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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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At 12 years old (or thereabouts) we moved from 911 1 St. NW to 1204 Grafton Ave.
As a child it was a big house, huge, main floor, basement (where I'd play with a chemistry set gifted me for Xmas, the copper sulfate and other chemicals packed in test tubes marked with a skull and crossbones), the upper floor (where the bedrooms were) and the attic, converted into a studio by my mother, where she did her sewing, painting, stained glass, etc. I remember pictures she did for myself and my sister, of us as monkeys, and a spread of Burt Reynolds from a Playgirl magazine with my father's picture pasted over the face.
We had a garage and a big yard, the back of which was converted into a garden that I was expected to weed. I remember not being happy about that. One memory, that of finding a large ashen cinder stuck to the side of the garage, pitching a stone at it to discover that it was not a cinder, it was a bat, and it fell to the ground injured and squeaking, we found a broom and put it out of it's misery...I felt terrible.
All the kids in the neighborhood would frequently assemble to play "Kick The Can", and I had graduated from collecting bottles for change to a paper route. One day while delivering papers I discovered a body, but that's a different story...
If you headed North on the street you would arrive in a few short blocks at the outskirts of town, the north edge of which was bounded by the Coulee, a stagnant stretch of water in which we could catch garter snakes, frogs, and - if we were lucky - mud puppies, or salamanders. There were a few poplar trees, in one of which was built a treehouse which we commandeered to our purpose. The treehouse was a childhood secret, and kids would find old girly magazines and we'd look through them, vaguely excited by the taboo nature of them but not really understanding, only that we were not supposed to be looking at them...
Which brings to mind another memory, of a friend who regularly went through his parents night table and came to school with the most incredible and outlandish tales of what he'd found, he had to be making this all up, didn't he?
In a few places the coulee widened, deepened, became a pond, and we'd find wooden old palettes, stuff them full of sticks and twigs, make rafts and pole about upon it like Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn on the Mississippi...
It was the idyll of childhood, only I hated Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in general, and when being unfairly punished for a poor report card or other misbehaviour would walk west upon the railway out of town hoping to catch sight of the mountains, only returning when I realized the grim reality that I was a long way from where I regarded as home, and that I was only 12 and would have to suffer the injustices of childhood for a few years yet...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Memory
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(Photo credit Corey Bond via: https://saskwatchers2019.blogspot.com/2019/02/robin-hood.)
When I was a kid we (me and whoever) sometimes ended up down by the Robin Hood Flour Mill in Moose Jaw. There was a dirty little creek near to it, in it's shadow, and looking in you'd see crayfish (a novelty to me), old discarded tires, broken medicine bottles, pop bottles, scrap iron slowly rotting away.
It was the early-mid 70s, so environmental concerns were not yet a thing.
Robin Hood was the biggest building in the city, by far, and had the grim reputation of being the place where people that were depressed would come to kill themselves. Drug addits, drop-outs, the love-sick, whoever. Every kid had some 4th or 5th hand version of what would happen if you when you landed, and a few of our teachers as well. You'd end up with your knees through your chest, or spread out like a water balloon, every bone broken and yet still all contained within your skin like a blob, so and so knew an paramedic, police officer, fireman, someone who had been called...
In my childhood it sounded like this was a regular thing.
Probably it wasn't, it would only need to happen once or twice for the community to retain the memory and see that everyone remembered.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Memory
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Gade 7 or 8, St. Agnes High School.
A class of perhaps 20 or 30 kids, of whom 3 I remember as "The Smart Ones".
First there was Robert F., a large, oversized teen-ager who'd been held back a few years. He'd been expelled - again and again - his parents owned a smoke/novelty shop down on Main St. He had the bad habit of telling the teachers to "Fuck Off" and "What are you going to do about it?" and "Smoke the bone...". Which explained why he was so frequently expelled and held back.
We had an art class - I was never good at art, but Robert, he showed some talent. I remember the art teacher, obviously in some ways aware of trouble at home, trying to encourage him, congratulating him on some stencilling he'd done with autumn leaves, and as much as he didn't like criticism he liked praise even less; getting tired of her telling what he could do if he applied himself ended up telling her to "Smoke the bone, you old...".
That was the last we saw of him. I googled him, discovered someone that may or may not have been him, doing well, professional, and so glad that things for him worked out in the end.
Then there was Tommy K., a smaller student, who was forever reading books and chipping in irrelevant facts, the only one I can recall was that the Emperor Nero threw fabulous parties, and the fruit on his table was carved out of amethyst and ivory and other semi-precious gems, and that the guests were compelled by etiquette to eat it. Probably the only fact about Emperor Nero we were equipped to deal with. I recall once being invited to his house, a clapboard shack down near the rail tracks, a bright, bare swinging bulb hanging from the ceiling, his fat mother or grandmother in a rocking chair, and a trap-door in the floor that led into a basement I desperately wanted to explore...
