by N. A. Dalbec
One Thursday evening, I remember the cub leader asking me to go home to put on my wooden cub scout shirt on. I hated to wear that shirt because it was so itchy. But I walked back home, and walked back to the cub scout meeting, which took place, you guessed it, one block from the school. I'm surprised my parents didn't move, just to save on buying me shoes. Coming back to the night of the cub scout meeting, if I went home for lunch that day, it means that I walked eighty blocks that day. No wonder I was tired at the end of the day.
Years before, when I was in kindergarten or grade one, we went on a field trip to the Experimental Farm. We went there by bus, and spent a lot of time walking around. At the end of the day, a monitor, who was there just for the day, asked me if I lived very far from the Farm. I said that I didn't live that far away. Stupid me! I ended up walking something like a mile-and-a-half or more after having walked all day. I can't say that I would credit the monitor for too many brains either, asking a five-year or six-year-old to make a judgment call like that.
I can tell you that it was great joy that I felt when I got my first real bicycle. It made the world a little smaller, and a lot more accessible.
Many years later, I met a young woman whom I dated. She came up with a very interesting observation about kids, and adults. She had noticed that there were an inadvertent number of things that adults did to kids that they would never dream of doing to another adult.
How We Got There
Automobiles have been an integral part of the North American way of life for some time now. One of the many reasons for this phenomenon is the fact that everything is so damn far away. North America is a big, big place, with relatively few people, a somewhat cold climate that doesn't lend itself well to waiting casually for buses, or trains, or anything else that might be running late, or not coming at all.
As long as I've been around, our family has had cars. Most of our family cars were not too exciting, but I've always admired their resilience. The first family car I remember was a white '53 Chevy. The only thing I really remember about it is that it bit one of my fingers once, and I didn't like the feeling. The '53 Chevy was replaced by a '60 Pontiac. Now why didn't my parents let themselves be swayed by a '59 Chevy, with those outrageous tail wings. The Pontiac was powder-blue with matching interior, and had four doors. It had two diner-style bench seats. Did diner-style seats that you find in a diner booth influence car seat designs, or did bench seats influence diner booth designs? The Pontiac had a six cylinder engine, and was an automatic. My sister learned how to drive using this car, and my father was her instructor. I still remember seeing them go around in the parking lot that was across the street from where we lived. My father was a very good driver, and I don't remember him having ever been in an accident. My sister turned out to be a very good driver too. Other members of the family learned to drive, using the Pontiac. It turned out to be the teaching car. It also got a pretty good workout from my older brothers. At a point near the end of its life with us the Pontiac began to sag in the middle. It wasn't a manufacturer's defect. The car had been for a little ride in the countryside. But it did last six years, and served a family of seven. Good show, Pontiac.
The replacement for the Pontiac turned out to be another Pontiac, this time it was a '66. It was quite a bit more stylish, and had a V-8 hooked to a two-speed automatic. The car was a four-door, jade green with a tan cloth interior. The seats had a moulded look that made them acceptable as bench seats. The classic touch was the stock fender skirts, and a rakish yet elegant stance that was given to the car at the factory. It turned out to be the first car that I ever drove, after discretely asking my father if I could start the car in a parking lot and drive it around a bit. I think I was thirteen years old at the time. I loved cars, and had watched all the moves for years. I did everything right, and it looked as if I had been driving for years. It was one of the great thrills of my life. This car lasted a long time, and the bullet-proof 283 engine put up with a lot of abuse from my sixteen year old foot.
The '66 Pontiac was replaced by a '73 Chevy Malibu. This time, style prevailed over function. The car was a coupe, with rust colored sheet metal, and a cream vinyl top and opera windows. It also had a split front seat with cream colored corduroy cloth. These were the unfortunate days of archaic anti-pollution, when auto makers really didn't have a clue what to do about incorporating government regulations into the design of engines. The 350 V-8 delivered about thirteen miles a gallon no matter how you drove it. It must have had some kind of thermo-nuclear reactor in it, because you could melt the pavement by staying in one spot too long. A smooth and quiet car it was though, and I loved driving it.
The Malibu was purchased by an elderly gentleman who kept it for years after he bought it. The car continued to look great for a long time. Its replacement was an '80 Oldsmobile Delta 88 with a 350 Rocket V-8 fed by a large four-barrel carburetor. The silky smooth power was delivered to the wheels by a three-speed automatic. The car was yet another coupe, powder blue in color outside and in. It was wonderfully fast, and my mother, who was getting on in years, really loved to boot it. She felt that a car should have lots of get up and go, in case you had to get out of the way of some idiot on the road. She did not take this one up to one hundred and fifteen miles per hour as she had done with the '66 Pontiac on the Florida Turnpike. That's another story. The Olds didn't have a very good factory paint finish, but I don't think it ever saw a mechanic's face in nine years of service.
