My dad, with his engineering diploma , various advanced tickets, former spit fire mechanic and bombardier in WWII, with practical mechanical wisdom, and his consummate skill at leading groups of men, large and small after working awhile with Matthew’s Conveyor Company out of Port Hope was offered a major promotion. He was asked to be in charge of their western Canada installation and maintenance division. Mathew’s Conveyor had won the very big contract for the installation of the conveyor system for the new Winnipeg Post Office building. They’d later get the contract for the Winnipeg Airport much because of the success of Dad’s work at the Winnipeg Post Office. We had to move. Mom was not happy but it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Wives went where their husband’s work took them.
I know there were lots of discussions with my Mom. Dad was from Manitoba but Mom was a Toronto girl, her mother,sisters and friends all being city born and Toronto raised. She’d worked as an executive assistant in the finest offices. My aunt who’d risen to be the executive assistant to the Canadian ambassador in Washington always said my mother was the best office woman of them all.
“She gave that all up to be with your Dad and to have you and your brother, Billy’ I heard from my beloved aunt very young. Probably in an attempt to guilt me and have show more respect and appreciation. . Apparently I had a problem with authority from a young age.
My mother thought of the west as heathen and wild. Dad was asking her to leave civilization and take her babies to a wilderness place called Winnipeg. Toronto at the time was called ‘Toronto the good’ because of it’s churches, ethics, clean streets and good government. It was industrial and manufacturing and men in suits and women in fine dresses. The west was ‘dirty’ by comparison. Definitely ungodly. She was very refined. I’m sure she was terrified. Dad was from Minedosa near Swan River in northern Manitoba and thought Winnipeg a big city like any person from Ohio would think Columbus Ohio was a big city and not even realize that New Yorkers think the Big Apple is not only a ‘city’ but the ‘only city’. Torontonians still are like that. In the 1950’s the only city more important than Toronto’s was perhaps London, England. Toronto was the best of cities and Winnipeg was a hick town, a place of saloons most likely. Older I realized my mother was courageous but as kids we were just looking for adventure. I was sorry my grandmother and my aunt weren’t coming and didn’t know why.
I remember the Morris car. A big dark green machine which was small compared to trucks and even other cars but really big to us. The back seat where my brother and I sat was huge. We had a roof rack too. The Morris had a big trunk. When we left we were all loaded up. I remember mom in a white cotton dress with a white bonnet hugging my wee smiling grandmother in her ground length black and white polka dot dress. . I was at the leg holding stage still clinging to my mother at times like this. The adults were all smiling and weeping and hugging above me. I was lifted up, big faces kissing me. I was thankful for my big brother. We stood together. He was always comforting when adults were acting strange. He’d even put his hand on my shoulder when he knew I was afraid. I would never admit I was afraid. We were dressed in new clothes. Not Sunday clothes but new still. I always noticed new clothes because I mostly got my brothers clothes. “Hand me downs” they were called.
We all climbed in the Morris. Dad pulled out and away from our house and home. We were leaving Toronto. Lots more waves. Mom was sitting quietly after that. She was crying. Trying to make a brave face of it. Dad was happy doing his best to cheer her up. My brother and I were wide eyed and innocent. We didn’t know we were going to the moon.
My grandfather had come over from Aberdeen Scotland. He bought a farm in Northern Manitoba, a place called Minedosa near Swan River.. He logged and ranched. His first wife, my fathers mother, died in childbirth with his only brother. The brother lived. I think my father blamed his brother for that. They had an off and on relationship all their lives, different and similiar in so many ways. Granddad, with his thick Scottish brogue, remarried and had three more boys and a daughter. The girl was accidentally shot with a 22 rifle by her brother. Dad had been close to his sister but never really blamed his brother because it was an accident and she could have died as easily being hit by a combine or kicked by a horse. Accidents happened on farms. Children grew up witnessing animals and humans die. There wasn’t any television. Life was real. People were not subjected to false narratives. They knew. Dad missed his sister but he never blamed his brother. It was never talked about until later when we were all adults.
