Tag: youth

The Two Stooges…3

…Of course it didn’t come to that. Being juvenile in mind and in body both of us were placed on probation for six months with a stern warning. It worked as it was extremely embarrassing for us, especially me, given that the Morrison name was fairly recognizable in the hallowed halls of justice in this shit hole of a city. My Grandfather Morrison was a cop, his son-in-law was a cop and every cop of Scottish, Irish descent in this Orange shit city knew about this case. The Gaelic, Celtic grapevine was faster than today’s Internet. Like Minority Report, they all knew about me and this particular indiscretion before I did or before it even happened. I was doomed for in those days having any sort of record, misdemeanour or felony, was a fate worse than death as manual labour was about all one could hope to acquire in the employment world if one had a record such as this. As it turned out the son-in-law cop was very high up there on the cop scale so unbeknownst to me my name was expunged of any record. Whew! That would come in handy later.

Timmy always had a lot of money. Wads of it. His mother had him and his other siblings modelling for the various catalogues and magazines that were popular with the locals. He was paid very well for these showings. In fact his mother preferred these modelling outings to his schoolwork. He missed a lot of school and barely got by in Elementary School but in High School he had to repeat Grade 9 and 10 a plethora of times. Nevertheless, his financial largesse to us was his way into friendship, or so it seemed to him, as he played on this financial pecuniary card to fraternize with his so called favourite buds or eviscerate the feelings of those of us that he thought unworthy of his attention. In this way I felt sorry for him.

My mother was empathetic when it came to Timmy. He would show up at our door in the winter with the top part of his shoes missing, toes open to the elements, or wearing a thin summer jacket when temperatures were well below zero. It was obvious that he was neglected but at the time this never occurred to me. He was fun to be with, crazy in his outlook on just about everything and most of all he had money to burn! And, he loved the Stooges.

Timmy, Jimmymum, O’Grunts and I became inseparable in those drug induced summers of love days of the 60s. While everyone else it seemed had lost their collective minds to sex drugs and rock-n-roll we just carried on, squarely, boringly normal. We did form a band at one time with visions of rock n roll glory, had a few gigs, then disbanded as Jimmymum’s car was his real guitar, O’Grunts became somewhat of a druggie; a hipster in his Nehru jackets and exceptionally wide bell bottomed slacks. Bruce, our lead guitarist, left for India to discover himself. I told him that all he had to do was look in the mirror. Timmy and I just hung out…

The Two Stooges…2

…Ed Sullivan dominated Sunday evening’s showcasing new musical talent, including the British Invasion that revolutionized the music industry. There was also Shindig, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, Saturday Night Hockey, Wrestling…real wrestling, Wide World of Sports, Sonny and Cher, Smothers Brothers and Laugh-in, Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Hee Haw and on and on it went and all covered off by just three national networks instead of the three hundred plus specialty channels that we have today with its paucity of talent, inventiveness, innovation and creativity. The sexual revolution was about to explode upon us in 1964 but damn it all anyway, at the tender age of 13, we were just a bit too young to appreciate what was going on or coming our way. The drug culture was also about to detonate like some psychedelic undulating, modulating explosive mind game but that only scared the bee-jee-zus out of us. No matter, the music was awesome and we spent many a Saturday afternoon at one of our houses, in the basement, or at the local restaurant, pool hall, plying what seemed to be an endless supply of nickels or dimes and quarters into that jukebox.

It was this sort of musical magic that got Timmy and I into a spot of trouble. One afternoon at the local mall, Timmy decided to lift a few albums that he had his eye on, placing them down the front of his pants. It wasn’t so much the square flattened bulge of his pants that gave him, us, away but his stiff legged robotic gait in getting the hell out of there. It was as if he had a large load in his pants. I am sure that they had us on their monitors as it came as no surprise to us that we were cornered by security on the way out. Timmy, the perp, and me, guilty by association.

