The Lords of Brookshire.

Back in the days when the year was split into two seemingly equal amounts of time -- the school year and summer -- The Slug and I were always looking for something to do. Riding our bikes was OK, but not exactly thrilling. We spent a lot of time at the farm, but sometimes I couldn't go over there and he had to come over to my house, which was decidedly more boring. We didn't really have any video games like kids today, unless you count PONG, which was fun for about 5 minutes. (Kelso was wrong -- even smaller paddles wouldn't have helped.) We had a basement with a ping pong table, but that was inside. Unlike the kids of today, we wanted to be outside whenever possible, but generally at my house that meant bikes or nothing. Boring.

That all changed when we got new skateboards. These weren't just any skateboards, and the reason they weren't just any skateboards is because of one thing:

Urethane wheels.

Why does that matter? Well, if you were riding a skateboard in the early seventies, you know. If not, I'll explain it to you.

Up until that point, our skateboards were made of narrow planks of wood and had rock-hard clay wheels with loose ball bearings. I am pretty sure the vibrations from these wheels permanently damaged my young brain. If you've ever ridden on one of these, you know why I say this. The combination of hard wheels, hard pavement and a stiff deck (Deck, I said deck) meant that the whole contraption just...buzzed under you. Does anyone remember those old vibrating football games? Yeah, like that. It was like being electrocuted from the waist down.

Even so, we used to take turns pulling each other behind our bikes. First your feet would go numb, then your ankles, then your calves. Pretty soon you'd feel like you had pins and needles from your knees down, and your feet felt like blocks of stone. This was not a good situation to find yourself in given what inevitably happened next. One second you were holding on to a rope and being towed as fast as your friend could pull you, the next second one of your front wheels would hit a pebble, the board would stop dead, and suddenly you were trying to run at 20 miles an hour with brick feet.

If you planned for this, you had a shot of maybe getting in one or two good giant-steps before you fell on your face, so it was a good idea to at least try to head for some grass. If you didn't plan for this, it meant that at best, you were going to be picking gravel out of your palms and knees for 2 days -- at worst, it meant a trip to the emergency room. This was the story of clay wheels, and it was not a happy one.

Enter Urethane and sealed bearings. Urethane was magic. Like rubber, but tougher, it allowed you to do two things - (1) go fast, and (2) go fast with control. You could slalom these boards, jump curbs, pull wheelies, you name it. The flexible fiberglass board in combination with these new, sticky soft wheels meant you had quite a bit of shock absorbency built right into the board, and the ride was incredibly smooth.

Those were the good things. There was an evil dark side, however, although we didn't recognize that fact until much later. Urethane gave you a false sense of security. It made you feel like you were better than you actually were.

In short, it made you feel invincible.

Right around the time we turned invincible, they started re-paving our neighborhood. We couldn't believe it. It was a gift from the gods. A surface so smooth and blemish free it was like you were flying instead of riding. Both of these things conspired to convince us that we could tackle Brookshire drive, a long, horrendously steep road that would take you 10 minutes to walk up and about 60 seconds to ride down. You had to slalom down this hill because if you didn't you would probably die.

We were never about the pipe or the park, in fact, we didn't even know those things existed. We were about one thing, and that one thing was speed. Well, two things, actually -- speed and competition. So this of course meant that eventually, we'd be back to one thing and that one thing was racing.

One day, after a successful slalom run down Brookshire, we were walking back up for the last run of the day before heading back to my house to grab some food. The Slug looked up at the hill and said thoughtfully, "I'll betcha we could just come straight down. "

"I don't know," I said. "It looks awfully steep. I almost got speed wobbles the last time, and I wasn't even going that fast."

"We'll tighten up our boards first," he said, taking his board wrench out of his pocket.

I was still skeptical.

"I'll bet you 5 bucks I beat you," he said, just to sweeten the pot.

"You're on," I said, looking up at the hill. I wasn't sure this was such a good idea, but there was no way I was going to wuss out.

We got to the top and tightened up our boards. I cranked down on mine so hard I don't think I could have turned if I had wanted to.