And then there was Joey D. He was by far the most popular kid - again small, an accomplished magician, being invited to his place it was old - his parents, too old to have a kid so young, the house always dimly lit, they collected Royal Doulton figurines, and Joey would warn us against playing too hard, forever reminding us that they were worth a thousand or more dollars apiece.
In the back yard Joey had a swimming pool, one of those above-ground affairs, maybe 4 feet deep, that helped contribute to his popularity, he had parties in which all the most popular kids in school were invited.
I was never so popular that I was invited.
I remember too, Martin R., a friend of mine, quite possibly the least popular kid in school, for reasons which I'll describe here. His ability to release suffocating farts on demand. He was large, far larger than his peers, not just tall but fat, he sweated with the least exertion, and he got permission to exit the classroom whenever he felt any uncertainty in his bowels. He also made spit yo-yo's, which if you don't know involve dribbling a bit of gob or phlegm down his chin, then sucking it back up, and he could let a yo-yo descend a good 2 or 3 feet without losing it, as disgusting as it was the boy kids couldn't help being somewhat impressed.
One day Martin R. did his family tree with his parents, and discovered that he was in some ways related to Joey. Joey probably knew and had kept quiet about it. Joey was not so impressed with the news...
Joey had a habit of missing classes, his parents would keep him out for reasons we weren't privy. He would hand in his note, explain to the rest of the class that he had "Tea With The Queen", and some of the less-bright ones were pretty impressed, myself amongst them.
And Joey got to see films that none of us were allowed to - "The Life of Brian" springs to mind, the Pope himself had forbidden us to go see it, as did the teachers, but Joey, well, Joey led a privileged life.
***
Life passes. In my early 40's I took my son to see a play at Jubilations - a musically themed dinner party restaurant in Calgary. They were bad plays, appealing to a generation a bit older than myself that didn't understand theatre or food. Their plays almost always involved "Elvis" being resurrected and doing some dumb number and saving the day, they were bad enough that my son got a pass to drink wine, he was 13 years old, until the waitress cut him off and gave me shit...
Joey recognized me, stopped by, we caught up on the intervening 30 years. And I understood him a lot better, and there was no reason to understand any more. And when he'd left I explained to the boy that if he didn't do well in theatre this would always be an option, and I think he got the hint...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Memory
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Briefly reliving my childhood - Leonard Fysh Drugs in Moose Jaw.
Somewhere off Main St, downtown, close to the railway station.
I'm probably 12, and I'd gotten hold of one of those old "Science Experiments you can do at home" for kids books, and had been all over town looking for supplies...most of the drugstores had nothing I needed.
The "Make Beautiful Crystals from Borax/Laundry Soap" experiment had been tried, it didn't work out. But there were a lot more...
The front of the drugstore, filled with the standard druggist props, medical aids, mortar/pestles, but the back resembled some old-time apothecary, jars upon jars filled with ...?
I had my list. Start with Ammonium Dichromate, an orange powder that when lit would turn into a fiery volcano spewing toxic carcinogenic green ash all over the neighborhood. They had it, and they sold it to me, and I was in business.
This experiment worked well, exactly as predicted.
And I went back a number of times, money from my paper route to buy things that very few adults, let alone children, could buy now. Magnesium, in long wires, sold by the foot, and this, while tough to light, burned with an incandescant white glow...
Or the glycerin and Potassium Permanganate reaction, buy a bottle of glycerin, add a few sprinkles of the Potassium Permanganate, and soon the mixture would begin to smoke - violent, vile smelling, huge white clouds, and then burst into flames. If you capped the bottle it would explode, which - provided you were out of range, proved even more exciting.
My father discovered the bottle of glycerin and forbid me from any more chemistry experiments, he confused glycerin with nitro-glycerin, and I tried to explain but what parent listens to their 12 year old son?
This "experiment" came in handy in High School, in Edmonton, when a group of us would wander from Louis St. Laurent High School to the adjacent Harry Ainley High School, set up our time-delayed bombs in their bathroom, then return to enjoy the evacuation of the school from the windows of our classroom...
And again in Surrey, where I showed some friends it in the bathroom, and having long since deserted when the fire alarm went off we enjoyed an early recess in the yard, although my teacher was a little suspicious when after a few "trial runs" I started packing up my bag before the alarm, a little too much foreknowledge.