He smiled when the image of the young lady who had aroused him in the morning finally came to mind. What he and this young lady had shared was a brief sexual interlude rather than a long affair, but her image brought back memories of a time when his passion and sense of discovery had made his world a very exciting place. "Ah, but those were the days," he mused, "and what I wouldn't give to be in that kind of shape again."
Tony guided the mower down the steep slope of his lawn. When he reached the sidewalk, he made a sharp turn and started pushing the mower up the slope. He was now thinking of starting on an exercise program. He could feel his bare toes digging into soft turf and his large leg muscles propelling him up the hill. Sure, the cigarettes had shortened his breath a bit, and the extra weight had slowed him down a step or two, but he felt as powerful and agile as ever. "There's no reason why a man my age can't get into good shape," he told himself.
He was on his way back down the hill when he saw his teenage neighbor's '69 chevy backing down the driveway that paralleled the slope of Tony's lawn. At the front of the car was a steep, wooden ramp. Jimmy and his friends had placed a skateboard under each corner of the ramp, tied an old tire to the front of the car, and were now using the car to ease the ramp down the driveway.
"Clever," Tony concluded as he made his turn at the sidewalk. The ramp was now out of this view, but he could hear those brash, teenage voices as the boys strained to pull the boards out from under the ramp.
"Lift, you wus!" one of them screeched.
"Get your ass into it," Jimmy exhorted.
Tony believed "get your back into it" would have been more accurate, but he also knew boys that age would think it was more manly to use the word "ass."
By the time Tony was heading down the slope the boys had retrieved their skateboards and were heading up the slope. He exchanged greetings with Jimmy without breaking stride and made his turn at the sidewalk in time to see one of the boys speeding down the driveway on a skateboard. The boy rose to the top of the ramp, spun the skateboard around and headed down the ramp. It looked like fun. It also took Tony back to the time when he was that age.
Since Tony's birthday fell on the day after school let out for summer vacation, his mother had not enrolled him until the following year. This made him a little older than most of his class mates, and he was able apply for the most prized of possessions, a California driver's license, before any of his friends were old enough to get one. His sister made things even better for Tony by giving him her old '47 Ford when she got married. That car meant everything to him. It was freedom, status, dates, and trips to the beach. Having to take a part time job during the school year in order to pay for the registration and insurance on the car only added to his anticipation as he waited for his sixteenth birthday to roll around. When his birthday finally arrived, he re-registered the car in his name and passed his drivers test. He proudly picked up his friends the same afternoon, and they went cruising.
Being the best at what you did was emphasized in those days, and mediocre became a pejorative term. The world was there to be conquered and everyone was encouraged to do great things. As they started down Colorado Boulevard, Tony boldly announced that he would set a world record tomorrow or the next day.
"Sure!" his friends derisively chided.
"No, I've checked it out," he assured them. "The Guinness Book of World Records has no mention of a skateboard. So whoever is timed over a distance on a skateboard will hold the speed record on a skateboard for that distance."
"Why should you be the one who sets it?" John asked.
Tony was tempted to say, "because I thought of it, asshole," but he decided against it. "All right," he agreed, "we'll have a contest. We'll pick the steepest road we can find in the hills above Pasadena, and we'll time everyone in the mile. We'll then do a four-forty, a two-twenty, and a hundred yards. Anyone winning one event will be eliminated from competing in the other events. That way each of us will hold a record, and since we'll pick a steep hill our records should last for a while."
The idea that each of them could set a record was so appealing they agreed to do it without giving a second thought to the competitive ethic of the time. Creativity and a ride did count for something, however, so Tony was allowed to make the first run.
Ron got out of the car with a stopwatch at the first telephone pole above the bottom of the hill. They then measured a mile from that pole on the car's odometer. John and Tony stepped out in the street, and John raised his hand. A car crested the hill as John gave the command to get set. He waited for it to pass. Then he yelled, "Go!" and dropped his hand. Tony pushed off and assumed a firm stance on the board. The noise of the skateboard's metal wheels rolling over the rough asphalt roared in Tony's ears and his lower legs tingled from the vibration as his speed rapidly increased. He was almost half way to the bottom of the hill when he passed the car John had waited for. Tony was now going so fast that he would have gladly jumped off the board if he could have done it without killing himself.
As he approached the intersection a very slow truck coming from the opposite direction made a left turn and the traffic light turned red. Tony could not turn right without running into the back of the truck, and he could not stop. He held his breath, hunched down a bit and prayed. Miraculously, he sailed through the intersection without mishap.
"Crazy bastard!" the cop hiding on the far corner of the intersection muttered as he started his motorcycle.
