15 year old; the sock hop, school dance, and the fights.

The sock hop and school dance are the events that come immediately to mind when I think of Gr. 9. Kathy, whose still funny, fun, intelligent and beautiful is still in my life but I think the relationship ended somehow. I remember being heartbroken but I don’t remember when that was.

My trying to climb into the mother and father’s window one night probably had something to with it. Her room was on the other side of the house. It was dark  her room was on the left looking out not looking in.

My mother didn’t like the hickies. I started wearing big navy blue army navy wool sweater. That’s when dickies became fashionable so we got those to hide the hickies.

I’m still playing on the Volleyball team. We’re still winning all our games. I’m doing well in school. I’ m loving English. I’m loving writing poetry.  I’m actually enjoying Shakespeare. I’m at the YMCA learning and competing on the Gymnastics Team.

 I was voted president of my church group. Doug has become my friend from church.  Our wild gifted friend is still alive. He’d die in a freak motor vehicle accident a year or two later when he got his driving license. There was a bridge being built but someone took down the detour sign. He hit the construction at 90 km an hour. 

Kirk and I are still friends.  We’ve got a group of guys we hang out with, not a gang but friends we can joke with.  Overlapfrom school neighbor Y and volleyball. We’d throw ball around, play pick up basketball at the court, ride bike, hike down by the river, just hanging out. 

Ron was doing great in church and school and playing soccer.  Dad’s a success in business. Mom’s writing for the Lance and enjoying her garden. She is forever winning awards for gladiolus. I’m still fishing and camping with the family but we’re catching more fish.  We’re hunting ducks and prairie chicken in the fall. Ron’s now hunting deer in the fall.

We’ve visitting Toronto taking the train to be with my Mom’s family. Dinner is a solemn affair with my serious grandfather and the US family who are visitting. My aunt is darling. She’s taken us to Easton’s and we’ve gone to her huge Baptist Church on Yonge street. Her other sister is married to a dentist. Her family are stuffy but Ron and I like our gentle beautiful cousin Ruthanne.

I’m on the student council. It’s weeks of arguing. I’ve spear headed a motion to have a noon hour sock hop and and it’s gone through.  The next thing is to get a school dance.  

At the sock hop no one is dancing. We’re all standing around in our socks, girls on one side, guys on the other. Nothing is happening. The music is playing. The lights are up. It’s the gymnasium. It feels like the gymnasium.

So I do it. I cross the greatest chasm.

‘Would you like to dance?” I ask this random girl who I thought was a friend.

“No,” she answered then giggled. I was mortified. Shot down in front of the whole school, it’s just a dance. 

All the girls giggled.The guys laughed. I can walk back across the chasm or ask another girl along the line this side

I moved to the next girl over.  

“Would you like to dance?” I asked politely.

“No, not till other people are dancing, “ she said.

I walked further along to increasing laughter and giggles.

“Would you like to dance?”  

“No’. 

At that point a pretty girl came over and said, “I”d like to dance with you”. We began to dance.’slowly everyone joined in. Lotsof the girls danced lesbian style but none of the guys went gay.

It wasn’t a slow dance thing. The music was all rock and roll. One of the guys with a huge record collection which others added to with loans ran the turntable music through the PA system, it was tinny but music. The dance was  one of those monkey type jerk things where you stand across from your partner shuffling and moving your hands up and down like you’re milking a huge cow.  

“I didn’t dance with you because I like you, Billy Hay. I don’’t dislike you but I hate those girls.  They’re so ignorant and stupid. . They all said they wanted a dance but they only want to dance with their special boys. They’re such rubbish.”

At the end of the song everyone was dancing. We were all having fun.  

“There,” she said. “We got the dance going. Now you can go dance with someone else. I’m sorry those girls were such cows. You’re a nice guy but you’re not my type. I don’t like jocks but you’re a nice guy. Ask another girl now and she’ll dance with you.”

Frankly I don’t know where Kathy was that day.  But I asked another girl to dance and another girl and another girl and they all danced with me. We had a lot of fun. I really liked to dance. Especially those line dances. 

