Halcyon Daze - Growing up Canadian

by N. A. Dalbec

  The house we lived in was big. What I really liked about it was that it had an attic, an unfinished one at that. There's something special about attics. If you put mothballs in them, the smell seems to permeate the wood, and create a whole new smell. This particular attic was made of rafters, and so was easy to get around in. One of the things that I really got a thrill out of, was finding alleys, as we called them, and dropping them down the outside walls of the house. I don't think they were using batt insulation in those days, so anything that you dropped between the studs would eventually make its way down to the basement. The sound was echo-like, and I couldn't get enough of it.

  You might be wondering what alleys are. They're marbles. Don't ask me why they were dubbed "alleys". I often wondered how they got all the neat colors and shapes in those things, and how come they were so tough. You could chip one if you really tried, but you really had to work at it. They also served well as projectiles in slingshots, and also worked well in firecracker cannons. Having all these alleys disappear on you makes you wonder if the expression "loosing your marbles" came about from such activities.

  Suited for Winter

  They were real winters, when you could expect a lot of snow. It started in late November, and lasted until early April. Freezing rain was not even invented yet.

  Being a kid in the winter was great. No circulatory problems, no real awareness of the cold. When snow would come, you'd find out about it by looking outside. No such thing as a weather report when I was young. Oh yes, they had them, but they were not important. It's not as if I had to drive anywhere at that age. Snow was the

  magical thing that made you want to get out to play all day.

  Once there was enough of it, you could go sliding. I was very fortunate because our house faced a long hill that was ideal for sliding. My mother would fit me into a one-piece snowsuit that was made of who-knows-what. We were living in the age of synthetics, and clothing was a natural for experimentation, I suppose. Once bundled up, she would send me out to play.

  I must have climbed that hill a million times. The best part of course, was to go down the hill. I did have access to a toboggan, but I preferred just plopping myself down on the ground, and letting my snowsuit slip its way down the hill at great speeds. It often amazed people that I could go sliding without a sled.

  The sport was sometimes hazardous. I remember once stopping halfway down the hill, turning around to look up the hill, only to be run over by a sled. Now that really hurt! Face first with a cold hard metal thing trying to peel off your face. Even as a kid, you have off days. To add insult to injury, I got run over a second time while getting up from the first hit. That was enough to cut my afternoon of sliding, short. I guess that was one of life's many lessons that you sure could do without.

  The Toy that Wouldn’t Do

  Watching big machinery at work was truly a joy for me. I could watch anything that worked, and moved, all day long. There was something about it that was mesmerizing. Men and machines, coordinating and orchestrating change in the landscape. All of this change occurred as you watched closely, and quietly.

  I was most impressed by earth-moving machines. I really liked steam shovels. I don't know why we still call them steam shovels, because in our part of the world, these things haven't run on steam in ages. But I loved the enormous capacity that these machines had for endless work, and the amount of change that they could bring about, seemingly without much effort. I wanted one. Not a real one, but a toy one. I loved to emulate and imitate the action of transformation. My parents knew this well.

  One day in late spring, or early summer, they took me downtown to a place called Toyland. I'm not quite sure why they brought me there at that time of year, because there would have been no special occasion. Anyway, I was not about to analyze their motives. We entered the store, and what a store it was. There was just about everything a kid could want. We were on a mission though, and that was to find a toy steam shovel. Now I knew exactly what I wanted. There were two kinds of steam shovels in the world. One type pulled the earth away from itself and upward. The other type pulled the earth downward, and toward itself. In our part of the world, there was only one kind of machine...the one that pulled downward, and toward itself. The other kind, as far as I was concerned was not real.

  We found the steam shovels in the heavy equipment section of the store. Guess what kind of shovels they had in stock? You guessed it. The other kind! I wasn't going to take this lying down. I promptly asked if they had any of the other ones. To my dismay, they had never seen one of the other ones. I couldn't believe that they would bring in less than authentic toys.

  You won't believe what I did next. I turned down my parents' offer for a steam shovel, and explained that a substitution was just not acceptable. I don't think they minded too awfully much. They didn't have to buy me anything that day. Instead of using a toy to do my digging, I used a large tomato juice can with one end opened up. It was a great scooper, and I could simulate the digging action of a REAL steam shovel. Thank goodness for imagination.

  Why Cars?

  I've always loved cars. I love to look at them, drive them, buy them, watch them race...the list goes on. Why do I like cars so much, I'm not quite sure.

  I do remember that a long time ago, when I was very young, four or five, I woke up one morning, and was greeted by my mother. She was smiling, and was making me feel pretty good about waking up, I thought. As it turned out, it was my birthday. You don't always know these things when you're a kid. She had something for me. Actually, there were two things, both simply wrapped, as I recall. I quickly unwrapped the first item. It was a Dinky Toy race car. It was blue, French racing blue, open wheeled of course, and very fast looking, even standing still. I know now that it was a Formula One car, and was probably a late-fifties model. I loved it.

