Automotive Escapades

I didn’t get my driver’s license at 16. I didn’t think of it. I didn’t care about it. I walked. I rode my bike. There was the bus. And there was always someone about offering me a ride. Most of my friends had theirs, though. And that’s when the “fun” began. We were teen boys, and no one should have let us within 10 feet of a steering wheel, let along keys. The vehicles of choice were Mark Charette’s 330, replete with its ever so fashionable 8 Track player, Roger Rheault’s new Trans-Am, Chris Cooper’s 3-on-a-tree pick-up truck, John Lavric’s pick-up, or his parent’s Volvo, and Renato Romey’s Firebird. Neither Garry Martin nor I had cars; neither of us had our driver’s license at the time, either. In most cases, there was too much muscle under the hood. Youth and power can be a potentially disastrous combination.

To illustrate this, I present the following cases. Enter a boy, a red-blooded Canadian youth with delusions of immortality, and a thrill of speed….

We were over at John’s place, preparing to go…wherever. We were running a little late, in a bit of a hurry. We ran out the door, piling into John’s truck, among other vehicles when John’s father came round from the back of the house. “John,” he called, “you forgot to bring the car into the driveway, like I asked you.” John looked at the Volvo parked on the street, and said, “Oh, fuck…I forgot.” He rushed back into the house, collected the keys and got behind the wheel. He revved the engine, cranked the steering wheel, and backed into the drive. Quickly. We were running late, don’t forget. The car pulled off the road in a smooth arc. And didn’t appear to be losing much speed. My heart skipped as I watched the car close with the house. When the Volvo did stop, it did so in a screech of tires, a hair’s breadth beyond the bricks within the inset depth of the basement window sill. John hopped out of the Volvo, rounded the car, and bent down to look at the bumper. He looked up at my obviously still anxious features, and wearing a broad smile, said, “Holy crap, that was close.”

Winter time, Renato, Garry and I were in Renato’s car, racing up Ross Street. Why were we travelling so fast? Lord knows. All I can say is that Renato went everywhere fast, but Garry and I never once thought to tell Renato to slow down. We were high school students, reckless, risk takers. And one didn’t nag one’s friends. Or ever appeared afraid in front of them. As we were about to top the hill, we saw another car pull out of Toke Street with the intent to gain our opposing lane. The trouble was, we were travelling so fast Renato’s car was floating on a cushion of air. Renato inched the wheel to the right and the car settled, catching just enough road to find traction. I watched from the back seat as the car we were about to T-bone accelerated, and we raced past, barely avoiding its back bumper. Renato struggled to control the Firebird, fishtailing left and right for two blocks before he brought the beast under control again. A heartbeat later Renato said to a deathly quiet car, “Whoa…that was close.” Did I say that not one of us was wearing a seat-belt?

Chris and John were in Chris’s parent’s new car. Ozzy Osbourne was singing “Flying High Again.” The volume was deafening, likely trailing bass for blocks. Chris hit a pothole, the car skid to the ditch, and Chris and John felt the car begin to roll. And it did. Both were thankfully wearing their seatbelts this time because the car came to rest on its roof. John told me later that “the stereo stopped playing while we rolled. At least I think it did, because I don’t remember hearing it. And when we stopped rolling, we were stuck there, hanging from our seats.” And then he chucked, his grin ear to ear. “Just then,” he said, “all was quiet. (Pause for effect) And then when the stereo began playing again we hear Ozzy sing, ‘Momma’s gonna worry, I’ve been a bad, bad boy.’”

I did not become wiser with age, or learn from our earlier recklessness, either, as evidence will show. I’ll skip ahead a couple years, I’m 19, out of high school, through my first year of college and working at my first real job as a student at Kidd Creek Mine. I’ve money in my pocket, money to burn on gas. And still oblivious to potential harm. I was cruising, driving my mother’s ‘79 Malibu. Man, what a car! V8, rear wheel drive, prone to fishtailing due to its oversize engine and weight distribution. Way too much power for my limited experience; I’d only passed my driver’s test and received my license the summer before. I made a pit stop, stopping to visit Dan Loreto and Anthony Lionello, up in Moneta. They were playing baseball, but took a break when they saw me pull up. We chatted for a while, but not for long; I had to get home. So, I jumped back behind the steering wheel, promptly forgetting my seatbelt. I peeled out, rounded the Flora MacDonald playground, and headed back north up Balsam and drove right through the stop sign at Kirby without seeing it or slowing down.