Tony could faintly hear what he thought was a horn, but he had other worries. The high speed and foot numbing vibration were tearing up the wheels, the bearings, and any bolts still holding the wheel assemblies in place. His legs were shaking from fear and fatigue, and he could feel the board becoming increasingly unsteady. He now heard the sharp, short burst of a siren. He glanced back into the flashing red lights of the motorcycle, and he could see the cop emphatically motioning for him to pull over.
"I can't!" Tony yelled, but it came out as a mere whisper, buried beneath the roar of the metal wheels. He could see the road flattening out in front of him and gently rising in the distance.
"Hold together!" he cried. "Please, God! Just let it hold together long enough for that rise to slow me down."
The cop turned on his siren again, and he accelerated to move along side of Tony. As he did so, the front wheel assembly of the Skateboard shifted, causing the board to swerve directly into the path of the motorcycle. The cop slammed on his brakes and slid to the other side of the street.
Tony had just slowed down enough so that he thought he could dismount when the cop came charging up behind him again. The skateboard was now shimmying so badly that all Tony could think about was getting off of it. He dismounted the only way you can dismount a moving skateboard. He kicked it out behind him and ran like hell. The board shot into the air, and there was the sound of screeching rubber as the cop swerved to avoid it. This was followed by a dull thud as the board struck motorcycle on its gas tank. The cop fishtailed his motorcycle to a stop, kicked it into first, and twisted the throttle on full to pursue Tony, who was running to keep from falling on this face. Tony took several more long, slow strides, and pulled up, causing the cop to zoom past him. Now feeling cheated out of his opportunity to run the little bastard down, the cop spun the bike around and glided up to where Tony was standing.
It did not take much in the way of observation to know that this was one furious cop. The vein in his neck bulged and throbbed, and his knuckles stood out as white knobs at the end of tan hands held stiffly at his sides. "Do you have a driver's license?" he growled through clenched teeth.
Tony's heart was still pounding from his frightening ride. "Yes, sir," he gasped. He was shaking so much that he had a hard time getting the license out of his wallet.
"What the hell did you think you were doing? You damn near killed me!" The cop shouted as he tore the license out of Tony's hand.
"I almost killed myself too, sir," Tony said, trying to console him.
"Can you think of any reason why I shouldn't arrest you?"
"I won't do it again. I promise," Tony pleaded.
"I'm sure you won't, not after the judge is done with you," the cop threatened. He then started writing furiously in his ticket book. When he was done he handed the book to Tony and said "sign it," which Tony did. The cop then snatched the book from Tony, ripped off the original ticket and handed it to him. "Since you're a juvenile your parents will have to call the court and set a date for your appearance. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good, and you can bet your ass I'll be there," the cop said. He then did an abrupt about face and stomped off.
In spite of the cop's ominous tone, Tony was not too worried about the court. He thought it would just fine him. His parents were another matter. This was his first ticked, and he did not know how they would react. "Ah, but the ticket was not for anything I did in a car," he reminded himself. That was a relief because his parents always tried to make the punishment fit the crime, and he would rather do without his skateboard than his car.
The court turned out to be a real circus -- complete with clowns, the biggest of which was the boy who was standing before the judge when Tony entered the court room. The judge was an old gentleman who wore half glasses which were constantly sliding down his nose. He pushed his glasses up and began to read.
"It says here you were urinating in a public place, on a public highway to be more precise. Is that what you were doing?" he asked, peering over his glasses at the boy.
"Not exactly, Your Honor."
"What do mean by 'not exactly?' You were either urinating or you weren't."
"Well, I really hadn't started going yet. So I guess you could say I was just sort of waving it around in the breeze."
The court room burst into laughter, and Tony could swear there was a slight twitching at each corner of the judge's mouth as he banged his gavel for order.
"Son," the judge said in a very fatherly way, "I'm not your attorney, and I wouldn't presume to give you legal advice, but it seems to me that urinating in a public place would be preferable to bearing the stigma attached to indecent exposure. Don't you agree?"
"Yes, sir."
"May I accept that as a guilty plea?"
"Uh... Yes, sir."
"Good. Now comes the hard part. You see, I have to find an appropriate sentence or punishment for you. What I would like to do is make you pick up weewee," he said, surveying all the laughing faces. Tony could appreciate someone who was playing it for laughs, and the judge seemed to be playing it well. He waited until all of the laughter had died down. "Unfortunately, that's impossible given the nature of the substance," he then added with a little smile. The gallery greeted this comment with polite titters rather than boisterous laughter, and the judge seemed disappointed. "This will take some thought," he said. "Call the next case while I think about it."
It was at this point that Tony found himself standing in front of the judge. "It says here you were going fifty-five in a twenty-five. Were you?" the judge asked.
"I don't know, sir," Tony answered.
