Getting up to speed on roller skating fun

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LAUREL, Md. -- "Now bend your right knee a little," says Phyllis Leins into the microphone.

The 75-year-old instructor, who began teaching roller skating when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president of the United States, speaks carefully and clearly from a perch on an elevated booth in the middle of the Laurel Roller Skating Center.

It's another Saturday morning, when beginners wobble on rented four-wheel, or "quad," skates across maple floors at each of the area's 11 indoor skating rinks. In slow motion, students try to execute Mrs. Leins' commands and remain upright at the same time on a surface as smooth as an Easter egg, glossed and fast as a bowling alley center lane.

"No, your other right knee," she says in a gently humorous jibe at shaky skaters who seem not to know where their right knees are.

The scattered chorus line offers a cautious knee-dip. There are 25 females ranging in age from kindergarteners to gray-haired grandmothers, and five males -- two little guys, who seem to have no fear, and three precariously balanced fathers.

"That's right," she says, "now bend your left knee a little and you'll glide off to the right."

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Long before in-line skates and skateboards, there were nearly 3,000 rinks like Laurel's skating center in communities of all sizes across the country, according to figures from the Roller Skating Association International (RSAI) in Indianapolis.

Whether as showy centerpieces of popular culture, like the old-fashioned nightclubs and movie theaters of the Roaring '20s through the World War II era, or just unadorned rinks in quiet towns, they were places where boys met girls, and parents knew their children would be safe in a wholesome athletic environment.