Halfway through Kirby, I saw a big black shape loom in my peripheral vision. I glanced left and saw the toothy maw of a grill bearing down on me. Time slowed to a crawl. I realized that the truck about to hit me was travelling at immense speed. I realized that there was no way I’d clear the intersection before I was hit, no matter what speed I was travelling at. I leaned to the right, I suppose in an attempt to retreat from the truck that’s about to hit me, and my left arm instinctively rose in the feeble hope of warding me from harm.

And then the car crumpled around me. Titillation sparkled as the glass flew. My arm caught most of it. The collapsing door thrust me further into the passenger seat. The Malibu was thrown from the grill of the pickup and I felt the tires scrape and skid on the asphalt. The car crashed into the black, wrought iron picket fence at the corner, scraping it hard. I heard metal tear.

I rose up from the passenger seat, sliding back into the now too tight driver’s seat. And tried to crank the steering wheel to correct the car’s travel, to hold it straight. The car responded, but it did so grudgingly. The wheel was stiff and tested my strength, but I did manage to set the car against the curb. It came to a stop. I put it in park. And reached to release my seatbelt. Oh, my numb mind said, when I couldn’t find it, it wasn’t on. I tried the driver’s side door. It wouldn’t budge. I reached over and tried the passenger’s. Neither did it.

I noticed than that there was broken glass around me, and saw that the driver’s window was broken, shards of glass jutting up from the door, so I tried to roll down the other. It wouldn’t roll down. I was determined to be free of the car, so I reached out, onto the roof, and pulled myself past through the driver’s side empty space. I almost blacked out, actually saw the edges of my vision narrow, but I didn’t. I pulled myself through the window space, and miraculously didn’t fall to the asphalt. I set one foot on the ground, and then I collapsed. I rose up, and made my way on weak, unsteady legs across the street, where I flopped down onto a stretch of grass there.

I looked back and saw a trail of blood leading back to the car, smears of blood on the roof, on the door. It dawned on me that, oh, that must be mine.

More details resolved to my sluggish mind. I’d parked in front of the Loreto’s house. I heard screen doors crash open.

Two thoughts crossed my mind. My old man’s gonna kill me, was the first. And, my insurance is gonna go sky high. I began to giggle. I couldn’t stop.

That’s when I heard Mrs. Loreto scream, and saw Mario Senior rushing across the street towards me.

High School Hierarchy

This may seem a bit of a rant. It’s definitely angry. I hope that it burns of defiance.

Was I popular in high school? I’d have to say, no. If anything, I was quiet and shy, especially around the girls, especially around the girls I had a crush on. I asked Penny Deluce what the girls thought of me, back then, and that's what she told me; she said she and her friends liked me, too, maybe not in the way I wanted, but it’s nice to be remembered kindly. Was I aware of my lack of popularity? I’d have to say, yes, that I was. Did that lack of popularity hurt? Yes, sometimes. But not always. I wasn’t exactly a pariah, either. I was invited to parties when I was finally old enough to attend them, more as the years passed. I even threw a few.

My first party I attended was my sister’s. I had to be invited. It would have been quite a feat to have kept it secret from me. I did live in the same house. And I was actually invited, and not just because I lived in the same house. My sister was not at all concerned with my social status. In fact, she was my coach when it came to helping me figure out how to navigate all the obstacles thrust in my way. She taught me how to dance, and we practiced how to jive together. I guess she didn’t want her brother to be a geek. And I wasn’t, not really. At her party, I was the disk jockey. It was fun. And her friends treated me well, for a kid. I think they were especially impressed with my LP collection, since I had just about everything they wanted to listen to.

