Where I Belong

by Alan Doyle

  When the weather was poor, we went into the only space big enough to hold us all—the basement of the Catholic church. It was a rectangular space about eighteen feet wide and about forty feet long, with a ceiling height of eight feet or so. Because of some posts and dividers, the room had about three thousand sharp corners, cast-iron radiators and pillars to look out for, and those corners are probably responsible for the facial scars on most Petty Harbour children of my generation. If those obstacles were not enough, there was also the perilous floor. It was old, crumbling linoleum tile that ripped your sneakers if you moved or twisted on the wrong spot. If you ran the wrong way, your feet could slide right out from under you and you’d land on your arse. The walls were covered in pressboard panelling that chipped and splintered and gouged your skin if you so much as lightly brushed against it. None of this was ideal for a ten-year-old. It was a hazard to walk around in that church basement; to play sports in it was a death wish. But that’s what we did. And we did it happily.

  The two most common games we played were dodge ball and floor hockey. Oddly, dodge ball was a fairly safe game, and we mostly escaped without serious injury. But floor hockey was another story. We played five against five. We had sticks. That’s right—in a cramped basement with plenty of obstacles, it was decided that the best thing to do would be to give young children hockey sticks. Swinging in a space that small was, to say the least, dangerous. It was almost impossible not to get pushed into a stanchion or hooked in the leg with a pressboard splinter. It was rare that anyone would shoot the ball without also sending a projectile floor tile rocketing into someone’s face. And we loved every second of it.

  Adversity develops the strangest skills. That’s what I learned about floor hockey in that church basement. Because the ceiling was so low, we used it like it was another player in the game. Hockey wasn’t two-dimensional, a game in which a ball was moved from one end of the indoor rink to the other. Instead, we played all three dimensions, becoming experts at banking the puck off the ceiling and walls to avoid our opponents. We could rip the ball off the ceiling and into the net over the goalie’s shoulder if we got the angle right. We played the ball in and out of corners the way a pool player manoeuvres the cue ball.

  As with ice hockey, I played goalie as often as I could in street and ball hockey. I recall playing ball hockey in a real gym later in high school and noting how easy it was to stop the ball when I did not have to deal with bounces off the ceiling or shards of tile flying in with the ball.

  After school, our hockey skills were put to good use and instead of playing in the church basement, we moved our games to O’Brien’s Wharf, which boasted the only flat piece of pavement in all of Petty Harbour. It was behind O’Brien’s Fish Plant, on the Catholic side of the harbour. The owners of the plant had paved the area to allow trucks to turn around when loading or unloading fish or offal. But for us, the pavement served a much more important function as the main ball hockey rink in town.

  We played there for hours, in all seasons, in all weather. Sometimes we played pickup; other times, we organized ourselves for serious matches, pitting Up the Harbour (the Catholic b’ys) against Down the Harbour (the Protestant b’ys) in legendary contests of will and skill.

  Some may think that our makeshift rink was lacking. It’s true that it had no boards or lines, and no nets, and was far from regulation size and shape, but to us it was glorious. Did it matter that the giant stainless steel legs of the offal tank stood right where the blue line of one end would be? No. Did it matter that one edge of the rink faced the open water, allowing the ball to slip periodically into the freezing harbour? Of course not.

  In fact, we always found ways to use these obstacles to our advantage. A few of the better players would run unsuspecting defenders into the offal tank, while others would ricochet the ball off the two-storey tank to clear the zone. We used that tank the way most hockey players use the boards, and it worked. But to be fair, most encounters with the tank’s legs ended fine for the tank and very badly for the players. Often, one of the younger players would break out on a wing, racing ahead to prove to the older fellas that he was a good player. He’d be hitting his stick on the pavement and screaming for a pass, running backwards while his eyes were firmly fixed on the ball in play … instead of the rapidly approaching metal posts of the offal tank.

  With all the focus on head injury in pro sports these days, I would like to do a study on how many concussions were inflicted by those posts. The worst case was Craig, who ran his head so hard, so dead centre, so directly into one of those posts that he was knocked completely unconscious. He lay on the pavement for minutes, immobile. It looked so serious. We almost stopped play.

