working and sinning

I took my first job when I was twelve. Not many of my peers had jobs at that age but my dad was raised by a farm boy and considered it his duty to make sure we were saddled with a strong work ethic early on. My older brother had been a carrier for the Toronto Star newspaper for several years. He’d amassed many prized possessions that he was now willing to sell me – for cash. My parents weren’t about to buy me these important consumer items – stereos, records, bicycles, basketballs…so I put the bit in my mouth and slung that bag over my shoulder and began the lifelong trudge for cash.

Not like Tyler Trap’s parents. He lived two doors down, was an only child, and got whatever he asked for. His dad had worked for Canadian Tire since high school. He’d always taken the stock options on his paycheque instead of Christmas bonuses. It meant that by forty, he was financially secure enough to retire to a career as a Postal Carrier. Working for Canada Post in those days was like retirement with four hours of daily exercise and a good paycheque. I dreaded going over to Tyler’s the day after Christmas. It took the shine off of my consumer high to see the loot his parents had laid out.

Tyler’s mom was a full time church lady. She had a big smile, big hair, big boobs and a big old car with batmobile fins from the fifties. She sang in the gospel choir at the Baptist church. I went along with Tyler once – only to find that I was a statistic in a recruitment campaign. The worship was fun and everyone was excited – especially about the prizes for the most new recruits. Not unlike bringing in new customers for the Toronto Star.

No, I was in the same boat as Ross Hudman. He lived across the street from Tyler. His parents were German immigrants and made my parents seem like spendthrifts. His older brother was a few years older than my big brother. Roman would soon quit school to start working the bar and nightclub scene. Ross had a younger sister like me too. So we’d sympathize over the latest cruel inequity our family’s had come up with to make us miserable as the three of us, Tyler, Ross and I, walked the mile to Fairmount Public school.

Ross got up in the dawn hours and delivered the Globe and Mail to our suburban Scarborough neighbours. I delivered the Star after school. Ours was a middle middle class street. A few streets to the east were the blue collar middle class homes and a few streets to the west were upper middle class homes. Roy’s route took him further west where mine took me further east. I had it better because the distance between homes decreased as you went east - and the tips increased. Ross’s reward for climbing to the big homes on the hill was a pat on the back and regular pay. I might get stiffed the odd week but at least I could cut across the lawns – no high fences and big hedges between homes on my route. Less to protect but more to share seemed to be the way of things in the cross section of life that was my world.

Ross was new to the neighbourhood. His parent’s thick German accents were the first non-anglo voices I’d heard. Tyler and I had been fast friends since my family moved in the summer before grade one. We were attached at the hip, liked all the same things, watched all the same TV shows and re-enacted them daily. Whether we were fighting off intergalactic Romulans in his basement wreckroom, or wrestling Tarzan’s white hunters in his backyard pool, the bad guys all had German accents – just like Ross parents.

The Hudman family moved in at the end of our Grade Five year. Ross wasn’t into pretend games. He introduced us to the art of playing practical jokes on neighbours – mostly just Nicky Nicky nine door – which was about how many times you could ring someone’s front door and run away before they came out in a rage to chase us. But Ross was definitely the third wheel in our trio.

But other things were changing in my world that year too. My body was becoming large. And not just tall. I was still the tallest kid in the class – even though I’d been “accelerated”. Me and six other kids had done grades 4 and 5 together. So, not only was my body accelerating me into a fat, goofy-looking, uncoordinated kid – but my brain had pushed me into a nerd status among the tough kids.

The tough kids shared common ground with the good boys in their love of sports. Sports had changed that year too. They were no longer games we played. They had acquired a competitive edge that meant if you sucked at sports you’d be cut from the team – cuts that went deeper than who won and lost. If you were a brain and good in sports, the bad guys left you alone. Without status on the field – I found I was a target – a big one.

The last day of grade five, out at the bicycle racks, the guys gathered to see who was in who’s class next year. It came down to who was on the class team that would help beat the other class’s team. Bruce and Steve, the guys who always did the playground team picking, were taking stock. When Bruce got to me he said “Amos you’re in our class? Well you suck at sports so you’re no help.”

He wasn’t being particularly cruel. Just stating the facts. I’d been assigned a seat on the bench marked “Loser”.

Getting fat that year was really bad timing. Not only had something changed about sports but over that summer the fairer sex had somehow transformed from pests to sex objects. We were all obsessed with breasts. And I don’t mean just the boys and girls of our class – girls with the purchase of bras and boys with the budding fruit they held. No, our whole world was titified. The sexual revolution was in full swing. Playboy mansion scenarios were becoming mythologized in the media as if it were Mount Olympus. Teenage beach movies filled our pubescent heads with the idea that “Life’s a Beach”. Our mothers even brought porn into our living rooms. Cosmo magazines were the next best thing to Playboys to a hyper-inquistive twelve year old – and beat the underwear section of the Eaton’s catalogue by a mile.

Tyler had always been really happy to see me return from the family cottage in September. But that summer, he’d spent the long Scarbro days hanging out with Ross Hudman. They’d developed a repertoire of inside jokes and had some fun teaching me their new games. It didn’t take long to discover that the object of the game was to ditch me.

My active imagination was now put to work with a new task – pretending that I didn’t care about being ditched. Pretending to laugh along as a wobbly third wheel. Pretending while learning to protect my dignity with a brave face. Tears wouldn’t do. Temper tantrums might get my parents sympathy when my brother would pull such tricks on me. But I was swimming with sharks now – I found that my friends had teeth and would tear me apart at the slightest taste of blood.

Tyler’s betrayal of our “best friends” relationship was a kick in the nuts. But what are you gonna do? As a kid your social choices are limited to your neighbourhood. You get along with whoever is within bicycling distance or go it alone. I chose to go it alone.

I pulled back into my own world. Like I’ve said – it was a well-developed world of books and scenarios of one adventure after another. It was a world full of excitement and risk. It was a world that tested our limits in life and death missions. It was a world I’d shared with Tyler. But now I shut that door and kept it to myself.

The door had been closing slowly – pushed shut as my peer group put away first their stuffed toys and then their GI Joes and finally their Hot Wheel cars. Imagination was longer “fun”. Fun was to be found within the rules of the playing field. Only girls and gays would spend time playing without rules. Rules defined how to keep score – who were the winners and losers – and that was how you “played”.

Probably my greatest liability in that game of life - that game we all must play – the sport of survival – is that I have always taken things very seriously. To me, at the heart of it all, GOD is watching and always measuring my capacity for passion. If I can’t be passionate about what I’m doing. If it doesn’t matter – really – if it isn’t about life and love and a sacred purpose that makes risks small and the blood pump – then it isn’t really worth my time.

If I played soccer or football or streethockey, GOD was watching. If I wasn’t playing a heroic part. If I was, in fact, a liability for the team. Then I was wasting my time. Might as well waste it by myself than waste it with friends who would sideline me.

If I talked with a girl, it was about whether we would spend the rest of our lives together. No - I wouldn’t actually talk with a girl about that – I wasn’t mentally ill. It was just that I was always watching my self through GOD’s eyes. And GOD was passionate and full of purpose and deadly serious – even if HE did enjoy silly kids’ Sunday school songs – it was really all about those slow trudging sacred straight-faced hymns.

My Mission Impossible – should I choose to accept it – was to go undercover. I would play along as best I could with whatever scenario life presented – public school, piano lessons, Sunday school, hanging out with friends, spending time with extended family. Only I would know that I was in fact pursuing a purpose worth risking my life over. Only I, me and GOD, would be able to measure the progress, the slow careful patient steps that would result, in the end, after sacrifice and suffering, in GOD’s justice and mercy.

Ross Hudman was Mephistopheles. The demon sent to tempt and test and train me. Little did he know. Little did I know. I was a double agent. While Ross dragged me down to the devil’s ground - out of the high and mighty clouds that a minister’s son lived in – GOD was preparing me to live in a world of deception and betrayal. I learned that my mission, my secret purpose, could be and would be pursued in any circumstance. The straight and narrow path of a good Baptist boy was not for me. My road would wind and curve and dip and peak and get mired and muddy. While many eyes might see it as wrong, GOD and I would keep the faith.

It was the paper route that eventually drew Ross and I together. Slowly Tyler came to take his turn as the third wheel in our trio. There were several factors. I had accelerated grades ahead of Tyler so that now Ross and I were going into grade 6 while Tyler was still in the 5th grade. It didn’t make a big difference but it mattered.

Tyler was good at sports. He joined in after school sports teams. I had my paper route to do instead. Ross was even worse at sports than me. I was fat and uncoordinated. He was skinny and equally uncoordinated. That was another factor that made a difference.

Sin was maybe the big divide that Tyler couldn’t cross. Ross had taken to smoking cigarettes. At first it was a big secret. One of those big secrets that he and Tyler shared that kept me on the outside. But for Ross, the best part of sinning was sharing it. He told me and swore me to secrecy. The parents couldn’t’ know.

Ross would smoke on his early morning paper route. At first he’d steal a smoke from his mother’s pack. It helped him to wake up in those early morning hours, he explained. Soon he was buying his own pack at the corner store. I remember the thrill of the adventure, Tyler, Ross and I going to the corner store to buy his first pack of smokes. We shared in the risk he was taking - to see if he the people who’d been selling us candy and pop and comic books for years would now enter into this conspiracy of silence between us and the adult world.

We hurried down to the woods of the ravine and watched Ross light up his first purchased cigarette. He got me to take a puff but Tyler wouldn’t touch it. He’d been warned about GOD’s wrath for sinners. The United Church GOD that I served wasn’t too worried about such trespasses. In the end it was theology that split up our trio.

Tyler couldn’t take GOD with him into sin and I could. Tyler’s world was divided into GOD’s world the THE world. I’d been taught that GOD is love. Love, of course, is to be found everywhere. I didn’t see sin as a deep pit, or high wall, that separated the saved and sinners. Maybe it was because I knew so many ministers and knew that it wasn’t the lack of sin that made them saints.

It was the kind of lesson I couldn’t put my finger for you - just something within the way my dad taught me, the way he talked about other people and treated people. I never saw sin as anything more than the clothes you chose to wear. Sin might define who you hang out with. But GOD could see us all naked in our birthday suits and couldn’t be fooled by behaviour. GOD was love and even smokers could love.

My parents were worried though. They asked me if Ross was smoking. I knew immediately that Tyler had told his mom and his mom had told my mom and now I was being put to the test. I told my parents that just because Ross was smoking didn’t mean that I was gonna start.

