As I mentioned in the previous post, when I was younger we had access to my grandfather's cottage. That grandfather was on my dad's side; my mother's father died when I was young of cancer, a period of time that was spent visiting hospitals frequently, and which I remember very little of. I will probably get into that a bit more in another post, but there isn't a whole lot I can recall about that time, so even if I don't my readers will not have missed very much. Regardless, this post is in regards to the cottage we used to go to.
As I have said, to get to the cottage you had to go by boat. First, we had to drive about an hour and a half out of Toronto, north of Peterborough, to Bobcaygeon, and maybe another 45 minutes from there. After doing some research on my own, I have found Mississagua Lake, and noticed it is about halfway to Algonquin Provincial Park, but more to the east. Now that I've finally found it, courtesy of Google Earth, I'm hoping that at some point I'll be able to rent a boat and go and see if I can actually find the old place. The cottage had a wee tiny little beach, nestled in the smallest little cove, and it is here that I first learned to float and ultimately swim. The sound of the water of the lake lapping at the floating dock is a sound that always soothes me to this day.
The cottage was tiny, and pretty bad from the viewpoint of the types of buildings that come to mind when you think northern Ontario cottage nowadays. It had a kybo, was built off the side of a steep hill so that it stood on stilts, and was mosquito infested most of every time we went up there. I don't think my parents were aware of Muskol and their variety of bug repellent products at this time, so getting bitten was a frequent occurrence. I can't really put the memories I have of the time spent there in any cohesive pattern, so this stuff will just be rapid fire and disjointed.
My first experiences driving a boat were en route to the cottage and the store. We have Super-8 film of me doing just that, but i remember it independently as well. I learned that the word 'Wednesday' had an 'n' in the midst of it from my grandmother up there. That would be on my mother's side, whom I considered my only grandmother, but we'll get there in a paragraph or two. At some point a swing was put in a tree by the path from the dock to the cottage, and I remember swinging on that. I also remember learning about birch bark, and using it as paper after it had fallen naturally from the tree. There was one time my mother was determined to wash my hair at the cottage, for whatever reason (I probably got something in it, but can't remember), and I was still afraid of putting my head under the water in the lake, so as my hair got brittle from the shampoo drying in it she convinced me to put my head under the tap in the kitchen. I remember one year I was fairly ill (I had stomach cramps like you wouldn't believe when I was a kid - turned out I am lactose intolerant, and yet all I drink to this day is milk), and they got this little portable toilet so that I didn't have to leave the cottage constantly all day and night. I remember watching the two channels of television we could get up there when it was a rainy day outside. Not that we only got two channels when it rained, no, we only got two channels ever. This is the 70s, remember, and the antenna was the only way to get reception. I always got disappointed trying to watch "Huckleberry Hound" and having the television cough up "Huckleberry Finn." I hated that little kid. Turns out, I didn't like the book either when I read it in Grade 8. Give me "Tom Sawyer" over "Huckleberry Finn" any day of the week. Oh, and my first encounter with "The Beachcombers" was up at the cottage too, so I guess one of the channels was CBC.
There were a few big things that happened up at that cottage. One year, I had fallen at home and scrapped the skin clear off my right knee. We went to the cottage and each and every time the wound had scabbed over, I somehow fell and ripped it clear again. Painful damn summer that, and a foreshadowing that eventually that knee was going to get really scarred, but that's a late high school story, and we're no where near there yet. I remember playing with chipmunks under the cottage, which doesn't sound as weird as you'd think when you consider that apart from the first few feet of the entrance and the back wall of the bedrooms, the entire cottage was off the ground by a sizable amount. I mean, sunlight got under there for crying out loud! Think 'sandy-floored lower deck' more than 'under a house' and you'll be on the right track. I for some reason remember going up there with a bunch of kids from Scouting on a weekend camping excursion, but given the size of the cottage I'm not sure I'm right about that. If it happened, then all the kids would have been in tents while the leaders (my mother and Peter, who we'll get to eventually) would have been inside the building. I remember a clue-laden treasure hunt leading to a chocolate bar tied to a tiny tree in the middle of a field clearing, and while were all looking high and low in the brush I spotted it and won the hunt. Weird how these memories all jumble together. Then there was the night of the thunderstorm...
One night, this storm swept into the area that really did a number on me as a kid. I was afraid of thunder and lightning at this point, and the storm was so intense it sounded and felt as though the hill the cottage was on was sliding down into the lake. My bedroom in the cottage was in the middle of the three I think were there, and I had a big window looking up the hill. I swear that for a moment there the storm was centred directly above the cottage. I have experienced severe thunderstorms since, but never in such a tiny shelter, and it was a life changer for me. As a result of that storm, something in me became different, and it came to fruition when at home that fall. We were having a pretty bad storm there too, and during that one I determined that enough was enough, forced myself to watch the lightning and really feel the thunder, and changed my viewpoint on storms entirely. Since then I've loved thunderstorms, and have wished I was a storm chaser in the American Midwest. One of my reasons for moving to the Dominican, though it is quite far down the list, is that the region gets really strong storms, some even at hurricane strength, and I'll be able to really watch one blow.
There was an island near the cottage, a fair sized one, and one time we decided to go out and take a walk on it. This was with my grandmother as well, and I only remember her coming up there with us maybe once. Anyway, we got over there in the boat, started wandering around, and came across this boathouse. Now, none of us went in, and I don't even think any of us took a peek inside the building, but we all (grandmother included) got this incredibly weird and creepy vibe off the place, enough so that we turned around and hightailed it off that island faster than it took to type this paragraph! Considering that looking out the windows across the deck of the cottage gave us a view that had that island dead centre in the middle of it didn't help things either.
