Rollerskates!

Here are my brother and sisters: John, Jr. (Bud), Virginia, & Mary Anne Vandeven on Walnut Street in Belleville, Pennsylvania in 1953. Belleville is in the Kishacoquillas Valley in central Pennsylvania.

I love these pictures of my brother and sisters. They look like they’re having so much fun. Our father was the photographer and you can see that he really had an eye for a good picture. He worked long hours and didn’t get to spend much time with his children, so I’m sure they were especially happy to have his undivided attention!

Bud & Virginia on rollerskates.

Rollerskating was a fun pastime in those days. We strapped them on to our shoes, tightened them up with the rollerskate key, and then trudged through the gravel driveway to the street. Walnut Street was less than ideal for rollerskating – it was very rough and the section that was level was rather short. For a really fun and exciting experience we toiled up the hill and zoomed back down. The vibration from that rough surface made your feet feel like they would never recover from that pins and needles feeling.

One reason the road surface was, and is still, so rough is that a lot of the ‘traffic’ on the roads in this rural valley is composed of the horse drawn buggies driven by the Amish residents. The horseshoes cause the center of the road to be rutted and pitted, making for a bumpy ride. Another problem were the ‘deposits’ left on the road by the horses. This just added obstacles to the already dangerous trip down the hill. If you got going too fast and attempted to avoid a pile of horse manure, you might have to come to a stop and fall down before hitting a barbed wire fence.