The Wizard (Part 5 The End Of An Era)

 So Rollerworld rolled on. It was a dream and a nightmare all at once. There were some really, really good skaters around and we'd be on the floor for hours sometimes. People came from out of town but we started to realize they didn't come back very often. The writing was on the wall.

We still ran some huge sessions in the winter but summer was just dead. There was never any air conditioning so even night sessions were sometimes nothing but sweat baths. Leaving the doors open to get some air invited bugs, a parade of kids trying to sneak in or out, more trouble with alcohol and the inevitable fights. On humid July and August nights, it was exhausting to get through six hour sessions...even if only 20 or 30 people showed up.

Suddenly, things weren't so bright as they'd been in the beginning. One of the owners converted the old lounge/office/locker rooms from the tennis courts into an apartment of sorts and lived there full time early on and nothing good came of it. I wondered often how they got this one past the zoning officers but nothing seemed to happen. 

This guy was sketchy at best and even though he made me a 'manager' (which meant pretty much nothing except I worked more), I very much doubted what we were up to.

At some point, he brought in a half-built hotrod coupe and a worn out Caddy limousine that were supposed to be classy but just seemed shoddy as hell. There was a lot of pretenses going on and there started to be an undercurrent that all was definitely not well. He eventually made a pass at my girlfriend and that was nearly the end of all of it. Yeah...things were going downhill fast.

Through all that though, we skated. We tended to travel more to other places since at that time, there was dozens near-ish to choose from. Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, anywhere we could find. Everywhere, skating was still big but the cracks were showing.

At work at RollerWorld, we seemed to have more troubles. To get more cash at the door, they allowed people in that in times past we would have barred. Drunk kids, non-skaters just hanging out led to fights in the bathrooms and parking lot. We apparently couldn't afford security anymore so the off-duty cops disappeared and it got worse. We started hearing that parents wouldn't let their kids come anymore. Some of it was the owner's predilection for partying and young girls. There was a fight in the restroom that ended up with a razor blade and a badly cut girl. It was like a downward spiral. 

I stopped being a full-timer and only worked a session or two skate guarding or running the DJ booth. The fizz was gone and it was time to call it a day. There was no money so it was back to only running the lights and heat when we absolutely had to. The snack bar didn't have snacks and the rental skates were falling apart. I can't really remember the last time I skated on the big floor but I know by then it was just dirty, cold and dismal. There had been too many bad nights of finding drunks in the dumpster, breaking up fights in the bathrooms, cleaning up puke in the corners and watching it all fall apart. The monster went under and became a mall. Last I knew, there was still a couple of the stores in it with hard rock maple floor that once upon a time...had my wheels on it.

For a while, I wound up working at a rink in Camillus where I'd load the saddlebags of my Harley with skates and records and ride up to do sessions on the weekend. That was fun for a while too but in the end, they couldn't keep it going for a lot of the same reasons and it folded up when the money ran out.

RollerWorld had a brief and awful reprise at another location in an old building downtown. The same creepy guys took a shot at doing everything on the cheap once again after it failed so spectacularly the first time. The floor was flakeboard and absolutely the worst. The roof leaked. It was full of really shady people. The sound was recycled from the place on Triphammer Road and was also really bad. I went there once, stayed about an hour and vowed never to do that again. It closed up for well and all after only a few months. I never felt bad about it.

So it all came back to where it started. The rinks were gone and have never yet returned. I'd like to think the craze will come around again someday before I'm too old to totter around the floor but I'm not counting on it. 

In the meantime, I still skate when I can. Someday I'll be retired and hopefully can still show the newbies a thing or two. I've got a couple of grandkids to get on wheels someday as well so I can't give up yet. 

Playing In The Dust

There's some old shades looking for attention this morning. I think I woke up and found them by the nightstand asking to be remembered. They can't be ghosts because they still live in my memories but they sure do go back a long, long way. Must be they needed a visit from the old guy before the rush of every day takes over again. They know I won't forget but still rattle the attic door once in a while to make sure I'm paying attention.

Some of my earliest haziest recollections from childhood were there. More feeling than memory but apparently still hard-wired somewhere between my ears. I remember...

