As a family we continued to go to Trinity Baptist Church in Fort Rouge. I was a member of the church youth group. I rode my bicycle, the big one, no gears that I remember. Gears came much later. Things were basic when I was growing up. Legs were gears.
Sonny the dog still lived. Dad and Mom still slipped him treats under the table but still said ‘don’t feed the dog at the table’.
In the summer I swam at the Fort Garry Pool where I took Red Cross life guarding courses. I remember mixed feelings about doing mouth to mouth even if my partner was a pretty girl in a red one piece. I continued in the YMCA Gymnastics Team and Leader’s Corp in the winter. I wrote poetry. I played a little guitar. I didn’t keep it tuned. I was off key so why should the guitar be different. We played volleyball on the school team.
Kirk masturbated first. He told Garth and I about it. He’d asked us about nocturnal emissions and we’d said no and stared st him weird. Then a few weeks later he said he’d figured out how to do it. Really. Amazing. After that I tried. Nothing happened. Months would go by ,probably just weeks, which didn’t make sense because Kirk was younger. But his black hair that started in his legs travelled up his body. Garth and I were jealous. Garth reported next that he’d had one it. Kirk had his brother’s Playboy stash while Garth and I only had the Sears Catalogue. Eventually all three of us had masturbated.
So one day the three of us in different rooms in Garth’s house when his parents were out, had a ‘beat off’ competition. Each took a Playboy Kirk had stolen (‘borrowed’) from his brother’s under the bed hiding place.I don’t know who won. It was all an honor system. It just seemed before we started one shouted ‘Finished!”’ . We’re kids.. This is micro and nano second era. Premature ejaculation might not be in our vocabulary but it was de rigour.
Whoever finished first left the remaining two of us in fits of laughter. That’s how that competition ended. One of us won hands down. Kirk returned the magazines to his brothers hiding place. We never had a beat off again. Probably because we figured no one could beat the winner. The irony is that from that occasion forward the objective became to slow down. We certainly didn’t discuss this with adults or anyone else. We only talked about it at first. That stopped when we actually began to think about girls as girls. Then extreme privacy became the code. As a Christian I think I had more concerns than others. But I was also the first one with a girlfriend which didn’t help that matter at all. This was before the age of sexual promiscuity and kissing was all junior highs did unless you actually ‘copped a feel’. I had every intention of marrying my first girlfriend too. The girls were very proper (until high school). But kissing and petting and dancing were all happening in junior high school.
At my age today I say that my ‘automatic’ is broken and I’m reduced to a ‘pull start’. When we were 13 spontaneous erections were an issue. Farts and erections. Both very embarrassing. The complicating factor was tight jeans. We’d have to stand up but could be literally trapped in our seats because of the jeans and the erections wouldn’t let us stand up. The horror of horrors would have been to get an erection at the Y. The pool was probably kept cold for a reason. The joke was, we could get an erection doing math. I never knew when it would come on or what would trigger it. Suddenly I had this this independent appendage literally with a mind of it’s own. I wasn’t the only boy squirming around in chemistry class trying to get ‘adjusted’ and hoping things would go away. There’s a lot of truth to the notion that men have two heads and only one blood supply. But when you’re 13 and in class it’s just embarrassing. Probably blushing helped to alter the blood flow.
Meanwhile the girls then were periodically running out of class leaving blood on the seats with teachers trying to clean up discretely with Kleenex. Adolescence is a steep learning clothes. And it’s all done with sits and voice changes.
I remember when there were a few of us guys out one night and we ran into Arlene and her girlfriends. A guy asked Arlene jokingly , ‘would you have sex with me.” Quick as a whip and famous for her comebacks she answered, “I’ll only have sex with a guy who brings me a cup of sperm. I want to have babies so I need to know he can produce.”
Well, we were shot down. Really. A whole cup. It was like she said she would do it but how as anyone going to come up with a cup of sperm. For guys it became a logistics problem. Everyone wanted to it with Arlene. She was gorgeous. We were all afraid of her Dad though. He seemed like a really scarey guy with a beautiful daughter. He scowled at us boys whenever we came by.
So There’s a group of us guys asking each other if anybody thought they could produce a ‘cup’. No one could. Then we’re discussing if we could store it in the refidgerator without of mothers finding it. We must have struggled with that problem for weeks to something else took over our brains. We all felt we just weren’t up to Arlene’s standards. It was years later I thought about this again when I read the words of the song Scarborough Fair. Girls have been teasing guys in similiar ways for hundreds of years. Arlene’s challenge was just a modern version.
“Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
He once was a true love of mine.
Tell him to make me a Cambric shirt
Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme
Without no seam nor fine needle work
Then he’ll be a true love of mine.
