Saturday, February 9, 2008

Slippery Slopes of Childhood

The distant memories of childhood eventually fade. I found this out as I reviewed my stories, looking for one to post today. As I read it, I was amazed that I had written it only a few years ago, but had already forgotten some 0f the details. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Life was not an endless summer full of adventure and discovery. Real life was interrupted every fall by the drudgery of school. On my first day of grade one, little did I realize that I and the kids in my class would spend the next nine years together. There were two classes of us, but there was little exchange in the make up of our group over that span of time. For the first two years we had silver haired Miss Bell Thompson as a baby-sitter / teacher. Right from the opening clang of the hand bell on the first day of school, with mothers in tow, we just knew she meant business. It was the pursed lips and squinty eyes that revealed her philosophy of teaching. Her blue and white outfits that gave off strong odors of deodorant and perfume looked too much like a uniform that indicated she would be more of a drill sergeant than a surrogate mother. She did, however, have a talent for conveying the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic that laid a good foundation for us all.

That is, all but the Funk twins. I suppose they were the only ones who were not intimidated. Their special genetic gift in life was a high pain tolerance. We just knew something was coming down when Miss Thompson let her agitation show by digging in her ear with a bobby pin. Douglas and Donald were identical twins and took great pleasure in confusing her. Being a self assured woman who had by that time amassed about a hundred years of teaching experience, she knew how to kill two birds with one stone. Rectifying the defiance and wreaking revenge for interrupting the class. The twins were masters of switch and blame, which only works if you are identical twins. They had probably mastered this technique at home. It was great entertainment for the rest of the class. We sat there, truly in awe, as both boys were punished, and punished severely for something probably only one of them did. The pain was meted out right there in front of all the students and it usually consisted of several very hard raps on the back of the hands with a wooden ruler, on edge. It was the 'on edge' part that kept me on the straight and narrow for most of my first two years under Miss Thompson. It happened on an almost weekly basis and the frustration on the part of the whip master was getting more evident as time went by. You see, the problem was that Donald and Douglas would not flinch a muscle during the ordeal, but more than that, they would look back over the classroom and actually smile as wood crushed bone and flesh, at least by the sound of things.

We knew for a certainty that no pain was ever experienced by these classmates, when we saw them get into their first fight. With each other. They seemed the best of friends, the way I and my brother would treat each other if, indeed, I had a brother. But I did not have a brother so I was so confused when I saw them turn on each other with hatred, usually only lasting until they had exhausted their energy tearing each other apart. And tear each other apart they did. Literally. Ears half torn off, bits of scalp pealed back, red and swollen eyes from the gouging, blood running down the chin from the cut lips and their good school clothes tattered and shredded and covered in grass and mud and blood stains. It was brutal. I suppose that a rap on the knuckles from a wooden stick doesn't hurt much when your ear is dangling on your shoulder.

The opposite extreme was Marion Rode. She was a pleasant enough girl, but my goodness, she knew everything. I had thought the purpose of school was to learn stuff. What was she doing there? She was at the top of the class for the rest of her life and we knew if we had a score on a test that was anywhere near her score, we had accomplished a near miracle. She came from a large family who had a very, very large mother. Rumor had it that she went into the hospital one day due to sever pains in her 'stomach'. She came out with a new baby in her arms, a complete surprise to her. She should have known though. It was nine months and ten minutes since her last one. At least it was a really good gene pool because every one of those kids was the pride and joy of Miss Thompson, whose favorites were always the ones who could ace the math quizzes.

I found it quite a coincidence that there were three Terrys in our class, but a really amazing coincidence that all three of us were left handed. It was a policy in those days to have one left-handed desk in each classroom. The educators of the day were finally giving in to the fact that some people are born right brained and there is not a whole lot they can do about it. It took several days, but we finally had three left handed desks, one for each Terry. Dragging a blotter behind the fountain pen was bad enough, but having your left arm hang down while you were trying to write was bad cause to give a failing grade in penmanship.

