New and Old Dark Shadows
posted by Sonny Drysdale at 1:31 AM
2 comments
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Friday, April 13, 2012
The Art of Calling on Friends
In the mid-sixties, well, in Windsor, Ont. on Isabelle Street in the mid-sixties anyways, the way to call on your friends in grade-school years was to do just that. Go to their back door (never the front - it was associated with and only for grown-ups,) and start calling out the appropriate name of the kid you wanted to come out and play. And so, after dinner, you would wolf down your Whip n' Chill dessert, run outside and across the street and call on your friends.
The years before puberty were periods of constant running, packing an entire evenings worth of activity into the hours between six o'clock and 9:00 when you had to go in. There wasn't even time to waste on television - you had till the late hours of dusk and the street was your playground. If you were older you got to stay out an hour after the streetlights came on.
I remember calling on Paul so vividly because I didn't often go over to his place without the Reynolds brothers - even though they lived just next door to him and he was immediately across the street from me.
There was a trick to calling on someone if you didn't want to come out looking like an idiot. The person's name had to have at least two syllables for it to be properly called. To call on someone was to use a cross between a shout and a song, a combination that could spring quite naturally from any kid's voicebox. In those years before puberty, a call could have a very musical, sweet and innocent tone to it.
You would stand outside their backdoor and shout the first syllable and sing the next. Or you could sing them both. What was essential though, was that it have two syllables, the last one ending in a 'y' otherwise it would come off sounding very flat and half-hearted. A name like 'Lar-ry' or 'Bob-by' would be perfect, but a 'Paul' would just not do at all. You could add the necessary 'ie' or 'y' to the end of it, but it seemed absurd to me and totally inappropriate to do that with Paul.
Paul Campbell was the undisputed coolest AND strongest kid in our neighbourhood. Not that he was a bully or a punk or anything. It was simply understood that he was the strongest. Although the Reynolds boys knew him well enough to stand in his backyard and call for 'Paul-ie,' I could never bring myself to do this. It seemed kind of demeaning and a bit too familiar. And as a newcomer to the neighbourhood, I wasn't about to go calling on the acknowledged strongest kid on the block something that sounded incredibly effeminate and babyish to me.
Instead, I settled for 'Pa-aul,' which of course fell flat every time. But as I said, I didn't often call on him solo and would let the Reynolds do the calling whenever I went with them.
One particular night after supper, as usual, I bolted from the house and called on the Reynolds. They weren't home so I bopped next door to see if they were at Paul's.
"Pa-aul! Pa-aul!"
This went on for a good two minutes. I was sorry it had. Mister Campbell finally realized that wasn't going away and came to the door.
"Oh, it's you Peck."
Al Campbell was one of those types who always call you by your last name. You could be ninety or nine months, but as long as you were of the male sex, he'd always call you by your surname, just like a phys-ed teacher. Actually, he'd been in the army. That's how Paul referred to it - 'in the army' - so I knew he hadn't been in the war or did any killing. Still, I found him intimidating.
"What do you want?"
"Is Paul home?"
"No, he's out, you can probably find him down to Bill's Confectionary."
I gave this matter some thought, uncertain about whether or not I wanted to go all the way two blocks down to Bills.
I was pivotting on the toes of my P.F. Flyers about to take off down the driveway when - "Hey Peck, how come you're always so serious?"
Al's having a little fun with me here. He's been smiling since seeing a frown cross my face as I was puzzling over the trip down to Bills. He also thinks I'm either too shy or quiet for my own good and like any good boot-camp sargeant wants to do something about it. And like anyone who had ever been in the army, he could also smell fear.
"What's on your mind Peck?"
I was not accustomed to carrying on two-way conversations with adulsts and this one was making me quite uncomfortable.
"I bet it must be something awfully important, eh?"
I hemmed and hawed for a bit, hoping something intelligent or witty would come to me.
It didn't. Instead, I sputtered out the first self-deprecating fact that came to me - just so Al wouldn't think I was stuck up or a sissy.