As you can see, my parents were a GM kind of family. And why not? The cars were tough as nails, and they lasted a long time. I'm responsible for the last family car not being a GM product. My mother wanted a teal colored Bonneville in '89. It was a beautiful car, but it was pretty big, and with age my mother was getting pretty short, not that she was ever tall. Anyway, she was traveling in town mostly, and gas was getting pretty expensive. So I suggested something smaller, but with all the goodies that she liked. There was nothing in the GM line-up that turned her crank, so we went to look at the Fords, and there was nothing there either. We finally got her into a Sundance, and she loved it, although she was somewhat apprehensive about the lack of power. She got used to it, and when she found out how much she was saving on gas, she became quite happy with the car. She discovered that she had all this extra shopping money every week.
How the World Got Bigger
Today's world is getting smaller. We hear people say that all the time. The world isn't getting smaller, but we can now get around it a lot faster than before.
When I was a kid, everything was done on foot until I got a decent bicycle. The bike made my world a lot bigger. I also had a keen sense of direction, and that helped out a lot. For some reason or another, it was virtually impossible for me to get lost, even in a city with a population of over one hundred thousand people at that time. I might have been seven or eight years old at the time, and my sense of adventure was well developed. The bicycle was an ideal mode of transportation. It didn't cost anything to ride, as long as I had the energy. I also didn't need any money. I just had to make sure that I had eaten enough before leaving on my trek.
I used to do this sort of thing all the time, and often on my own. I don't remember telling my parents about how far I was going, because they probably would have worried, or restricted the distances that I could go. I had a very good system to keep myself from getting lost. I would venture out in increments, or I would stay on a street and run its entire length. If the street turned out to be to short, I would try to find a parallel street that would allow me to continue in the same direction. For example, if I was traveling in an easterly direction, to the farthest point out, in the event that I had to use a series of parallel streets to continue eastward, I would consistently pick parallel streets either north or south of the original street. That way I knew that I was always going, for example, east by northeast, and to come back, I knew that I had to travel west by southwest. It was a great system. It allowed me to discover the city easily and
quickly. It wasn't unusual for me to travel five or six miles in each direction. Landmarks were very important to remember, of course, and eventually they became familiar sights.
The city was an intriguing place, and my trusty one-speed bike would take me everywhere that I wanted to go. I don't remember ever being stranded because of my bike.
It must be very distressing for people who travel, but have a lousy sense of direction, unless of course they have someone chauffeur them around. A good sense of direction gives you a great feeling of independence, especially when you're a kid. There's pride in knowing that you can do it on your own, and all that stuff.
As you get older, the sense of direction doesn't always seem to help you out in your decision making. One of the reasons it doesn't is probably due to the fact that life is not laid out like a city's streets. In life you aren't always going in one direction.
Off to the Movies
Here's a familiar line:"When I was a kid, movies cost thirty-five cents, and that was for a double bill, a cartoon, and a Pathe newsreel. Then you bump in to some dinosaur who'll tell you that they got all of that and more for ten cents, or even a nickel. Well, beyond that they either paid you to go to the movies, or movies didn't exist.
I do however remember going to the show for thirty-five cents. And I also remember going to what was our favorite as kids, the four-horror hits day at the rat-hole. Why the theatre was called a rat-hole, I don't know. Yes it was old, but it had really neat seats that actually allowed you to sit up a little higher if some tower sat in front of you, or slouch, whichever you preferred. Now a four-horror hit day didn't cost you thirty-five cents. No, a four-horror hits day would cost you a buck. But for a buck, you could walk in at just before noon, and regale yourself in movieland for no less than six hours. If you were lucky, the movies would be long, and you'd get out of there at eight in the evening. You might wonder if people got hungry during that amount of time. Of course, but they had among other things, hot dogs in those days. They also had the lousiest fountain soft drinks that you can imagine. The cola was flat and tasted like medicine. The hot dogs were okay though, and so was the popcorn, the Nibs, the Licorice Allsorts, which should have been called Licorice Mouthsores, the chocolate bars, and all the rest.
My friends and I were very keen on horror movies, and our parents could get rid of us for the whole day. If they had known some of the things we were seeing, they probably would never have let us go. In the course of a few short years, we saw every Vampire movie that was ever made, as well as all the werewolf movies, the King Kong, Godzilla, Zombie, Triffids, Mummy, torture, Sinbad, horror-comedy, cowboy-horror, outer space monster, invaders, body-snatchers, poison plants, killer children with cue ball eyes, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula Meets Billy the Kid, Roman gladiators, The Fly, The Incredible Shrinking Man. Did I miss anything? Yes, The Three Stooges Meet The Werewolf, Charlie Chan Meets Everybody, The Phantom Of The Opera, not the singing kind. There was more, of course.