My grandmother, Dad’s step mother, was a quiet kindly woman who I remember being strong and tough but also very sweet and kind. Mom always said, “she had a hard life.” The wives of ranchers and farmers always did. It was the hardest life for men and women but they’d only want to leave it when they got too old for all the chores. Mostly rural people feel sorry for people who live in the city. Only the teen agers want the neon lights.
Dad would have stayed in the country but he loved machines. He also had that hankering to explore. He loved to travel. There wasn’t enough for him on the farm. Besides he and Dad fought horribly in the end before he left and before he returned with a family and Grandad and he forgave each other but never forgot. No they never forgot. Most of what I knew I learned from Mom. Dad didn’t speak much about his childhood except when he’d talk of the horses and cattle and the tractors and cranes and such. Also the hunting and fishing and carnivals. Relationships weren’t much talked about. Pranks were. Like them as boys pushing the outhouses back 2 feet on Hallow’s Eve. I remember too hearing how my Grandad shot the big black bear that had killed his calves after the dogs treed him. He’d shot him with a 22 rifle. One shot in the eye. He fell dead to the ground. Those were the stories we were told as kids, not the other ones we might or might not learn about when we were old.
When Dad was old he talked about his childhood more. All he said of his father was he was a ‘hard man’ back then. Being a ‘hard man’ back then ment unyeilding and frankly ‘heartless’. Grandad built a huge ranch and logging business became a millionaire and the Reeve of the district. His sons paid the price. They were the work force for the expansion and Dad’s leaving after a brutal fight was seen by my strongly religious Old Testament non drinking temperance grand father as betrayal. Dad went to work driving 6 horse Clydesdale logging wagons for the neighbours and eventually left the north. Grandad and he loved each other. He was the first and oldest son. I think Grandad missed his first wife too. Mom would say that. They’d been so in love.
Dad grew up on the farm. He was schooled at home and in the one room school house. Minnedosa was a big place to him. Winnipeg was a huge city by comparison. By the time he got to Toronto he’d travelled all over Canada with the Air Force and with work. He liked Toronto but I know he missed the west. Dad was happy talking hog prices and didn’t much care for talking about stocks and bonds and politics like that was all they talked about in the east. Dad never left Minedosa in some ways and Mom never left Toronto. I grew up with displaced parents like lots of other folk in Canada. Everyone in the west and north especially were immigrants or children of immigrants. Even in the east the linearge was as best a few generations. CAnada was a young country and growing exponentially. Even the natives had often only been where they were for a few generations. They’d displaced the ones before them as the new immigrants moved in and the earlier ones moved on. Our family still remains in Minedosa but there’s the a maritimes branch, an American branch and I’m the one of the furthest west, one of those whose settled in British Columbia. We still keep in touch with the Scots in Glasgow, Ediburogh and Aberdeen. I was blessed to find the graveyard of my Irish ancestors when I went there a couple of years past. I never thought of such things much as a kid but they’ve become more important with age.
I vaguely remember the long drive across Canada in the Morris, mom trying to distract my brother and I with Christian comic books. We were a family of readers, I was reading early, and doings puzzles and games. My nephews continue to this day to be gamers and puzzlers. . We’d sing songs too. Jesus Loves Me. He’s got the whole world in his Hands. Soon the car was out of the towns travelling forever on long empty roads through evergreen forests past the Great Lakes in the Northern Ontario. We’d camp in the canvas tent and sleeping bags made with with wool blankets and flannel sheets and large diaper pins. Dad was forever pointing out birds and animals as we drove. Mom was reading billboards out loud. I was bored and bugging my brother. He was happy to be reading his books while I was the proverbial kid asking ‘are we there yet!” We also stayed in motels for the first time. Everything was new.
Mom was sad and efficient. When she was sad or anxious she was like Martha of the Bible, busy. She became quiet and busy. She knitted in the car. Dad tried to be cheerful. It was a long trip. I liked the stops by the lakes to skip stones and pee in the woods or use the gas station facilities. There were gas stations all along the way with attendants. Dad could make such a long trip because he was a mechanic and knew his cars. It was way beyond the skill level of most people and there weren’t the roads filled with tourists we see today by any means. Long lonesome highways.