All of my life I've had a faint, black and white picture stored away in a dusty place where I keep all the oldest things I can still find. It's only a moment like a photo but one that has been there always. If I had archives, this would be the first entry...

I can see my mother sitting in a chair in the house where I grew up. And I know it's me seeing her, not something someone told me that I turned into a memory. I'm looking up at her. I can't see her face but I know it's her. I know that I am very small because I know she's holding me in her lap and saying something that I can't understand. But I know it's her voice and that somehow everything is alright. It was safe and cozy. There are no colors, no words, just feelings that I can only describe as love. It's so vague that it doesn't seem real but somehow I know it is. There's nothing before it and nothing for a long time after. It is very old and much treasured. Very small and yet somehow very valuable. I suspect it's the very beginning of me.

What would make that tiny slice of time turn into something I would still remember now and again after all these years? I'm sure it came from something that actually happened but is it possible for someone who couldn't have been much more than a baby to even form a memory? I suppose it must be because there it is, still living amidst all the trillions of other events and recollections that are my life. I hold onto it like an anchor. It feels somehow like it shouldn't be lost.

It doesn't intrude but no matter how many times I visit that place, it never changes. I don't know how I know but I don't doubt it was real and true. And try as I might to look deeper into the dark, there's nothing I can find that goes back any further. Was that the moment I woke up in the world for the first time? Does everyone have one of these that they've forgotten or buried? Why can I still find it when I usually can't remember a phone number or what day it is? 

It makes me wonder sometimes how much that one almost lost instant so long ago affected everything that came after. Did that form the first step in the line of all the rest? What would I have been like without it? Did the anchor I grabbed actually steer the course? 

I suppose a Freudian would have a field day with thinking like this so maybe I'll dedicate this remembrance to science someday. I don't know if my donor card covers it like it does my kidneys and lungs but who knows? 

There is a saying that anything ever put on the internet lives forever. If that's true then when I hit 'publish', that gauzy little ancient slice of me will become something that finally got out into the world. 

Maybe that's what the shades wanted all along. You're welcome.

The Wizard (Part 4 - The Roller World Chronicles)

And so began Roller World. It was billed as the biggest skate floor in the state by the owners but I found out later that they made that up just like so many other tall tales. Guptill's Arena up near Albany was bigger by far but they ran with the story anyway.

The early weeks and month of the monster were a blur. It seemed like I was either skateguarding, DJing, handing out rentals or chasing a vacuum cleaner in my sleep. Sessions were relentless as the owners tried to get as many bodies in the door as they could to recoup the construction cost and presumably keep the loan sharks from breaking their knees. Friday ran from an Afterschool Skate into the night session which was usually 7pm till 1 in the morning. Saturday was all day starting as early as 9 for a while for a couple of matinees and then another marathon night session till 1am again. Between sessions and after it was all over, the crew had to clean the joint. We learned to vacuum with skates on to make it faster over about an acre of carpet. The bathrooms were sometimes epic events even with concrete floors and block walls. Even the farm animals of my youth couldn't have done the damage that sometimes was done in those stalls.

Hit or miss, the doors opened again and the crowds came. In the early days, the place was busy. I think the only day we were actually closed was Monday. Tuesday was for private parties, Wednesday and Thursday had oldies/adult night and a session with recorded organ music for the traditionalist dance and figures group. We never had a live organist that I recall although there was an organ on the stage. It was all on 45s that I gritted my teeth and played for the dancers. Then it was off and running for another weekend.

Usually we'd clean after the night session till about two or three in the morning then load up and go down the hill to Sambo's Restaurant (how non-PC is that  name these days?). They had all-you could eat fried shrimp or gigantic breakfast specials that got destroyed by tables full of starving rink rats. 

