Halcyon Daze - Growing up Canadian

  The girls often did the same thing, but with more lady-like drinks like a mickey of vodka, or a bottle of rose wine. We often wouldn't see the girls until the dance actually began.

  It was quite something to be at one of these things. Of course there were those who went there straight, and if you didn't want to get into trouble with the teaching staff who monitored the dance, you made sure to be on your best behavior. even though you often couldn't stand straight.

  There were always rows of chairs lining the outer perimeter of the auditorium, and people who weren't dancing usually lined these areas. There was always a cluster of people at the back of the auditorium. That was the best place to check the traffic of people, because the washrooms were outside the auditorium. Inhibitions seemed to disappear as the evening wore on, and there always seemed to be a panic to find a dance partner for the slow ones. In those days, that was often the closest that you would get to having sex.

  The whole evening was a blast, and if you were really lucky, you met a girl that you wouldn't mind having a date with sometime soon, and she would feel the same. Those dances were probably one of the best parts of going to school, except for the house parties. I loved to play the field in those days. I felt like a kid at a smorgasbord. There was a trade-off to playing the field though, and that was that you didn't get to develop your relationships. And that's something that would probably have done me some good.

  On the River

  I don't really know why they call it living on the river when you're actually living by the river. Technically, I suppose that if you are a Tom Sawyer, or Huckleberry Finn, you really are living on the river. In any case, our house sat on the shore of this particular river, which ran its course through the center of the city in which we lived.

  Though small, by river standards, it's a pretty river. It flows through some ninety miles of countryside, and actually flows in two directions from a series of lakes at the center. The waters are sort of muddy, giving the river a rather brownish look. Apart from springtime, it's an ambling river, and when looking at it on a windless day it is difficult to distinguish between reality and reflection.

  Soon after moving to the house by the river, my parents decided to buy a small boat. It was more dingy-like than it was boat like, and had a funky name. It was called a Moby Ding. It was all of eight feet long, and about four feet wide. It was made of plastic-like material that bent under pressure. The bottom was so shaky that we had to make a plywood floor which we placed on the existing floor of the boat. The boat's only redeeming quality was that it was unsinkable. My parents also bought a four-horse outboard motor for the boat. It was an air cooled motor which allowed you to run it out of the water if you hit a shallow part of the river. Even my parents wondered why they hadn't bought an aluminum boat. However, the fun factor was there, and I spent a lot of time on the river with other friends who had, ahem, real boats.

  If you happened to be two people in the boat, the balance was fairly good. If you were alone in the boat, you had to sit at the front of the boat to get it to plane, which was fairly easy to do because you could spit from the stem to the stern. At one point, I devised a pulley system using the oar locks so that I could sit and steer from the front and get the boat to plane more readily. It also meant that I had to rubberneck my way around to see where I was going.

  My friends and I spent entire summers on the river. Some of us had boats, and some of us had canoes. We'd go swimming in the middle of the river during the day, and we'd go fishing in the evening. We'd even have campfires and cookouts on the far side of the river, which was undeveloped. It was like being in the country with all the conveniences of being in the city. If you ran out of something or other, you simply hopped into the boat, and crossed the river to your house. The school that I attended, was on the other side of the river, and in the spring and fall, I'd sometimes take the boat across the river to get to school.

  There were a few mishaps due to the design and construction of the boat. I remember traveling along one day only to discover that the boat was filling with water, rapidly. I couldn't see where the water was coming from. I was able to reach the shore safely, and upon closer inspection of the boat, discovered that the motor's shaft had rubbed and eaten through the base of the transom. So I placed a fiberglass patch on the hole, and that seemed to fix things for a while. The same sort of thing happened again sometime later, but this time the whole stern section was splitting from the rest of the boat. So I placed a larger transom board to better distribute the pressure. This was some boat. Claims of unsinkability were probably based on the fact that the boat would rarely see water.

  During the years of the Moby Ding, two of my older brothers built a seaflea. Now that was a real boat. It had been built solidly with a series of water tight foam filled compartments. It was extremely buoyant, and could support a ten horsepower motor and three adults. Not that it was wise to have three adults in the Seaflea at the same time. The river was ideal for the Seaflea, because the waves never got bigger than a few inches. The four horse was adequate, but not thrilling, so on occasion we would rent a ten horse, and that would really give you a thrill. It was wise to wear a bathing suit when using this boat, mostly because the bow was just an inch or two above the water.

  The river was a great source of entertainment summer and winter. It was a place to swim, to water-ski, to fish, to camp, to skate and to enjoy every day, even if it was just to look at it.

  Another First

  High school was a super place to source out just about anything. Everybody had a brother who's sister in law's best friend had a cousin who's nephew had something to sell, give, borrow, trade to whomever was interested. Thank goodness sourcing out didn't usually have to go that far for most items.

