ShakeyJay

…Speaking of parked cars, only a kid could come up with a game called “Running Out From behind a Parked Car” The aim of this game, beside suicide, was to run out from behind a parked car when another car was approaching us on the road. We wanted to see how close we could come to being hit without being hit. That wouldn’t be smart. Not too smart but what can one expect from pre-schoolers. Smarts? Not likely and I am amazed that I am still alive today. A memorable snippet of childhood that was.

Yet another fate for toddlers, preschoolers, kids, that is worse than self inflicted injuries from stupidity is the mandated visit to Grandma and Grandpa.  My maternal Grandpa, on my mother’s side, drooled. And his lips were huge. Red and chaffed they were and somewhat blistered but not from the sun but from the wad of chewing tobacco he constantly chomped on.  His spittoon was always nearby. A dirty brass coloured round finely decorated in minute detail.  It was adorned with ornamental cherubs hovering over agricultural scenes with small claw legs that were there to remind the user of the fate that awaits if one carries on with a habit like this. Perhaps, but they sure paid attention to craftsmanship in those days. It was a beautiful piece of work that spittoon. And while second hand smoke may be bad enough, second hand spittle to a kid is a fate far worse than death and a gross fate to boot.  For what was a toddler’s job anyway? A cuddle, the compulsory hug and of course that peck on the cheek.  Both cheeks! Yuck!

I had a love hate relationship with those visits. I can still see Grandpa clearly, as if he was still alive today sitting here beside me.  There he was standing on the stoop looking above and beyond. All was right with his world. Hands in his pockets, his white shirt, dark black pants held up and tethered to his massive frame, magically, with bright red suspenders.  Red huge moist lips, and not in a good way, were bordered above and beyond by rosy red cheeks.  Cheeks that were divided by a huge bulbous red, pickled and veined snauze topped off by a crown of snowy white but fluffy thinning hair.  And on those very hot and humid days of summer a sweat permeated from every pore of his being staining his shirt with a sickening yellow sheen.

Kids are supposed to be excited when visiting their grandparents.  And I must admit that for all of the grossness I had to put up with I was excited but for more mercenary reasons. For with every visit and with every wet hug and with every wet gummy smooch that came with every visit was the mandatory handshake. And while he was breaking my fingers in that vice grip of a hand of his I could feel a bill fold then crumple into my small innocent pinkish hands. A dollar bill! Fantastic for in those days a dollar bill equated to over 300 black balls…

…Growing up in that small neighbourhood with the small park was memorable. I received my very first scar there on that very tiny street; on a fence between two garages that was situated at the back of a garbage strewn lot. Now boys being boys this fence had to be climbed. Why? Because it was a fence, of course.  A fence crowned with rusty barbed wire. Adventure yes, and you know what’s coming next. I don’t have to describe what happened. Needless to say, I shit my pants – again! Blood everywhere. My left index finger sliced open from just above the knuckle to its base at the palm of my left palm.  I can still see the scar clearly today some 60 years later – a mark of boyhood adventure back then. Yet I can’t quite remember the look on my mother’s face.  She must have fainted – or maybe it was me.

I can’t recall having too many friends in those early days.  But one I remember dearly. David Cairns was his name. Small lad: blond hair, blue eyes, Scandinavian breeding perhaps. I can still see his face and features as clearly today as if I had just met him yesterday.  He lived a few houses up from me in an old wooden framed house. It was huge, like some medieval castle or a western fort.  It was painted white, stucco maybe, with brown trim, a somewhat poor example of the English Tudor style.  David and I were inseparable as only toddlers could expect to be at that age.  Yet we must have grown out of toddlerhood by then as David and I would sleigh to our hearts content coming down the terraced hills and front yards of the 100 year old homes in the area. Descending, fast as the wind, head first, down the front and across the snow frozen lawns of those houses that were lucky enough in our eyes to have had a terraced front yard.  And having a paved and ploughed snow and ice covered road at the bottom of that mountain of pure white snow was somewhat discerning but we survived and not a tad bit cognizant of the potential dangers lurking about everywhere, everywhere indeed, behind every where’s tree and every where’s parked car.  No not just everywhere mind you, just where there was snow, our sleighs, our friendship, our happiness…

