Halcyon Daze - Growing up Canadian

by N. A. Dalbec

  In the fall I returned to school, and was given a break by the administration. The deal was: if I passed chemistry, they would forgive my physics failure. No more mister nice guy. I was bound and determined to get this monkey off my back. I was fortunate enough to sit at the same lab table as one of my good school friends. He happened to be one of the smartest guys in school. We sat at the very front of the class, which made things like cheating difficult. That year, however, I cast off the gloves, and cheated my way through the whole year. The chemistry teacher had a hard time understanding why I was getting exceptional marks in my school work and abysmal marks in my exams. I looked at him straight in the eye, and told him that exams made me nervous.

  I passed Chemistry, and was forgiven for Physics. I stopped taking Math after grade eleven and never looked back. I passed grade twelve and never cheated in another subject. I didn't have to. I was good in the other subjects

  A Buck an Hour

  I was fifteen coming out of grade eleven. and I felt that it was time to get some summer work, to make some spending money.

  I had to go to summer school in the morning. I had a little bit of academic catching up to do. So that left the afternoons and weekends free for work. A good friend of mine who still lived in the old neighborhood said that he would not be able to work at the store where he was a stock boy, any more. He asked me if I was interested, and I said yes.

  It was a funny sort of store. They sold kids' things, everything that you could think of from cribs to carriages. The store was in the Italian part of the city, but was run by two Jewish women, who sold stuff that only Anglo-Saxons could afford.

  I don't really remember the interview. All I remember is that I got the job. It paid a whopping one dollar an hour. For that hourly sum I was given the title and responsibilities of stock boy. The work involved going down into the basement where stock was kept. I hated that basement. It was one of those old, dark, musty basements with a low ceiling and exposed pipes and joists. On occasion the traps that had been strewn about the place would interrupt a rodent's activities. It was not a pretty basement. That's where the stock was though, and I was the stock boy. I tried not to spend too much time down there. Shipments to the store were relatively small and frequent, so I could sort of blitz the boxes down the stairs. I did however, manage to develop the quasi modo look in the time that I was there. I was in the growing stage of my life in a place that was meant for elves. I also learned to vigorously dislike banging my head on the large wooden support beams that spanned the basement ceiling.

  I also had to assemble the items that needed to be assembled. Fortunately I was able to do that sort of work upstairs on the main floor in the back of the shop. There was no air conditioning in the place. The only source of cooling came from giant portable box fans that were placed in the store-front windows, and at the back of the store. On those hot, humid July days it would get really uncomfortable in there. The store-front window area attracted lots of flies. I can't for the life of me figure out why, because the flies were dropping like flies. Every morning I would sweep the store-front window area and collect mountains of flies. Does this sound like some medieval place that I worked in?

  I remember working one day, and feeling very, very sluggish. I felt like my feet were in molasses. I worked part of the morning. It was very quiet that day. By the time noon arrived, I had to leave. I just couldn't help feeling that I was going to pass out. I left and shortly after, went to see a doctor. As it turned out, I had contracted German measles. Apart from feeling weak and developing a mild rash, I felt okay. Ironically, German measles were the one thing to avoid when you're pregnant, and so I was not able to go to work until I had completely recovered, because you can't be near pregnant women when you have German measles.

  I worked there two summers. The place was a bit ratty in the non-retail areas, but the ladies I worked for were okay. I'm sort of happy my forehead didn't grow from banging my head on those damn floor beams.

  Growing Wild

  How does one capsulize the late sixties? Prosperity, peace, love, groovy, let it all hang out. They were wonderful times to grow up in. Never had there been so much freedom to do and explore. If you were young, it was fantastic. If you were a parent, it was probably the scariest thing that could happen to you. Old values were being put into the dumpster. Styles were outlandish, attitudes were changing drastically, recreational drugs were invented, and the whole world was moving towards something else. The military look was out, formal attire was out, bras were out, sex was in. I could go on ad infinitum.

  I was fifteen and watching all of this happen. It was exciting and I wanted to take part in what was happening. I had been a pretty straight kid up until that time. I liked doing well at school, because that was all that was really being asked of me at that time. “Get good marks, and keep your nose clean", as my father and mother would say. Keeping one's nose clean became more and more difficult, for some reason. It was probably a combination of growing as a teen, and growing with the times. There were many temptations, and I was a very curious kid. I wanted to try almost everything. I would smoke cigarettes until I'd get a headache, which usually didn't take long, and when we could find someone old enough to buy beer, or whiskey, we would get liquored up. Then smokable entertainment became popular, so we could add that to the list of things to try. We were doing what a lot of middle class semi-affluent teens were doing in the late sixties, and loving it.

  At one point the partying got a little too wild. We would get together somewhere outside, in the evenings of the summer and the fall, to ingest vast amounts of grain alcohol and smokables. In our frenzied fun we would sometimes overdo it and lose motor and digestive control mostly. It happened to everyone of us at one point or another, and all of us had a run-in with our respective parents.

