*Content Warning: this piece contains strong language. All opinions, language, or reflections are those of the author and do not represent Swedish Medical Group.
Jamey and I are sitting on our skateboards on top of a two-hundred-foot cliff, watching the Bay Boat Club loading dock, Lake Erie crashing into jagged rocks below, and the sunset. We're both smoking Marlboro light cigarettes. We’re wearing winter skull caps, black hoodies, and baggy jeans so we can stay warm on this windy October day. We're just a couple of preteen skater punks trying to figure out how to cause trouble.
I look at Jamey. He’s hitting a rock with a thick twig, like a drum. A cigarette dangles from his mouth. “What do you want to do tonight, Jamey?” I ask, disrupting his imaginary jam session. “Let's do something different. Exciting.”
“Shit on the floor, stomp on it, and the kitty cat rings the bell!”
“I'm serious Jamey. Let's step it up. Do something crazy. Do you have any ideas?”
“I've always wanted to skate the Bay pool,” he suggests under his breath.
“Hell, yes! Now you're talking my language. Are the pools empty yet? Let's go check it out.”
We grab our skateboards and jump over the fence onto the road that goes through the park where the Bay pool is located. We throw our boards on the concrete and then skate down the road as fast as we can. Using one leg to push off the road, I give myself a couple pumps of speed before putting my foot back on the board so I can surf the newly paved asphalt road into the park. I love to coast, and I spread my arms out like a red-tail hawk. Jamey hotdogs his way up the road, doing ollies and kickflips with his board.
Ever since we were kids, he's always been better at me at skateboarding – but I’ve always been his wingman, going to different places to skate with him. Even if I'm not at his level, I'll try anything as long as we're together causing a ruckus.
“Let's go over by the kiddie pool!” I shout.
We turn the corner down the road next to the entrance of the pool and come to a screeching halt. Our boards slide forward, screeching the wheels.
“Look Jamey, the pools are empty,” I tell him, pointing to all three of the pools. There's the one-foot kiddie pool in front of us, and then a giant six-foot leisure pool in the middle, and on the very right, a twelve-foot deep diving pool. That's the pool we have to get to, where we have the best chance to do cool tricks and get big air.
“Hey, John. I think we can use this big metal green post to climb over the fence,” he suggests.
“Good idea. It's the only place we can climb up. The other fences have barbed wire on top.” I jump back on my skateboard. “Let's get out of here before the pigs get suspicious. To the treehouse for a smoke!”
“Yeah! Woogie.”
We casually stroll past the bigger pools, looking inside, studying the surroundings. There's an old oak tree in the picnic area in front of the middle pool. About a half a block down Park Road, we go into the kid’s park and climb up into our favorite man-made fort. There’s an old rusted-out metal platform attached to a big thick metal pole, with a gritty ladder you can climb up in the center. The walls are made out of wood posts, and when you're up there it's like you’re in the bow of a pirate ship. You can see everything across the ‘sea’ – the tennis courts, and the police station behind us, and the Bay Pool basketball courts, and the baseball fields in front of us. We light up a couple of smokes, looking at each other and smiling.
“So, Jamey?” I say. “You fucking got this! I don't want you to wuss out at the last second like you did last time.”
“That was just once! Yeah dork, I'm not going to puss out, ass-wipe.” He throws his two cents in. “…But I don't think we should do this now. I think we need to do it later.”
“You mean, sneak out later?”
“Hell, yes. We got to do this ninja-style, like we did the other day.”
“All right,” I say, slapping him a high five. “That sounds like a good plan. We should meet back here at twelve-thirty a.m. and then we'll be thrashing that pool in no time!”
We snuff out our Marbs when the clock tower on top of the police station charms at ten o’clock. We climb down the treehouse and practice our ninja skills, jumping into the giant sandbox with the toys and hiding from cars driving by, until we get to the park road.
“Okay, homie,” I say. “I'll see you back at the treehouse at twelve-thirty sharp.”
“Hell, yes! I can't wait to get some air.”
We flip our boards down, heading towards Wolf Way, one of the main the roads in our small suburb of Bay village, west of Cleveland. We both live a block away on parallel streets off Wolf, so the kid’s park is a perfect midway spot for us to meet. We skate in the middle of Wolf Way until I head left on Bruce Road and he turns right onto Russell Road.
“You better not bail, poser!” I shout at him.
“Fuck you!” He hollers as he shove-its in the middle of the road and heads off.
When I get home, my parents are watching Dick Goddard ramble about the weather. “Hey guys! I'm going to play video games. Good night!” I shout as I run downstairs with Cheyenne, my one-eyed white Lab, at my side.
For me, sneaking out is easy because my parents are busy psychologists, and they spend hours seeing clients at their practice. They're usually upstairs in bed asleep before David Letterman's monologue is over. I burn some time playing Wizards and Warriors on my Nintendo entertainment system.
Around twelve twenty-five, I tiptoe up the basement stairs in my black Chukka Boots and quietly close the basement door, locking Cheyenne downstairs. The next part is easy because all I have to do is slip out the side door.
I'm off! Running with my skateboard, ducking my head, trying to make myself look small. I dash down the street using the other house’s front lawn bushes for cover. I'm in luck because no one is out. Not a car in sight.
When I hear a dog barking at the corner, I just keep running across Wolf Road into the kid’s park, diving into the sandbox, losing my hat and getting sand all over my baggy JNKO blue jeans. My heart is racing so fast. This is the excitement I was looking for – and it's only just begun!
