Hoppies or “bumper shines”were ‘hopping on the backs of cars’. This was pre Uber. As kids in Fort Garry we’d duck walk in the snow ,low down so the driver couldn’t see us, to a car stopped for a stop sign or light then grab onto the fender. Sometimes when we were really daring we grabbed onto the rear door handle as we were walking past the stopped car. The driver would accelerate and we’d have a free ride skiing on the soles of our snow boots behind the moving vehicle. This was a primary winter activity from Gr 6 to Gr. 10. Frankly I don’t know why I stopped it. It really was fun especially with friends cheering or hopping on beside you.
In the burbs the car speed would be 30 or 40 km but when we hopped on the backs of buses on Pembina the bus would go at 60 km / hour. That was a thrill. The down side was when our boots hit gravel or a stretch of the road was salted to cut down on the ice. At that point my feet would simply stop moving while I’d begin to be dragged on my belly. A lot of knees of jeans were torn that way especially on Pembina Highway. I lied to my mom and said I fell down the stairs. Several times.
One time I caught on the back of an unmarked police car. The young policeman jumped out. The chase ensued. Only this young policeman was fast. I was going over a fence when his boot connected with my butt. I flew and landed head down into a snow drift. My friends had to help pull me out because I was trapped like a cork in a bottle.
Mr. Jerry Fischer was the Gr. 6 teacher. He was for many of us the ‘To Sir With Love’ teacher character. He was a character. I remember waking him one fall on the way into school one morning. He slept in or was passed out in his English sports car parked in front of the school unshaved and shirt tails out. He also had a babe of a girlfriend. It was the beginning of mini skirt era. As boys we were just beginning to notice such things. He certainly was Kirk and my hero. He brought plants and cages of various animals and fish into the classrooms. It soon looked more like a jungle. He was so enthusiastic about teaching. We, as kids, just got caught up in his passion for science mostly. Biology became fascinating.
I took the iguana home. On weekends someone took the iquana home. It was sunny I was letting the iquana out of the cage on the grass. I had little cut bits of apple I was feeding this miniature green monster. Iquana were vegetarian. Suddenly it keeled over and died. I truly believed that I’d killed it by not chopping his food up small enough. I was mortified. Inconsolable. My parents actually were angry with Mr. Fischer for letting the kids take an exotic beast home where it could die and a kid would cry all night. No one thought I killed the iquana. Certainly Mr. Fischer didn’t think that when I brought the dead iquana back to class in a shoe box. The other kids did but none of the adults. Really, he just died. Keeled over with a bit of apple in his mouth. I didn’t try to revive him. I didn’t know CPR or mouth to mouth when I was 12. I was simply horrified. But a couple of my classmates who loved the iquana like I did thought I killed it. I insisted I didn’t. I felt so sad. I killed the iquana. Didn’t chop it’s dinner up fine enough. Today I don’t even think a valsalva maneuver would have helped. Fate.
His revolutionary teaching ideas resulted in him being interviewed for the Winnipeg Free Press. A picture was taken of him and the aquariums, I can’t remember if the iquana or some other creatures were in them but there was Kirk and me in the picture. My mom cut the little clipping out and kept it. She sent it to me years later. I put it in a frame and kept it on my desk. Biology and Mr. Fischer.
Thanks to his inspiration I got my first tropical fish tank that year. Soon I was even breeding Siamese fighting fish.
Thanks to his inspiration I got my first tropical fish tank that year. Soon I was even breeding Siamese fighting fish.
I believe it was Gr. 6 that I joined the YMCA. Kirk and I joined along with a number of other boys. Keith and Colin were members of the gym club. I might have been in the YMCA swimming but it was when I was 12 the the YMCA gymnastics club began to play an important part in my life. It just seemed that I went from playing hockey as a kid outside to spending all my time at the YMCA.
We took the Pembina Bus downtown and loved the walk through the Hudson Bay basement to come out on the street by the Y. In the winter in cold Winnipeg as kids we travelled through stores, then scooted out onto the street then entered the next store, that way getting warm between exposures to the 40 below wind chill. The wind on Portage was famous. The wind chill at Portage and Main record making.
This was when we came under the influence of Mr. Don McQuaig (sp). The YMCA wasn’t just a gym. Young Men’s Christian Association. I did all the levels of swimming there. In the summer I’d collected Red Cross swimming awards each year at the Fort Garry pool. So when I joined the Y I just repeated the tests and collected all my swimming awards there. In free style swim we’d not wear clothing as boys but for the classes and tests we wore bathing suits. There were codes of conduct and people trained there for the Olympics.
