Original oil painting by: Grandfather’s wife
The following was written by my late wife Elaine. She wrote a long book, a diary really, from which this is one passage:
Skating at the Riverside Roller Rink was our favorite date plan, and we eventually bought our own skates instead of renting rink skates, and we had special red metal cases that Dave painted and lettered with our names and the rink name.
We rode everywhere in his ’36 Chevy until it was towed away by the police department from the street in front of the Highland Park YMCA where he lived for awhile and when the cops took it through a wide U-Turn, it disconnected from the tow hitch and was hit by another car and that was the end of the ’36 Chevy.
The last time I rode with Dave in that car was in a snowstorm, and I kept the windshield wipers going by hand with a knob, back and forth, all the way to my house from the rink. Then getting back home across the city to Grandville Street that night after leaving my house must have been big fun, on snowy roads, steering, and shifting the old “floor shift stick,” while turning the wipers on and off all at the same time.
I took Dave to his first Hollywood movie; an Air Force story in black and white, when he was 19. (He was raised like I was: no movies, dancing, cards, etc. – but as I wrote somewhere else in this story, I started going to movies when I was 14.)
We went lots of places together during our dating months, and one place was to VCY (the Voice of Christian Youth), built around Billy Graham’s ministry. (Billy Graham is still preaching to large audiences. Yesterday, June 2001, on TV the information ran across the bottom of the screen that an overflow crowd of 7200 people came to his latest event and they had to stand outside and hear it on loudspeakers because the auditorium was full.)
To be continued…
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee is a nonagenarian in West Virginia who built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
Thank you for sharing. The stories bring back happy memories for me from my own past.
Mr. Dave, was the skating rink in a building with good floors or in a tent high up off the ground?
Good hardwood floors and a Wurlitzer theatre organ accompanying the skaters.
It sounds like a lot of fun. Thank you.
You’re welcome, Bill.
A little more about indoor roller skating in those days: It was very popular with kids in the 1950’s. Riverside’s Rollerdrome was a substantial building with an open floor about 100 feet wide and 150 long. there were floor to ceiling posts in the center to share the roof weight with the outer walls. The posts were sort of am obstacle course during the dance sessions, during which the skating pairs had to crisscross the floor, one or the other or both skating backwards.
During the free-skate sessions, it was anything goes and most of the girls cleared the floor while the boys skated hell bent for leather, banging the walls and posts all over the place.
Meanwhile the Wurlitzer was going boogie-woogie, all stops open.
But times change, don’t they?
There is a decrepit building on a hill East here which used to be a roller rink. When that use faded away it eventually became a tire and muffler and brake service shop.
That faded too, as high sidewall tires were replaced by low profiles and the building is now stuffed full of new highwall tires over ten years old for which there is no economic use.
I have no idea what the Riverside Rolerdome looks like today. It is (was?) in Plymouth, Michigan, about twenty miles or so Southwest of Detroit. Anybody here know?
Woops! Should have Braved it ( Brave.com ) before I asked.
Here it is, apparently alive and well:
http://www.riversidearena.com/
Mr. Dave, we had two skating rinks. One was in a huge building with nice wooden floors. It had a large back door they kept open with a huge fan blowing cooler air inside. There was a huge mattress just outside the door. It was for all the skaters who couldn’t turn. They’d fly out the door, and fall on the mattress. haha
The other was a tent rink called Barney’s. It was high off the ground on piers. The “good girls” weren’t allowed to go to Barney’s because girls there kissed. My sister went to Barney’s a lot but I don’t think she ever got kissed. hahaha
One time, I went to a tent rink in Alice, Texas with a cousin. A cute guy was showing off for all the girls. A girl was watching him, and not paying attention to what she was doing. She went out the door, down the steps, and fell on a caliche parking lot. We never saw her again. lol
Well, regional differences were always part of life everywhere.
In this case, indoor roller skating was and/or is different in Texas, Michigan and West Virginia.