Tell him to bring me a cup of sperm
The girls were wearing bras in gr 7 whether they needed to or not. Gr 7 was simply all about hormones. Voice changes, acne, growing up, new clothing, gossip. Everything was different.
I was elected class president and began school politics. I was on the student council in Viscount Alexander and later in high school.. Wes Hazlitt and I became friends as a result of this overlap in interests. He’d go on to be school president, a truly great guy. I’d end up President of the Amalgamated Baptist Youth Groups of Winnipeg but that would come later. It just began in Viscount Alexander with going for meetings at lunch with one of teachers and sometimes the principal. We discussed the most mundane matters. It was an exercise and only in later years would it hold more meaning and pay off. Learning Robert’s Rules of Order and how to conduct meetings became a plus. Being on the executive in high school was something else. Later I’d even be the Winnipeg Representative to Youth Parliament in Ottawa. It all began in Viscount Alexander with Wes Hazlitt. I wanted to have a sock hop where my friend Dan Donahue who had a band could play for the school. We eventually got the sock hop and Dan and his band played but that was a couple of years later.
I miss the little girl with pig tails who cleaned the hamster cage. She was really pretty but we all were surprised at how she’d muck about in hamster shit and seem not to be bothered by all that. The pretty and popular girls shunned her. As guys we like to muck about with shit but she was a girl ahead of her time with a passion for biology. Sitting behind her in class one day I made like I was putting one of her pig tails in my ink well. I didn’t have ink in the ink well. She just thought I did. She just jumped up, turned around and punched me. Not slapped but punched. Amazing girl. Naturally she got detention. I acted innoscent but I never forgot her. She wanted me to dance with her one time and I didn’t get the hint so she stomped on my toe once and walked off. I’ve often thought of her as the one that got away and wondered what became of her. She was brilliant and totally different.
Meanwhile Laurel a taller girl was the first to actually develop breasts. The girls were wearing bras I later learned were called trainers and thought they helped “boobs” grow. But you could see that Laurel had shape because she wore these white blouses when she stood in front of the windows with light shining through she was mesmerizing. I just stared and thought of heaven. Other guys handle hormones differently. I remover a couple of guys couldn’t deal with the tension so showed their affection by snapping her bra strap. She slapped a couple of guys silly and that stopped. This was before MRI’s so the guys weren’t taken to emergency but went straight to the principals office where he strapped them even sillier before sending them home to their parents. This was still the age of chivalry and girls were expected to be treated like ladies.
Meanwhile I fell in love with Kathy but I don’t think she became my girl friend till gr. 8.
The Baptist Church camp came before Kathy. Lots happening at age 13. Music suddenly became very important along with dancing. Everything continued but somehow it was all no longer in black and white but in technicolor passion. I was having intense moods. I remember I was totally torn up about some Mrs Browns daughter fromEngland and went about singing all the words of the song. Before I had a girlfriend I’d broken up wit everyone on the radio. I was reading books from the school library, every poetry book we had, studying the Bible and philosophy and still reading science fiction.
Keith Carter had memorized all the Bill Cosby ‘s Baby Coach Wheels and Monsters under the bed. He’d tell the story and we’d laugh till we cried. “Hey , come see my kid, he set the house on fire because he thought there were snakes under his bed.”
Dead baby jokes were all the rage too. Fart jokes. “ Beans ,beans , the musical fruit , the more you eat the more you toot!” At campfire we’d tell gruesome horror stories.
Snuggies were in then too. . Guys running around trying to lift each other up by the ‘gotch’ (underwear). That stopped when one of the slower guys did it to a girl and came up with a hand half her nylon panties. Somebody should have explained to him that you had to stick to Stanfields. Canadian made Stanfields were tested for standing up to snuggies. They had some lab where they did tensile tests. Stanfields had to withstand snuggies and fats. Panties were never in the league of Stanfields.
I was shooting at the gun range getting marksman awards then too. Hunting and fishing with Dad and Ron and Mom continued. I began shooting grouse with my 22 rifle when I was 13. I still wasn’t big enough to handle the 12 gauge. My father and brother let me take a shot with big Remington pump action. The recoil put me 10 feet back on my ass in the wet marsh. We all laughed. Nothing like a practical experiment to show I wasn’t ready for a shot gun. My brother had his own by then. The dog sure loved duck hunting though. My dad and brother shot atthe ducks. Seeing one fall out of the sky was rare but extraordinary. Sonny the springer spaniel hunting dog just flew through the air into the freezing water right to where they fell catching them in his mouth and retrieving them .After the early morning hunt we go looking for prairie chickens in the grain fields. That’s when I’d get to use the 22. Mostly we shot prairie chicken, in the woods we might shoot a grouse. Sometimes we’d shoot a rabbit. Dad had his old truck and we’d drive across the fields to park. Then we’d hike for hours along the edge of the field sometimes even getting some ducks that were eating the grain. Then we’d sit down and eat the sandwiches Mom had packed for us and drink the sweetened tea she’d made for the thermos. These were greatest fall days.