  I remember stumbling home one night and being totally out of control. I had consumed the better portion of a bottle of grain alcohol and had also eaten a big chunk of recreational drugs in my drunken stupor. My friends decided in their drunken stupor that I should be led to the doorstep of my parents home and left to deal with the situation. Well, my parents just didn't know what to think. They were faced with a babbling idiot who was their son. My mother decided to call the doctor who lived next door. The good doctor came over and had a chat with me, not that I was making any sense. I was probably on the verge of alcohol poisoning. He sent me to bed.

  The next morning I woke up. I felt terrible, just terrible. I was completely dehydrated, and smelled like barf. I wandered over to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror and noticed that half of my locks were gone. One side of my head still had relatively long hair, and the other side was gone. I was too ill to worry about it, but the hurt of having scared the hell out of my parents, and the close to feeling dead sensation from the previous night's alcohol, was compounded by the deep feeling of loss for my hair. I had betrayed, and I had been betrayed equally. The previous night's events must have really hurt my mother, because she reacted by cutting off my long hair. I had no choice but to go to the barber shop that morning, and have the rest removed.

  Some of the wildness had certainly been knocked out of me, but I still think that the haircut was an unnecessary measure. If my parents had only known how bad I felt from the alcohol alone, they would have understood that the medicine was in the bottle all along. The period of difficulty passed, and I eventually found some kind of balance. I had gone somewhat astray, started growing wild, so to speak, and a series of events following that infamous night had a domesticating effect on me.

  I didn't stop partying and seeking out greater sensations, but I did temper things somewhat, and I made every effort not to subject my parents to disturbing events.

  Legal at Last

  The big day finally came up. My sixteenth birthday. I had been looking forward to this for months. Everything to make it happen was planned. I was on my way to get my driver's license.

  My birthday fell on a school day that year, so I had
to set up the first driving lesson for the end of the day. I already knew the road safety handbook by heart, and I was ready to write the test to get my temporary permit.

  The school day finally ended, I rushed to the bus stop and anxiously awaited the bus. It was a short ride to the license bureau, and I felt like telling the bus driver to step on it.

  I rushed into the license bureau and sat down to write the road test. It took me no time at all, and before I knew it, I had the temporary permit in my hand. Now I had to wait for the driving school instructor to arrive. I had picked this particular school because the only cars they carried were Mercury Cougars. I had a thing for Mustangs and Cougars. They were essentially the same car, with the badges and grill work changed to protect the innocent.

  The driving instructor arrived on time. He was driving a turquoise Cougar with a vinyl top. It looked good and I was looking forward to taking the wheel. I hopped into the passenger seat to introduce myself and we drove off. We drove about one block. The instructor asked me when I had written my test. I told him. Then he asked me if I knew how to drive a car. I said yes. Then he asked me if I wanted to drive. I felt like physically pulling him into the passenger seat as I was getting out to run over to the driver's side of the car. This was going to be better than sex. I had lusted after this for years. I had taken cars out of the garage and into the driveway, I had driven my sister's car from the passenger seat. I had done everything that I could in my life to get behind the wheel of a car, and to drive one down the street. Here was my chance.

  The car was already running, and now I was at the wheel. The instructor looked at me and said: “Let’s go." I put the car in gear, and off we went. The lesson lasted about an hour, and I had a second one booked for the following day, and my driver's test the day after that. Everything went well. I had started all of this mid-week and by the end of the week I had my driver's license. I was so proud.

  Carnival Time

  By the time I reached the twelfth grade, I found myself involved in a lot of school activities, usually to the detriment of my studies. I loved to help organize dances and other events, mostly because it was fun to do, and it usually involved a certain amount of excitement.

  One of the year's major activities was the winter carnival. The day's activities included indoor and outdoor events. These were topped off by a dance with a live band in the auditorium. Logistically speaking, the carnival was an event that lasted a very short time, but required an enormous amount of planning. We had a team of good people though, and everyone knew what they had to do.

  We were going through a series of cold snowy winters at that time, and so the chances of getting real winter weather for the outdoor activities were pretty well guaranteed. One of the new events planned was a car rally in the soccer field. This was my idea and I pushed hard to make it happen. The course would be carved out of the snow that lay in the field. There were already four or five feet of it at the planning stages. The course would be a single lane, single direction one with natural barriers made of, you guessed it, snow. Safety was a big consideration, because we didn't want some kid's disgruntled parents suing the school for having allowed a car to run over said kid. We managed to sell the idea to the principal. I'm sure you could never get away with something like that today. The Treasurer of the student council and I walked through the field and marked out a course. We then had a front end loader come in to carve out the course. It looked great, and the Treasurer tried the course with his Austin Mini.

  The course was ready to go, but snowstorm after snowstorm kept filling it in. We were wondering what to do. So just before the big day, the Treasurer and I drove around the course in his car to stamp down the snow. We must have gone around a bizillion times. The Treasurer was getting pretty good at doing the course. He wanted to win the competition on Carnival Day.

