Home is Where the Heart Is…I Guess!

From an earlier post:

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Back in the day my employment prospects, while numerous, were never really career worthy. So in between jobs, or between a period of steady employment I would sometimes hit the road and do some travelling. My first bit of travel occurred just after working for A.C. Wickman. While working there polishing the fat wide ends of the tiny drill bits I was let go just one day before my three month probation period ended. All of us rookies, who had all started at this factory on the same day, were all released, terminated, let go, made redundant, superfluous, surplus, unused, outmoded, unnecessary….fired. It didn’t matter how or why or what you said to describe your circumstances, situation or bit of bad luck.

It all meant the same damn thing. Pogey! And how I love that word redundant! Code for fired. A nice English bit of linguistic mumbo jumbo, confusion-speak to tell someone that they’re sacked.

“You’re being made redundant” someone once told me. Great! I thought I was getting a promotion.  Redundant… wow.

I decided to head to the west coast. By train! The Transcontinental…all the way and all by myself. Well not really by myself when I got there as my penultimate oldest sister was shacked up with a Japanese fellow. Her best girlfriend, my next door neighbour’s daughter, was also out there. You see, this was 1968, the year prior to the summer of love. Yet 1966-69 was, in reality, the longest summer of love in history. And “go west young man” was really hippie-speak for the wider, greener pastures of acid rain, or West Coast Bud. And I could stay with them until I got settled.

“Why not just stay here and be a stoner” someone once said. “Why go all the way out there?”

“Well, man, sunsets are really, really weird out there.” another answered.

“How so?” they queried. “You can’t see them anyway cause it’s always raining out there.”

“Well man… because man, it’s like, wow man, out of site…but there is no land anywhere west of there. Don’t you think that is sooo cool. Soooo out of site. Land I mean. You can’t see any land man. It’s out of site”

“Well yes” they thought of this stupid idiot. “Land is out of site west of there cause it’s all Pacific ocean from there on in.  Until you hit Japan.”

“Japan? Like wow man! Japan? Really? Man, that is so weird, so cool, that is so profound man.”

Good gawd I thought. The future of mankind!

My parents were fine with this although they were entirely tuned out of the reality of the drug culture. Unbeknownst to them they were letting their young son, at 17, to hit the long and winding, purple hazed road of personal freedom. I can say this now, looking back on those years, but at the time I was scared shitless. I boarded coach on the Transcontinental at the very large cavernous platform of the enormous train station that served my hometown for over a hundred years. I could imagine then and there, at that very moment in time, how the soldiers of the Great War and World War Two felt when leaving the familiarity and warmth of families and loved ones for the trenches of France and Belgium, or the training fields of England, knowing full well that many of them would not be returning to the comforts of home.  Why did I feel this way? Think this way? At this particular moment? I don’t really know but the images of troops on trains in cavernous train stations like this one just seemed to pop into my head for no apparent reason: as if it had been ingrained into my psyche from such a young age that their individual and collective sacrifices paved the way for my very own freedom of choice at this very moment in time. And, as I was waving goodbye to my parents just as the Transcontinental was slowly leaving the station, I could almost see or visualize the spectres of long lost souls roaming about this very station looking for and finding, waving goodbye to their friends, their families and their loved ones for the very last time, for eternity. These willowy images dissipating slowly like some afterthought in a mist of memory in the stillness of time.

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It took over three days to reach the coast. I was dead tired as it was extremely difficult to sleep in coach. The scenery for a young lad was extremely boring. Trees, and lakes; trees and lakes; the occasional hill covered with trees then more lakes with trees around them. Muskeg, Muskox and Muskrat – it was rather musky out there with a lot of musky critters running or scampering through the musky forests of trees and lakes and streams. Then more trees and more lakes and more trees and… trees.  Finally, no more trees.  Just flat grassland. A sea, no an ocean of grass. More grass, then a lake, maybe a river bounded by grass on all sides, but no trees, just grass. As far as the eye could see. Grass! Sometimes a small rise would come into view, a small hill covered with grass. I dreamed of grass, of trees, of lakes, of grassy knolls. It was weird man and I was no stoner.

Finally hills, as barren as Sister Mary Bernice, my grade school principal, morphed into bigger hills which transformed into very large hills with deep, deep valleys. Valley’s covered with trees. The mountains, the Rocky Mountains: all the granite one could ever imagine. Most people see these mountains as majestic, beautiful, God’s handiwork, a reflection of his power: the very smallness of mankind in full view when measured against this spectacular backdrop. Yet all I could think of was granite. Enough granite to cover every kitchen counter top on the planet. But wait, that wouldn’t occur for another thirty years. What was I thinking?