Sometimes we'd skip that and go street-skating all over town until nearly daybreak. Somebody would drive a pack of us up to the Cornell campus and we'd work our way downhill into Ithaca from there. We knew where we could ride on walls, down stairs, through alleys and blast down deserted pedestrian paths. 'Libe' slope was a favorite although it's paths were narrow and zig-zagging to scrub off speed was tough. I think we tried State St. a couple times but most of it was still bricks then so even gumball wheels couldn't take it. More often it was a tucked-in screamer down Buffalo Street hill or University Ave. past the city cemetery. I distinctly recall doing it in a wet snow that rooster-tailed off the back wheels of whoever was in front of me. Timing the traffic lights was everything. On better nights, we'd often we'd end up in the spiral parking garages downtown terrorizing the drunks staggering out of the Aurora St. bars and dodging IPD.

But mostly we skated on the big floor on Triphammer Road. I basically lived there. At some point, somebody figured out that we skated roughly 60 miles a day on the weekends. I went through wheels at a frightening rate. 

Somewhere along the line, I upped my game by trading my faithful Sure-Grip Century skates for a pair of Douglas-Snyder Imperials. I saved up for months to get the plates, Riedell 120 boots, Fafnir bearings, nylon cushions and Gyro wheels. The whole rig was over 800 bucks back then and cost more than the car I was driving. I built them myself in the shop and they've been my faithful companions ever since. They've never seen a toe-stop, just dance plugs under the nose. I never tied them past the eyelets either and the tongues are permanently bent from being pinned down under the laces. The iridescent lightning bolt stickers were my trademark so I made a new set for the heels the first day. I can't for the life of me remember where the idea for dog collar chains on the back came from though...something I saw someplace I'm sure but it's long gone. 

The lightning bolts and dog chains are still there all these years later even though the original wheels and bearings long since wore out. I have no idea how many sets I burned up but there's a pretty sizeable pile of used ones in my garage.

These days the wheels are Roll Line Ice artistic since Gyro went out of business and RollerBones built the newest set of bearing but the plates and boots are still going. 

But back to RollerWorld...over time, the money must have gotten better because suddenly we were installing a suspended ceiling, more lighting and more sound system. By 'we' I mean the almost free, unskilled labor that sold tickets and swamped restrooms. Nobody had any idea what they were doing but an always changing crew spent days stringing wires and ceiling grid from teetering man-lifts and wire-nutting lighting bars to extension cords. It was all deemed 'temporary' so somehow the code enforcement guys never made us tear it all down. 

The craziness of endless sessions went on through construction wreckage but at least the drop-ceiling made the indoor rainstorms stop. Somehow, it all worked.

For a time, no matter what...the place was jammed. We held a skating contest that brought skaters from what seemed like everywhere. There was a few live band nights. One private party brought in over 800 people on a Tuesday. I rode my Sportster around the floor towing 20 or 30 kids a couple of times...as did the owner's wife with her MG Midget car. We routinely ran out of rental skates and snack bar food. A Saturday night needed at least four people watching the main floor to keep it even roughly under control. It was absolutely nuts.

Somewhere in there, four of us formed a skate team that travelled all over the place basically just showing off. We practiced in the off hours late nights and early mornings. We actually got pretty good at our routine after a while but it seemed like my skates never came off my feet. 

It was certainly not how the farm kid wobbling around Skate City even remotely pictured it turning out. But almost inevitably, it started showing some cracks. The good years seemed to get a little shady as time went on. The owners had a growing reputation as a really seedy bunch. Things that we hadn't noticed before...

The end was coming but we never saw it till it was too late.

Vaccination Ruminations

Surfing and cogitating on this my Sunday morning...or Friday to everyone in the real world. Scrolling and taking it all in.

While I probably shouldn't be surprised anymore, I'm struck once again by the gymnastics (mental, not Olympic...although they are pretty awesome too) employed by a significant slice of the population when talking about the pandemic in general and vaccines in particular.

I don't even know where to start because the bizarre theories are a moving target. It's like whack-a-mole but with Q. It's exhausting.

Fauci did it. The Chinese did it. Immigrants did it. The Democrats did it. The doctors and hospitals are in on it. Bill Gates wants to track you. It's just the flu. You can't trust the CDC, WHO or Johns Hopkins. My immune system will handle it. God will protect me. Salt crystals and essential oils will protect me. Side effects. Equine worm pills work better. It's all a plot to depopulate the world and mind-control the survivors etc., etc. The list is long and ridiculous.