But in school, I can’t say that the “cool” kids or the jocks had much to do with me. Nor I with them. As I’ve said before, I was fairly heavily involved at the pool, first as a helper, then as a guard and instructor. I had my crowd, our weekend outings at the mall and arcades, kickin’ back time at the beach, at the pool, and in basements, routing through others’ collections to rout out my next purchase, my next favourite LP, my next favourite song, my next obsession. There was homework, there was TV, there was the cinema on Friday nights (Mark Charette worked there and snuck us in every now and again). And there were books.

But the evidence was there. Leafing through the old yearbooks, I’m astonished how little the yearbook crowd actually knew about us, if they even gave us a second thought. The pages are thick with the popular crowd, with the basketball teams, the volleyball teams, and hardly ten pages passed without the popular girls crowded together in the fame, mugging for the camera. Even the supposedly candid shots were always of them. There were a few pictures of us, one of John Lavric here, his hair quite a bit longer than in his class photo, another of Garry Martin there, a couple group shots, no more. I’m sure I saw my back in one of the photos once. To be truthful, we weren’t really a school spirit, rah, rah, rah bunch. John worked for his dad and was one of the first of our number with a car, Garry and I spent most of our time at the pool, without much spare time for school sports. There were few extracurricular activities that interested me, us. Gerry Gerrard was in hockey, not an O’Gorman staple. Mark Charette and Roger Rheault were in basketball, but few others. John and Dan Loreto began working out at a gym. Chris Cooper was in Cross-country running, but somehow didn’t grace those pages. Gerry, Mark and I were in Track and Field (Roger, too, I think), but it was held too late to make the print deadline (although it always did in the RMSS yearbooks, I’ve since learned, leafing through my wife’s).

So, were we pariahs to those “cooler” kids? Maybe.

Did we care? Yes. And no. We were the geeks and freaks of our school, in our day. And we liked that just fine. We were into our own things, sometimes that meant sports, but for whatever reason they weren’t the “right” sports. Whatever.

And as it turns out, it took years for the rest of the world to catch up to us. We were gamers. Pre-home-computer. The arcade era. And the arcades were teeming with us, not a jock or a popular girl to be seen. It seems like everyone plays them now, not that I have for more than a decade. We played Dungeons and Dragons. We read horror, science fiction, and sword and sorcery novels, watched every genera of escapist movie ever made, modern, classic, silent, red menace, anything we could see at the theatre or the video store. In the aftermath of Lord of the Rings, whole hosts of superhero movies (to be clear, I never cared for superhero flics), and decades of fantasy gaming, 100,000s of thousands of people now play roleplaying games and attend every type of escapist convention imaginable. FYI: I was never part of the costume crowd. To each his own. If you love it, go with it.

That said, I never liked being invisible to others, either. Reading what was written about my friends and I in the O’Gorman Yearbooks, what was inferred, what was obviously bullshit made up by strangers, it’s no wonder that I did not purchase my final yearbooks.

I remember that the burbs to be published about each of us being distributed throughout, beforehand. I was shocked when I read mine. It was vicious, backhanded. I went to the writer and told her in no uncertain terms what I thought of her description. I even went to the principal and complained, told her what I knew it meant. And demanded that it not be published in the yearbook. Was it? No, it wasn’t. Some shallow, banal piece replaced it. What was it? I don’t remember either, now. Thankfully, I suppose. Not having that book allows me distance to the insult, and its flaccid replacement. Am I imagining that long ago slight? Not a chance. We remember the hurt inflicted upon us far more than any other memory. Why? In hopes of never having those hurts repeated.

What did that long-ago editor think of me when she wrote that blurb? Was it indeed spiteful? And if it was, what did she think of reputedly meek little David Leonard venting his red anger in her face? His not being so expectedly compliant. Not being such a victim.

Compliant? Meek? Victims? If they only knew. I remember us well. Geeks? Sure, why not; but we were also fearless, adventuresome. We were daredevils, speed demons; bright, tech savvy and replete with curiosity, loyalty, and love.

What do those people think of us now, I wonder? Do they, at all?

Do we care?

Dance Hall Daze

We finally took over running the dances.

