Going to a new school. Entering a new group. Being an alien. Right off the other kids are suspicious of you. They sidle up to you along the basement wall, “What’syer name, kid? Wanna fight?”
No answer is required to this, and none is given. You just glare back and the two of you stand there, hackles up, until you can think of a decent way to leave.
On our first day at Albert it was wet and cold outside, and all the kids stayed in the basement. The noise was unbelievable. Little kids running around screaming, bigger kids chasing them, screaming. Some kids sitting in the corner, playing marbles. I can still hear the sound of those marbles bouncing off the cement wall. Kids half-way up the stairs, kids on the floor, kids throwing water from the water-fountain, kids crying, kids cheering, kids swearing.
And then–a voice from the top of the long wooden stairs. “Here comes the Old Man!”
Suddenly dead silence. Like one of those stop-action sequences in the movies, where everyone is frozen in mid-motion. The Old Man, the principal of the school, was short and nimble and bald and wore glasses. He hated all kids. He’d come bouncing down those long steps and walk around the big basement room, his eyes daring any kid to make just one move. Just one. If anyone did, he’d get a cuff on the side of the head, and he’d be hauled up those stairs, two at a time, to the principal’s office. If nobody moved, the Old Man would stop, glare at us like a sergeant-major glaring at new recruits, and then shout, “All right, everybody outsider!” And outside we’d all go, and outside we’d stay until he was back in his office on the second floor. Then we’d filter back, and the noise and running and fighting would commence all over again.
We did, however, have one big thing going for us at Albert School. That was Hub. Almost immediately, he became the school’s leading citizen–not leading student–but leading citizen. Albert had a very good baseball team that spring, which led to visions of winning the city championship. Hub was an excellent ball player, and immediately made a place on the team.
As a matter of fact, Hub became so well-known that for quite a while the kids thought our last name was Hub. Thus, they called me “Little Hub”, and Denny “Littler Hub”.
Ah, I’ll never forget that baseball team! Compared to it, the New York Mets, or the Baltimore Orioles are nothing. The pitcher was none other than Cece Fletcher. Who was he? Why just the best that ever was. And the catcher was Kenny McLeod. An all-round athlete if there ever was one. But the greatest of all the members of that great team was Adam Wenninski.
Adam lived on a farm, and often had to do chores. Sometimes he would have to go home first. Then he would arrive at the ball diamond, in one or the other of the school grounds, riding bareback on a horse.
As the schedule drew to a close that spring, with Albert right up at the top, school work was practically forgotten. The greatest rivalry was between Albert and King Edward. Our principal and the King Edward principal were rivals themselves, and each was determined to win. The final game took place in King Edward Park. The game was about to begin. No Adam Wenninski. The entire student body of both schools was there, of course. We were allowed out an hour early, just so we could make it. And then, when the umpire yelled “Play ball!”, Adam Wenninski was still missing. Without his big bat, Albert couldn’t win. But the game had to start. They were up first, and we got them out without a run. Then we came to bat, but where was our man Adam? Suddenly somebody saw him, galloping full-tilt across the 25th Street bridge. Such a cheer went up as could be heard clear to Clark’s Crossing! Adam pulled his horse up, leaped to the ground, seized a bat, and knocked a home run. In all the annals of baseball–never has there been such a dramatic moment.
And in the fall, Albert School had the best soccer team and won that cup, too. And now our principal became a fiend. He wanted everything in sight. He discovered that there was a cup for public school lacrosse that hadn’t been up for competition for years. King Edward had that, too. So why not turn our soccer team into a lacrosse team? Same size field, same number of players. No sooner said than done. A little practice, a challenge, and that cup, too, came to Albert School.
But the greatest triumph of all was hockey. What a team we had. Peggy O’Neil (later with Boston Bruins), Mutt Gardner (later with Montreal Canadiens), Curley Kerr (later with the Saskatoon Quakers), brother Hub, Tommy Hunter, and some other lesser players. All you needed then was six good players, and you had a hockey team. Nobody wanted to go off the ice, ever. And we won that league, too.
