I Know Your Name

Is it strange to sometimes weep? 

I mean...after all, we're supposed to be manly-men right? Nothing as foolish as songs or books would ever faze us in the stereotypical world. Memories of people long gone and hurts from only an hour ago just sail on by without a nod from real men...right? That's what the hard-man, boomers are supposed to be like isn't it? Raised by the Greatest Generation to stare at hardship with steely eyes, unquivering lip and a heart that fears only fear itself. I've heard that over and over for most of my life...

And yet...sometimes...for no good or apparent reason...I find myself choking over lyrics. Or having a hard time blinking back tears because a memory of some old pain suddenly took hold and wouldn't let go. Maybe I've been staring out the window for an hour and I don't know how I got there. Or the mirror looks back at me with eyes I don't recognize. Then some nights are long with dreams that only end when I wake up crying out and can't remember why.

I know the name of this thing. It runs in my family. It has led me to some strange places. 

The Chopper

 I've waited almost all my life. It's a little strange I guess because most people I know wouldn't have. They'd have stalled off something else or borrowed the money or worked more or something...anything...but I never did. Something else always came first. Call it a failing of mine...doing something that was only for me has always been a tough one. Something was always more pressing than something I just wanted.

But that's not the story. I guess it all started with my older brother. He's 'First Family' and so was considerably further along in age and rebellion than I was when I first started to have real memories of him. He was a biker at the time and a trial to my parents and so of course I followed along.

It's a little hazy but I remember a purple panhead chopper with lace paint on a peanut tank parked in the yard. It might have had upswept pipes and a glide front end or that may be a conglomerate memory of more than one bike. There was quite a few of them. I do know there was a legendary Sportster that got its controls switched because he was left-handed that ended up vertical against the wall of the garage when the throttle stuck and the clutch was on the wrong side. I can still hear the crash.

There were frames being raked and fenders being sawed all the time. The neighbor kid had a V-Twin torn apart in his bedroom that leaked oil down through the ceiling into the kitchen...to his mother's dismay. I knew what 'Frisco pegs' and springers were in grade school. I copied all the biker stuff I saw on my brother's jacket onto my brown-bag book covers even though I had no idea what it all meant. My teachers probably thought I was on my way to prison by 6th grade. I'd been front to back through A.E.E. Choppers catalogs and 'Easyriders' magazines from my brother's stash a thousand times when Mom wasn't looking. She likely would have killed us both if she'd known...

It goes back so far that I have a vivid memory from the playground of Caroline Elementary of a comic book ad for a mini-bike chopper that I absolutely had to have. I dreamed of riding it to school (all of about 6 miles) one way or another before I even knew what a license was. If I could just come up with whatever it cost to buy it back then...shipping was free. Somehow my lawn mowing money never added up to quite enough.

In substitute, there were sissy bars on bicycles and hours tinkering to get a 24 inch wheel on the front of a 26 inch bike because everybody knew the front wheel had to be smaller. I hummed 'Steppenwolf' and 'Iron Butterfly' while I stripped the flats off seat and axle nuts with a 12" Crescent wrench. In summer, the garage was littered with Dads tools, scrounged up bicycle carcasses and a pack of kids trying to put the pieces back together. Tires were an endless challenge but pliers and hacksaws abounded. Some of the results were probably as dangerous as they were epic to us.

 I know I built a catastrophically poor-riding thing out of a Schwinn spider-bike with abandoned Z bars found on a shelf and silver-spray-painted electrical conduit hammered over the forks to make them longer. The front end refused to stay on the ground it was so off-balance. I know the front wheel wobbled about an inch all the time because truing spokes was sort of like black magic to us and the axle nuts were usually loose anyway. It had almost nothing for brakes and I believe I was on that quivery creation when I went down in loose gravel coming off a hill and scoured most of the skin off my front from collar bones to navel.  Didn't matter. I rode it till it fell apart.

It went a little sideways when I finally got my first actual motorcycle. Harley was the only thing officially allowed for choppers but Honda was what I could afford. All 100cc's of it. I sawed off the muffler (when I got out of the hospital after the first ride...but that's another story) and another Honda dirt bike followed. I loved riding in the woods and trails and eventually got a real license to ride on the road (legally for once) between trails. The worries of trooper cars and tickets subsided and again, I rode the thing to destruction but the chopper didn't materialize.