  There was another car to be unwrapped, but I don't even remember it now. I do remember that those two little cars probably started my love affair with cars. Although sometimes the love affair would wane.

  I remember my parent's '53 Chev. It was white, with gray interior. One day, I was playing in the side-yard adjacent to the driveway. I wandered over to the car, tried the door, and discovered that it was unlocked. So I opened the door on the driver's side, and climbed in. I was pretty short in those days, and standing on the seat while holding the steering wheel gave me a good vantage point. Lots of dials, lots of switches to play with...better than a lot of kid's toys. I also discovered the horn. Now that was neat to play with. When you think about it, a horn on a car's steering was probably a fundamental form of remote control. Get something to happen from some place else.

  Well I had an awfully good time while inside the car, but I didn't want to abuse the self-granted privilege, so I proceeded to get out of the car. Once out, I proceeded to shut the car door. As I did that, I proceeded to leave some of my fingers inside the car door. I distinctively remember PAIN! PAIN! and more PAIN!

  Luckily, no fingers were lost, and no bones were broken. I quickly learned not to shut car doors that way. If I remember well, I wasn't allowed to go play in the car any more, but I once again fell in love with cars once the pain went away.

  The First Ride

  I was began to wonder if I'd ever get one of my own. Many of my friends had one already, and this was, after all, an important item for a kid to have, It was part of one's development and all that stuff.

  I wasn't very old when my good friend lent me his bike to learn on. The first thing I did when I got on was to ask him for a push, just to get me going. Good plan. I didn't have to concentrate on pedaling and steering at the same time. Good plan until I started heading for the ditch. That universal feeling of panic overcame me. Everything stiffened up. No more steering capability, no more balance, no more anything...and of course, the lesson on using brakes had not been taught, or requested. I ended up in the ditch. My pride was hurt, my confidence shattered, but my will remained. So, of course, I tried again, a few times, an
d got the hang of it. I thought it was mighty nice of my friend to let me wreck his bike, seeing I didn't have one to wreck.

  How good a salesperson are you when you're five or five-and-a-half years old? Pretty good I'd say. Matter of fact our best sales talents seem to be with us at birth, and go on to diminish as we grow older. I started bugging my parents for a bike, explaining that I had outgrown the tricycle that never worked very well since it had been run over, and pointing out that my peers were already riding bikes.

  That summer, late that summer, I got a bike. Let's qualify that. I got a two wheeler, of sorts. This thing was something else. To begin with, it had a rubber chain, sort of like a belt you would find on a washing machine. Not only that, it had tubeless tires, made of some kind of petrified rubber. As a matter of fact, you could run a gap into the middle of the tire, through all of its circumference, and still be able to ride the bike. Now I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but where on earth did this thing come from? I seem to remember my parents offering to take it back if I didn't like it. I was so desperate for a bike, and believe it or not, had developed a sensitivity to rejection in that I didn't want to hurt my parents' feelings, or was it that I figured I would never, ever get anything again if I didn't accept the gift as it was.

  Well, I rode the darn thing. And in retrospect, I should have turned the thing down. The belt would slip if it got wet, or loose. The ride was enough to give you kidney problems. The whole thing was a joke on wheels. I never did get to like that bike. I, or no one I know, has ever seen a contraption like that.

  Thank goodness we grow out of things. Fortunately, I grew out of that bike into a real bike, with a real chain, and real tires that you could get a flat with, and brakes that worked. The friend who taught me how to ride a bike, whom I've known for decades, still remembers the bike with the rubber chain, and every so often when I bump into him, he still gets a laugh out of the thought of that bike.

  The first One

  As we go through time, we find ourselves going through many firsts. Very philosophical, but what does it all mean? For one thing, it means that you end up living a lot of different experiences, some good, some bad, some good for you that feel bad, and so on.

  One first that I still enjoy thinking about, is my first girlfriend. We're not talking about a teenage love affair. We're talking about a major pre-teen thing...the summum of innocent love. Hell, at that time, I was unaware of the existence of any other kind.

  She was my parents' long-time friends' daughter. She and I shared our first years on this planet, and I considered her as good if not better a friend than any other human being that was my age. She was very pretty. Her hair was golden brown, her eyes were clear and blue, and she had lots of freckles. She was very smart, I remember, but she was not meticulous in class. This was confusing to me. If someone was smart, then they should also be able to pay attention to detail.

  We often walked to school together, and I would place my arm over her shoulder. We used to get teased a lot about that, but usually by older kids. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what the fuss was all about. We were in the same class for two years. It was at this point in time that I became aware of that so unattractive feeling, the one of jealousy. I would become all fired up inside if I knew that someone else was vying for her attention. And I remember going crazy thinking that someone else would win her over when we moved away, and I went to another school.

