Halcyon Daze - Growing up Canadian

by N. A. Dalbec

  When I got a little older, and we moved to the downtown area, I decided to get my own paper route. I figured that it would be a good way to meet some of the other kids in the neighborhood. The drop-off point was very conveniently located across the street from our house, so I could see when the papers were being dropped off from the comfort of the living room. That was very handy on rainy days.

  Getting a route was pretty easy. You just went up to the coordinator and gave your name. The turnover was high, so getting a route was just a matter of time. I lucked in on a route that ran straight up the street from where we lived. It was an afternoon run for one of the two major papers in the city. The job was straight forward. You picked up your papers when they got dropped off at the corner, placed whatever inserts that were included, and delivered the papers. What made the job weirdly interesting was the kaleidoscope of customers that existed along this downtown run. It was a mishmash street with a combination of businesses, offices, and residences, mostly apartment buildings, without elevators. The route ended just short of one of the most notorious street corners in the city. It was a corner that was considered tough, and the people who hung around there were not always the most reputable.

  The strange thing about delivering newspapers was not the delivering. That was the easy part. The strange part was collecting the money for the delivery every two weeks. That's when you met the people behind the doors. That's when you got to put a face to all the sounds that you'd hear coming from behind the closed doors, day after day. That's when things got scary sometimes. That's when you wished that all of your customers would have been pre-paying customers. It's also when you found out how other people lived, or pretended to. On the plus side, it was an occasion to meet some of the nicer customers, and some of the more generous customers.

  Sometimes when collecting I'd sort of wish that nobody was home. Some places were not pretty to look at, nor were the people who lived in them. The classic look without a doubt was the guy who evidently had a drinking problem, whose dress code consisted of checkered slippers, maybe a pair of pants but most probably a pair of shorts, and the ubiquitous sleeveless undershirt with a combination of sweat and tomato sauce stains on it. Wheezing, and an old cigar or cigarette were optional. The female counterparts usually wore the fuzzy slippers, a housecoat or better yet a cheesy negligee that promised to reveal everything that you didn't really want to see. Options here ranged from poorly placed wigs to an array of permanently placed curlers.

  They were not bad people for the most part, but they certainly were sad looking. Strangely enough, they were often very generous, and appreciated good service. They were the contrast that we all seem to need in life to remind us of how well off we are.

  The rest of the customers were non-caricatural, and sometimes non-existent it seemed. The paper would always be gone, but when it came time to collect, the customer was never there. Our instructions were to refer these cases to the coordinator, who would usually know the chronic non and late payers. Somehow, he would get the cash from them.

  The paper route certainly turned out to be quite an experience. I learned a lot about people during that time, and I suppose I also learned a lot about myself.

  Let’s Get the Hell Out of Here!

  We hadn't been downtown long. As a matter of fact we had moved there in late summer and with the arrival of spring we were getting ready to move again. Eight months felt like years to me. I wasn't crazy about the neighborhood, and during our stay I made no new friends.

  I was all of thirteen years old, and when I found out that we were moving I cheered inside. The new place was just that, a brand new house on one of the rivers that ran through the city. It was a custom-built house originally being built by a developer for his family. The fellow was in financial difficulty and could not afford to keep the house for himself, so he sold it to my parents.

  The setting was unique, and the area really had a lot of appeal. Not only that, I could now walk to school. As a matter of fact I could see the school from the house. When we eventually got a boat, I was able to row across the river and walk a few hundred yards to the school.

  There was also the potential and promise of making new friends. The area was riddled with kids my age.

  The house itself was quite something. It was the largest one on a street shared with four other houses. It was a two-storey affair, with a double garage, and four bedrooms. The windows were huge, and they let in tons of sunlight into the house. The kitchen was right at the front of the house, looking out onto the river. There was an inviting family room on the main floor, and all of the other usual rooms. The backyard was immense and very sunny in the afternoon. The spring snow was melting, exposing the yet to be landscaped grounds. The proximity to the river made it a real nature lover's paradise in the middle of the city. There were lots of Red-winged blackbirds that, as we came to learn, were a sure sign of spring. There were also muskrats and beavers swimming in the melting river's waters.

  I was so happy to be there. I really felt at home. The place and setting were easy to fall in love with, and the excitement of the times made it all the better. And exciting times they were. These were the best of economic times. These were the late sixties. Everybody who wanted to work was working, job mobility was very good, going to school and staying in school guaranteed you a good job when you graduated, gas was inexpensive, beer and cigarettes were also inexpensive. There was a sense of widespread prosperity, and most everyone was enjoying the times. You could even let your hair grow down to your butt if you wanted to.