There came a very used blue Yamaha 650 twin with a Kerker exhaust for the first street-only bike. It was loud and sort of looked like a Triumph if you squinted right. Then the first actual Harley...an '80 Roadster that I financed and bought brand spanking new from a dealer in Syracuse.

 That was as close as I ever got to customizing when those same old Z bars ended up on it, a shorty exhaust got hung and 4 inch extension tubes went in the front end. I rode it to Florida twice that way and had my longest single-day mileage on it. I loved that bike but eventually traded up for a Super Glide and finally had a big-inch. That's the one I still have 39 years later. It's had a few changes but after so long, it still wouldn't take too much to put it back to stock. It's got a whole lot of miles and history on it and I would never let it go after all this time. We've been through too much together.

But it still isn't a chopper.

Somewhere in there was a short flirt with a Kawasaki Z1 with an 1100cc kit in it. That was in fact a true custom but it really wasn't what I was looking for and besides, it was probably going to kill me. It was insanely fast in a straight line but with about a 10 over girder front end, rigid frame, no front brakes and that engine...it reminded me of the Schwinn all grown up and overdosed on steroids. It was even green like the pedal bike. I sold it before the inevitable.

Through it all, the years of being a road captain for ABATE of NY, the MSF Rider Course instructing, poker runs, MDA rides, the miles and miles of road...assorted other bikes and adventures...all of it...there's always been that dream of a bike built the way I want it. I always have a picture of it in my head...the way I did when I thought of the one with the Briggs & Stratton engine so long ago...and by now it's a very 'old school' vision. 

It must be black of course, shovelhead motor, drag bars, not-too-radical glide front end, 2 into 1 turnout pipe, a touch of chrome on the engine, sprung frame because I'm old, open belt primary, possibly a suicide shifter just to keep it interesting and a fuel tank with range to go more than around the block. Just enough sass. It sorta looks like this but not really...this one isn't mine.

Nothing like the excessively excess look in style of late with the stupidly fat back tires, almost no seat, miles long front ends, ridiculously big engines and pipes that dump straight down. Extreme everything. Or the other one I see all the time...ape-hangers on a bagger with dub wheels. Everybody wants to be either the 'Mayans' or 'OCC' because they saw it on cable. It all went sort of mainstream somewhere while I wasn't looking. 'Sons of Anarchy' became a thing...I'm not sure what but it was a thing. Showpiece choppers of obscene price got 'commissioned' by sports stars who may or may not ever ride them from a couple of loudmouth drama queens because Discovery Channel. It's come a long, long ways from 'Easy Rider'.

Even Harley got in the game with 'factory customs'. They're selling corporate designed and approved bikes that start at up to $44,000...just add a few grand more in accessories and you've got your sorta-kinda-chopper. The good news is that most of the parts will fit and they might even throw in a tee shirt or a belt buckle. I'm glad they're making it work but I'm old enough to remember getting run out of the dealerships when they were only looking for dentists and lawyers to buy 'Glides. It wasn't always so cheerful.

In truth though, the new stuff is probably not much different than exhaust stacks, metalflake paint and 6 foot sissy bars were in another time. But I just can't. Trendy never was part of it and that was the point.

Anyway, back to where I started...I've been the strangest kind of biker. I've owned motorcycles non-stop since I was 16 but never the chopper I was after. I'm in my sixties now, kids are grown and gone and I'm sneaking up on retirement but the long, low bike in my head stays only there. After all this time, there's still a mortgage to pay, a furnace to replace, a roof that needs shingles, payments to make and all the etcetera etcetera's that have kept that dream out of my garage for about 50 years. I guess you always need a goal to work towards but time is getting a little shorter as the years go along.

I don't know if I'll ever realize that dream I dreamed when I heard a kick-start Panhead through fishtails for the first time...but hey...someday.

The Buck Stops Where?

"The Buck Stops Here"

When someone claims to be the leader of a movement, he must accept responsibility for the actions of his followers. The captain of every ship that ever sailed knows that they are ultimately responsible for the actions of that vessel and everyone on it. Command comes at a price.

Everyone who has ever carried the mantle of leadership and authority or who has others in their care in any capacity understands that there is a cost to be borne for that privilege.

Power without accountability is tyranny. Power without consequence is criminal. Power without compassion is tragedy.

A man who accepts the trappings of power that go with an office of such import as the Presidency and who will not also accept the ultimate responsibility of command...is unworthy of the title.