The cottage years also included one of my first sexual encounters, if you can call it that. A couple of cottages over, there were two little girls, and one day when my mother had us over there to visit we went to play. Our play basically consisted of taking off our bathing suits and comparing body parts. That was it, the sum total of that experience, but I don't remember ever visiting them again. However, that could also have come from the fact that the cottage years ended rather abruptly after my grandfather died. He willed the cottage to us, but my father's mother decided instead to sell it, and for some reason (probably financial) my family never fought her on it. I hated her from that moment on, and never found it within myself to forgive her. In fact, from that point on I never really bothered having any contact with her whatsoever, and that is why I consider my mother's mother to be my sole grandmother. In my mind, from the age of about seven or so, I only had one grandparent, even though my other grandmother was around long into my teens. Given how happy being up at that cottage made me, and how horrible family life was otherwise, it's no wonder that I held that grudge the way I did, and do.
So those were my cottage years. I often times wonder if my life would have been any different if that cottage had stayed with us the way it was meant to. If having a safe haven away from everything and everyone would have made me handle things better, or at least more maturely, when all the bad things happened later on. I'll never know, but at least I can try and see if I can find the place again, and with any luck I can recruit Scott and Andi on my journey to do so.
About Me
- Gutrend
- A big lover of all types of media, from Movies to Video Games, Books to Music, Television to Stage.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Early Years - Part Three
Since I am now entering territory that may or may not have happened once I had started grade school, I figured that it would be a good time to warn readers that the timeline on the new few posts is likely to jump around a bit. If I'm writing something about school life at Dorset Park and remember something that happened one summer day possibly before I even went to school, I'm going to simply slap it in there in order to ensure it doesn't get lost for good.
When I was younger I was ambidextrous. I could switch mid-word from one hand to the other and unless you were watching me write/print, you'd never know where the switch took place. Not much of a story attached to this, but there it is. I was forced to choose to write with my right hand in Grade One, by Mrs. Charleston, but we're trying to get all the pre-grade school stuff out of the way first here.
I do remember one day, it must have been in August or September since I can't imagine any other reason for this day to have happened unless it was in preparation for my first days at school. I was sitting on the big chair my father used to read in, in the corner of the living room, and my mother was really pounding into me the basic knowledge every kid needs in order to be found if lost. Address, phone number, parent's names, stuff like that - heck, maybe exactly and only that. Seemed like more, but can't remember more than those being hammered home. I figure from a present viewpoint that this was probably in response to my first days at Dorset Park, since everywhere I went before then would have been with someone else who knew that information, and child abduction simply wasn't as big a deal in the 70s as it is today. We didn't even put the locks on the door at night in those days.
I had an encyclopedia I didn't use much, the World Book Of Knowledge. Had records I listened to regularly, Winnie The Pooh, Chilling, Thrilling Sounds From The Haunted House by Disney, An Introduction To Music which was the soundtrack of a bunch of animated shorts that were about the instruments and what made what sound. I even had this Star Trek comic on album, about this little alien creature that crooned this sound which took over people's minds. Came with the comic book and everything. Don't know what age I was when I got that, as I wasn't much of a Trek fan when I was a kid, but someone thought it would be neat. I still have all of these records, never gave any of them away or sold them. Not in mint condition, of course, since I've actually used them when I was younger, but they still work.
Even as a child I loved to read. I remember going to Scarborough Town Centre, long before there was a cinema there, long before the RT had a station, and going to Cole's Books in order to grab a few of The Hardy Boys series of titles. It was a long time before I had the collection, the original 56 titles, hardcover, blue backed books that I still have and keep on display on my bookshelf. Not only am I keeping them for my own kids, but also as a throwback to a simpler time, story-wise. I still have my original boxed set of Paddington Bear, and even an old Dr.Seuss book, "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish." I read and reread those books when I was a kid. I also played a lot with toy cars, Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. I gave them personalities, storylines, kind of like what you see in the Toy Story movies, but with a multitude of cars rather than a bunch of other toys. I had a bunch of hockey pucks (don't know where from, I've never played hockey) and tracks from a Hot Wheels set I got that shot cars into a loop-de-loop, and I would make fortresses and roads, incorporating my bundled up blanket as a mountain to climb to get to the enemy lair. Did all this on what I was told was a Captain's bed. Basically, it was a bed that was REALLY high off the ground, with storage and drawers underneath. Great idea, until you take into account that the damn thing was too heavy for me to move, and anything that fell behind it would be gone for months at a time.
I remember some of the stuff that we have on Super-8 film as it was being shot. A lot of my fonder memories came from going to a cottage my family was left by my father's father when he died. Used to go up there a lot during the summers. It was a tiny place: three little bedrooms, and a main living room/kitchen area, then a deck looking out over the lake. that would be Mississauga Lake near Bobcaygeon, just past Peterborough. Had to get to the cottage by boat, and the bathroom was a kybo. That, apparently, comes from the old Kybo brand coffee cans that would hold the lime that dropped the odour to a minimum, and is usually only used as a Scouting term. You'd likely call it an outhouse. Anyway, there were a lot of memories from that cottage, and I think I'll reserve the next post for them.
I'll finish this one off with a shot of that Star Trek comic I have. I linked the picture to the actual item on Amazon. 1975, just a couple of years ago.
When I was younger I was ambidextrous. I could switch mid-word from one hand to the other and unless you were watching me write/print, you'd never know where the switch took place. Not much of a story attached to this, but there it is. I was forced to choose to write with my right hand in Grade One, by Mrs. Charleston, but we're trying to get all the pre-grade school stuff out of the way first here.