In the world according to conspiracy theory...Covid vaccines:

a) Weren't tested enough

b) Are experimental

c) Are made from aborted fetuses

d) Alter your genetic code

e) Cause sterility/pregnancy failure

f) Vastly increase your risk of really rare unrelated health problems

g) Make you sicker than the virus

h) Don't work anyway

Did I miss any? They're all wrong but if I say that it only proves to the true believers that I'm in on the plot or I'm a pathetic sheeple selling my soul to big pharma. Conspiracy is a self-reinforcing thing that scabs over every shred of evidence that refutes it. I miss the days when it was only about who killed JFK and how the moon landings were faked.

Look, I got vaccinated against CV19 as soon as the shot was available to me. I'll be part of the herd in herd immunity if we ever get there. I'll get the booster too if it becomes necessary. I've been vaccinated many times before and not one solitary thing has ever happened except I didn't get sick with tetanus, polio or any of the assorted childhood diseases that common vaccines protect against. My kids were vaccinated and turned out ok. I got a second dose of Moderna, a tetanus shot and a shingles vaccine in less than a month, a flu shot a few weeks later and other than a beat up left shoulder, went about my merry way without a hitch...just as advertised.

I guess I really am one of the sheep being led to slaughter by...the ever-present...THEM. THEY tried to control me and apparently it worked. 

Or it could be that I just looked around at the best sources of information available and got the shots. I'm not going to claim that 'I did my own research' before I got stuck. That's because I don't think I'm a doctor and I don't believe my real doctor is experimenting on me in a grand scheme of world domination. He's a nice guy who tells me to watch my weight and reminds me when I'm due for a colonoscopy. I trust his judgment on the state of my health and rely on him to "do no harm" 

If I'm willing to believe him if he told me I had a serious illness why would I doubt his assessment of being vaccinated? 

 

He's trained to understand the relevant medical research, something I'm not even remotely qualified for. In that at least I'm much like assorted politicians, pundits, pillow salesmen or Plandemic pushers bellowing conspiracy.

I'm a locomotive engineer by trade and training...not a physician or virologist or epidemiologist or any other -ist that makes a career out of studying this kind of thing. I trust those people to do the work that to me might as well be sorcery. 

I fully subscribe to Clarke's Third Law that states: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

It certainly is for those of us who haven't paid the dues in time and study to understand the nitty gritty in specialized fields of science.

I compare it to why I cannot and will not spend hours 'researching' why things like my cell phone, sound system and computer do what they do. It's sufficient that they work. My truck could be running on pixie dust and eye of newt for all I care. It starts when I turn the key. The point is most things in the world we live in do what they do without our intimate knowledge of how they do it. Vaccines are the same way.

 

I do try to have a very general idea of what's going on with a fair number of common things but there's a reason I can't build a new microwave from scratch...or give myself an x-ray or do my own root canal...I haven't made a career out of knowing how to do those things and it would be an insult to those that have to insinuate my knowledge could equal theirs. Why Joe Average would think he or his second cousin or someone 'the MSM refuses to cover' could be fully competent regarding something as esoteric as vaccines and claim to make educated judgements about them is mind boggling. 

I can watch YouTube till the cows come home (guilty as charged) and still not understand a profession like piloting well enough to land a jet or architecture well enough to design a building. Yet I have to believe those who work in specialized fields like that are generally competent, ethical and dedicated. You have to in our world or you'd go crazy...oh wait a minute...

Bill Along The Way

For a few years now, I've had an ancient steel mountain bike stashed at the crew dorm in Mechanicsburg Pa. where I spend way too much of my time. It's cabled to the rack outside but I try to keep a cover over it so it doesn't rust into oblivion. It's a story in itself that'll wait for another post.

I took it out for a short hop the other day and ended up on one of my go-to loops. On this one, I head south from the hotel to get out of the worst of the traffic, cross a ridge and drop down to McCormick Road, east a ways to a tee and then back over the hill to the bike rack. It's about 14 miles and ends with a downhill so I can coast most of the way in. McCormick Road is a bonus.