The fall suppers were incredible too. Great harvest feasts we’d go to. They were held in the town’s around the cities, the farmers and their wives would make these unbelievable smorgasboard dinners, the turkey and the mashed potatoes with gray were the best. Then there’d be Apple and pumpkin pie and vanilla ice cream. We’d seconds too. Great harvest moons would be shining outside abode in the star studded sky. The city lights obscured the stars but once you were on the outskirts the whole Milky Way was ablaze in the sky. The moon was so bright and big you felt you could touch it. The sound of Canada geese flying south could sometimes be heard with hawks hooting as they hunted field mice in the night. A soft which was the sound of a bat flying by close.
Spring break up was the exact opposite. We’d be worrying about flooding and even get school days off to join in the sand bagging the red river. Kirk and I would raft about on ice flows in the golf course. We almost got carried out into the Red River by the current. That was the same day we saved a couple of other guys from passing out of the park eddies to the fast flowing river.
That night there was a picture of a couple of guys our age on the cover of the Free Press. I remember Mom and Dad asking me if Kirk and I ever got out on the ice floes. They asked about the river ice floes so I said in all honesty, “No, never”. We just rode the ice floes in the golf course. It flooded each year to the 8 foot dike,
In the winter the snow would be so deep we couldn’t get the door open. I’d have to climb out the window with a shovel to dig us out. I’d go over to the neighbours too. The 1966 Winnipeg blizzard was famous showing all the houses with snow up to the roof but each year we’d get so much snow you couldn’t open the doors without shovelling. That year was the worst because the snow was over the doors and the windows. Dad fished me the smallest through the kitchen window some 12 or more feet above the ground. I just spent the day shovelling neighbours doors free. I must have freed dozens of people. The old people were the most thankful. I’d come back the next few days and shovel out paths. As kids we had tunnels you could stand up in all through the backyard. People couldn’t get their cars out for days and some weeks. We pulled a toboggan up to Pembina with Mom so she could shop for groceries, Pembina a mainstreet was plowed and businesses along Pembina opened one after another. It was a while before the side streets could be plowed and cars dug out. Days or maybe a week later everything was back to normal. Winnipegers were the most resilient people one could imagine. Everyone pitched in too.
Being 13 was a busy time. I had a very full life when I think back to it. We were just so active. Now I hear that kids are looking at their screens. I remember mom only allowed 1-2 hours tv time a day. It was the first thing to go too if we got into trouble. I didn’t mind so much because I was so into reading.
Younger I’d entertain myself with cards, four boxes with different colours would become my armies and I’d have these kings and queens and princes and have the cards having major wars I imagined in three d all over the room. Sofas were hills. The carpet was the valley . When people talked of past lives I thought I was probably some kind of general because as a kid I was so involved in strategy. I laid out these great wars with hundreds of cards. Later in life when I looked at some of the wars of history I had the feeling of déjà vu. It was like I was going through all these wars as a kid, reviewing them. Napoleon and Wellington.
Life as a child and especially as a teen was sacred. Astro projection and synchronicity were givens. Kirk and I were always talking God and physics. We just believed. Kirk wasn’t limited by Christianity. He was just spiritual and had these experiences like I did but didn’t have to consider them in the light of Christian teachings. My brother would join the Billy Graham movement and it would be years before I found myself around Christians who lived in the spirit. At church there was just a lot of preaching. Hell and brimstone ruled back then. Dad would fall asleep and mom would elbow him awake.
I thought about Jesus and crucifixion a lot.
I didn’t think I was going to hell. There’s a lot of misunderstanding about Christianity and a lot of wholly unwarranted criticism. I just kept asking myself if I was doing what I was supposed to do. Was I fulfilling God’s desire for me. Years later I’d come across the Christian reader, “My Utmost for his Highest.” Christianity was just all about doing your best.
I’d have these dreams of shining people like angels. I’d see a mother and father godlike creatures who’d reassure me it was going to be alright.
I’d had this recurring dream all my life of myself in a pod and somehow getting knocked off course and ending up in the wrong planet and the wrong life. Stop the planet I want to get off meant something more to me when I heard it.
Gr. 7 we weren’t into pranks as much as we’d be in gr. 8 and 9. But we were becoming mischievous. I think it was when I was 13 that I set a bag of dog poop on fire in front of my neighbours house on Halloween. I watched him go ballistic after stamping the fire out with his slippers getting wet with poop. He saw us hiding in the ditch.. we immediately let out down the road while he fell stumbling behind us in his housecoat in the snow. We only did that once but it worked perfectly. It definitely encouraged us. Success does that.
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