Of course in Saskatoon then we had the best hockey in the world from which to get our inspiration. The Saskatoon Sheiks were in the Western Canada professional league, along with Regina, Calgary, and Edmonton.
And there never was a greater hockey team. Most of them are in today’s Hockey Hall of Fame, as they well deserve to be. There were the Cook brothers, Bill and Bunny, who played on a forward line with Corbet Denenay. Bill Cook was probably one of the most accurate shots in the game, and when he did miss the goal, just as likely as not he’d break the boards at the end of the rink. Corbet Denenay was the fastest and slickest skater I’ve ever seen in fifty years of watching hockey. And there was tough, old bald-headed Harry Cameron on defence, and Leo Reese who, although he possessed only one good eye, could see far too much for opposing forwards. And none other than George Hainsworth in goal. Wow!
The standard way for us kids to get into the game was to go down to the old arena on Saskatchewan Crescent real early. Then we’d hang around the door, waiting for the players to come. “Carry your equipment, Mr. Cook?” we’d beg as the great men came by, and if we were lucky enough they’d hand us their skates and pads, and let us tag along behind while the ticket-taker glowered. Of course this gave us standing room only, but sooner or later we’d notice a seat with nobody in it, and manage to slide our backsides into place.
Half the fun of the game was watching the rink rats sweep the ice and sell peanuts between the periods. Cleaning the ice, they operated with long-handled push brooms. They walked around with a slick, jerky little pushing motion that slid the ice crystals just ahead of them into the path of the wide broom following. It was precision at its best. Then they’d come out with their baskets of peanuts. There were no aisles in the old arena, and the only way to reach the customer was to pitch the bag up from the rink into his waiting hands. Then he’d toss the money down and the seller would pick it up off the ice. Sometimes he’d even catch it.
But the game itself. Such speed and grace! Such stick-handling! It was against the rules to pass the puck forward anywhere on the ice. Only straight across or slightly back, and the puck-carrier couldn’t kick the puck. Also, the body-check hadn’t been invented. So the players played the game with their sticks and skates. They could skate like the wind, and they carried the puck on their sticks as though it were glued there.
It would be nice to say that because of all this the game of hockey in the early Twenties was nice and gentlemanly and mild. But it wasn’t. It was rough, tough and nasty–as hockey should be. There was plenty of blood on the ice. Fist-fights were frequent, and butt ends, spearing, and all the other neat little tricks were as common then as now. I remember the Regina goal keeper, Red McCuster, whom we Saskatoon fans considered the dirtiest player of all time. He played most of the game on his knees and it was almost impossible to get a puck past him. And if a forward got in too close, he simply and neatly hit him over the head with his long stick.
Saskatoon won the league and played against Victoria in the semi-finals for the Stanley Cup. Never before or since have Saskatoon people been so hockey-crazy. The rink was jammed every night. During one game, I remember, when Hub and I managed to squeeze into two spaces one above the other, I almost joined the players on the ice. Bill Cook and Bunny Cook were executing one of their spectacular rushes down the ice. Just as they hit the defence, Bill flipped the puck over to Bunny, and he drilled it into the net. To a man the crowd leaped to its feet and went crazy. In his enthusiasm, Hub hauled off and hit me so hard i
n the middle of the back that I went sailing down over the heads of the people in front and landed in the second row from the ice. But I was too happy to care. Our beloved Sheiks had won the game.
But they lost the series. The final and deciding game was tied after three periods. In an overtime period, George Hainsworth caught a stinging shot. It stayed in his glove for a second, and then slid out and dropped over the goal line. The gloom in Saskatoon was as thick as a London fog.
When we couldn’t get into the games we listened to them on home-made crystal sets. Hockey broadcasting was just beginning then, and a group of us would gather in somebody’s bedroom. One kid would wear the earphones and relay the play-by-play description to the others, who were sprawled around on the bed and floor following every move of the play. And when the Sheiks scored, the bedroom became a circus of kids pounding each other on the back, throwing pillows, standing on their heads, punching each other, and bouncing on the springs.
