

It was our sanctuary. After the sun had set, and the lamp lit streets grew silent, we grabbed our skateboard and flew down the hill toward the city. It was summertime. We had no where to go when the sun decided to rise, so we took advantage of our surroundings. During the day, we would be driven away by businesses and police alike, banned from skating most places due to some misplaced stigma that comes with the banished sport. So when those business people locked up, and the police went home, we came out of hiding.

It was like a movie. We would roll at about twenty miles an hour, carving our way down the largest hill in the city like a unbound dragon. Picking up speed we would turn sharply, cutting across the roadway and leaning into the turn. We would try and lean far enough to skid our fingers along the pavement, just like the original Z boys of Dogtown. Though in our fantasies, we were fearless, in actuality our fearlessness ended at around thirty miles an hour. That feeling of loosing control; the thought of impending injury or death slowed us down as we reached the bottom of the hill. In all of our days skating, only one of us ever conquered the whole hill, and when he did it, we almost hailed him as king.

At the bottom of the massive hill lay a bridge, and on the other side, one of our favorite spots. In a small town, particularly an old New England town, there are few places to skate. Unlike bicycles, a skateboard requires a smooth surface. A single crack or the tiniest pebble can end your ride and quickly. Brick, cobblestone, or crumbling concrete are like kryptonite for the small hard rubber wheels of a skateboard. Our city was covered in such places. We had to make due with a select few spots. And those spots were only accessible during the night time hours. The spot we rolled towards tonight was one of the best.

We skated over the three lane bridge. Its lines were worn and faded, built over a river that one hundred and fifty years ago was more logs than water due to the mills that littered the shoreline. Past the dam. It was an imposing monolith holding back the lake from before I was born, perennially making me wonder if someday it would break and destroy the whole town in a violent torrent not seen since Johnstown. It already had almost one hundred years ago. Around the homeless shelter. My sister had to stay there once, the inside walls covered in colorful paintings of children dancing over rainbows and beds around every corner of the building. Then down the street past the pub. You had to avoid the drunks that would stumble out and ask to ride your board; the red neon lights in the window alerting you to the nature of the business before you even saw the main sign.

This street was hundreds of years old. Horses once hauled lumber and ice up and down its muddy surface. Schooners constructed hundreds a year ago were built right on this very road which borders the shore of the river and were employed to to ship lumber to the West Indies. Even after the great fire, this street was a place of industry. And now, here we were, twenty first century, a group of hooligans rolling towards one of the town's larger businesses late into the night.

The tangerine colored streetlights illuminated our way as we popped onto the roadway and cruised down the center line. The smell of fish wafted into our olfactory glands, causing us to grimace in disgust.. Coming to a stop, we picked up our boards and walked up to our destination. The loading docks of a seafood company. The smell was bad at first, but after about one half hour, you didn't even notice. The concrete of the docks were so smooth. One push off with your foot could propel you the full distance if your bearings were good. Each and every truck port had a varying distance and height, making the loading docks a versatile location to practice a vast assortment of tricks. We did so with reckless abandon, giddily taking turns, one after the other, giving it everything we had.

The night waxed quickly and we soon found ourselves staring at a clock much later than we had expected to see. The old saying, “time flies,” seemed particularly relevant on these occasions. We made our way home. Past the pub, around the shelter, over the bridge, and up the gargantuan hill. The final crucible of a late nights ride. We would crash into our beds, like a drug addict coming down from a high; adrenaline giving its place to exhaustion. But we were free. Free to skate, free to go, free to be ourselves. Scraped knees, bruised shins, sore muscles. These were our battle scars. And those scars do not disappear, and neither do the memories. I often reminisce when I drive past those places where, in the early morning, we would consecrate the ground, building friendships on the cheers of a successful ride.