Early Music Lessons

I’ve always loved music, but didn’t engage in it much until recently, active more as an enthused appreciator than as an actual participant. I’ve always loved live music, and always preferred being up close and personal with the stage, never content with seeing acts and superstars who are no more than miniatures on a distant stage. More on that “up close and personal” in later posts, but you’ll have to be patient for those.

My sister took piano lessons from an early age, reaching 11th grade. She didn’t play in public often, just the recitals she was obligated to do. She rarely ever played when anyone else was in the room, either. She did make an exception for my father, who would sit and listen to her play for an hour at a time. She played when I was in the room, as well; probably because I never judged her performance. But she was a perfectionist, and never pleased with her playing. My mother asked me once, when I was still quite young, if I’d like to take lessons too, after noticing me fingering the keys on Karen’s piano. I declined, rather shyly, sure I could never learn. There were SO many keys, and they were SO far apart. And, having watched my sister play, it looked SO difficult. That was stupid of me. I regret it to this day. The earlier one begins to learn anything, the better, and it’s more likely to become innate if one does start at an early age.

There was "choir" practice for the plays while in Pinecrest. I know I said that I hated learning harmony, but I always loved to sing. I used to sing along to LPs and the radio, often humming along while doing homework. I don’t remember musical instruments being taught there, at all.

That was relegated to art class in St. Theresa, where we were introduced to the recorder, probably to see if they could scare us all away from pursuing music as a career. I have patchy memories of music classes, I think it was once a week, where we were all expected to screech and squeak for about 15 or 20 minutes at most. I can’t recall anyone coming away from those music lessons with a desire to continue. Unless you took guitar lessons as an extracurricular activity. I did. And I really wanted to learn. But I was learning on a J-45, enormous for me at the time. And the strings hurt my fingers. I was told it would take time to build calluses on my fingertips, but impatience took its toll. I’d pick at it a couple time a week but I just couldn’t reach the fret board and reach around the body at the same time. I also had to endure the ridicule from bullies. They threatened to steal my guitar, they threatened to break it, they pelted me and the guitar case with snowballs. I quit shortly after that, afraid I would lose my dad’s guitar. I regret that too.

I would pick the instrument up from time to time, browse the method manuals, and attempt to teach myself, but learning to read music by myself was daunting, at best. Then, a schoolmate at college said he would teach me, but he only taught me a couple cords, never following through.

I began taking actual music lessons much later on, in my 40s, through the TSO. No guitar there, but by then I was interested in more than just guitar. I began with a plastic clarinet, later added alto sax. And now that I can read music, I’ve started back on guitar again. I’ll likely never be great, maybe not even good, but it’s the journey that matters. Challenge yourself. It’s never too late to learn new things, it’s never too late to chase down a dream.

A Brief Acting Career

For obvious reasons. I was never comfortable standing up and being on display when younger, let alone performing, debating, or acting.

Not that I had to do much of that while in Pinecrest. I was not in the main cast of anything while there. I suppose I didn’t make the cut. Although I was good enough for the chorus. But then again, everyone was good enough for the chorus. I recall being a sugarplum, dancing in your head, in the Christmas play. Was I a sugarplum? I can’t rightly say what I was, but I remember being dressed in a round red costume (so maybe I was a cranberry) with the others, lined up at the back of the gym, and when cued, we marched in through the main doors from behind the spectators (our parents), up the aisle, and then after splitting into two groups, up the stairs on either side of the stage. Our parents laughed when they saw us enter, not maliciously, but in good humour from being surprised by our sudden entrance from the rear of the gym...or so my mother said. We sang, I remember that. I had to sing harmony, and I was not particularly pleased to be chosen to be (I don’t think any of us were, to be honest). Harmony took a little while to learn; it’s not like it comes naturally to a grade school kid. I remember we’d been separated into two groups during practice, melody to the right, harmony to the left, all of us seated on mats on the floor.