"I'm always getting, 'I don't know.' Why don't you know?"
"Skateboards don't have speedometers, sir."
This brought a laugh, which seemed to annoy the judge. "A what?" he asked. "This doesn't say... Officer?"
"It was a skateboard, Your Honor," the cop replied.
"Fifty-five miles per hour?" the judge asked.
"It was a steep hill," the cop explained.
"It must have been," the judge agreed. "But what about the red light? Why did you go through a red light?"
"Well, sir," Tony answered. "I was going so fast I couldn't stop."
"Aha! So you admit that you could have been going fifty-five?"
"Perhaps."
"And you admit that you went through a red light?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did you fail to pull over for the officer for the same reason you failed to stop for the red light?"
"Yes, sir."
The judge took off his glasses and shook his head. "I had no idea those things were so dangerous," he said. "Young man, I'm afraid I'm going to have to make an example out of you."
"Example" set off an alarm in Tony's mind. "Your Honor," he pleaded.
"Quiet!" the judge shouted. "I'm going to suspend your drivers license for... When does school start again? You may start driving again on the first day of school."
"Your Honor, may I say something?" Tony asked.
"Make it fast," the judge responded.
"What I did on the skateboard has nothing to do with the way I drive a car. Besides, I'd never do it again... I mean, you might as well suspend my license for falling out of a tree on an apple."
"If you rode an apple in a horizontal direction at fifty-five miles per hour and through a red light, I would still suspend your license," the judge replied. "Next case!"
Tony was still smarting over the suspension of his driver's license when he received a letter form the Guinness Book of World Records. The letter explained that they could not recognize Tony's record because he had broken the law in setting it. The only bright side Tony could find to this episode stemmed from the fact that his friends repeated and embellished the story of his ride often enough to make it a local legend.
It had been many years since Tony had thought about his legendary ride, and he was actually smiling over the memory of it when he finished mowing the last little patch of grass. The slight fatigue and honest sweat from his physical exertion made him feel good, and he thought a cigarette and a cold beer would make him feel even better. He retrieved those items from his house and stood on his front porch, watching the boys as he caught his breath. They seemed to be having so much fun that he could not resist walking over to their starting point on the driveway.
"May I see that thing," he asked Jimmy.
"Sure," Jimmy answered, handing Tony the skateboard.
Tony examined the modern, plastic wheels and the lamination of the board. It was really sophisticated when compared with the ones he and his friends had made.
"You know, I used to be a legend on one of these things," he told Jimmy. Tony then thought about the materials used in making both the board and its wheels, and he could not resist adding the cliché. "Of course, that was in the days of wooden boards and iron men," he said.
The cliche turned out to be a big mistake because one of Jimmy's friends said he could not understand, "why you guys put those ridiculous boxes on the front of 'em." This comment implied that Tony was five or six years older than he actually was, and that he had ridden a skate scooter rather than a skateboard.
"My generation didn't put those ridiculous boxes on them," Tony said, almost snarling. "In fact," he added, "I'll bet I can still take that ramp."
"I don't know," Jimmy said. "It's probably been a lot of years since you've done it," Mr. Banty.
That did it. Now Tony would have to show the little shits. "Watch me," he said, setting down his cigarette and beer.
In an effort to go faster than the boys had been going, Tony pushed off a little harder than he thought he had. As a consequence, he reached the top of the ramp sooner than he expected, and this caused him to start his turn a little late. The board shot straight into the air, and Tony turned about one hundred and sixty degrees in the air before his bare toes slammed against the top of the ramp. The result was a belly flop on the ramp and a head first slide to the bottom.
"Oh, shit!" Jimmy screeched.
"Rad," several of Jimmy's friends intoned.
Jimmy raced over to Tony and asked if he was okay.
"Yeah," Tony responded as he climbed to his feet.
"Whoa dude," one of Jimmy's friends observed, "your toe is wasted."
Tony did not need anyone to tell him he had injured his toe, but he did not expect to see it bent at such a funny angle either. "I guess I should have said iron wheels and wooden men," he said, trying to gain in cool what he had lost in athletic accomplishment.
"Do you want me to tell your wife to take you to the hospital?" Jimmy asked.
"Don't you dare!" Tony snapped as he started hobbling off toward his house.
He knew his wife would not only ask how it happened but also why he did it. It was obvious to Tony that every man reaches a point where he can feel the sands of time begin to bury his youth and erode his virility. Many men try to hang onto their youth by cheating on their wives. Other men get involved in absurd athletic activities, such as riding a skateboard. This, however, is not something you can explain to your wife -- not if you are Tony Banty. God, how he dreaded the inevitable question of why? He really did feel like a kid in that respect and he always would.
First published in macsbackporch.blogspot.com on May 6, 2009
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