I mostly still remember the worry on my grandmother’s face, the brave smile, and my mom and her sisters hugging, my grandfather, a few neighbours and friends come together for the departure, Dad filled with adventure and pride in his new position. Us kids not knowing what to think. It was a big step for Dad. He’d soon have a hundred and fifty men working under him. Then he was a young man who had made good and been noticed. He would come to be admired in the world. City and provincial officials would speak highly of my father. Other men would defer to him. We’d be invited to dinner’s as a family with politicians and ‘big wigs’ as he’d call them.. Mother liked the attention. She liked knowing important people and would have friends in Royalty and Parliament but she was a Christian. ‘Christian’s don’t brag about that stuff.” She’d say. My parents were very private people and even after they were dead my brother and I were still learning about their lives outside the immediate.family.
Mother would not be so liked by all. She was extremely selective about her friends. She was very jealous around other women. My aunt and other women have since told me “Your father’s was a very handsome striking man.” Not something I thought of as a son and boy. My mother though was truly a beauty, great thick auburn red flowing hair, intelligent, educated, admired but really with very few highly selected close friends. By contrast she had lots of acquaintances. She was Baptist and eastern. A lady. Looking back I realize today what a real lady she was.
“Your father is the only man I’’ve ever been with and that’s true Bill. The women today don’t know what love means. You don’t know what you’re talking about for all your education and worldly experience.” She’d almost shouted at me one day when I was talking to her in the ‘big shot’ way of myself and my ‘academic’ peers. Our generation was so much smarter than theirs. We actually felt sorry for our parents. But that would come much later. When I was 5 my mother and father were next to God. As far as I was concerned my mother was the most wonderful, most beautiful, most intelligent woman in the world. My Dad was the greatest father ever. My brother was pretty perfect too. All we needed was a dog back then and that was coming.
My mother’s close special friends all had families, went to church, loved their husbands and cared for their children. She wanted nothing to do with women who said bad things about their husbands or families, cheated on their husbands, drank or smoked or didn’t care for their children well enough. She was evangelical before the term was known.
My mother could be very judgemental, stubborn and difficult. That made her enemies in low places. She was happiest in the church. My aunt told me that when they were growing up all their social lives revolved around the Baptist church and community. As a kid growing up I wasn’t fully aware of what a rock star my mother was or the power of her tribe. It took me a lot of years to recognize what fine people my parents were and how it wasn’t easy for them to be who they were and who they became.
We’d move into a temporary apartment on Gertrude Avenue in Fort Rouge, Winnipeg, a few doors down from Trinity Baptist Church a block away from Pembina Highway. It was the third floor walk up of a old wooden house. I don’t think it wasn’t a happy year for my mother.. Dad’s first work took him away for weeks at a time ,working somewhere in the north. In addition to the big projects which had brought us to the edge of the world he’d put in conveyor systems in small airports, post offices and grocery stores around the province. This is what he began doing when the Post Office job was beginning. Later he’d branch out to work on projects in Saskatchewan and Alberta. That wouldn’t be until I was in my teens. There was enough work in Winnipeg to keep him busy for years and then the northern projects after that would only see him away for a week or two at a time. Mom didn’t like him away and he didn’’t like being away. They were pretty interdependent that way, their life revolving around the family community and home. Neither had any ‘vices’ except saving and making money and raising a family, not that they are vices.
That first year was tough for mom. Two small children, a new city, her mother and sister not there, a little apartment with an old lady landlord who was annoyed at noise us boys made. I have vivid memories of that year. Some aren’t good. It seems that this was when I began to know bad children and bad adults. Prior to that I remember being hurt by the dog and skinning knees playing games but its’ at this age in the Wild West I first become aware of what I’d later know as evil. Theology, psychology, sociology and politics all began for me in my 5th year of life.
