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, 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 ...
The dome under which thousands of roller skaters circle the rink on weekend evenings was completely destroyed.
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.
The basement of the roller rink was damaged by the water used to extinguish the flames.
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.
What Remains of the Island Expo Hall
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