Then, later, while in St. Theresa, I was in an actual play, one in which I actually had lines. I studied and studied, never believing I’d actually learn all my lines. There weren’t many, the play was just an act, and a short one at that, maybe five or ten minutes long at best, but it seemed an eternity for one with stage fright. We, the cast, were students and teacher in a classroom. I played the bullied student who forgives all the other students in the class who’d been cruel to me, once their misguided behavior was pointed out to them by our properly wise and insightful teacher. I told them, “All I ever wanted was for everyone to just get along,” (a la Leave It to Beaver) and they all understood and we were best friends till our dying day. Jesus...! There may have been some quavering of voice while I probably mumbled out my lines in a bland and unemotional monotone.

The final play was in high school. Mine was a bit part, just a walk through with one line. But at least I spoke. Without a nervous twitter of voice. More importantly, I was to walk arm in arm with a momentary crush. Granted, my heart was in my throat the whole time. Being mocked and teased by my friends in the front row didn’t help much.

Finally, in high school, we were separated into groups of three or four and expected to perform a skit on a subject we chose from a hat. We opted to perform ours as a newscast, with anchorman and man on the street interviews. We spent more time laughing at our own material than practicing. I think it showed. I definitely missed one of my lines.

Practice makes public speaking easier. Knowing your material cold helps too. Given time, I gave up on fear of speaking in front of others. I came to realize there was no point to it. Who the hell are they in the audience, anyway? Friends or strangers. They’re either rooting for you, or you’ll never see any of them ever again. So, don’t sweat it.

Interclass School Games

I’m not sure what else to call them, but I recall we had them at both Pinecrest and St. Theresa, where the school made up teams of members of different home rooms and grades, named them particularly cool and evocative names like the blue team, the red team, green, etc., or some such, and set the teams to compete athletically for points. Sort of like team Olympics.

Pinecrest was held in the warm spring months, so the sports were relay races, high jumps and the sort. I was especially good at the sprints, somewhat good at high jumps, disastrous at throwing events. We’d compete, and the teachers would award the points to the winning teams, and after completing the full circuit of events, the points were tallied and the three teams with the highest scores won gold, silver, and bronze. I don’t remember actually winning a medal, although I do remember once or twice being confused by who actually did win an event, not keeping the actual number of home runs or whatever clear in my head. Paying close attention to details like timekeeping and unmarked scoring was not really my strong suit back then.

St. Theresa’s was held in the winter, but the events were pretty similar. The one I recall most of all was a simple one. One team had to kick a soccer ball through the opposing team, each player in turn, and the team that kicked through the other the most got the points. I knew I would do well at this one. I’d played soccer at recesses since grade 1 and was always good at it. I could always kick long and far, and with reasonable accuracy. There were no other rules than those simple ones; so, when my turn came, I prepared for the kick by setting up the ball on a built up, make-shift tee of snow. I set the ball atop it, stood back, and having already figured out who had guarded their end the worst, decided to kick through them. I decided to keep the angle of the kick as secret as possible to the very end so the other team wouldn’t be able to shift their goal keeping at the last moment, as I’d seen them do, skipped the first couple steps, and then quickly wound up and kicked hard. And realized my mistake the moment I connected with the ball; I’d stacked the tee too high. My instep kicked the ball, not my toe, and the ball went high, not hard and deep as I’d intended. It went oh so high, like a pop-up fly ball in baseball. I watched the ball as it rose, as it seemed to hang in space forever, and I cursed. It was the easiest catch of the event. I didn’t win a medal at that particular Olympics, either.

Roughhousing

Boys will be boys. You remember. You don’t even have to remember. All you have to do is observe your kids, your grandchildren, the kids in playgrounds, or at the mall as you go about your day. It doesn’t take much to set boys off, to try to take each other down, or test one another’s strength. It’s all an alpha male thing, jostling for position, each one trying to rise to the top of the heap. It’s a sex thing, showing off, inviting girls to notice ME. Should girls be present, it can escalate pretty quickly. It can become a fight in the blink of an eye. Worse still if one of those boys likes the girl present; and it can become a desperate bid to save face if circumstances turn for the worse. Of course, girls needn’t be present, either. I wasn’t immune.