We were charged and had to go to court. Timmy being Timmy had a brilliant idea. He didn’t let me in on his intent but before we came before the judge and prosecutor Timmy had his toothbrush ready to go, just in case. It was a standard brush but he attached a little bit of string to it with a small handle attached. It was kind of funny to see. One had to be there to see the humour in it. He was also ready with a retort if it came to that:

“So Mr Saunders” said the Judge “What do you have to say for yourself?

“Not much yer Honour”

“Given the evidence against you I do find you guilty and charge you with either 5 days detention or 50 dollars. What is your decision”

“Oh, that’s easy yer honour. I’ll take the fifty bucks: Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk”…

The Two Stooges

Hey Moe, hey Larry, nyuk,nyuk,nyuk.

I first met Timmy in Grade Six. I didn’t really hang out with him but just knew of him. And the fact that he was an alter boy, so I used to see him carrying on up there on the alter during some of the Sunday services I went to. Sitting there on a side bar of pews by the main alter joking, giggling, snickering with the other alter boys making fun of the priests and members of the congregation. He was a bit of a jester in that regard.

We sort of became good friends, not close though, in Grade Eight, just as the Beatles made their debut in North America, February 1964. We both loved their music but also the other bands of the so called British Invasion: Rolling Stones, Animals, the Kinks, The Who, Dave Clark Five, Moody Blues, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Herman’s Hermits, well not really Herman’s Hermits. Of course there were other American Bands that were also making an impact around that time such as the perennial favourite Beach Boys, Sam and Dave, Vanilla Fudge, Sam Cooke, Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan, Three Dog Night. Supremes. Temptations, Ugly Ducklings. Unfortunately Elvis was caught up in all of those crappy musicals at the time and wouldn’t really make a statement until his triumphant come back concert of 1968. And as the 60s progressed the music became even more awesomely progressive with the likes of David Bowie, Pink Floyd, the Doors, Procol Harem, The Moody Blues, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye and CCR. Musically, it was a great time to be alive.

Timmy and I had a great deal in common in that regard. We both liked the same stuff, were big fans of the Three Stooges and along with O’Grunts and Jimmy-mum carried on like Curly, Larry, Moe and Shemp. It was pure immaturity, sprinkled with a bit of idiocy that kept us sane in those days of great transformative culture in music, fashion, film and morality. From the romantic, wholesome and family fantasy world of Pat Boone, Perry Como, Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Andy Williams, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Laurence Welk, World of Disney to the likes of Alice Cooper, Janis Joplin, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joe Cocker, The Faces, Cream, Led Zeppelin and on and on it went. Movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rosemary’s Baby, Easy Rider, The Great Escape, Pit and the Pendulum, The Dirty Dozen, Cat Ballou, Bonny and Clyde, Wild Bunch, Lolita, and The Graduate were radically challenging censorship and violence while pushing the boundaries of the established mores of the day. TV may have been minimalist in its content and selection in those days but it was incredibly entertaining expanding the limits of creativity and freedom of expression.

Finality

Finally graduated from Catholic elementary school. Did seven years. Seems like a jail term in some sort of perverse way.  It would have been eight but I skipped a year, grade three to grade five: Ms Upper to Ms Keller.  Come to think of it now, in all of those years, I only had one male elementary school teacher. Mr Bowner. He was great: very theatrical and entertaining.  Why was that? So many female teachers and so few male?  Is it because youngsters in those early years still require the nurturing attention that can only be provided by the female sex? Feminists today would kill me for even suggesting such a thing. I don’t really know.  Even in todays so called enlightenment school boards are trying to deal with the matrification of our Elementary School system, that boys are getting a raw deal.  So they say! That they are becoming whusses, feminized, losing their religion. So they say!  I don’t really think this is the case as this was the norm when I was in Elementary School some 55 years ago. If one were to check I do believe that one would find that women dominated the profession at this level for over a hundred years, two hundred maybe. I even remember reading about the explorer David Thompson and his schooling by the Grey Nuns of London back in the 1770s.  Why are we so concerned about it today? Don’t know, don’t care, I don’t have an opinion on this.  It seems to have worked…

 

Our Park Thou Art in Heaven…Final

…He saw me, looked down at me, smiled I think, or perhaps smirked. The cigarette burning red hot ashes from the corner of his mouth as both hands were needed to control the pressure of the water hose.

