by Malcolm Butler
After calling Ruston home for the vast majority of my five-plus decades on this earth, I have a tendency to venture to places that were part of my childhood.
I had one of those adventures earlier this week when I was driving on Burgessville Road.
As I approached Farmerville Highway Monday mid-morning, I decided to take a left onto Atkins Road headed south. It’s a road I hadn’t driven down in decades. No reason.
Atkins road wound around, as my Toyota Tacoma (that I bought from the wonderful folks at Karl Malone Toyota) hugged the asphalt with ease. I honestly had forgotten where Atkins Road led. Again, it was just on a whim that I made the turn off of Burgessville.
All of a sudden, as I came around a turn, there was something I remembered. Something I had forgotten, but that quickly came back when I saw the old, rundown red barn-looking build with the white, chipped away, rusted lettering.
Hal’s Roller Rink.
It took me right back to the late 1970s and early 1980s when that place was one of the go-to places for a kids birthday party. I could almost remember the smell, the sounds, and the sights of those times and that place.
The facility was built somewhere in the 1950s (I believe) and originally named Atkins Roller Rink. If my memory serves me correctly from a story I heard years ago, it was then rented to renamed Hal’s sometime in the early 1970s. And man was it a young kids dream.
I went to dozens of birthday parties at Hal’s Roller Rink over the years and they never disappointed. Although I wasn’t the best skater, I was good enough to think I was a professional, rolling around the rink, listening to the top tunes of the times.
Although I can’t completely picture the entire inside of Hal’s Roller Rink, I have a foggy remembrance of aspects of it.
But what is clear as day in my mind is the fun times I had just being a kid and cruising around on my skates.
It would be cool if someone bought that place and reopened it. Any takers? If it ever happens, I may just go act like I’m eight years old again.
