About 40 years ago I took my yearning for adventure and built myself a skateboard.
Since I was the eighth-grader who couldn’t even build a decent checkerboard in wood shop, the board took on the trappings of my primitive craft. I didn’t get too far but even my brief runs on roller skate wheels nailed to a flat piece of pine gave me a sense of freedom.
I felt like the King of California, where sidewalk surfing was in its infancy.
Popularized by a Jan and Dean song, the way-out weirdness of the West Coast had made it all the way to my rural enclave in Perry County, Pennsylvania, where I eventually graduated from high school, made my way out of town to college, and then struck out on my own.
At 50, California eventually beckoned and I found myself living out more pioneer dreams in a land now teeming with young skateboarders who reminded me of myself in my formative years.
Skaters were everywhere.
Upon my return “back East,” as people used to say out there, I realized that the skate culture had spread like a Southern California wild fire and that the internet had helped create a massive new generation of young people who loved to skate.
In many circles, skating overtook Little League as the game of choice.
Northeastern Pennsylvania is now part of a new world in the 21st Century skaters’ kingdom where kids all too often have no place to go.
To their credit, Carbondale officials have built a public skate park.
Wilkes-Barre officials and their Luzerne County counterparts have agreed to take the matter under consideration.
But I expect little from them.
Dickson City officials have now entered the fray.
Police there will now confiscate children’s boards if they catch them skating on public roadways.
Despite a petition bearing more than 300 names, Dickson City officials have decided to treat creativity as a law enforcement issue.
Granted, kids must obey the law.
Police must deal with skater-related crime ranging from harassment to destruction of public property to disorderly conduct the same way they deal with adult crimes of the same nature.
But that doesn’t solve the skate dilemma.
A public park is not too much to ask.
Even if officials fail to raise the money through grants and requests for corporate donations, trying to raise the money and showing kids that they care will help improve community relations.
Yesterday on “Corbett,” Ric Widoner called to express solidarity with the kids of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Widoner is a Northeastern Pennsylvania native who heads up the skateboard program at the YMCA of Boulder Valley in Colorado.
“Skateboardinator” Widoner has organized skaters in a community of consciousness and commitment to improving their towns and themselves. Everybody wins when adults and children join forces to make a better place.
Former Scranton Mayor Jimmy Connors also called to say that he once put together a moving skateboard park at the urging of reasonable young people who asked for his help. The movable parts traveled from one city park to another so kids from all parts of the city had a chance to use the facilities.
Connors said that he doesn’t know what happened to the skateboard equipment after he lost the election. But he realized its value in strengthening the ties between young and old as well as the past and the present.
Valuable lessons can be learned from Widoner and Connors.
Today’s skaters are tomorrow’s voters.
If nothing else, that should get the attention of public officials.
If not, town fathers and mothers are doomed to chase the wind in towns that all have seen better days.
We should embrace the wind.
The kids might teach us that it’s never too late to enjoy the ride.
Michael Savage
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