With time the years seem to blur together in the past. I don’t remember if I learned to ride a bicycle at 7 years old or 9 years old. I know by 10 I was riding bicycle all summer.
I was cutting the lawns of neighbours for a dollar an hour by then too. I had a manual push lawn mower. Dad said if I mowed our lawn I could use the mower to mow the neighbours lawns for a business. I don’t remember getting an ‘allowance’. When we ‘needed’ money for something out of the ordinary we’d ask. Mom would give us ‘candy’ money along with the money for the tickets when we walked up to Pembina and Point Road to go to the movies there on Saturday afternoon. ]
Camping is what I remember doing a lot. At first we had the brown canvas tent with the centre pole that slept two adults, 2 kids and the dog Sonny. Next we had a blue six man tent. That gave us lots of room. The truly skookum tent mom loved was a 6 man tent with the mosquito netting extra room. She had the Coleman gas cookstove on a little collapsible table in there. There was a 4 man collapsible metal table and 2 camp stools for us kids and two camp chairs for the parents.
I remember Blue Lake the best. The setting was pristine. We’d camp in the trees right by the lake where the boat launch was. Mom would stay home in the tent reading in her chair inside the mosquito net. My father, brother and I would go out fishing each day in the boat with a 5 hp Johnson motor. I remember first going out fishing with my mom in the boat. She and I spent most of the time untangling knots. I remember whining about that and Dad complaining about my whining. My brother would stoically sit through we squabbles. Mom would defend me as the ‘baby’ and eventually I’d cast the hook before it was time to go back in.
Next I’m on the same lake in the same boat and Mom no longer comes with the ‘men’. The ‘red devil’ lure was the best. I caught pike or jack fish while Dad and my brother seemed to always catch pickerel. Sometimes we’d go ashore and explore. There was a great wooded path to another lake beyond a fall. We couldn’t get the boat there but we’d walk up there and cast from the rocks.
I can remember going back to Blue Lake for years, not consecutively but repeatedly. Dad had 2 weeks holidays in the summer and if we weren’t going on a road trip with camping and the occasional motel then we were camping. Blue Lake was a favourite because of the pickerel. You could look almost to the bottom of the lake.
Kirk’s family would go to their cottage on Minaki Lake. The Minaki Resort was a great old 30’s classic with stripped logs, a true work of wilderness beauty. Part of the CNR CAnada resort system that included Banff Hotel and other famous luxury accommodations. Apparently in the 30’s Canada was a favourite place where the elite could take a wilderness train trip and see bears and moose. Minaki was that sort of resort place.
Jake MacDonald years later would write the quintessential book about the place, The Houseboat Chronicles, a genius of a read for anyone whose spent time in the Canadian north.
I joined Kirk for a week or so once or twice at the cottage. His mother was the best of cooks and she would make these fabulous meals in the kitchen that looked out on the lake. A loon would be landing always. Ducks taking off. Fish jumping. An eagle overhead. Mr. Laidlaw when he was there would run with his crutches and jump into the freezing cold water naked. The boys, Kirk, Tom and I would cannon ball off the dock in the morning too. The family ritual. The beautiful older sisters would with the mother later swim. If the girls were there bathing suits for the boys were necessary. Otherwise Kirk and I went naked.
We later belong to the YMCA where all the boys swam naked. Skinny dipping wasn’t unusual. My family, my mother being Baptist, didn’t do that sort of thing but it was fun at the Laidlaws. Running naked down the dock full speed as a kid then launching oneself off into the cold water. Now that’s the way to wake up.
During the day Kirk and I would explore the back woods. I remember a morning spent making spears and then the rest of the morning trying to spear a grouse. The grouse is the dumbest bird alive but somehow we could not hit it despite it’s running and stopping a few times to let us each get a throw at it.
As boys we always had knives. Little closing blade ‘jack knife’s that would in years to come grow to be the hand sized multi tool creations put out by the Swiss Army Knife company.
We’d whittle and talk and hike. We’d canoe a lot too. Just the two of us. 10 years old and maybe later again when we were 12.
I especially remember one shenanigans we got up to. Don’t know why this one sticks. We decided we were so dark with the summer. We walked around shirtless, in sneakers and shorts, and turned almost black with the summer sun. We picked berries which we mostly ate ourselves. Delicious ontario blue berries. Competing with the black bears we’d avoid. If they were in a patch they got there first. We left them to their feeding.
