My memory is of hundreds of children wandering around the streets of Fort Gary at 3 am looking for swimming pools.
It began with Jamie.
“Do you want to meet me at 3 in the morning and we’ll sneak into my neighbour’s pool.” Jamie, the banker’s son, said. He lived 3 blocks up the street past the Gyles place where Bill, his sisters, their mom and his famous artist cartoonist father lived. My brother Ron once went up with a 22 and scared the crows away from their house for the sister. Bill and I would become close friends in Vancouver 20 years later.
But this summer Jamie and I were sneaking out and skinny dipping in the rich neighbours pool. It was a rush. Stifling hot nights and then this cool illicit swim. Jame and me and the raccoons. My brother pretended to be a sleep when I sneaked out. We shared a room and I am sure he knew I was coming and going. Mom and Dad probably didn’t but who knows. It was like there was this magical parallel world with the adults all sleeping and us kids out in the night with the fairies, goblins and leprechauns. Full moons were the best, even the trees were enchanted.
Kirk was away at Minaki some of the times. Keith Carter soon joined us. Garth was involved. Kirk must have been in on this. There got to be so many kids involved it got hard to keep track of everyone. The idea came about that we should meet and swim in the Fort Gary Pool. What a lark! Even if it was behind the Fort Garry Police Station. This was the age of telepathy and gossip. This was before Woodstock, Cellular Phones and Flash Mobs. This night kids from all over descended on the Fort Gary Swimming Pool. We kept meeting different groups of our classmates. Carl Hedlin was the funniest. He was the first kid to hit his growth spurt, and 8 foot tall at 14. His bedroom was on the second floor.
When we met him on the street with a few other guys the question was immediately,
“Karl, how did you get out?”
“I used a ladder.”
Of course.
So here was Carl putting a ladder up to his window before going to bed and his parents didn’t know. At least Keith came out of the basement window. He just had to leave it unlocked. I walked right out the front door myself. Half the houses in Fort Garry were unlocked that summer. It was witchy eerie how many kids were just sneaking out of their houses and meeting up on the streets that summer, like aliens had stunned our parents.
One kid had his brother’s little bicycle and was riding on it with a couple of other friends walking beside. Over the football field and onto the swimming pool we descended as a mob. The swimming pool had a wire fence around it but we just scaled it like criminals or zombies. All us kids in the pool trying to be quiet at first. The police station was right there.
The next thing was some kid got on the diving board and then another. That’s when the cannonballing began with its noise and huge splashes. Next the little kids bicycle was handed over the fence and some guy took it up to the high diving board. He rode it right off the board into the water. That was a first. We couldn’t not applaud. That’s what brought the police. The noise had escalated exponentially. The police en mass came out of the police station. It took a while for them to figure out what was happening. We kids were scaling the fence by then. The bike was left in the pool and the kid whose bike it was was grilled by the police while his brother acted shocked. Hundreds of kids went running off across the fields like so many cockroaches. The Police were chasing. They were on foot and in cars. Fort Garry didn’t have helicopters or SWAT so the kids still had the advantage. The police drove their cars with lights flashing across the football field, They didn’t use sirens. All we heard was our heart’s breathing and ourselves sucking air as we ran like the wind from federal time. Kids and police were everywhere. It was a full moon. Miraculously no one got caught.
‘We’d better lay low for a couple of nights’ was the word the next day. The rest of that summer we were out 2 or 3 at a time meeting other kids but never the numbers of that night. We didn’t go back to the Fort Garry Swimming Pool either.
I tried swimming in the Red River one night. We’d been told they’d closed off the raw sewage outlets into the river. But I realized the logs I’d dove into weren’t t wood and had to use the garden hose at night back home to wash off.
When the Queen visited, the Prince who presumably had been drinking dove off the Queen’s boat to the boat of this very fetching young thing. I wasn’t surprised none of the women wanted even a Prince after he’d been in the Red River.
We continued to go skinny dipping in the pools. We also stole carrots. Stealing carrots from gardens was a really big thing we did on those night time follies. Strutting down the street in the wee hours as a teen chewing a dirt covered big carrot was better than having a Cuban cigar.