They were worried, just like Tyler’s mom, about the bad influence he might have on me. Tyler’s mom put a wedge between her son and Ross. But I asked my parents about whether they didn’t think that I could be a good influence on Ross, they were able to see things upside down. Ultimately, they trusted me. Even though they never knew whether I was on that secret mission from GOD or not – they trusted that I was.

In the years to come I gave them lots of reasons to suspect differently. I took a puff of pretty much whatever Ross offered me after that. While I never did take to smoking, I did get into pot and porn and rock and roll and bars and well, I never did get laid - but that’s another story.

The worst part about the paper route was also the best part. Both Ross and I hated going “collecting”. So, we’d go together to keep each other company and give each other courage. Knocking on doors and shaking people down for the week’s paper money could bring out all kinds of strange reactions in folks. Some were cold and stiff. Some were rude and would treat us like pests. Some were terrific. Some were just strange.

Roy would do imitations of each of them as we approached. He could nail the character of every and any customer and have me splitting my sides laughing by the time we got to the door. If it was my turn to collect he’d make little side comments while the customer dug in purses or pockets that would produce guffaws and strange, annoyed looks from the adults.

After collecting we’d buy pop and chips and head for Ross’ basement. Inside the lid of his parent’s old stereophonic cabinet Roy would put record after record on the turntable. My brother had Beatles and Beach Boys and Simon and Garfunkle records. Roy’s brother was a few years older. He was into much heavier fare. I was introduce to the funk of Bad Company; the rage of Black Sabbath (I knew I shouldn’t be listening to such obviously satanic-driven art but it rang true with something in me). Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention broke taboos and Alice Cooper made a circus of it.

And Led Zeppelin. We knew their first album well – every song - and I remember getting excited by Roy’s anticipation as he played me their second offering. Roy’s enthusiasm drew me in. Before there were DJs, Roy was my own personal tour guide of rock and roll music. The hours I spent reading he spent listening. It was like he would pull out the best chapters and verses and delight in the sharing of them. We just sat and listened. It wasn’t background – it was a taste of the life waiting in our foregrounds.

Roy would offer comments and cues – “listen to this part – - - don’t you just love that?” And I did. The heavy rocking thunderous rolls of sound drew out my adolescent, hormone-raging angst. The sexual energy of the Lemon Song made us laugh and squeezed out of us our own sensuality. The driving sorrow of “Heartbreaker” made me love the Blues before I’d ever heard them. Jimmy Page’s peels of guitar made your guts soar – taking your anger and throwing it to the stars. Robert Plant’s vocals; his moans and cries and the way he put everything into every song was heroically inspiring. John Paul Jones was the invisible master adding the bass lines and synthesizer that held it all together. But it was the drumming. The drumming of John Bonham that pulled me in and makes me a lifelong fan. Led Zeppelin provided the beat that I walk to - to this day. This music – its variety and range unique and unduplicated by any others - is the Beethoven of our age.

Ramble On would seduce you into a gentle country rhythm that starts like a Crosby Stills and Nash song but bursts into heavy surges of metal only to take you back to a gentle rambling.
I’ve got to Ramble On
I’ve got to find the Queen of all my dreams
How years ago in days of old when magic filled the air…

Those basement jam sessions brought me, more than anything else – more than girls, more than pubic hair and deepening voice, more than parental or peer pressure – into adolescence. I found in the music the expression of the wide-ranging emotions, thoughts, fears, taboos, and guts that it would take to live life fully. I knew, or felt, in some uncanny way that this music was the safety net that I could always fall into when the tightrope-walking act I practiced every day failed to suspend me.

My closest friends have always been people who could turn me on to new music. Sometimes I find stuff I like on my own. But mostly I rely on the passions of others. When I find someone who has searched out and dug deep into an artist or a genre with passion, I love to hitch my wagon and get taken for a ride. Nothing yet however has replaced my first love – the tortuous courting and friendship of Ross Hudman who broke my hymen and opened up my soul to rock and roll.

Lets go for a spin

It was a sleepless night in the Otonabee residence. I lay there waiting for the escape of sleep. My first year of university was in mid-flight, mid-winter, mid-term exams. I was already tiring of the routine. Feeling like a rat in a concrete maze walking the hallways down to the cafeteria three times a day. Running on the exercise wheel of classes and performing tricks on paper for the trainers. Where was this taking me? Was it preparing me for another maze to run my adult life through? I wanted open roads. I needed open roads.

Staring at the ceiling, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a tiny red glow just outside my window. I sat up and pushed the large sliding window aside. Along with the winter chill, three large Scarboro boy-men climbed through the ground floor window.
“What are you guys doin here?”
“We’re on a road trip. You comin?”

I’m sure that responsible thoughts must have crossed my mind. Thoughts like “you’ve got studying to do” or “you’ve got an exam in two days”. But I’m also sure that I was dressed and out the window with my old high school buddies before even Dave had time to finish his beer. It was a matter of honour. To turn down a road trip would be a both a slap in the face to my old comrades and an admission that I was becoming soft in the academic cushiness of Trent University.

Chuck was driving his 1972 Lincoln Continental and the four of us piled in. Why he’d bought that old boat was beyond me. The cost of keeping it in gas was astronomical. But Chuck had the cash. Instead of being a poverty stricken student he’d opted to work downtown at the Lever Brothers plant where his Dad was a supervisor. Of course a Lincoln Continental is a perfect road trip vehicle. It sat six with elbow room. Eight could cram in when necessary. Leather seats, lots of leg room, and Chuck had added a wicked stereo system. Add beer and weed and it was a party on wheels.

Dave and Doug had cracked under the pressure of exams at Western University in London and escaped back home to Scarboro to regroup. Chuck had come up with just the thing – a road trip to Dave’s family’s Pigeon River cottage. It was the site of many long drunken philosophical discussions among this band of Pigeon River Pirates. On this night they were all excited about some new adventure they’d come across. On the way out of Peterboro they explained.

On their way to pick me up the Lincoln had ventured out onto the ice of Chemong Lake. At Bridgenorth there’s a boat ramp and cottagers had created a snow road to cross the Lake.
“You have to check this out Amos, you’re not going to believe it!”
Chuck turned off the road and steered down the steep incline. First his front fender bumped onto the lake – kissing it hello - then the rear fender dragged down the last bit of snowy shoreline – like clenched fingers trying to get a last hold on safety.

Before the Lincoln stopped bouncing Chuck stomped the gas pedal to the floor. As the beast lurched ahead we got sucked a little deeper into the upholstery. Dave turned to look at me and Doug in the back and we must have mirrored the big wide grin on his face. Surging into the night across a darkened lake I could feel my blood increasing speed with the car. It raced up to the tempo of the Led Zeppelin on the stereo as Chuck leaned forward and gave the volume a crank. We lowered the windows and let the freezing night air sweep away whatever remained in our overstuffed university heads.
“You loving this Amos?” Chuck asked over his shoulder.
As the only suitable answer - I let out a long whooping war cry.
“Yeah? – well check this out.”
With his left hand he switched off the lights. His right hand at the top of the steering wheel suddenly dropped to the bottom and with only a moment’s hesitation the great steel coffin went into a spin. I was pinned to the door like a wet leaf on the windshield. We spun like a top into the black night.
“WHOOOOEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!” was the Pirate’s unison cry – our fates joined together tempting death to take us all right now.

As the ride slowly lost velocity and came to a halt in a cloud of snow. Doug, Dave and I said together “Do it again!” urging Chuck on like 3 year olds. Chemong Lake is a big long lake. With the lights back on Chuck headed back down the lake, got the boat up to speed, and cranked her again. And again. And again.

Young men have great imaginations when it comes to thrills and adventures. And Chuck was just getting started. It was like he had diagnosed what ailed us and was doling out a remedy to suit. We’d stopped for a pee break and were checking out the stars. He popped the trunk and said “Get in boys”.

Dave and I took the first shift. The trunk was so huge that even I could stretch out between wheel wells. There was plenty of room for the two of us.
The anticipation in that trunk, building as the mighty V8 roared into the night, building as Dave and I muttered oaths and prayers, building until finally the ton of steel, leather and rubber spun wildly round and round. Being locked into a frozen blackened box, racing through the night waiting to blindly spin out of control could be a great form of psychological torture. Testing the limits of fear (and stupidity) made life worth living – or so it seemed to our adrenaline driven brains.

The problem with defying death is that the adrenaline becomes more addicting than nicotine. Like smoking, smart people never start. Life is short enough already – right?

What makes this story fun to tell - instead of tragic - is the simple fact that we survived. How many young men have done equally fun and stupid things and ended up as casualties? Just take a look at auto insurance statistics for young men and you’ll get a good idea. Telling and retelling these adventures to each other over brews by the fire in years to come, we’d get philosophical and ask “why?” “Why would we survive when others perished?”

I suppose such musings have always been the by-product of the road traveled from testosterone to danger to adrenaline. Whether that road is traveled because of events beyond control like war or weather, or whether bored young men take to that road just looking for opportunities to test the power of testosterone, it’s a road we crave. Our generation was born into a time of peace but it sure didn’t stop us from digging up our own kind of brave and pointless battles.

These battles were diversions from the thing that really terrified us. The straight line of our lives that lay ahead. School, jobs, marriage, family, mortgages. They lay on the road ahead as sure as death. The wild freedom we had just won as young men was slipping quickly through our fingers – like the night turning to day just over the horizon. Spinning through the dark out of control was a perfect antidote for such linear inevitability.

Chuck was driving and I was co-pilot now. The guys in the back were yelling “go nuts! go nuts!” so Chuck kept his foot down as the speedometer past it’s midpoint. “Go nuts! go nuts!” cheered the cargo and the car became a hurtling bullet through the night.
“What’s that up ahead Chuck?” questioned the trusty co-pilot.
“What? I don’t see anything.” answered the pilot letting up on the gas. And then, the dark blur up ahead came into focus.
“IT”S THE SHORE!” we screamed together. We hit it like Evil Kneivel hitting a ramp. Chuck stomped on the brakes but that had as much effect as our screams – we were in the air. As the Lincoln took flight I saw us crashing through a cottage picture window. It could just as easily have been a stand of oak trees we hurtled into. No need to fear the future. The future had just compressed into a super-natural breath-taking instant - now.

The Lincoln landed like a cat on all fours with a thud that bounced us off the roof. It seems we’d landed in a parking lot. Chuck spun the wheel, booted the gas down and steered us back over the embankment and onto the lake before I could even compose my prayer of thanksgiving.

The muffled yells from the trunk were a little less enthusiastic now and a lot more angry. Looking at each other and just giving our heads a shake Chuck stopped the car and we got out and lifted the trunk. Doug and Dave sprang out at us like Lazarus from the grave. The air was as blue as their bruises.
“What the fuck happened?”
“Well, you guys said – go nuts.” protested Chuck.
“We were saying – donuts – do more donuts” they swore, “we wanted you to spin the car in some more DONUTS!”.
“Oh” we said.