…Our parents were never around. They were too busy making a living. And they were happy and relieved to leave us to our own devices.  And we were happy that they did for that park bore the limits to our huge and timeless imagination and universe of fun.  My first serious crush manifested itself in that park.  No doubt a park volunteer, a summer counsellor of some sort.  Probably sixteen.  I think I was three. Funny that, but the age difference didn’t seem to bother me or anyone else at the time.  I followed her everywhere, even with a shit load in my summer shorts. I am sure that they, the grownups, thought that that was sweet but I had other canorous thoughts on my young and feeble mind.  Today that girl, if she is still alive, would be in her late 70s.  Yikes!

Funny why kids cannot and will not do what is expected of them.  I am convinced that there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.  It’s ingrained in their psyche, in their young DNA. To do the very opposite of what is expected, acceptable and piss off the parents.  It’s called exploration, finding our way, for as kids we were all Lewis and Clarks, Radishes and Gooseberries – LaSalle, “Tin Tin,” or DiCrapio. I remember when wifey and I bought a contraption for our twins called a “Jungle Jim,” or as it is affectionately known in suburbia as a suburban, backyard torture chamber for kids or for those fathers unfortunate enough to have to put the damn thing together.  And all I could hear that Saturday morning – and afternoon – were the cursed remarks floating wirelessly to my sensitive ears coming across over the various fences of our neighbourhood yards. And so, after many hours, this plumber’s nightmare finally took shape. Finished, proud and turning the keys over to my four year old twins, I watched them from a safe distance but out of sight. To my chagrin, to my horror, but not terribly surprised, they immediately began climbing all over the damn thing.  Forget the swings, forget the slide, and forget about the double see-saw with the cold bright yellow metal seats. Their goal was to check this thing out; explore their environment and see how this contraption was put together.  Inquisitive and enquiring minds these youngsters! Sure enough, one of them fell from the top cross bar onto the grass below. Getting up, brushing himself off, he looked around at nothing really then at himself then at his twin brother, in silence and in shock. After what seemed to be an interminable amount of time all hell broke loose:  screaming, wailing, crying and the gnashing of teeth.  Oh the horror of it all. Dante’s inferno! Then looking around as if lost and in a panic for where the hell was mom?

Where the hell was mom indeed?…

…..That incident with my friend at the Hug and Slug occurred over 40 years ago yet it is as clear today in my tiny brain box as if it happened yesterday.  And as clear as that may be how many of us can really remember our first few years of life? Like most people I can recall brief snippets – like the time my older sister broke her arm on the teeter-totter in the small peckerette, I mean parkette, across the road from the house I was born in.  And why do they call these places parkettes? Is that a feminine park? No, no nooo! A small park in the city where I spent most of my formative years is now called a parkette.  So when does a parkette become a regular park you might ask? Don’t know. When it grows up I guess.  I may have to ask the city’s parkette-heads for an answer to that one.  But to be all inclusive in today’s world we will need a park, a parkette, a gay-park and a trans-park.  

So how does one break their arm on a teeter-totter? Easy!  My sister was sitting at one end of the teeter-totter with some of her friends at the other end. Up and down, up and down, up and down they went – good clean but oh so monotonous fun.  Pretty boring stuff!  And kids hate being bored.  Especially brats and some of the little brats that day had a better idea of fun.  I knew exactly what they were thinking, these brats. “Let’s get her, my sister, up as high as one can” one whispered, and then, in precise military fashion squealed “hold it down, hold it there, wait, then, on signal, jump off” at the opposite end of the teeter and watch how they taught her. Poor ole Mary. She took Newton’s Law of Gravity to heart and took the path of least resistance straight down into the ground landing on her arm: broken, physically, and in spirit. And those brats sure as hell had a good laugh. I think I even chuckled.  After all she is my older sister.  And, as it turned out, 1953 was the hottest year on record so Mary had to endure weeks of forearm sweat and severe, unrelenting and continuous itchiness.   Oooooo! Too bad!