Baptist church camp was that summer. I only remember one which is probably not surprising. I doubt I was invited back. My brother went too. He was the good guy. I, not so much. There were older kids and younger kids some 20 or 30 of us. Church services in the morning. Lots of baseball and volleyball and swimming in the lake. Great communal meals. Christians ate the best pot luck and smorgasbord. This camp, the food was the best. Lots of barbecue burgers and mashed potatoes and gravy. The girls my age were cute. There were 3 or 4 of us guys 14 and three or 4 of the girls who were 14 or 15.
Naturally I suggested we sneak out and skinny dip at night. It what I’d been doing in the city. I kind of overlooked there weren’t any girls with us those nights. The smallest youngest guy was all for it. The two of us slipped over to girls cabin. Whereas they’d all been for it in the afternoon now only one wanted to go alone with me and no one wanted to go with the other guy. His drooling and buck teeth might have contributed. The little guy went back to the guys cabin.
This daring beautiful girl then sneaked out later to join me. We went down the trail to the beach. We stopped and stood there. I still remember how beautiful she was in the moonlight. She wanted to kiss. I hadn’t kissed anyone so there we were holding each other and kissing closed mouth in the moonlight. Adolescence a time of steep learning curves. It was the most wonderful thing I’ve ever known. Obviously there was lust on both our parts. But lust was sinful so this was passion. We were definitely overcome by a force greater than ourselves. I don’t know if Jesus was there but God was definitely present. I would have stayed all night just holding and kissing her but things had hardly started and she was slipping away back to her cabin. So I went back to my cabin too. I couldn’t get over the smell of her hair. Her face in the moonlight. I was head over heals in love. I’m surprised I slept at all that night.
All hell broke lose in the morning. I wake to all three ministers staring at me. The ugliest jealous little girl had told the minister. The minister had called a tribunal. The tribunal was these three men. I was brought to the common hall before these three men and who asked me for every lurid detail of what I’d done. I admitted everything except fault. I said it was wrong. I knew we weren’t supposed to leave our cabins at night but I couldn’t believe anything so blessed as kissing a girl so beautiful if the moonlight could be wrong. Nothing else had happened.
“Lust. Hell. Fire and Brimstone. Satan. Adam and Eve. The snake.” This one man held the Holy Bible over me. I think he was trying to exorcize the demon of adolescence out of me. It didn’t work. I just sat there dumb founded remembering the softness of her skin.
“It wasn’t like that. I love her.” I said.
I remember the youngest of the men trying to reason. Talked to me about girl’s reputation. This was a really big thing back then before Hollywood, Madonna, Miley Cyrus, the Kardashian and Fify Shades of Grey. All of the risk and what could have happened.
“Nothing happened. We just kissed.”
The truth be told the camp was going for 3 more nights, a long weekend affair and I admittedly thought that things were just beginning. I didn’t feel any need to rush not that I knew what to rush to. My sole sex education at this time was pictures of naked girls, an STD film from WWII, love songs on the radio, and the Song of Songs in the Bible. That had been her favourite passages and she’d shown me those the day before. When we were guys and girls doing Bible study together. The girls honed in on Song of Songs. Us guys knew the Old Testament battles and loved Joshua fought the battle of Jericho. The girls knew Song of Songs.
“She could have become pregnant.”
(From kissing? I don’t think so)
I didn’t say that but I frankly wasn’t thinking the whole thing through.
I was grilled for hours, or so it seemed, tag team, one minister after another. The girl was kept apart, Shamed. Her parents came to take her away. My brother shook his head. He was not impressed. He was into sports and loved the church camp for badminton. I don’t know what it was with my brother but he had this thing for badminton. The Badminton Club was down the street from us and Ron somehow got the badminton bug. So at the camp he couldn’t understand why I’d be chasing girls at night when there was badminton to be played during the day. He liked girls well enough because they liked to play badminton. Personally I wanted to go skinny dipping with girls and it was clear that this was not going to happen at church camp.
Mom and Dad gave me heck further when I got home. More grounding. I was still a popular kid and would be elected President of the Baptist Youth in Fort Rouge and then the whole of Winnipeg. I’d rather have never stopped kissing that first girl in the moonlight on the wooded trail by the beach.