He is responsible for what happened at the Capitol. Whataboutthats don't change it. Deflection and comparisons don't excuse it. He called his 'base' to action and they obeyed. He knew exactly what was going to happen. He led and others followed...the blame is his. That's the true cost of sitting behind the big desk.
Make no mistake...the man at the bully pulpit preached insurrection and revolt because he didn't get what he wanted. He used the awesome power of his office to corrupt and deceive.

True to form, he didn't even bother to head the march to the Capitol himself as did better men such as Dr. King when their belief and cause led them to risk all. He stood behind bulletproof glass and sent the believers on their way. He didn't link arms and stride proudly with them into history. His face isn't going to be in the photos of what he did because he wasn't there. He didn't risk anything. He calculated correctly that he could get others to do it for him. He let his faithful be on the point of the charge. As he so often has, he thought of them as useful but ultimately expendable. He let them do the dirty work while he watched it all on television from the house he doesn't even own. He led from behind.

Ultimately, the future will judge. Millions of words will tell thousands of stories of what happened. Hundreds of historians will defend their theses and pundits will analyze for a generation. How it all unfolds from here remains to be seen and I am probably the least qualified to even remotely predict what the next few years will bring. But what I do know is that one man abdicated his right to lead and undid any good he may have done. His inability to react with grace or dignity when it really, truly counted will be his legacy.

Year End and Down

Here we are again. 2020 is going into the history books almost universally described as the worst year in pretty much everyone's memory...mine included.

It's been a tough one. The pandemic is on top of the list of course. Navigating the crisis is exhausting. Masks, rules, statistics, misinformation and the seemingly inevitable conspiracy lunacy over the whole thing takes more energy than I seem to have most days. It seems like most people either don't believe it or are dying of it and it wears me out.

I miss people. I miss my Dad who I haven't seen since March for fear of bringing him a life-threatening illness that I've likely been exposed to. I'm sad that my son couldn't visit this year. I'm tired of not seeing either of my kids. I'm angry that people still don't care enough about anyone but themselves and their 'personal liberty' to even try to slow the virus down. Just call it fake and have a party.

Work has kept me off balance since the spring when they officially stopped being a railroad and embarked on a new mission to do nothing but generate money for hedge funds. People have left in droves or gotten fired or caught the virus and the few who have too much time in it to get out are miserable...that would include me. There's not enough people, locomotives or hours. Arbitrary deadlines abound and it feels like some overlord in Atlanta is watching every move waiting for you to make a mistake so they can fire you. This too is exhausting.

Even time home isn't really time. I can't sleep while my mind races with too much input and I wind up waking up early and just spinning. My Mom used to say I was like a duck...calm and collected on the surface but paddling like crazy underneath. I've been paddling a lot these days. I know some of it is the dark and the season but the pond seems especially choppy of late.

I miss so much. Skating. Skating is probably out until the vaccine trickles down from Washington and Hollywood and Wall Street to those of us 'essentials' who've been expendable through the whole thing. I need to skate and feel music again.

I miss biking. I saw so much of the world from a bike saddle but now there just never seems to be time or energy. I used to ride in the winter, in the dark, in the rain but somehow it just seems like I can't ever find the pedals. My old friend the blue Trek has hung in the garage for almost two years without turning a wheel. I feel a little empty every time I think about it. I've gained 20 pounds and lost my legs and I can't seem to do anything to fix it.

Even the old SuperGlide sits mostly dusty and unused. I pulled it out a few times last summer but never got very far. I think I burned about 3 gallons of gas. 

I guess I'm like so many in the world these days...somehow lost, a little bitter, a lot worried, sometimes scared, often angry, always on edge. I'm on a circus wire with the wind blowing and the lions are loose in the ring below. There are times when it's paralyzing. I'm jumpy and short-tempered and I know it. A song came on when I was driving home last week and I found myself wiping away big tears for no apparent reason. The world just seems so broken. Sometimes I seem broken.

I know I should thank my lucky stars that I'm where I am. I have a wonderful woman to be my best friend, I have a home, I'm still working when so many are not, there's food in the fridge and so far at least...I haven't caught the virus. I'm wildly fortunate and I know that too but this time of year and particularly this year...I'm struggling.

Someday maybe this thing will leave me alone. Sunny days and a vaccination would probably help. I have some time off coming in May so there's that to at least look forward to. In the meantime...I'll do like I always have...dig in and do the best I can. Check a couple things off my to-do list and take a good day whenever I can get it.

