The Wizard (Part 1)

Let's talk about roller skates. Not the ones with a brand new key that Melanie sang about...not the strange things with all the wheels lined up end to end either. I mean quads. Four wheels on each foot and one wheel on each corner.

I've spent what has to amount to years with those things laced to my feet. Of all things to last a lifetime...why skates? I was asking myself that the other day as Kellie and I kicked around which rink we wanted to hit on one of my rare Friday nights off.

I met Kellie at a skating rink by the way...just as information. 

We still like to go when we can and still hold hands like kids when the lights go down and a slow song comes on. But maybe I should start at the beginning...

The actual year is pretty hazy but it must have been sometime after '77 because I'm reasonably sure I was out of high school before I went skating for the first time. I don't remember how it came about that I got talked into going. I liked ice skating on frozen ponds when I was younger so maybe it was the idea of skating while not ending up as frozen as the water...I'm just not sure. I was working on the farm at the time and it's possible my girlfriend suggested it for something different to do...I really don't know. Somebody came up with the idea because it certainly wasn't on my radar at the time.

Regardless, I somehow I ended up at a little place on Judd Falls Road in Ithaca called 'Ides Skate City'. It was next door to a bowling center and owned by the same family that ran the lanes. Over the years, skating had faded from popularity though and for a while the building was used as a warehouse for equipment from a factory. At some point, a couple of guys (who I found to be very sketchy...more on that later) thought they could cash in on the booming skate craze, leased the building, cleaned out the junk and opened it back up as a rink.

As I remember it, the still-original floor had water damage ripples on the far end from a very leaky roof and it always developed puddles when it rained. There was no surface finish like they use now so they sprinkled powdered rosin over the bare wood to give it grip just like in the old days when both floors and wheels were hard-rock maple. The dust was incredible on a busy night.

The rental skates I took my first spin on were ancient and equipped with incredibly slippery wheels. The leather was crispy from a million sweaty feet and most of the laces had three or four extra knots that made it impossible to tie them right. They also had loose-ball bearings that occasionally fell out and scattered everywhere if the lock nuts backed off. Hitting one of those little BBs with super hard wheels was like instantly nailing your foot to the floor and a hail-mary nose-dive almost always ensued. 

I remember carpet covered plywood boxes for benches, carpeted walls, a tiny snack bar, skate rental counter, bare cinder block restrooms and a DJ booth all crammed in one end by the door. A few flashing lights and six speakers on the walls made it sort of disco-ish and there I was. Something must have clicked even as I was staggering along the wall holding on for dear life because it wasn't long and I was there an awful lot. 

The DJ most of the time was a guy called Flash. Mixing was still in the future so he just played random songs that he liked back to back and droned out the announcements in the same flat monotone used by almost every rink DJ I've ever heard right up to this day. 

"Clear the floor please. Clear the floor", "Couples only on the floor please. Couples only"...it's like a litany that never changes. 

He gravitated to country rock and oldies so I learned to keep my feet under me to 'Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress' by the Hollies and 'Can't You See' by Marshall Tucker. They did an all-oldies night once a week for the fifties and sixties lovers and Tuesdays was organ music on 45's that got a pretty good crowd of waltz and tango couples. They never had a live organist like some of the older, established places did but nobody seemed to mind. Flash gamely played it all and eventually lowered himself to take occasional requests if he was feeling mellow.

I soon found out that there was another rink job called 'Skate Guard'. Mostly it consisted of rolling around with a whistle in your teeth, scolding the tag-players and whip-crackers and helping the fallen back to their feet. I think it pretty much paid  in free admission and soggy pizza at the time.

That job belonged to another character known as Wild Bill. He was probably as old as my father and skated on ancient wheels under an ever-present cowboy hat. Everybody that worked there wore the same hideous orange bowling shirts (courtesy of the lanes across the parking lot) with the rink name in big letters on the back. Bill looked a little odd with a ten gallon hat perched over that shirt but he made up for it when he cut loose and really skated. He had the most incredible, very fast shuffle footwork when he got going and we loved to try to keep up and copy the steps. I think he might have been the one who first taught me how to go from wobbly forward to wobblier backwards. Once I figured it out though, there was no stopping. I never broke any bones during all that...but I sure did fall and hurt a lot. 

To this day, I don't know what the attraction was...but I was there. Saturday matinees, weekends, weekdays...didn't matter. And like anything else, if you do something often enough...you're bound to get better. I got so I could keep up with Wild Bill. Then I got faster.