Danny Donahue’s band was on stage. They had their own amps and all that mysterious professional electrical gear. We all stopped the music fo listen to him. We crowded around the stage and he played. Drums, bass guitar and Danny. . There might have been another guitarist.  They were just great. Danny was the best. His voice was special.  All the girls swooned.  Everyone cheered. It was pretty magical. Hearing this incredible group that was from our own school and them being so great.  After they played we went back to dancing. It was only an hour over lunch.  It went well.

The principal at the next council meeting agreed  we could have a dance. Extra curricular activities other than sports were a big deal. He worried about his insurance. They’d been problems at other schools. Teachers didn’t want to monitor. A dance was more unpredictable. Sports was regimented.  This was years ahead of fans using the sports event to wage wars against other countries. Back then sports was just sports and the spectators were all well behaved. The problem with dances was booze.  Kids sneaked booze into dances and all hell broke loose.  

We had permission for the dance. That was the big deal. I had enjoyed arguing for the dance and having the support of the council.  Poitier was there I believe. Grant too. I was in the high school student council too and it overlaps with the student councils I was on in junior high. Wes Hazlitt played a big part. He was wise before his time and could convince management of things. He had this knack for making a deal and getting everyone on board. I came up with ideas and just assumed everyone would be on board.  Wes had finesse.

Nobody messed with him either. He was the strongest guy anyone knew. He had polio so needed to use crutches a lot. This made his arms and shoulders strong, like brick shithouse. No one could last a second against him in an arm wrestle. I even saw him hold handstand for a minute on his crutches. A really crazy funny guy.

The dance was great. Now the lights were turned low. The girls were dressed to the nines. The skirt hems we’re going up and the necklines were dropping. Mini skirts were on tv.  Danny Donahue and his band played. They were the big draw. 

I felt like I was on TV in one of the dance sets that were popular at the time. American Bandstand.We could have been in Los Angeles, London or New York. The music and this dance were just so ‘with it’.  Living in Winnipeg we always felt like we were anything but ‘withit’. We were  outsiders on the world of modern culture. Later when I’d live in London England or San Francisco I’d reflect that our mainstream scene was 10 years out but our fringe was contemporary or ahead of the “scene”. 

Here we were having sock hops and a dance with  Danny was playing the latest Beatles music. There wasn’t sheet music or songbooks in those days. Musicians had to buy a 45 or LP of a group and learn the song by listening to it over and over. Otherwise they had to wait for it to come around on the radio and try and get the song listening for it to come on over a few days or a week. There was recording devices except studio equipment. Danny and his band were playing songs we were all listening to on the radio and they were writing their own songs and music. Danny was a musical genius. It was cutting edge. There were Eve coloured lights. The guys were acting like gentleman and the girls were gorgeous. We were even doing the twist kind of genteel like the way it started.  I was worried the whole time we’d not pull it off. We’d had so much resistance from the administration. This was the doorway to more dances and more contemporary  activities.  Everything could go wrong or nothing could go wrong. When you’re an organizer you don’t really have much time to enjoy the event itself because you’re worrying about everything. 

But when ithe band was ending and the dance was going on,the stupid kids, three of them, guys whose brains were slower to develop than others, began to cause trouble . They began cutting the seats out of the bottom of the chairs and throwing them like frisbees.  I saw them first. I also smelt the booze.  While I was trying to get a dance going they were working their own gig being ‘bad boys’.  Their ambition was to be a gang and they were this weird mix of kids who had a couple who were flunked  Because they were slow in school they had their drivers license. They had 100 cc Honda’s and others with bicycles. The guys with motorcycles had flunked a grade. One guy flunked repeatedly. They were bigger too and smoked. Smoking was being tough.you couldn’t drink till you were 21. 

Without a thought except for the principal having his excuse not to have another dance, dances and sock hops weren’t part of what the administration was paid to have, I just walked right over and stopped the three guys.

“Don’t throw that.’ I said.  “They’ll shut down the dance and we’ll never have another. Can’t you just have fun. Look how much the girls are liking it. If we destroy property the principal won’t let us have anymore dances.”

“Who cares,” the weasel leader said, knife in one hand, chair in the other, holding them like weapons. Here I was appealing to something that had t developed in the guys brain and might never. Selfish and self centered. 