Of course, there came a time when my grade became the seniors, Grade 12, and 13. Were we the role models one would expect of such mature individuals? We who cursed throughout our high school years, gambled in the halls, were nearly expelled, raced about town, spent all our money on gas, and video games and LPs? We rose to the occasion, as you’d imagine.

I recall Sean Quinn spinning a few dances. I remember Chris Cooper doing the same. Where did they get the music? Did the school have an album collection? I don’t think so. It did have its own sound system or lights, as far as I remember, but I won’t say that under oath. So where did all that music come from. From us. Chris had oodles of albums, milk cartons full of them. We all did. (Personally, I didn’t have any milk cartons, although I was always on the look-out for them, if never actually laying my hands on them; the world had gone metric, and the new ones weren’t compatible to LPs.) But not one of us had enough to run a dance with. There were too many types of music for one person to have copies of everything everyone wanted. So, we pitched in, much like, I believe, all the disk jockeys prior to us must have done. I remember Chris borrowing a number of albums from me, from Mark Charette, Garry Martin, and John Lavric, as well. And I recall the dances being as good as all the others we’d attended, but different. We spent as much time behind the table as in front of it. Well, they did. I’d hang out there with them, but I wanted to be dancing. I wanted to have my arms around a girl.

The Christmas dance was our finest hour. It was hopefully going to be the best one yet. We all helped to hang decorations, set out the chairs and such. And when all was in place, we still had hours to spare.

I went home to get myself all dolled up. Silk shirt. Parfumed. Probably Hai Karate!

Chris and John went over to Dan Loreto’s house. I suppose they may have gone home first. I suppose they must have eaten something. I do know that Mario Loreto Sr. fed them homemade wine. John, from what I gather, understood homemade hooch. Chris did not. Mr. Loreto handed them small glasses of homemade wine, strong as moonshine, light on the tongue as air. They had one, then another. John begged off a third; Chris did not. I don’t know how many glasses slipped past Chris’s lips, but there were more than a few; there must have been. Undoubtedly, more than enough. Because those glasses did not hit Chris directly. It was a brutally cold night. And Chris and John and Dan were numb with it.

Their supper finished, the wine drunk, they made their way to the school, in advance of we participants, to deliver the music and begin the night’s festivities. And that’s when the wine hit Chris. To say it hit him like a ton of bricks sounds like a cliché, but you’d have to have seen Chris, and not fail to imagine that Monty Python 16-ton weight not resting atop him.

I arrived. The music was playing, newish stuff that no one danced to yet, but familiar enough that it set the mood, got people excited, got their feet tapping and their adrenaline pumping. It was loud, spilling out into the hallway from the gym, into the hallway, out through the door and into the street. I stowed my parka in my locker, changed from boots to shoes and began to make my way to the gym.

That’s when I saw Chris, held aloft between John and Dan, headed toward me and away from the gym. Chris was polluted. No doubt about it. He was drunker than I’d ever seen him.

“Jesus H. Christ,” I said, like any good Catholic boy would say within the confines of a Catholic school, “what the fuck happened?”

John was calm. He also wore a grin that stretched from ear to ear. But he was calm. “Well…” he said, drawing that out with a chuckle trailing after it, “Chris dipped into the pot a few times too many.” He explained what had happened, how it happened and when it happened. And he said that Chris was okay when he left the Loreto’s, but upon leaving, he declared that he may have had a little too much wine. They bought him some coffee somewhere, but it had little effect. Chris was getting drunker by the minute, beginning to stammer, weaving on his feet. But what was to be done? The dance was about to begin. They drove to the school, Chris claiming that he would be alright the whole way, an obvious lie by all reckoning, but duty called. And Chris was never one to shirk his duty. Back out in the cold, he seemed to get a little better. Hope prevailed. Not enough, but, one can always fall back on hope when all else fails.

They thought we could cover for him. There was John, Garry, Renato, Anthony Lionello, Sean Quinn, and hell, there was even me, who could pitch in and get Chris through this nightmare. We could feed him albums, spin them for him with a little coaching. It was going to be alright, they told themselves. Hope prevails.

