It was a blistering summer day when my friends and I decided to race our skateboards while sitting down instead of standing up.
It was Chris, Dustan, Nick and I. Our boards were cheap and hard to ride at fast speeds down the many hills of town. When we tried, our boards would begin to wobble violently, forcing the rider to abandon the deck of wood and, hopefully, he was able to run as fast as the momentum he had already gained. If he lost balance, it meant sliding along the concrete.
On those muggy Midwest summer days, that meant abrasive contact of hot pavement gnashing our bare skin. Sitting seemed much safer for the higher speeds. Sometimes I would tinker with mine replacing the trucks and wheel bearings with random parts from my previous boards, even roller skates. I felt like a modern day Prometheus...with my Frankenstein board. I was the lame god Hephaestus toiling at my forge. With no money, we had to be creative.
Out of boredom we decided to race each other. The track we invented went several blocks and began on a quiet street next to Dustan’s house. First it went down a small hill, then onto a long flat straightway, around the corner and down the final steep hill, across another quiet street and into Chris’s driveway. The hills were easy, but the straighways meant that we would have to use our bare fingers to manually scoot ourselves along until the final hill. It was a lot of work to get the speed needed to beat our opponents. After several hours we all had worn the skin down on each of our fingertips.
“We should go down Tank Hill,” Dustan suggested.
“Oh no. That’s crazy! It has way too many cars.” Nick answered immediately. It was as if he had already anticipated the notion.
“Yeah, I’m not sure if it’s legal.” I said.
“I can’t anyway.” Chris announced. “I’ve got to go to Yale tonight.” We all knew that meant that he was going to stay at his mom’s house in the next town over.
“I’m not doing it. You guys go right ahead. I’ll get in big trouble.” Nick added.
Dustan just laughed, but I could see that his gears were still turning. He was going to do it with or without us. We all knew it. Dustan was known for these types of things. On his first day of school, he got in big trouble for secretly standing behind our sixth grade teacher, Mr. Smith and comically saluting him. I barely had gotten to know him, but I felt a sense of responsibility towards him, as we had met over the summer just after his family moved to town. This mocking of one of the toughest and most frightening teachers was quite a brazen act.
Another example of Dustan’s mischief was the time I heard metal being drug down the street. It was an awful scraping and squealing sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. I watched in disbelief when I saw Dustan riding along with a big grin on his face as he rode his bicycle dragging a metal shovel beside him down the street pretending not to notice the sound, sparks trailing behind him.
“Okay. Let’s go. We can ride all the way down to the pool.” I agreed.
Nick and Chris left while Dustan and I grabbed our beach towels from our houses. We all lived only a few blocks from each other, which made planning last minute adventures very easy.
We stood atop the massive hill of our town’s main thoroughfare, State Street. It was known as “Tank Hill” and it began on the street where I lived, North 12th Street. We could see the traffic getting smaller and smaller all the way down through the business district.
“Are you ready?” Dustan asked with excitement in his voice.
“Let’s do it! If we need to slow down, we’ll pull off at 8th Street.” 8th Street went back up another hill towards Nick’s house.
“HERE WE GO!” Dustan exclaimed as if he hadn’t heard me.
We began rolling faster and faster. The wind was sheering across my face as we hurled past parked cars. 8th Street blurred by quickly and I knew there was no turning back. About halfway down the hill before the Casey’s General store, the start of the busy business section of town, I noticed we were coming up on a slower moving car. Slowing down was not really an option if we wanted to maintain control of our rumbling steeds whizzing beneath us. We would have to pass it on the right.
“This will be interesting.” I thought to myself as Dustan and I rolled up beside them looking up into the passenger windows of the car.
That is when I noticed the yellow sign on the car door.
DRIVER’S EDUCATION VEHICLE
It was the driver’s ed car! And who should be sitting in the passenger seat but our high school principal, Mr. Patera!
We goofily waved and lunged forward with overly intense expressions, pretending to be race car drivers.
The students in the backseat laughed and pointed, Mr. Patera looked down from the sedan at us with an angry grimace, fuming mad as the nervous student driver gripped tightly to the steering wheel making sharp, jerking motions as if steadying her ship.
We rolled past them and kept rolling. We rolled down into the main street businesses waving and laughing at all of the stupefied pedestrians as we rumbled on to the city park and swimming pool. I repeatedly looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was following us. The driver's ed car had turned left back towards the school. We were scott free!
We laughed and splashed until the pool closed at sundown. We had pulled it off. Our classmates would surely hear of our daring exploits. Girls would shake their heads. The guys would smile in wonder, envious of our reckless courage.
Several weeks passed. Our classmates stopped talking about our daring adventure down Tank Hill. On an early fall day, Dustan and I were walking to school when a black Toyota pickup rolled up beside us on the street. Inside sat an incredulous Mr. Patera. He rolled down his window and we stopped and waited for the lashing.
The time had come. We were about to pay the piper. One cannot steal fire from the Gods and get away with it. We were fools to believe that we could be lauded as heroes without a price. Our price would, most likely, be suspension from school or in school detention. My mother was going to kill me! Chiseled on my grave, the epitaph would read, Chad Elliott - Death by Going Down a Hill on a Skateboard.
Mr. Patera began slowly.
“The next time I see something like that, I’m turning you into the police.” he said in a low, serious tone.
Dustan and I just stood still stammering.
“You got that?” he asked with a raised voice.
We both squeaked “Yeah.”
Dustan began snickering into his collar. I nudged him to be quiet.
Mr. Patera shook his head and began pulling away. As he rolled up his window I noticed something unexpected. Through the reflection on the glass, I saw that his face was softening...the grimace melted into a grin on his face. As he pulled further away, I could see his shoulders began lifting up and down as if he was holding back laughter.
The two of us looked at each other in disbelief. We began walking again and, slowly, we came to the realization that we had pulled off the perilous act with no punishment. We had managed to break the rules and get away with it. We had stolen fire from the gods and shared it with our common peers...our eighth grade classmates. We were lauded as heroes for a brief moment between boyhood and manhood. Even the Gods were impressed.
