One of the problems of getting older is that we frequently descend into bouts of nostalgia. I’ve recently been thinking about “Old Charleston”. For me, that means Charleston of the 1950s and early 1960s. A time before I entered my cynical teenage years.

There were a lot of really nice things about growing up in Charleston. It was a small town and a very safe place to live. In the summer, our mothers just turned us loose to “go outside and play”.  As long as we were back by lunch they really didn’t care where we were or what we were doing because they knew we would be safe.

One of my favorite memories is the old Virginian Theater. It was a very ornately designed movie house with painted walls and ceilings and plush velvet covered seats. It was one of the first places in town that was air conditioned. There were signs on their marquee that said “It’s Cool Inside” with icicles dripping from the letters. In the middle of summer who wouldn’t want to go there? I can still remember standing in line for what seemed to be hours to see Old Yeller, a Disney movie about a stray dog. We sat in the balcony, ate popcorn and raisinets and loved every minute of it.

I also spent a lot of Saturday mornings at Skateland, a large roller-skating rink on Charleston’s west side. We would spend hours skating around and around. Often, we would slingshot each other so we could build up speed; this usually occured right before we crashed into a wall or went sprawling down the floor. I can remember when we younger kids were forced to leave the rink so that the older kids could do a couples skate. At the time I couldn’t imagine anything more disgusting. I also remember the great fun we had doing the hokey pokey on roller skates.

My grandmother used to take me to the lunch counter at the Diamond Department Store. It was a grown-up experience for me because even though it was called a lunch counter, women still dressed up in those days. I got my very own hamburger and a large Coca Cola, something that I didn’t frequently get at home. And it was just fun going shopping with grandmother.

A lot of summer days were spent at Rock Lake pool. I still think it may be one of the largest swimming pools I have ever seen. It’s possible though that it may have grown in my memory. It had large slides that must have been at least two stories tall. It had trapezes that allowed you to swing out over the water at least 15 feet in the air before letting loose and landing with a large splash. It was great to go home smelling of chlorine, worn out and sunburned.

There is one thing though that I don’t remember in any of those places in “Old Charleston”. And that’s African Americans. Charleston at that time was still partially segregated. Kanawha County schools were only integrated in 1956 and a lot of other things were still far behind. You would not think this would be the case in a state that was born of the Civil War.

The Virginian Theater and the Diamond lunch counter didn’t integrate until late 1950s or early 1960s. Skateland and Rock Lake pool both chose to close rather than to integrate. It amazes me now as I look back how naïve I was to not even recognize that this type of discrimination was occurring. While we have made progress, we still need to recognize that there is so much more that must be done.  The “New Charleston” should be a place where everyone is welcome and feels at home.