Of course, once they got Chris to the gym, and into his seat behind the turntables, the heat hit him anew, and it was obvious that Chris ought not to be in faculty’s view. So, they needed to get him outside, and most likely home, before all went awry.

And that’s when I came in.

“All we need to do,” said John, “is to get Chris a little air,” bustling past me.

And right into Sister Fay.

She looked Chris up and down, and inquired as to Chris’s state.

“He’s just a little under the weather, Sister,” John explained.

Sister Fay was not convinced, I imagine.

Chris looked up, took the principal in, and said, “Oh, hello, Sister.”

And promptly threw up all over Sister Fays’ shoes.

She was horrified. We were horrified. We also had to bite our cheeks to keep from bursting out laughing.

Somehow, she allowed that he had the flu, even though the smell of wine was rising from his pores in a flood.

How’d the dance turn out?

It was one for the books!

Pitfalls of Peers

We were all trying to find our way through those formative years, some more successfully than others. Friendships were reassessed, and we are all shuffling whom we hang out with.

We all learn new things, adapting as we go. Learning about ourselves, too.

John Lavric introduced me to punk and metal. Punk stuck. Chris Cooper opened my eyes to Ska Revival, Reggae, and Post Punk. Garry Martin loved New Wave. Garry was a bit restless, always in need of motion. New Wave and dancing was a pressure release valve. Dan Loreto was very much a Classic Rock guy. John, Renato Romey, Roger Rheault and Mark Charette had cars. I did not. There were girls. There were bullies. So much to absorb, so much to assimilate.

How did I do at negotiating those pitfalls? I have my opinion on that, but you be the judge.

One day I was walking towards the school, up Joseph, with two of the aforementioned gamblers (see earlier memory, gambling in high school). We were in sight of the school, literally at the corner of the “senior” building, when suddenly the two of them jumped me, trying to wrestle me, and at times throw me, to the ground. I gripped them, then I somehow (I’ve no idea how I managed it) managed to get both in a headlock, and we hit the ground together, probably not what they’d been expecting. They struggled. I held on. From what I could see, they were turning red. “Are we done yet?” I asked. They said we were, and I let go of them. Upon rising, I saw other members of their steady clique further on. That should have told me something. But I brushed that bit of foreshadowing aside. They said we were done, and so I thought we were, until I’d learned otherwise. I refer to the night they took me to the cleaners.

After they took me to the cleaners, there was a spat of punching. I don’t know who started it, or why, but I understand the whole alpha male posturing thing now. Only the jocks and toughs participated. But I did, too, once. I agreed to this to vent my rage on one of the gamblers. Stupid, really. The rules: Each took his turn, balling up his fist and driving it into the fleshy bit of the other’s shoulder. The scrappers pulled this off with a rapidity and an accuracy that boggled the mind. Was I good at it? No. I was never a fighter. But I did connect solidly a few times. I know I did because I heard it. Most of mine were glancing blows, though. Not so the other guy, who took the time to aim, and he punched me repeatedly. I was bruised and sore for days on end afterward. But they did leave me alone, after that.

As I said, there were girls. Crushes and likes included Sandra, Dawn, Patricia, Gretchen, Mona, Elaine, and Carole, among others. I suppose we all fell in and out of love with dizzying regularity. I discovered young love makes one stupid, though, gullible in one’s aim to please.

Carole asked me if I wanted to play a game. I was flattered and agreed. She pulled out a quarter and traced its edge on a piece of paper (then palmed the original coin, unseen, and produced a new clean coin), then said all you have to do is roll this coin off your face onto the pencil circle and you win the quarter. She proceeded to do so. Her coin landed outside the circle. It’s hard to do, she said. She traced the coin again, telling me it got easier with more circles.

So, I rolled it off my nose. Missed. She traced it again. I passed the coin to her but she said she’d already done it and wanted to see if I could beat her time. Of course, the rules said I could not roll the coin off the same spot, so I tried off my cheek. Missed again. Repeat a few more times.

A crowd had gathered, a teacher among them. After a few more attempts, Paula Soucie looked in, and gasped.