Somewhere along the line, I decided I'd had enough of scuzzy rental skates and plunked down some cash for the first set of my own. Sure-Grip Super X plates and All American wheels, the cheapest Reidell boots there were, sealed bearings that didn't fly apart and away I went! I tinkered with different wheels. I found out how to tune the trucks the way I wanted. I was well and truly hooked.

Finally, the owners decided I was there all the time anyway so they might as well put me to use. I got an orange shirt, a whistle and no longer had to pay admission. I'd race through chores at the farm...shower, change and be there when the door unlocked. My girlfriend openly wondered what I'd gotten myself into...or more probably...what she'd gotten herself into.

This was the '80's remember and the skating boom was in full swing. Some Saturday nights the floor was so packed you could hardly move. We needed four or five skate guards on our tiny floor just to cover the crashes. We routinely ran flat out of rental skates and some people were using mismatched sizes made out of broken pairs just to get out there. The snack bar ran out of everything. Flash broke down and started playing better music under pain of after-session beatings if he didn't. 'Knock On Wood' brought on a stampede. 'Working Day and Night' was a train wreck waiting to happen if someone went down. 150 mostly out of control people at high velocity in a dark room could never get around that poor soul who lost his footing. The pile-ups were epic.

The off-skate area was shoulder to shoulder too so one unchecked-full-speed exit from the floor into the milling crowd looked and sounded a lot like the bowling alley next door. It was an absolute free for all and I loved it.

I wound up working there as much as I was farming. Skate-guarding morphed into after-session cleaning, working the snack bar and skate rental counter, selling tickets, fixing broken skates and covering the booth so Flash could get a break. I swept up the rosin dust, swamped out the disgusting restrooms, cooked a million hot dogs and became in all senses of the term...a rink rat.

One thing kept leading to another as time went along. I figured out how to build new skates from scratch so I became the resident 'pro' in what was hilariously called a pro shop. I got my hands on the turntables and records and that became yet another story. Music started to matter a lot more. 

I became a fixture. I would work the sessions and then come in early to skate some more (I had a door key by then). I can't even imagine how many miles I put on. I just kept on skating. I wore out set after set of wheels and bearings until I scrimped up enough for a whole new pair of skates. This time around they were Century plates with jump bars (I didn't know how to jump too well yet but the bars looked really cool and nobody else had them), a much nicer grade of boots and Fafnir speed bearings inside Powell-Peralta wheels that rolled like glass. It felt like I just got a new Corvette.

A whole pack of 'rats' developed out of nowhere at Skate City as well. Names and faces...some I can remember...some not. Some I still know...others long gone. They were the circle of friends I never had before. I finally had something...something I didn't even know I was missing.

And somewhere...sometime...someone started calling me Wizard. Whoever you are...wherever you ended up...I hope you know that it stuck.

Choices

You know that we could save everybody right? I mean...everybody. 

Every broken veteran that our endless wars have created; every struggling addict the opioid companies created; every cold, hungry, sick child and family that we've kicked out of the social safety net; every immigrant or asylum seeker at our borders that we've criminalized; every homeless, helpless soul who wanders among dumpsters because we closed the shelters; every senior who has to choose between medicine or food each week because they can't afford both...every single one of them.

(December 2020 Covid-19 update: And since this was first written, a pandemic has torn around the world. 300,000 Americans are dead. We couldn't have saved them all but we could have used our vast power, treasure, knowledge and skill to at least try. We could have saved so many but we chose not to. Thousands of people instead chose to argue over masks and closed bars and if it was even real. It became a political hot button and states that didn't vote the right way or say the right things got cut off. Hundreds of our 'leaders' decided it was expedient to ignore it outright and do nothing. We abandoned the sick and dying for poll percentage points and posturing. The powerful let them die. HB)

We are the richest, most powerful political construct the world has ever known and yet we choose not to be the most compassionate.

We choose not to. We have the money. We have the ability. We choose not to.

We have decided collectively if not individually to to leave the weakest and poorest to fend for themselves while a select few accumulate wealth that most of us cannot even comprehend. Consider...

There were 621 billionaires in the United States in 2019. The highest number ever. Can anyone honestly picture a billion dollars? That's one thousand times one million. $1,000 X $1,000,000. 

Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon is alone worth 13 of them. That is simply an unimaginable number.