If I can just make it through to spring...

The Black Revisits

The holidays are here again. I hate this time of year so much and I doubt that'll ever change. It's just the way I'm wired I guess. It's my old dark place. So dark I know it as The Black.

I've said it many times here on these pages that I just can't stand the expected and required happiness for a month over something that is basically a commercial enterprise. This year will be more of the same.

As a bonus, this time around we have a pandemic where everyone is either (hopefully) staying home and thinking about others or (for some) ignoring all warnings and having big family gatherings to share in the Covid-19. 

The railroad is keeping me exhausted and off balance which doesn't help. I'm working relentlessly as the virus and quarantines makes the rounds of the terminal 

It always manages to make me sad...sometimes more than others.

I struggle every year. I miss my sons. I miss sunny days. I don't laugh much and when I do, it feels like I'm faking. It catches me off guard...when I'm driving or almost asleep. Or a memory sets it off or a stray thought leads down the wrong road. I find myself listening to unhappy songs again...angry music or sad. Somehow it appeals to me when nights are so long and days are so dark.

I know that I will get over it and through it like I always do but someday...I hope it isn't so hard. 

And maybe when spring is somewhere near and 'the holidays' are behind once again, The Black will slink back into the places where it hides and leave me alone for a while so I can smile.

The Wizard (Part 3 - The Roller World Chronicles)

Roller World. It was going to be huge. Compared to our old place, it was slated to be a monster. Of course...it wasn't built yet.

It was to occupy a structure that was originally built as an indoor tennis club. 'Courtside' I believe was the name but I could be wrong. My first look in the door was a shock. The thing was gigantic. It was a clear-span steel building with room for 4 tennis courts. It had locker rooms, sauna, a lounge and pro shop in an addition on one end. I was suitably impressed. The outside shell is actually still there if anyone wants to see it but it's now a shopping/office building.

The ceiling was about 40 feet in the air at the peak and hung with noisy, glaring mercury-vapor lighting. Even though it had some kind of padding on the walls, it still echoed like a dry well. The acoustics would take on more significance later. 

There was a couple of other things as well that we didn't notice right away that became somewhat larger issues down the road...like the small fact that the steel roof and beams created their own weather. It actually rained indoors at times depending on the humidity. Not a big deal I guess if you're playing tennis but it matters a lot when you try to skate on a wet floor. It also didn't have air conditioning...at all. It was a screamer in there in the summertime and no amount of opening doors and running fans mattered one thin damn. Likewise, the heating system was built to take the chill off...not to actually heat the big barn. If you tried to warm it up enough to take the frost off the floor in winter, it pretty much ate up the fuel bill for the month in a couple of days. Turning on the heat was a very big deal to the owners and they only allowed it sparingly, hoping that enough warm bodies would come in the door so you at least couldn't see your breath.

It also came equipped with the green all-season carpet in the playing area. That carpet was to become my enemy in short order. Since the owners were basically broke and doing everything on the cheap, they never pulled up the old flooring. Too expensive and too much labor. Instead, they had us rink-rats cutting it out in strips wherever there was going to be a block partition that needed to anchor to the concrete pad underneath. And there were a lot of partitions. The wall around the floor was 600 feet long by itself. There would be more walls for the snack bar, skate concession, ticket counter, office space, restrooms, a workshop and oh yes...the whole perimeter of the building got a concrete block interior liner. There was miles of it.

The construction guys would lay out the cuts and we would start in with utility knives and scrapers. That soon turned into crowbars, chisels and electric jackhammers because the stuff was glued down for all eternity. We worked for weeks getting that crap peeled off. The masons were breathing down our neck all the time to stay ahead of them. Our knees wore out and my hands bled more than once before it was done. I thought I'd left that kind of work on the farm...nope.

The block and brick guys were relentless. Soon there were partition walls and doors all over the place. The snack bar area border was a low brick divider and was supposed to have Bluestone cap to finish it off. Trouble was, nobody could afford to ship the stuff from Pennsylvania. My boss allowed as how I might be able to haul it with my pickup and a trailer as a favor. Who knew what 2 inch stone blocks might weigh?

