long hot summer

School was out & the long hot summer began. Central Pennsylvania grows really humid in June. It can be unbearable when you are outside doing–virtually–anything. Jim Howell & I never really let the weather bother us. We didn’t care…much. We rode in freezing barns, dirty cobweb-festooned basements & drafty attics. We did anything to skate. Cherry Hill was an option, but we needed a ride & that didn’t happen everyday. With a two hour commute, parents & friends were ‘less than’ enthusiastic, about driving us to the skate park & sitting there all day. I understood. One day in June, I called Jimbo & he came over to the house. We frequently changed the ramp, according to our whims & ideas. We saw the ‘tombstone’ at the ‘High Roller’ contest in the magazine & fashioned one for the ramp. It was a joke, but we dropped in, pulled rock-n-rolls & airs off of it.

Once, we wanted to learn ‘fakie ollies’ but the one side of my ramp was small, so we built an ‘over-vert’ addition. We didn’t have plywood, so I went down this winding country road behind my house. I went to an old deserted barn & pulled ‘tongue-in-groove’ planks off. We put them together & added about a foot of ‘over-vert’ on the ramp. Jimbo pulled ‘fakie ollies’ & ‘fakie ollie to tail’ that night. We hung a “Coleman’ lantern on the corner of the ramp as it was growing dark & he was close to making it. As bugs flew in our mouths & dive-bombed us, Jimbo slapped one down. We were elated! These negatives sat in my fathers darkroom file cabinet until about three weeks ago. He wasn’t sure if they were good or not. He just sent them. I asked Ray to scan them & just saw them for the first time ever. There was an image of Jimbo as well! So Stoked. We didn’t have very many images from my ramp so this was a find! I wanted to share them with everyone. Thank you to my father- ‘David’ -for these images. Skate. – Ozzie