  “Is he breathing or is that just the wind in his sweater?” I asked, my plastic goalie mask lifted on top of my head.

  “He’s breathing. Game on!” Bobby yelled, already breaking down with the ball and whipping it up net.

  “Hold on, hold on,” Shawn said. “Mikey, run up and tell Maude to come down and see if Craig should go see Dr. Natsheh. Benny, help me haul him out of the way.”

  And so we laid Craig on a pile of coats behind one of the nets. But nobody could stand the wait, and soon enough, Bobby said, “Well, come on, b’ys! Maude’s on the way. Game on, for frig sakes.” And game on it was.

  But the most challenging obstacle on the O’Brien rink was the sea, which, as I said, was inconveniently located right at the edge of the pavement, and there was no way to move it. The ball easily slipped over the edge of the wharf, quickly floating out into the water before we could reach it with our sticks. This became very aggravating.

  “Frig sakes, b’ys,” Bern might say. “Watch the passes on the left or we’ll spend the whole day getting soaked.”

  “Yeah, b’ys,” Wade insisted. “Next one to shoot the ball over goes in after it.”

  Over time, we devised several ways to retrieve the ball. The most primitive way was to throw a pile of rocks to the outward side of the floating ball and hope the resulting ripples would bring it back to us. This method was time-consuming and required a good supply of rocks, which, depending on the season were not always available, as for half the year they were buried under mountains of snow. Fortunately, we devised a better system. It all started when Bernie and I were watching hockey one night and a news break between periods showed an oil spill. The coast guard had placed cool-looking semicircle buffers around a slick, and these were doing a good job containing the oil. Bern, the engineer-in-training, had a bit of a eureka moment.

  “That would work perfectly for ball hockey on the wharf!”

  And that’s how we developed a sophisticated boom system where we’d effectively rope off a section of the harbour so that when the ball fell in, all we’d have to do to retrieve it was reel in the floating rope, which nestled around the ball and gently led it back to shore.

  The ingenious boom system is a fine example of how a group of young boys can work together to solve a problem, especially a hockey-related problem. But our powers of co-operation were inconsistent at best, and when we weren’t working together towards the betterment of all things hockey, we were beating the shite out of each other. You see, in Petty Harbour, scuffles of all kinds occurred on the wharf, and not only between boys. Fishermen who had gripes with each other would have a bit of beer or rum, and fisticuffs would sometimes follow. These brawls were generally harmless, often nothing more than shoving matches. In the worst cases, one party might leave with a bloody nose. But a common feature of all of these fights was the ending, where a tussle was punctuated by the inevitable launching of one combatant over the wharf and into the freezing water.

  And that was that. The tradition was carried on by all us boys when we started playing street hockey on the wharf. Any serious hockey disagreement was solved by one kid throwing another kid over the side and into the freezing-cold water. We’d all watch as the boy went under and surfaced a few moments later, shivering and turning blue, much to our am
usement. One of the bigger boys would reach an arm down and haul our sopping-wet teammate out of the drink, whereupon he’d most likely simply run up to his house, change into some dry clothes and be back in the game ten minutes later with no harm done.

  Fortunately for me, I was mostly a dry player because I played goalie. I wore a lot of equipment and therefore considered myself safe from being thrown over the wharf. That was my first mistake. I didn’t fight all that much, but one time, I got in a scrap with an older boy, David. I was about eleven years old; he was about thirteen. He kept successfully screening me and either scoring himself or helping his team score with his aggressive play in the crease area.

  “If you don’t get your arse out of my crease, I’m going to ruin you with my goalie stick!” I warned.

  “What?” he said. “This is fair play, Doyle. If you don’t like it, get one of your pansy defencemen to move me!”