What were the chances of us hitting a parking lot along that cottage shoreline? Why were we so lucky?

“You go when you’re times up - when your number’s called.” is a popular proposition. “We’re spared because God has something important for us still to do.” is another good one. “Guardian angels guided us.” is one I like. But “Who knows?” is one of my favourites. It’s often followed by “but I sure am glad to be here!”.

The Cottagers probably called the cops on us. But as our cups of luck, or fate, or grace, were full that day, we headed home before having to answer any tough questions. It was time to get back to the books. I suppose I didn’t have all the facts that might have been crammed into my head – ready for that exam. But I do know that I couldn’t have been in a better frame of mind.

I was having a hard time giving a Shit

I was having a hard time trying to give a shit myself. I mean, if no one else really cared - then why should I? Ms. LaFreniere was on my case and she was the one teacher in the place I actually respected. Not that she was the only good teacher at R.H.King Collegiate Institute, it was just that she was someone you could be honest with and know that she wouldn’t lay the whole teacher should/must/can’t trip on you.

For example, her English classroom looked out onto the Smoking Lounge, an outdoor space where students were allowed to smoke. It was an alcove out of the wind. There was even an open space under a second story Science Room so you could get in out of the rain. This was the seventies. Being cool and smoking went hand in glove. Today it’s funny that the best outdoor space would be designated as the Smoking area. Probably everyone smoked there out of the wind and the rain and the School Administration figured it was simpler just to go with the flow and make it official – like they actually had a say in it. I didn’t smoke tobacco – it turned my stomach – but reserved my lungs for a finer herb.

So there we were in Ms. LaFreniere’s grade 12 English class discussing one of her whacked-out books. Herman Hesse’s “Steppenwolf”, Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”, and Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” were a few of the pieces she gave us to chew over.

A high point of that year was when I said that “On the Road” could be summed up with one word. When Mrs. LaFrenniere agreed that “it” was it, Tracy Fish flipped out. Tracy was a jock and a bully. I’d been the brunt of his treatments before. He couldn’t let this little victory of mine go unchallenged. He said there was no way a whole book could be summed up with just one word. I just calmly said “either you get “it” Tracy or you don’t.” It was my own version of browbeating – revenge - and it felt great.

So anyway, this one day I spotted Tracy Fish out in the Smoking Lounge lighting up a joint. I went over to the window and yelled at him “Hey Fish – quit skipping class and get in here.” thinking I was being pretty funny. He yells back at me “Hey Brown - why don’t you get out here and help me smoke this?” So, recognizing a chance to befriend a bully, I jumped up on the window sill, climbed out the window, hopped to the ground and strolled over to join him. Before I could get a good toke, three other guys had followed me out the window. What can I say? I suppose I have some natural leadership tendencies. Mrs. LaFreniere wasn’t impressed and stood at the window yelling “You guys get in here!” in her best shot at being angry while trying to hide the amusement in her eyes. Fish and I developed a mutual respect from that day on.

She wore long hippie skirts but I couldn’t picture her as a full-fledged psychedelic flower child. She was way too smart to be too far out there. I could see her at Rochdale though. Rochdale College, just around the corner from Yorkdale’s hippy haven was Toronto’s version of Haight-Ashbury. It was a ten storey, University sanctioned, experiment in communal living. The guy we bought our Mexican $20 an ounce weed from had told us stories about Rochdale. Those were the legendary glory days of free love, turning on and dropping out. In 1976, long after the doors of Rochdale were welded shut, we were still getting high on the waves that followed those sixties tsunamis.

As kids, we’d watched it all go by on television news and seen the pictures of naked youth in LIFE magazines in the dentist’s office. By now, made-for-TV movies were presenting a cheesy version of it all for our consumption. I wasn’t allowed to go see the Woodstock or Easy Rider movies and there were no home rental videos back then.

As I think about it - its more like we were in the trough between waves. The late sixties summer-of-love wave was the big one. The early seventies produced the most amazing music as artists took the freedom unleashed by the sixties and ran with it in all kinds of amazing directions. But now, in the mid-seventies, the Beatles had split up. Hendrix and Joplin the guy from the Doors were dead and the big waves had passed by.

The hippies were in their thirties now and dropping back in – getting jobs as high school teachers for example. The times were like a hung-over re-hashing of the big bash the night before. It was like stargazing and someone says “Wow – did you see that? That was the most amazing shooting star I’ve ever seen!” And all you can say is “Really? That’s great man.” and keep looking up at the heavens – waiting for something to happen.

The Sex Pistols and The Ramones hadn’t hit my radar yet. If it wasn’t on CHUM FM, I hadn’t heard it. The mood hadn’t turned Punk-angry yet. Things were still simmering in a depressed and lost discontent. We had no cause to fight for. No anti-Vietnam or Civil Rights high ground to hammer away from. The Sandanistas’ powder keg was yet to be ignited. Beer kegs and no shortage of narcotics kept things dampened down and dazed. All we had to rebel against was our own priviledge and prosperity. Not a very inspiring target. Self-defeat was where we were at. Angry, young and bored were the punk lyrics waiting to be written about us.

The one extra-curricular activity I risked getting involved in was Student Council politics. Teenage culture meant that anyone who put themselves out trying to achieve something – sports, academics, arts, fashion, school council, or dating – automatically became a target. Every move was scrutinized, criticized, mocked. If you were really good in sports you might achieve something close to social status.

I was useless in sports and good in class, so I didn’t have much of a reputation to risk. Student Council ran the school dances and raised money for sports uniforms and was supposed to carry the school spirit. My brother had been School President three years earlier and had had great successes hiring local big name bands like Lighthouse and Fludd and even Rush to sell out crowds. Once there’d even been a small riot afterwards with Scarbro toughs taking on the boys in blue from 51 Division in the parking lot.

Things had definitely cooled off since. We could have school dances again after a year’s ban on them but then the teachers went on a work-to-rule strike that meant all teacher-led sports and clubs got dropped. That year’s School President was a real freak. Dillon Donaldson wore thick glasses, scraggly beard, and hair down to his belt. At a Grateful Dead concert, he’d fit right in. In Scarborough, he was out there. He ran a cynical election campaign on the platform - “If you think this school’s a joke – vote for me.” and won by a landslide. He moved into the Student Council office just off the stage of the auditorium. The smell of dope smoke hung in the heavy stage curtains where the Student Council meetings were held.

I’d managed to get elected as the Grade 11 representative, due to a lack of competition and my brother’s reputation, and got to know Dillon just a bit that fall of 1975. Things were going okay. Dillon was very smart and had a quirky sense of humour. He was getting things done and we ran a fairly successful dance – it wasn’t a flop. Then, just after Christmas, he hung himself in the Student Council office. I remember hearing the news from our Vice President Paul before it was announced and it was unreal. Death hadn’t crossed my suburban footpaths before and suicide seemed like something that happened in other places but not here. I was playing a minor part in the first drama on the school stage that wasn’t amateur. We had no idea how to act this one out. An aura of doom descended on the school like a heavy wet wool blanket. We got used to it but it pretty much lasted for the rest of the year. If a school could become depressed, we were wading through it.

The Vice-President was a good guy. He was smart and sensible and I realized he was probably pretty much running things for Dillon anyway. Paul showed me something about leading in tough times. When others would have just said “fuck it”, he stood up and stoically got the drum beating again. He brought a sense of dignity and responsibility into the Student Council meetings. The edge had come off of the cynicism and self-satire of what we were doing. I did what I could to help him organize the last big dance of the year. When the dance was over he took me into the inner sanctum of the S.A.C. office and convinced me to run the next year for President. It was basically the “it’s a dirty job – but someone’s got to do it.” speech.

I recruited Steve Miller to run as my Vice-President. He’d always been funny and popular and a good athlete and I knew I’d need the votes he could bring in. I thought it was game over when Billy De Marco announced he was running. Billy was a really funny guy. He’d been our football team’s drunken mascot the year before and was a natural clown. He could get us to work up some school pride without making us feel like we were getting all American about it. Having pride without acting proud – the measure of Canadian cool. The school was ready for a good comic laugh.

I would have voted for Billy myself. But I knew enough about the Student Council to know that it’d take more than laughs to make it work. I couldn’t see Billy actually getting things done. With an uncommon sense of responsibility - and totally prepared for failure - I organized my campaign. I knew that I had almost zero popular coinage to work with. I also knew that I had almost nothing to lose. Just the attempt at the office meant being labeled a super-loser for the attempt. Every time I thought about that, terror would rise up like a cliff-edge out-of-control dream. Maybe it was the terror that finally pushed me into it. I decided to go big. If I was going to fall on my face in front of the whole school, I might as well make a show of it.

Steve talked up all the grade nine and ten girls who thought, as he did, that he was hot stuff. I recruited the conscientious girls from the Student Council and we got them to help make signs and poster the school with them. We hung a huge banner in the school cafeteria – something that had never been done. Our slogan was “IF YOU GIVE A SH*T, VOTE AMOS FOR PRESIDENT”. We didn’t ask permission. We just borrowed the ladders from the janitors and put it up after everyone had left for the day.

First class next morning Steve and I got called out of class down to the principal’s office. A.C.Burr was a big square-headed, deep monotoned voiced, subtle-humoured man. He was probably an excellent administrator but as far as we students were concerned he was a huge humourless cop. His presence in the school had a dampening effect on the raging hormones of teenage boys. He was not amused by our banner.

“You have to look at it this way sir” I began, “It’s a challenge to the student body. You know how bad student morale is at this school. That’s why they brought you in isn’t it Mr. Burr? If Billy DeMarco gets elected you know that things are only going to get more out of control. That banner is a test whether - deep down – beneath the jokes and the cynicism – those students actually care. Do you believe that our students really care about this school Mr. Burr? I paused and he replied in his slow, low, monotone… “Wellllll, ummmm, yes I do believe that our students care about this school.”
“Then I need your support Mr. Burr.” I picked it up again. “If you take that banner down, it’ll show that this is your school – which it is – but that we students have no say and there’s no reason to really care. But if you decide to leave that banner where it is – it’ll show the students that you and I have a working arrangement. That we’re in this together and we believe in them. Do you believe in those students Mr. Burr.”
“Welllll, ummmm, yes, of course I believe in our students.”
“I thought you did sir. Thanks very much for your support. I think that together we can do some good things with this school next year.” I stood up and put my hand out to shake on it. I glanced back at Steve. He was sitting there with his mouth open. I jerked my head to get him standing too while Mr. Burr was pondering whether or not to shake my hand. He did. Then he shook Steve’s hand and wished us good luck with the campaign and we were out of there.