It was 1966. I was only thinking about girls. I was also thinking about music. It was all about the music. That was the year of the beach boys Good Vibrations, the Troggs Wild Thing, Beatles Yellow Submarine, Rolling Stones Paint it Black.
That was the year the Beatles released Help too. Kirk and I made a point of going to the movie. “The girls will be there,” I told him. He was more into volleyball than girls. He had sisters. Girls were not exotic. But he went with me to Help. It was crazy. The girls screamed through the whole movie. I remember Kirk and I feeling very out of place watching this inane movie all while girls screamed and cried and rolled around in the aisles. It was weird. Girls were weird. I did like the Beatles.
The first episode of Star Trek with William Shatner as Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Spock aired the fall of 1966. Now that was something Kirk and I could get into. There’d been westerns on tv like ‘the Rifleman’ and WWII war movies like ‘Desert Fox’. But nothing like Star Trek. I remember being in school looking forward to running home and watching the next episode. We never missed any. I loved the Uhura played by Nichelle Nichols and the doctor, De Forest Kelly. Scotty the engineer played by James Dothan was priceless as was Hikanru Sulu played by George Takei. I’d read all the science fiction in the Fort Garry Library, had branched out to the school and city libraries and now was watching Star Trek every week. The space race was on and I really hoped to go to Mars one day. It was all a matter of time. I was going to have my own spaceship one day.
We were also reading James Bond. We didn’t get to the movies at first but we read all the books. We’d discuss them at school.
That’s the year I dropped a text book on the bald head of the math teacher. He actually stumbled and almost fell. He crumpled more out of surprise, not dazed but pretty soon hopping mad as he rushed up the stairs to catch who had done it. The kid beside me just said their book slipped and didn’t say I’d actually knocked it outdo their hands. I’d gauged trajectories and timing and shoved the book out of their hands at just the right moment. I was at the top of the class in science but that stunt put me at the top of the class among my friends. We dropped books on three teachers altogether until they placed one at the top and the bottom of the stairs.
We were full on into pranks grade 8 and 9. I don’t know why. It was an obsession then. I wasn’t alone either. Kirk was usually right in there with me. A couple of other guys too and then lots of copy cats. I liked originality. That’s when I made stink bombs and cleared the whole two floors of Junior high. I was the ideas man but I also lead from the front. More often than not the other guys refined the plans and added a nice twist to end.
My favourite school prank was when we were in chemistry and this kid foolishly asked me how the gas fires worked. I’d used gas as a kid with gas camping stoves and barbecues. I was my brothers and Dad’s mechanical helper in the garage forever. I’d even used acetylene torcheswith Dad teaching and supervising. I knew stuff other kids didn’t like they knew stuff I didn’t.This was a kid who didn’t have much practical knowledge. . I told him to open up the gas line full and stand aside. “It needs to get the air out of the line before you light it.” He believe me.
The result was holy. When he lit it, it looked just like a military flame thrower? The flame went 4 feet across the room and set the teacher’s desk on fire. The teacher had been writing on the chalk board at the time with his back to us. He was utterly astonished when he heard the whoosh turned around and saw his desk on fire. He was amazingly quick thinking and quick. He shut the bass off at the wall and immediately he got out the fire extinguisher.
I was proud to see that scorch mark on the chemistry teacher desk was still there years later when I came back for high school reunion. As men now , several of us boys stood around in awe looking at the evidence of that awesome day.
The stink bomb evacuation of the school was nearly as good. Several of us each hid the pens with sulfur in desks It took the teachers wearing masks a while to find them while we stood outside. I loved science.
Meanwhile I was also enjoying English. I just loved poetry. I loved reading. I loved history. I loved language. I was writing journals and poetry starting in junior high.
Volleyball continued to be incredible. We were getting up at 6 am to be at practice an hour before school. We were winning all our games. Something about the team of us gelled. Kirk and I spiked. Kirk was an awesome spiker. Anderson was the best setter. I happened to learn this great overhand power serve and would rack up points for the team.. It was great to win. I liked the cheer leaders too. Winning and having those girls in these little white dresses hug you. I was feeling breasts then too. Hugs had become a whole lot better as the months went on.