"Not really. I don't even know what the Viet Nam war is about." As I ran down the driveway, I could feel my face getting redder as I heard Al chuckling away like crazy.
The years before puberty were periods of constant running, packing an entire evenings worth of activity into the hours between six o'clock and 9:00 when you had to go in. There wasn't even time to waste on television - you had till the late hours of dusk and the street was your playground. If you were older you got to stay out an hour after the streetlights came on.
I remember calling on Paul so vividly because I didn't often go over to his place without the Reynolds brothers - even though they lived just next door to him and he was immediately across the street from me.
There was a trick to calling on someone if you didn't want to come out looking like an idiot. The person's name had to have at least two syllables for it to be properly called. To call on someone was to use a cross between a shout and a song, a combination that could spring quite naturally from any kid's voicebox. In those years before puberty, a call could have a very musical, sweet and innocent tone to it.
You would stand outside their backdoor and shout the first syllable and sing the next. Or you could sing them both. What was essential though, was that it have two syllables, the last one ending in a 'y' otherwise it would come off sounding very flat and half-hearted. A name like 'Lar-ry' or 'Bob-by' would be perfect, but a 'Paul' would just not do at all. You could add the necessary 'ie' or 'y' to the end of it, but it seemed absurd to me and totally inappropriate to do that with Paul.
Paul Campbell was the undisputed coolest AND strongest kid in our neighbourhood. Not that he was a bully or a punk or anything. It was simply understood that he was the strongest. Although the Reynolds boys knew him well enough to stand in his backyard and call for 'Paul-ie,' I could never bring myself to do this. It seemed kind of demeaning and a bit too familiar. And as a newcomer to the neighbourhood, I wasn't about to go calling on the acknowledged strongest kid on the block something that sounded incredibly effeminate and babyish to me.
Instead, I settled for 'Pa-aul,' which of course fell flat every time. But as I said, I didn't often call on him solo and would let the Reynolds do the calling whenever I went with them.
One particular night after supper, as usual, I bolted from the house and called on the Reynolds. They weren't home so I bopped next door to see if they were at Paul's.
"Pa-aul! Pa-aul!"
This went on for a good two minutes. I was sorry it had. Mister Campbell finally realized that wasn't going away and came to the door.
"Oh, it's you Peck."
Al Campbell was one of those types who always call you by your last name. You could be ninety or nine months, but as long as you were of the male sex, he'd always call you by your surname, just like a phys-ed teacher. Actually, he'd been in the army. That's how Paul referred to it - 'in the army' - so I knew he hadn't been in the war or did any killing. Still, I found him intimidating.
"What do you want?"
"Is Paul home?"
"No, he's out, you can probably find him down to Bill's Confectionary."
I gave this matter some thought, uncertain about whether or not I wanted to go all the way two blocks down to Bills.
I was pivotting on the toes of my P.F. Flyers about to take off down the driveway when - "Hey Peck, how come you're always so serious?"
Al's having a little fun with me here. He's been smiling since seeing a frown cross my face as I was puzzling over the trip down to Bills. He also thinks I'm either too shy or quiet for my own good and like any good boot-camp sargeant wants to do something about it. And like anyone who had ever been in the army, he could also smell fear.
"What's on your mind Peck?"
I was not accustomed to carrying on two-way conversations with adulsts and this one was making me quite uncomfortable.
"I bet it must be something awfully important, eh?"
I hemmed and hawed for a bit, hoping something intelligent or witty would come to me.
It didn't. Instead, I sputtered out the first self-deprecating fact that came to me - just so Al wouldn't think I was stuck up or a sissy.