Their girlfriends were standing by scowling. They’d not liked what the guys were doing either but they didn’t like me a do good one bit. 

It had just  seemed like a good idea for them. Destroy comes a whole lot easier than create. Maybe my talking to them made them they see the administration bearing down on them and then police and jail and a swat team or two. Everyone had their dreams. They just hadn’t planned on “goody goody two shoes” Billy Hay hassling them.  They backed down.

I went back to the dance. Mostly I was enjoying listening to Danny and his band. I never knew he was so good. We’d grown up together. Where did this guy get that voice and how did these guys learn how to play their instruments so well together. I was a 5 chord guitar wonder and couldn’t play with any one because I couldn’t tune my guitar and had no idea of harmony with instruments. I could sing a bit but these guys had their instruments all tuned together and were synchronized and had the beat. Everyone was impressed. We really had talent at our school.

“You’ve got to get out of here,” a couple of my friends said, when they approached me. “The gang is waiting outside to beat you up.They say you disrespected one of their girlfriends.”

“I never disrespected one of their girlfriends.”

“She’s saying you didn’t ask her to dance.”

“She was with her boyfriend. I didnt ask a lot of girls to dance. This is bullshit.”

“I know. It’s just an excuse. But the girls are stirring the guys up. They didn’t like you telling the guys to stop ripping up the seats with their knives. “

“Of course that’s it. Now girls want to see you knifed after the dance. They really don’t like the girls on the student council. Everyone’s  saying how great Danny, the band, the council is so they want to ‘send a message ‘’send a message’, where do they get this stiff.’ I asked, thoroughly dumb founded. Gangster talk in Fort Garry. What losers. 

‘They won’t pick on Wes because he’s too strong. Danny has too many friends. I guess they figure you’re the easiest target. They didn’t  like you stopping them destroying stuff.’

“Maybe you should have let the principal handle it.”

“I couldn’t, he would have used it to close down the dance and any further dances.’

“Well, he’s going to do that anyway when they knife you after the dance.”

“Whose going to do it.”

“Robby Baker”.

“I don’t know Robby Baker”.

“His girlfriend is that real skank bitch. She was there when you stopped the other guys destroying the chairs.”

“Was Robby there.”

“No”

“Someone went to get him.  The other guys are afraid of you but Robby said he could beat you.”

‘This is bullshit.!’  Years later I’d learn the line ‘you stand up and you make yourself a target. Then I just had to deal with the knuckle draggers. They’d not contributed to this really good thing so they were going to ride their shitshow on the tails of the dance and Danny. 

I remember realizing back then that their were people who brought the light and the party with them and others who couldn’t do that so didn’t like the light and they called their dark thing the party. I learn to call it evil but then I was just a scared kid figuring things out as I went. I instinctively knew that war was all about place and time. I wasn’t worried about fighting except I didn’t want to fight knives and gangs. It was what the principal predicted and I didn’t want him to be right. He didn’t think kids had maturity.

So I just left the best dance of my life. I went out the back door and sneaked home.  It was half way through the dance. It was my big night. I was so happy and then I was sad. .

They never fought one on one. They started that way but the pack jumped in if the victim was winning or if he went down. It was a no win situation.  

My mom was there when I got home.

“Why are you home so early? “

“No reason.”

She pestered. The mom questions. I was upset. It had been such a big deal.  I told her the whole story. I  insisted she do nothing and that I’d take care of it in the morning.  She promised she’d wouldn’t do anything.

Before dawn I slipped out of my house and rode my bicycle over to where Robbie lived. I don’t know how I knew his house in Wildwood. I guess it was his mother outside taking out the garbage. 

I asked , “Is Robbie home?”

 “He’s a sleep downstairs.. Who are you.?’

‘ His friend”. 

 I walked past her into the house, downstairs into the basement, right into Robbie’s room. He was asleep. .  I sat on the bed.  I waited. He woke with really wide eyes.  Trying to raise himself on his elbows, me looking down at him, hands on my lap.

  “I understand you wanted to fight me. I’m here to do it. Just you and me. We can go outside. No crowds.  One on one.  I’d like that. What about you?’ I spoke really quietly.