Being an idiot and young, the challenge was accepted and off I went with a U-Haul trailer behind a half-ton '74 Dodge. The rental place guys would probably have had apoplexy if they had known what I was planning to put on their trailer, to say nothing of the bumper mounted trailer ball that had to hold it all. The yard men at the quarry looked pretty skeptical at the prospect of actually moving the amount on the order with what I had but they loaded me up with all of it and I headed for home. I'll never know how many tons overweight I was but with squishy tires and a very, very hot 318, I made it back. My automatic transmission was never the same and died a slow, painful death after that little misadventure. They paid for my gas but the tranny was a loss I had to eat out of my skate guard money. 

Then one day, a new crew showed up with deep south accents and nail guns. Soon after them arrived flatbed trailers loaded with pallet after pallet after bundle of wood. A whole lumber yard parked in the driveway and started unloading. The floor had arrived. 20,000 square feet of Hardrock Maple over a double layer of interwoven 3/4 inch plywood for the main skating surface. Another few thousand for the smaller secondary floor that was supposed to be the dance club. (more on that later too)

At least on this, the owners didn't cheap out. The main floor was 100 X 200 feet of floating surface in a fan pattern that took about a week to put down. The installers walked and crawled and pounded and nailed all day and into the night under those awful merc-vapor lamps till it was done. Then another crew came in and sanded it for days. Finally, it all got a couple coats of urethane over the perfect red figure lines and circles. It was gorgeous.

I might have been the first one to roll on that floor. It was so smooth it didn't even feel like I was touching the ground. The hours spent getting ready seemed worth it.

Meanwhile, things got nearer to opening night. Snack bar equipment came in, the restroom plumbing finally worked, the wooden interior doors were all varnished and hung, carpet went up on the walls (significantly, not on the floor), rental skate shelves got built. A thousand things to get ready. It was interesting that the money ran out before there was any attempt to carpet the off-skate areas. From the first day to the last, we had green tennis court flooring complete with lines everywhere there wasn't wood. There was almost no special lighting so we opened under those same vapor lights that took 5 minutes to warm up after you hit the switch. I think the meter actually whined like a jet when you turned those things on. They only turned on enough of them to see by so the money didn't hemorrhage quite so fast to NYSEG. 

The new world was a weird combination of cheap and top shelf. The counters were just plywood with carpet stuck on them. Changing benches the same. The snack bar tables and seating was used stuff from a fast-food joint that replaced them with new. The sound system came from the old place when we shut down to make the move and was vastly, awfully insufficient for a room 3 times the size it was designed for. Even with added speakers, it was pathetic. Remember those acoustics? The skate wheels could drown out the music on a good night.

On the other hand, the floor was top notch. The walls were built to hold up till Armageddon and the restrooms could be cleaned with a fire hose if necessary. And it was BIG!

There was room for all the rentals, a separate shop to work on them, office space, a real ticket booth, two DJ booths, a snack bar that you could actually work in, lockers by the hundreds and so much skate floor you could get lost on it. We thought we were really big time because we had turnstiles at the entrances. 

We made the move over a few days. I hauled hundreds of pairs of rental skates in cardboard boxes on the flatbed of that same exhausted Dodge pickup. On one trip, I lost some off the back going down Judd Falls Road and for a few minutes, there was a chaos of runaway roller skates zooming down the road, a pack of kids in hot pursuit and confused drivers probably wondering just what the hell they were looking at. It took quite a while to round up all the strays and pair them up again.

But at last, Roller World opened. I don't actually have a clear memory of opening night. I know it was packed but there were so many nights to follow, they all kind of ran together. There was so much story ahead.

It was the end of Skate City though and I never saw the inside of it again before they finally tore it down years later to make room for a drug store. I was sad to see it go especially because by then, Roller World was gone too in an assortment of awful decisions, bad press, poor management and more shady financial and personal issues among the operators than I care to ever know about. 

But the adventure was still more ahead than behind when we opened up on Triphammer Road that first night. I hadn't yet met the hundreds of people who influenced how I skate even still. I hadn't seen the rinks I'd go to from Orlando to Ottawa. 

Roller World was another door and you know the Wizard was going through it.

The Wizard (Part 2)

Back to Skate City...

The '80's rolled along and skating and I went with it. Some strange new things came along with all the prosperity at our little rink...the need for an off-duty deputy to keep the peace was one. There was an armed, uniformed officer working every Friday and Saturday night to quell the parking lot fights, kick out or keep out the drunk teenagers and be a presence...just in case. They had their hands full some nights since we were open from 7 till 1 am and that's a lot of time for stuff to happen in the restrooms and behind the building. There was a cemetery right next to the parking lot that they had to keep an eye on too. A whole bunch of cheap beer got slugged down among the tombstones on a detour from the cars to the admission window. We had to go rescue one of our patrons one night when he had a couple too many, leaned on a headstone, knocked it over and pinned both arms under about a thousand pounds of marble. It kept the security guys busy and amused.