One day, back in Grade 8, Garry Martin and I were sent on an errand. Classes were in session, the halls empty. As we were about it, we began to joke around, and began to push and shove, never actually meaning to hurt one another. If anything, we were just having fun, giggling the whole time, muffling our laughter so as not to get in trouble for disturbing the classes in session, or the hallowed peace of the halls. We started to throw shadow punches and Kung-Fu kicks, always sure to be wide of the mark. Mind you, some of those came pretty close as we ducked and weaved in and out of range. Then I closed in, just as Garry began to thrust out a leg, his body becoming somewhat horizontal. Committed, I could not, for the life of me, check myself. But I tried. I skid to a stop, piked my body. I felt the psychic thrust of the foot approaching me. And then I felt a tap. In a slightly sensitive spot. Not even a tap. Let’s just say there was enough contact to say there was the hint of contact. And my entire world contracted with that touch, into that moment. I don’t think I’d ever experienced that much pain in my entire life, and I’d experienced some pain by then, riding into parked cars, falling off fences, that time I fell off my bike and landed in the hospital with a concussion. It exploded, rushing out from that central spot and cutting off all sensation everywhere else. Already piked, I crumbled. It must have seemed a seamless flow of motion when observed from without; you’d have to ask Garry. Garry was instantly horrified, seeing me down on the floor, clutching at my crotch. He rushed forward and whispered a panicked, “Are you okay?” when it must have been obvious that I wasn’t. I think we both thought that unless I got up pretty quickly, we’d be in shit, first for fighting, then for breaking the rules for roughhousing, and for not going about our chore like little automatons. Thankfully, that all-encompassing pain left me as quickly as it came, but I was tender for some time, certainly unable to do more than shuffle for a few minutes. Needless to say, whenever I see someone get kicked in the nuts in a film and continue to fight, I call bullshit.

School Trips

Memories are a muddle, all twisted up together, at times. Two memories collide in my mind, somewhat similar, but obviously separate upon further exploration: the Grade 6 Midland school trip, and the Grade 8 Toronto school trip. There had actually been two school trips, not just one! I’d suspected that, but couldn’t separate them. The two were similar in only one aspect, the visiting of historic forts, but that was enough to overlay one on top of the other, confusing them in my mind. Middle-age, and the long span of years taking their toll, go figure. Pictures would have helped separate them, but I have none, either never having been taken, or long lost.

The Midland trip. Grade 6. I recall the theft of the ten dollars from my suitcase vividly. That left me with almost no mad money for souvenirs, as I’d mentioned in that earlier memory. Left without the means to buy much, I had to be very careful with what remained. I made one purchase that I remember, a small fur pelt, purchased at the fort from a native display, one about a foot in length, the pelt, not the display. It was soft, the hairs parting and flowing between my fingers. I had to have it, and I did. I remember placing it on the small desk in my bedroom at home, not sure what else to do with it, always wondering as the months and years passed why I did buy it, what use I had for it. My first impulse buy. Not the last.

The Toronto trip. Grade 8. I recall the Pong game and the shoplifting at the end of the trip. I remember who did it, but as with the theft from my bags during the Midland trip, I don’t believe any mention of names would be fair, not after so many years have passed. And what would it serve? One memory is rather vivid from the Toronto trip, however. For whatever reason, our bus had not picked us up at the end of some tour, and our supervising teachers decided that we were not so far away from our hotel that we could not walk back. We were further than they imagined, as we were exhausted by the more than the hour’s walk on concrete. Along the way, a woman stepped away from a building, and through a wicked smile, asked me/us/the cluster of boys I was with if we would like to party. She was dressed as you might imagine. I imagine she was in hot pants and a tube top, her hair flared out, her make-up loud and not particularly subtle. I blushed. I think we all blushed. The woman laughed, so did her “friends.” Embarrassed, we begged off, trying and obviously failing to be cool, and found ourselves walking a little faster, to catch up with the more numerous cluster of kids ahead of us, the one presumably protected by our chaperoning teacher.