“Hey man’ he cried, obviously terrified. 

‘I don’t want t o fight you. It was the girls. We’re cool man. I’m sorry. No way. I’m really sorry man.  It was the girls. I was drinking. I don’t know what was going on but really we’re cool.”

‘Okay’.

I got up and left.

The dance was on Friday night.

On Monday on the way home from school, Robby Baker approached me with some of his friends.

“I just got expelled from school.. assshole. ‘ unlike his lowbrow friends and skank, Robbie was a smart gUy. School meant a lot to him. ‘ your mother phoned the principal and said I threatened her baby. They phoned my mom and now  I’m expelled from school because of you.”

He was really enraged.

I was shocked.

My mother hadn’t told me. She’d promised she wouldn’t do anything. I’d never have told her. 

Robbie Baker punched me three times in the face. ‘Fight back you prick”.  I couldn’t. My mother had betrayed me and Robbie was right, I was a rat and I deserved a beating. I just stood there as he punched me over and over again getting out the rage he rightfully felt. We’d been cool. Now I was the lowest snitch. 

“I’m not fighting you. I’m sorry.  I was wrong to tell my mother. You had enough. ‘ I finally said.

“Yea’ He said and walked away, His knuckles were bleeding, my face was hamburgher. 

I walked away thoroughly dejected. The hangers on were slapping Robby on the back.  

A few months before a guy had come up and punched me three times in the face. I’d said don’t do that three times but he kept punching me. It was over a girl. He wanted her attention. She wanted me.  I had a girl friend so it was a whole drama that played out in his mind, most frustrating  because the girls in general ignored him because he was a creep.  

I hit him.  My one punch dislocated his jaw and facial bones. He was taken by ambulance to hospital where he stayed a few days coming  back to school his face all bruised.  The police had interviewed me and they interviewed the girl.  That’s all that happened.  He attacked me. I defended myself. The girl said she was just talking to me when he attacked for no reason.    I had a reputation.  Now I had another reputation. 

It wasn’t me. It was the creep’s  face. I’d learn years later he had this ‘fragile face syndrome’. Guys like him could never Box.I had the opposite kind of jaw. I could take a punch.  My eye swelled up blue and closed though. I was really bruised too. 

My mom asked what happened. I explained it to her slowly.  Very slowly. I was 15 years old and suddenly a whole lot older.  I didn’t tell her who had done it, denied Robbie did it, but said ‘I had it coming because I was the lowest of the low.’

 I wouldn’t trust her or talk to her about anything important for years.  We were both from the same blood. Irish/Scot. We could hold a resentment.  Loose lips sink ships.  

A couple of the younger little guys from the gang now that Robby had hit me came up and hit me in the next weeks. No reason. Just to show they were tough.  I wouldn’t fight them. They were glad I didn’t fight back. They called me a sissy, maybe I was. 

They surrounded me once. Robby wasn’t there. He’d actually turn out to be an okay guy just caught up in circumstance with a skank girlfriend and lousy friends and alcohol.  These sleaze ball guys with their motorcycles and the others guys on bikes, kids who hung out at the billiards were really losers.. The leader, some slime ball with too much brylcream had a big knife. He didn’t go to school.  He’d tried to kick me but I’d just blocked every kick. Thank God for martial arts training. I’ve blocked a lot of kicks in my life. Just scissoring the arms. He got out this this big 8 inch blade from the pannier on his bike, a baby Harley look alike.  He entertained his gang by stroke across the blade’  The he  came after me. He had it overhand so it was easy to block and then he went under hand . He kept trying to stab me and trying to kick me. I just kept blocking, hoping to tire him out, hoping the other guys didn’t join int. He finally stuck me, grazing my ribs.  He quit then. Maybe he felt it. Maybe he hadn’t meant to take it that far.  Maybe he thought he hit my jeans.  I had a lose jacket on.  I walked away.  Back straight. The blood dripped  into my pants.    My jacket covered it. 

“If you’re not going to fight, well fuck off.” He called at my back. 

