DAILY NEWS JOURNAL, GREG TUCKER, 4/7/2013
It started locally on the city sidewalks. Then it went indoors at Jakes Town on the Woodbury Pike and open air on portables. Finally, roller skating centered on West College.
In the early 1700s, a Dutch ice skater attempted to make a pair of dry land skates. He attached wooden spools to wood strips tied to his shoes. These early inline skates, called “skeelers,” attracted little interest. In 1760, Joseph Merlin, a London inventor, made a pair of metal-wheeled boots, basically inline skates. Premiering his invention at a prestigious London gathering, Merlin skated into a mirror and injured himself.
A more successful demonstration of skating occurred at a German ballet in 1818. The performance included an ice skating scene that was successfully performed on stage using inline skates. The first patent went to a French inventor in 1819. He attached copper wheels in a line on a wooden sole attached to a boot. In 1823, a London inventor patented the “Rolito,” an inline skate with the first brake pads.
Due to the design of these early inline skates, it was quite difficult to skate a curve. Nevertheless, some entrepreneurs saw possibilities. A German beer hall in 1840 put barmaids on skates. Given the size of German beer halls, the buxom barmaids and the condition of most patrons, the mishaps were enjoyed and dry land skating got a publicity boost.
By the 1850s, several public skating rinks were operating in London.
Original 1960 architectural rendering of the Skatecenter on
West College Street.
The birth of four-wheeled skates that could maneuver in a smooth curve and backwards is credited to James Plimpton, an American inventor. In 1863 he patented a skate design that had two parallel sets of metal wheels, one pair under the ball of the foot and the other pair under the heel. The wheels worked on rubber springs and each skate had a toe-mounted brake. Ball-bearing wheels were added in the 1880s.
Roller skating’s popularity soared in the 1900s with over 7,000 skaters attending the opening of the Coliseum Rink in Chicago in 1902. Hundreds of rinks opened in the U. S. and Europe. Even Madison Square Garden in New York was adapted for roller skating.
An inexpensive, metal clamp-on skate with an ankle strap was soon developed and by the 1920s. Made adjustable to fit hard-soled shoes, each pair was sold with a “skate key” used to adjust the length and to tighten the toe clamp.
Florence Ridley fondly recalls her sidewalk skating in Murfreesboro in the early 1930s. Eight to 10-years-old, she had a regular sidewalk route.
“I would go from my home on North Highland to East Main, then out Main to University, then left to Vine, left to Highland and back home. If I was really feeling adventurous, I would go all the way to the Brinkley Grocery on the corner of Main and the Boulevard,” she said. “It wasn’t easy on the old brick sidewalks, and there was a difficult step-up at the corner across from the women’s college.”
Cousin Jimmy Ridley, who lived in the 1900 block of East Main, remembers that the tree roots made skating on the old brick sidewalks like rolling on a washboard.
Florence also remembers a portable rink set up near the West College and Front Street intersection. It was under a tent with a hardwood floor cabled together in sections. Juanita Gilley Langrell remembers a portable rink in the early 1950s on a West Burton lot owned by Lacey Mars from Knoxville.
Bertram S. Orr manufactured portable rinks and set up one of the rinks behind his home in Rockvale in the late 1940s. “We started Rockvale skating in the high school gym before we had the outdoor rink,” remembers Orr.
In the 1940s there was a popular indoor rink in Jakes Town on the Woodbury Pike. The rink, since demolished, was on the northwest corner of the Travis Court intersection. Billy Harrell, a 12-year-old living on Murfreesboro Street in 1948, remembers the rink was always crowded.
“Robert Lee Jakes built the rink,” recalls Harrell. “It was in a frame building with a hardwood floor that measured maybe 50 by 75 feet. (The wood floor was eventually replaced with masonite.) The skates were all clamp-ons.” Behind the rink, Jakes operated an auto salvage business.
Jim Ridley recalls taking a date to the Jakes Town rink. “I think her name was Roxanne. It was our first date. We just went round and round holding hands. The best part was when I fell on top of her.