For hockey was part of our life. All during the long, cold winter we thought of little else. At school we played at recess and noon hour, and after school we played on the open-air rinks. On weekends we played in church leagues. In the evenings we played road-apple hockey on the street corners, under the flickering light of the street lamps. A kid without a hockey stick in his hand was only half-dressed. We’d walk to school doing a series of hockey shots. Shooting an old tin can or a horse turd or a piece of ice. Always shooting, always stick-handling. Hockey.
And that brings me to Charles Dickens and Goofy Hendrickson and the Cratchit’s Christmas dinner. I don’t know how a kid picks up a nickname like “Goofy”. The same way I got tagged “Fat”, I guess, and Eugene Ellingson became known as “Puss”, and Ernie Roberts became known as “Pants”. A whole book could be written about how kids get their nicknames, and why. Anyway, Goofy Hendrickson had picked up the tag, and it stayed with him. He was the only kid we knew who ate crayons, and he had this interesting habit of tattooing himself with his straight pen by running the nib under the skin of the back of his hands and arms. He also swore a lot. His dad worked for Burns and Co. in their stockyard, and swearing was a necessary accessory to his job. Goofy picked up some expressions that even we hadn’t heard, and frequently used to beguile us with them.
We were in Grade Seven by now. The teacher was Miss Bishop, and she was pretty and I was in love with her. But not the way I was in love with Elva Mawhinney who sat across the aisle from me. Elva was petite and dark-haired, and had the prettiest little mouth you ever saw. Everything about her was pretty. The way she leaned her chin on her fist when she read from the reader. The way she rested her plump pink arm on the desk when she wrote. The way she tossed her dark curls when she turned her head. The way she walked. The way she did everything just sent me up the wall.
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was our supplementary reading and, as every teacher since the story was written has surely done, Miss Bishop decided that we would dramatize the Cratchit’s Christmas dinner for the school’s Christmas concert. Fine. I was chosen as Bob Cratchit, I suppose because he was tall and skinny and I was short and stout. I sure did hope that Elva Mawhinney would be chosen as Martha, because there’s one part in the story where she runs into Bob’s arms and he kisses her. Yeeow!
But things never work out perfectly in this imperfect world. Elva was chosen to be one of the young Cratchits–you know, the ones that were steeped in sage and onions to their eyebrows. Goofy Hendrickson was the other one, I suppose because he was the tallest kid in the room and looked about as much like a young Cratchit as he did like a jack-rabbit.
The part of Martha? That went to Edna Trumper. What can I say about Edna? She wasn’t petite and frilly like Elva, that’s certain. She was kind of long and skinny. And she wore a coarse cotton dress, and coarse cotton stockings and boots. She was a fine girl, though, and certainly did fit the part of Martha, but I could never figure why Miss Bishop–in just this one instance–should suddenly resort to perfect type-casting.
Well, you know the Dickens story. It’s full of bounce and good spirits, and is everybody’s idea of Christmas dinner. Let’s face it, Christmas as we know it was invented by Charles Dickens. But our performance somehow lacked some of the necessary verve and enthusiasm. We wandered about the front of the room mumbling our lines and, try as she would, Miss Bishop couldn’t inject any life into the performance–especially into that kissing scene.
Let me see–the exact words from the story are, “she came prematurely from behind the closet door and ran into his arms”. It doesn’t say anything about Bob Cratchit running the other way, or keeping his arms at his sides, or turning his head and blushing red as a sunset, or trying to dodge. None of that is there at all.
“Come now, Max,” Miss Bishop would urge. “You can do better than that. Don’t be shy.”
How could I explain to her that if she’d just put Elva Mawhinney in that part, she wouldn’t need to worry about my shyness. She’d have trouble the other way round, I’ll be bound. But I couldn’t say that, so I rather welcomed the shyness-bit.
Oddly enough, the only one who showed any real feeling for his part was Goofy Hendrickson. He really dug it. Ran around shouting about sage and onions and pinching the other young Cratchit–Elva–and pulling her hair, and making her dimple all over the place. And when they squeezed into the corner together, as the script called for, it seemed to me he squeezed too damned hard.
