On New Year’s Eve, I was fixing dinner when I heard sirens. I didn’t think much about it because it’s a common occurrence to hear them around these parts.
Then my Facebook notifications started blowing up. When I logged on, my entire feed was posts and photos of the Exposition Hall, aka the Wheeling Island Roller Rink, that was on fire and expected to be a total loss.
My heart sank. This fire literally hurt my heart. But at the same time, it also brought back a flood of memories, both of skating there and my childhood in general.
I was trying to remember the first time I skated at the rink on Wheeling Island. I’m pretty sure it was a birthday party and I was 11 or 12. Then, for reasons I don’t really remember, we started going there every weekend, and I spent a couple of hours most weekends there for the next five or six years. But before that … .
A Need to Roll
I started roller skating on a regular basis out of necessity. It started when my bike broke and my parents wouldn’t buy me a new one. Something about being irresponsible and needing to learn how to take care of things … yadda yadda … I don’t know, I just knew it was summer and I was hoofin’ it and not thrilled about the idea.
The year before, my girlfriends and I all got roller skates. Not sure why we all did it at once, but we all got the same pair of skates from Pickway Shoes in Benwood. Our skates were white with these new rubber-like wheels that came in all sorts of colors with matching stoppers. I had sets in red and purple, and two sets of laces, white and rainbow. Anyway, I decided that I would skate all summer instead of walking everywhere.
Now, this was 1980, and a show called “The Facts of Life” was really popular. One of the characters was a young black girl named Tootie. She roller skated everywhere. I was the Tootie of Warwood. Ironically, that’s the one nickname I could have lived with that no one tried to pin on me. I roller skated all over Warwood, uphill, downhill, up and down flights of stairs … I developed some skills.
I got a new bike for Christmas, and the skates stayed in the closet until we started hanging at the rink. A lot of stuff went down in that building, and some of it even involved skating.
I had my first couples’ skate there. It was to “Into the Night” by Benny Mardones. Couldn’t tell you the name of the guy I was skating with, though.
Networking
I kept up with friends, ones who had moved away, there at the rink. We might live in Warwood, Elm Grove and Bridgeport, but we could hang out at the rink on the Island.
I had my first “date” at the rink. His name was Donny, and he was a friend of my cousin’s. My parents thought my cousin and I were hanging out. It was safer to let them think that. We were 13.
I had my first couples’ fight at the rink. Donny and I had been dating for about three months. He was skating with some other girl, so I started skating with another guy. He didn’t like that. I didn’t care. We “broke up” that night.
Several friends got engaged at the rink. When I was an older teen, our church group started going to the rink every Saturday night. There were two groups, my teen group and then a group of 20-somethings that came along to “chaperone” us. In actuality, we were chaperoning them since several of them were dating, and it was forbidden for them to go on individual dates. Several of them ended up getting married.
By my late teens, the skating rink became the place I told my parents I was going when I was actually off doing other things with guys who were too cool to be at a skating rink. I mean, why skate with a bunch of kids when you could sneak into a bar and watch your boyfriend’s band?
As my teens waned so did my desire to skate. Even now, now that I’m at the “skate-and- you-might-break-your-hip” age, I still think back on those years and all the memories and smile.
And now that the rink is gone, I’m glad I have them.