Mountains, and more mountains, snow covered, nature’s monuments. Mountain passes that scoured a route for the early explorers: Lewis and Clark, Thompson, Fraser, Carson, DiCrapio, Morrison I thought. Unbelievable! Then darkness. What? These idiot trainers scheduled the very best transit, the transit through the mountains, to occur at night? Dopes! And they called us stoners! Alas, we would arrive at our west coast destination in the morning?  Try to get some sleep I thought but in Coach that was an impossibility.

Waking up to a slow moving chugalug train inching its way it seemed into the outer burbs and run-down industrial sites of this so called magnificent coastal city. Magnificent in that it was a large metropolitan area surrounded be the majesty of the coastal mountain range and the Cascades: a nice name for a string of active, dormant and extinct volcanoes.  Think of Mount St Helens, Rainier, Hood, Baker, Shasta and other non descript names for mountains that have the potential of reeking natural havoc, cascading death and destruction on an unsuspecting, unassuming public. These mountainous, frighteningly natural megaliths formed a formidable barrier to the north and east of the city’s metropolis but then offset by the calm waters of the Pacific Ocean bordering its northwest, west and south-western flanks. Only problem with this visual description was the curtain of rain, drizzle and mist that permeated my vision out of the coach’s dirty windows. These titans of nature and the oceanic beauty and seemingly calmness of the Pacific were really just figments of my active imagination in all of this rain, or as a described picture by some nature magazine article I read about the place.

My first impressions were not good. I found the outer fringes of this city in disarray: disorganized, third worldly in its ardour and its feel. Low rise buildings of various sizes and shapes with facades of every colour of the rainbow. Ugly purples, grotesque yellows and grim orange decor trims added to this canvass of dirty grey stucco buildings and rusted out arches and gantries of the numerous bridges that spanned the delta of a mighty river.  With the dreariness of the rain and the drabness of the grey skies these colours and contours were transformed and morphed into a visual scene that reminded me of some hippy’s bad acid dream of an undulating kaleidoscope landscape of a barf induced wasteland. When we finally reached the western terminus of this national journey, and could go no further, a young fellow like me could only sigh a sigh of relief that the torturous three and a half day trek in coach was finally over.

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My sister met me at the station then took me to their abode in the downtown core. They had rented an apartment in the City’s west end, very close to the beach of the British sounding bay with water that was so cold as to render it un-swimmable. One would have an extremely difficult time finding one’s privates after a swim in waters such as this. And who was one anyway? Close to that were funky looking shops and high rise concourses that spread their way along narrow streets, avenues and boulevards toward a massive green expanse of a park that adorned itself with towering trees of old growth forest. But in the rain these towering, magnificent giants of nature were mostly obscured by the fog in the midst of a city that was blanketed for the most part of the year by a canopy of clouds and mist.  With all of this rain the buildings of the downtown core exuded a depressed aura of doom and gloom being grey on the mind, grey on one’s thoughts with an outlook of a grey depressing world in the midst of all of this precipitation.  “But at least it’s not snow, you don’t have to shovel it,” I heard over and over again. Yes, but saying this was really a defensive mechanism on one’s part, a sense of insecurity or rationalization by some idiot who chose, regrettably, to live in such a grey expanse of concrete within what is, in reality, an urban rain forest.  After a few days of this I wondered how anyone in their right mind could live here. The dampness of the place was bone chilling and mould worthy.

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But then again I guess home is where the heart is.

(c) Shakeyjay 2016

*Excerpt from my book: “I Thought I’d Died and Gone to Heaven.” Soon to be out on Amazon and Kindle.

Song of the day:

Have a terrific Tuesday.

 

SJ……………………………Out.

 

Rabid Dogs…3

….It wasn’t long before I was out of that place. Appendicitis will do that to someone. Yet I almost died from that infection.  I was laid up in the hospital for over a week.  Lots of time to think about my future under the cloudy haziness of morphine. Weird but oh so wonderful dreams. Suddenly I could relate to my hippy brethren and their Last Chance Saloon.