I do remember one day, it must have been in August or September since I can't imagine any other reason for this day to have happened unless it was in preparation for my first days at school. I was sitting on the big chair my father used to read in, in the corner of the living room, and my mother was really pounding into me the basic knowledge every kid needs in order to be found if lost. Address, phone number, parent's names, stuff like that - heck, maybe exactly and only that. Seemed like more, but can't remember more than those being hammered home. I figure from a present viewpoint that this was probably in response to my first days at Dorset Park, since everywhere I went before then would have been with someone else who knew that information, and child abduction simply wasn't as big a deal in the 70s as it is today. We didn't even put the locks on the door at night in those days.
I had an encyclopedia I didn't use much, the World Book Of Knowledge. Had records I listened to regularly, Winnie The Pooh, Chilling, Thrilling Sounds From The Haunted House by Disney, An Introduction To Music which was the soundtrack of a bunch of animated shorts that were about the instruments and what made what sound. I even had this Star Trek comic on album, about this little alien creature that crooned this sound which took over people's minds. Came with the comic book and everything. Don't know what age I was when I got that, as I wasn't much of a Trek fan when I was a kid, but someone thought it would be neat. I still have all of these records, never gave any of them away or sold them. Not in mint condition, of course, since I've actually used them when I was younger, but they still work.
Even as a child I loved to read. I remember going to Scarborough Town Centre, long before there was a cinema there, long before the RT had a station, and going to Cole's Books in order to grab a few of The Hardy Boys series of titles. It was a long time before I had the collection, the original 56 titles, hardcover, blue backed books that I still have and keep on display on my bookshelf. Not only am I keeping them for my own kids, but also as a throwback to a simpler time, story-wise. I still have my original boxed set of Paddington Bear, and even an old Dr.Seuss book, "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish." I read and reread those books when I was a kid. I also played a lot with toy cars, Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. I gave them personalities, storylines, kind of like what you see in the Toy Story movies, but with a multitude of cars rather than a bunch of other toys. I had a bunch of hockey pucks (don't know where from, I've never played hockey) and tracks from a Hot Wheels set I got that shot cars into a loop-de-loop, and I would make fortresses and roads, incorporating my bundled up blanket as a mountain to climb to get to the enemy lair. Did all this on what I was told was a Captain's bed. Basically, it was a bed that was REALLY high off the ground, with storage and drawers underneath. Great idea, until you take into account that the damn thing was too heavy for me to move, and anything that fell behind it would be gone for months at a time.
I remember some of the stuff that we have on Super-8 film as it was being shot. A lot of my fonder memories came from going to a cottage my family was left by my father's father when he died. Used to go up there a lot during the summers. It was a tiny place: three little bedrooms, and a main living room/kitchen area, then a deck looking out over the lake. that would be Mississauga Lake near Bobcaygeon, just past Peterborough. Had to get to the cottage by boat, and the bathroom was a kybo. That, apparently, comes from the old Kybo brand coffee cans that would hold the lime that dropped the odour to a minimum, and is usually only used as a Scouting term. You'd likely call it an outhouse. Anyway, there were a lot of memories from that cottage, and I think I'll reserve the next post for them.
I'll finish this one off with a shot of that Star Trek comic I have. I linked the picture to the actual item on Amazon. 1975, just a couple of years ago.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Early Years - Part Two
I had an incident involving Fred the dog that coloured my viewpoint on adults for a lot of my childhood years. The problem was in perception, and I never understood what made this woman think I would do what she said i did, but I'll tell the story and let readers be the judge.
Fred was a little yappy dog. I think he might have been a Scottish Terrier, but am not certain. He was small, easily held by someone even five years old, so we're not talking about a big threatening Dane or any such thing. No, Fred was tiny, and loved attention.
The incident in question occurred on the front lawn of the house Fred lived at. I was visiting him, and he was getting a bit rambunctious, but I was playing with him at the time. He was standing over my feet, and I lifted my foot until it was against his belly, and lightly hoisted him in the air up and back. It was a lesser equivalent of lightly tossing a baby in the air, with no harm expected to come to the baby. Well, no harm came to Fred either, but all of a sudden I was hauled away to my house by Fred's owner while she screamed bloody blue murder about how I kicked her dog. This was total nonsense, not the least of which the insinuation suggests that I would ever be deliberately cruel to anyone's pet, and anybody who actually knows me even a little bit would know just how truthful that idea is. No, I was playfully lifting the dog and moving him backwards a bit. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, I had been doing this with a wagging-tailed Fred a few times before 'spotted' by his owner. Either way, my mother did exactly what you would expect her to do - believe the dog's owner without ever, for my entire life, hearing my side of the story. Not only would she not even ask me what happened, she refused to ever let me bring the subject up, and she died without ever caring enough to hear her child's explanation. This was the family I grew up in.
There were times that I thought were great, at the time. I once watched an episode of Sesame Street which had this kid climbing the stairs at his house as though they were a mountain he was scaling, and so I asked my mother if she would give me cookies for my ensuing long climb up Mount Denham, and she obliged and watched me make my climb as she cooked dinner that evening. Of course, when I got older she made a point of saying, and I'm quoting here, that she "often capitulated to my requests simply to keep me quiet." I thought when the actual fun happened that it was a kind of bonding thing going on, but apparently it wasn't. Even before going to school, which became a debacle all on it's own, I was aware that my mother had a special kind of loathing for me, even though she tried to hide it under disguises of caring and affection. Looking back on it now, I can see the telltale signs that most of it was forced. Thankfully, as unaware as I was, I got her back a few times for things, but never purposefully. However, the incident in particular that I am referencing didn't happen until I was in grade school, so that will come up in later posts.