McCormick is a slow-moving two lane that follows Yellow Breeches Creek. It must be on a lot of loops because I almost always encounter other bikes when I'm on it. There's some beautiful old homes and farms set back off the road and the shade is nice on a hot day. I took some pics earlier this spring on a much cooler afternoon...

Lots of people use the creek for tube-floats and kayaking too and there's a narrow roadside park that I've found requires extra care lest you get doored by somebody jumping out of a pickup. The scenery is worth it though so I ride it whenever I can.

This day, I had just started down McCormick from the west end when I met an older-looking guy riding the other way on a hybrid. We waved as riders of any civility should when passing and he said something I barely heard about it being easier going the other direction. Just a casual nod and a comment to each other and then off on our opposite ways.

A bit further down, I stopped for a minute to catch a pic with my phone and there he was again, now going the same way as me. After he passed, I caught up with him on an uphill where he was slogging a little and sort of startled him when I called 'on your left'. I pulled up beside him and asked if he was a local, which he turned out to be and just like that...we started chatting. He was very thin but chugging along at a pretty good clip. We rode together all the way to the end of the road till we hit the tee where I would turn left and he would turn around. He said he was doing three laps of McCormick to get in shape and suddenly there we were, sitting at the end of a country road in the shade, talking like we'd known each other for years.

He told me about the annual ride he was going to make with his brothers which was why he was working on his legs. He said they had ridden rail-trails from the C&O to the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon even though he was the oldest of them at 72. They've been doing it quite a while with a skip last year due to pandemic but are back at it again this season.

Turns out the group ride began after he was diagnosed with colon cancer years ago and took some bad advice to hold off on treatment. Surgery and a biopsy eventually discovered it had metastasized into his lymph system and suddenly it was stage 4 and the surgeons allowed he had maybe one or two years to live. His prognosis was slightly off however since two years had turned into almost ten and here he was, riding a bike and planning an overnight trip of more miles than a lot of younger, healthier people I know would even attempt. He listed off all the things he'd done for therapy since his surgery and what it had done to him but still hadn't told me his name. He talked about how so many people give up when something awful like his diagnosis happens to them and suddenly they just fade away until they die. He decided he wasn't going to do that and got on a bike for the first time since he was a kid...and that became the annual ride with his brothers.

He laughed when he told me he felt like a menopausal woman these days because he's taking testosterone suppressants as part of his treatment and now has hot flashes and takes bone density supplements. The drugs make it hard to hold muscle mass too so he faithfully does his laps. The blood thinners he takes give him purple splotches under his skin and made a scratch on his leg bleed till it filled his sock but he just shrugged. He and his docs are tinkering with doses and meds to keep him on an even keel and the pedals turning. 

Eventually he mentioned that his name was Bill and the conversation went on. He said he was hoping to hold his illness off, make it to 80 or 90 (which I think he just might) and stay on the bike as long as he could. We talked about battles with depression and failed marriages and work but it never felt maudlin. It was just life. 

He told me of adventures and people he'd met along the way...the paraplegic that rode a hand-bike and the writer for 'Railroading' and 'Trains' and he talked about the brother who couldn't ride because of Alzheimer's and so many more. We shared ride stories and family stories and waved at the passing pickups loaded with kids, tubes and coolers now packed up and headed for home.

I think we sat there for most of an hour until I realized I still had a ways to go to get back for some dinner and a couple hours of sleep before the phone rang and he said he needed another lap before he called it a day. We shook hands and wished each other well. Like the oldsters we are, it never occurred to us to swap emails or platforms or even last names. It was just Bill and Harold once in a lifetime and that was enough. 

As we got our bikes hitched around and aimed in opposite directions, he turned and said that even though we'd almost surely never cross paths again, he was glad we'd met and he'd remember me. He said he believes chance meetings with people you come across makes life worth the trouble. We shook hands one more time and with another wave, pedaled off our separate ways.

On reflection, I don't know why this one little event among so many in two completely different lives seems so important...but it does. I wonder at the way everything lined up for it to happen at all. It just felt good and somehow felt right.

So Bill...wherever we go and however it all ends up, I too have a memory from a hot day in July on the corner of McCormick and Lisburn that I will keep...an hour of friendship with a stranger on the road that will last a lifetime.