Then out of the blue my sister from the wet coast called me. Seems that her husband had bought a 35 foot sailboat with the intent or dream of sailing it to Japan, his homeland. Indeed he had already made plans and departed with a Brit companion, who was a professional sailor. Together with George, his girlfriend, frigate birds and flying fish Sid made it to Hawaii in 19 days. Unfortunately this trip was a wake-up call to reality for Sid in that his dreams of maritime lore, Pacific blue and Japanese pride came crashing down on him drowning him like an emotional tsunami on his psyche, his self confidence and his personal well being.

Sid realized that he did not like open ocean sailing. He was seasick most of the time during the crossing from the west coast to Hawaii. He missed his wife as well as their first newborn child. Consequently he decided to pack it all in in Hawaii but still wanted George, the Brit, to sail the boat to Nagoya Japan, a Pacific port town that was close to Sid’s birthplace. George needed some help to achieve this as his girlfriend had split. Thus the phone call to me.

Sail to Japan? You bet. I quit my job, said goodbye to family and friends off I went to Honolulu. The Ala Wei Harbour and Ala Moana Yacht club near Waikiki would be my home for the next 6 months, then off into the wide Pacific expanse to Japan via Micronesia: the Marshall, Caroline, Gilbert and Marianas island archipelago was beckoning.

That excellent adventure is the subject of another story. Suffice to say we only made it as far as Saipan in the Marianas as the boat was taking on water as its seams were opening up under the strain of pounding seas and surf. There was no way on earth that we could sail her from Saipan to Japan as it was a “beat” all of the way up to Nagoya. Sadly I said goodbye to George, who would end up sailing the boat south from Saipan to Guam to sell her to some American sailor.  I flew to Tokyo where I proceeded to my sister’s place in a section of Yokohama called Totsuka. That was the end of this journey. Ever try speaking or learning Japanese? No wonder “hara-kiri or seppuku” was so popular. I returned home to my shit city of a city by plane about a month later.

I really enjoyed that experience and found that I was drawn to the maritime life.  By hook or by Captain Crook I had to find a way to continue on this path. Without a hesitant breath I began surveying the quays, the berths, and the jetties of the waterfront area of my home town within a nano second of arriving home. I read the local maritime shipping newspapers to see if I could some how worm my way into this profession. No luck. A longshoreman perhaps, or a deckhand, a boatswain, maybe a third mate, whatever, anything at all to belong to the maritime brotherhood. No luck. The maritime employment doors in this city at least were slammed shut on me like some battened down hatch on a ship in a storm. The union was as tight as a dolphin’s ass and was, in the vernacular, a closed shop. Unless someone died of nepotism, not likely, my chances for employment in this profession were about as slim and as ornery as a sailor’s fart upwind…

I Can’t Wake Up…5

…Just like Woodstock there was the requisite pond. There were already fans playing in the water, peeing in the water, shitting in the water. I decided to avoid the water. There were also tents, conveniently called pavilions scattered willy nilly about the grounds. Hippy entrepreneurs sticking it to the man by charging exorbitant prices for the basic necessities of living in a farmers field with twenty thousand of your closest friends. There were craft pavilions; classes on how to make tie dye pavilions; bong pavilions; know your grass pavilions and not the garden variety type either; the ever popular oxymoronic sounding pavilion on how to take acid safely. It was at one of these pavilions that I ran into Sandy, who was already stoned out of her mind. I think she recognized me as she came over to me and stood in front of me looking studiously at me and at me face. Studying every facet of my facial expressions, I could only imagine the contorted psychedelic images rummaging and racing through the dark and warped cornices of her mind as she inspected the blackheads on my cheeks. She smiled, then grinned, then grimaced, all of the time about five inches separating me from her bulging eyeballs with their dilated pupils.

“Hmmmm” was all she could muster in profound conversation.

I asked her if she brought her bodyguard with her, y’know, the guy with the sawed off shotgun.

“Hmmmm,” was all she could say. Still looking at my facial expressions. Head bobbing from side to side.

“Hmmmm” She lifted her fore finger, pointing it at my face, making imaginary circles in the space in front of my face from my forehead down to my chin.

“Hmmmm” then she giggled, started to laugh then in flash, stopped, grinned and ran off with one of her cohorts.

I turned to Timmy and said “Let’s get the hell out of here. There’s going to be trouble”

We left immediately. The hippy lifestyle just wasn’t for us.

That weekend was something of a turning point for Timmy and I. I don’t know why but just as our business was about to take hold Timmy turned weird on me. He began to stay up very late at night, which was a toxin to our particular line of work. It became increasingly difficult to wake him up in the morning. Night after night he would be up, later then later, sometimes staying up all night long.  I’d ask him where or what he could be doing at that time of night but all he could say to me was, “you know how it is.” I didn’t.