  When he succeeded again with his aggressive play in my imaginary crease, I lost it and whacked my goalie stick up between his legs as hard as I could. He dropped to the ground. I looked from teammate to stricken teammate and was met with blank stares. No taunts or curses or cheers followed. None of my defencemen sprang to my defence. Instead, the eyes of every face I turned to spoke the same wordless opinion. It was only then that I realized I’d broken the unwritten rule, a commandment so ingrained in everyone that it didn’t even need to be said out loud: NO DRILLIN’ FELLAS IN THE NUTS.

  No one was on my side.

  David stumbled to his feet, red with pain and tears in his eyes. He grabbed my goalie stick and hurled it into the harbour. “You’re goin’ in after it,” he said quietly but with certainty.

  No way, I thought. I’m the goalie. I’m wearing all these pads. If these pads get soaked, I’ll be pulled underwater and drowned. But all the players around me were taking formation, creating a corridor to the opening at the wharf’s edge. Justice and tradition had to be served.

  David took me by the scruff of the neck and dragged me kicking and screaming to the lip of the harbour. I tried to make a fight of it and dropped my gloves, but with the pads and heavy coat, I was no match for him. And with one quick push, he flung me in—with my helmet and cage and my goalie pads on. The water was so cold it actually burned. I can still remember the feeling of searing heat on my legs and lower back and the taste of sea water splashing into my mouth. Fortunately, I managed to grab some of the cribbage on the way into the water, so I only went in about waist-deep. I was scrabbling and struggling like a lobster in a pot, and I somehow lifted myself and my soaking pads up the cribbage and back over the edge of the wharf. By the time I collected myself enough to look around, the game had resumed. I was glad to see that at least my own brother was still on the sidelines, eyes on the water, making sure I made it up and out of the drink.

  David yelled out, “That’ll teach ye to keep your stick down!”

  Bernie said discreetly, “Go home and get some dry clothes on before you catches pneumonia.”

  Dripping with water, looking no doubt like a drowned kitten that had clawed its way out of a beef bucket, I had only one thing to say: “No.” And with that, I walked back to the net to resume the game, bringing play on the rink to a halt.

  “You ain’t playin’ now, b’y,” David said. “I’m not having your fadder coming over here blamin’ me for putting you in the hospital with pneumonia. Go home or I’ll throw you over the wharf again.”

  My face was resolute. I looked at all my teammates, who were clearly not the least bit happy with me for causing this second disruption to the game. By this point, I’d lost most of the feeling in my legs, but that was irrelevant. What was more important was getting back out there.

  “No,” I said definitively one more time.

  “F—k ya,” David finally said. “Let the stupid little prick freeze to death if he wants. Game on!”

  And with that, the game resumed, with me in net. We played for another forty-five minutes. My pads froze to my legs, but I discovered that if I kept moving I could stand it. I’m not sure why it was so important for me to keep playing. It wasn’t pride or bravado. Rather, I suspect it was embarrassment about breaking a rule of conduct that was as clear to me as it was to everyone else. And sticking around in freezing-cold hockey gear and not complaining was my Catholic way of playing out the penalty. Amazingly, I never got frostbite. Or pneumonia. And never again did I drill an opponent in the nuts. Ever.

  Will lived just up the road from us on Skinner’s Hill. He lived in a small but very well-kept two-storey house that we had to walk past to and from school every day. Will was always around. He was a man with a keen appreciation for science, technology and progress. He often engaged Petty Harbour folks in conversation on these topics. “Everybody’s always going on about the ‘good ol’ days,’ ” he’d say. “What a pile of bull. Back then, we were starved to death, froze to death, going around like savages looking for firewood. These are the ‘good ol’ days’—right now. Up to the house with your guts full, the electric heat on blast, hove off on the chesterfield, watching the hockey on the colour TV.”

  Will kept the gardens around his house as tidy and prim as the house itself. In his backyard, he had several rose bushes and a vegetable patch. Now perhaps to you Mainlanders that doesn’t sound like a miracle, but believe me when I say it’s a testament to that man’s determination that he was able to grow anything in that impossible ground. And he was proud of it, rightly so.