That was the first time I’d ever seen a prostitute.

Halloween

I ceased trick-or-treating earlier than most, I think. I was twelve when I last got dressed up and begged candy from door to door.

We didn’t vary our costumes much. My mother made ours, a new one every couple of years. It was invariably a clown costume, actually just a shift made big enough to be thrown over a snowsuit. The last was a mustard yellow, almost brown, very ‘70s. I think there was a hat, too; again, something large enough to slip on over a toque. Our bags were pillowcases, doubled up so we could carry more and not need to head home to unload. I don’t remember anyone carrying prefab Halloween bags, although I think toddlers have carried those little plastic jack-o-lantern pails around since before I was born.

Karen and I shelled out together, usually with the Millers, maybe others from around the block, then with some of her friends later. Karen probably didn’t want to babysit me, and I certainly didn’t want to be, maybe she just wanted to hang out with her friends, but my mother would have had none of that, safety in numbers and all that. So off we went after supper, after gathering together for the hunt. There was much planning, discussions with other troupes of kids on where the best houses to hit were. I recall a house at the top of Hart Street that was always considered a must visit: they always handed out cans of pop, an article we were thrilled to get, considering the novelty of receiving it. It was a silly thing to covet. Too big, way too much weight. What weights a pound at the beginning of the trek will weigh a ton an hour later, especially once handfuls of candy were heaped on top.

I remember some kids carrying UNICEF boxes with them, something I never see now.

My last year, it was wet. Most Halloweens were wet in my memory. There was always snow in the yards, damp dripping banks melting out into ruts in the road, and it was always cold, the threat of the coming winter on the wind. This couldn’t have been the case every year, and it wasn’t, there were warm years too; but when I remember Halloween nights, that’s the way I remember them.

Karen and I went from door to door as quickly as our legs would carry us. The night was not particularly inviting, but greed kept us on, it certainly did me. We’d made a wide circuit, had quite a haul by the time it had grown dark, when I felt and heard the bag begin to give. It was a sickening sound, the sound of impending loss. I could sense candy bars beginning to escape, terrifying my avarice. I hoisted the bag up, inspected it, and found a hole in the bag with a searching finger, through one bag, and then the other in the inner sack too, big enough to risk leaving a trail of candy behind me all the way home if I didn’t do something about it. I hugged the sack to my chest, and gripped the tear and held it tight. I thought about setting the bag down and maybe tying a knot where the hole was, but there was slushy snow in all the yards, the road wet and littered with rivulets and puddles. So, I just clutched the hole, hugged it hard, told my sister what was happening, and scurried home. She didn’t follow. The night was young, after all. It seemed such a long way home, but it wasn’t really, just down Patricia and back up Hart, but with the bag failing, it seemed a marathon. Shin splints plagued me towards the end. The weight seemed unbearable as I rounded the block and half ran to and up my driveway and to the door.

I made it, I might have lost a bar or two along the way, but to stop and try to retrieve them would have risked the rest.

I never went out again. I thought myself too old for it the next year. I was thirteen, after all. Trick-or-treating was for kids. I opted to stay home and shell out, instead. It stung that first time. My sister went out with her friends without me, and I felt a slight pang of jealousy watching her go, but it passed. I never felt the urge to head out again. If I wanted some chocolate, I could just reach into the bowl and have some. And we always had extra. Even at the end of the evening.

