PLYWOOD SKATEBOARD
There was a magical time. Back when we got to call each other evil and terrible names. When a fist fight would end in a friendship. When ELO ruled the airwaves. Kinder. Hotter. Gentler times. It was the first six months of the greatest decade and summer was upon us. Well at least to the best of my knowledge. The story I recall is real. The year may be off by one. I have memories of the neighborhood, of building a “skateboard”, of singing Don’t Bring Me Down by ELO, and of hating David Long with the heat of 1000 suns.
It was the summer between my 5th and 6thgrade years and like most 11 year olds, I’d decided I hated David Long, a kid who lived at the top of the block. By top I mean North, away from the Gulf. Essentially a third of a mile from the Southside. We didn’t call it that of course, we were 11, but it sounds pretty legit now.
I love the hatred of youth. Based on nothing, you just decided you didn’t like a kid. If he was unlucky, you convinced everyone to hate him too. This wasn’t that. We both just decided to hate each other and rode our bikes around glaring at each other, pre-adolescent pudginess gleaming in the Mississippi sun.
All of this culminated in the middle of the block one day when we threw down our bikes and decided a fist fight would solve it all. We met under the tree at the Williams’s yard and threw punches for what felt like an eternity. Me suffering a black eye, David, a bloody nose but more importantly, he quit first, and I was declared winner by Ron Engel, making me the 5th -8th toughest kid on the block behind The Fisher boys, The Avery kids, Kevin Riser, Jeff Laughlin and Patsy Williams who would go on to give me multiple ER visits from hitting me in the head with dirt clods.
The fight likely looked very slappy in nature but felt monumental to young me. I’d never been in one, let alone won one so I was exhilarated. I went home and was immediately punished while my black eye developed, waiting patiently for my mom to hand me a steak to put on my eye, the 70’s-80’s cure all for black eyes. I got ice and grounded instead.
I was forced to call and apologize despite my proclamations that “It was all his fault.” My victory lap halted before it even began.
During my 2 weeks of prison time, a strange transformation took place. As my eye faded from purple to blue to green to yellow, so to did my hatred of David Long. Before the end of the summer we were best friends. Such is the mystery of prepubescent boys.
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I’ve blathered on before of the relationship between song and place, music and memory intertwined forever. This is why ELO came to me this morning.
When you’re a kid you look for any opportunity you can to openly swear. Especially in front of adults. You look for swear words in songs so you can belt them out in the back of the Toyota Corolla station wagon and declare to your mom that you were “just singing the song!!”. Without the luxury of Google at your beck and call, you did your best figuring out lyrics and died on that mountaintop defending even the worst translations. Such was the case with Don’t Bring Me Down.
The 5th of seven verses (7 verses!?!?) is:
“You're lookin' good, just like a snake in the grass
One of these days, you're gonna break your glass”
Every kid in the world of course inserted ASS for GLASS and belted it as loud as they could, because “it’s the words!” It wasn’t but we were convinced of it.
This song is directly tied to my flip flop friendship with David Long. Sometime after my release from the gulag, David and I set aside our hatred and set our sites on land speed records.
One afternoon we took two pair of roller skates we’d grown out of and we nailed them to a scrap piece of plywood, the higher pair in the back so it was jacked up a little. 16 wheels of pure speed, soaked in WD-40 to make em spin faster. We found a scrap of carpet and nailed that to the top. We found a chunk of rope and tied it to the back of my dads Raleigh Super Record ten speed and proceeded to tow each other around the block, over and over. Our goal, 20 mph.
There were no helmets or pads. Just two former mortal enemies taking turns reaching breakneck speeds on the downhill side. Never once wrecking. Over and over and over again. Neither looking forward to pulling but trading off equitably aiming for the record. Lungs and legs burning.
Upon one of these trips a car drove by, windows down, the music loud, blaring out of 6x9 coaxial speakers. The song, Don’t Bring Me Down. The timing, impeccable. Me with a hand entwined in a chunk of rope, my new best friend hammering up the hill, me almost screaming...
“You're lookin' good, just like a snake in the grass
One of these days, you're gonna break your ASS!
Don’t bring me down
No, no, no, no, no”
David and I didn’t remain best friends past sixth grade and in fact I vividly remember him wanting to kick my ass in high school. I avoided this ass kicking and maintain my 1-0 record in street fights to this day.
I still like saying bad words.
#hugsandhi5s
