It’s vaguely near Christmas again, so the toy catalogs are already in the mail. Time was when you could get a semi-legitimate skateboard from your toy catalog. I got one in the mail from Fisher Price that features Earth Ace, one of the Planet Heros. He skates on the moon. “The moon. This is what I’m talking about. Hey! Look out!”

The first skateboard I ever rode came from Sears. My dad bought it for my mom at a Sears catalog outlet store. At the time, Midland Michigan wasn’t big enough for an actual Sears store. Instead, we had a small shop with a few displays of smaller objects you could buy on spot, and a counter that you would go to to look at the Sears catalog, pay for what you wanted, and pick it up when it arrived. One saturday the family made a trip there and my mom became infatuated with a stand of Roller Derby brand banana boards. They looked just like board “B” above, only yellow. My father, being infatuated with my mother, decided to buy it for her. I think it was $14.99.