Gym Club got better too. Keith was awesome. I can’t say that enough. Knowing him was awesome. We’d be walking in a field and he’d take off doing handsprings, summersaults and back flips and ending with some impossible triple round twisty things. Kirk and I would do some dozen hand spring in a row and Colin and Ron would do back springs and summersaults. Kirk got good at back hand springs and I got really good at forward walking hand springs but choked at summersaults. We learned them with a spotter holding a big belt around our waist with rope to hold us up and help us over. I could do them but I never got over my fear so they werent the sheer fun that forward walking handsprings were. I even liked the occasional back hand springs. Cartwheels had been neat but now these handsprings were something else. We’d break into them going down streets or crossing fields. They were something. And if Keith was around he stole the show hands down everyone clapping just to see him. But together we were a force. Gym Club was awesome.
I was began riding that summer more too. A horse riding studio was at the outskirts of our end of town. I’d ridden over on my bicycle and shown an interest. I think I paid for my first ride then the couple who had the place told me I could come by any time and exercise their horses. I simply don’t remember paying much again but I was there going for rides all summer most weeks, sometimes two or three times. This went on for a few years too. Riding horses with Dad was one of the best times in my life.
He was working in Saskatchewan and Mom sent me off to spend a week with him. He knew all these cowgirls and cowboys and we went riding in the evening just like in westerns. Then he’d take me fishing. I’d wander around on my own during the day while he was at work, reading, exploring but then those rides and the fishing pickerel on the weekend was so memorable. It so special having time alone with Dad. Ron was his favourite mostly because he could assist him working on things. I was the second assistant. Dad was always working on his car or truck or building things around the house. He built the garage and poured cement for the walk and veranda, did the roof and built another room in the basement. That extra room was where Mom kept her canning. It was planned to double as a bomb shelter. The Cold War Continued in the background.
I continued martial arts practice with Kirk and some advanced stuff with a black belt at the Y. I got really good with jump kicks which would prove especially fearsome.
Ron and I fought as we got too big for the one bed room. I took to sleeping downstairs in a sleeping bag on the cement floor rather than sleeping in the same room as my brother. Dad just up and built the most beautiful little hardwood floored room with lovely walls all in the space of a weekend. I loved my room. Dad was the best even though the tension between us was increasing at times. Teen angers are testy. I remember taking my parents for granted as a teen. I don’t know why but I was resenting them more and yet they were simply the best.
We’d go to auctions. Dad liked auctions and smorgasboards. At this one auction I saw a Rcoh dual lens SLR. It had a screw out. I was all set to fix it but Dad stopped me. When the auction began Dad pointed out the missing screw. I got my first SLR for $5. Dad loved photography and making films. He’d shoot these super 8 clips then splint a whole bunch together.we’d watch his home movies. Mom liked bringing out the photo albums and going through them, “There’s Edna. There’s your cousin Robert....” at the time we found this boring but after they both had died and my aunts and uncles had died my brother and I felt so bad we hadn’t taken notes. We have all these black and white photos and we don’t know who they are.
As we weren’t ice fishing and I’d begun a darkroom in the basement using a hose from the laundry sink Dad suggested I use the ice fishing shack because we could take it all over black and get it so dark I could develop film there. That way others could use the basement when I was in my darkroom. I’d taken an interest and got the chemicals and developers. Next I began printing. Then Dad went with me to an auction where I bought an enlarger cheap. Suddenly I was the school photographer and loving black and white spending hours in the basement. This got Mr, Laidlaw the chemist going and he put a skookum darkroom in his basement. Three guys came to learn how to set up a darkroom. I helped them develop and print their first films. One became a commercial photographer with his own studios and a lifelong career. Another became and artist with black and white photography featuring big time in his avante garde work. The third became a wilderness travel photographer with works featured in magazines. I loved photography and was glad I could pass on the joy of the dark room watching the images appear out of nothing.
