Everyone has a place like this...

I grew up in Elmore, MN, a small rural town in southern Minnesota. Depending on who you asked, there were somewhere around 700 people living there. It was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone, and if you spent enough time on Main Street, you'd eventually see just about the whole town.

In 1988, when I was in sixth grade, my dad, who everyone knew as Cowboy Ray, was serving as a part-time pastor when the local church congregation decided to dissolve. Rather than selling the building or letting it sit empty, they gave it to my dad with one request: they wanted the space to continue blessing the community. We lived in the house next door to the old church, and my dad, who had an enormous heart for kids, saw an opportunity that most people probably wouldn't have recognized.

Instead of seeing an empty church building, he saw a place where kids could belong. He transformed that old church into something our little town desperately needed, and before long, it had a new name. Everyone simply called it "the Center".

Every weekend, kids from all over town would make their way to The Center. They ranged in age from eight- or nine-year-olds to teenagers who were sixteen or seventeen. We'd play basketball on the small court, shoot pool, play ping pong, dig through board games, and spend hours just hanging out. Looking back, I don't remember spending much time wondering what we were going to do. We all knew where we'd end up.

Admission was one dollar. Everyone could afford a dollar, and that was the point. Nobody ever pretended a dollar covered the cost of keeping The Center open. Parents would occasionally help with the utilities or other expenses when they could, but for the most part it was my mom and dad carrying the weight of it. Once in a while a friend or two from church would stop by and lend a hand, but there wasn't a team of volunteers running programs or organizing activities. It was mostly just the two of them, faithfully opening the doors every weekend because they believed kids needed a place to belong. Growing up, I knew exactly what that cost our family.

Money was always tight. I remember wanting the same shoes or clothes everyone else seemed to have, and I knew why we couldn't always afford them. The Center wasn't just using a building. It was using our family's resources, our weekends, and a huge part of my parents' lives. At times, that was hard for me to understand. I could see the sacrifice, but I couldn't yet see everything it was producing.

My friends experienced The Center differently than I did. For many of them, it was freedom. They weren't at home with their parents. They weren't sitting in a classroom or listening to a coach. They had a place where they could simply be kids. What they didn't realize was that they hadn't escaped adults at all. They had simply found adults who cared about them in a different way.

My mom and dad weren't hovering over every conversation or turning every Friday night into a lesson. They were simply present. They welcomed kids when they walked through the door. They paid attention. They stepped in when someone needed correcting, but they always did it with patience and grace. They expected respect, but they led with love. Looking back now, I realize every kid who walked into The Center was being cared for, protected, encouraged, and quietly mentored, whether they recognized it or not.

My experience was different because Cowboy Ray wasn't just the guy running The Center.

He was my dad.

While my friends were sleeping in on Saturday mornings, I was back at The Center sweeping floors, taking out the trash, and getting everything cleaned up before everyone returned a few hours later. At the time, those were just chores. Today, they're some of my favorite memories because I wasn't just cleaning up after another weekend. I was working alongside my dad. I also had a front-row seat to something I don't think my friends even noticed. They genuinely wanted to be around him.

I watched teenagers choose to spend their weekends with my dad, laughing with him and talking with him. Years later, even after I had moved away, many of them were still stopping by just to play cards with Cowboy Ray.

Around that same season of life, I discovered BMX. Without realizing it, The Center became the place where my own dreams began to grow. The first ramp I ever built was nothing more than a cinder block with a sheet of plywood laid across it on the sidewalk in front of The Center. It wasn't much, but it was enough. Before long, the front steps became grandstand seating for neighborhood kids as my friends and I learned how to jump our bikes.

We eventually moved into the street, dodging the occasional car as we practiced flatland tricks, and then into the backyard where one quarter pipe became a halfpipe, and every year another ramp was added. During the long Minnesota winters from 1996 through 1999, we even built ramps inside The Center so we could keep riding all winter long. The Chaos on Wheels stunt team was born out of those sessions in the street and on the ramps.