The fact that the banner stayed gave us some credibility for sure. And it made them think. Not that anyone would actually admit to giving a shit about the school - but maybe someone should eh?

I was still sure I would lose to a Joker. I figured we could probably get the conscientious vote. But Billy would get the stoners and the Italian vote. We were definitely outnumbered. Steve was ready to bail. He wanted to drop out of the race before we were humiliated. His idea was that we could save some face by making a joke of it – “who gives a shit about being President anyway” right? I had to threaten him to stay with it. I told him if he quit he could forget me helping him with his essays. He was a good talker but a terrible writer. He depended on me to keep his grades where his parents would let him out of the house to date his latest true love.

Talking Steve into it helped me convince myself that we had a chance. Part of me really wanted to be school president. I knew that I could do a good job at it. But I also knew that winning school elections was not about who could do the best job. It was a popularity contest pure and simple. I believed in our cause and somehow, from somewhere, got the guts to keep going. Even though I was sure we would lose, I suppose there was a streak of faith in the student body – that they could do the right thing. Or, maybe it was my religious upbringing – a combination of a hope for miracles and a passion for lost causes.

The voting happened right after a whole school assembly in the cafeteria. Candidates gave their speeches and then everyone went and voted. All the Athletic Reps went first. They were all jocks and got lots of cheers and jeers and everyone knew that the best athletes would win the offices they wanted. No geeks bothered trying for the Athletic Association offices. Then the Grade Representatives went next. Each grade elected two reps to the Student Council. The speeches were pretty much what you’d expect. There wasn’t a lot of competition for office and both the grade 9 and grade 13 reps got in because no one else was running.

The School President speeches were saved for last. Billy was going first. As he approached the podium there was a buzz of excitement that ran through the cafeteria. What outrageous things would he say? Just looking at Billy made you smile and everyone was ready for a good laugh. But he wasn’t hamming it up in front of the bleachers now. As soon as he started talking you could tell that he was really nervous. Maybe the fact that he was sober had something to do with it. The audience went silent. Billy was reading his speech like he was stumbling through Shakespeare – awkward and stilted and totally unsure of himself. It soon became painfully obvious that these weren’t his words. As he stumbled on the auditorium rumbled with comments. Billy noticed and stopped reading and gave a weak laugh but didn’t know what else to do except keep reading. Watching this natural funny man read a dull speech was sad – like seeing a wild animal on a leash.

Billy’s flop was the door that opened up for me. I just had to walk through it now. And I did. As nervous as I was, I was not afraid. I knew that I could deliver a good speech and I trusted my message. The speech had come together for me in the early hours of that same morning and it was sitting in me like something heavy. It weighed me down and grounded me so that when I walked to the podium, it was like I belonged there.

I unloaded the speech on them. I made them laugh. I played up the “Giving a Sh*t” thing and really pushed the angle that I wasn’t afraid to stand up to our Neanderthal School Principal. I referred to him as “Big Al” with him sitting right there on stage – not smiling as I looked back to him. It was perfect. He looked pissed off but did nothing to stop me. My speech caught those who had already written me off by surprise. They had to look again - there was some wit, and some rebel spirit, behind the geeky exterior.

Steve’s speech was unusually self-effacing and not cocky at all - and very short. We sent them out to the voting polls with a laugh. I later found out that Billy’s speech was written by his cousin from another school. It got his cousin elected and it got me elected too.

I have to say that it was an incredible high getting elected School President. It totally went to my head. I loved the fact that as I walked the school hallways people looked at me instead of through me or past me. Sure, it also earned me a fair amount of ridicule from the too-cool-for-school lads. But now I was a geek with an office. My own office with a key. As they jammed their coats into narrow lockers, I threw my stuff on my couch or desk while I made calls on my Presidential phone. Now there was an edge of jealousy in their jibes.

They would groan as teachers would excuse me from yet another class for important Student Council business that needed attending to. I would cruise the halls memorizing where all the beautiful girls were at which time of the day so I could bump into them at the end of class.

I wasn’t all show though. We got the year off to a good start with another crowd pleaser. Student I.D. cards were the big fundraiser of the year. It filled the coffers for the year’s sports expenses and set the operating budget for the Student Council expenses. Selling school spirit was tough. The cards would get you discounts at dances and sports events. But why spend ten bucks on a card if you’re never gonna use it? After last year’s depression, no one was sure whether it was cool to care or not.

So I introduced for the first time a laminated photo Student I.D. card. Instead of the usual cardboard business card that you’d lose within a few days of buying it, you could now possess an official looking pice of identification. We hired a company to come and do the photos and they gave us the job of typing the names and birthdates on the cards and running them through the laminating machine.

We did a grade a day starting with the senior class. In those days, Grade 13 students were 18 years old and eligible to drink. When word got out that we were producing laminated photo I.D. with your birthdate of choice under the plastic, there was an enthusiastic line-up of under-age drinkers happy to pay $10 for such official looking fake I.D.

Public drunkenness was way more socially acceptable in the seventies (before mothers got MADD) and bars and Liquor Stores would take any reasonable excuse to sell booze to minors. We raised a record amount of funds for the S.A.C. coffers that year. Our teacher advisor Ms. Lafreniere was very impressed. At our next meeting, the rest of the Student Council reps gave some knowing smirks as she sang our praises, but no one spilled the beans.

The next challenge was the first Dance of the year. This would tell whether we were worthy of the office – or not. We were conservative in our choice of a Band for the first school dance. I didn’t think we couldn’t pull off the attendance needed to pay for a band like Rush. It was a heady experience for a 16 year old to go through the glossy photos and marketing mailings from every bunch of musicians in Toronto.

We decided to go with an old reliable. Liverpool was a Beatles cover band and had pulled in a crowd at our school before. They weren’t cheap, but weren’t looking for the big name bucks either. We pulled in just enough to pay the band and the cops and the cases of beer for our student volunteers in my office afterwards.

At sixteen, I managed to pull off a high watermark of confidence that I haven’t seen since. I look back with admiration at that kid and wonder where it came from. A smart operator emerged from behind those geek glasses. A set of contact lenses, being known by everyone in the school, and keys to my own office made me king of the world. Except for getting rejected in my stab at dating the school’s most elusive beauty – that was a real kick in the nuts – I was riding high.

Did the power go to my head? Definitely! I got called in to the Principal’s office halfway through the year. He told me that I had the highest class absentee rate of any student in the school. Because I was a good student, teachers were willing to let me off classes to attend to Student Council business. Often, I would just wander the hallways or hang in my office.

Sometimes I’d drop in to chat with Kiki Mohammed the Guidance Counsellor. He was as bored as I was and we’d have long philosophical talks about how education should really be done. He assured me that as long as I got a B+ average, I could get into any university. “No future employer will ever look at your high school accomplishments”, he assured me, “so why knock yourself out?”. Being from Pakistan wasn’t very popular in those days. Paki jokes were being told on FM radio. I, for one however, thought Kiki was pretty cool and took his professional advice to heart.

My power-drunk attitude, combined with a general lethargy among students that winter, made me wonder “what’s it all about anyway?”. I’d finally relented to our Social Convenor’s demands for a disco dance. He was from one of the two black families in our school. We were a working-class hard rock school and I tried to tell him that it would bomb but he was insistent. I fronted him the funds to hire the DJ but told him he’d have to pay the cops from the take at the door. (Notice how this was now a personal decision and not a Student Council vote?)

I personally refused to attend the dance not wanting to tarnish my reputation – keeping a good ten-foot-pole between me and the Disco scene. I got a call at home that night. He didn’t have the cash to pay the cops. I showed up with the chequebook and rescued them. There were about two dozen girls, one black guy, and one gay guy dancing up a storm under a glitter ball. Me and the cops just shook our heads and wondered at this strange culture transplanting itself into Scarboro turf.





Enthusiasm was in short supply. My initial burst of adrenaline had run out. High school is life’s first endurance test. Learning to deal with the boredom of classes from teachers who’re bored with their subjects and impatient with students who don’t totally suck up to them. Almost as bad as the boredom of the daily drama of who’s in and who’s not. As if it mattered. Sticking it out meant finding something to get you through. If it wasn’t sports, or academics, then drugs were an interesting option. But really, they were just another distraction while you put in your time waiting for puberty to wear off and adult cares to kick in.

Mrs. LaFreniere was on my case. She was typically so easy-going and supportive that this “get-serious” talk kind of caught my attention. Like I said before, she was my English teacher and I think she managed to pose the lifting-of-school-spirit as a quest.
On the quest there is always a point where the hero loses track of his sense of direction. He is waylaid and distracted. He forgets who he is and why he is pursuing the holy grail. I was in that place – mired down in the game-playing of high school and forgetting that I was there for a reason.

How she did it, I don’t know. But she got the juices flowing. I went home angry at her for pushing me – but knowing she was right. That night out of the soup my universe I cooked up a plan to launch a talent show.

It wasn’t exactly an original idea, but it hadn’t been tried in years. I knew it’d be met with resistance by the rest of the Student Council. So, I pitched it as the start of a new school tradition. We’d call it “The Annual” and this was to be “the First Annual Annual”.

The big night came. We’d rented a stage, lighting, and a sound system for the gymnasium. The classy old auditorium had been torn down the year before – did I mention that? Yeah, the classy old brick building that was the first secondary school in Scarbro had been condemned as a fire hazard and torn down. They’d built a new structure clad in corrugated steel. It looked like a factory from the outside and felt like an antiseptic medical institution inside. Are you starting to get the picture of what I’m talking about? What it was like to try to create a wave in a millpond? Well, the talent show made a splash.

Steve and I rented tuxedos as the evenings’ Masters of Ceremony. Surprisingly the seats filled up. There’d been a bit of a buzz around some school talent. A couple of brothers had pulled together a rock band that covered Rush tunes. Rush was homegrown Toronto rock and very solid music. The Santern brothers had to have talent to cover those tunes – and the school came out to see them. Would they crash and burn, or could they pull it off?

We gave the opening act to Bernie Fitzgerald. He was a member of the computer club in the days when you had to know code to use a computer. In other words – a real geek. I knew that he was a major Bob Dylan fan and a bit of a head. Being a geek myself, I had sympathies with Bernie and his crowd and they convinced me he was good.

He took the stage and gave us his best Bob Dylan impression - a performance with heart. He banged out the tunes, blew a harp attached to his guitar and sang with as raspy a voice as any teenager could. The performance earned him a healthy response. It was the first surprise of the evening.