Then came the actual eating scene. Here, although he has described a Christmas dinner better than anyone else ever could, Dickens thoughtlessly didn’t write down any actual dialogue for his characters to speak. Miss Bishop, being no playwright, had not assayed to correct that deficiency.
“Just talk the way you would normally,” she advised’, not realizing what she was saying. And we did pretty well at it in rehearsals. I said “There never was such a goose cooked,” and Mrs. Cratchit cried with great delight, “We haven’t eaten it all at last!” and the young Cratchits filled in the script with “yum yum’s”, and such a deal of smacking of lips as to make even Scrooge blush.
But came opening night. Or opening afternoon, I should say, and something happened to us thespians. As soon as we saw parents and others coming into that school auditorium, we got buck-fever and got it bad. As a result, we all got sort of hopped up and overdid everything. If we were supposed to speak out, we shouted. If we were supposed to walk fast, we rushed. So when I came in through the curtain as Bob Cratchit, and said my bit about “Where’s Martha?” and she came to the part where it says, “ran into his arms”, she came out of the cupboard like a lioness coming at a zebra. Naturally I took a backward step, tripped over a stool and fell flat on my back.
The whole thing rather fell apart after that. Nobody could seem to remember what to say or where to stand, with the result that we walked over each others’ lines, and into each others’ persons, and the play was a shambles. There was a rustle in the wings, which I was sure must be Charles Dickens turning over in his grave, but actually was Miss Bishop, trying to whisper directions to us.
The grand dénouement of all this confusion came with the dinner table scene when the goose was brought in. Nobody could think of a single bright ad lib, and we all sat there, heads down, utensils moving foolishly as we stuffed forkfuls of nothing into our tongue-tied mouths. From the wings Miss Bishop kept urging, “Say something, say something, say something!”
And finally she got through at least to Goofy. His frightened, benumbed brain finally grasped the idea. A big, stupid smile spread across his homely face. He carefully laid down his knife and fork, turned full face to the audience, and yelled: “It’s the best sonofabitch goose ever I et!”
11 River-Bank Follies
The south branch of the Saskatchewan River runs through the centre of Saskatoon and dominates the city. The part of Saskatoon on the south side of the river, called Nutana, was settled in 1883 by a band of temperance missionaries led by a man named Lake, and that part of the city has been d
ry ever since. All of the numerous houses in which we lived in Saskatoon were on the Nutana, or dry, side of the river.
The banks on this side are high and steep, and heavily treed with birch, aspen, elm, chokecherry, Saskatoon berry, and box-elder, or Manitoba maple. When we lived in Saskatoon the river bank on the Nutana side was a vast, natural, secret, mysterious playground for kids.
It was interwoven with narrow paths through the underbrush and between the trees–paths that only kids knew. There were clearings deep in the midst of rose bramble bushes into which only kids and rabbits could find their way. There were great leaning, climbing trees into which only kids would venture. There were caves that only a very few kids knew existed. And, best of all, there were patches of Saskatoon berries and chokecherries on which we could gorge ourselves for hours.
On the riverbank we were absolutely free from parents, and even the cops rarely ventured into its heavy gloom. Even when they did they never saw anything, and heard only the occasional bird call, which was in reality a warning. The river bank, then, was strictly our domain, our Casbah. And here we spent most of our time during July and August, when we had our holiday from school.
Below this forest, along the margin of the river, was the mud bank where low willows grew, and along which the muddy waters of the river swirled with a fast and deadly current. This is where we fished for goldeyes, and ran about naked, and lay on our backs in the sun and wrestled and made catapults, with which to shoot at woodpeckers and cedar waxwings which we never managed to hit.
It was the most relaxed form of fishing imaginable, and the only kind for which I ever had any real enthusiasm. First we would purchase at Woolworths a ball containing one hundred yards of tough white cord. This we would divide up into six lines, each fifty feet long. To the end of each line we’d attach a railway spike and, at intervals of about eight inches, small fishhooks, which we would bait with worms.
Never Sleep Three in a Bed Page 12