This article is reposted with permission by THe National Museum of Rollerskating. The original author is Joy Bacon.
Growing up, my family earned quite the reputation for epic road trips. Whether it was stretches of Baltimore to Montreal or Seattle to Mexico, we crammed all the sights into the 14-day window after sports camps ended and before my parents had to be back to get their roller rink in Richland, Washington, ready for the new school year. And these trips always included a myriad selection of historical stops, from the classics like the Smithsonian to more “remote” destinations like small state park visitor centers.
So it was no surprise that when my sister and I drove most of Interstate 80 this summer, a stop in Lincoln at the National Museum of Roller Skating was a natural part of our itinerary. As a history teacher, our father, Alan Bacon, never missed a chance to infuse our life with the family business with its historical roots. His rink, after all, had literally been a part of our family history since his birth in 1953. We knew where the old windows used to be, remember playing in the sawdust of the floor renovation, and had helped change more paint colors than we care to count. But visiting the museum finally put our own family history into a larger context of the national pastime.
Despite living and breathing the rink life, my sister and I were still intrigued by the many facets of roller skating displayed at the museum that we hadn’t explored before. We’d seen the infamous Charlie Chaplin video clips, but didn’t realize the same era included women roller skating in Vaudeville Follies. We’d visited a Barnum & Bailey circus, but couldn’t believe they included skating bears in advertising posters. We had both participated in competitive arts skating, but didn’t realize the extent to which the sport’s elaborate costumes evolved over the past 50 years. We’d skated to live organ music at Oaks Park in Portland, Ore., but hadn’t ever played a rink organ for ourselves. The artifacts and displays offered tangible connections to a world we’d lived, but never studied.
As a millennial and Olympics enthusiast, my favorite surprise finds were Tara Lipinski’s old roller skates and costume. This year’s Winter Olympics included both speed and figure skaters who transitioned from their non-frozen counterparts, and while the 2020 Tokyo games won’t include 4-wheel events, the 2024 summer games in Paris could see petitions for roller sports to be included in the mix.
This month’s newsletter features many individual anecdotes from visitors near and far to Lincoln. I’m glad my sister and I made the time to have our own museum story to tell. We could build a narrative that started long before our narrow window of history with skating, and hopefully will stretch far into a future of a thriving industry, sport, and cultural landscape.