Collecting Bottles ... 1950's Style

The sweetness of my life is getting her groove back so it is off to do some Christmas shopping today. My post for today is another boyhood story. I hope you will enjoy this one because I had fun writing it.

Frankie and Brett were two of the best and the worst friends an innocent and naïve little boy could have. I grew up in a home whose mission statement was more implied than stated, and what was implied was that you had better obey Mom and Dad 'or else'. The 'or else' part was not well defined but I instinctively knew that it was best not to find out. On the other hand, Frankie and Brett came from homes where there were no real rules to speak of. That came about partly because there was seldom a parent in sight, something which intrigued and fascinated me. The freedom that came out of that was dizzying. It offered endless possibilities.
So, it came about that I learned my morals from the safe and secure place called my mother's knee. The immorality I learned, came from hanging out with Frankie and Brett. Frankie lived the farthest away of the two and it was perhaps a good thing because of the two of them, he was immoral to a greater degree. I puzzled at the observation that these two guys had older sisters that taught them all kinds of intriguing things and I too had an older sister but she had not told me any of this stuff. I concluded later in life that either my sister was hopelessly naïve herself, or she had such a disinterest in me that she would not even give me the time of day, or she was a loving and caring sister who was protecting me from the evil world, albeit by keeping me ignorant.
Roberta had a limp. To this day, I have no idea why, but it somehow elevated her in my mind to legend status. After all, she was somehow a survivor. Her husky voice added to the mystique. She took it upon herself to make sure her little brother Brett had access to her romance magazines. This was primarily done through her negligence in that she would forget to lock her bedroom door and neglect to put her magazines on the highest shelf in the room. We simply took that as an invitation, or permission, you might say, to look through them, taking great care to replace them in such a way as to leave absolutely no evidence that they had been rifled through. When we had scanned the whole stack, we would steal into Brett's parent's bedroom and under the bed we would find a neat stack of 'True Detective' magazines. These magazines were curious for the reason that I assumed there were actually detective stories therein, but each and every story was prefaced by a picture of a scantily clad woman, in some state of undress, apparently uttering a scream. I never read one of those magazines, nor any story in them, as there was not the time or the desire when paging furtively through them only looking for the next screaming victim. Thinking back on it now, I can see how a steady diet of that kind of thing would easily make a permanent connection in a young mind between women and violence.
These shenanigans would never have been able to take place, had there been a parent at home during the day, to monitor the young boy's behaviour. Brett's Dad was a school superintendent, traveling around the school district, and his mom was a nurse, working shifts at the local hospital. Two young boys in a big house full of adult things, all alone, with time on their hands, was simply trouble waiting to happen. I sensed that it was not a good thing, I mean the being alone, and was always a little relieved to make it home without having been caught red handed doing some forbidden thing.
Frankie had an older sister too, but she was so mysterious that none of us ever actually saw her.
She could have simply been a rumour. It was no rumour though that she had to leave high school before graduation because she was pregnant. I must admit that I pondered over that for years wondering how that was possible. I finally put it to rest when I convinced myself that she had a secret husband in the little town down the road to the east of us and would go see him on weekends.
I never did anything forbidden with Frankie, like I did with Brett, but my, did I learn a lot of new words. His dad owned and operated the local hotel and of course there was what was called a beer parlour on the premises and people who frequent that kind of establishment usually have very colourful language and I was told that when one drank too much beer, the choice words tended to flow more freely. And that would explain why Frankie's dad talked that way, and why, as a result of hearing it day after day, Frankie too, talked that way. And that would explain why Frankie and Brett and soon Terry all talked that way. If my mother would have heard us talk that way, not only would I have been forbidden to play with the only two boys my age on our side of town, but I would have been subjected to a severe leather belt strapping, and a grounding to my room of the rest of the summer, which would have meant the only humans to play with would have been my sisters.
That explains why my mother never ever heard me talk that way.
Frankie's mysterious sister took a few of her best friends, including my older sister, for a treat one day. Four of them planted themselves in her Dad's hotel cafeteria and ordered ice-cream sundaes, with nuts and whipped cream. Nobody could afford that kind of luxury. When they had wiped the last vestiges of chocolate sauce off their cherub faces, the waitress demanded payment. Frankie's sister instructed the bossy waitress to 'put it on my Dad's bill'. That could explain why we never saw her.
These were my friends, for better or for worse, and we had many great times together. They had grown up in that small prairie town and were more than willing to show me around and teach me what it was to be a boy on the loose with no fences or boundaries, once I left my yard, that is. When we were in grade one and two, our world was our end of town. We knew every street, back alley, every climbable tree, and every outhouse that was obscured from it's owners kitchen window, just in case we had to 'go' and were too busy to run all the way home. We knew every stray dog, every kid and his parents, and every place to seek quick shelter in case one of those sudden summer downpours caught us in the middle of an adventure. Later when we got bikes, our world expanded, not only to the other end of town, but the 'outskirts' where the poor people like the Romashenkos lived. From there we explored the highways, the country roads, and every ravine and strip of bush for miles around. There was never a dull moment and my great delight was exploring and learning the lay of the land. Trekking for miles up and down the Yellowhead Highway, pulling a little red wagon to hold all the pop and beer bottles strewn about by thirsty travelers, was very hot and tiring, but so rewarding when we trudged home and cashed in our treasure for real money.
