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.

The Cop Car

The police seemed quite different when I was younger. They were enormous, most officers towering over those around them. I know, I’ve never actually been tall, and I was a kid then, so, everyone towered over me. But the stories told me suggested they were of sterner stuff. That may not be true, that may just be tinted memory.

Be that as it may, one day, when I was a kid, David Miller and I were at the base of Pinecrest, taking a break from whatever. It was hot. It was the dog days of summer. I recall us standing, straddling our bikes, leaning on the handlebars, not actually going anywhere, not actually doing anything, when we heard a distant siren. Our interest was perked. What kid doesn’t love a siren and the excitement that always seems to accompany one? We noticed the siren was getting louder, and louder still, overlaid by the high-pitched whine of a motorbike. Dave and I looked at each other, aware that their source was definitely coming our way. And then we saw it, the motorbike flying up Brousseau, actually leaving the ground as it topped the rise at Toke Street. Its scream was terrific, loud enough that we’d have cupped our hands to our ears had we not been astounded at what was playing out in front of us, had it not crossed right in front of us, so quickly that it was a blur that was already receding. The bike threw a spray of fine sand behind it as it fishtailed into the bush trail at the base of the school hill, back towards the cruiser that raced after it. Remember the cruisers then? White and blue, and as big as a ship. It too passed in a blur, a white streak that to our surprise was not slowing down. The cop car was way too wide for the trail ahead, regardless how wide its entry. We ought to know, we all but lived back there on those trails. As the cop soon found out as he sailed into the trail in hot pursuit of the bike. And then he was lost to sight. We heard the snap of branches and branches and even more branches. And then just the siren. And then silence, just a tiny motorbike in the far distance, and the thrum of the cruise however far it had carried into the trail. Dave and I hadn’t moved, never having taken our eyes off the trailhead. A short while later, not long, no more than a minute or two, the cruiser backed out, breaking still more branches. Twigs and leaves stuck out from the hood, the front lights, the wheel wells.

I suppose the cop gave us a hard look as he backed out and drove away; maybe not, maybe he was too embarrassed to want to see if those kids were still watching him. I wasn’t, I was still too bewildered at what I’d just witnessed to actually see him, still staring at the bits of bush bristling from all over the cruiser.

The Field

When we first moved to Timmins, and for years afterwards, the lots across the street, the space between Hart Street and Murray and bounded by Brousseau, were owned by the district school board and remained undeveloped. In various stages of growth, every so often sheared to the nub, it was a spark of imagination and a little space of bush, a couple of blocks from the real thing. It was a wonderful playground for all around.

There were trails of passage, worn down by thousands of footsteps, trails that remained even when it had grown feral. That only happened once, when the shrubs had reached a proper height to create a proper maze. But more often than not, the bushes were no more than ankle height. There were thistles and fungi, blueberry bushes and alders scrub. But when it was a proper maze, it was a brilliant place for hide and seek!

I remember when, in the early/mid ‘70s, my father bought a Skidoo. We didn’t have it for long, a few years at most, I suppose, but when we did we had a caboose trailer too. I recall hours of bone chilling cold back there, despite our being wrapped up in a heavy woolen blanket, when Karen and I were being dragged along behind my parents on the sled. My feet were blocks of numb ice at the end of those family outings. Not fun. But when we weren’t being frozen in the caboose, Karen and I would take the skidoo out onto the barren lot across the street for a ride. That was fun, that was thrilling. There were laps and loops and figure 8s etched all over that field. Karen drove more often than not, but I did too, never at great speed—my mother told us to keep it down, and since we were in plain sight, we did; to do otherwise risked our never being allowed to play on the sled, ever again.

One winter, Keith came to visit for a weekend. We were playing war out in that field, with hockey sticks for rifles. We stormed the banks, and defended them. Then we split apart, adding hide and seek battles to the scope of play. I was left to seek. He was out in the deep, windswept field, and I was sneaking up on him, keeping low, using the high banks for cover. I risked a peak over the bank, expecting to see his toque clearly, an obvious dark spot out in the stretch of snow. But he was nowhere to be seen. I panned left and right. No Keith. So, once I reached where I knew I’d seen him last, I bounded up and over the bank, expecting him to scream BANG, BANG BANG! But all I heard was silence, and the wind. I crawled, my belly sliding over the snow. When I reached where I’d last seen him, there was just an empty foxhole, and a berm neatly piled up around it. I looked over the berm and discovered he'd hollowed a tunnel.

“Keith?” I called.

“Down here,” he answered. Climbing down feet first into the hole, I found he’d been busy. He’s burrowed out a warm cozy tunnel down there. We spent the next hour expanding the space...until it collapsed on our heads.

That began a furious burrowing out of banks by David Miller and me after Keith had gone home. At least until we saw the snowplows and massive city snow blowers pushing back and cutting into those banks, crushing them, chewing them up and spitting them out into trucks. Visions of being caught inside one of them when these monsters passed ended our snow tunneling phase.

Shortly after that, the school board sold off the lots, houses rose up on them, and that short-lived free-for-all playground disappeared for good.

There was disappointment. There was mourning. They’d stolen our domain.

Moving Day

We moved from Cochrane to Timmins in the summer of 1970. It was the most important day of my life, up to then.

I was four and a half, so moving from the only place I’d ever known to some place I'd never heard of seemed like moving to another planet. I was concerned, unsure what to expect. I’d no idea what was going to happen. I was also profoundly sad when the day came. I recall wanting to linger, to play with my friends for just five minutes more when my parents called for me to come, telling me it was time to leave. I kicked stones. I ran. I can’t say for certain what I did because I remember doing both, and both can’t be true. I had nightmares of similar leavings for years afterwards. I’d be told it was time to leave in my dream, and I’d pull at dandelion heads and kick at stones to delay the even. I’d wake in a cold sweat upon the completion of a countdown in my head (probably a side-effect of years of NASA countdowns), just as the moment arrived.

I climbed into the car. I cried a little, chocking back what I could. We were leaving my home, my grandparents, my uncles, aunts, my cousins, my whole life behind forever, as far as I could tell.

The hour it took to travel to Timmins felt like an eternity. The furthest I’d ever travelled was to the cottage, and that was only ten minutes from our house on 16^th Ave. The eternity passed. Probably not well, either. I was prone to car sickness and was usually doped up on Gravol so that I wouldn’t get car sick. They tried rubber strips, too, the theory being that it grounded the static electricity from the car. None of that worked. I’d almost always get sick. Sometimes we’d stop in time and I’d throw up into the ditch. Sometimes I threw up in the car. I have no memory of getting car sick on that ride, even though I probably did.

We arrived.

We pulled onto Hart Street and rolled down the hill towards Brouseau Avenue. There it was, 560 Hart, the new house, a yellow brick split level, two lots up from the Avenue. An empty lot separated us from the tall two-story on the corner. An undeveloped field lay across the street, the brush higher than my head.

Our new home was bigger than our house in Cochrane. Stairs up to the bath and beds. I ran up and down them, then downstairs, discovering that the basement was a work in progress, then back outside.

The movers followed shortly, and that inevitably brought every kid in the neighborhood out to watch. I discovered our new neighborhood was flush with kids my age. We were shy at first, me especially. But we were kids, and I was NEW, so we were playing in no time, before the furniture was even fully unloaded. It was like I’d lived there my whole life. I doubt that Cochrane crossed my mind at all.

That’s what kids do, they meet someone their own age and they’re best friends within ten minutes.

Kids adapt.

It’s so cool how they do that with so little effort.

It can leave a mark, though.