"Not really. I don't even know what the Viet Nam war is about." As I ran down the driveway, I could feel my face getting redder as I heard Al chuckling away like crazy.
posted by Sonny Drysdale at 8:12 AM
1 comments
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Riverside Revisited - The Last Chapter
That evening in Yaybars went by quickly. A series of fast moving incidents is the only blur I remember. Sitting at a deserted table with one of my sister's friends in Grade 11 and getting along famously and then moving closer to have a look at the problem she was having with her camera, looking up and seeing she had no interest in her zoom lens but looking at me and smiling. No words smokin', we melted into a warm unhurried kiss oblivious to all the passing smartass remarks. When we stopped, we found Mugs sitting at our table with his back to us. He turned around, looking bewildered, focused his eyes on my girl, seemingly not knowing I was even there and blurted out "And I didn't trip over second base! Well, fuck me dead Gertrude, that's just the way the game is played!"
She ran away at that and as I chased her to the womens' can, I knew I wouldn't see here again that night. So I thought to hell with it and decided to get drunk. I was standing at the bar in the backroom when the band started to play. I did my best to ignore them but even from the backroom of Yaybars that was hard to do. As with Yaybar's policy at the time, they were booked for the month and pretty bad.
To distract myself, I took to people-watching. Coates was sitting at a table a few feet away with a couple of rough-trade lookng girls. He seemed in the kind of contented funk I was familiar with - his hands folded in his lap and a smile on his face as his pretended to be interested in their conversation. Six Tequila Sunrises sat before them which I knew that Coates had paid for. They were the fashionable drink that year and Coates liked to impress with his cash on weekends.
At one point, he stopped their conversation mid-sentence by piping up out of nowhere an old song he had picked up somewhere - "Got to get my old tuxedo pressed/Gotta sew a button on my vest/Yeah, tonight I really gotta look my best/Lulu's back in town." He then leaned back with a satisfied smirk and the two girls gave each other frightened glances. But for me, the expression on his face topped with that damned derby made my night and for weeks afterwards, whenever I needed a good laugh, I would replay it in my mind just to cheer me up.
Meanwhile the band was getting progressively more atrocious. And it seemed like the entire football team were encouraging them with every song. When they launched into a rocking version of 'The Hokey-Pokey,' the jocks were muscled off the dance floor by the middleaged bowlers who regularly came to Yaybars after their games because back then the only way you could get alcohol in a bowling alley was if you stuffed a mickey inside your bowling shoe and snuck it in. The sight of them all putting one foot in and then the other and then shaking it all about was too much for me and I had to get out.
I went into the 'Gents' room to throw water on my face to clear my head but it didn't help. My departure was hastened by an overheard remark by two gents standing at the urinals, staring at the wall when one turned to the other and declares, "I don't care which, but I want to get in either a car accident or a fight tonight." The other solemly nodded in agreement.
Passing the dance-floor, the band broke into the inevitable cover of 'Johnny B. Goode,' whipping the entire space into a frenzy of high-school brawn and middleaged paunch. Controlled by mad impulse and forsaken of any rational thought as in 'common sense,' I calmly walked through the dancers, got up on the stage and taking the microphone in hand, yelled out the first thought that came into my head - "Rock and roll, you STUDS!"
The first punch hurt the worst. There were others but I was quickly hustled off the stage and thrown down the front steps onto Riverside Drive.
Two hours later, I found myself outside Bills Confectionary, downing a pop-machine can of Sport Cola. The streets were deserted and I was quite surprised when Coates came stolling down Wyndotte looking about as bad as I did.
"What happened to your hat?" was the first thought that came to me. The brown derby, which I had seen perched on twenty different heads that night was now back on Coates' head, dented in on one side as if someone had sat on it.
"Oh, I ran into a little bit of trouble back in Yaybars. Same time as you, as a matter of fact."
"Heard about that did you?"
"Hard not to Howie. I just came from Riverside Tavern and Mugs is still telling people about it and he was in the john at the time and missed all of it. Whatta stud."
"So what happened to you?"
"I didn't know the lyrics to a song."
"Oh."
