Skateway U.S.A.—a Henderson institution for more than two generations—is about to close.
From the outside, the building on Franklin Avenue is a sort of low Quonset hut wrapped in red, white and blue metal siding.
Inside, Skateway is nearly 20,000 square feet of Americana. Shelves of rental skates. A concession stand called The Pep Stand that dispenses soft drinks and nachos and pizzas made from a recipe that hasn’t changed since the 1970s.
And there’s a big hardwood skating rink around which children, teenagers and grownups have skated to the pulse of music ranging from the Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive” to Smashmouth’s “All Star” or maybe De La Soul’s “Saturdays”—anything with a beat.
Maybe they held hands. Or danced. Or free-styled. Or just tried to get around without falling (again).
It’s been a place where kids went, then grew up and had their own kids, then brought those kids to learn to skate.
But the end of Skateway is at hand. Its last weekend will be May 10 and 11.
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It’s difficult to say for certain what inspired Henderson entrepreneur Lewis G. Dixon, who passed two years ago, to build a skating rink in the 1970s.
Maybe it was because he took his son, Phil, to a birthday party at the old Green’s Rollodrome on Watson Lane and thought, ‘Sure, I could run a skating rink.’
Or perhaps it was because it was at a skating rink—Green’s—that he met his future wife, Aldia. “He was 18 and she was 16, and they were never apart after that,” said their son David.
Or maybe he just believed that a skating rink was good for youngsters.
“In this town, there’s not a lot for kids to do,” David Dixon said, “and my dad”—he stopped here, taking a long pause to corral his emotions—“always wanted a safe environment where parents didn’t have to worry about what happened to their kids.”
Regardless, Lewis Dixon in 1974 built his first Skateway U.S.A. along U.S. 60 in Waverly in Union County.
“The property at Waverly was the only thing he could get,” David Dixon said.
It worked out.
“It was only two years before he expanded it and actually added on to it,” Dixon said.
As a youngster, “I couldn’t skate at all,” he said. “They had a lady down there who gave lessons. I was standing in line (to be taught) and there was a girl behind me who was so scared and nervous, she threw up down my back.”
“I’ll never take another lesson in my life,” young David said to himself. “I’ll just learn on my own.”
He considers himself a pretty good skater. But not like his father, whom he said skated “wonderfully … so smooth, so effortless.” Lewis Dixon’s favorite song to skate to, he said, was Willie Nelson’s “Seven Spanish Angels.”
In 1979, Lewis Dixon secured a tract of land on Franklin Avenue. As with the Waverly location (which was sold several years ago), he had his friend Sam McLeod construct it.
At the entrance, an illuminated RC Cola sign was hung. “We want to make you happy,” it reads, “smile and say Skateway.”
And with that, Skateway U.S.A. was in 42420.
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“I’ll bet I was 12 or 13 when Mom dropped me off here, and we had the best time,” recalled Betsy Tillotson, who is David Dixon’s sister-in-law. That would have been around 1990. It was just the beginning.
“I’ve been coming here many, many, many, many years,” she said.
“I started working here (at age 15) when my sister (Rendy) and Dave got married,” Tillotson said.
“I got married, and when I had kids, I brought them,” she said.
All three of her kids have worked there as well, and she began managing Skateway on her own about 1½ years ago.
While some observers regard the late 1930s to the late 1950s as the Golden Age of Roller Skating, Dixon regards his teen years as “the heyday of roller skating.”
“I can still remember my flared bell-bottomed jeans and flower shirt and platform shoes,” Dixon said.
“I think it’s still very popular, and business-wise, we don’t have any complaints,” he said. “Betsy does a great job.
“We have a lot of parties, and kids still like to come here,” Dixon said, though Tillotson said it’s mostly to socialize.
“Kids today want a warm, safe place to go, and they don’t really want to skate,” she said.
But some grownups still do. A while back, Skateway was booked for an adult skating party from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. “Everybody likes to recapture their youth,” Dixon said.
That proved so popular that Tillotson began scheduling Skateway’s own late-night adult parties with food and beverage treats, a deejay and a photo booth. They’ve had crowds ranging up to 100 people.
Nonetheless, the family is selling the property. A sign on the front door cites “circumstances out of my control,” about which Dixon declined to elaborate. At an April 29 interview, he said they were preparing to close a sale to a local church. Details couldn’t be confirmed before the deadline for this story.
“My dad used to end every session with, ‘Boys and girls, they say everything must come to an end, and this session is ending,’ ” Dixon said.
For Skateway U.S.A., the very last session will end at 10 p.m. Saturday, May 11.