Something else new was a urethane floor coating that finally (sort of) got rid of the rosin dust. We put it down one summer and did it all wrong. Who knew anything? Everybody was giddy from the fumes and we ran out before we got it all coated. The owners tried to stretch it as much as possible so it went on thin and streaky. It peeled almost immediately and made for some treacherous corners but at least it wasn't bare wood.

At some point we also acquired a new DJ who wound up with the name Dangerous Dan. He was open to more kinds of music than Flash but had a tendency to play what he liked instead of what we could skate to. A couple of local AM radio jocks played there occasionally as well...Charlie, Joel...last names escape me but they brought their own stacks of 45's and we learned. Somebody heard that you could mix songs together and make new ones if you had two turntables (which we just happened to have) so suddenly we had twenty minute versions of 'Rappers Delight' stitched into 'Good Times' and 'Another One Bites The Dust'. It was probably awful but we were the rankest of amateurs working on a mixer board with rotary pots and a crossfader that nobody knew how to use. We loved it.

Private parties became a thing that we did on weeknights. They ran the gamut from church groups to frat parties.
The former were some of the biggest nights we had bar none. They could pack the place and at the very least tended not to destroy the bathrooms.
One of the latter comes to mind when a Cornell science department showed up with a cooler full of lab-made 200 proof alcohol. We didn't know about it until after the first broken wrist and the total redecoration of the restrooms. It was bad...very bad.

There were open session Christmas parties, Halloween parties, you name it. 

The joint was jumping. I worked sometimes from 1pm till 3am. Skate guard a matinee, clean the place in between and then open back up for the night session. Clean it up as best we could after we closed at 1 and then, more often than not, go hit Sambo's Restaurant (how politically incorrect is that name now?) for all-you-could-eat fried shrimp and fries. It was a wonderful, awful time.

I kept learning new stuff on skates from wherever I could pick it up. Out-of-town skaters started showing up now and again with their own crazy moves and steps. Packs of kids from Pennsylvania showed what shuffling in a pack looked like. We had a few freestylers and artistic types and they were pretty amazing to watch but the formality of it never really caught my interest that much. 

I stole some of the jumps and turns but I was bound to be a true session skater even way back then. I tinkered with all kinds of weird wheels since I got them cheap on my employee discount. Gone were the impossibly hard 'All Americans' and 'Fomacs'. In their place there was a set of speed wheels, then a set of 'Roller Bones', even a short-lived set that actually looked like red softballs...interesting but pretty awful for edges. I've got boxes of old wheels in the garage still.

For all of it though, I really didn't know much about skating itself. I started seeing a couple of magazines about skaters instead of the trade rags from the RSROA and in them were pictures of huge rinks packed with people all over the country. Skating was big stuff and we didn't even realize it. Our horizons were getting a lot broader than the little place on Judd Falls Road.

I can't remember when we did it or where we went but at some point, a bunch of us loaded into some very iffy vehicles and went to another rink. Syracuse or Binghamton is likely because it wasn't that far but suddenly there was a lot more out there. Rinks were all over the place and we traveled whenever we could. 

Everywhere I went, I picked up a little more...another move or another song and kept on learning. 

By now, farming was pretty much gone and I worked almost full time at Skate City. I spent days rehabilitating wrecked rental skates that should have been retired years ago. There was endless, hopeless cleaning to do. The restrooms were a catastrophe almost every night. The rug soon got torn and the owners wouldn't replace it. There was a lot of buzzing about the same owners and very young girls after the sessions. A story went around about one of them looking down the barrel of a revolver held by a very irate father. The holes in in the endeavor were starting to show through in more places than the carpet.

But threadbare as it was becoming, I was still there. Wizard was my sort-of official name because well...everybody had to have one. Then one day, another rumor became a fact...we were moving. The same less-than-reputable operators had decided to quit leasing the building (or the owners threw them out...never knew for sure) and buy a place across town.

Now my time was divided between helping to get the new place ready and running the old one in the interim. The saga of Roller World was underway. That's the next chapter...