Star Wars

Have you seen the Star Wars opening scene? Of course you have. I think everyone has. But did you stand in line with everyone else in 1977 to catch the phenomena sweeping the world? I did, though I have no idea with who, my sister most likely, or my neighbor, David Miller, if not her. I wasn’t yet meeting up with and hanging out with school friends, or keeping up with them throughout the summer. We were now scattered across town, some of my new friends living as far away as Schumacher and South Porcupine; not like those from Pinecrest, most of whom lived within two or three blocks of one another. So that summer was a somewhat lonely affair. No longer part of the public school system, my old friends and I were no longer hanging out; they'd moved on, and so had I. I don’t blame them; they had new friends met at R. Ross Beattie Secondary. It wasn’t that bleak: there was swimming lessons and public swims at the pool where I’d begun to take note of new friends from St. Theresa if I hadn’t already.

So you can imagine how important this movie was to me, how I might have been swept up by it, as thoroughly seduced by it as Eric Foreman was in “That 70’s Show.” Its simplistic vision was thrilling and drew me in, with its heroes, its villains, its clash of good and evil. The loudness of its Wagnerian theme, the epic scope. I saw it more than once.

Everyone under 20 did, most likely. But do I remember actually doing it? No. I remember sitting through multiple viewings of “The Empire Strikes Back” at the Palace years later, probably because I went on my very first “date” ever with Lori Ann Miller to see it a second time, sunk down in its red velvet seats, heads close, whispering, me wanting to show off by explaining every nuance of every scene. But I don’t actually remember standing in line and seeing “A New Hope.” You’d think I would, but I don’t.

I do remember being able to quote every phrase from it in the St. Theresa school grounds when school resumed, the boys I knew in a circle, all of us discussing it, all of us equally swept up by the film over the summer.

What I especially remember is their hanging on my every word while I quoted the film. But of course, that’s not entirely true. We hung on each others’ words, reliving the film in its retelling.

To this day, every time I hear the 20th Century Fox intro theme, I think of Star Wars.

A House Unfinished

Our house on Hart Street seemed to be in a perpetual state of construction. My father always had the best intention of finishing the work, but there was always another project to consider. He did finish the areas that were actually lived in, but if there was a major project to be done, like when “we” built the addition (cue whatever music you imagine that accompanies the entrance of able-bodied contractors), it was time to call the professionals.

He did complete the rec room, furnished with the most ‘70s fashionable bold floral carpeting, that crawled up the walls of the bar and storage couch—think chocolate brown, orange and yellow, with matching cushions.

The spare bedroom in the basement, with serviceable en suite, was also completed, albeit with similar, and almost matching wood paneling.

So too was the new rec room and sauna under the addition. It was good, even great when it was complete, if you could stand the burnt orange carpeting, again, all the rage in the late ‘70s; my friends and I thought it all very cool there, so that’s where we hung out. The sauna was a thing of beauty, the shower outside the sauna sturdy enough to support the living room fireplace above it, if need be. Sadly, the cast iron tube next to the shower was painted the same colour as the carpet, but that’s just paint. The plumbing was sound, after two or three fits; the lights worked. What else could one ask for?

The utility room, where my mother spent more than enough time doing laundry, was another thing. It was never completed, the walls never dressed with wall board, the electrical wiring exposed for all to see for as long as we lived there.

What can be said about my dad was that he tried. He sometimes succeeded, he mostly succeeded, and the finished work was alright, when he applied himself; but patience was never his strong suit. One cannot spend one’s week on the road, living the life of the travelling Molson Brewery rep, and then spend the night out with one’s friends when one comes home, and be endowed with patience when attempting finished carpentry, electrical work, or plumbing.