We were standing at the top, waiting for the last car to leave turn off Brookshire before we dropped in. I looked at The Slug. "You sure we want to do this?" I asked him.

"Hell yeah," he said, tucking his wrench into his pocket. "It'll be fun. Plus I'll have 5 bucks."

There was no limit on kicking off to gain as much initial speed as you could, and The Slug was faster than me to begin with. Luckily, I had the better board. I figured my only shot at winning would be if I could get ahead of him and stay there, since he was heavier than I was and if he got in front of me I'd never catch him.

"GO!" he yelled, and we kicked off. We were neck and neck going into the first drop, and by that time we had both feet on our boards. We were crouched low to cut down on our wind resistance. I was in the lead and wanted to keep it that way. I didn't look behind me to see how close The Slug was, but I could hear him coming up on my left. About half way down, the angle of the road changed and it got really steep, then leveled out for about 50 feet before dropping again. When we hit the first drop, The Slug pulled ahead of me, but I was keeping up. Still, I knew there was no chance I was going to catch him, and had already resigned myself to paying him 5 bucks. Suddenly, I saw him falter and his board started wobbling quickly from side to side.

That was the last thing I saw before he disappeared behind me. I heard two giant steps as his sneakers hit the pavement -- THWOP! THWOP! and then nothing.

I couldn't stop, I couldn't turn around. My board was too cranked down to turn quickly, so I did the only thing I could do -- I headed for the side of the road and the grass. I hit the edge and tumbled, rolling over and over on someone's front lawn. I stood up and looked behind me, then started running back up the hill toward The Slug, who was laying face down in the road.

When I was almost to where he was lying, he rolled over and picked himself up. He stood slowly, and I could tell he was hurt. The question was how badly. He limped toward me.

"HOLY CRAP!" I said. "Are you OK? What happened?"

"I think so," he said. "I got speed wobbles." He held out his hands.

His palms looked like hamburger. He pressed them against his T-shirt, leaving two red stains.

"How bad is my back?" he asked, turning around.

When he turned around I couldn't believe what I saw. "You don't want to know," I said.

I had thought his hands were bad, but apparently he not only hit and rolled, he had skidded on his back first. His jeans and T-shirt were shredded -- two giant, oval holes on either side of his spine, a thin strip of material running down the center. There was almost nothing left of it. One of his back pockets was hanging off his pants, and his belt had torn itself free of the belt loops. He had scraped off a good portion of his back skin, too. I have no idea how he didn't crack his head wide open.

"My mother is going to kill me," he said, which was pretty funny, considering he almost accomplished that on his own.

"We'll go back to my house and fix you up. You can take one of my T-shirts. Your mother won't even know. "

We walked for bit, then he stopped.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"I don't know," he replied. "Something hurts on my ass."

"I'm not looking at your ass," I said.

"It's more like the back of my hip," he said, and pulled his jeans down a little and tried to look behind him.

I glanced over against my better judgment. The skateboard wrench he had stuffed in his pocket had taken a quarter-sized chunk out of the fatty part of his hip. And the chunk was just...missing. I was looking into a gravel-lined hole in his skin.

"Oh man, that's gross!" I said.

He poked at it and said, "Yeah, it sorta is." Then he laughed.

"Man, that was fun," he said.

I couldn't believe it, but that's what he said. I thought about the sweet, smooth ride, and the feeling of all that air rushing by me as I sailed down the hill. Then I laughed.

"Yeah it really was," I agreed. "Well, more for me than you, but still."

We finally made back to my house, and got him "fixed up" to the best of our limited ability. It involved lots of hydrogen peroxide, wadded up toilet paper and masking tape is all I'm saying.

Our mothers never did find out, although I don't know how that was even possible. I also don't know how he didn't end up with tetanus or something worse, considering all the foreign matter he had packed into his scraped hands and back. He had a dimpled scar on his hip for the rest of his life, and I'm sure he had gravel embedded in his back for the rest of life, too.

Just another one of those funny memories from childhood that become part of you, I guess. Like gravel.

I never got my money, but that was OK.

I told him it was worth five bucks just to see a T-shirt shredded like that.