The next act was even a bigger surprise. You know that scrawny little guy in your class that looked like he was three years younger than everyone else? You know how he got picked on in gym class? You remember his bone-white legs in white shorts looking like two sticks holding up a marshmallow? Well, we discovered that night what he did at night. Instead of wasting time at strip malls and drinking in basements like most of us, he was working up a comedy routine. On the stage that night, he transformed himself into Rich Little. His impersonations of Richard Nixon and Bill Cosby were really good – and the jokes behind the imitiations were funny. The humour - and the surprise of this guy pulling it off - combined to generate cheers from the audience. These students were actually impressed. It was like they were saying “Hey, maybe this school has something worth appreciating.”

The Santerns were on next. Pete was the drummer and in my Functions and Relations class. He was a good guy I thought. His older brother Frank was definitely a dick though. In the negotiations for this evening we’d bashed heads as he made one demand after another. This was their debut at their own school and as far as he was concerned it was all about them. To me, they were the evenings big act, but also a big risk. I thought Frank was asking way too much and pushing it. We both thought we were doing each other a big favour. Turns out we were.

Frank got all the money and the fame and I got the satisfaction of pulling off something they said, and I thought, couldn’t be done. The boys rocked the place. Steve pulled off Geddy Lee’s high pitched wails and Pete did a very decent job of putting down Alex Lifesons’ rhythms. Lorne’s older brother put out the bass line with competence. We were impressed. They even did a tune of their own that didn’t suck at all.

They did a full set and would have done more if I hadn’t pulled the plug on them. It was getting late and we had one more act. I encouraged people to stay in their seats because we had yet one more surprise for them. Mr. Manesh, our new long-haired Egyptian Chemistry teacher was going to give us a song. Mr. Manesh was very young, very hip, and pretty timid about being a teacher. He used to beg us to stop cheating during his tests. We knew he was way too cool to actually discipline us. But we had no idea just how cool he was until that night.

He took the stage with his guitar and in his broken English introduced his song “Castles in the Air”. It’s remarkable that I can remember the title of that song. Usually, I can’t remember names and titles for shit. But Mr. Manesh made a memorable evening remarkable. After the loud, hard-rocking tunes that spoke to us of where we’d come from, he put out a quiet, sophisticated ballad that told us where we still had to go.

Students were still talking about that night weeks later. I got a lot of credit for making it happen and it seemed to get the school spirit through the slush of a Scarboro winter. There was one more dance in the school year. The “Greasball Boogey Band” was a gang of guys who pretended to be greasers from the 50’s. It was popular to have a 50’s dress up day back then. All the guys got to do their best greaser tough guy imitations and the girls dressed up either as either cheerleaders or sluts. The band put on a big act and the dance was another break-even affair.

The year almost slid away into oblivion and it was me this time that got things whipped up into leaving the year with a finale. I re-wrote the Student Council constitution; creating a more cooperative and less hierarchic system. I limited the powers of President and broadened the Counicl so it wouldn’t be open to the kind of exploitation and single-minded decision-making I’d exhibited. I called a whole school assembly to explain it and have the student body vote on it. I think they voted for it because they didn’t really understand the difference and when you are a teenager “change is good.”

Somehow we convinced the Principal to give us a day off at the end of the year for a School Spirit day. We organized games and music at the newly created Bluffer’s Park at the base of Brimley Avenue. An amazing number of students actually showed up and participated and we raised money – leaving funds in the coffers for next year’s Council.

Grade 13 was an exercise in stamina. High School had no more lessons to give me – I was sure. I didn’t run for Student Council again. I’d outgrown it. Been there – done that. The teachers were out to prove that they were “on to me” and felt they had to give me a tough time after letting me have such an easy ride the year before.

I’d spoiled my own reputation with the new Student’s Council by spreading a rumour that Steve and I had gone skiing in Quebec with S.A.C. funds the winter before. I got a kick out of seeing the rumour spread and my reputation trashed. I was into self-abuse in a big way. I got a real satisfaction out of confusing people, keeping them guessing with their misperceptions and assumptions about who I really was.

I love to play with those perceptions I guess because I really do care what people think of me. I care way too much and that really bugs me. As much as I work at only caring about what I know to be my own truth, my feet remain glued to this earth with the gravity of communal judgment.

This telling of this tale of my political career is, I suppose, a combination of pride and expose. I have to say that I got a swell of pride (without being proud) when my daughter’s youth group leader told me about her performance in her high school talent show. I already knew that she was attending the R.H.King newly named – “Academy”. I’d heard that they’d brought in a new regime complete with school uniforms and mandatory extra-curricular performances and it had whipped up a demand from parents looking for some spit and polish from their education dollars. She probably wondered, and I didn’t tell her, why I got a big grin on my face when describing this annual talent show, she called it “The Annual”. It was a nice surprise. Maybe I really did give a shit after all.

On the Road

I don’t know what my parents were thinking when they let me leave Scarborough with Dave Horseman mid-summer 1976. We’d each saved up $400 by working at the Shell self-serve gas station and car wash on evenings and weekends. The trail for young men from Ontario to

Alberta’s oil fields was well worn in those days. But we weren’t looking for work.
My brother had given me his copy of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”. The tales of freedom and discovery that sent a generation “on the Road” in the sixties was still working its magic on me in the seventies. Kerouac made the getting from A to B of hitchhiking into a spiritual quest. Dave was my Dean Moriarty; slightly older and tougher and street-wise. His life had shoved him ahead into a way of dealing with the world that was bold.

I don’t know how spiritual Dave and I were at sixteen. I do know that we had surplus hormones raging through our bodies and we needed to set them free. We were heading for adventure. Deeply spiritual, deeply horny, deeply looking for any trouble that wouldn’t kill us or put us in jail, we were hungry and tired of the same old Scarboro fare.

We flew to Edmonton where Dave’s older brother had once shared an apartment with Rick Proudfoot. Rick was a roughneck on oil rigs out of Edmonton. He was maybe 21 or 22 but to us – he was a matured man. He was the man. The fact that he would even talk to us – let alone invite us along for the ride – was a great honour. I was surprised that he seemed perfectly okay with putting up two kids from his old high school looking for a western adventure. Rick was a burly, hairy, and very friendly guy. He quickly became our hero.

Dave was the youngest in a family of five tough kids. His firefighter dad had died when Dave was real young and his mom worked long shifts as a nurse. Dave was raised by two much older brothers who were known to be as tough as they were smart. His two sisters were just as smart and from what I could tell – not exactly the motherly types. Dave had learned how to take a beating – verbal and physical - early on.

My first memories of Dave Horseman are of his challenges to my innocent childhood state. Whenever our paths would cross in the neighbourhood, he’d call me names and try to provoke me into a fight to win back my self-respect. I would decline the offer and run. I had no interest in fighting real people. Imaginary battles were just fine with me. And self-respect wasn’t a big commodity in my life - certainly not worth blood and bruises.

I had a big brother too so was used to getting verbally and physically assaulted. The problem with fighting for me was that it was way too emotionally charged. Good schoolyard fighters like Dave made a sport of it. For me, these scraps took on Biblical significance. Fighting was against the God of Love and a punch in the face was to me a spiritual attack. Tears would well up and I’d cry not because I was in pain but because the emotion of it all would overwhelm me.
Because I was a large kid I was a target for small bullies like Dave looking to win points in the schoolyard. He finally cornered me one day after school and I was trapped by a circle of classmates. I refused to fight but Dave just tackled me to ground anyways. He was in the process of turning my hair green with grass stains when I simply stood up. Dave’s arms and legs were still wrapped around me, so he ended up looking like a chimpanzee hugging me off the ground. The jury of peers circling us broke up laughing and Dave just had to let go, drop to the ground, and laugh along with it. I had won the fight and Dave’s respect without throwing a punch. He pretty much left me alone after that.

It was wit again that formed a common bond between us in high school. I had become tired of academic achievement as my mark of social status and was working on becoming a smart ass instead. Dave and I began competing for number of classes skipped in a week. Extra points were awarded for getting kicked out of a class. Music class was the easiest.

Mr. McManus was a smart ass himself and couldn’t stand the competition from the likes of me. Near the end of the grade 11 year, I boasted to Dave that I would get kicked out of class without saying a word. I knew that McManus had had it with me. I simply stood by my stand-up bass with bow poised and when our teacher, baton in hand, did a scan of his band’s readiness, I gave him my best big wide in-your-face smart-ass smile.
“Get out Brown!” he snapped.
Dave exploded a guffaw into his poised trumpet with a “BLAAATT”.
“You too Horseman!”

We were raiding Dave’s fridge at home making massive sandwiches, still laughing about that one, when the school called. Mrs. Horseman was getting ready for her shift at the hospital. She picked up the phone and it was the principal – I guessed – calling about the incident with Dave and I. She listened, then flatly responded “Why are you bothering me about this – he’s your problem when he’s at school.” and hung up. She turned to Dave. “What are your marks like now?”
“Still straight “A”s.” he said not looking at her.

And that was the end of that. The Horseman house fascinated me. There was no God there. There was no suffering of fools or weaklings. There was never a hint of false courtesy. No tenderness for hurt feelings. No keeping up of appearances. And no fear of petty authorities like school principals or priests or the such. Those were all luxuries. In my home they were deemed essential and it was fascinating to see how love, respect, honesty and hard work were rooted in that home without the shrubbery of manners. Once you got past the big snarling black dog Sniff (by matching his snarl) – you found an inner circle of respect.

Roughneck Rick was between jobs waiting for the union to call. He had lots of time and money to burn. We’d ride in the back of his Trans Am, sipping rye whisky from the bottle (it made me choke - but I kept choking). He’d take us to house parties or bars or wherever he and his gorgeous girlfriend, Anne, were going. Long dark hair and big dark eyes, Anne was a very sexy woman - and again – so friendly. She gave us tips on how to pick up women. (Yeah right I thought – “hey babe, let’s hitchhike back to my pup tent!”).

Days we’d hang out in the apartment, recovering from the night’s adventures. One day we were visited by a real live ex-biker who’d done time for nearly murdering a cop right in front of my dad’s church. The stories he’d tell us curled our hair. We lapped it all up. He was the friendliest criminal I’d ever met. He was the only criminal I’d ever met.