  The big day was upon us. A lot of work had gone into preparation. In scheduling the events some bright person decided rather arbitrarily that some events should be run simultaneously. The net effect was that the car rally was run at the same time as an in-house talent show featuring some of the boys who were pretty good rockers. This diluted the crowds and made two of the most interesting events take place at the same time. Then there were gaps in the day when virtually nothing interesting would happen. Go figure. I was annoyed, to say the least. The council had forked over big bucks for an event that was far from maximized. I had to be philosophical about the whole thing, and remember that I had a lot of fun putting the rally together. The Treasurer won the timed rally as we both thought he would.

  The day's events continued. We had taken the precaution of inviting two local girls' schools for the carnival, which made the ratio very interesting. An autistic could meet a girl on that day.

  The preparations for the dance were in order. What was not in the formal schedule was the delivery of the cases of beer into the dressing room at the back of the stage. Someone else with a car was dropping off the beer at a pre-determined time. I was in the dressing room waiting for the delivery. All of this was very tricky to do, because the stage door looked out onto the priests' residence which at the time was part of the school. The principal was a priest. He happened to be on his way to the residence via the dressing room door at the back of the stage. He used to do this to avoid going outside in the cold. When I saw him, I just about soiled my pants. Here he was getting ready to walk out the door that the beer was going to be delivered through. He looked at me with a big smile and asked how the preparations for the evening dance were coming along. I looked at him, smiled, and said that everything was under control. Inside, however, my bodily functions were ready to let go. He sort of waved at me as principals do when they walk by, and went out the door. A few moments later, the beer came in the door. That was one of the closest calls in my academic career.

  The dance turned out to be a big, big success, and the carnival turned out to be the last for that school, and probably the best it had ever seen.

  Yet another First

  Spring had arrived. We could see the end of an era as the school year was coming to an end. We would be the last graduating class from this school. History was being made. I was looking forward to the summer, and not at all to the graduation ball. I was getting my certificate all right, but I just wasn't into ceremonies, and formal things at the time. I was more than happy to see that I had successfully completed this portion of academia, and a little disappointed that I would not have marks high enough to go to what they called pre-university. My mind was ready for pre-university. I desperately wanted to get out of the high school controlled environment. The desperation had not translated into acceptable marks, and so the option was to go to grade thirteen in the year to come, and then go to first year of university.

  I was all of sixteen at the time. I now had my driver's license, but no car. I'd sometimes get my parents' car, and I really enjoyed that. Everybody our age wanted a car in those days. Some of us were more fortunate than others. A friend of mine who was just a little bit older was very lucky. He had virtually unlimited access to his mother's '67 Chrysler Newport convertible. It was a beautiful car. It had a big 383 hemi engine which produced rubber on demand. We used to go everywhere in that thing. To top it all off, it came with a credit card, that was to be used for gas only. That's what we used it for, lots and lots of gas.

  At that particular time, we were friends dating friends. That seemed to happen a lot in those days. He was dating a very pretty girl, and I was dating her friend. We did a lot of things together, and had a lot of fun. One night that summer, we ended up at my friend's place. His parents were gone of course, and we had lots of beer and cigarettes to go round. It was nice when the girls you went out with liked beer. It meant one stop only, and that was good because we were still under age. Well we partied as we tried to do as much as possible and as the evening wore on we were feeling less and less pain. At one point, my friend disappeared with his girlfriend. They were much closer to each other than my date an
d I were. But, ah, the miracle of alcohol. It was such an effective mental barrier remover. It was also an effective panty remover. Of course, I'm sounding one sided here, but in reality it takes two to tango and I know that drunken lust travels a two way street.

  The kissing went on to petting, and the petting went on to the removal of clothing, and once most of the important garments were removed, we did the big one to each other, on that damned cold tile floor, near the bar, in the basement. How romantic. That was my first time. I was actually late getting started. A good number of people were getting it on at fourteen and some at thirteen. Late or not, it felt great to unleash the hormones, and it was even better in those days, because a lot of the girls took the pill. There was no such thing as Herpes yet, and there was no such thing as AIDS. The worst thing that might happen to you is that you might pick up a case of the crabs. Those were the good old days.

  First Car

  I was sixteen now, and I had my driver's license. My parents weren't big on lending their car out, and I wanted to get some driving time in.

  It just so happened that my brother had a car he wanted to get rid of. He had a '69 forest green Corvette with a 427 fed by three two-barrels. That's not the car he wanted to sell. Even if he wanted to sell it, I couldn't have afforded it. No, the car he was willing to part with was a little more mundane, and a little funkier. It was a 1960 Austin Westminster sedan, with a detuned Healey 3000 straight six. This car had been around for some ten years, and was just about as old as I was. It did however have some redeeming qualities such as luxurious leather upholstery, red no less, and an overdrive transmission that didn't work, mated to a column shifter. The fact that the overdrive was there served as a topic of conversation, more than anything else. It also had a stock functional air scoop. Very in. My brother had intentions of painting the car, and had taped all the chrome bits and had washed off any wax that might have adorned the bodywork, with a solvent.