The neighbourhood kids played together and included me, the new kid. . The girls were a year older. My brother, four years older, had found older friends, boys and was already playing baseball with them. He loved sports.
I was in the back yard at that parallel play stage still digging in dirt with a younger brother of the older girl, another little guy. I loved digging in dirt. We had a little dinky toy cars and trucks and were making highways and hills for them to drive on, We were sharing the roads. We weren’t at the stage where we’d have shared our toys. It was under the veranda, a bit of a private place. The little girls were giggling together. It was parallel play days.
I remember the girls huddling on the other side of the space under the veranda and then coming over to us and wanting us to play house with with them like their parents. I remember them using us as props and daring each other to kiss us. We were malleable. The little brother didn’t like this and stood with his hands in his pockets turning back and forth on the spot letting his sister and her friend kiss him. The older blond girl with her two friends took the lead. I was kind of frightened. The new kid. Wanting to fit in. I don’t think I’d ever played alone with girls. At church we all played together but there was always older kids or adults. .
They’d been whispering and giggling in the other corner. They’d come across and kissed us and gone back to their conspiratorial little circle while we’d gone back to playing with dirt . The next thing, the bold one had hoisted up skirt and pulling down her panties at the side and exposed her bum check. She said “I dare you to kiss my bum”. Her girlfriends chanted “kiss her bum, kiss her bum. We dare you.” Not kiss her ass or kiss my ass but ‘bum’. Bum was a big bad word for 5 year old back then. .
I did. She giggled and straightened her clothes. They went back to their corner ,’ their house and kitchen, they called it’ and I went back to digging and making roads. We heard our mothers calling us for lunch and we left.
It seemed the phone rang immediately. Mom was white when she got off.
“What have you kids been doing? “she asked in that very serious Mom voice.
I told her everything because I’d not learned to lie yet, not about important things. In retrospect I look back and I’m surprised that no one would be interested in genitals. It would be a year or two later that we as kids began showing each other our anatomy but this was all about the ‘bum’ and ‘kiss’. Even though we ‘flashed’ our genitals at each other a couple of years later I can remember when I was visitting my northern relatives and all the boys as a group went off with the oldest to look at the new born baby sister of one. We’d been discussing girl’s anatomy and two of the guy got in an argument which was settled by looking at the little sister. “See I told you so.” I remember that but not what the two guys had disagreed about. I expect it had to do with there being ‘no penis’. None. None whatsoever. As one of the guys we were were all amazed at nature.
Hardly five and I was in big trouble. My brother was upset that I’d upset Mom and Mom was very upset that I’d made the family look bad in the new neighbourhood. She was angry at herself. “I should never have let you out of my sight.” “I shouldn’t have let you play with those kids’.
Dancing was even a taboo in a lot of Baptist churches, though my mom and Dad met dancing and would love to dance all their lives. The classic Baptist joke, was “ why don’t Baptists make love standing up. They’re afraid it might lead to dancing.”
“You must not play with those girls again.” She scolded me. “ You must never do what they say even if they want it. You have to stay out of trouble, Billy!”
She was angry and sad at the same tim.e. I don’t think she ever believed I started it or caused it but she was just afraid back then. Afraid of gossip. Afraid of non baptists. Afraid of catholics. Afraid of aetheists if she had ever met or knew one. Afraid of communists. . Afraid of criminals. Afraid of Winnipeggers. I think when my Dad wasn’t home she was a bit paranoid. Her family was a family of worriers.
“High strung,” my aunt would say. “We’re all just a little high strung in this family. It’s harder for your mom because we’re all high strung in the east and the western people dont’ know enough to be high strung. They don’t any society. Spend all their time around hogs and wheat. They’re stupid that way. Laid back they call it. But slow is what we call it. Your mom’s just a bit high strung then more than some. Like you Billy. Biting your nails and such.”
