Most of the things we used to do in ancient times—back when I was growing up—have slipped into history. Kids today don’t do a lot of the same things we did two generations ago. One of the few, however, that seems still to be in vogue, is the skateboard.
Back in 1964 a group called Jan and Dean had a popular song on the radio called Sidewalk Surfin’ and we loved the song. Perhaps it was because we were riding sidewalk surfboards at the time, so it was something with which we could identify.
Either we were too poor to buy them or skateboards were not widely commercially available at the time. Anyway, we made our own.
I took a scrap piece of 1” X 8” pine, cut it to a couple of feet long and then penciled lines on it—a pattern that came to a point in the front and tapered to about four inches wide in the back. Then I took a hand coping saw and cut the board to the configuration I drew. Afterward, I sanded down the edges, removing any sharp corners and then smoothed out the top surface with fine sandpaper. I managed to find a skull and crossbones decal at the hobby shop and spray painted a thin blue stripe at a diagonal across the board, just behind where I applied the decal toward the front of the board. Then, I took a steel wheeled roller skate and used screws to attach it to the bottom side of the board. I put a coat of dark shellac on the board to give it a light brown color.
I was then ready to put my life on the line.
Forty-forth street had a gradual incline to the North of our house and it was a good hill to walk up and then ride the board back down. However, to the south, there was a very steep hill and, once we knew how to ride the board it was always the South hill we rode down. All of the neighborhood kids built boards or had their fathers build boards for them, and we would attack the hill as a group. There were a lot of bruises and skinned elbows and knees, because the hill was fast and we didn’t wear any protective equipment.
Because interaction in society requires that we belong to something and give a name to that something, we called ourselves the North Forty-forth Street Sidewalk Surfing Association. It was better than joining a street gang, I suppose.
Even though we are sure that you can go to You Tube and hear Jan and Dean sing,
“Grab your board and go sidewalk surfin’ with me,” Jimbo has reached the point in life that falling off a skateboard would require some time to heal, so he won’t be joining in.
But it is good to remember how it was forty-seven summers ago on Forty-forth Street in Jimbo’s world.