It turned out that while I was being hustled out the door, Coates was in the back room oblivious to the commotion and puzzling over the second verse to 'Lulu's Back in Town.' To the great annoyance of the two girls he had been supplying with Tequila Sunrises, he would ask "Now, how's that go again?" And getting no answer, he would run through the song's opening, hope the next part would come to him and when it didn't he'd try again - "Second verse, same as the first."
The girls at his table tried to ignore him but he soon had all the neighbouring tables joining in and before long the second verse was completely forgotten about. That is, until two biker-looking types showed up at the table to reclaim their girlfriends. Coates was sitting with his back to them and didn't notice the girls' annoyed nods of 'go for it' when he came to his grand finish, fingers snapping, head bobbing back and forth and the most smug look you have ever seen as he instinctively spun around and faced the two black-leather clad gents and informed them that "Lulu's back in town."
On the gravel of the back parking lot, amidst the sound of the Detroit River slapping against the stones of shore, the sound of tires hitting the multiple potholes which were Yaybars' idea of a parking lot, the strange mixture coming from the bar's open windows of watered-down badly done Chuck Berry, could also be heard the sound of fists smashing into numb flesh and a soft thud like the silence of a bruise, of brown velour being crushed.
"Well, fuck me dead Mergatroid, I know those lyrics. I could have saved you a lot of trouble."
"Too late for that, Howie. Besides we're now both banned from Yaybars. No more return engagements."
"Good. Better class of people at the Royale Tavern anyway."
"Let's get out of here. I'm beat. How's that song end anyway?"
And so, down the dark streets leading away from the river and towards Schillers Bush and inevitably K-Mart Hill, I and my pal Wes Coates walked from one pool of light from one streetight to the next, like singers on a stage going from one spotlight into the dark and then the next magically appearing shaft of light, all the while singing "Gotta shine my shoes and slick my hair/Gotta find a hat I bought somewhere/Yeah, tonight I'll use a real boutonniere/cuz Lulu's back in town ..."
Not loudly. But also not giving a damn if it woke the whole street up.
She ran away at that and as I chased her to the womens' can, I knew I wouldn't see here again that night. So I thought to hell with it and decided to get drunk. I was standing at the bar in the backroom when the band started to play. I did my best to ignore them but even from the backroom of Yaybars that was hard to do. As with Yaybar's policy at the time, they were booked for the month and pretty bad.
To distract myself, I took to people-watching. Coates was sitting at a table a few feet away with a couple of rough-trade lookng girls. He seemed in the kind of contented funk I was familiar with - his hands folded in his lap and a smile on his face as his pretended to be interested in their conversation. Six Tequila Sunrises sat before them which I knew that Coates had paid for. They were the fashionable drink that year and Coates liked to impress with his cash on weekends.
At one point, he stopped their conversation mid-sentence by piping up out of nowhere an old song he had picked up somewhere - "Got to get my old tuxedo pressed/Gotta sew a button on my vest/Yeah, tonight I really gotta look my best/Lulu's back in town." He then leaned back with a satisfied smirk and the two girls gave each other frightened glances. But for me, the expression on his face topped with that damned derby made my night and for weeks afterwards, whenever I needed a good laugh, I would replay it in my mind just to cheer me up.
Meanwhile the band was getting progressively more atrocious. And it seemed like the entire football team were encouraging them with every song. When they launched into a rocking version of 'The Hokey-Pokey,' the jocks were muscled off the dance floor by the middleaged bowlers who regularly came to Yaybars after their games because back then the only way you could get alcohol in a bowling alley was if you stuffed a mickey inside your bowling shoe and snuck it in. The sight of them all putting one foot in and then the other and then shaking it all about was too much for me and I had to get out.
I went into the 'Gents' room to throw water on my face to clear my head but it didn't help. My departure was hastened by an overheard remark by two gents standing at the urinals, staring at the wall when one turned to the other and declares, "I don't care which, but I want to get in either a car accident or a fight tonight." The other solemly nodded in agreement.
