Halcyon Daze - Growing up Canadian

by N. A. Dalbec

  I seem to remember going to the boys' club alone a lot, and I seem to remember going skiing alone a lot, yet it might be a distortion of time on my memory, because I always had lots of friends who went skiing. Maybe it just felt lonely. Not only that, in all of my years of skiing, I never got really good at it. Oh sure, I could make it down just about anything, and I used to get a big thrill out of going downhill through heavily treed areas. It was considerably more dangerous, but you didn't need any style, and that was fine with me, because I never really developed any real style or balance.

  In retrospect, the winter Saturdays that I really enjoyed the best during that time in my life were the ones where I didn't get shipped off, and neither did my friends.

  Other People’s Cars

  When you think about it, as kids we're really lucky. We usually don't have to worry about the rent, where the next meal is coming from, what clothes to buy, what's happening anywhere else in the world, plus, we get driven around.

  The art of being driven around is not without a need for practice. For one thing, you usually have to behave before you go some place, you have to behave while you are going some place, you have to behave when you get there, and yes, you have to behave on the way back, especially if you are a guest kid.

  Some of the cars that other people had were really something. I must say that as a kids, my friends and I were really spoiled when it came to riding in neat cars. One of the best was a mid-fifties Cadillac. It was an ambassador's car, which makes sense, because my friend's father was an ambassador. The jet-black car was beautifully maintained, and cared for. It was washed daily, summer and winter by the chauffeur, whom we called Mr. Doughnut. Sometimes Mr. Ambassador himself would drive us somewhere, and that was just fine too. The Cadillac was fully loaded, and had a very conservative gray velours-like interior. The best part of this car was where the gas filler cap was located. It lay just behind one of the hinged tail-lights. We would sometimes go to the drive-in or sometimes the Towers store. There were no pretentions here.

  One of the ambassador's friends had a '63 Continental convertible four-door, with the suicide rear doors. It also was very beautiful, but we didn't go for many rides in it. We got to look at it more than anything else.

  When the ambassador's Cadillac died, it was replaced by a navy-blue Buick Electra. It didn't look as funky as the mid-fifties Cadillac, but it was less ostentatious, and allowed the ambassador a little more "incognitoism". We also went to the drive-in and the Towers store in the Electra.

  Another friend's uncle had a really old Lincoln four-door. It was also black but was not as pretty on the inside. The slab seats were a sort of sandpaper gray with dull yellowy white borders. This car was not as properly cared for and maintained as the ambassador's Cadillac, but it was still fun to go places in. The major destination seemed to be the Dairy Queen. Imagine six or eight kids arriving at a Dairy Queen in a beat up late fifties Lincoln with one tall silly adult driving? The Dairy Queen owner could usually retire after we had been there.

  In the funk department, there was another friend's father's convertible Consul. It was black with red interior. The top was usually down wherever we went, but the destination was usually the country club. The only problem with going in this car was that my friend's father was an avid smoker, and he'd flick his cigarette in the wind. We usually sat in the back, downwind of the flicking cigarette. You had to time it right so that you would close your eyes as the flaming ashes came your way. The Consul was also used as our practice car in the driveway. We would take turns pushing the car back and forth in the driveway as the other person steered. That was tons of fun, and we built up good leg muscles doing that.

  One of the all-time classics was a car that one of my brothers bought. He wasn't even old enough to drive legally when he bought it, I think, and quite frankly, you couldn't get away with driving this car today. It was a mid-fifties Buick four-door that had its top lopped off. The thing was enormous, and had not been reinforced after having been decapitated. It also had an enormous engine in it that roared, probably because the exhaust system was not intact. The car was so big in the driveway that I remember the garden hose tap being severed from the house's side as my brother was backing the car up. When you drove down the street, the sides of the car would sway in and out and everything would creak. I think my brother eventually had the rear doors welded shut. Needless to say, this car did not last long. I don't remember going anywhere in particular in this car, but I do remember getting drives in it.

  There are more of course, and each car conjures memories and stories. They became an integral part of North American life, and changed the way we live. One of the best parts of being a kid is that you didn't have to pay for the cars that thrilled you.

  Land of Palms

  I was only twelve at the time, and Christmas was just around the corner. It was towards the end of the week before Christmas break, and my parents were coming by the school to pick up my report card, and to advise the principal that I would be absent from school for a few days surrounding the Christmas break. This suited me fine. The report card was good, and that helped set the tone for our upcoming adventure.

  We were off to sunny Florida, by car no less, and we were even bringing along some strangers for the ride, and a quick ride it would be, because we were going to do it non-stop from our frigid point of departure, some eighteen hundred miles away. The car, a recently purchased '66 Pontiac would be the ambling shelter that would carry my parents and me, as well as two paying passengers through the entire east coast of the States from just north of New York State to Fort Lauderdale, in southern Florida.

  I had never been to a place that was warm in the winter, or that had palm trees. I was very much looking forward to the experience, and was interested to find out if there really was a fort in Fort Lauderdale.