The YMCA Gymnastics Club was the thing. We’d start with a mile run around the track that circled the gym just below the high ceiling. After the run we’d do tumbling exercises and then take training in the different stations. We had rings, low bar, vault, parallel bars, high bar. We learned all the somersaults and hand springs on the mats. On the wall there were pegs we’d try to develop our upper body strength with. Pulling our bodies up and putting the pegs in the hole above. Colin Lount, Ron Brawn and Keith Carter walked the pegs up and down the board effortlessly. Meanwhile I was thankful if I could drag myself once to the top.
I’d left Boy Scouts because there was an older bully who picked on me. My 4 year older brother Ron stayed in Scouts. He was the same age as the bully. The bully just smashed us younger kids with his fists.
Dad had taken Kirk, Garth and I as kids and set up a rope ring in the basement. He bought us a couple of sets of boxing gloves. That was when we were 6 and bullies had bothered us in our first year of school. So there he was teaching us to box, us little uncoordinated kids, down in the basement with this rope around a part of the room and us learning to thrust and punch and dance with our feat. Little Rockie’s ahead of time. I don’t remember learning much boxing. Dad had boxed some in the Air Force. It didnt’ go on long but it stopped the bullying then. When the older kids jumped us we punched back and that took the fun out of it for them.
Most people don’t realize, especially girls, how often boys are bullied and how we learn to stand our ground and hit back. I wrestled with this other kid in my class. Despite the silliness of girls we didn’t think it was bullying if kids were evenly matched. We knew about light weight and heavy weight. Girls didnt know anything and nobody fought with the girls because they were girls. Besides if a guy lost to a girl anytime he was a loser and if he beat a girl he was still a loser because he beat a girl. The girls had all the advantage in a fight. But we considered it bullying if two or more guys took on one guy or if an older bigger guy took on a little guy. Older bigger gang guys were a problem. It was also bullying if the other guys came at you with weapons. So there I was in one of the best districts in the city and by Gr. 6 I’d been attacked three on one and 5 on one always by boys 2 or 3 years older. Thanks to Dad my friends and I survived. The main issue was the confidence. If a kid showed weakness the bullies pounced. I avoided most fights by standing up to challenges and talking.
Predators can’t afford to be hurt since they really don’t have a support network. They’re looking for easy kills. My dad taught me about wolves in the woods and people were the same. There’s really no ‘honor’ in war today because most soldiers only engage when they have a clear advantage. War is all about winning. Weakness attracts war. I still find it sad that so many people who know nothing and spent their lives protected or hiding still blab on about things they don't know anything about.
Gr. 6 Kirk found a Ju Jitsu book. That’s when our formal martial arts training began. We practiced on each other all one summer. Tosses, throws, kicks. Kirk was fascinated by the Eastern philosophy and we talked about that. At the YMCA there was an older fellow with a black belt and he coached us that fall and for years to come.. We took some wrestling there too. I was abysmal at wrestling. Flipped and pinned by the wrestling guys in seconds. Lots of laughter at how easily I could be beaten by them on the mats by comparison to how it was next to impossible to get me off my feet. Billy Goat Gruff.
Billy Goat Gruff was the children’s name I got when I teased Liza Laidlaw, Kirk’s little sister. She was sharp as a whip. I called her Liza Lollypop and she came back with Billy Goat Gruff. The nick name stuck with little kids in the neighbourhood. Liza now a mother and maybe even a grandmother will always be Liza Lollypop.
My brother beat up the bully at the Boy Scouts . It was my first year as a scout. I ‘d graduated from cub scouts and had the big round hat I was so proud of when the bullying began. Ron told the guy to lay off. When he didn’t and Ron caught him boxing me outside the church he stepped in and punched the guy a half dozen fast ones putting that guy on his knees. In those days of cowboy fighting there was none of the ‘curbing’ and head kicking that came later. Ron had won. The guy was supposed to have learned his lesson. All should have been well. But he came after me again. Ron wasn’t there. I was beat up bad. He was a barefisted puncher and I took a lot of hits to the head, cut by his ring and just generally battered. My brother pounded him good in retaliation the next scout meeting. My brother was a quiet peaceful guy but a force to contend with when you were wrong and crossed him. But I’d just lost interest in Boy Scouts after that. The bully left too after Ron was through with him but it had soured my scouting experience.