We had a dog of our own at home, a Labrador Retriever named Duke. I loved him a lot, but an incident with him changed my childhood quite a bit. I was trying to get him to lick my hand one day in the living room, and I kept offering the back of my hand for him to lick. At some point, something happened, and Duke bit my hand. Blood everywhere. Stitches, scars, terror. I never looked at Duke the same way again, but we kept him and my mother blamed me for constantly pestering him and basically making him bite me. For the rest of the time he was alive, he worried me. At least once he went after my mother (good dog!), but talk of him being removed from the home never came up. When we'd go out on a road trip, Duke used to lie on the back seat with me (we were in a station wagon at the time), stretched out and with his head tucked behind my back. I guess it was some sort of endearment, and if the biting had never happened I probably would have loved him for it, but it made me quite uncomfortable when it was happening. I've never really missed Duke until now, writing this. I wish things had been different. He was diagnosed by a vet as being schizophrenic, which explained the biting, and my mother blamed her cousin Gloria for that, possibly rightly, saying it was caused by a staring contest she had with Duke and which threatened his dominance. I never found out the truth of that, but to this day don't attempt to stare down any of my or other people's pets. I am an animal lover, in spite of what Fred's owner thought.
I remember my first big word. My father was home, sitting in his chair in the living room, and I was trying to describe a house I had seen, either on television or on a road trip. I struggled with words to describe it, until I finally blurted out 'dilapidated.' My father understood what I meant, and that confused me. I was under the age of five, for crying out loud, and as far as I knew I had just made up a word. When I became aware that this was in fact an actual word, I wondered exactly how the hell I had come to be saying it. To my knowledge, to this day, I hadn't consciously heard the word before, and still wonder where I picked it up from. I don't kid myself that I somehow was a genius and discovered this word without having heard it first, I just have no memory of having heard of it before I said it. Just a weird situation I experienced when little.
Not as weird as the one I'm ending this entry with, however. The house at Denham was a split-level, with each floor really only taking up half the footprint of the house. Including the basement, this made for three levels, with the bedrooms directly above the basement towards the back of the house, and the main floor, with kitchen, living and dining rooms, at the front. There were only five steps separating the main floor from the bedroom floor, but the basement was a full flight down. Basically, it was a two story house missing half of one story to crawlspace area. Excuse the crudity of the following Paint drawing of the two levels of the house, but it'll make things easier for upcoming posts if I have a map now:
The basement consisted of three basic rooms plus the crawlspace. One room was virtually empty, and was meant to be a second bathroom. The room to the left of the stairs was the laundry room, and the rest of the basement was living space, the family room if you will. The second floor was comprised of the living room, at lower right, the dining room at lower left, the kitchen at mid left behind the fireplace and coat closet, three bedrooms across the top, and a bathroom at mid-right. The front door is the one seen between the bathroom (up the stairs) and the living room, and the back door was kind of between the kitchen and dining room. I've omitted bedroom closets and kitchen appliances because it was taking too long to upload the picture as it is, and it was getting cluttered. Sorry it is so small, but it's what I could do spur of the moment. Maybe I'll try and make a bigger one later. Probably not.
As for the weirdness, one morning I was sitting at the dining room table doing a jigsaw puzzle. I had my back to the left wall, so I was facing directly into the living room area. Suddenly, without any noise or lead up, the lamp in the living room came on. Just turned itself on, with nobody else in the house even awake. Scared the crap out of me, and it took a lot of guts to get myself into my room, the one directly at the top of the stairs nearest the bathroom. When my father woke up, about an hour or two later, he told me that it must have been on all night, and for some reason the light just popped back on this morning. At the time, and still to this day, I call 'bullshit' on that suggestion, and as a result I consider this my first encounter with a ghostly presence.
Fred was a little yappy dog. I think he might have been a Scottish Terrier, but am not certain. He was small, easily held by someone even five years old, so we're not talking about a big threatening Dane or any such thing. No, Fred was tiny, and loved attention.
The incident in question occurred on the front lawn of the house Fred lived at. I was visiting him, and he was getting a bit rambunctious, but I was playing with him at the time. He was standing over my feet, and I lifted my foot until it was against his belly, and lightly hoisted him in the air up and back. It was a lesser equivalent of lightly tossing a baby in the air, with no harm expected to come to the baby. Well, no harm came to Fred either, but all of a sudden I was hauled away to my house by Fred's owner while she screamed bloody blue murder about how I kicked her dog. This was total nonsense, not the least of which the insinuation suggests that I would ever be deliberately cruel to anyone's pet, and anybody who actually knows me even a little bit would know just how truthful that idea is. No, I was playfully lifting the dog and moving him backwards a bit. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, I had been doing this with a wagging-tailed Fred a few times before 'spotted' by his owner. Either way, my mother did exactly what you would expect her to do - believe the dog's owner without ever, for my entire life, hearing my side of the story. Not only would she not even ask me what happened, she refused to ever let me bring the subject up, and she died without ever caring enough to hear her child's explanation. This was the family I grew up in.
There were times that I thought were great, at the time. I once watched an episode of Sesame Street which had this kid climbing the stairs at his house as though they were a mountain he was scaling, and so I asked my mother if she would give me cookies for my ensuing long climb up Mount Denham, and she obliged and watched me make my climb as she cooked dinner that evening. Of course, when I got older she made a point of saying, and I'm quoting here, that she "often capitulated to my requests simply to keep me quiet." I thought when the actual fun happened that it was a kind of bonding thing going on, but apparently it wasn't. Even before going to school, which became a debacle all on it's own, I was aware that my mother had a special kind of loathing for me, even though she tried to hide it under disguises of caring and affection. Looking back on it now, I can see the telltale signs that most of it was forced. Thankfully, as unaware as I was, I got her back a few times for things, but never purposefully. However, the incident in particular that I am referencing didn't happen until I was in grade school, so that will come up in later posts.
