ON WHEELS.
Do you remember the very first time you tried to roller skate?
I don't, but I do recall that, when I did try to do so, I was, like everyone else I've talked with, afraid of falling.
I never had any childhood experience of ice skating, having been born in the South, where non-skaters were common. I had tried to walk on ice, of course, and that was enough to teach me how hard Mother Earth – or Water - could be, even from just a few feet above the surface.
The pages of skating history record the inventor of roller skates, one Joseph Merlin, a Belgian, is best remembered for doing a classic crash when he first tired to introduce roller skates to the world of social activities of his time. That would have been around 1760 in London, England. Merlin, no relationship at all, I'd say, to the Magician Merlin of King Arthur's Court, was, however, quite a showman, none the less. He decided that it would be good to put wheels on skates instead of blades.
He tried it and was successful, to a degree. In order to bring the invention to the eager eye of the public, he divided to dress himself up in the colorful costume of a Court Minstrel. He planned a spectacular entrance into the ballroom where a magnificent masquerade dance was in progress. Merlin also decided, in dressing up for his act, that he ought to do so to music and that was no problem. He was, by trade, a respected maker of quality violins, so , in the midst of the masquerade dance , a fleet-footed minstrel, playing the violin, came gliding onto the dance floor where the dancers were somewhat taken. Many stopped dance to watch the gliding appartition.
Merlin circled the floor, a romantic symbol of graceful art in motion, gliding skillfully along on his metal wheels where blades ought to have been, on a waxed, hardwood floor instead of an expanse of ice. Apparently, he caught a glimpse of himself in a huge crystal mirror, which ,with flowers and small tables, and shelves, constituted the main decoration for the dance area. That sight of himself was to be, well, his down fall. Merlin must have been so intensely impressed with the sight of a minstrel dressed in color array, playing expertly on a fine, hand-crafted violin, it seems, that he forgot to turn aside and crashed headlong in the mirror and totally demolished it, the fiddle and portions of himself!
So, however you fall whens skating today, you can't exell the performance of the originator of roller skates when he demonstrated how fall-able they could be.
Small wonder, isn't it, that “roller skating” did not catch on at that time – in the 1760's. We had to wait until the 1860s' before anyone tried it again, it seems. A veritable rollerskating craze swept furiously though the United States spread to England, then Europe where it remains a popular form of falling to this day.
A.L.M. June 11, 2003 [c530wds]