  I was still a little young to take advantage of everything that was happening, but I still enjoyed the times. New cars sat in the driveway of the new house, new friendships developed and a lot of the old friendships were maintained, high school was a neater place to be than grade school, girls were starting to look good as the hormones started acting up, zits were made to be popped, and all was well with the world. In my heart of hearts I fervently hoped that this would be our last move and that we could enjoy what we had.

  Initiation Day

  It was a tradition in our high school. Every year the older students got to abuse the new students for a day. The purpose of the initiation was rather obscure, and the fateful day was met with feelings of apprehension and fear. We had heard the stories of what could happen, and the older students would wring their hands as they planned their various forms of torture. To make the event more sporting, a points card system was used. This was introduced to motivate the novices into performing bold and unorthodox feats in order to gather the most points, in the form of signatures for the honor of contributing to the pride of their respective classes.

  I was one to get involved, and I truly wanted our class to accumulate the most signatures. You could get signatures by doing such things as letting a senior paint your face with a magic marker. You could also get points for eating a raw egg, and doing things the like.

  At one point in the day some of us had ventured out to the pond which lay within the school grounds. A host of activities were taking place. One point getting activity involved dunking one's head in the pond. One of my former grade school mates dared to be different and solicited many potential signatures by offering to jump into the pond wearing his underwear only, a daring feat that would surely bring him great praise from his classmates, and the seniors. And so he took off his clothes and jumped in. Not to be outdone, I solicited even more signatures by offering to jump into the pond with all of my clothes on, including shoes, jacket and tie. I made sure to get the signatures first, so that I would avoid doing this for naught. Once I got the signatures, I did the deed. Needless to say, I got soaking wet doing this, but my pride was high in knowing that I had gathered a large number of signatures for my class, and gained some notoriety at the same time. But the consequences of the deed had not been contemplated.

  There I was, soaking wet, with no change of clothing, my face completely covered in magic marker. I ended up in the vice-principal'
s office looking and feeling a little bit silly. The vice-principal tried to keep a straight face as he asked me what had transpired. I explained the situation, and we concluded that I should go home to get changed.

  So there I was on the city bus, face full of magic marker, and sounding like a giant squeegee as I moved. The bus driver must have wondered what the hell had happened to me. I tried to look straight ahead and not think about how I looked. After what felt like an eternity, I finally got home. Thank goodness no one was there. I quickly showered and changed into dry clothes, and promptly returned to school.

  I can't remember whether our class won that year's initiation but I did make the yearbook, and I knew that the following year it would be my turn to hand out the signatures and make the new kids do silly things.

  Nine A, Ten A, Eleven D, Twelve D

  This place was definitely different. It was bigger than the old place. It was more formal than the old place. There were more priests here than in the old place. You had to move around a lot more than in the old place, and you had a hell of a lot more teachers than in the old place. This was high school. It was run by the priests and if you wanted to get in the door of any classroom, you had to wear a tie and jacket. You had to take Latin, unless they had put you, heaven forbid, in the commercial course. And, there were no girls, except for two secretaries, and a couple of female teachers.

  Some of the older students, the grade twelve guys, were really big, I thought. Hell, some of them had beards and drove cars. Some of them were bigger than the teachers and looked older than some of the teachers. Some of the guys were really small. I remember some of the kids in grade nine dragging their suck-sacks stuffed with books on the floor because they weren't tall enough to keep them off the ground.

  It was a small school by today's standards. There were only six hundred and fifty students spread out over four academic levels of six classes each. In class, unless you had sight or discipline problems, you sat in alphabetical order. As it turns out, many of my high school friends had family names that started with a B, a C, a D, or an E, even an L. So much for letting fate dictate your choice of friends.

  There was no uniform, but as I mentioned, you had to wear a tie and jacket. The smart guys and the poor guys wore the same tie and jacket all year long. There were even a few guys who wore the same suit year after year, or until the cuffs of their pants reached way above their ankles. Some of the guys had their suits dry cleaned once a year. You could see the sweat rings around the armpits of their jackets, and the seats of their pants would reflect light from being so shiny. The vain or rich guys wore sharp looking coordinates or business suits. They looked good, but who were they trying to impress?

  The cafeteria also doubled as an auditorium. In the first years, the cafeteria was stocked with a Coke machine, a chocolate bar dispenser, a milk dispenser, and a canned food dispenser. Needless to say, you were better off bringing your own lunch if you cherished your face, and your ego. I remember seeing some pretty bad acne in those days. Blackheads were quite prevalent too. I probably didn't help the situation too much because I used to bring in a thermos full of hot dogs every day. I was the ad hoc hot food vendor at the school. There was good money to be made, and I'm surprised that my parents never complained about how many hot dog packs they had to buy weekly.