“It was also our last date.”
Some of the regulars at Bud Mitchell’s Tire Store explain that “a lot of fighting went on” at the rink. Ed “Smutt” Smotherman recalls that on one occasion Leslie Harris got crossed up with some of the Walter Hill boys and went to the hospital with a gaping slash across his stomach. Harrell remembers that the Edwards brothers from Westvue were good skaters but usually came to the rink “looking for girls and fights. One of those Edwards boys got in a fight with Cleve Messick and broke Cleve’s nose.”
According to Smotherman, violence was one of the reasons the rink closed. (Jakes also operated a restaurant and truck stop on Northwest Broad across from the old General Electric site.)
Rutherford author Tom Adams wrote a collection of short stories about life in a small southern town in the post-war 1940s. See “An Ox in the Ditch,” Berryhill Press (1995). One work of fiction is set in a community easily recognized as Murfreesboro and tells a tragic story of “Spence” and his family (loosely based on the true story of convicted murderer Spence Edwards). “Spence” in Adams’ story is an accomplished and showy dance performer on roller skates with a female partner named “Evelyn.” In fact, Spence Edwards was a superb skater, according to several of his contemporaries, and may have had a regular dance partner named Aureba.
The Jakes rink closed in 1955. In April 1955 Smotherman, a watch repairman, and his brother-in-law, Norman “Jack” Warren, opened a new rink on the Lascassas Pike. “We leased a concrete block building about where Rutherford Boulevard now crosses the old Pike,” remembers Warren. “It had been used for square dances.”
“Smutt and I worked the floor, but we also hired skate guards to help the beginners and to keep down any rough play,” explains Warren. “Some of the best skaters were from the Air Force base in Smyrna and we hired several of them as guards. Those city boys from up north apparently had a lot of skating experience.”
Bill “Stone Face” Goins, Rex Feathers, David and Eddie Reed, Carl “Chicken” Davis, Kenneth Hunt, Robert and Joe Spradley, and Bill Taylor were among the skate guards over the years on the Pike and at the later location in Murfreesboro.
In 1960, Smotherman and Warren hired local architect Burney Tucker to design a modern and attractive roller rink at 849 West College, which became the Murfreesboro Skatecenter.
By this time boot skates had replaced the clamp-ons and business was brisk. A special effort was made to attract new and experienced skaters from the Kittrell area.
“From 1960-65 we held skate festivals in the Kittrell gym,” recalls Warren. Kittrell basketball stars were involved. “Monk Montgomery just watched, but Connie Vance and her whole family skated. The Kittrell kids really supported us in the early days.”
But by the end of the “activist” ’60s, the popularity of recreational roller skating was in a sharp decline. The best “boom years” soon followed, however, with the Disco craze. “The decade from 1975-85 was the best for rink operators and many new rinks were built across the country,” explains Warren. “It was the combination of disco music, disco lighting and disco roller skating.”
In 1977, Warren opened a new and larger rink behind the original Skatecenter. (The original building is now leased by various retailers.)
Skating got another boost in the 1990s when high-tech materials were incorporated into the design of inline skates. Although the new equipment put many new skaters on the streets, rink skating continued a slow decline.
“Recreational skaters today are predominantly the younger kids and their families. By high school, the kids have other interests,” according to Warren, who recently received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the international rink owners’ association. Son Doug now manages the rink and was recently named Rink Operator of the Year.
In Nashville, thanks to Milton area native Michelle Modrall Weaver, daughter of retired educator/coach Bobby Modrall, women’s flat track roller derby, a contact sport, enjoys a strong following. About eight years ago Weaver learned of the sport’s popularity in Texas and elsewhere. She recruited a team of skaters and founded the Nashville Rollergirls. This team brought the first roller derby action to Middle Tennessee in January 2007. (Michelle competed under the name “Mayhem N. Suze.”)
Although injury recently ended her competitive skating, Weaver still enjoys skating on the Greenway while pushing her son’s stroller.
Rutherford County Historian Greg Tucker can be reached at [email protected].