Passing the dance-floor, the band broke into the inevitable cover of 'Johnny B. Goode,' whipping the entire space into a frenzy of high-school brawn and middleaged paunch. Controlled by mad impulse and forsaken of any rational thought as in 'common sense,' I calmly walked through the dancers, got up on the stage and taking the microphone in hand, yelled out the first thought that came into my head - "Rock and roll, you STUDS!"
The first punch hurt the worst. There were others but I was quickly hustled off the stage and thrown down the front steps onto Riverside Drive.
Two hours later, I found myself outside Bills Confectionary, downing a pop-machine can of Sport Cola. The streets were deserted and I was quite surprised when Coates came stolling down Wyndotte looking about as bad as I did.
"What happened to your hat?" was the first thought that came to me. The brown derby, which I had seen perched on twenty different heads that night was now back on Coates' head, dented in on one side as if someone had sat on it.
"Oh, I ran into a little bit of trouble back in Yaybars. Same time as you, as a matter of fact."
"Heard about that did you?"
"Hard not to Howie. I just came from Riverside Tavern and Mugs is still telling people about it and he was in the john at the time and missed all of it. Whatta stud."
"So what happened to you?"
"I didn't know the lyrics to a song."
"Oh."
It turned out that while I was being hustled out the door, Coates was in the back room oblivious to the commotion and puzzling over the second verse to 'Lulu's Back in Town.' To the great annoyance of the two girls he had been supplying with Tequila Sunrises, he would ask "Now, how's that go again?" And getting no answer, he would run through the song's opening, hope the next part would come to him and when it didn't he'd try again - "Second verse, same as the first."
The girls at his table tried to ignore him but he soon had all the neighbouring tables joining in and before long the second verse was completely forgotten about. That is, until two biker-looking types showed up at the table to reclaim their girlfriends. Coates was sitting with his back to them and didn't notice the girls' annoyed nods of 'go for it' when he came to his grand finish, fingers snapping, head bobbing back and forth and the most smug look you have ever seen as he instinctively spun around and faced the two black-leather clad gents and informed them that "Lulu's back in town."
On the gravel of the back parking lot, amidst the sound of the Detroit River slapping against the stones of shore, the sound of tires hitting the multiple potholes which were Yaybars' idea of a parking lot, the strange mixture coming from the bar's open windows of watered-down badly done Chuck Berry, could also be heard the sound of fists smashing into numb flesh and a soft thud like the silence of a bruise, of brown velour being crushed.
"Well, fuck me dead Mergatroid, I know those lyrics. I could have saved you a lot of trouble."
"Too late for that, Howie. Besides we're now both banned from Yaybars. No more return engagements."
"Good. Better class of people at the Royale Tavern anyway."
"Let's get out of here. I'm beat. How's that song end anyway?"
And so, down the dark streets leading away from the river and towards Schillers Bush and inevitably K-Mart Hill, I and my pal Wes Coates walked from one pool of light from one streetight to the next, like singers on a stage going from one spotlight into the dark and then the next magically appearing shaft of light, all the while singing "Gotta shine my shoes and slick my hair/Gotta find a hat I bought somewhere/Yeah, tonight I'll use a real boutonniere/cuz Lulu's back in town ..."
Not loudly. But also not giving a damn if it woke the whole street up.
posted by Sonny Drysdale at 2:19 AM
3 comments
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Riverside Revisited - Chapter 5. The Funniest Guy I've Ever Known
That brown derby proved to be very popular that night in Yaybars. There were a couple of old friends of Coates from his basketball days sitting in the back room with their girlfriends and so we sat with them. The girls were much taken with the hat.Indeed, they paid it more attention than they did us or their boyfriends. Passing the derby back and forth between them, it sat briefly poised like an unsteady turtle upon their heads as they gossiped between themselves about some poor soul who had once had the misfortune of knowing them.
"She took off from home and went to Montreal."
"Alone!"
"Then she hitch-hiked to Vancouver."
"With a guy!"
"And now she's back here."
"Alone!"
"She wanted to stay at my place, but my mom wouldn't let her. She looks different now. She's not normal."