  The lockers were all in the basement. As you walked by, you could smell the food items that had fallen behind some books and were left to die in the dark. Those who smoked could do so outside, behind the gym, or near the rear entrances to the school. In the winter though, people used to find spots in little used stairwells.

  I spent four of my youthful years in that school. Even after all these years I could probably find my way around as if it were yesterday.

  Institutionalization and Socialization

  Schools by definition are institutions of learning. The process takes years, and it has been found that the younger you start, the better you learn. Concurrently, a socialization process takes place. So we learn, and as we learn, we hopefully also learn to live. A lot of this learning to live is done unconsciously, and often, haphazardly.

  I remember in the first year of high school a segregation process began to take place. The grade nines hung around with the grade nines, the grade tens hung around with the grade tens, and so on. One year really meant a lot in those days, and a certain stigma was unfortunately attached to seeking out contact with peers at other levels. Unfortunate it was, because a wise person in those days could establish a much vaster network of friends. This could prove useful in the future, something we rarely thought about in those early years.

  Another form of segregation appeared based on brain power. If you were a brain, you were often a suck, and you carried a suck-sack. You could be a brain, and not be a suck, but it was difficult. If you happened to be a good athlete and a brain, the suck label was very difficult to attach to you. You were a person to be admired or despised, but nearly always respected. You probably also entered school politics and got involved in the running of student activities. If you were good looking on top of that, you probably dated the better looking girls.

  On the other hand, you might be one of the dummies. You could be good looking, and a good athlete. You would be respected for your athletic prowess, and forgiven for your stupidity. You were probably a car owner, because you'd already been working for a number of years while killing time at high school. Your destiny, probably a trade. The irony in all of that is that the guys who fell into trades probably ended up with a more secure living than the guys who went for the academic stuff.

  If you were neither athletic or stupid, you might have been an artsy-fartsy, in which case you might or might not be good at math and science, and you might be dating some girls, but you might not be able to sway them with brains, or pure virility, so that getting the date in the first place might be the biggest challenge of all. You probably had to consult a lot of people and swallow your pride in doing so. The girls you dated probably were the simple type, in that they were more accepting of shortcomings.

  There were yet other types of guys. They never ever dated girls, and they never ever talked about girls. and quite frankly, they didn't seem to be interested in girls at all. They did their own thing. A lot of them seemed to be bright, and creative, not too big on athletics, not the usual athletics anyway, and good public speakers. I don't know what the connection was.

  Then there were the guys who weren't particularly good in all the subjects, but might shine in one or two, and they weren't particularly good in sports, but they concentrated on one or two outdoor activities. They probably liked drinking and partying. They weren't afraid to try something new, and if they were good looking, had developed enough social skills from attending so many parties that they could pick up just about any girl they cared to chase, and keep her long enough to develop a superficial, yet satisfying relationship.

  There were also criminal types, and musical types, and comical types. We all had a little bit of every type in us, but interestingly enough, in high school, whatever predominated in your personality and your skills, seemed to make you generate towards people of the same ilk. You were usually fully aware of the others, and you knew that you would be dealing with all the others when you got out into the real world, but for now, you could separate yourself from the masses.

  High School Dances

  Every once in a while the school principal would let the students put a dance together. I would guess that in one academic year there was probably a dance per month, on average. It might have been a little less, but who's counting.

  School dances, and any other activity were very important to us, because there were no girls to speak of in our school. If we wanted to see girls, we had to invite them to these dances. The easy way to do it was to invite the two neighboring girls' schools officially. Someone from our student council would go to the other schools and make the invitation. Needless to say, our students' council was wise. The wisdom was in askin
g about twelve hundred girls to a school dance at a boys' school with a population of just over six hundred. Talk about hedging your bets!

  There would always be a live rock or blues band. In those days you could get a really good band for four to six hundred bucks a night. The tickets to get in were sold for around a dollar apiece, and the Coca-Cola Company would usually foot the bill for the soft drinks, so that the student council could actually make money on dances.

  The big kick was to get as liquored up as you could for these things, and that was done by getting someone older with a car, or someone who looked older and had a car, or someone who looked or was older, and driven by someone else, to go buy the beer. A six-pack was a dollar and a half in those days, including the deposit. That was pretty close to your entire week's allowance, when you think about it. But of course a six-pack would get you out there. Cocktails were in the parking lot, about an hour before the dance. This was a guy thing usually, and the idea was to down your six beers in the least time possible. There was nothing like sucking on a cool one when the snow was falling, and the temperature was at the frosty end of the scale.