  I saw her from time to time, up until the age of twelve or thirteen. By that time she had developed beautifully, was at that point taller, more mature, and all the things that young girls are at that age, while I was shorter, had more zits, arms and legs that were growing faster than the rest of my body, and generally not so appealing as I may have been when I was five years old. Ah, life can be cruel.

  Well, I made up for all of that. I grew to be taller than her, I'm sure. The zits went away, and I regained some appeal. But I must confess, there will always be a soft spot in my heart for my first love.

  Wrong Time, Wrong Place

  Going to church regularly was a very important part of growing up in our family. It was a regular thing, and as far as I knew then, everybody in the world went to church regularly. That's how things were, and had always been.

  One day, on the way home from school, a friend of mine and I were talking and walking. Nothing special. We did this every day, except that this day would be different. As we came upon the local church, we stopped and looked. It was a weekday of course, and we wondered what happened in the church the other six days of the week? It seemed sort of silly to have this structure in place, and have so little use for it. So we decided to go inside to see if anything was happening there. The front doors were open, so that was easy enough. We walked in to have a closer look.

  There were very few lights on, but the candles were burning. We both thought that this was strange, and quite frankly, a bit of a waste. Who on earth took care of the candles during the week? How long did candles burn anyway? We walked down to the front of the church, close to the altar. Now during a regular visit, this was as far as you could go. Only the priests and altar boys got to see what was behind the altar. Well curiosity got the better of us, and we decided to take a closer look. We whispered our comments out of respect for where we were, and even this was risky, because one never talked in church...one listened quietly. We were still into old fashioned altars in those days; everybody faced the altar, including the priest. We walked up to the altar, and had a look around. It was neat to have this new perspective. Now we didn't think that we were doing anything wrong, but we also didn't want to push our luck. The whole episode probably lasted five minutes, and we made sure not to disturb anything. Once our curiosity was satisfied, we left, once again, quietly. As far as we knew, no one had seen us, and as far as we were concerned, no one went to the church, except on Sundays.

  Well this did not turn out so innocently once the adults got into the act. Not that we were ever able to confirm it, but it seems that our visit had not gone unnoticed. I can only guess that someone had been watching us all along, and had reported the incident almost immediately to our respective parents. All hell broke loose! You'd swear someone had been shot or something. Not very many questions, mind you, but a lot of quick implementation.

  It was announced to me the very next day that I was no longer allowed to see or speak to my friend. We were not to associate in any way forever, or something like that. Hard to believe. I do seem to remember speaking to my friend again, but you can rest assured that we never went back into that church together again.

  A New Channel

  When I was a kid, TV was not yet a really big thing, at least where we lived. We could receive two, count them, two channels. Color was nothing more than an inventor's dream, and reception was at the mercy of the infamous antenna. The best show on TV was "The Friendly Giant", preceded by same channel colleague "Chez Helene". On Chez Helene there was the pretty assistant, Louise, who would help out daily. Funny how we are naturally attracted to beauty, even at a very young age. And of course on Friendly, there were Rusty the rooster, and Jerome the giraffe. I always liked that show, even when I grew up. There was a sedating quality to it. Never did things get out of control in Friendly's castle.

  Now all of this controlled peace and calm was to abruptly, and for most people welcomely come to an end with the advent of a third TV station. The new station would be more commercial, and would aggressively seek to sway the television audience. Talk about shooting fish in a barrel.

  People were ecstatic. New programs, more variety, and all that stuff. I still remember my brothers trying to pull the new station in, playing with the antenna, pleading with the tuner, one of those endless loop tuners. It was wild. They finally managed to pull in the station, which happened to be less than a mile away, and the first thing we got to see on that station one Saturday afternoon, was a football game. I preferred Friendly.

  Tasty Bits

  It would certainl
y be nice if our taste buds remained as sharp and sensitive as when we were young. After years of assault, they seem to work, but not quite as well.

  There are a few special tastes, the memories of which, have remained with me since my youth. The first one is a combination of taste and texture. This combination comes from something that is still popular today...Rice Krispies' squares. The first time I tasted these, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. There was something about them that was addictive. The only problem with them was that they were very abrasive if you ate too many of them, and your mouth would retaliate by making everything else taste like garbage for the next couple of days. The one good thing about those squares is that we didn't make them at home. This turned out to be a form of control.

  The other incredible taste experience came from egg rolls. One of my older brothers used to pick them up once in a while, and once, he let me have a taste. I think the plum sauce was really what did it. Try an egg roll without plum sauce and you'll see what I mean. The combination of taste and texture once again, was indescribably delicious. I noticed upon traveling in latter years that some of the best egg roll makers had settled in our part of the world. I've always considered myself lucky for that. It was years between my first taste of an egg roll and my second taste. Egg rolls were ten cents apiece. Very expensive for a kid.