I met Kathy when I was 14 too. She was black haired and utterly beautiful. Naturally she became the reason that poetry existed. The sun rose and the moon set. I wrote horrid songs too, couldn’t tune my guitar and couldn’t sing with my guitar but never were better love songs sung alone by a boy sitting on a porch. At that age we are in love with love.
Kathy had a pool table in her basement. Herman and the Hermits and Jerry and the Pacemakers were the groups the girls liked. There was always a half dozen or more of us, a mixed gang in their basement, playing records and dancing. We danced all the time. The Pony. The Jerk. The Swim. We would dance and we’d play billiards. And we’d try to get alone with the girls to kiss or hug and they’d tease us and slip away. Meanwhile the parents were always appearing like Jack in the Boxes. Coming down the stairs every minute and foiling every attempt at the boys to get closer to the girls. No unsupervised time back then.
I just remembered that was the year us guys began to move cars around. We’d noticed that some people left their keys in their car so we’d climb in and take the brake off then six of us would push the car down the street.
The Milowski’s Car on South Drive was a favourite. Kirk and I pushed that down the street onto South Drive by ourselves because the driveway sloped. It was a big black Mercedes I believe and the long driveway ran down to the road. Twice we were able to get the brake off and push the car down to the street where we left it. Then we hid in the bushes and watched as a half dozen cars lined up honking their horn till the father of the twins came out in his slippers and house coat. The girls told us that he came back shaking his head and insisting he’d put the brake on. Twice we did that. It was a hoot.
The best one was time we moved the VW Bug of the college football coach. We’d found his Volkswagen parked askew on the street with the keys in the ignition. Six of us pushed it a block away, one kid in the car steering, 4 of us pushing and on skid sitting of the roof. We pushed it over the curb and right up the lawn blocking the front door of the house next to a friend of ours. Our greatest problem was keeping quiet because we were always laughing so much.These capers were late in the evening coming home from being out with the girls.
I just realized too that none of this truly hilarious fun occurred with drinking or drugs. We were all under age and were having the best of times being little miscreants for sure but we really didn’t do any damage. Kirk and I had talked about that when we’d soaped the school windows. That was a coup, putting all those dirty words on the windows and not getting caught. We both knew that if we got caught we’d be killed by our fathers so we planned . We also didn’t believe in destruction and knew the value of things. There was this other group of rich kids who were doing pranks too but they were always getting caught and always causing damage. One kids dad was a lawyer so he was getting them off and they seemed to think that getting caught was half the fun. Not Kirk and I.
So that night the six of us parked this Volkswagen Beetle on the front lawn of another guy. After the weekend our friend who hadn’t been in on the caper told us the outcome of the story. His neighbour was furious when he saw the Volkswagen on his lawn. He knew it was the football coach’s. He called him to get his car. The football coach was truly remorseful. He’d been so drunk on the Friday night when he drove home he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t parked it there. This whole shouting match ensued and the poor younger hung over coach backed his VW off the lawn and over the curb to head on home up the street. Our friend reported the story in detail to endless laughter.
The best caper which probably was on the edge of bad was the bonfire in the middle of the street. Kirk and I and a few other guys had found gallons of gasoline in a garage when the people were away on holidays. We’d been snooping for it because everyone had gas in their garages for lawnmowers. We’d had thought the idea to make a huge pile of dead leaves in the centre of the road bonfire using the gas to set it on fire. We were all outdoors guys and knew about gas and fire. We had a good perimeter so the fire wouldn’t spread. Weused just enough gas. We knew it would be a great burst of flame and then burn out. It was awesome.
Naturally I poured the gas and set the fire.
A dozen of us kids stood watching with sheer wonder. Kids love fire. Fire is fantastic. The fire station was 2 blocks away. It turned out that a car had come round the corner and seen the fire and smoke and raced to the fire station reporting the whole street and neighbourhood was on fire. Two fire trucks and three police cars responded. This was by all means a record. Even better Kirk and I stood by watching and talking to the police and telling them we didn’t know which kids had done it. “Older kids.”
