Growing up, I remember hearing my dad talk about how he and his brother introduced skateboarding to Ohio.

“I’m not kidding you, Linz. We took our skateboards out there, and the kids looked at us, ‘Oh, wow, what is that?’ They’d never seen anything like it.”

My dad spent a large part of his childhood in southern California, Anaheim to be specific. It was the late 50s and the 60s, riding down the boulevard to the beach on a bike or skateboard; surfboard in his hands.

From the bright side Lindsey Bright

Needless to say, skateboarding became a part of my childhood as well. There are pictures of me as a 3-month-old in my dad’s arms as he’s skateboarding down the street. When I was old enough to walk, I would try to be like my older brothers, skateboarding around.

I was never quite as balanced as they were, so I would run and dive onto the skateboard, paddling with my arms around the neighborhood. Sometimes, my brothers, dad and I would get both of the skateboards, large blue plastic Coyote IIIs, and stick a long board over the two. All of us would sit on that long board, try to keep balance and roll around the neighborhood.

There was always fun to be had when a skateboard was close by.

As we got older, my brothers got more involved in skateboarding - tricks, kick flips, all the cool things that I didn’t have the balance to achieve. Even though we lived in a large city, more than 600,000 people, there was no skatepark. It was expensive to buy the rails or make the ramps, and without a place to put them, they were of little use. My brothers got kicked out of business parking lots all the time.

The solution - a skate park. There was a buzz in the city that a skatepark would be made. My dad and brothers went to an area grant program to ask for funds. Others in the area did as well. Finally, after my brothers had graduated high school, a small skatepark was built.

Skateboarding is a really fun activity. It keeps most kids active, playing outside. The trouble they get into is because they have no place to skate. Business owners continually kick skaters off their property. I do not know if the city of Sidney has the funds to build a skatepark, but it would be a great benefit to the city if they did.

I commend the local kids who have started the petition for a skatepark in Sidney. Instead of becoming ‘juvenile delinquents’ with a vendetta against authority, they are trying to change things and solve the problem.

Lindsey Bright is a reporter for the Sidney Herald. She can be reached at 406-433-2403 | reporter@sidneyherald.com