  I was about fourteen at the time, and had a real passion for motorized things. I loved and fantasized about anything that saved you from walking, or riding a bicycle. My head was older than my body, and the law would not permit someone my age to drive anything but a tractor or a riding mower. Neither within my grasp. It used to annoy me to hear that in other parts of the country kids who were fourteen could get a license to ride small motorcycles. I remember trying to convince my parents that we should move to such a place because they had their heads on right in that part of the world.

  During a conversation at school one day, I discovered that a guy who lived near my place had a motorcycle for sale. It was an old Suzuki 80 two-stroke, and it ran. I asked the guy how much he wanted for the bike. He said he would let it go for about thirty dollars. At the time my weekly income was a paltry two dollars and fifty cents. There was a financing challenge here if I was going to buy this thing. The first thing to do was to go and see the motorcycle.

  It wasn't far to go. The kid who had the bike for sale lived a few streets away. It was a beautiful late spring day, and I had the hots to buy me a motorcycle. When I got to the place where the kid lived, I noticed the motorcycle in the driveway. It was originally red, I guess, but had faded to an orangy color. The exhaust was made up of a muffler that had been severely severed and squashed into a flat piece of metal. Just about everything else was there, including some funky white sidewall tires. We started the thing up and listened to it. The kid explained to me that it ran fine, except that the spark plug had a tendency of fowling up quite frequently. I hopped on and went for a very short spin. The thing was really giving me a thrill.

  I decided to buy the bike on the spot. We worked on the price, and the financing arrangement. Twenty-five bucks now, and the rest later. I also made a side deal with the kid, promising him that I would give him free hot dogs which I brought to school daily in a thermos to sell to kids during lunch. He agreed, and I pushed the bike home because I was too young to legally ride it.

  I got it home and started it up. It ran well, and from there I could ride along the river. At the bridge I would turn the bike off and walk the bike across the bridge. Then I'd start it up and ride along the other side of the river. This was a
street bike that was learning life over as a trail bike. I had tons of fun with it. I also became good at taking the spark plug out to clean it. I finally had a set of wheels that would take me somewhere instead of vice versa. I had no money to put into it, and it didn't ask for anything more than a bit of gas, and a minuscule amount of two-stroke oil, or any other petroleum product thicker than gasoline. Thank goodness for that, because I still owed the kid who sold the bike to me, the balance of payment. I think he reminded me every day until I paid him in full. I guess he was not a trusting person. Maybe he opened up a collection agency in later years.

  That bike served me well, and when I was done with it, I sold it to one of my brothers, and when he was done with it, I arranged for another kid in school to buy it off my brother. The last fellow actually fixed the bike up and ran it legally on the street for the longest time. I had paid thirty bucks for the bike, sold it for thirty bucks and arranged to have it sold for thirty bucks. There was very little talk of inflation in those days.

  Summers With my Cousin

  Even though I had a lot of friends my own age, there were always older people in my life. For some strange reason, I could communicate with adults in a way that made them talk to me like I was an adult too. One of those people was my older cousin from out of town.

  The university offered a series of summer programs for teachers wishing to upgrade their qualifications. My cousin was one of those people who liked to study, and liked teaching. The courses he wanted to take were not available in his home town, so for a number of years he would spend a part of his summers at our house, while studying at the university. On the weekends he would either go back to his parents' place, or go visit his girlfriend in a small town that was located a bizzillion miles away. It took him some eight hours one way to get there. I hope she was making his trips worthwhile.

  Most of the courses took place in the morning, and my cousin would usually study for part of the afternoon. After that he was free to do as he pleased. He had a neat car to drive around in. It was a '65 or '66 powder blue Beaumont with a small block V8. It was a squarish looking coupe with a white interior that was quite sporty with bucket seats and a floor console. He had the wheels, and I knew the city, so we spent many summer days exploring different places in the city and surrounding areas. I was in my early teens at the time, and I loved to cruise around with my cousin in his car.

  One of the fun things about my cousin was that he treated everyone on an equal basis. He was always interested in what you had to say, even if you were a kid, and he would respect your opinion for what it was. In retrospect he may have been using me as a test bed for his teaching ideas. After all, he was learning the art of teaching, and his work was mainly with high school students. With me around, he could bounce off ideas, and mentally record his findings on my reactions to ideas as a young teenager. Whatever the motivation was, we had a really good time checking things out in the city, and talking about all kinds of things.

  My cousin loved all kinds of music, and he loved books and movies. We went to see a lot of what were to become all-time great movies. He was really taken by The Sound Of Music, and I swear, he must have seen it a hundred times. There was one cinema in town that played the same movies for oven a year, sometimes, and The Sound Of Music was one of them. We also went to see things like James Bond and just about every comedy you can think of. He had a great sense of humor and he looked a little bit like Peter Sellers.

