This summer out of the blue, my daughter took up an interest in my childhood skateboard. I heavily WD-40’ed the hell out of the genuine polyurethane wheels and the bushings for the trucks. I also needed to do some repairs to the board to fix the holes from the trucks over the years. It cleaned up nicely. I handed it over to her and we started practicing in the driveway.
The board is originally a Black Knight Board that was sold in the late 1960s – 1970s. It was produced with clay rather than polyurethane wheels. My older cousin Alan (by a year and a half) was a skateboarder first. I kind of looked up to him when I was younger. He was a tough kid and seemed to be good at everything he did. When we were younger I liked getting his approval. I didn’t think The Black Knight board was necessarily cool. So, my grandfather sanded off the Black Knight emblem and we replaced the original clay wheels with original polyurethane Super Surfer wheels. This was around 1975. The board is now much worse for where. Originally you couldn’t see the screw holes in the top of the board. That was from years of riding.
It stayed stored away for over thirty years. I brought it back out in the 2000s when my nephew Kyle took up an interest in skateboarding. He long surpassed my skill set. I was and have always been more of a cruiser. I had a skateboard culture to evolve in when I lived in California, but once we moved to Oklahoma that changed. The only time I could seriously get back on a board was in the summers when I would fly back out to stay with my father and cousins. My cousins boards were evolving way past mine, they were using wider trucks with what seemed like much wider OJ wheels. I would be rusty at the beginning of each summer and I had to share my cousin Alan and Eddie’s boards. Going back to Oklahoma in the Fall meant playing football, with little room or place to really skateboard. On top of it all there was no one as a kid to skateboard with it Oklahoma.
I was so excited when my nephew Kyle took it up as a kid in the early 2000s. His family would visit from Kansas City often. I enjoyed running Kyle around to find great places for him to ride. When he was a teenager we found a skater made park under the old Kingshighway bridge. This was my favorite spot. I could never do the tricks Kyle can, but I’ve enjoyed photographing his development as a skateboarder over the years.
Fast forward to now. Curiously, my ten year old daughter took an interest in my old board this summer. She had actually ridden it before as a child, when Kyle and his family were in town. For our first day, Keira and I worked on her balance with my old board. She took to riding goofy foot immediately, just like her father and her cousin Kyle. It didn’t take me too long before I had a scrape and realized Keira needed a bigger board 😉
She has regularly asked to skateboard this summer and I have happily obliged the request. I have gotten back on her board and slowly I am finding my muscle memory for riding. I think Keira will be more over a cruiser like me. We have found a place by her school that no one is using for the summer that is rather clear. It has a nice incline to it, so she starts at the top and works her way downward. We have updated the pads because she recently had a fall like her father and she did not appreciate that at all. She refuses to wear a helmet. She has so much hair. I didn’t wear a helmet when I was her age because no one did then. They didn’t have such things. I am not forcing the issue because I want her to enjoy something. She goes down a hill in our subdivision that scares me when she does, and she told me once the reason she loves to rides is the feel of the wind in her hair. How can a Father deny her that?
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