We had a dog of our own at home, a Labrador Retriever named Duke. I loved him a lot, but an incident with him changed my childhood quite a bit. I was trying to get him to lick my hand one day in the living room, and I kept offering the back of my hand for him to lick. At some point, something happened, and Duke bit my hand. Blood everywhere. Stitches, scars, terror. I never looked at Duke the same way again, but we kept him and my mother blamed me for constantly pestering him and basically making him bite me. For the rest of the time he was alive, he worried me. At least once he went after my mother (good dog!), but talk of him being removed from the home never came up. When we'd go out on a road trip, Duke used to lie on the back seat with me (we were in a station wagon at the time), stretched out and with his head tucked behind my back. I guess it was some sort of endearment, and if the biting had never happened I probably would have loved him for it, but it made me quite uncomfortable when it was happening. I've never really missed Duke until now, writing this. I wish things had been different. He was diagnosed by a vet as being schizophrenic, which explained the biting, and my mother blamed her cousin Gloria for that, possibly rightly, saying it was caused by a staring contest she had with Duke and which threatened his dominance. I never found out the truth of that, but to this day don't attempt to stare down any of my or other people's pets. I am an animal lover, in spite of what Fred's owner thought.
I remember my first big word. My father was home, sitting in his chair in the living room, and I was trying to describe a house I had seen, either on television or on a road trip. I struggled with words to describe it, until I finally blurted out 'dilapidated.' My father understood what I meant, and that confused me. I was under the age of five, for crying out loud, and as far as I knew I had just made up a word. When I became aware that this was in fact an actual word, I wondered exactly how the hell I had come to be saying it. To my knowledge, to this day, I hadn't consciously heard the word before, and still wonder where I picked it up from. I don't kid myself that I somehow was a genius and discovered this word without having heard it first, I just have no memory of having heard of it before I said it. Just a weird situation I experienced when little.
Not as weird as the one I'm ending this entry with, however. The house at Denham was a split-level, with each floor really only taking up half the footprint of the house. Including the basement, this made for three levels, with the bedrooms directly above the basement towards the back of the house, and the main floor, with kitchen, living and dining rooms, at the front. There were only five steps separating the main floor from the bedroom floor, but the basement was a full flight down. Basically, it was a two story house missing half of one story to crawlspace area. Excuse the crudity of the following Paint drawing of the two levels of the house, but it'll make things easier for upcoming posts if I have a map now:
 | |
| Denham Floor Plan, crude outline |
As for the weirdness, one morning I was sitting at the dining room table doing a jigsaw puzzle. I had my back to the left wall, so I was facing directly into the living room area. Suddenly, without any noise or lead up, the lamp in the living room came on. Just turned itself on, with nobody else in the house even awake. Scared the crap out of me, and it took a lot of guts to get myself into my room, the one directly at the top of the stairs nearest the bathroom. When my father woke up, about an hour or two later, he told me that it must have been on all night, and for some reason the light just popped back on this morning. At the time, and still to this day, I call 'bullshit' on that suggestion, and as a result I consider this my first encounter with a ghostly presence.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Early Years - Part One
A lot of the stuff that happened to me when I was younger is a bit fuzzy now - I think that happens to everyone. The stuff of adulthood is much more complex and stressful than the stuff of childhood, and it makes me hope that if/when I have children, they get to reading this at an age way earlier than I myself am writing it, and it motivates them to do the same for themselves. I never had a diary, or a journal, when I was growing up. In fact, a lot of things that people take for granted now were not around when I was a kid. That might be another post, but for now I want to try and convey some memories I have that did in fact stay with me until today.
I remember one day when I was approaching school age when my mother was trying to ensure that I remembered pertinent information about my life to that point. Things such as my address, my phone number, my name, stuff of that nature. In fact it might only be those things, plus one more: I was apparently also told about a spare key hidden outside of the house that I never remembered until it was shown to me again in my teen years after I had to break into the house one afternoon. For some reason, that never stuck.
I can remember a lot of things from when I was really young. First of all, I remember the basement of the house being clean. That sounds like a joke, but my mother was a lazy woman, and figured that if she cleaned the house once in her life, that everyone from then on owed it to her to clean it constantly from then on. As a result, the basement gradually (over years) became overcrowded with crap, but I'll get to that as things progress here. I clearly can see the time when i used to write on a small blackboard, complete with tripod, in the basement, switching hands when one got tired. I didn't know at the time that being ambidextrous was a big deal, and it didn't really matter to me, especially since it was taught out of me in grade one by a teacher named Mrs. Charleston. Again, I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the basement.
I had a tiny little chair, and a tiny Formica table, that I used to use when downstairs. I did puzzles on it, and I clearly can picture a puzzle that remained in my mind for decades. It was a barnyard-themed picture, with horses and kids, and the puzzle picture was drawn by an artist who put little dots on the end of his letters. The name of the artist stayed with me, and when I was in my thirties I went searching on eBay for anything drawn by Thelwell. Turns out he has books too, just discovered that now, but I did find that he was quite a popular artist in Britain. I think that's where both my love of jigsaw puzzles and crowded, humorous pictures for my jigsaw puzzles originated. I fool around with them on an irregular basis, even now, and my current favourite artist for my jigsaws is Mordillo, with his Tornado puzzle being my number one classic. Sadly, that particular title is no longer available, but there are others, and at the left side there you'll see a link to one of them. Love his stuff, reminds me of Sergio Aragones work in the margins of MAD Magazine. I can do puzzles with thousands of pieces, as long as I like the artwork, and this stuff represents what I like to do.