The CNR Passenger train went by each day and we’d often see rows of cars with passengers looking out the window at us kids. We’d stand and wave. We figured we were part of the ‘experience’ of the ‘north’ for these travellers. I don’t know who thought it up but when the train came next we were standing on a hill as it whipped by at 80 miles an hour. We had taken off our shorts and were standing waving, big smiles on our face. They were taking pictures.
We figures we must have shown up on a Japanese tourist picture at least. We laughed so much thinking they’d think we were Indians (indigenous), because we looked so brown. We poked each other and giggled about them telling their folks overseas about seeing bears and native children. We didn’t tell our parents. There was a lot Kirk and I didn’t tell our parents. We were often getting into situations that would have caused a parent nightmares. At the time we were reading the Hardy Boys and that was us. Also Kipling was big and we’d imagine we were behind enemy lines sneaking up on turtles and gophers. We laughed a lot.
Later in the day we’d return.
I liked to fish and took the boat out but Kirk got bored fishing. It was an issue. I really liked to fish so here he was with his friend visitting and I’d be up fishing and he’d want to go hiking. His mother actually told me they didn’t need any more fish. I loved fishing at Minaki and caught my first bass there.I couldn’t imagine Kirk not liking fishing. Instead he’d like to talk and walk so we did more of that. Kirk was always the greatest guy to talk with.
We’d share all manner of ideas about parents, school, God. For as long as I can remember Kirk and I talked about God, how we came here, what we were. We talked about what we were going to be when we grew up. I wanted to be a jet fight pilot then. I don’t remember what Kirk wanted. Wish I did. I’d love to be a fly on the wall and hear those conversations again. I have the flavour of them. Philosophical ,theological,curious,and pure. Untainted by so much that came later.
I loved the gas lamps at Kirk’s Minaki Cottage. The lighting of these. His mother asking his father if it was time. The discussion of the lighting of the gas lamps. The decision to light the lamps. The circles of yellow light that appeared in the dusk around the lights.
That was at the main cabin. We slep out in another cabin called the ‘boys’ cabin. I never even went in the ‘girls’ cabin. Totally taboo. Though not like the ‘boys’ cabin. Everyone came and went there. But at night the lamps would come on and there’d be a time for reading. Listening to the night creatures. Winding down of the day. Quiet time.
Then ‘remember to brush your teeth’ and ‘off to bed’. We’d giggle in the cabin and fall asleep while the parents stayed up later sitting around the soft glow of the gas lights.
The moon and stars were something over the still blue lake. An occasional cloud floating overhead.
In the summer too Kirk’s two older sisters would put on plays in the back yard of their house across the back lane from us in Winnipeg. They’d write them themselves and then they’d recruit us kids to be the actors and actresses. It was not uncommon for there to be 5 or more in the ‘cast’ and the plays would go on for hours in preparation. It really was fun. As a kid coming up with things to do in the summer was a challenge as that is so hard to believe for an adult. But the older sisters and older brothers usually were doing ‘neat’ things and would include us. More often than not a parent would tell them ‘watch your brother’ and we’d be included. With my brother Ron, it would be making and fixing things. Going to the store could be an event. I look at my dog when he follows me and think of myself following older children in much the same way. Happy to be part of the pack, a part of an ‘adventure’.
The biggest event of 1962 was Space. NASA was big in my home. I had NASA paraphernalia from somewhere. I had a picture of Cape Canaveral too. We all watched the rocket launches and the space men in their astronaut suits. Scott Carpenter orbited the earth in a space capsule, the first man in space. We’d paid attention to the monkeys. It was the “space race’. I think the Russians put up a dog too. The first man in space was the big thing. As a family we were all in front of the tv with mom making pop corn. Star Trek wouldn’t begin for another 4 years.
I remember one night when all the men gathered in the back lane on a summer night. A huge cigar shape had appeared in the sky. Saucer like lights were leaving and returning to it. Ed, the pilot, my father, ex Air Force with the best 10 power binoculars, and Kirk’s dad the chemist and University alumni were there with others. Us kids were standing around knowing enough to be silent.