 I guess that makes it feel a lot like hope.

Nobody Wants Your Miserable Job

I've seen a ton of posts on unsocial media of late claiming "Nobody wants to work anymore", presumably put up by self declared superior beings who actually are working or just feeling like busting on someone else because it's trending.

My take on such idiocy is that the pandemic just might have given people a chance to get off the hamster-wheel for a while and rethink the capitalist nightmare.

Maybe working at minimum wage jobs or less-than-minimum-plus-tips with little or no benefits, juggling child care and transportation...or maybe even making out ok but still not doing well made them realize that living paycheck to paycheck and crisis to crisis for ungrateful business owners and detached corporate 'human resources' departments might not be all there is to a working life. Even for those who did keep working through the pandemic, the outpouring of praise was only sporadically matched by anything of substance. 'Essential" and "Heroic" didn't exactly translate into grateful very often. 

Maybe people looked around at the pandemic landscape and realized that to much of the business world, they were absolutely expendable. When commerce fell off the cliff during shutdowns and quarantines, many (notice I didn't say all) businesses and industries cut their losses by cutting people first and now they're crying because the first to go aren't lining up to be the first to come back to do it all again next time.

Many companies of all sizes lobbied hard against raising minimum wages for those that were left and others are fighting tooth and nail against unionization, better healthcare, better working conditions and meaningful retirement plans. All this is 'socialism' and anyone who wants it at their workplace is looking for 'something for nothing'. Does anyone blame a big chunk of the workforce for not being exactly overjoyed to jump back in?

The list of businesses that got CV19 taxpayer-funded relief is long and distinguished and the money they received is hardly mentioned but "nobody wants to work" is the hashtag. "People are looking for a handout instead of a job" is the narrative but corporate America happily took far more in government bailouts than individuals and I haven't seen one post harping on the business world. Why is that? Why is the vaunted 'free market economy' not able to adapt to a new reality that people are less willing to be used and abused by their employer? Why is it going to be catastrophic if the minimum wage increases? I thought that was how capitalism is supposed to work? If you can't make it in the marketplace as it is, your enterprise fails and someone who does it better takes the cake. Labor is going to cost you more these days. Evolve or go under. That's what you've told your workforce for years. 

I know small businesses got crushed by the pandemic and many companies large and small went belly up but that's not the issue I'm talking about. I also know that lots of businesses did bend over backwards to help their people and that shouldn't be forgotten either but that's not what makes me so angry.

My point is that the trend to point fingers at working people and let employers off the hook is wrong. This is when we'd be better off demanding a paradigm shift in how business treats it's workers. Maybe when they're not seen as just 'headcount' they'll come back. Maybe when there's something to come back to that isn't the same old same old. Maybe when they don't need a job-and-a-half or two plus public assistance to live above the poverty line (are you listening Walmart?) or a future that goes beyond next week or the next stockholder meeting, they'd be a little more enthusiastic. Maybe "You're just lucky you have this job..." isn't enough anymore. Maybe if they thought they could make a little more than a fraction of a percentage point of what the CEO makes they'd feel more like diving back in. Maybe...

Here's some thoughts for the titans of commerce...pay your people a wage they can live on and treat them with a little dignity. Worry about the things they have to worry about...housing, childcare, transportation, healthcare, retirement...things your upper echelons take for granted. These aren't 'something for nothing', they're value for services rendered. You pay CEOs exorbitant packages to allegedly attract the best (and pay bonuses even when they fail both the company and the stockholders) and yet can't fathom why your lowest paid employees deserve anything less. You want the best? Pay fairly for it. You want to retain them? Give them reasons to stay instead of reasons to leave. Ponder for a bit why your working people are unwilling to take yet another increase in their healthcare premium or a wage freeze while you require they also take on the workload of the people you figured you didn't need anymore. Demand from yourselves what you demand from them. And stop blaming your failure to adapt to a changed reality on those you've already bled white.

"Nobody wants to work" is putting the blame on an awful lot of people who aren't lazy...they're just tired of living and dying for a wage they can't survive on for people who just don't care.

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.