By the time we got out of the movie house, we were scared out of our minds. We actually had to walk home back-to-back so that we could see what was going on everywhere. We were buzzing on caffeine, glucose, and ten million other additives and preservatives. It was fantastic!
Off to the Beach
Summertime was outdoor time. Occasionally, somebody's parents would drive us up to a lake just a half-hour from town. It was, and still is a beautiful lake, with lots of sandy beaches, clean clear water, picnic areas nestled in groves of tall evergreens. There was also a snack stand for those who'd forgotten something on the way up, or were too lazy to bring up their own supplies. Motorboats were not allowed on the lake, but you could rent a canoe or a rowboat for the day.
We would go swimming, and run around the beach, and do all those beach things of course. We weren't very old at the time, maybe nine or ten years old. But even at that tender age, we discovered an activity that was rather unorthodox, one that we didn't even understand, but one that we would get lots of giggles out of.
The whole thing started quite haphazardly, and innocently. My friend and I were on the beach running around when a young lady in a revealing bikini stopped to talk to us. I can't remember what the subject was, but she was very pleasant, and I guess she just liked kids. Now we were considerably shorter then, and anyone who wanted to talk to us had to bend over. When this particular young lady bent over to talk to us she gave us quite a vantage point. We both sort of looked at her, and then to each other silently, and then back at her, trying to look at her in the eyes. It was very difficult, because of the obvious distraction. Anyway, she eventually left us to continue with whatever we were doing, but as she left, my friend and I looked at each other once again with knowing thoughts, and giant grins on our faces. We had both felt the same tingling feeling in our bathing suits, and we liked it. We didn't know what it was, but we certainly knew what had caused it. So there we were, two nine or ten-year-olds with the minds of dirty old men. We had instantly become addicted to the feeling, and we knew where to get more! So we incorporated a new beach activity into our casual schedule of events. We would seek out ladies in revealing bikinis, and go ask them anything at all, just so they would have to bend over to talk to us, and we'd get that addictive tingling feeling in our bathing suits. We just couldn't help ourselves.
When we ran out of ladies that we could approach, we decided to go to the snack bar. Once there something else happened. One of us dropped his money in front of the counter. Unfortunately, the floor in front of the counter was made of boards, and of course the money fell in between the boards. No problem. We were small enough to climb under the platform in order to fetch the lost coins. Once we got there we found more than we bargained for. Not only did we recover our lost loot, but everyone else's. It was fantastic. We couldn't believe our eyes. There was money everywhere we looked. So we gathered up all the money we could find, and shared the proceeds.
What a day of decadence at the beach. Here we were, two nine-or-so-year-olds out hunting for women and free money. We still didn't know what to do with women, but we sure knew what to do with the money.
Getting Shipped Off
We were a fairly big family, and my parents were pretty busy with all the things that parents are busy with. So on weekends, Saturdays anyway, I would be encouraged to do something by myself. This usually meant going some place, and that place usually ended up being the boys' club or the ski hill. Neither place was a bad place, of course. Some kids would give anything to go to places like that.
The boy's club was just for boys, as the name implies. I understand that they've removed that bastion, and replaced it with the boys' and girls' club. The club at the time incorporated a large swimming pool, and a gymnasium among other things. To go swimming, you had to wear a club bathing suit. The club bathing suit, if I can manage to describe it properly, was made of a plain white cloth, and had an open side to it, which incorporated two sets of tie-strings, so that you didn't slip it on, you sort of wrapped it on, and then tied the one side, which left one hip exposed. Who was the genius who had invented this thing? The swimming was okay, and I usually started off on Saturday morning with a swim.
Later on in the day, the gymnasium was converted into a screening room for cartoons, and if you cared to, you could have lunch at the same time. I always enjoyed the cartoons, as did most of the kids.
I'm a little foggy about what else went on there, except that I know I spent a lot of cold winter Saturdays there.
The bottom line regarding the boys' club is that I really didn't enjoy going there. It's one of the few places in my life where I didn't make friends easily. Two of my close childhood friends went to the Y on Saturdays, and I probably would have preferred to go there. We did everything else together, so why not go to the Y on Saturdays together?
The other place I would get shipped off to was the ski hill. To get there was a little more involved than going to the boys' club. To get to the boys' club I just took one bus there, and one bus
back. To get to the ski hill, I usually walked about a mile to the bus depot in the market area, and then hopped on a specially equipped city bus or school bus that would take us up to the ski area. It wasn't too bad on a reasonably warm day, but I really hated going up there on a day when it was forty below. First, you'd freeze your buns off walking to the bus depot, then you'd freeze on the bus because it couldn't handle that kind of cold, then you'd freeze on the fully open chair lift going up the hill, then you'd freeze your face off coming down the hill. Some days it was just too much, and I'd just sit in one of the lodges and wait for the day to pass by.