Besides doing puzzles in the basement, I also remember playing a lot as a kid down there. Don't get me wrong, I've up until now described the basement only as a place that got cluttered with junk as the years went by. Let me clarify: The house at 23 Denham was built in the 60s, and in that decade the power of television was not as apparent as it became in the late 70s and 80s. As a result, the homes built in my neighbourhood had no room specifically designed or planned for a family gathering site around the television. Families had to figure out their needs and adapt their houses around them. In our case, the basement became that room, and my father altered the room to suit it. First of all, he erected a wall (two-by-fours with fake wood panelling sheets nailed to them) to enclose the furnace and laundry area, and then walled off the spot where the downstairs bathroom was to be installed. Then, he placed a stand-alone counter beside the wall in the laundry room, cut through the wall above the stand, and the television sat in the laundry room on the counter, and was viewed in the wall in the main room of the basement. For some reason there was also a counter running along one of the outside walls of the bathroom enclosure, maybe intended as a workbench or something. Either way, the bathroom never got started and that room became storage.
So, the basement was well-lit, and meant to be a family room for the house. It was that way for a few years, but as you'll see in later posts it morphed into something quite different. For those early, pre-school years, it was a pretty happy room. I read down there, I played down there, things were great. Two things did stand out for me though. One was that I had a Sesame Street book, entitled "A La Peanut Butter Sandwiches." I think it featured The Count, as the phrase in the title was supposed to replace Abracadabra when doing a magic trick. Anyway, I remember that book, and I also remember losing a book down there. I can't remember which book it was, might have even been the same book, but it got dropped behind a couch down there, and though i asked my parents to get it for me it was always "We'll get it later," and they never did. Keeping in mind that this was the early-mid 70s, and given the types of people my parents were (and I hope the readers are beginning to get a clear picture out of what I've written so far), I hope it comes as no surprise that when I had the need to move that couch in the year 2000, I actually expected to find that book back there. It wasn't, but then I remembered that the couch had been re-upholstered a couple of years earlier. Regardless, when I dropped that book accidentally behind that couch, it might as well have left the planet.
I remember playing with glue. Not in a bad way, playing with it by taking bits of felt and gluing them to a large piece of construction paper, making a shark fin under a big sun. It was a whole beach scene, but I specifically remember the shark fin and the sun. That particular piece of artwork hung on the door into the basement bathroom area until the 2000s as well. That bathroom area was where my toys when I was really young were stored. I remember a Fisher Price castle that had a secret room behind a swivelling staircase, and I remember a big box full of miscellaneous LEGO pieces. I still buy LEGO for myself...well, not since 2005, but if I had the means I still would. The prices they want for the worthwhile sets are astronomical, but that's another post. My mother would make a house out of LEGO for me at night, and then in the morning I would destroy it while making explosion sound effects with my mouth. That may have contributed to her hatred for me, which I'm certain was real and vibrant at some point, but at the time was not visible.
There are more memories to share, but this post is quite long already, so I'll continue another time.
I remember one day when I was approaching school age when my mother was trying to ensure that I remembered pertinent information about my life to that point. Things such as my address, my phone number, my name, stuff of that nature. In fact it might only be those things, plus one more: I was apparently also told about a spare key hidden outside of the house that I never remembered until it was shown to me again in my teen years after I had to break into the house one afternoon. For some reason, that never stuck.
I can remember a lot of things from when I was really young. First of all, I remember the basement of the house being clean. That sounds like a joke, but my mother was a lazy woman, and figured that if she cleaned the house once in her life, that everyone from then on owed it to her to clean it constantly from then on. As a result, the basement gradually (over years) became overcrowded with crap, but I'll get to that as things progress here. I clearly can see the time when i used to write on a small blackboard, complete with tripod, in the basement, switching hands when one got tired. I didn't know at the time that being ambidextrous was a big deal, and it didn't really matter to me, especially since it was taught out of me in grade one by a teacher named Mrs. Charleston. Again, I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the basement.
I had a tiny little chair, and a tiny Formica table, that I used to use when downstairs. I did puzzles on it, and I clearly can picture a puzzle that remained in my mind for decades. It was a barnyard-themed picture, with horses and kids, and the puzzle picture was drawn by an artist who put little dots on the end of his letters. The name of the artist stayed with me, and when I was in my thirties I went searching on eBay for anything drawn by Thelwell. Turns out he has books too, just discovered that now, but I did find that he was quite a popular artist in Britain. I think that's where both my love of jigsaw puzzles and crowded, humorous pictures for my jigsaw puzzles originated. I fool around with them on an irregular basis, even now, and my current favourite artist for my jigsaws is Mordillo, with his Tornado puzzle being my number one classic. Sadly, that particular title is no longer available, but there are others, and at the left side there you'll see a link to one of them. Love his stuff, reminds me of Sergio Aragones work in the margins of MAD Magazine. I can do puzzles with thousands of pieces, as long as I like the artwork, and this stuff represents what I like to do.
Besides doing puzzles in the basement, I also remember playing a lot as a kid down there. Don't get me wrong, I've up until now described the basement only as a place that got cluttered with junk as the years went by. Let me clarify: The house at 23 Denham was built in the 60s, and in that decade the power of television was not as apparent as it became in the late 70s and 80s. As a result, the homes built in my neighbourhood had no room specifically designed or planned for a family gathering site around the television. Families had to figure out their needs and adapt their houses around them. In our case, the basement became that room, and my father altered the room to suit it. First of all, he erected a wall (two-by-fours with fake wood panelling sheets nailed to them) to enclose the furnace and laundry area, and then walled off the spot where the downstairs bathroom was to be installed. Then, he placed a stand-alone counter beside the wall in the laundry room, cut through the wall above the stand, and the television sat in the laundry room on the counter, and was viewed in the wall in the main room of the basement. For some reason there was also a counter running along one of the outside walls of the bathroom enclosure, maybe intended as a workbench or something. Either way, the bathroom never got started and that room became storage.