After maybe a week of western orientation, Rick was heading back to the rigs and it was time for us to be in the mountains. He drove us to the outskirts of Edmonton and wished us well. We stuck our thumbs out inviting chance to bring us luck. I’d done a fair bit of hitchhiking around southern Ontario. Roy Robson and I would escape Scarboro for a day – taking our fishing poles on the Markham Road bus up to the 401 ramp where we’d catch a ride east. Our only plan was to get to water and fish – wherever whoever stopped for us might be heading. Once we made it all the way up to Lake Simcoe outside of Brechin before we headed home. We once rode with an alcoholic salesman who’d stop at every Legion and buy us a beer. At the fourth Legion we told him we were gonna check out the pond at the edge of town. I left my bobber hanging from the hydro wires alongside the Uxbridge pond. It was there for years. We once rode on a haywagon with a country kid who showed us his burlap bag full of baby raccoons. We always made it back to Scarboro before dark.

But two teenagers with big backpacks were having a rough time getting a ride outside of Edmonton. At the end of July cars were full of kids and camping equipment and had no room for two extra riders. We stood by the road all morning long. It was approaching lunchtime and our stomachs were growling so we came up with a sneaky teenager-type trick. (Desperate times call for desperate measures.) One of us would sit off in the bushes with the packs while the other hitched. If we got a ride our story was that “our buddy was taking a pee while you just happened to stop – do you mind if we squeeze in?”

We soon got a ride with a guy who’d been driving all night and needed one of us to keep him awake. I jumped into the back of his pick-up while Dave took the job of keeping the driver talking up front.

Riding in the open air, the wind whipping past, Alberta foothills appearing on either side, the mountains somewhere ahead, was all that I’d come here for. It felt like my mission had been accomplished – and we were just getting started.

Somewhere past Edson the driver decided to get a motel room and we were out of luck. Dave tried to convince him that he could drive the truck for him – but we were soon back at the side of the road. We got a ride out of town about 20 miles and then – nothing. We tossed a Frisbee back and forth, laughed about our adventures so far and bitched and complained about the lack of rides.

While Dave was “peeing” in the woods, a late 50’s Chevy pick-up with a home-made camper on the back stopped. The driver was a thin young farmer-looking guy in a straw hat with long black hair and a beard under it. We could see he wasn’t too amused about our two for one deal, but he got out and opened up his camper for us to jam our packs into. We crammed into the cab of the pick-up – Dave straddling the four on the floor shift - and we were off. John was heading to the mountains to camp for the week and would take us right to a campsite outside of Jasper. What luck! He soon warmed to us and seemed happy to have some company – a couple of green and wild Ontario boys probably reminded him of his own first adventures out of Ontario.

The thing you couldn’t help noticing about John was that he had his left hand on the wheel and a hook on the wheel where his right hand used to be. The hook was two stainless steel question marks that he could open and close at will it seemed. It wasn’t far into our introductions when Dave – not bothered by manners – asked John about the hook. He patiently told us the story of the sawmill accident back in Ontario.

Over the next few days we were to discover just how handy one could be without a hand. John was a very cool cat and we grew to respect his ways. Meeting him was just the kind of gift the road could present - if you opened yourself up to what it had to offer.

John was a natural teacher. Wise, subtle humour, never hurried, generously opening the book of his life. The maybe six years he had on us made him a child of the sixties. In other words - John was a hippy. I’d never met a hippy before either (just like with criminals - I only had a TV caricature in my head) He patiently shared with us how he’d carved out a life in the mountains at the edge of a small town. The hippy ethic he showed us – was to be generous, free of judgments, and boldly open with the choices one makes. For two young jokers coming out of an Archie comic book-suburban existence, it felt like we’d walked into a novel new way of being. But first, we had to pass the test.

We arrived at the campsite outside of Jasper and got set up. Dave and I unrolled the pup tent, put it up and threw our sleeping bags inside – no cookstove, no food, no fuss-no muss. John just opened up the back door of his camper, pulled out some cold Lethbridge Pilsner beers, and popped off the caps for us with a snap of his hook. Dave and I looked at each other - very impressive. We grew more impressed as he demonstrated an even greater feat of dexterity with his hook - nimbly rolling a joint at the picnic table.

Weed was nothing new to us. We’d been smoking pot for well over a year already. The guy who ran the Car Wash at the gas station where we worked kept us supplied with some good $20 an ounce Mexican. He personally hand cleaned it of sticks and seeds and sold only enough to keep himself in free dope.

So we shared easily in this communion with John. Anyone who smokes pot knows that there is a society one joins when one gets high for the first time. After that, when you meet another smoker, there is a shared common ground you meet upon. But whether we smoked or not wasn’t the test.

Sharing the reefer at our picnic table, we chatted and commented on the fine quality of the weed. As the joint neared it’s end, when a roach clip is often produced to keep one’s finger from burning while the last and best of the joint is consumed, John clamped the roach in his hook. With a twist of his left hand, he pulled the hook off and offered it to Dave.

I was glad it was Dave he handed it to first. I immediately sensed that this was a test – just how cool would we be about using John’s hook? On one level it was just a tool; a practical device like a knife or a fork. On another level – a level that marijuana makes more potent – we held in our hands a symbol of dramatic, traumatic change. John’s life had been radically changed at the sawmill – the kind of change we are taught to fear and cautioned against from infancy. The hook set John apart. He was no longer normal. He was one of them – the tragically Disabled. We held in our hands what made him an outcast. Would we lift it to our lips in a sacred toke or would we awkwardly laugh and be repelled by the weird other-ness of it?

I guess we passed. We didn’t laugh. We were cool about it. Each did a toke in turn and passed it back to John. I said “that’s pretty handy John” and only realized the pun after it was out of my mouth.
“Exactly” he said. And then it was cool to share a laugh about it. Over the next days we got to watch the reaction of others with this rite of initiation into John’s circle of trust.
John told us he was planning to make a pilgrimage the next day to a special place just outside of Jasper. Would we like to go along? We checked our calendars and there wasn’t anything planned so – “why not?” Free Camp, John explained was a few miles out of town. Every time he was in Jasper, he would go out of his way for a visit.

Next morning, we jumped into the cab of his old Chev and drove out beyond the town limits to where the railway tracks crossed the highway. “We’re on foot from here” he told us. Following the tracks, we encountered a steady trickle of people moving back and forth along a well-worn path.

They were not exactly the tourists you’d see crowding the streets and stores of Jasper. They all had lots of hair. Long hair, beards, beads. No polyester blends in their clothing. Denim and cotton and well-worn wool sweaters seemed the trend for this crowd. There were teenagers like us there. And there were some wise old folks in their forties. But most of these people were somewhere in their twenties. Arriving at Free Camp, taking the whole scene in, I figured there must have been a few hundred hippies camped out in this Sherwood Forest.

Tree forts were popular. Some of these folks had gone to great effort to build themselves platforms up above the ground. Sheets of clear plastic hung between trees and served as walls and canopies and blocked ones view from straying too far in any one direction. Just as well. Our suburban eyes were full of wonders. Dave and I hung back and let John take the lead. He had a few names of people he enquired about as we made our way in among this band of merry men and women.

Dave pulled at my arm “Amos – these people are freaks. We gotta get out of here!” I had never seen Dave so unraveled. He was supposed to be the tough guy. He’d led me into Taverns and Biker Bars and once scared off College thugs trying to raid our case of beer. But now, there was something that unnerved him about this place. I don’t know what it was. Maybe he thought we’d have to go naked at some point if we stayed too long? Maybe it was the lack of “tough” that was unsettling. People here were friendly and relaxed. Very relaxed.

We came to a large circle with log benches around a big fire pit. An older guy, John’s senior by a couple of decades, welcomed us and offered us steel mugs. We were taken up to where a huge cauldron –like I’d seen used for pioneer maple syrup boil-ups - hung on poles over the fire. Our host handed us a dipper and we filled our mugs with a hot tea.
“Marijuana tea” John explained. “Everyone pitches their twigs and seeds into the pot and everyone shares in the tea.” We took a seat on a log while John chatted with the old hippie. There was grey in his beard and he carried an authority about him like well, not a Mayor or a teacher or a Priest but maybe a combination of all of them without the rigid “box” any of those labels might suggest. He introduced himself as Marvin and we clasped hands thumbs up. John produced a reefer and the four of us shared a social moment.
“Who can stay here?” I asked.
“Anyone” the old sage replied. “That’s why it’s called Free Camp. Anyone who wants to stay can stay as long as they want. No fee. No rules.”
“Don’t the cops come out here?” I asked further.
“Nope. They know we’re here. But they also know there’s never any trouble out here. We take care of our own. If somebody gets hurt – we deal with it. So, they leave us alone.”
“Cool.” I nodded. “Very cool.” taking another deep toke.

We sat and John and Marvin started telling stories of years gone by. They spoke of an annual “Bacchus” bash that was the height of the summer’s social season. Athletic games and live music and festivities galore were spoken of in excited reverent terms. It was something to be experienced they told us – highly recommended.

And then the conversation turned to bears. Apparently they were a real problem out here. The main reason for the raised platforms. John told a story about watching a young guy having a game of tag with a bear in a field at the edge of the camp. This guy had kept the bear chasing him in circles for about twenty minutes.
“Bears follow you by smell.” Marvin explained. “They’re really very short-sighted. If you can get beyond their field of vision and zig-zag so they lose the scent trail – you can outrun a bear. Run in a straight line and they’ll be on you in seconds.” The guy in the field had managed to stay far enough in front of the bear to keep it confused about just exactly where he was.”
“Pretty risky game.” I said. “What if the bear’d caught him?”
“Bears also hate loud noises” Marvin explained with a laugh. “If you want to get rid of them all we have to do around here is start banging on empty pots and put up a racket. There were enough people around the field that day that if he’d got into trouble – we all would have been able to scare that old bear off.”
“Cool.” I said. “Very cool.” (that was the limit of my hippie repertoire at the time)

After a few cups of tea I stood announcing. “I need to take a leak.”
“The loo is that way” Marvin pointed past some plastic sheeting and I headed out. Winding past a few more campfires, I found the rough-fashioned outhouse at the edge of a clearing. A path continued past it through the field and into another wood so I chose to skip the loo experience and keep walking. The woods were tall pine and hemlock. The undergrowth was kept low by the fallen needles. In the hushed cathedral quiet of the woods, as I stopped to unzip and unload, I could hear the roar of a river. It called to me.

Zipping up, I carried on down the path. The volume of the roaring water rose with every dozen steps until I came upon the stony shores of a white raging river. Fist-sized rocks and bigger were strewn truckloads deep along the shores and I stumbled over them down to the water’s edge. Kneeling, I scooped up water to wash my hands and was shocked by the ice-cold chill in mid-summer. Even Lake Ontario would warm in July. But of course Lake Ontario wasn’t fed by glaciers. This was ancient ice freed by the sun at last to become this powerful raging river. Time frozen for centuries was now racing on towards ocean depths deeper than the glaciers were high.

