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Who remembers when a pair of these skates was the cat's meow?

Maybe Hans Brinker?

Not to sure about the "cat's meow" but there were several sets that were worn when I was a mere lad in the late 50's-early 60's....
Cheers

I still have foot issues caused by the many hours in those things.

Uhhhh...I do....

That pair is almost a twin of a pair I've got here. They belonged to my grandfather who was born in 1899. My mother told me he got them when she was a kid in the 1930's to replace an older pair. They are still in good shape but are too small for me so I've never worn them. Lucky if I skate once or twice a year nowadays but I've still got my Bauer hockey skates.

I was a speed skater, that was my main sport; both roller and ice.

In the off season, I played hockey. Speed skating was physically and mentally challenging. Hockey was just SO much fun. I wish I would have started hockey at an earlier age, I would have stuck with it.

But I also played many of the usual sports. Baseball, football, swimming, track, cross country. Didn't much like baseball, just played because my grandmother loved baseball.

Main thing I loved about swimming was the early morning workouts. 2,000 yards before school started, always felt really good after that morning workout.

What are they used for???

Would this be the wrong place and time to say I never used hockey skates, always used figure skates....


Or should we start a .270 forum and I can post it there?

I think those are illegal to
possess in Texas.

I didn't have enough ice around when I was growing up to use those.

Tom Hanks was sure glad to have a pair on a tropical island though.

Willlson!

The nostalgia for me is that I've skated since about the mid-1950's, and recall that back before video games, computers, and 80 channels of cable TV, kids in northern climes used to spend a lot of time outdoors in the winter with stuff like that, (among other winter toys). We had an outdoor rink put up every winter by the town and we spent a lot of winter evenings on skates. Also skated a lot of ponds and bays on the south side of Lake Ontario. Wasn't much else to do as an energetic kid in the dead of winter with only 2 or 3 stations on the B&W TV and hardly any other entertainment options. Back in those antiquated days kids like me even shoveled driveways for $$ after a big snowstorm. Nowadays that is absolutely UNHEARD OF.

I had a set just like those when I was seven. I wanted to play hockey, but there were no leagues or teams in my locale.

I also remember "skating" mostly on my ankles.

Never could ice skate...but roller skating was fun. I have an old pair of metal roller skates around here that clamped on to your shoes..those things were broken bones waiting to happen...

The "clamp on the shoe" roller skates - we had a lot of sidewalk running around our school building when I was a kid. We all wore our key on a shoelace around our neck. Back then, our mothers made sure that we wore "real" shoes because somewhere in the Bible it said that if we wore tennis shoes (we NEVER, EVER called them sneakers) before school dismissed for the summer our feet would become hideously malformed. This gave the clamps a good purchase. The skinned knees and elbows numbered like the stars in the sky. I distinctly remember seeing stars when I would land directly on my ass. One day I pulled that move off twice, and each time there was a penny lying in the grass next to the sidewalk where I sat.

Guess you never had a pair of those "kiddie skates" or training skates for children. They had 2 small blades in the front and 2 in the back under your heel so you wouldn't be skating on your ankles. Sort of like training wheels on a bicycle . I think I started with those at age 4 or 5 and I recall my 2 younger sisters and younger brother starting on that very same pair. I took my step grand-daughter skating for the first time about 3 years ago at age seven at a local indoor rink and they had this contraption that's like a walker used by the elderly and disabled except it's for use on ice. You just lean forward on it and skate and it helps steady you. She'd never skated before and it really helped her. I think she only fell down once. I saw other small kids with them and they seem to work very well. Too bad I can't remember what they're called. Bet I would have loved them when I was first learning to skate; would have saved me from falling down so much and that ice is soo hard.

So, that's where my skates went. I spent many hours in clones of those, Good times, stronger ankles.

Don't recall what the rental skates looked like first time I laced up, maybe like that or a bit more modern.

All I can say is from the picture, dang those things look painful with the lack of ankle support.

As kids my brother and I had metal roller skates too, with leather straps and a wing nut on the bottom that was used to either shorten or lengthen the size of the skate (one size fits all!).

They were hellaciously noisy, uncomfortable and damned dangerous. It wasn't until we figured out that since they were made of steel, and in a powerslide at the bottom of a city hill would produce a good amount of sparks, and that if someone broke out some gasoline at the bottom of the same hill, well, does the name Evel Knievel ring any bells?

I've "ice skated". if you want to call it that, maybe three times in my life when they turned the floor of the Jackson Coliseum into a skating rink for a while. I think I spent more time on my butt than upright but we had a blast.