God I was proud of my brother and thought he was the greatest guy in the world to protect me. He did it a few times in our lives. Whatever faults a kid can find with an older brother they all go when he’s getting his ass whuppped, things aren’t looking really good , and his brother steps in to the rescue. That was my brother Ron, a guy to be counted on. Everyone did. They always could.
I just complained that all the teachers who had had him before me would say what a great student my brother was and why couldn’t I apply myself. My report cards always read that Bill would do better if he applied myself.
I’d get A’s and B’s but this one semester I’d applied myself and got all A’s but one. My mother had said, in typical Mom fashion, not how well I had done, but ‘why did you get that B?” So the next semester I really applied my self. I got all B’s . It really is hard to get all B’s. Like target practice shooting bull’s eyes’ ,a person can get lucky ,but the success is in the tightening of the spread. I worked at getting B’s for a year or two after that and then lapsed into my old pattern of mostly A’s and occasional B’s , getting straight B’s was harder than straight A’s. That was the way my mind worked as a kid. I played weird games, only I knew the rules to.
The YMCA Leaders Corp picked up where the Boy Scouts left off. The men were trying to teach us kids values and standards and down right manly behaviour. Looking back , it was all ethics. Young Men’s Christian Association was about applied Christian values. William James. Pragmatism. No one talked about Jesus. We were just expected to live and behave like Christians.
The fights continued in the locker room. I was kicked naked by an older boy in the groin and lay in a fetal position for an eternity. The kid was a teen ager and picked on us kids slapping us with wet towels, punching us and kicking us little guys. He was a little twisted too. But myself and three friends ‘paid him back’. We had become good with wet towels and we all slapped him silly with wets one day in the shower. He’d bullied all of us but after that it stopped. We also came together as a group. He was one of the swimmers and we were the Gym Club.
The higher ups would hear and put a stop to these things quick unless we’d settle it ourselves if we could. No one wanted to be a rat or a squealer. They were the lowest. Presumably someone talked to the kid too and no one wanted to be expelled from the Y. Getting expelled from school meant no homework but we all loved the Y. No fun in getting expelled from gym.
Keith Carter was amazing. He was great at everything. His summersaults in the air were simply unbelievable. Colin Lount had an injury as a kid, some polio or something like that, making his one leg marginally less functional. Without that he would have been perfect. He was so graceful. On the rings he’d lift himself up then stretch out into a perfect hand stand. Kirk had grace too. Each of us had a niche. Ron Brawn our new friend had muscle and was amazing on the high bar. Me, well I was the vaulter. I could run and vault where others wavered. It took a lot of faith to launch ones self head first, fly through the air, and hope to catch the end of the long box before shooting your knees and feet through your arms to come out standing. I was crazy.
I also liked the parallel bars until the other competitor before the annual competition pulled my arm off the bar, when I was in a handstand,trying to make it look like an accident. He really was hoping to injure me before the competition. I fell and twisted coming down hard. I had to go home. I’d injured my back that day. Till this day I still remember him slyly grinning. Then in the competition next day he was smugly confidantly looking over at me with that superior look psychopaths have. I competed beat him despite the pain. He threatened me after. But I’d won that competition. I’ve had recurrent back pain in the same spot under duress. It’s probably psychosomatic. Something to do with having your own team mate betray you just to win a competition. A regular Judas. I didn’t understand this and didn’t have that quality. It’s actually rare. Sociopaths only a per cent or two of society and psychopaths an even much smaller fracture. That competition was years later wasn’t when I was 12 but years later.
At age 12 the YMCA gym and swimming club was a favourite place. We’d go after school a couple of times a week and then spend most of Saturday’s there. Our mom’s would give us money for the bus and a little more. We loved the thick chocolate smoothies that they had in the basement of the Bay going home on SaturdayS. That was the stop after we’d showered and swum and dressed . I was on the way to the Pembina bus stop. There were usually 3 to 5 of us coming and goin to the Y.
The YMCA Leader’s Club was special. We had to show merit and pass and be interviewed with Don. Kirk became his favourite. Don McQuaig was also one of those revolutionary leaders. A devoutly Christian man who went on to be the secretary of the World YMCA’s in Switzerland. He really did encourage ethics and morality. he’d have these incredible discussions about life with us boys. We’d meet as a group, about 6 of us in his office and discuss life, the gym, leadership and teaching. We’d get this pure unadulterated wisdom back. An amazing influence. He was all about excellence.
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