The kid was the lousiest fighter I’ve ever come up against.  Left himself wide open and even with a knife he was useless. But I couldn’t fight back because if I did the gang would jump me. One of the kids in the school was permanently brain damaged by these guys. They all got him down and everyone kicked him in the head and left him in the ditch. I’d meet him after he got out of jail years later. His life changed 180 degrees by these ass wads.  A good kid.  He never came back to school.   I knew Jujitsu. I knew  blocks.  I ‘m defensive at the best of times. I don’t how how he got the hit in on the ribs. They didn’t know.  I walked away like nothing happened.  It’s was all about ‘cool’. 

It sure hurt though. I went down the next back lane and looked. Blood all over my side. I had to clean that up and get it bandaged.  I couldn’t let my parents see. For the next week I was my own doctor. I was left with a weird scar but it eventually healed. After that nobody bugged me. I don’t know why.  I was just deemed as a kid who didn’t fight.  Nobody wanted to look like a fool trying to get me either. They might even have been afraid if I did fight back because I certainly could defend myself.  

it took me a while to get over that. I became really depressed. I couldn’t wait till school ended. There was no where safe. I wondered when another kid would jump me. I wondered when the gang would come after me. I wondered when my mother would do something stupid again. I couldn’t talk to my Dad because he was away a lot with work then.  My brother wouldn’t understand. He was all involved with the church and thought I shouldn’t get involved in all that ‘worldly’ stuff. He was more and more into gospel and Billy Graham.  He was playing soccer and popular with the academic set.  He still played badminton.  He liked Elvis. The minister said John Lennon was the devil. Mick Jagger was Satan spawn. The minister railed against pop culture from the pedestal.  

At night I was lying in bed with iodine and bandages on my side. I was skipping gym because I couldn’t change. I said I’d pulled a muscle. It was probably the best neighbourhood and the best  school. There certainly were a lot worse.  Parents and teachers didn’t know anything.   In years a head I’d help dozens of kids who were being bullied.  Their parents and the school administration would deny it. Once with the help of the Winnipeg Police and their agreement to post surveillance on a school they caught an extortionat gang who were bullying kids and taking their lunch money. I was seeing a genius and he was getting routinely shook down. No body had done anything.  They couldn’t believe it happened in that school where judges sent their kids. The bullies were the sons of rich people.   The Winnipeg Police the boy and me.  It was a righteous day. The kid thanked me. The parents thanked me. I thanked the Winnipeg Police.  .  I ended up seeing a whole bunch of geniuses in the years to come, gifted kids, and they all were bullied.  Giftedness is a hidden disability.Probably contributed to the high IQ’s too. In many ways for many kids Canada could be the worst place to be smart and creative. Mediocrity ruled. Some countries and some places even in Canada protected their genius.  All this affected me many years ahead, what I did in life.  Lying in bed in pain with Kleenex bandages leaves a different kind of scar.  Even Freud said, “maybe the paranoids were right’. 

I just got really depressed. One really cold night I walked down to the river bank and lay down in the snow and waited to die. It was 40 below.  I hoped that I’d just go to sleep and freeze to death.  It didn’t happen. I watched the stars. I saw satellites. I wondered about space travel. I froze. I was cold but I didn’t die. My teeth chattered.  I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t move a muscle for hours just laying there. I’d not taken off my clothes.  I was embarrassed about being found naked so I was in pants and a jacket. I should have froze. I didn’t even get frostbite. I just lay there motionless. It seemed like days.  I’d not said anything when I walked out but I must have been gone long enough because  my parents phoned the police.  There was a search out for me just beginning when I walked home and went to bed.

“Where did you go Billy. Are you okay.” I didn’t answer.  I wasn’t answering adults sometimes back then because their questions  were just too stupid.  

My mom and dad were worried about me. I saw that they cared. I didn’t think they did but it was obvious they did. I just went to bed and everything went back to normal the next day.  I went to volley ball practice, went to school, got A’s went to church.  I said my prayers.  

13 years old: hormones, masturbation, ice floes and church camp

13 years old went on forever. We still lived in Fort Gary.  I still went to Viscount Alexander School.  We were no longer in Viscount Alexander Elementary School but now in the Viscount Alexander Junior High School. The former was a bungalow building whereas the latter was two stories.

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.