He would sleep in till noon, then two, then three in the afternoon. I couldn’t wake him up. And I was shit out of luck as he had the car and that car was central to our business. I tried and tried to get him out of this funk but to no avail. Finally, after about a month of this, I had had enough. I told him that if he didn’t turn this shit of his around that I would have to go back home. He just shrugged his shoulders, turned over and went back to sleep.

Saying goodbye to Mrs Redfern, Robert and Mr Johnston, I was gone the next day, taking the train home to my shit city of a city.

Timmy stayed on the wet coast for the next forty five years. He is currently retired, unmarried and still stays out all night long. Or so I am led to believe. I have barely spoken to him since. To this day I don’t really know what happened to cause him to act like this. Perhaps it was those tie dye shirts and skirts, or those hippy hippy shakes.

Sandy eventually returned home. Today she is somewhat of a recluse, suffering from various mental disorders. She never married. Perhaps it was the drugs or the drug counterculture that set her off. So sad!

Madness man!

I Can’t Wake Up…4

…A tie dye convention was suddenly before us. Young women in their tie dye ankle length skirts, gum boots, tits hangin out of their tie dye tees, smiling, waving, weaving and smokin, laughin at no one in particular. Bare chested, long haired men, dirty faces, filthy fingers and knarling nails quaffing booze, smokin joints, hauling ass – literally and figuratively.  It was a lice lover’s paradise. Dante himself would have been impressed but challenged to describe this scene. He must have had Strawberry Fields in mind when writing his Divine Comedy and its depictions of Heaven, Purgatory and Hell, especially hell. Strawberry Fields must have played an important part of his allegorical travels through hell.  Whatever, St John’s volunteers were sure to have a busy two days, and, Johnny on the spots, while well dispersed throughout the grounds, would be sorely lacking with an estimation of about twenty thousand visitors expected per day. Shit everywhere man! And lots of it! I made a mental note to get the hell out of here before darkness set in.

We made our way toward the large staged scaffold. It was impressive: large amps everywhere, lights strewn about the structural framework, drum sets, guitar racks, mics, black staging curtains and men and women scurrying about like ants on the stage itself. Organized commotion in disarray. It looked as if they knew they were well behind schedule. Timmy and I must have looked a sight standing there before the stage watching all of this unfold.  Here we were, two guys with relatively short hair, conservatively dressed, prepared for the inclement weather. We were square. We knew it. Pat Boone like. Completely out of place…man. We did take a gander at the musical playlist beside the stage. Never heard of any of these bands. Locals no doubt but it didn’t really matter as no one would be able to hear the music anyway. And just like Woodstock they would be too stoned…

I Can’t Wake Up…3

…Speaking of the hippy lifestyle, Woodstock had just occurred this very summer. August 15-18, 1969. It was all the buzz among the hippy counterculture, but even more so with music fans like Timmy and I. Not to be outdone by the East Coast, some copycat festivals began to spring up here on the wet coast, everywhere it seemed, every weekend, on some non descript farm in the farmland east of here.  It had to be on a farm you see. Such originality! Most were abject failures, but it provided hippy food for thought and something to talk about.  It must have been tiring for the hippies to talk about the alphabet all day long.  As it turned out that there was a music festival planned for a farmstead not too far from this coastal city.  I believe they were calling it “Strawberry Fields,” or something equally profound like that.  Timmy and I decided to check it out.

We drove out to the prospectus. And just like Woodstock it was automotive gridlock. We decide to park our car a few miles away and walk in. Turned out to be a good plan as many of the autos became bogged down in the mud and sludge. Yes it was raining, just like Woodstock.  There was a great deal of cussing, yelling, pushing and shoving going on among the various drivers and bikers, especially the bikers. It was automotive pandemonium, definitely a frightful, fitful, love-in man as the fists came out from every which way from Sunday. And this was only Saturday.

We skirted around the problems, found the main gate, paid our fee and walked in. And what a sight to behold. Utter chaos. The end of the world as we knew it. This must be what Armageddon is going to look like. A sparse, barren, rain soaked, mud caked, garbage strewn landscape. Passchendaele couldn’t have been worse. Probably around 10 thousand hippies all gathered together in one place. All smokin, all tokin, all jokin, all smilin with their coke-ins and love-ins.  Stoned out of their ever lovin minds. And the music hadn’t even started yet….