Besides shitting my pants from time to time I do remember spending countless hours, or what seemed so, in that park. I remember walking there alone one windy fall Sunday morning beside a huge cedar hedge. Then again everything is huge when you’re three years old.  Like a celestial call from high on high, a branch came thundering down hitting me on the side of the head.  I was knocked silly and still have the small indentation in my cranium to this day.  It almost feels the same as those small soft dents on the top middle portion of the skull that babies have after they are born.  And all fathers know of those little soft pliable dents in the cranium.  For in our small, male, minute, mindless minds we all wonder what would happen if…if….if, I still shiver when I think about that one.  So I now had two. One on the top of my head that eventually hardened up with nature and another carved by a wayward cedar branch that fell on my head that cold autumn Sunday morning.  Eventually it healed itself.  And where were my parents when all of this occurred?  Don’t remember.  But I can still feel the feeling of feeling that dent even as I am transcribing here.  I shiver to think of it….

 

I once knew a guy, a very close friend of mine at the time, who ate 15 “Big Macs” at one sitting.  It occurred very late at night after an evening of drinking and debauchery.  It was a small bet to start with to see how far he could go as he loved “Big Macs” but the challenge progressed nonsensically as we kept egging him on. Great fun! He did it although a wee bit pail at the end of it all.

Those were carefree days, as all days are carefree when you are young. And those burgs only cost 49 cents each back then.  Not too sure if he ever touched another one after that though.  I do think that he is a vegan today.

I can still see in my mind’s feeble eye this same guy being dragged down a set of stairs by his shirt collar by a tall buxom blonde Norwegian gal who truly was an Amazon Olympian at 6 feet and some.  Very athletic and as my friend tells it later the next day – very ambidextrous, triple jointed.

This blatant kidnapping occurred at a Country and Western club that we called the “Hug and Slug”- a colloquial term for “The Army, Navy and Air Force Club, so called by all the WESTPAC Widows that frequented this abode.  An appropriate name I can tell you. WESTPAC Widows were those women married to sailors who were deployed from home in the Western Pacific operating areas for very long periods of time.  To normalize, these widows would frequent this Country and Western Bar every Friday and Saturday night for a bit of dancing fun and then some.  And we, being the young and restless lads that we were, naive thank God and wet behind the ears, were navy recruits who were alone from home for the very first time and were delighted to provide the required entertainment for we yearned for motherly comfort.  This was also a time when very long hair was the fashionable norm so we, with our newbie brushed and navy white-walled haircuts, were social outcasts as the saying goes especially at the bars, the discos and the dance halls of this parochial port town.  Yes we would tempt our fate from time to time and test our sense of belonging and manhood at these discotheques but after striking out early we would all head down to the ole “Hug and Slug” to test the waters. It never disappointed.

Country and Western clubs are extremely down to earth, value oriented, and patriotic old fashioned but all welcoming fun. We would end up having a great time there to the wee hours dancing with these widows to such memorable tunes such as “All My Exes Live in Texas.”[1] Or the equally memorable and nostalgic “Ten Tall Beers With A Shooter of Whiskey Is All It Took.”  Great stuff!  A good time was had by all for these women could not have cared less about our appearance. As long as we had some hair on the top of our heads, was all that mattered. And my friend?  Battered and bruised by the pounding he took on those stairs and, helpless as he was, had a very big smile on his face for he knew his fate.  She, a determined and predatory look if I ever saw one and, as I recall, entirely attuned to her prey and purring ” You’re coming home with me sonny boy.”

“Oooooookay!  He whimpered. To us. “See ya!”….

[1] George Strait