So, the basement was well-lit, and meant to be a family room for the house. It was that way for a few years, but as you'll see in later posts it morphed into something quite different. For those early, pre-school years, it was a pretty happy room. I read down there, I played down there, things were great. Two things did stand out for me though. One was that I had a Sesame Street book, entitled "A La Peanut Butter Sandwiches." I think it featured The Count, as the phrase in the title was supposed to replace Abracadabra when doing a magic trick. Anyway, I remember that book, and I also remember losing a book down there. I can't remember which book it was, might have even been the same book, but it got dropped behind a couch down there, and though i asked my parents to get it for me it was always "We'll get it later," and they never did. Keeping in mind that this was the early-mid 70s, and given the types of people my parents were (and I hope the readers are beginning to get a clear picture out of what I've written so far), I hope it comes as no surprise that when I had the need to move that couch in the year 2000, I actually expected to find that book back there. It wasn't, but then I remembered that the couch had been re-upholstered a couple of years earlier. Regardless, when I dropped that book accidentally behind that couch, it might as well have left the planet.
I remember playing with glue. Not in a bad way, playing with it by taking bits of felt and gluing them to a large piece of construction paper, making a shark fin under a big sun. It was a whole beach scene, but I specifically remember the shark fin and the sun. That particular piece of artwork hung on the door into the basement bathroom area until the 2000s as well. That bathroom area was where my toys when I was really young were stored. I remember a Fisher Price castle that had a secret room behind a swivelling staircase, and I remember a big box full of miscellaneous LEGO pieces. I still buy LEGO for myself...well, not since 2005, but if I had the means I still would. The prices they want for the worthwhile sets are astronomical, but that's another post. My mother would make a house out of LEGO for me at night, and then in the morning I would destroy it while making explosion sound effects with my mouth. That may have contributed to her hatred for me, which I'm certain was real and vibrant at some point, but at the time was not visible.
There are more memories to share, but this post is quite long already, so I'll continue another time.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
It Takes A Neighbourhood
The house I lived at, at 23 Denham, was a split-level detached house built in the 60s on the site of what used to be a golf course. The street itself ran the length of exactly one block, at both ends having another side street running perpendicular to it. The numbers on the street maybe ran as high as 28, so we were near the north end on the east side. As I grew up, I became familiar with the people who lived in some of the homes around us, so I'm going to mention them before getting into the real start of my personal story.
Next to us to the north, at 25, there was a family whose name I couldn't remember. They had a daughter named Julia, and I got to know her as a playmate and friend. It was one of those relationships in the movies, where kids who are the same age live next door to each other, grow up together, eventually marry and remain together for the entirety of their lives. When I was around 5 or so, probably the summer before I started school, Julia's family moved away. I vaguely remember being told they went to Hawaii, but perhaps they were Hawaiian and just moved somewhere else. Regardless, she had been a big part of my childhood to that point, and losing her friendship still saddens me to this very day. Wherever you wound up, Julia, I do hope you have had a happy life.
To the south, at 21 Denham lived the Freckers. Can't remember the wife's name, but the husband was Bill, and these two were elderly when I first met them, never mind the years that passed. Bill had a garage in his backyard, the only house in the area that did, and he kept a workshop in there that I visited maybe twice growing up. The two of them were always nice to me, chatting and keeping an eye on me for my parents when I was out playing, but never in an obvious way. I spent a lot of time playing with their grandchildren when they came to visit from Oshawa, two girls named Nicole and Danielle. Danielle was younger than Nicole by maybe two years, and Nicole was younger than me by 3 or 4, so we didn't meet or play until I was a bit older.
Next to the Freckers, at 19 Denham, were the Tobins. They too had a daughter, named Lisa, and she was a bit older than me, by maybe 3 or 4 years. Lisa Tobin was involved in my first sexual experiences with a member of the opposite sex, soon after which she got her period, which stopped everything immediately - soon after, they too moved away. I remember that before I was allowed to play with Lisa, I was given a literal fifth-degree questioning by her mother up their driveway so that my mother wouldn't be able to spot it occuring if she happened out on to the sidewalk. I don't recall anything sinister about the questioning, but it took a long time and was all over the map as to what was asked. Just a weird situation, for sure.
Next to them were two more houses whose inhabitants I had interaction with over the years. 17 had the Gummetts, a nasty old couple who were generally the meanies of the street. They were the house where, if you lost a ball, it would never come back. Theirs was also the first house on the street that, when travelling south, wasn't like the others around it. All the houses were identical on the street as far as design, with maybe a few mirror images in how they were built, except three: 25, where Julia lived, and the Grummetts' home were still the same style, but turned sideways. Number 15 was either turned totally around or was a different style altogether. I think that it was just turned around, so the back was the front with windows on the upper floor, but never went in it so have no idea. It was at number 15 that Fred the dog lived, and I'll discuss my interaction with him in another post.
Across the road I only knew two families, the people directly across from us and the house one to the south of them, so probably numbers 22 and 20. At 22 were the Methvans, again an older couple whose daughter was attending college. Cindy Methvan was my piano teacher when I was younger, before she moved from her parent's house and got married. At 20 Denham was Ann Dark. She was alone as far back as I can remember, and also fairly old. She was the person on the street who hid behind the curtains and watched everybody coming and going. She was also apparently a wild racist. Never got to know her beyond those facts, so who knows if any of it is true?