My mom was a smart woman so she would have known that the girls were ‘bad’ and they’d ‘initiated’ ‘adult play’. Today years later I’d know that the kid had probably seen their parents playing or was a product of sexual abuse. I wasn’t. I didn’t have sisters either so I didn’t know girls much back then. My brother was more competitive and simply didn’’t even play with girls till much older. I was different that way. I enjoyed girls from as early as I can remember. I was as competive as the next guy, liking all the sports but unlike most guys I liked girls. I liked their talk and games, their silliness and humor. I’d always have girls as friends whereas my brother like most guys would have that one girlfriend who they’d become intimate with and then have her friends as family friends. That was the the way it was back then. There was a lot of group socialization but having the opposite sex as ‘friends’ wasn’t normal in ‘jock’ or ‘geek’ crowd but normal in the ‘artistic crowd’ which I was also a part of. .
I’d play with girls but not for years after that incident. The little girl whose bum I kissed would wave and smile at me slyly when her mom wasn’t around. I ‘d see them playing across the street. None of the kids ever played under the veranda. I think the landlord even fixed the board worried about the safety risk when the mother complained about the children playing under there. . I remember that time as the first time I’d be punished for some thing I didn’t know I was doing was wrong and being falsely accused as the instigator when I wasn’t that at all. It confused me and I stayed away from that girl and was cautious about the kids in that neighbourhood. I’d only make friends at school and church until we finally moved. .
Mom and Dad didn’t spank me . They’d have spanked me if they thought I was at fault. It was very serious though. There was late night discussion about it. My brother and I would listen in our beds especially if we heard our name. I don’t think my parents knew we listened. They thought we were asleep. But we listened. Mom only wanted me playing with the kids from the church and seemed as concerned that I was ‘ruined’ as the lady who’d complained to Mom about her daughter. She clearly blamed my mother. My mother knew she as a Baptist Christian lady was above reproach and any woman that smoked and drank like that mother did was probably a follower of Baal. As likely as not she thought the neighbours had orgies with their children involved. She wasn’t far off the mark as later scandals rocked the neighbourhood long after we were gone. My mother was here in heathen backward hardly civilized Winnipeg. She had her work cut out for her protecting her children and family from all the sordid corruption of this monstrous town.
Now someone might think I am remembering this wrong, the psychotic flipping of victim and victimizer that the borderline and antisocial patients do but I was 4 or 5 and the other kids were 5 or 6. As guys we like playing with trucks and guns. Girls like playing house. As kids back then we didn’t initiate play with girls. They were forever trying to join in our games while we as guys were forever trying to get away from the girls. Later I’d change. I remember living to chase girls as a teen. Not as a kid. Girls had motives. Some invisible lice type bug that us guys knew infested girls. Some girls didn’t have them but most did. The girls that didn’t have them were rare and special. Later I’d have a few such girls as friends. Karey Asseltine never had kooties.
That was also for me the first ‘false accusation’ of note in my life. There would be several more of note later in my career when people would lie for ambition or money. At the time I suspect the girls mother was simply protective, but that the dynamics of the women was a whole lot different. Mom was incredibly jealous and detested “bad’ women with a vengeance. As a Christian she was probably the most unforgiving person I ever knew but only if you threatened her family or as she would say tried to act ‘high and mighty’ around her when ‘you weren’t.” I never saw her that way with men either, only other women. And only a few times in my life.
The other big memory of that year was my brother and I just running all over the furniture, screaming and fighting and Mom trying to settle us down repeatedly without any success. I remember a few times in my life when as kids we went Lord of the Flies. That was one of them and neither my brother or I could be stopped from ‘raising hell’. Dad was a way. Mom was so exasperated she phoned the police. Years later after a few drinks, making a case for persecution and self pity, I’d love to complain that even my mother phoned the police on me. Ron and I had been going at it while Mom sat on the couch crying with her head in her hands , us ignoring her screaming and fighting with imaginary swords we’d made with brooms and umbrellas. It was winter and winter was awful in Winnipeg. Dad was away for weeks.
A Bang came on the door. Mom got up and opened it. Ron and I like wild animals watched from further back. Not at first afraid. Just surprised at the interruption. . “The devil had got into us.”