He made 130,000 times more than I did last year. At a rate of approximately $3,715 per second. And he does it year after year. Don't get me wrong...there's nothing wrong with being successful...they worked at it or got really lucky or both but how much is enough? How many tax breaks does someone who cannot conceivably spend their income in a hundred lifetimes need? 

Even those like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who are allocating billions from their personal fortunes to charitable work, continue to accumulate wealth faster than they can constructively give it away. 

Individual wealth aside, remember that our own federal government took in $3.3 trillion dollars in tax revenue last year. $3,300,000,000,000. Another unimaginable amount. And 80% of it came from individual income taxes. Corporate taxes came in at a whopping, uninspiring 9% of the total. (CBS News data)

We allow at least 60 Fortune 500 companies in this country to skate by without paying a single cent in income taxes on $79 billion in profits. If they paid the 21% federal tax rate, they would owe $16.4 billion in taxes. Instead they received $4.3 billion in rebates. (Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy data)

And we're in debt. To the tune of $22 trillion dollars. (I can't even imagine what it is now. I cost a bundle to bail out corporate America...again) Those who could contribute the most contribute the least and those who need the most can't keep up.

We're in red ink at the highest level in history but we decided to spend $13 billion dollars on another aircraft carrier. We have 10 of them already. More than any other Navy in the world...but just to make sure...we better build another one. 

Think of it like this. If the companies that paid nothing paid only their share...no more...like most of us, it would buy the Navy's shiny new carrier and lo and behold...there's $13,000,000,000 just kicking around to actually help people who desperately need it.

Or consider this...54% of federal spending is spent for defense. $598.5 billion dollars. Twice what is spent by the entire rest of the planet. We have by far the most powerful professional military in human history...but we decided we needed a new branch..."Space Force"...just in case. And by the way...we still have enough nuclear weapons to mostly eradicate life on Earth should the occasion ever arise. Just like personal fortunes; how much is enough?

But back to helping people who need it. A depressing percentage of the population are convinced that the vulnerable are the enemy. The stereotypical view that people who need help are somehow lazy or choose to be in the predicament they're in or refuse to work or whatever...is not at all typical. Yes, there are people who abuse the systems...but by far the majority are not nor are they looking to have everything handed to them for life. They are not the cause of our financial woes. We are.

Immigrants are not the enemy either. We all came from somewhere else. Unless your ancestors were here before the Europeans, you're an immigrant. Period. Stop calling yourself American if you believe otherwise.

People seeking asylum from Central America are not terrorists. Neither are the African or Middle Eastern refugees. Anyone taking on the danger and hardship of leaving their homes, especially those with families, is probably pretty desperate. They're not animals, not diseased, not bent on stealing 'our' livelihoods. They're looking for hope and we should be proud that they come to us to find it. Building literal or administrative walls to deny it to them is just evil.

They need help. Simple as that. And a society that claims to be a civil one needs to provide it. That's supposed to be who we are. Many working together to help a few to make us all better. Each of us who can putting a little bit in a big pot. It's stone soup. Everybody adds a tiny bit that they can. Those who need a hand now will be able to lend a hand later. It's not Communism or Socialism or any other '-ism' of the week...it's what makes us a country. It's supposed to be what makes us human.

We have the wherewithal to take care of everyone...or we would if we only decided to use it.

But I guess it's easier to just keep on keepin' on. Stay in the bubble where helping anyone is weakness. Where strength is more and more weapons. Success is for a few and power is for the most successful of all.

Hide in religion that preaches 'prosperity' while living in a tax shelter. Where the concepts of love, forgiveness and hope for the most vulnerable are lost in hate for anyone who is 'not like us'. Seek comfort in piety but lock the doors when 'the least of these' comes knocking.

Feed the lobbyists and starve the homeless. Hand out corporate welfare but cut SNAP. Roll out the red carpet to the shareholders and hedge funds but pull the rug out from under a retiree who depends on Social Security. 

Keep saying all is well because Wall Street is on a roll while millions...from WalMart employees to serving military families need public assistance just to eat. 

Cut staff and cut budgets. Build walls instead of homes. Buy another missile system with the money that would feed a thousand families. Save the banks and automakers and airlines with our money while personal bankruptcies skyrocket. And protect the health insurance providers' profits while real people die.

It doesn't have to be this way. We choose for it to be this way. We make a choice.

What happened to us?