My first BMX bike shop was opened inside The Center while I was still in high school. My dad never shared my passion for BMX, but he believed in me, and he gave me the space to chase a dream that neither of us could have imagined would one day grow into something much larger.

When I left home after getting married in 2000, I moved the ramps with me, but I always assumed The Center would always be there. So did everyone else.

The younger kids had never known life without it. Their parents had grown accustomed to it too. Somewhere along the way, community support slowly began to fade. I don't think it was because people stopped caring. I think they simply started assuming The Center would always exist. It's amazing how easily we take for granted the things that quietly shape our lives.

Then one day, it was gone...

A few years after I moved away, some local teenagers broke into The Center. They vandalized the inside and stole anything they thought had value, including my dad's guitar. The damage wasn't just to the property. There was something deeper that was lost that night. If you knew Cowboy Ray, you know that guitar was almost part of him. It was the guitar he played while leading Bible studies with neighborhood kids in the very place where so many of us had grown up. It carried years of memories and represented the countless conversations, prayers, and moments that happened inside those walls.

The community came together and bought him another guitar, which was a meaningful gesture, but there was never enough money to fully repair the damage done to The Center. And honestly, I think something else had changed too. The place that had once been filled with laughter, conversations, and memories now carried a different feeling. The doors closed, and they never reopened.

Today, more than twenty years later, the old building still stands, slowly falling apart. Every time I drive back through that little town, I notice how many buildings now sit empty or neglected. I don't believe the closing of The Center caused that. I think they're both evidence of something deeper.

Communities don't become strong by accident, and they don't stay strong by accident either. They require people who continue investing in the places that bring others together.

My dad passed away twelve years ago. The church was filled beyond capacity for his funeral. Many of the faces in that room were kids who had grown up at The Center, but they weren't kids anymore. They were adults who had built lives of their own, yet they still made the time to come. Some took time off work. Some traveled from other states. They came because Cowboy Ray had been part of their story, and they wanted to honor the impact he had on their lives.

He never became wealthy. In fact, if you looked only at his bank account, you'd probably conclude he hadn't accumulated very much at all. But if you measured his life by the people who showed up, the stories they told, and the lives he quietly influenced, you'd come to a very different conclusion.

As I've looked back on those years, I've realized something I couldn't have understood as a kid. The Center wasn't simply a place where kids spent their weekends. It was a place where an entire generation learned what community felt like. It was a place where my friends thought they had found freedom when, in reality, they had found two adults willing to sacrifice so they could experience it safely. It was a place where my own dreams were given room to grow. It was a place where my dad faithfully encouraged kids to make good decisions and, eventually, to wrestle with the most important question he believed anyone could answer: "Who do you say Jesus is?"

When people ask me why I believe places like Rooted Action Park matter, my answer doesn't begin with bikes or ramps.

It begins with The Center.

Looking back now, I can see that Rooted didn't start when we built a building next door to our house and filled it with ramps. It started decades earlier in a little town in southern Minnesota, where I watched my parents quietly give what they had so kids would have a place to belong. I hope that my kids will one day look back on the sacrifices we are making today so local kids can have a place like Rooted and see that it was all worth it.

I imagine almost everyone has a place like the Center somewhere in their story. Maybe it was a church basement, a neighborhood garage, a ball field, a youth center, or simply someone's front porch. Whatever it was, someone made sacrifices so that place could exist. Someone quietly paid the bills, unlocked the doors, swept the floors, welcomed the next kid who walked in, and believed that investing in young people was worth the cost.

I hope we never forget those places.

More importantly, I hope we never stop creating them.

And maybe that's one of the greatest gifts we can give the next generation—not just another building, but another place they'll remember for the rest of their lives without realizing until years later how much it cost someone to create it.

Thanks for reading!

Jeremiah Anderson

Rooted Action Park Founder

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