  As we rolled along I had the chance to acquaint myself with our two passengers. One was a man in, I would guess, his twenties or early thirties. He was rather aloof, and had that "What did I get myself into?" look. He did not care to share in the driving, nor the conversation, and I can only guess that he had taken copious amounts of tranquilizers to help him while away the hours in the car. The other passenger was somewhat older, and somewhat more interesting. She looked like someone's grandmother, and she loved to quietly converse. She also did not share in the driving. She was an interesting person to me, as I had never really known my own grandparents enough to remember them, and I found it intriguing to find out what an elderly person's perspective was on life. I learned such things as: older people, in many cases, don't require very much sleep, and that it isn't unusual for a person such as this lady to run quite efficiently on three hours of sleep per night. My first reaction was that this must be very lonely, because most other people are out for the count some eight hours per night. She lived alone, from her account, and no, she didn't feel too lonely about the whole situation. She was very philosophical and had the right to be at her age. I decided to adopt her as my grandmother during the trip.

  Going through Pennsylvania was grueling. The weather was not cooperating, and the hills made things worse. Scranton is a name that has stuck with me since that time. I had never seen anything like it in my life. This was neither bad, nor good. I had just never seen any place like it. Beyond Scranton were many more miles of travel. It was fun to feel the temperature rise as we headed south, and the countryside changed dramatically as well. Another place that stuck in my mind was the bypass for Washington D.C. My gosh it took a long time to get around there. Why did they make cities so big? Next flash was Macon, Georgia, at night, in the rain. I had seen, "To Kill A Mockingbird", and it had impressed me in one way. The movie was set in Macon, and Macon was impressing me in another way. This was in the days when Georgia had no four-lane interstate highway, so you ended up going through Georgia proper. No "antiseptic, looks like any other place" highway here. I was really struck by how differently people could live, yet they lived. I had nev
er seen anything like this before, except for those seemingly endless "South Of The Border" signs leading into the Carolinas.

  We worked our way south and finally hit the Florida state border. By this time, my parents were getting pretty tired, having shared some twenty hours of non-stop driving. My mother was at the wheel, and being the determined person that she was, decided that we should make some time here. Patience was wearing thin, and the lure of warmth and sunshine was foremost in our minds. The turnpike was begging for speeding cars. It was straight, wide, and quiet. So my mother decided to see what Pontiacs were really made of. She mashed the pedal and had us going about one hundred and ten miles an hour. The car was amazingly stable and quiet, although I don't think it would have been wise to open a window at that speed. We made very short work of driving through Florida, and I think our quiet gentleman passenger's tranquilizers were wearing off.

  The car made it to Fort Lauderdale with nary a protest. I'm sure if the G.M. engineers had opened up the engine, they would have been hard pressed to find a trace of carbon in there. We dropped off our passengers at their respective destinations, and went on to our own. It had taken us less than a day to get to Florida, and I was thrilled by both the beauty of the beaches and the wonderful climate.

  I was impressed by all the old cars that were still in one piece, as well as by all the old people who were still in one piece. I liked the pastel colors of the buildings, and I thought the trailer parks looked better than some housing projects that I had seen. I thought it pretty amazing to see groves of orange trees and grapefruit trees. They even had oranges there that we never saw at home. The whole place was very exciting, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself discovering it.

  The trip to Florida would turn out to be the starting point for many more trips to come, and I'm glad my parents brought me along. I found that I thought differently after going there, and that was good.

  Going to the New World’s Fair

  The mid and late sixties were an exciting time. There was rapid economic growth, job mobility, and all kinds of good things.

  In 1967 I was twelve years old. In the winter I had just been to a place called Florida, and the experience had really been the first one to open my eyes to the world beyond. I now knew that there were places better, and worse than where I lived, and in the spring of '67 I was about to discover a world that would come to visit and show itself to me and countless others.

  The World's Fair in Montreal was to become a special place for me from '67 and throughout the following years. The site had been reclaimed from the mighty St-Lawrence river by the engineers who built the Metro system in Montreal. When excavating for the tunnels, they decided to take the rock that was taken out and place it on the river bed to extend one existing island, and to create another. On these islands they built a futuristic city that would house the countries of the world during the Fair.

  The place was truly magical, with bold and daring architecture, that spoke of sophistication and imagination. The streets were for pedestrians, and served as service roads at night. The lighting and landscaping were very well executed and all of the power and telephone lines were placed underground. The place was naturally air-conditioned by the river that flowed all around it, and the canals that wove through it.

  When I first laid eyes on the place, the first impression I got was of comfort and amazement. I instantly felt comfortable with the modern architecture and was amazed that the place was so well done. I was also amazed that we didn't build cities this way, seeing we had the technology. The place made sense. It could handle millions of visitors, there were no cars to speak of, you could get around the place using monorails, articulated ground-level trains, boats, gondolas, helicopters, hovercraft, and so on. All of this in a place taking up just under a thousand acres of land.