“What can I do for ya, young lad” he offered in a lyrical brogue. 

Somewhat embarrassed and off guard I returned:

“Just watching Sir, that’s all.” and then “Tomorrow this will be an awesome piece of ice”

“Aye, with any luck, if the weather holds.”

Silence

“So, this must be some neat job you have here, looking after things at the park?”

“Yes, but this is only part of it. I have three other rinks to look after besides this one”

“Wow” is about all I could muster. Then, continuing on:

“When I grow up I want to have a job like this. So cool.”

He chuckled “No you don’t, and no it ain’t” he said rather emphatically, then adding

“I have to do this. You don’t. I have no other choice. You do. So stay in school.”

“But school sucks. I hate it. The nuns, the priests, the rules and the strap.

He chuckled somewhat.

“It’s not funny.”

“Oh, I know. I know it’s not funny. But thinking back, I got it good too from those nuns and priests.  Real good. But not here. Over in Ireland, where I come’d from, where I grew’d up, – some of those priests and nuns were the devil’s own, the devil’s fire brigade. 

“Really,” I thought aloud, “Just like here?”

“Sure, sure” he said. “They’re everywhere. With fire and brimstone they spoke with the brimstone and fire they breathed.  And they sure set the standard for all of the physical pain and grief that a Catholic young lad or lass could harbour, without being dead, the world over. Some were good I would think. Just not mine”

“What school do you go to.” he asked

“Our Lady of Peace” I answered.

He looked right down at me and into my eyes, into my very soul it seemed.

“Is that so” he said.  “Well I think they had a school for it over there as well. Our Lady’s School of Perpetual Abuse, I would think. For they knew how to give it and we got it good, day and night.  Black and blue we was, then black again.  The thing is though we fought back, but in such a way that the bastards never knew they was being conned. We had a lot of laughs outsmarting them, doing that. That was the key for us to survive in these schools.”

He chuckled but in remonstrance, remembering perhaps that it would seem to be a memory hidden or repressed.

“Listen to me young lad. Adapt, and don’t let them get you down, or get to you emotionally, in your brain like thoughts, and if you do it right you will have fond memories of you and your mates’ experiences and a lot of laughs.  But I’m sure it isn’t as bad as when I went to school. That was day and night back then. No rest for the wicked boys and girls, as they said. We was all orphans.”

He paused, as if to let that last comment sink in. Then he turned, slightly, to blanket another part of the rink with water. Silent! I followed him around.

“Orphans? in Ireland?, Wow.” It seemed so far away, and too much to sink in.

“Orphans, yes. I don’t remember my mother or my father. Just the school, the orphanage, the nuns and priests.  But I got out of it.  Ran away and joined the Navy”

And as if sensing my next question. “I was 14.” 

“Yup, Royal Navy, the Senior Service, as they say.”  He volunteered “It was also harsh discipline thar, in the Navy, but I thrived on it cause I was already used to the abuse…Aaaargh” he laughed out loud.

“But in the Navy they had free rein to kill ya if they so choosed.  For being out of line, AWOL, or desertion as they called it.  But again, my mates kept me sane and my wingers safe. And justice? For the smallest infraction, there was shipboard justice…before the mast, before the Captain… the Coxswain would cry out in his loud and booming voice: “MARCH THE GUILTY BASTARD IN!” As I said. I loved it. Rum was dirt cheap and the cigs even dirtier cheapier. Clean sheets and three squared – if you liked kippers and hard tack that is. But compared to the boarding school, and the Army, I thought I had died and gone to heaven” 

“I came through the war unscathed though.  Only once did providence come to my side.”

“What’s providence?” I interrupted

“Providence is a sort of destiny’s luck.” he continued.  Like something that happens to you in the present that makes no sense at all except that it has an enormous impact on something in the future.”

He looked at me whimsically, quizzically, probably knowing full well that I didn’t have a clue of what he was getting at.