High? Yeah, you could say I was high. I splashed the ice-water onto my face but that wasn’t enough. Placing palms on two large rocks just out from the shore a bit, I plunged my head into the river and let the rushing water fill my ears. I needed to feel it - not just hear the sound of its passing. It sucked the breath out of me like death and I pulled myself back with a gasp shaking the freezing water off my head like a Labrador. Still kneeling, I reveled in the wonder and power of the moment as the baptism trickled down my shoulders and into my shirt. It was another one of those –“this is why I came here” moments instantly etched into my soul.


Stumbling back up the river’s bank, out of the bright sun and into the woods, I noticed the forest’s floor was ankle deep with low bushes laden with ripe blueberries. Giving thanks for yet another gift from God, I stooped to pick a handful thinking “the bears would sure like this spot.” Rising to continue - it was as if my thought had summoned them. A large black bear was no more than a good cat’s throw in front of me. I dropped the berries in my hand as she rose to stand.

Watching her go up to full height I knew this was a “she” letting out her terrifying skin-tingling roar because - as my eyes grew wide and my heart started thumping - I also saw two small black cubs looking back at me from either side of where she stood tall and toothy. A mother bear protecting her cubs. What could be more threatening?

A thousand thoughts raced through my mind in a blink of an eye – although I’m sure I never blinked. Was this it? Was I about to die? Should I run for the river? Should I lie down and pretend like I’m already dead? Yeah right – AS IF!

From somewhere deep in my Scarboro loins came a reaction I didn’t know I possessed. It rose up and spewed from my lips in a stream of rage. “FFFFFFFUUUCCCKKKKKK OFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!
It was my native battle cry.
The bear cocked her head sideways regarding me now with curiosity.
I glared back at her.
“Are you serious?” her look said.
I didn’t budge.
“You really think you’re something don’t you?” she shook her head.
I thought I detected a grin as she dropped to her fours and started foraging in the berries moving her cubs away from the path.
“Good” I said like we’d just settled something.
My heart was still pounding in my chest as I stepped slowly forward. I kept walking a slow pace right past where she and her cubs were now getting back to their afternoon snack. Or, I suppose they were - ‘cause I didn’t look. Once I started walking I just put my eyes to the path and kept walking as if I was just minding my own business weaving past dangerous characters on Yonge Street.

I have no idea where that behaviour came from. You could call it instinct but it was more like another person took over for me in my own shoes. The self-conscious teenager stepped back in fear and doubt and another person stepped forward. Was it me – a new bolder version of me – a hidden warrior waiting for the right time to emerge? Or was it something more? Do you believe in guardian angels? Did the bear see a fierce-looking angel with a fiery sword of destiny standing behind me? I have no idea what that mother bear saw that day. It was either amusing enough, or threatening enough, or maybe a combination of both, to make her see me as more friend than foe. It also changed forever the way I saw myself in the mind’s mirror.

I had a tale to tell when I got back to the fire. I couldn’t sit down and had another few quick cups of tea while the guys quizzed me about what’d happened. Marvin grinned and looked at me with some new eyes. He offered his hand again - thumbs up - and drew me forward into a hug this time. “Welcome to Free Camp man.” it seemed that I’d been initiated.
“You’re fucking crazy man.” was Dave’s way of congratulating me.
John was all nods and smiles. He produced another joint in celebration.

Years later I circled back to Free Camp. I was unemployed in the middle of a summer break from university. I was traveling on my own this time. The rides were easier to catch that way. It was the eighties now and I was curious whether the hippies still roamed the woods as free and wild as in my memories.

They were there. The day I arrived just happened to be the day of the annual Bacchus celebration. I pitched my tent in the woods at the edge of the camp and partook in the celebrations. I hung back in my usual way. But I was no longer the child who had become something more that summer.

Circling back helped me remember the day a new person had stepped forward. And I had a sense that still another breakthrough was waiting to be hatched. The youth that had emerged from the child was outgrowing his skin again. I carried my full height and weight now but this new change was more about growing deeper into who I would be. I knew there was a purpose waiting for me and it was driving me crazy trying to see it from where I stood. I had more searching to do.

Mother of the Groom

The story came packaged with the most unusual wedding shower present - a pair of rollerblades. A strange gift from my new mother-in-law. It seemed kind of fun, but right away I sensed that she was trying to tell me something. And she was. It was only days later when I was sorting out the shower gifts from the pile on my living room floor that I discovered the handwritten letter rolled up and inserted into the foothole of the left rollerblade. There were quite a few pages; half-sized stationery with flowered borders, covered both sides in his mother’s hand…

Dearest Melody,
I am so thrilled that you have chosen to spend your life with my Amos. He is a wonderful man and you are a wonderful Christian woman. I suppose you already know this, but I just wanted to make sure. That beautiful mountain of a man – big and strong and nice to look at – has a volcano inside. Has it erupted around you yet? That’s where the roller skates might come in handy.

I blame it on the doctors at the time of his birth. I didn’t know any better and was away from my mother and family. When Amos came along we were in the middle of our first winter up in the wild and woolly Muskoka country where Dan had been sent on his first church mission. It was the last week of February and we’d never experienced snow so deep and so all-enveloping. It blew up against our little Manse and drifted in the windowsills to be discovered in the morning like unexpected visitors standing inside the front door. It just kept falling day after day, week after week as I grew more and more expectant.

We’d been through one birth already of course. But Peter had been born in West Toronto Hospital where we were surrounded by both of our families and lots of doctors and nurses – not at all like the little Red Cross Medical Mission in Burk’s Falls.

We’d been through one winter in the drafty little manse. Dan had been assigned to serve the Muskoka west Pastoral Charge with its seven remote little country churches. Of course in mid-winter it was down to five as two of them were on summer roads. The central church in Magnetewan wasn’t any bigger than the chapel in my Dad’s West End Toronto church. But it was exciting to be on a mission. Dan loved the adventure of it and I was along for the ride. In the fall I taught school in the one room schoolhouse just a little walk from the manse down the tree-lined dirt road through the village. You could see the river down between the houses on the one side.

Mrs. Hurlycoat would watch little Peter and I would give the local children their lessons each day. There were forty children aged from 5 to 15 all in that one big classroom. Their parents were so pleased to have a “real teacher” as the winter before the lessons had come from Mrs. Oppenmeyer, the General Store owner’s wife. She hadn’t made it past grade 8 herself and her thick German accent took some getting used to. The children were disappointed when I had to leave to give birth to Amos. Mrs. Oppenmeyer would take them through their lessons just fine but there’d be no singing and no special projects to work on. Those children were used to making do.


The contractions came near midnight on a Sunday night. We’d been to the Williamson’s for a big Sunday roast beef dinner after church that day and I think the smell of roast beef must’ve enticed little Amos out into the cold. I woke Dan up and told him it was time to get the car ready and to call Mrs. Hurlycoat to watch Peter. I kept busy putting my things into a suitcase and laying out clothes for Peter for the next day. By the time the car was brushed off and warmed up – it was snowing – of course – Mrs. Hurlycoat was in the Manse.

First things first, she turned up the thermostat on the oil furnace like she always did. It was part of the deal. She didn’t complain about the extra trouble three year old Peter would put her through and we didn’t say anything about the extra oil she burned (“It’s the congregation that fills the tank isn’t it?” she asked by way of an explanation the first time she went to the thermostat.) Everyone in the village seemed to know our house and household better than we did. We’d often get the impression that the good people of the church saw us as their mission – keeping the city minister and his family going through the winter – the same way we saw them as ours.

Dan got me bundled up and into the icy little Aston Martin. My water broke on the way out to the car. (It was the icy patch I slipped on three days later walking up our sidewalk with Amos in my arms.) Riding in that little English car through the snowdrifts in the daytime was treacherous. Following the little patch of light those headlights shone into the night’s snowstorm was terrifying.

The snowbanks were up above the car’s roof in most places. It made the road like a tunnel and easy to follow as long as you stayed in the snowy tire ruts. If the car jumped out of the ruts the deep snow would grab at your wheels and threaten to pull you into those walls of snow. As frightening as that was - it was out in the open spots where the wind blew across the fields that the real terror lay. The road would become part of a wide blanket of snow that you had to just steer straight through. You knew that the road was straight in that stretch and you just had to hope that your aim was true. Dan started singing hymns and I knew then that he must be just as terrified as I was.

I suppose God heard the hymns and sent angels because we made it through to the little Red Cross Outpost. We were like a ship arriving in safe harbour. Mrs. Hurlycoat must’ve got through on the telephone to them because they were up and waiting for us – both of them. The nurse and her husband the caretaker ran out to the car to greet us with a wheelchair. “The doctor’s on his way” they assured us as the wheelchair went sideways into a drift off the sidewalk and the gentle old caretaker dragged me backwards out of the snowdrift and through the doors apologizing all the way. They got me into one of the three rooms (after evicting an older gentleman in his skivvies. He seemed like a regular, or a relative, by the way they spoke to him).

Amos and I spent the next thirteen hours in a wrestling match fighting to push him out of his watery hideout into the world of light and air. The doctor arrived with snow in his hair. (And I’m not talking about the snowy locks of age and experience.) He was a young Italian man from Toronto – out flying solo on his first mission like Dan. Over those thirteen hours, Doctor Triggiano and I took turns feeling scared, angry, and helpless at the situation. Amos is a Pisces you know. He seemed to like being in the water just fine thank you. If he was coming out it would be against his will.

The nurse was the saving grace for all of us. She’d been the local midwife for years and years and had seen this kind of battle more than a few times. Agnes was her name I believe. I didn’t like seeing the way she winced as the doctor pulled a pair of forcepts from his bag. But Agnes remained stoically calm offering strong words of confidence and encouragement throughout. Those words were for me - but I’m sure Doctor Passano received them too. He would take deep breaths right along with me as we prepared for yet another push and wrestle. He finally dragged little Amos out of his cocoon and into the first day of March. The sun was shining brightly now through the window. I was an exhausted mess crying endless tears –enough to fill a river. Almost too weak to worry, I watched helplessly as they whisked my silent baby away to another room.

After what seemed an eternity, I heard his angry cry piercing the silent snowbound quiet of the little Hospital. The nurse came in, told me everything was going to be okay, and gave me a pill with some water. I took a deep breath, sighed, and dropped off into a sleep as deep as the snow.

The next sound I heard was Dan’s voice bellowing through the little outpost. I couldn’t really make out what he was saying through the painkiller’s haze but I could tell he was mad. ”He’s black and blue! Looks like he’s been in barroom brawl! What the heck did you do to him? And my wife’s hardly any better! I want some answers and I want them now!” Poor Dan was really beside himself. He’d had several complaints the week before about his last sermon.