Once I was old enough to “help,” I was drafted. You’d think that was a good thing. But I was only used as the jack-of-all-trades helper, useful for fetching, carrying, and holding in place. I was never really instructed in the use of electrical tools, just hand tools, but never actually trusted to do anything with them, not often, anyways. I was to learn through osmosis, I suppose. On more than one occasion, I was instructed to come help, which I always did when asked, but not without trepidation, because whenever I did, somehow, things did not come off right. Depends on what we were doing, though. Some things went swimmingly, others not. Say we'd work on the plumbing for the shower and sauna, and I’d be expected to hold the copper pipe immobile while my father soldered the joints; but I’d have to hold it all in place above my head while he readied the soldering tools, not an easy thing back in those days when my arms could never be mistaken for those of a bodybuilder’s (FYI, they still aren’t, as I’ve not seen the inside of a gym in some years). The soldering complete (but not before I’d heard “hold it straight” a number of times), we’d test the work by turning on the tap. There may or may not be a drip. We’d drain the pipe, and begin again. The joints would be pulled apart, dried, replaced and re-soldered. We’d turn on the tap, and there may or may not be a drip. After a few repetitions of this, my dad’s patience was a thin skin at best. He may or may not yell at me, although the first was more likely than the second. How this was my fault was beyond me, so after a few repetitions, my patience may or may not have been a thin skin, too. After being yelled at three times, I’d drop the pipe and walk away.

As you can imagine, I’ve never developed many home improvement skills. I hate it. The mere thought of doing construction work and repairs sets my teeth on edge. A nervous fear of failure rises up into my chest.

If I have to work on the house, I can feel my father rising up in me. His language, too.

Coming of Age, Of a Sort

That would be between ‘76 and ‘78, I’d say. That's a hard thing to nail down for most people, if not all of us, as it happens in leaps and bounds over a period of time. So let’s observe some of this process. Further details of each to follow, I imagine.

In ‘76, I began helping out at the pool, not the Schumacher pool (that’s where my sister began her junior guard experience), the Archie Dillon Sportsplex, then only a year old. Judy Miller was still at the cash (God love her for her longevity of service), but other than that, the two pools could not be more different. The Sportsplex was brick, tiled, windowless, '70s modern in every way. It echoed, as all pools do. It was humid, as all pools are; but hot, as the Schumacher Pool never was.

In ‘77, I bought my first albums with what little wealth I had: Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours,” and the Eagles’ “Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975.” I loved them both, but I can’t say I chose them on my own. They were picked out on the advice of my cousin Alan, in from Cochrane. We stumbled upon each other in the new Timmins Square on a Saturday afternoon, at Circle of Sound. I was in a record store for the first time, out with friends, trying and failing to be mallrats, leafing through the maze of future personal purchases, browsing the best sellers, when Alan appeared. We talked, he asked me what I liked, and I admitted I didn’t really know, limited to the playlist on the local radio and the memory of the too many ‘60s and ‘70s rock in my older cousins’ collections to remember; I’d yet to find my groove. When he asked me what albums I had already, I begrudgingly admitted that I didn’t own any LPs, then, yet. He took those two off the best-sellers wall, and said that these were two worthy of building a record collection from. He was right.

In ‘76, the class trip to Midland, the first time I was ever away from my parents. We were placed four to a room, one of whom likely stole the $10 of mad money my mother gave me for the trip. That kid held a $10 bill up to me and all in the room and said, “Look what I have.” Me too, I said, in response, unsure why he was so boastful about showing it off, my own mother telling me to keep it secret; but upon a search of my own luggage later could not find my own money my mother had given me. Read between the lines, and I’m sure you will come to the same conclusion I did. But how to prove the theft? I let it go.

In the summer of ‘77, Star Wars was released. I very much had an Eric Foreman moment.

In ‘78, I saw my first video game, Pong, on the school trip to Toronto. We spotted it in the restaurant of the hotel/motel we were staying at, and were soon 3 to 5 deep around it, fascinated, transfixed by what we knew was the future. That same trip, someone was caught shoplifting on a stop on the way home. One of our teachers went down the aisle with a basket, telling us that if anyone else had stolen something, to place it in the basket and nothing more would be said. He left with an empty basket. The shoplifter was eventually returned to us, his head low with shame upon entering the bus.

In ‘78 and beyond new interests began to penetrate my shell: girls, New Wave, Post-punk; video games, first at the Square, then Andy's Amusement, and later still at Top Hat’s.

The list of crushes to that point: Heather, Alison, Patricia, Shelly, Kim, and Sandra. Obviously, more to come.