Today's Roller Derby has decades-old roots

Cherry City Derby Girls warm up at Armory Auditorium

    in Salem, Ore. (Ken Palke photos)

Let me share a secret . . . I've been a Roller Derby fan for five decades. The sport -- some call it roughhousing on wheels -- has been around since the 1940s. Today Roller Derby is red hot, but its popularity has ebbed and flowed over the years.

These days, though, there are women's leagues drawing crowds all over the country, including here in Salem and Portland. Recreational skaters are swapping their in-line models for the old school four-wheel skates that are used in the sport. And Roller Derby was even part of the plot on a recent episode of television's Hawaii 5-0.

My Roller Derby reverie began in the 1950s when Mom and Dad took us kids to see the Los Angeles Thunderbirds skate on the banked track at the Olympic Auditorium. The sport was popular on L.A. television in the 1950s-'60s when there was lots of air time to fill. Roller Derby then was something akin to professional wrestling with skating personalities and a heavy diet of over-the-top bumping, thumping and elbows thrown at members of the opposing team, often the rival San Francisco Bay Bombers.

Channel 5 TV announcer Dick Lane sold the sport to the masses with his colorful commentary and a few well-placed "Whoa Nellys" when a skater was shoved into the track railing and doubled over, or some similar stunt. 

Men's and women's squads on the teams alternated skating periods. After both teams started around the track in a pack, the object was to free a skater -- the jammer -- who was catapulted out front, sped around the track, then worked his or her way through the pack, scoring a point for each opposing team member passed. Pushing, shoving and issuing the requisite number of body blows was the order of the day.

People can relate to Roller Derby because, like riding a bicycle, most people have tried roller skating at one time or another. As a kid, I strapped steel-wheeled skates onto my shoes and traveled the sidewalks of my neighborhood. I even met one of the Roller Derby stars who lived a few blocks away in Torrance, Spec Saunders.

Several times while in the Navy stationed at Alameda, Calif., I went to the nearby Oakland Auditorium to see the San Francisco Bay Bombers skate . . . featuring the mighty blonde Joan Weston.

And lately I've enjoyed the rough and tumble matches of the Roller Derby women here in Salem. These gals take their skating seriously and fight hard to win.

I'll agree that Roller Derby isn't everyone's cup of tea, but there's plenty of action . . . and that's good enough for me.

Skaters take a few turns, top, and check out opponents

from the bench, bottom.