The only bad thing that ever happened on one of those trips was when we found a part case of unopened beer. Being good cub scouts, we always carried our scout knives with us, so a bottle opener was not at all a deterrent to preventing good beer from going to waste. It was a scorching hot day and we were thirsty. There was some debate as to whether we should open them now and quench our thirst, or bring them home, cool them off at the town well, and enjoy them at a more leisurely pace under Brett's caragana hedge behind his Dad's garage. We had all tasted beer, yes, even me, but under parental supervision. You know, just a sip to see how it tastes. The second option seemed too risky. There were bigger boys, bullies, in town who might see us with our prize and would think nothing of taking it away from us, outright. Out here in the tall grass of the ditch, we would not be seen and there would be no chance of having it stolen out from under our noses.
There was enough for one full bottle each. And one full bottle we each drank. Somehow, it did not taste the same hot, as ice cold, like the last time I had tried it. It was wretched and the thought occurred to me that it might be hundreds of years old and have gone bad. It did not even remotely taste like the beer I had remembered. But, we could not back down and lose face. It was unspoken, but there was a contest going on. Who could finish theirs and who could drink the whole bottle without complaining. I am sure our faces were not green, but mine certainly felt that way. It was very quiet heading back to town. We seemed to overlook some prize bottles but we were thinking only of getting home and lying down in some shady spot somewhere, hoping the dreaded puking would not begin. It would have been good for us, but that would have meant loosing the contest.
The recovery was slow but we eventually came back to life. It was mid afternoon by now and if we wanted to cash in our find, we had to get busy and scour the mud and refuse off the bottles, both inside and out. We were experienced at this task and we soon had a red wagon full of cleaned and sorted bottles, ready to head for one of two places in town that paid cash for bottles, Lee's Cafe. The other place was Frankie's Dad's hotel, cleverly named 'The Lanigan Hotel'. But with what Frankie had planned, it would not have worked to go there.
There were only two restaurants in town, Lee's, and that other big faded yellow place by the railroad tracks with the huge 7UP sign on the side of the building. Years later we discovered that it had a name. Kraft's Kafe. We should have known. Mary Kraft was the owner, the cook, the waitress and the bouncer. It was cleaner, but Lee's was the town hangout. Lee and his wife came to Canada decades ago, with his brother Happy. Then came Lee's son, June, a young handsome business-like protégé of his father. When he came, he came alone, from Hong Kong, and it was a bit of a mystery when a few years later June's young son Hip showed up. There was the occasional glimpse of an old Chinese woman in the kitchen, but it was uncertain as to whether she was the wife of Lee or Happy. Only Lee and June had any inkling of the English language. Hip was a fast learner though. Too bad his teacher was Frankie.
There seems to be a human mental assumption that works something like this. If someone cannot speak English very well, they must be stupid or at best gullible. Brett and Frankie were victims of this mistake and after we sold our wagon load of bottles to Lee, their criminal minds went to work. We knew from roaming the back alleys of town, that Lee stored the bottles behind his business establishment until he had a high enough stack to warrant calling a delivery truck out to take them all away at once. The plan was simple. We would creep around the back of the cafe and reload our wagon, pull it around the block and hit up Lee for another few quarters when we sold him the second load of bottles. It seems I was assigned the task of point man. I was reluctant to be involved at all, but I reasoned that if caught, I would not be seriously implicated because I would not actually be doing the selling.
I crept around the stack of bottles and other junk lying near the rear kitchen entrance of the cafe and peered into the gloomy interior. I thought I caught a glimpse of the elusive elderly Mrs. Lee, but as my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I realized it was Happy, toiling over a counter near the large oven. The rumour was that his home baked raisin pies had a nice golden sheen on the top crust because he would growl up a big nugee from his throat and spread it over the crust with a baking brush and then bake it in the big oven. I quickly glanced away lest I witness a confirmation of the rumour. I liked his raisin pie and as long I didn't see anything, it didn't happen.
Over his shoulder, through the round glass window on the swinging kitchen door, I saw June clearing tables, and beyond him, sitting at the front counter, a wimpy home rolled cigarette dangling from his lower lip and peering at a Chinese newspaper, sat Lee.
I glanced over my shoulder and announced 'all clear', and at that signal, Brett and Frankie loaded up the red wagon lickety split. With one pulling and two pushing, we were down the block and around the corner before anyone even suspected there were robbers in the back yard. We were clever enough to wait a while, after all, a wagon load of bottles takes some time to find, let alone wash.
We practically had the money already spent as we wheeled up to the front door of Lee's. Hip was playing on the front steps and I greeted him with a cheery 'Hi, how are you?' With an innocent grin and an eagerness to please and be accepted, he blurted out, "D**n good. Go to h**l". I had heard this response before and because the men who frequented Lee's thought this to be hilarious, nobody bothered to correct him. Frankie crouched down to Hip's level and was about to teach him a new phrase when I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him to his feet as I saw Lee approaching.
We announced that we had another load and should we take them to the back or did he want to count them? Lee sent a lot of money to Hong Kong family members and hoped one day he could afford to bring more relatives to Canada. He was not about to let three snot nosed little thieves deprive him of his hard earned money. He caught on immediately, ranting something about the bottles looking familiar. His English not being that good, I could not determine if he was telling us to go to the hotel with our bottles or if he somehow knew of the hell that I was sure to go to if my parents ever found out about this. We dumped the bottles right there by the front door and ran for our lives, little red wagon bouncing at our heels, all the way home. Frankie and Brett were laughing but I was too scared to find any humour in the situation. My Dad spent a lot of time at Lee's and Lee bought bananas from our store when someone ordered a banana split. Surely this would not remain a secret in a town where everyone knows everything about everybody. There was a distinct possibility that I would never again be able to step foot in the shabby little Chinese restaurant. It would be a pity because I sure did like Happy's raisin pie.