{"id":243,"date":"2018-11-16T19:24:53","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T19:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/?p=243"},"modified":"2018-11-16T19:24:53","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T19:24:53","slug":"roller-skates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/roller-skates\/","title":{"rendered":"Roller Skates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Roller Skates<\/strong><br \/>\nI remember my skates,<br \/>\nsimple really, compared to today\u2019s.<br \/>\nA platform for your foot and 4 metal wheels.<br \/>\nA key to crimp the skate to the rubber sides<br \/>\nof your sneakers before you could take off.<br \/>\nWe didn\u2019t have sidewalks so the road was our rink<br \/>\nor the concrete floor of the basement,<br \/>\nswing yourself around the black plumbing pipe.<br \/>\nPush&#8211;glide, push&#8211;glide if you could call<br \/>\nit that on the rough surface. I tried making a turn,<br \/>\nfell, took a chunk out of my knee, still have the scar.<\/p>\n<p>The town\u2019s only rink was supposed to be integrated<br \/>\nbut black children were not allowed.<br \/>\nWanting equality for everyone, Dad enlisted us for a test.<br \/>\nMy group: white kids, the other: black and white.<br \/>\nWe paid our fee, got skates with wheels<br \/>\nand boots; rolled on to the smooth, wooden floors,<br \/>\nwith loud music, flashing disco lights. <\/p>\n<p>Can\u2019t remember if the other group got in,<br \/>\nMom came and took us home.<br \/>\nLater, the roller rink was torn down<br \/>\nleaving an empty lot in its place.<\/p>\n<p>Boston Literary Magazine<br \/>\n9\/2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Roller Skates I remember my skates, simple really, compared to today\u2019s. A platform for your foot and 4 metal wheels. A key to crimp the skate to the rubber sides of your sneakers before you could take off. We didn\u2019t have sidewalks so the road was our rink or the concrete floor of the basement,&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/roller-skates\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Roller Skates<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","category-published-poems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":244,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions\/244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}