  HELMETHEAD

  I am a massive hockey fan. I’ve tried for years to write the ultimate hockey song for Great Big Sea. I’ve always known that a rowdy hockey song would fit very well in the GBS live show, both in Canada, because the game is a holy sacrament here, and abroad, for the sheer Canadianness. No matter where GBS plays, a great hockey song would rock the house.

  Me in my all-star team uniform for the Goulds Minor Hockey Midgets in 1985.I believed this was a glamour shot that would impress all the ladies—ladies who really dig smelly goalie gear, oversized glasses and peach fuzz.

  Ironically, it is my passion for the game of hockey that has kept me from writing the perfect hockey song for the band. My attempts to discuss hockey in song are always too heavy-handed or desperately poetic. I wrote “Walk on the Moon” with a young goalie in mind as he stands in the crease before the puck drops at the top of overtime in game seven of the playoffs. I compared the moment to Neil Armstrong’s moon landing, perhaps a bit grandiose a description for a hockey game …

  Along with Séan and Bob, I wrote a small tune for Hockey Night in Canada called “Play the Game,” which rattled through images that caught our eye while watching hockey. But the song was only ever played a couple of times on TV and never found its way onto a CD or into a live performance.

  I was still looking for the perfect hockey ditty when Bob, genius man that he is, penned the perfect song. I was thrilled, of course, but also totally pissed off that I did not write it! After all, Bob hates watching hockey and never played a game in his life. I suppose it was his distance from the sport that enabled him to look at some of the more honest and human aspects of the characters in the game and write the now beloved GBS song “Helmethead.”

  This hockey ballad tells the story not of the hero captain who scores the winning goal or the rookie goalie who makes the big save, but of the fourth-line bruiser in the minor league who is a big hit with the ladies. He makes his way from town to town as women everywhere swoon—and he loves every minute of it. He says he’ll never win a championship, but has lots of good fortune with the babes.

  The song ends with a send-off and warning, one that always brings the house down when we perform it live. It simply advises that we probably should be wary of fellas wearing head protection.

  Brilliant lyrics. Check them out at www.greatbigsea.com. I can’t decide if I’m more grateful to count this as a GBS song or more jealous that I did not think it up.

  But beyond Will’s vegetable garden, his true pride and joy was h
is crabapple tree—a crabapple tree that had somehow managed to root and thrive on the indomitable rock of Skinner’s Hill. That crabapple tree was massive. It stretched as high as the house. At the end of the summer, when the crabapples were almost ripe, my brother and I would set our eyes on them.

  “By the frig, I’m getting those apples,” I would say.

  “What do you want with those apples?” Kim rightly wondered.

  “We wants them because we are not allowed to have them.” Bernie always had a way of keeping it honest and simple.

  “Ye should leave them alone if ye’re just going to flick them at each other. If I took them, I’d at least bring them home so me and Mom can make a pie.” (She probably would, too.)

  Dad also warned us to stay off Will’s property. Will guarded his crabapples for weeks as they turned from green to a reddish hue, but forbidden fruit makes you want it all the more. Every time I’d see him, he’d be talking about how those apples were just about ready to be picked for jam or something. Jam? To us boys, that was just dumb. That’s not what crabapples were meant for. They were clearly meant for throwing at people.

  We would sneak round the back of his house and see Will in the window, standing there like a sentinel. If you rustled a bush, he’d be out on the back step, eyes peeled. When he let his guard down, leaving his window post to go to the bathroom, we’d jump the fence and make for the tree in a full-on assault. But we rarely got to the tree before Will’s Irish setter would come racing down the back step, teeth bared for attack.

  “Run, b’ys! Run!” Bernie yelled during one failed attempt. “Friggin’ dog’s got a scent of us!”

  We hightailed it over the fence and narrowly escaped getting mauled.

  But the dog was not the final defence measure Will was willing to take to protect his precious fruit. Will had a salt gun—an air gun that he packed with rock salt instead of BBs or pellets. If you were not careful and Will got you in his sights, you’d feel the sharp, jagged salt rip into you and sting like a bugger as it melted into your open flesh.