There at the door were these two big Winnipeg policemen in big coats and under that blue uniforms. They’d come in and take off their coats. Mom gave them tea and talked to them crying. I’m so sad today to think of that. Only now do I realize how frightened and alone and overwhelmed she must have felt. I’ve known so many young women since who alone with little boys, mostly, have lost it. It doesn’t surprise me to hear that a mother has killed her children or abandoned them. I didn’t care back then. I didn’t know how 24/7 difficult little children can be and how cabin fever can make everything worse. Immigrant families are especially taxed without the family support and the father working so much and often the mother having to work as well. We were meant to be in village not living as isolated nuclear families. In Toronto my aunt would have taken us boys for a day or grandmother or vice versa and mom would have had a day of rest from the ‘little hellyons’. Today my brother and I’d both be on Ritalin, me given industrial dosages. I tried a lot of adults patience routinely correcting them when they were so obviously wrong and so stupid as to not admit it. “You’re too big for your britches!” “You’re too smart for your own good.” Was said to me thousands of time.
Back then I can see my mother utterly defeated. Today I’m ashamed. Today I know that I could easily break things as fix them and if I’d not become psychiatrist I’d would have made a great hitman. Later when dad came home he’d hold her and she’d cry, Ron and I would get earfuls. But first the policemen would talk to us but mostly to me. Ron would always get ‘you’re older you should know better.’
The policemen knew. They’d seen it a hundred times. They sat at the table listening to our mother drinking tea and waiting. When she’d cried and shared one of them said, “Would you like us to talk to the boys.” My mother nodded. While one sat at the table with Mom the other sat down at our level on the couch and gave us that ‘talk’ boys would hear over and over again throughout their lives. It’s the talk uncles , teachers and officers give. I probably heard it more than most. It’s still part of the good man repertoire.
“Your father is away, sons. Your mother is all alone and she’s afraid. You’re not helping. When your dad is away you can’t be boys. You have to be little men. You have to take your father’s place. You’ve got to help your mother. She needs you to be good. You have to be men. You can’t be fighting each other .You can’t be screaming and disturbing the neighbours. Not when your father is away. You have to listen to your mother as if your father was here too. She shouldn’t have to need to call the police so her sons will listen to her”
“Would you have listened and stopped running about and shouting and fighting if your dad was here?”
“Yes”, we both said. Heads and eyes down.
We had got the gravity of the situation and were now little boys with our heads hung low. No longer great warriors of yore. . My brother who’d always be the more responsible one nodded his head, looking at the police and somehow knowing ‘blaming his little brother’ wasn’t going to work in this situation like it did sometimes. . I had my hands folded on my lap and eyes down. I remember I wished my hands were in my pockets because I always had interesting things in my pockets that I could feel. I really did once keep a frog in my pocket as a child. I’d always have stones and things I’d found. I’d play with them when adults were talking to me. But when my hands were on my lap I didn’t have any distraction.
“You’ll listen to your mom from now on and act like little men and not be wild animals?” The policeman said.
My brother and I answered ‘yes sir’ together. They left. Mom put us to bed after that. We’d made it through another day and night with my father gone.
When my father was home there was lots of play and fun and games but never so out of control. He’d shout or slap the back of our heads, never so it hurt, just to get our attention. I think I like NCIS because Gibbs reminds me of my Dad in ways. I don’t like him hitting Tony’s head. They’re adults though Tony acts like a kid and there’s a whole lot going on there that men can understand. But that was my dad’s way. He’d cuff us like a big old lion and things would stop. There was this thing between him and Mom which revolved around us kids, him insisting she shut us down and her not being able to. We knew Mom loved us and she was a pushover. She’d go off emotionally and slap us too but never hurting us. Not till I was a teen. As a child we were pretty good kids mostly and obeyed our parents and their voice tones set the standards for the home with the occasional cuff or slap to accent things. We didn’t get ‘punishment’ as other kids did. We didn’t get ‘rewarded’ much each. We just ‘fit in’. We did what was ‘expected’ . We were a family and mostly we all got along.
I remember well the night dad brought home garlic.