I got along with the two Terrys, but never became fast friends. There was a famous Toronto Maple Leaf hockey player named Bobby Bonn, whose claim to fame was playing in a Stanley Cup final with a broken leg. This was the stuff of true heroes and Terry Nackenascheny live in the actual house that Bobby Bonn grew up in on the east side of town. The old paint worn three story house became a sort of shrine for us young wannabe hockey players. This made that Terry somewhat of a hero too. By default. The other Terry had glasses at age six already, but we thought it was because his dad was a teacher at the local High School. If your kid had glasses, he looked more scholarly, and this was appropriate for a teacher's kid. The other theory was that he was a coward and wearing glasses virtually guaranteed him a spectators role only, when the after school fights broke out. His dad was an alcoholic and when the word got out, Terry was always making excuses for him. It was natural and I felt a little sorry for him, except when he beat me in chess.

Most of the students in the Lanigan Public School were farm kids. There eventually developed an 'us versus them' attitude between town and country kids. We were just jealous. The farm boys never came to school in the first week in September like the rest of us. They had to help bring the harvest in on the farm. Indeed some of them never ever came back to school at all. Like Gordon Turner who sat behind me and talked to himself when he was supposed to be doing his work. The front end of a combine fell on his head and killed him outright. Keith Vernard was hauling cattle with his brother when the truck left the road and flipped over, expelling both brothers and all the cattle. The ensuing stampede crushed Keith and he never survived. Kenny Shenko never came back one fall day either. He hung himself in his Dad's barn. He had just been on my team in a spirited game of Prisoner's Base in the school gym the day before. Kids' had tended to avoid him because his clothes were permeated with barnyard smells.

The farm kids were generally poorer than those of us from town but made up for it in smarts and in physical strength. They excelled in track and field competitions, but did not do well in team sports. But they got a ride in the bus every day. I thought it would be a pure pleasure to have a ride in a school bus everyday, twice a day. Some of these kids were a half hour drive out of town so I don't know why spending an hour a day on a bumpy country road in an old bus with no springs appealed to me. These kids, for the most part, had parents who shopped at my dad's store so I instinctively knew that I should be nice to them. Over the years I made connections between my dad's farm customers and which kids belonged to them and eventually knew everyone in town and most people within a radius of five miles. We, as a family, sat down one evening to do a town census. We named every man, woman and child in town, added them up, and came up with 575. We did not go beyond the town limits and knew many hundreds more in the farm lands.

Farming was what sustained this town and not until 1965 was there any other economic base. That is when the potash mine was developed.
The main school was a granite monstrosity with oversized halls and very high ceilings. Having been built in the early part of the century, it was somewhat ornate, much in the style of a government building. It was on a rise and was looking down protectively on several smaller one room school houses and a portable or two. There was no sanitation system as we know it today. The row of toilet cubicles were built over a cavernous septic tank and anyone who had the great misfortune of dropping something into the toilet was assured of saying good-bye to it forever. It could be a painful good-bye because you could see it and almost reach it, but the thought of doing so was too repulsive.

The gray water from the wash basins was collected from under the counter as needed, by the janitor, and dumped in front of the school so it could run down the slope and feed the fringes of grass along the third base line of the ball diamond. In winter, it became the frozen version of a water slide. You were not cool unless you could sail down the entire length of the ice sheet while standing. Being uneven and rough, it was quite an accomplishment and only the most coordinated boys could pull it off. On one such attempt, I fell half way down and instead of finishing the slide on my butt, I attempted to walk back up. My feet disappeared from under me and I landed on my face. Why my face? I was unconscious for while and I remember wanting to stay that way in order to avoid the excruciating pain around my eye.

What resulted was the most incredible black eye in the history of Lanigan Public school which was the topic of conversation for months. I hated it because those who saw it and were not aware of how it came to be, asked questions. "I'd hate to see the other guy" became so predictable. And, no, I was not looking through a keyhole. While the tough guy persona was enjoyable, it soon faded as the embarrassment of “I slipped on a slop pile" took over. While the colours eventually faded from black to purple to yellow, the hard swelling around my left eye took many years to gradually subside. It was a constant reminder to stay away from slippery slopes.

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