  When it came to music he was as fanatical as they get, in an era where stereo was just taking off. He had all kinds of music, and a wonderful reel-to-reel tape deck that recorded very well. My cousin would sometimes dub some music for me onto cassettes so that I could have a copy.

  On one occasion I really stunned my cousin. We were sitting in front of the house one early evening, talking about this and that. At one point we got on the subject of cars. His car happened to be parked on the street, not far from where we were sitting. I'm not sure how this came about, but at one point, he told me to go ahead and take the car for a spin if I wanted to. I was thirteen or fourteen at the time, and he didn't think that I had the nerve or knowledge to do so. I casually walked over to the car, hopped in, and started it up. Once it was started, I put it in gear, and drove off. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my cousin's jaw drop. I didn't want to scare him, so I just went around the block. It was great fun, and I really enjoyed driving his car. When I got back, he sort of continued to be amazed at what I'd done. He wasn't mad or anything, but I don't believe he ever let me drive the car again.

  At one point my cousin finished up what he had set out to do at the university, and he married the girl that he used to go and visit in the little town that was eight hours away, and they made some kids of their own. I knew from experience that when people in those days got married, they always changed, and when they had their first kid, they changed even more.

  House Parties

  A good friend of mine and I once theorized during one of our philosophical discussions that teens should be put on Hormonal Farms from the time of puberty to the end of their teens. Both boys and girls would go to these farms that would combine some schooling, a lot of grunt work and all the sex you could muster up. You'd have the option to leave when you were fed up, but then you'd be out of the farm and theoretically satiated and socially adjusted.

  For want of Hormone Farms. we settled for house parties. House parties occurred at any time of day, and on any given day of the week. They took place at anyone who's parents were not home, and preferably who's parents had a healthy supply of liquor in the cabinet. When I think of it, we probably contributed to lengthening the lives of many parents by diluting their supply of booze with water. I can just imagine Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so entertaining their friends one evening, and Mr. So-and-so pulling his Bridge partner to one side, pointing out that his favorite Scotch doesn't seem to have the same kick that it used to have.

  There were games at house parties. Fun games that everyone loved to play. One of the most popular was Spin The Bottle. If you're alive, and were a teenager, you know what is involved when playing Spin The Bottle. Another rather fascinating game involved turning off all the lights in the place, usually someone's basement rec room. and letting everyone wander around in the dark. If your groping hands fell upon something that you figured belonged to the other sex, then you pulled the person to whomever the parts belonged to, and you gave them a big wet kiss.

  These were a couple of ways of taking care of the hormones. The whole thing was lots of fun, and made you a good kisser for when you'd be dating someone seriously. There were rarely any conflicts that came out of all of this. Yes there would be the occasional jealousy, and sometimes you'd find yourself going out with someone one day, and the next day your close friend would now be going out with the same someone, and you had somebody new. That's how it went, and that's how we learned. Practise, practise. practise.

  As we grew older, and cars became available to us, the games changed a little bit. There were still house parties, but they became a little more sophisticated, in that you went with one person, and you left with the same person, if you were lucky. Cars, however, allowed you to reduce the number of players, and restricted the amount of space that was available. They did give you a lot more privacy and a lot more intimacy.

  I still feel that the Hormonal Farm would have been a good idea. We might have better adjusted citizens today if they had been given the chance to purge those incessant urges that plague teenagers, and made them go wild.

  Screwed-up Summers

  Academically, I had done all right so far. I wasn't an all-across-the-board A student, but I did shine in a number of subjects. Things started to get a little rougher in grade ten, and the subjects that were giving me strife were math, and math. I was also having problems with math. You could call it algebra, you could call it geometry, or anything else for that matter, it just didn't sink in. I also didn't like the teacher. I was not alone, and having spoken to a numb
er of my peers in latter years discovered that they felt the same way, concluding that half the problem was the teacher. Not only did I have the un-pleasure of having this person teach me math for two of my four high school years, I also had to take some catch up courses on Saturdays in the winter, and two summers of summer school.

  Big, big drag. The only good thing about summer school was that there were some girls to look at. At least you could lust after their bodies as you sat in class. I plugged away at it, and got through grade ten Math.

  The following year I continued on with the subject, but the motivation was not there. I did make it through to Christmas with a passing mark, but when it came to the mid-term exam in March, I packed it in. I remember sitting in the auditorium with hundreds of others, poring over the math questions, and not getting anywhere. At one point I paused, handed in my uncompleted exam, and promptly ended my math career. Unfortunately, that did nothing to cure my woes in physics.

  At the end of grade eleven, I faced the pleasure of returning to summer school to re-do my Physics course. There was a lot of Math in Physics, wouldn't you know. I remember pissing away those beautiful summer mornings that we just don't get enough of in our part of the world, and then going to my summer job in the afternoon. I didn't pass the Physics course, which was given by the same teacher that had given the course during the school year. What karma! We hated each other's guts.