So you see dear, Amos had quite the stormy entry into the world. Who knows whether he could sense the terror in his mother as we drove those snowy roads? Who knows whether he picked up on the doctor’s anxious, tentative hand? The first faces he saw were frightened. The first sounds he heard were hurried worried instructions. Angry accusations were the first words he heard from his father. If you go by first impressions – you have to wonder what the little darling must’ve felt about this world he’d been pushed into?

He thrived after that. Once he got some food in him he started growing and didn’t stop –he’s still growing I think. But every once in a while – and this is why I’m telling you all this – the slow simmer that’s inside him boils over. And when that long slow fuse comes to and end , it seems like the anger’s coming from a bottomless pit. It just blows and blows.

With attention, you get so you can notice the signs. For a few days before, he gets real quiet. He starts taking everything very seriously. Every comment is taken to heart. Even encouragements seem to make him wince. Storm clouds gather. And when it breaks, he starts letting his tongue go. His shouts roll like thunder. His words shock like a lightning hit – it’s scary how he can strike right at your deepest, most hidden hurt.

It’s so not like him. Not like the kind and gentle Amos we love. I don’t know where it comes from but on those days – it’s like he’s raging at the world – mad about being here – mad as hell – and somebody’s gotta pay. And that’s when all you can do is strap on your roller blades and skate out of his way.

When you get back, the storm will have passed and he’ll be ashamed like a bad puppy that’s peed on the carpet again. I just have to wonder if it’s got anything to do with that Red Cross Outpost. He would have some good reasons to be mad about that whole little adventure. That - and it was quite some time before he got any of that roast beef.

God's Henchman

Is it even possible to get back through memory’s haze to see and feel the way it was? Can I remember seeing the world from inside the Garden before I got kicked out? I grab onto a fiery sinew of string inside of me. It runs through my intestines. It goes deep - twisted down through my guts - hidden from sight and rarely even felt. “It’s nothing really. No big deal. Not worth letting bother me. There’s people with real problems out there – how can I whine about this little annoyance?”

I’ve got an ugly mouth ulcer today; a canker sore. Not a cold sore on the lips where it can be seen. No, my suffering is unseen behind my smiles. When I smile or talk the open sores rub against my teeth and are atagonized. I never get just one. There’s usually a batch of them. They usually start with a small nick in the skin. I chew on the inside of my cheeks or my fork slips and jabs me in the gums or sometimes it’s just too much acidic food that wears a little patch raw. And when they start, they pop up like mushrooms over night. “Hey – where’d that one new come from?”

Are they the surfaced end of the string? Is their annoying, almost-surfaced pain connected with the ulcers on my soul? I know that down in there somewhere there’s a canker that never really heals up. Don’t ask me how I know. It’s not like I feel pain down there.

It’s only as tangible as that wisp of smoke that’s all that’s left of a dream as you come awake. The waking snuffs out the candlelight from the place where you just were – and now eyes open - how you were and who you were and what you were doing – is extinguished and a sunlight of a new day floods in. It’s lost. What can you do? There’s no way back there – except maybe with this string of pain that makes itself hard to ignore every so often?

Something happens in my week – a bitter exchange, a disagreement that turns sour; a misunderstanding that gets my heart beating fast and my mind racing - annoying and distracting – but not serious enough to make me stop doing what needs doing. So, I push it down inside – sending salt down to the wound. That little cut in my soul flares and ignites that string like a fuse with a slow burn - an acid flame comes back up the string. It turns my stomach and I don’t know why. It is days later - after the incident - and I have long forgotten quickly pushing it down. The first sore in my mouth splits open. A dream offers only clues.

I Knew. I knew while we were doing it that we were uncovering some hidden and adult thing. It was exciting and gave us great pleasure at the time – not physical, sexual pleasure – I suppose we were too young for that. It was more about satisfying a curiosity; an itch. It was an adventure. Hidden, warm, in our cozy bunk bed with my little sister there as a nurse; we took turns being Doctor then patient, the three of us, examining each others’ private parts. It was the first time I had a close up look at a clitoris. I suppose I hadn’t been that curious before. It’s not like my sister and I hadn’t had lots of baths together as babies and toddlers. But now I was climbing over a hill, about to venture down into the expansive new vista waiting.

But it’s not a choice you get to make is it? You don’t get to choose to stay in childhood. It’s more like a rising flood in the River of Time. A child’s natural curiosity is fed by more and more raindrops of information until, before you know it, the river lifts you up and spits you out on the bank of adulthood.

Our session ended innocently just the way our other games would end. It was lunchtime and my cousin Sheila headed home. I suppose I’ll never know just how her parents caught wind of our game. Did she have some guilt or shame about it? Did my little snake scare her? Did she tell her sisters – wanting to prove how grown up she was? Did she share with her Mom some new knowledge she’d gained that morning in the Garden? Maybe she made her Dad choke on his macaroni and cheese with a question about penises?

Knowing Sheila there were some emotional power games going on. She could be nasty and vengeful as well as fun and loving. One day her sun would shine on you, and the next – lightning bolts out of a blue sky. Once she’d sniffed out what a powerful emotional reaction our little game had in her family, I’ll bet she’d turned me over to her Dad as the guilty one.

I don’t know where my Dad was. If he’d been there Uncle Don’t would have been a little cooler. But just my Mom was there – my Uncle’s little sister - and me and my little sister - when he stormed into our cottage that sunny afternoon. We were standing in the kitchen. I was washing the lunch dishes and Wendy was drying. Mom was putting things away in the fridge. He didn’t knock or call out a hello. He just let himself in and surprised our busy little crew with his sudden presence.

Uncle Don’t liked to appear like he was laid back and relaxed. He would tell stories about people that would make the adults laugh. Those stories always made me wonder if the people in his stories knew how much he despised them. His chuckles, his amusement at his own superior wit, would come from somewhere deep in his chest – paid out from a well-guarded bank. Everyone loved him. He was just like his father they said - would do anything for anyone. I stayed out of his way.

But that day I was cornered. At the sink with Wendy behind me and only my Mom between me and him, he unleashed some sour fiery accusations my way. I don’t remember what he said. I just have a dream-like image of the four of us there. It feels like the wolf was in the door of the three little pigs’ cabin. I feel a sudden bonfire of shame burning in my head and I feel a piercing stab in my loins. Not in my balls, not in my belly button, but right in between. Where a baby would grow if I was a woman.

Not to be overly dramatic about it but – my childhood got aborted just then. No wonder it makes me so fucking angry to face that scene. It was the day I got fucked by the adult world. Others can tell stories of actual physical molestations by adults. No doubt you have your own story of the day you got screwed over and spit out on the bank of adulthood. It’s a story no one wants to tell or really wants to hear. No wonder it’s been hidden under layers and layers of years and years of making sure I never again get trapped like that. It explains a lot. It tells the whole story I guess.

Whatever I tell you now about the rest of my life and times is simply an illustration of the effects of this experience. The Day I realized I was naked. The Day I got kicked out of the Garden of Eden. The rage that stings still from the hot piercing wound my soul received. If it wasn’t my Uncle Don’t, it would have been someone else. He was the Angel with the fiery sword sent by God; God’s Henchman who stands guard at the garden wall.

“Way Down in the Hole”
When you walk through the garden
you gotta watch your back
well I beg your pardon
walk the straight and narrow track

if you walk with Jesus
he's gonna save your soul
you gotta keep the devil
way down in the hole

he's got the fire and the fury
at his command
well you don't have to worry
if you hold on to Jesus hand

we'll all be safe from Satan
when the thunder rolls
just gotta help me keep the devil
way down in the hole

All the angels sing about
Jesus' mighty sword
and they'll shield you with their wings
and keep you close to the lord

don't pay heed to temptation
for his hands are so cold
you gotta help me keep the devil
way down in the hole

Tom Waits



I do battle with him every time I take on a fight for someone hurt by a big deaf authority figure. I keep reaching out and grabbing that fiery sword thinking drunkenly that this time I’ll disarm God’s Henchman. Thinking I can get back to the place where we are free to be - just be. It’s why I drown the sting with whatever’s at hand. Too much food, too much sleep, too much drink, too much work, too much bullshit.

Then for a while I play it their way. I play the game by the rules. And I play it well. Oh-so-well you’d think I was made for the game. In all the ways I’m ashamed of - I’m just like him. I play the game like a self-satisfied, righteous, sarcastic – I’ll cut you if you cross me – fat cat. Everybody loves me – that’s my goal when I get stuck in that headspace. People like to think I’d do anything for anybody. They like to think that I’m different from them; different from their kids and relatives. They want to know someone who doesn’t get trapped and tortured by demons – who’s risen above it all.

I play it like Uncle Don’t until I can’t stand it anymore and I’m driven staggering back to the edge of the Garden to take another swipe at God’s Henchman. Then, someone’ll take a stab at me – not liking the angry stand I’ve taken. The daggers’ tip is poisoned. It finds its way down there to the wound and flares up into a full blown mouth ulcer that lasts for days and weeks.

So, if that’s the nightmare of my life. What’s the dream? What keeps me laughing and buoyed and bobbing along? The river goes on. It winds along the banks of where I live now. And while I keep failing to get back to its source – so far – I can always take a dip. I can dive in to the cool, clear waters and wash off the bullshit of the day’s work. Every so often I play hooky and go and splash around with a pal – pretending that we’ll never end up on that bank again; clothed and armed and oh so serious about building a better world or mousetrap or home for our kids; safe from those who would fuck them up. The river is the source of life that starts in the Garden and never ends. While there’s no going back, there’s salvation there running downstream.

The Promised Land

This holiest of holy places
found, re-membered,
where the beginning, the end,
and the everlasting is

Some times, we come upon
this hidden place in the middle of
the day’s street
and stop

through child’s eyes we see
rediscover
the buried treasure
the dream we forgot was real

my lion’s ravenous hunger
my lamb’s trembling fear
is lost, swept away
in the everflowing

The stream that begins in glory
thunders down mountainous egos
sweeps the valleys mess
in prophetic floods of truth

and rushes corrupted to the wild garden place
where the trees leaves are for the healing
of all nations
-beginning with my hurts and hungers and yours

and a little child shall lead us
heroically to re-imagine
the impossible forgotten world
beyond the angel’s flaming sword

into the furnace’s refining fire
into the cross’s redeeming execution
struck dumb in reverence
restoring creation

Eden resurrected
I promise
don’t forget
-thus saith the Lord

Alleycat Reeve
inspired by Robert Milner’s imagination on canvas
October 2007