“It’s definitely a UFO.” Ed said. He’d gone back to the house and phoned the Air Force that night, some number he knew. “They said it was a weather phenomena.”
“I’ve never seen a weather phenomena like that.” Said Dad.
“It’s got to be a UFO. They seem to be just stopping and starting with those little ship leaving and coming.”
‘That’s what I see, Gord.”
“Can’t see much more in the binoculars. The saucers seem to be spinning maybe but the cigar thing is just all a light.”
“They wouldn’t be landing with the ships coming and going.” Said another adult, I think the school teacher.
“They could be getting water.” I don’t know why someone thought about water but as earthlings we obviously prize our water so assumed others would too.
“I think they’re just looking about. An exploration.” Said Gord.
“I saw some mighty strange things flying and I don’t like that they won’t tell us what things are. That’s sure as hell not a weather phenomena.” Ed said.
All the men agreed. But most had been in the military and knew the ways of the ‘higher ups’.
That observations and several others were common that summer but that one was the most memorable. I expect in retrospect the launching of a man in space attracted attention from elsewhere but as a kid we were just blown away by the idea of aliens visitting earth, hoping they’d land and tell us stories of what it was like where they came from. Maybe we’d meet alien kids our own age.
The Kennedy’s were in the White House. Everyone agreed that Jackie Kennedy was the most beautiful First Lady. We all loved President Kennedy. He was so young but he’d been wounded in the war.
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring came out that year in the New Yorker. I’d read it 10 years later and be all concerned and then 10 years later wonder why the fish hadn’t all died. Acid rain was a scarey idea but no one melted like they did in the horror movies. I just kept fishing and remembering noticing that what had been said simply wasn’t true. I was studying science by the time I made that realization so had one less thing to worry about. As a kid I had a lot of worries. I’ve always tended to be a worrier. My aunt said worrying ran in her family. We were all kind of high strung. Dad was more down to earth.
We really did worry the Russians were going to invade through the arctic or that we’d be hit by a nuclear bomb. We knew as kids we were on the flight path of the Russian missiles. The news gave us hog prices and grain prices. We were on the prairies. Trains and great graineries really mattered. The stockyards were important. Grandad had a ranch and conversations about agriculture were a matter of news and topics in the kitchen. The radio was in the kitchen and that’s where we all heard CJOB. “Beefs and bouquets” was the radio call in talk show my parents listened to in the morning.
I first learned about Cuba then.
It was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was the year everything changed. That was the year I learned that I couldn’t trust adults. That was the year I saw all the adults were afraid.
Looking back in the Encyclopedia at that year I see the Navy Seals came into being. Adolf Eichman was hung. There were plane crashes and train crashes. There were snow storms that got front page news because they happened out of season. Extreme weather events occurred but weather was weather. Engel vs Vitale cases against prayers in school were rulee prayers unconstitutional but in exchange male nudity was also ruled as not pornographic. The first Walmart and first Kmart appeared. Andy Warhol premiered his Campbell’s Soup Cans exhibit. The Rolling Stones made their debut in London. Telstar relayed the first live television signal across the Atlantic. Marilyn Monroe died. Nelson Mandela was arrested. Typhoon Wanda struck Hong Kong. China and India conflict over borders lead to the Sino Indo War. Canadian Alouette 1 , the first spaceship built outside the US or Soviet Union was launched from California. Johnny Carson took over the Tonight Show. The Beatles “love love me do’ was released. Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolf appeared on Broadway. . Dr. No ,the first James Bond Film premiered.The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. I said that already. It warrants repeating. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life was published. The Vietnam War continued. Lawrence of Arabia, featuring Peter O’Toole, premiered
Jim Carey, Canadian actor and comedian and Eddie Izard, British actor and comedian were born. Mathew Broderick American actor was born. Bon Jovi and Jan Arden, American and Canadian singers were born. Tom Cruise and Wesley Snipes American actors were born. Demi Moore and Jodi Foster, American Actresses, were born .
Writers, William Faulkner and Herman Hesse died. Marylyn Monroe died. Neils Bohr Died. Eleanor Roosevelt died.
The Nobel Prize for Medicine went to Watson and Crick
The Nobel Prize for Literature went to John Steinbeck.
The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. I said that. It changed my world. I knew a new kind of fear. The lonely kind.
Posts