“David, you need to stop this, right now,” she told me.

I was obviously confused so she took me by the arm and lifted me from my seat, and said, “You need to stop this and wash your face.”

I was then surrounded by laughter.

Paula threw a look of disgust at the assembled onlookers. And an even more vicious one at Carol.

As we left the room, Paula explained the trick I had been a victim of. Shocked, I hid my face and rushed past those giggling faces in the hall until I reached the bathroom.

I looked on my pencil marked, crisscrossed face in the mirror.

Crush ended. In a heartbeat.

Track & Field

Or just track, in my case. I was always fast, faster than most in my class, anyway; so, it was only natural that I would enroll in track and field, or more specifically, the 100 and 200. Never long distances. Maybe it was because I came from a smoker’s house, but I lacked the lungs for it. I was usually placed in long jump, but I always seemed to either leap too early, or be disqualified for stepping on the board. I was hopeless at field. When attempting shot put, I’d have to dance out of the way to avoid crushing my toes. Javelin was not much better. Maybe I ought to have spent time in the gym, but I wasn’t interested in pumping iron. I had some at home. They were largely ignored, excellent at collecting dust in the corner. I tried hurtles, but we trained indoors at O’Gorman, and we only had room in the gym to set up three, and a mat against the wall. So, we’d have to crash into the far wall when training to keep enough momentum to clear the third hurdle. I always crashed into the fourth when in competition; I suppose that was that flinch instinct kicking in, expecting a wall to rise up and slap into me.

Track was late in the season, so I never made it into the yearbook. Those who ran cross-country in the autumn did, but never us in track and field. Too late to make the printers, I suppose.

My first meet was at RMSS, my first time on an asphalt track, too. I did alright, considering my never having ever worn cleats before, well enough to not lag behind, fast enough to finish with the field, but that was all. What I remember was an RMSS senior turning his dirty tube socks around so that the dirty bottom was on top. I wondered why he did that. It must have felt wrong, what with the heels all stretched out, not to mention the crusty feel they must have had.

I improved with age. Winning heats. Never quite coming out on top, but I remember always making it to the finals, and usually crossing fourth.

And then there was the joy of seeing friends who attended other schools, hanging with them, lazing out in the sun between races.

On one occasion, and I think it was the only time I’d ever seen him since Pinecrest, I watched an old friend, Mike (no idea what his last name was), running in the 400 meter. He was a short guy, muscular, long flaming hair flying behind him. I called out, “Go, Mike, go,” to him; he glanced over, but I don’t know if he recognized me as he passed. Time passes, people move on, and who knows, maybe he didn’t like me much back in Grade school. Or maybe he moved away, because, like I said, I never did see him again.

I do recall my less than finest moment. I was set to run the lead leg of the 200 m relay (not to brag, but we placed our two fastest runners in the lead and final leg, or so I’d like to believe). I surveyed the field, the competition, got set in my lane, one of the outer lanes, and anticipating the gun. There was the sharp snap, and I took off the moment I heard the shot. I focused on the race at hand, and when I ran, the world faded away, until there was only the pumping of my arms, the pounding of my feet on the track, my rapid breathing, my eyes on the lane ahead. What I remember most of the 200 was that you couldn’t see the other lanes, so when in the outer lanes, you couldn’t gage how you were faring against the inner lanes, so you had to really focus on maintaining speed, and on gaining speed. I thought I was doing pretty well. As far as I could tell, I was so far ahead that I couldn’t see anyone in my peripheral vision. What I did see, was my team mate, Mark Charette, the next leg on my team, running back toward me, waving his arms. I looked up, then around, then back. Not a soul. I was alone.

“What?” I asked, I yelled. I knew what.

“False start!” Mark said. Not my fault, either.

I was shocked, then furious in a heartbeat. I’d just ran 100 meters of a race for nothing. I threw the baton down. Cursed, almost threw a fit. Retrieved the baton. And sulked back to the starting point. Hoping and failing to get my wind back.

When the second start fired, I was slow to start, too aware of time, the gun, and another potential false start. And found myself too winded to do much better than to keep pace with the other lanes.