Brother Rick shares a cool memory!

Callin me out like that. You know its kinda strange that you brought out the sky hooks. Last night I was unpacking some boxes at our new house and found a bunch of old skate photos. Some from around the barn ramp time, others are from the wayback machine.

Back in about 77 a skatepark opened in Toledo called Soaring High. I had been skating a few years and had a slight idea of what was going on with pools, pipes, and then parks.

Shortly after it opened I was able to go for the first time. It was a rolling continuous piece of concrete. Poorly designed, but it had a few bowls. They each had a name. There was the Stokin' Bowl, Bathtub, but the big daddy of all of em' was the Soaring High peak. It was about 25 feet deep w/ a vertical slab that was probably 7' or 8' feet high. It actually looked like a drainage ditch, long slow w/kinda flat walls. I was 12 or 13 at the time and it was all over for me. This was "IT". The next time at the park I just went up to the manager before even gettin my shit on. Bam, I asked for a job. He asked how old I was and said I could work on the safety patrol. It was a ticket to ride. Tues and thur nights, sat and sun days. All I had to do was skate and tell someone if there was an injury. Lots of broken legs in that place.

One day this Ratty lookin crew of older guys showed up. Smellin like weed, laughin, just having the best time. They turned out to be from A2. Dale Calvert, Jim(juggler guy), Derek(Disco) And a couple of others that I vaguely remember. Dale and I were instantly cool with each other. It was always more fun when they were around. They would bring weird shit with them to the park. I remember a slalom board to carve really fast on, a unicycle, and really vague memories of Jim using some sort of SKYHOOK contraption to catch big air off this natural jump.

Brian Mank worked there also. Later in life we would talk about that place and bullshit. I always remembered Jim doing full on frontside hand plants on the base of that block, but Brian said BS. Last night I found a photo of it. It is just fuckin' rad. The back of the photo has a date of feb 79. Hopefully it will scan ok and I'll get to you for the site. Enough rambling.

Rick from Toledo (now Montana)