  Most downtowns in major cities don't take up a thousand acres, but try getting around as quickly and comfortably as you could at the world's fair, and they were moving millions of people daily.

  Anyway, I fell in love with the place, and spent enormous amounts of time there over a period of about four years. It was about two hours by bus from where I lived, but I could get there and back for three bucks. I had to pass as an eleven-year-old to get that kind of price, but I looked young for my age, and could get away with it.

  The World's Fair was a place of freedom and fun for me. I introduced a lot of friends to what I considered my personal playground, and they too had lots of fun.

  Even though I was only twelve at the time my parents were really good about letting me go there alone or with friends. Whatever we did there was our business, and our business only. Not that we ever did anything really wrong over there, but it was stuff that might worry a parent.

  We would immediately buy some small cigars, or even a pack of cigarettes, and we must have looked awfully silly smoking those things at our age. And of course we would buy the longest ones available, so that we'd get our money's worth. We'd also jump off the monorail, just for the thrill of it. That often meant jumping fifteen feet through the air, sometimes landing on a peak of a building. We'd also spend hours jumping on and off articulated ground-trains. I remember one of my friend's thinking that if you jumped off backwards, you'd be defying some law of physics. He quickly learned that you don't try to defy the laws of physics. He ended up smacking his head on the pavement. Thank goodness he didn't hurt himself too seriously.

  During the official year of the World's Fair, we were too young to drink, but in the following years of the Fair, we did our darndest to look old enough to buy a beer. The guy with the most facial hair was usually elected to try and buy the beer. If nobody had facial hair, we'd elect the tallest guy. It usually worked, and we never gave the bar staff a hard time.

  The place also had an amusement park, and one of the big thrills was to smoke something and try out the scariest rides. We'd go on anything, and I don't remember anyone ever tossing their cookies. There were also a lot of great concerts on the grounds, and I remember seeing Chicago there. I would have liked to see Jimi Hendrix and the Cream play there, but I don’t think they played that venue.

  We even slept over, one weekend, by staying on the site after closing. We found an incredible spot to sleep among artifacts that were being stored from the previous year's displays. I remember sleeping on a meridian lounging chair, all the while gazing at a four or five foot owl that had been carved out of wood. Two of us slept in the comfort of this storage area, while another of our friends spent the night in the Fair's police station. We met up with him in the morning after being caught roaming around the grounds too early in the morning. The police let us go later on that morning.

  I remember sleeping under a picnic table the following night, while we watched a couple doing it under the stars.

  The place offered adventure and excitement for many of my teen years, and I feel privileged to have had such a place to do some of my growing up in.

  Go East Young Man

  Summer travel usually occurred in August, mainly because my mother used to take a lot of summer courses that usually ended in the latter part of July. She and my father seemed to enjoy road trips, and I being the youngest in the family was usually elected to be the requisite passenger. This was by no means a chore, as I loved to travel.

  This particular trip was going to take us around the Gaspe Peninsula, and the Atlantic Provinces. I had never been to these places, and was looking forward to discovering their particular charm. I had heard about a lot of the places we were going to, places like Perce, where the ocean had bored a hole into the a large mass of rock protruding into the ocean, and other places like Reversing Falls, Magnetic Hill, as well as other attractions.

  My imagination would always work hard during a trip, trying to visualize the places before we would get there. I was usually all wrong about a place that I would imagine, sometimes being disappointed, and often surprised. The Gaspe Peninsula had not yet been transformed by the tourist trade. The scener
y along the sinuous highway was truly spectacular. Ocean, highway, cliff, and the occasional town or village. But was it ever poor out there. I had never seen such poverty in my own country. The people were a-one, and the food was okay, if you liked seafood. My palate had not taken that particular bend yet, and so the food selection did not appeal to me. I couldn't imagine how people survived in this part of the world. The mainstays were fishing, fishing, and a bit of forestry and mining. The houses looked like they had never been painted, and there was a generally run-down look to the area. Thank goodness prosperity made its way into the Gaspe sometime after my visit there as a pre-teen. Perce, the giant rock with a hole in it really has a hole in it, at low tide, so you sort of had to make it there at low tide for the full impact.

  Reversing Falls was a more dubious attraction that was definitely worth seeing, but really should have been named something less pretentious. Maybe Walt Disney, or one of his associates had been commissioned to go around the Atlantic Provinces at one point, to dub natural phenomena with exotic titles, in order to enhance tourism. All to say that Reversing Falls are not quite waterfalls that have water crawling back up the side, but they are an interesting natural occurrence that could be called, Reversing Rapids.

  On we went to Magnetic Hill. I remember shaking my head in disbelief when we rolled backwards down a hill, but we were supposed to believe that we were going backwards up the hill. It's supposed to be an optical illusion, and at the time we went, there was a large billboard that gave you instructions on what to do to feel the full impact of Magnetic Hill. Thank goodness they didn't charge for the thrill on the hill. Ah, that Eastern sense of humor.