The only other home on the street that bears mentioning was number 27 Denham Road, where at some point during my grade school years a Czechoslovakian family moved in, the Bolchiches, That is a phonetic spelling, as I have no idea how it was properly spelled. They moved in with their sons Gordon and Dennis when I was in early double digits, and due to the nosy interactions of both my mother and theirs, our friendship ended after about a year and became distrust and hostile glances for the remainder of my life on that street. That was a shame, but I feel nothing but animosity towards them now, and have no idea anymore if any of it was even warranted. I'll get into that stuff at another time.
Beyond the confines of my street, I knew a bit about some other people in the neighbourhood, but didn't get that information until I started attending school at Dorset Park Public School. The school was at the south end of Blaisdale, the street parallel to Denham one over to the west. It went just south of the street at the south end of mine, Cornwallis, and dead-ended in the school parking lot. Needless to say, I was only a three minute walk from the school doors to my door, which is ideal for kids first starting out. Beyond that, I knew about the White Shield Plaza, where resided a Miracle Mart, which was our main grocery store, located right at the northwest corner of the intersection of Kennedy and Lawrence, and the McGregor Park Library and Arena, found on the south side of Lawrence right between Kennedy and Birchmount Road, where they had an outdoor swimming pool and indoor skating rink. Until I was much older, and apart from knowing where my grandmother on my mother's side lived at 70 Eastwood Avenue down at Gerrard and Coxwell, these locations and people were the centre-point of my life.
Next to us to the north, at 25, there was a family whose name I couldn't remember. They had a daughter named Julia, and I got to know her as a playmate and friend. It was one of those relationships in the movies, where kids who are the same age live next door to each other, grow up together, eventually marry and remain together for the entirety of their lives. When I was around 5 or so, probably the summer before I started school, Julia's family moved away. I vaguely remember being told they went to Hawaii, but perhaps they were Hawaiian and just moved somewhere else. Regardless, she had been a big part of my childhood to that point, and losing her friendship still saddens me to this very day. Wherever you wound up, Julia, I do hope you have had a happy life.
To the south, at 21 Denham lived the Freckers. Can't remember the wife's name, but the husband was Bill, and these two were elderly when I first met them, never mind the years that passed. Bill had a garage in his backyard, the only house in the area that did, and he kept a workshop in there that I visited maybe twice growing up. The two of them were always nice to me, chatting and keeping an eye on me for my parents when I was out playing, but never in an obvious way. I spent a lot of time playing with their grandchildren when they came to visit from Oshawa, two girls named Nicole and Danielle. Danielle was younger than Nicole by maybe two years, and Nicole was younger than me by 3 or 4, so we didn't meet or play until I was a bit older.
Next to the Freckers, at 19 Denham, were the Tobins. They too had a daughter, named Lisa, and she was a bit older than me, by maybe 3 or 4 years. Lisa Tobin was involved in my first sexual experiences with a member of the opposite sex, soon after which she got her period, which stopped everything immediately - soon after, they too moved away. I remember that before I was allowed to play with Lisa, I was given a literal fifth-degree questioning by her mother up their driveway so that my mother wouldn't be able to spot it occuring if she happened out on to the sidewalk. I don't recall anything sinister about the questioning, but it took a long time and was all over the map as to what was asked. Just a weird situation, for sure.
Next to them were two more houses whose inhabitants I had interaction with over the years. 17 had the Gummetts, a nasty old couple who were generally the meanies of the street. They were the house where, if you lost a ball, it would never come back. Theirs was also the first house on the street that, when travelling south, wasn't like the others around it. All the houses were identical on the street as far as design, with maybe a few mirror images in how they were built, except three: 25, where Julia lived, and the Grummetts' home were still the same style, but turned sideways. Number 15 was either turned totally around or was a different style altogether. I think that it was just turned around, so the back was the front with windows on the upper floor, but never went in it so have no idea. It was at number 15 that Fred the dog lived, and I'll discuss my interaction with him in another post.
Across the road I only knew two families, the people directly across from us and the house one to the south of them, so probably numbers 22 and 20. At 22 were the Methvans, again an older couple whose daughter was attending college. Cindy Methvan was my piano teacher when I was younger, before she moved from her parent's house and got married. At 20 Denham was Ann Dark. She was alone as far back as I can remember, and also fairly old. She was the person on the street who hid behind the curtains and watched everybody coming and going. She was also apparently a wild racist. Never got to know her beyond those facts, so who knows if any of it is true?
The only other home on the street that bears mentioning was number 27 Denham Road, where at some point during my grade school years a Czechoslovakian family moved in, the Bolchiches, That is a phonetic spelling, as I have no idea how it was properly spelled. They moved in with their sons Gordon and Dennis when I was in early double digits, and due to the nosy interactions of both my mother and theirs, our friendship ended after about a year and became distrust and hostile glances for the remainder of my life on that street. That was a shame, but I feel nothing but animosity towards them now, and have no idea anymore if any of it was even warranted. I'll get into that stuff at another time.
Beyond the confines of my street, I knew a bit about some other people in the neighbourhood, but didn't get that information until I started attending school at Dorset Park Public School. The school was at the south end of Blaisdale, the street parallel to Denham one over to the west. It went just south of the street at the south end of mine, Cornwallis, and dead-ended in the school parking lot. Needless to say, I was only a three minute walk from the school doors to my door, which is ideal for kids first starting out. Beyond that, I knew about the White Shield Plaza, where resided a Miracle Mart, which was our main grocery store, located right at the northwest corner of the intersection of Kennedy and Lawrence, and the McGregor Park Library and Arena, found on the south side of Lawrence right between Kennedy and Birchmount Road, where they had an outdoor swimming pool and indoor skating rink. Until I was much older, and apart from knowing where my grandmother on my mother's side lived at 70 Eastwood Avenue down at Gerrard and Coxwell, these locations and people were the centre-point of my life.
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