I feel around the sand for my hat and find an orange ball. I throw it at the swing set. Laying down on my stomach, I poke my head up and see Jamey running across Wolf Way.
“Click! Click!” I make a noise with my tongue to get his attention.
“Where are you?”
“I'm in the sandbox,” I softly yell. I raise my hand.
Jamey jumps over a three-foot fence, runs into the park, and dives into the sandbox right on top of me. “Bonzai!”
“What the fuck, dude? Get down or officer Foley will find you!”
“Fuck Foley, that stupid fat potato-eating Irish oinker!”
“All right, settle down,” I say. “What the hell are you wearing?”
“I wrapped my Red Bones long-sleeve around my head like a ninja. I thought we were dressing up like ninjas?”
“What? No. You're crazy. I’ve just got my black CAT hat!” I pull it over my eyebrows and ears, incognito style. “I think we should just beeline it through the basketball courts, strait to the kiddy pool.” I lift my head up and point. “It's the easiest way to get to that big green fence post.”
“Okay.”
“I don't see any fuzz, dude. On the count of three. One, two…three!”
“Wait! Wait! Wait! I'm not ready, John.”
“Okay…three!”
I take off on foot past our treehouse to the basketball courts, where I dive into a grassy field. Jamey uses his skateboard on the basketball courts and passes me up like a lightning bolt towards the kiddie pool. I get up off the grass and run as fast as I can to catch up. By the time I make it there, he's already halfway up the fence post.
“Meet me at the pool!” he says, lifting his other leg over the fence. Falling ten feet inside.
Throwing my board over the fence, I climb by holding onto the post and sticking my boots into the diamond holes of the links for traction. By the time I'm halfway up, Jamey is skating towards the diving pool, getting ready to launch into the six-foot shallow end. I lift my other leg over and drop to the ground when I hear a loud vibrating crash from Jamey as he lands the drop-off and disappears.
“Oh, shit!” I yell, picking up my board. My adrenaline is flowing as I look around and sprint to see what happened to him. I slowly hop down into the baby blue landscape of the empty pool, which is dimly lit by streetlights.
“What the hell, dude?” I whisper. “That was so loud.”
“Ha! I didn't know that was going to happen.”
“It's all right. Let's go. You go first.”
Jamey ollie-impossibles before flying down the slope of the twelve-foot concrete hill at the deep end of the pool, then stops himself up against the wall at the bottom.
I'm not as brazen as Jamey, so I just slowly go up to the lip of the hill before I push myself over the edge. I grab the bottom of my board, speeding towards Jamey, pinning him up against the wall as I slide on my ass.
“Yeah!” We celebrate.
Like being at the sled-riding hill, we climb up the slope, doing different runs over and over. Jamey does Ali-shove-it before going down, and when he runs up, he throws down his skateboard so he can jump the lip of the pool like a ramp. Me, on the other hand, I go down sideways, bending my knees so I can surf the slope back and forth like a wave in the ocean.
We're having so much fun we let down our guard, because the next time I go up the hill I see a police car turning down the Park Road from Wolf Way. Coming towards us.
“Pig!” I shout as I jump on my skateboard and go down the slope for the last time. “Come on, Jamey, huddle up in the corner against the back wall.”
We sit on our boards in the corner of the Blue Cave, nervously waiting to see what happens next. We look up and see a spotlight over the pool shining against the back wooden fence.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, John!” Jamey whimpers. “I can't get in trouble. My dad will ground me forever and smack me upside my head.”
“Chill. We're not going to get caught! It's probably just officer Foley. He's a jackass. He'll never find us down here. Chill out, spaz.” I look through my pockets for non-existent Marlboros. “Can I bum a smoke?”
“Right now? You're such a dick. You never have smokes.” He digs in his pockets and gives me a cigarette, putting one in his mouth as well. I take out my lighter and light his smoke first.
“Welp, Jamey,” I say. “No matter what happens to us tonight, this was exactly the excitement I was looking for. We should be proud of ourselves that we actually skated Bay Pool. We can tell team Ape.”
“Who the fuck cares, asshole! Get us outta here, dude. You always get me in trouble!”
“Whatever, douche. You wanted to catch big air. Let's try to relax, stay quiet and take a couple puffs.” I calm the situation down.
Jamey is smoking, quickly tapping his worn out checkered AirWalk shoe on the blue asphalt of the empty pool. A few minutes pass and I start quietly singing a song that we made up: Come to where the flavor is, Maaaarlboro lights. The Marlboro man on his Caamel with a Marlboro in his mouth…
“…SWAYING in the wind!” We sing together, and then burst out laughing.
Suddenly a loud screeching warning siren from the cruiser bellows, causing us to jump back, grabbing each other. Officer Foley turns on the red and blue lights, followed by full-blown sirens, and then screeches off down the park road like someone just got shot.
“He's gone, Jamey. Let’s do one more skate session.”
I’m kidding.
“No! I'm getting the hell out of here.”
We pick up the boards and go up the slope, staying low and out of sight. Jamey picks up his long-sleeve t-shirt and wraps it around his head again, turning himself back into a ninja.
“Yo, Jamey. I think I see a broken board in the back fence.”
We jump up to the ladder, climbing out of our pop-up skatepark, going to the cracked fencing panel. I smash the plank with my skateboard, breaking it in half and then I pull the broken pieces off so we can squeeze through.
“I told you we wouldn't get caught, Jamey,” I say as we’re wiggling our way through the fence. “All we got to do is skate home, because all the pigs in Bay are busy right now.”
“Whatever, dickhead,” he says. “We got lucky.”
Author: John J. Mistur
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