The funniest thing was one of the always guilty younger kids had climbed into a tree figuring he was sure to be blamed even though he’d just watched. Thinking he’d done it because of his guilty behavior it took the police a lot of time and coaxing to get him out of the tree. Meanwhile Kirk and I and the others continued to talk to the firemen. That’s when I saw a policeman sniffing a kids hands. As I was the only one who had handled the gas I slipped away after motioning to Kirk they were sniffing hands. He stayed and began distracting the police by discussing the combustion quotient of leaves and asking the firemen about what type of gas would cause this flame. The flame was out. There was just a pile of ash when the fire trucks arrived. I was gone around the corner then headed through back yards vaulting 6 foot fences at a bound. Dakhour wasn’t around then. We just loved outrunning young police. Being gymnasts and athletes we got away every time except for the one time I tried a hoppy on the back of the cop car and got my butt kicked.
This was the ‘very best’ ‘prank’. While the adults were very serious and there was all kinds of lectures on fires and the danger of fires and pictures of Rome burning and London burning, we never got caught. Kirk and I became legends in the teen underworld though. . “Two fire trucks and three police cars” was the record. No one beat that.The owner of the garage got in to trouble for poor storage of gas or some such thing but everyone had gas in their garages for their lawn mowers. The story made the Fort Garry press. I’d later be a part time photographer for the paper my mother wrote a column for. I took pictures of a real fire seeing how fast it spread. No surprise adults take fire so seriously. Years later I’d be a volunteer firefighter in the countryside fires. Scared stuff but at 14 years old we were teen underworld hero’s “2 fire trucks and 3 police cars” and no one hurt.
That was the year I began to climb up on roofs and run across them. The jumps from garage to roof to roof were awesome but we were throwing eggs at police cars just to get chases and climbing over a roof was a genius way to evade them. We’d get over the roof and run across south drive , then lose them in the bushes along the river. Obviously the police had a different perspective on our childhood entertainment. It was fun for us. They were getting paid and these were young guys.
Now a whole case can be made for the police chasing kids and people with real emergencies dying but it was’t like that at all back then. It was Barney Miller. A police emergency really was a cat caught in a tree. Police have told me since we were ‘entertainment’. They even waited to chase us kids the night of the swimming pools and loved catching the slower ones. They knew about us kids in the Gym Club too. They even bets on who could catchthe “Vaulter “but no one did. That’s because I switched tactics and began climbing houses and running over roofs.
My Dad had taken to selling roofing material on the side and giving Ron and me jobs putting it on. I knew roves.Heights didn’t bother me. Jumping off roofs and rolling on grass was easy.
One of the kids went onto win the nationals sprinting. I think it had a lot to do with his being a lousy vaulter and climber so he had to depend on strait out speed to evade cops on foot and in police cars. It got so we didn’t even have to throw eggs but just walked by them calling them ‘fat,old and slow’.
The Fort Garry Police were community police. We grew up talking to them. One of the sons was a friend. Naturally he’d didn’t get involved but he didn’t squeal either. The police would joke with us too. Like a police car pulling up beside Kirk and I and the young cop smiling saying ,”not out starting fires today eh.”
“We didn’t start any fires.” We shrugged. But we were scared they’d catch us. It was that kind of cat and mouse stuff. No one got hurt. Everyone was community. It changed years later. It was all before drugs and alcohol we all went to church. In Fort Gary there was the big Catholic Church, big Anglican Church and big Unite Church all within blocks of each other nearby Viscount Alexander. Everyone knew my Mom and everyone knew Kirk’s Dad.
The only damage I remember was too Kathy’s table. Her parents weren’t home and her best friend, her boyfriend and Me had come over probably against her parents wishes. We were playing music loud with the parents upstairs stereo. We were dancing and somehow we got dancing together ,all of us , on this huge marble table the parents had in the living room. The ‘crack’ was volumous. OMG! Well we were all terrified the parents would find out but Kathy said she’d just not mention it.
At school the next day we learned that the parents found the crack but that the Dad figured it was a geological atmospheric phenomena. . The men got together and discussed climate and expansion and contraction of rock and it was the discussion of the evening. Kathy said she’d not told them the reason was their teen daughter dancing on the table because they liked their own explanations better. The crack apparently was glued and a topic of conversation for the father who would wax poetic about marble and atmospheric effects, thereafter.
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