We’d never had garlic.
“I”m not going to have any of that garlic in my food.” Despite being Irish my mom cooked English through and through.
Where did you get it!” She asked.
“The Italian family that moved in downstairs. The man gave it to me. He’s a good guy. We talked about fishing and cars. Nice people. “
Dad was travelling and trying out other peoples foods whereas mom was extremely conservative till much later in life. She boiled everything she could. The only spices God gave us were salt and pepper and everything else especially garlic was for ‘foreigners’.
“If they’re Italian, they’re catholic and I’m not going to have any of my children eating catholic food.” Mom said.
Well Dad prevailed. We boys had garlic and we loved it and we all laughed because we all smelled of garlic after that. That’s how spaghetti and garlic bread became a mainstay in the Hay home. Mom would even move on to basil and oregano later in life.
I loved kindergarten too. The other boys and I would build things there. The school had all these wooden sticks with joints. We’d make great constructions together, space stations and such. We’d do puzzles too. I was the de facto leader of these building activities and excelled in sports. There was always another guy I seemed to be competing with even starting in kindergarten. Some guy who wasn’t so good with making stuff or doing stuff but would fight. I think I was insensitive to. I’d learn later my arch villain in grade school who I fought with till we became friends came from a horrible home. I just ticked off guys like that. Envy and rage. So I’d get in fights. From as early as I remember I didn’t ‘start’ them, never threw the first blow, but I sure did end them. Later I hospitalized a few guys. I’d also learn later that I could get stupid guys to fight by saying something, just the right thing, and they’d blow their cool, come at me and then I’d take them down. I fought with my brother 4 years older wrestling all the time so I had an advantage over kids who didn’t have an older brother. I really was a scrapper as a kid. I didn’t mind the knives later but when the guns started appearing in my 20’s I became a bit more diplomatic.
Girls don’t know anything about boys growing up. Quite simply survival is the number one concern for most boys between age 6 and 12.
Between age 6 and 12 girls are safe physically.
6-12 I was fighting bullies every other day. I was always having some clown or thug usually with one or two other guys coming up and punching me or surrounding me. The teachers didn’t help. I’d get an award at school and these bullies would come after me’ teacher’s pet’ , ‘brown nose’ , ‘show off’. I think I was attacked at least a thousand times or more in that 6-12 age range. On the way to school, after school. Our friends and their gang. It began in kindergarten.
I remember the teacher, an attractive buxom somewhat overweight woman, taking me over her knee at the front of the class and pulling down my pants so my penis was on her skirt as she slapped my naked bare bum over and over again in front of the class. I and this other guy had been fighting but i was the only one I ever knew who was bare assed in class. I was really ashamed and humiliated mostly because the girls were so pleased and loved watching the boys get ‘disiplined’. The girls were good. The boys were bad. The other boys got detention and time out. The girls laughed.
When my mother heard of this, she formally complained and the teacher was disciplined but that didn’t help me because now she was out to get me.
It was in kindergarten the girls pulled us boys into the cloak room and showed us their genitals and demanded we show them ours. I remember all of us , it seemed to me all of us, went in to the cloak room with this one girl who liked doing that. No one got in trouble. No one got caught. No one touched but we stood back and looked at each other. That was the game. The girls would pull us into the cloakroom and I assumed the other guys were showing them and they were showing us. We knew not to tell our parents and not even talk about it. There were a few girls and a few guys but we thought it was everyone. It happened and it was passed, no one the wiser.
The other thing I remember is not knowing how to lie on the floor. I camped and lay on the ground but the whole idea of lying on the hardwood floor on a mat was beyond me. I asked my dad at the dinner table a little while after we began kindergarten the day after the teacher had us do this and it felt so weird I thought i must be doing it wrong.