“Let me explain it this way.  I was transferred to an oiler – that’s a ship that refuels other ships at sea, like a floating, moving gas station on water – and just before boarding that ship to leave port and to go out to our war station at sea, I was called back.  Some sort of emergency at home.  How could that be I thought? I had no home! So the ship sailed without me and when I arrived back in the town where I had lived at the boarding school it turned out that I did indeed have a younger sister who was quite sick, had been given last rights, and had asked for me. Turns out she, like me, had also been given up and had been sent to another boarding school, but in the next village.  Damnation I thought. I had a sister.  As it turned out her school was a front for what they called laundry houses – or asylums. You wouldn’t know about those places but there was nothing asylum about them I can tell you that. They was an affront for sure, those sweathouses. An affront to humanity, human kindness, compassion, empathy, everything civil and just. The laundry school from hell. And that’s all I’ll say about that.”

He paused briefly, then continued

“But, as unluckily as it was for her that this was, it was also luckily for me because that oiler took a hit and being so full of oil went up like a some heavenly torch, burnt the sky crimson, in spectacular fashion it was with shades of reds and oranges and yellows, before being doused to eternity’s sleep as she slipped, stern first, into the sea breaking up below the waves to the bottom below but with one last glorious belch of sea salt from old Neptune himself, or so they told me after.  No one survived.”

He let that sink in for the moment. Then continued

“I survived the war though death really hit home. I cried and I cried and I cried. I don’t know why I cried so hard because I didn’t really know anyone on that ship thank God for that.” And I didn’t know my own sister either yet I cried so hard for her.  He made the sign of the cross with a free hand.

“What happened to your sister?” I asked, politely

“Died… a lung disease. But she really died from one of life’s broken hearts, and broken promises. I never knew her but I think I loved her. Funny that. Not knowing somebody but still loving them, potentially I guess, unconditionally perhaps, for I never knew, I never knew her. The ties that bind I think. You understand me boy?”

“I think so.” I said. I didn’t

“Good, cause I’m not sure if I do… understand me or my life that is”

Silence again. Much longer this time as the time was needed to take in this account of his.

“You should be getting home” he said as he turned again to strike out at another area of the rink.

“Stay in school, and don’t let them penguins get to you. By the by, what’s your name?”

“John” I answered, awkwardly.

“Well John. I am Desmond O’Brian. Des for short, but not for long”……he guffawed. You can call me Sir” he guffawed and guffawed again.  Then suddenly snorting, snorting then coughing, coughing hard, a bronchial, nicotine laced cough that went deep into his own form, shook his entire physical being relentlessly before dying down and out through his throat.

“Glad to make your acquaintance John.” he choked again, waved me off with one arm, coughing again.

I left, turned away toward my street and off I went, carefully as the ground was extremely icy.

It always seemed weird, but nice to me, when an adult of whom I had no association with at all called me by my first and given Christian name. John…John, yeah John. A simple name yet the sound of it from someone else’s voice directed at me and at me alone gave me a sense of well being and a confidence in myself that the adult had the respect, and acknowledgement of my own existence in this world, however small my own worldly horizon or vision may be.  It was as if we shared some of life’s experiences, good or bad, in some sort of way, synchronicity perhaps.  It was always a nice, heartfelt gesture to hear one’s own name in that manner by a relative stranger.  Instead of the usual  …MORRISON PAY ATTENTION OR I’LL PAY IT FOR YOU! 

Before I was out of sight I stopped, turned and looked back at the rink. I could see Mr O’Brian ever so faintly, or should I say his silhouette, which really resembled a dark lifeless shadow in the stillness of this winter’s night. The stream of water continuing to rise, then arc, then cascade out and down and out again in a frost-like icy fog over the surface of the rink. Tomorrow that ice surface will be an awesome shade of greyish blue, a smooth virginal sheen of ice, as fragile as frozen glass, bordered by the brilliance of clean white snow, until the inevitable cut and crunch of the first set of cold steel blades hit its surface.

I never saw Mr O’Brian again. 

In today’s world, that park is bereft of young boys and girls playing. Sadly, it is deserted all year long.  Its lifeblood is a distant memory.