Hank Doyle is 96 years old and skates between his house on Calera Creek Road and the Linda Mar Safeway six days a week. He buys one item per trip. He says it is so he has a reason to come back tomorrow.
“I’ve been on this board since 1962,” he says, holding up a longboard with a deck that is mostly tape. “It’s not the same board. It’s the seventh board. I keep the wheels.”
Hank skates a route that starts on Linda Mar Boulevard, cuts through a parking lot behind the strip mall, and ends at the Safeway entrance where he tucks his board under his arm and walks in. The cashiers know his name. The morning manager, a woman named Kavita, holds his board behind the customer service counter so it does not get stolen.
“It used to get stolen,” Kavita says. “Twice. Hank just bought a new one. He didn’t even seem mad.”
Hank was a longshoreman, then a high school PE teacher, then a longshoreman again. His wife of 54 years, Marcia, died of pancreatic cancer in 2021. His daughter lives in Sacramento and visits twice a month. He calls her every Sunday at 10 a.m. The skateboard, he says, started as a way to get to the store after he stopped driving in 2019. It became a way to get out of the house after Marcia died.
“You watch the road,” he says. “You feel where the asphalt is bad. You see who’s out and who’s not. It is more like fishing than exercise.”
On the Tuesday I followed him, Hank bought one cucumber. He paid in cash. Kavita handed him his board back. He skated home with the cucumber in a paper bag tucked into his sweatshirt pocket.