“How do you nap on the floor, Dad?” It’s the weirdest thing but my dad getting down on the floor and showing me and telling me I was doing it right was one of the important moments in my life. Mom and Dad would teach us stuff. My brother would teach me things too. I’d simply did not know how do something and this older wiser smarter more experienced person would show me. Not tell me. Show me. I remember the thrill of that experience beginning for me in kindergarten. I realized I loved learning. I still love learning. I love skill acquisition. I love getting help from an older person when I don’t know something. I ‘d go through a few years of ‘doing it my way’ but I had learned early the value of instruction and while I enjoyed figuring things out myself which I did I loved learning. I didn’t have this ego thing that stops so many peoples education. Pride. Whatever. I just loved learning.To learn though you had to accept you didn’t know and that you were stupid. Lots of people, the really stupid ones, just can’t admit it and accept that to learn they must lower themselves. I remember that mat business as such a time. My realization and appreciation of my father and my parents. Mom was always teaching us kids stuff too. But dad taught me to lie on a Matt on a hardwood floor by showing me. I’ll never get over what great parents I had.
Bill Cosby has a great book called Dad in which he shares how his kid, and only his kid, looked at him when he shot a ball in the basket like he was one of the Harlem Globe Trotters. That’s the way I felt about the things my parents and my father and brother and teachers did, sheer awe. I was so blessed to have all these genius’s in my life. I thought my father was a genius when he showed me how to lie on a mat on the floor and assured me that was the right way. Weird. I thought my mom was an even greater genius when she taught me how to tie my shoes.
The kindergarten was only a block from home. Up the street past the Trinity Baptist Church. The real fun was the fire escape. It was a big metal tube that went down the side of the building. The teachers would put us in the top of this tube. The teachers at the bottom would catch us as we slid out 3 stories down. At first it was the scariest thing then all us boys loved fire drill.
I was in cub scouts too. It was in the basement of the church. Everything we did as kids was within a block from our house. Except when we did expeditions away from home with my parents we lived in a one block radius of home. We explored a street over each direction into really foreign country. We’d challenge the authority by crossing a road on our own a couple of kids and walk down the street of this other planet and see the different dogs that barked at us and watch out for bigger kids who were always scary because they always seemed to pick on us.
With our parents we’d make big excursions, to the store, to downtown, only a few blocks away. Then Dad would take us camping and fishing whenever he’d have a weekend off. I can’t remember a time we weren’t loading up in the car and going to some campsite by a lake where we’d all go fishing and sleep at night in the brown canvass square tent with the wood centre pole and four metal bars for the roof and big wood pegs for the four corners of the tent and guy lines. We’d use outhouses with big holes and be afraid we’d fall through. My brother and I would walk in the woods then exploring around the camp. I’d always have to be with him and mostly we’d be with Dad or Mom. There’d be other kids in the camps and we’d play hide and seek and tag and sometimes throw balls about. As far as I can remember we had a Coleman gas stove and mom cooked meals which we ate at picnics tables swatting flies and mosquitoes. Mostly we’d eat fish dad and Ron caught. Mom and I would spend most of my time fishing back then untangling my line. It wasn’t till later we got a boat.
In church the pews were hard and my feet didn’t get to the floor. The minister was a loud man in Black. The ladies smelt nice and wore pretty dresses. I liked the Sunday school comic books and stories and games. While the parents were upstairs I’d meet with the other kids in the basement and write out Bible verses and hear stories, much like school ,but smaller and more relaxed, and more fun. I liked Sunday School. It was better than being in church where Mom was always telling me to stop squirming and stop making noise and Dad would be upset when I poked my brother. I think I poked my brother whenever I got bored. Then we’d be poking each other. I mostly started all our fights when we were kids. I’d start poking him or bugging him He wasn’t a pillar of virtue either and would poke back harder or wait and poke me later. Mom was not impressed with us in church and thankful for Sunday School. Dad was forever nodding off. She her hands full with all her boys.
The singing was fun. It was especially fun when my Aunt Sally came to town and she and mom would belt out those old gospel tunes, the two loudest ladies in the church. Dad chuckled then and my brother and I would wonder what was going on. Whenever my Aunt was visitting it was a good time. She made fun of my Dad and made my mom laugh like a little girl. Those two were hilarious together. Then the family was even more so.
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