Queen of the Roller Rink

With the independence my driver’s license granted me I felt free! I kept the roads warmed between DeWitt and East Lansing.  My parents continued to travel to the cottage each weekend, but employment kept me home, alone.  My brother lived at home until he was just over twenty one years old, but when he wasn’t working, he was at the cottage with my parents.  I lived for the weekends.  My parents were gone and I was free to roam.  Oddly enough, when they were at the cottage, I seem to be able to make it home at a reasonable hour.  My Mother would have been proud.  I did not have parties at the house.  I was responsible. Even when my parents went on vacation for a week, I did not stray from my responsibility.  I went to school, I went to work and I went to the roller skating rink every night it was opened.

In my senior year, Dad went to pick up a new car at Bud Kouts Chevrolet.  As he was taking delivery, I was admiring the new cars on the show room floor.  There before my eyes sat the most beautiful car I had ever laid eyes on. Dad came out of an office to find me drooling over this hatchback.  Deep Chocolate brown exterior with tan leather seats and a plaid cloth inserts.  Sporty and brand new!

Dad told me to get inside and I fell in love with it! Again, he struck a deal with me and one I could not pass up.  We would trade my Pinto in.  At the time, General Motors had a program where you could drive a new car with little money down for a full year without making a payment on it.  At one year, you either traded it in for a new one, or you paid it off in full or financed it. Are you kidding me?  You think I was going to pass up that deal?  Within an hour, at seventeen, I drove a brand new car literally off the show room floor on to the dealerships parking lot! I had come a long way in 18 months from a primer dotted blue smashed Volkswagen to a spanking brand new sporty hatchback. I decked this ride out from front to back.  I bought a rear window louver to add a little muscle to my sporty hatchback and I thought I ruled the world by the glow of the dashboard lights.

I continued to work at the insurance agency and actually enjoyed it. I especially loved taking information about insurance claims that people called their agent to report. I decided that as long as I spent so much time at the roller skating rink, I might as well work there and so, I applied for a job.

I met my first love at the roller skating rink, much like my parents story.  I remember the first night he showed up to skate. He was taller than most of the boys that skated there and I gravitated toward tall men at five foot eight but I didn’t immediately gravitate to him as he was a male and my opinion of the male species was lower than pond scum. His name was Scott and he was a senior at East Lansing High School.  I was a junior. He asked me time and time again to skate, but I always turned him down.  I don’t remember how we came about skating together but I think my bestie from high school was involved in this match made in pretend heaven. He started working at the rink as a floor guard and so any night I skated that he worked, we would skate together but he was working and it wasn’t the same as when he was not working.  I decided to apply for a job. Getting paid to skate was the perfect idea.  I was there every night, why not get paid for it.  So I approached the manager about a job.

I was still going to school and working part time at the insurance agency, but I could work nights at the rink.  The manager, Mike, stated he had an opening in the concession stand.  I guess he didn’t realize this girl knew all about equal rights for women and she made it very clear that she was not concession stand material. I was applying for the floor guard position.  End of story.  He said I was a girl.  Excuse me?  Was my mother under this costume that resembled the rink manager?  I was a girl!  I didn’t know that, so glad he pointed that out to me!

He told me that the floor was too dangerous for a girl to manage.  I had to control the skaters and manage the flow of traffic, putting violators in the penalty box and at times having to chase them down.  I’d been skating since I was big enough to stand on these four wheeled boots.  He wasn’t backing down and I was not giving up.  We struck a bargain.  He would hire me and give me one night on the floor but if I didn’t work out, hello concessions stand.

I was to begin my first night under the sparkling disco ball the following Monday.  He warned me that I had to don the orange jumpsuit that resembled the fashion statement inmates made being escorted to court in. I had to be able to tear a roller skate wheel down and repair it both ball bearing and precision.  I passed that test. Monday night came and I was ready to roll.  Usually there were two floor guards at any given time on the floor no matter what night you skated, but this Monday night, I rolled alone.

He was out to prove a point.  What he did not realize is I don’t back down and I’d already been living in Hell at school so this would be a cake walk for this prima donna. I guess he thought because I was a girl and all girl at that, I would run from this challenge that he lay out before me.  He scheduled me to work Soul Night.

It was easy to spot this new bait on the floor.  I wore an orange jumpsuit and was the only white female, no, I stand corrected, only white person on the floor.   If you have ever been to a roller skating rink, the flow of traffic goes in one direction and then for “fun” they throw a twist in there and for one or two songs you skate in the opposite direction.  You are not allowed to cut across the floor.  You are not allowed to cut people off.  You are not allowed to skate recklessly or you will be lassoed by the floor guard and penalized by sitting in the corner until the guard feels like you have paid your dues. On Soul Night, all these rules and regulations do not exist in the minds of the participants.  As the floor guard, the rules do exist and you are challenged with managing the flow of traffic.  On any given night, you might catch less than a half a dozen violators and you blow your whistle, point and direct them to the corner.  Most go without much hassle, but on Soul Night, you have a whole different game board.  First, they skate in whatever direction they chose to.  They cut across the floor, they cut off other skaters, they speed, they are reckless and in any given moment, you might have a hundred skaters on the floor and thirty of them in violation of not one, but several rules.  You had to control that and it was challenging especially as the lone guard on the floor.

On a normal night, the floor guard skates around the floor keeping his eye open to violators but also people who fall.  They must rush to their aid but also direct traffic around the crash and burn site.  On Soul Night, I suppose it would be the same, but not as the only guard.  You could easily become the victim of a crash and burn if you were not careful.  I never skated on Soul Night so this was all very new to me.  But, I was set up to fail and I do not fail!

I positioned myself in front of the DJ booth that sat in the curve of the rink.  I had clear sight of the whole floor, yet I was not in the mix of the chaos that was taking place on this wooden playground. I firmly planted my feet and with the expertise of a finely trained British Bobby I blew my whistle and directed traffic from the corner of the battlefield. If I was ignored, I took off with a vengeance to trap my violator and personally escort him or her to the penalty box and if they gave me any grief, I might forget they were there.  I took control of that floor.  Scott came in that night to see how I was going to do.  He knew that I could out skate any one on the floor, but he also had worked Soul Night and he knew the dangers of managing this unruly group.

I repaired skates, I racked skates, I did what I had to do, to prove I was worthy of the position. I was fighting for equality and my Mother was not ruling the roost on this challenge.  I was not going to let someone tell me that I could not have this job because I was a girl! As I racked the sweaty skates after hours, Mike came back to the skate room to congratulate me, I proved him wrong, he didn’t think I had it in me and he admitted he set me up to fail.  I had the job, the first female floor guard at Roller World in East Lansing was born that night.