"She was so quiet. I never thought she'd be on drugs!"
"My mother says those are the ones you can always expect that of."
"Well, people change. I guess I'm not that surprised."
"My mother wasn't either."
"If I ever turned out like that, my mother would kill me!"
With the arrival of Coates, the two boyfriends came out of their lethargy and soon the three of them were off and running down memory lane, dribbling a basketball all the way and beer off their chins in the process. Nothing bores the hell out of me more than than sort of stuff and so I opened a window, felt the cool air from the river a few feet away, nursed my beer and thought of that girl being orally dissected across the table from me. She had escaped by moving out of town and her reward upon returning as the prodigal daughter was to have her two former best friends talk about her as if she was an article in the National Enquirer. I guess it's true what they say - you can't go home again. Because why would you want to. "Well, people change. I guess I'm not that surprised."
Using a trip to the washroom as an excuse to leave, I got up and took a tour of the place. It was packed more than usual and a great number of people seemed to be in the same restless mood I was.
In the ballroom, I came across Mugs sitting with Hays, churning out stories fortified with bullshit to a couple of young skeptics when I joined them. They had heard the same story probably at least three times at that point and were getting tired of hearing the variables change. Hays called me over with this story about Mugs' baseball game that night, the anecdote culminating with Hays, his face as red as his hair from holding back laughter, suddenly forcing out in a quick stream - "I almost pissed myself laughing!" before collapsing into a fit of giggles, while all this time Mugs endured all this with a passive stoicism, refusing to give the story any dignity or merit by even commenting on it. Just the same, it struck me as a great story and had brightened my evening and so when Coates wandered by, I called him over so he could hear it for himself.
"Hey Wes, we missed a good game tonight. Mugs was up, hit a triple and then tripped over second base."
Mugs wasn't going to keep quiet this time. "Oh fuck off, Howie, you weren't even there!"
"I wish I was. Tripped over second base and landed on his ass! Damn, I wish I could have seen that. They tagged him out at third."
"Okay Howie. You don't have to tell the whole world, you stud!"
'Stud.' That was one of Mug's favorite putdowns at the time. Like calling someone a jerk or an asshole. For some reason, Mugs took a word which would be considered a compliment in most social circles and turned it into a form of derision.
Mugs quickly changed the topic. "What are you made up for anyway Coates? You get paid today or something. What's with the white pants? You turning queer or something? Geez, look at this guy. All dressed up and wearing a jacket with the sleeves half ripped off. You oughta let your mother finish the job once she's started it. Eh, Howie? He oughta let his mother finish, eh?"
"Well, I won't be living with her much longer Mugs," Coates says.
"Oh yeah? Mister Working Man. Hey, why don't you buy Howie's old man's place? It's only one street over from you, ya stud."
"Nah. I don't want to move that far away from home. Actually, I'm going to California."
"Yeah? Maybe I'll come with you. I wouldn't mind seeing a few Dodgers games."
"I can see you tripping over second base as we speak. No Mugs, I'm not going for the ballgames. What I had in mind was the beach, Sunset Strip, California Girls. Just thinking about it makes me screw up my words at times. Tonight at dinner I was telling my old lady about these small sea animals I saw on the news the other day and they come out on the beach only one night a year to 'procreate.' And so I'm giving her this Jacques Cousteau type report, straight out of National Geographic, only instead of calling them 'organisms,' I fuck my words up and say 'these orgasms on the beach.' Bit of a Freudian slip. I didn't bother to correct myself."
"Shit-snowflakes, Coates! Take me with you! I wouldn't mind some of those orgasms on the beach! Eh, Howie? In between Dodgers games of course. Say, how 'bout that Kofax, eh?"
And I left them to their talk about California, although we all knew that Mugs didn't have the least intention of going. Something like that would interfere with his way of life - which for the most part consisted of sitting around coffee shops, high-school cafeterias, pool halls and neighbourhood taverns and just shooting the bull, making fun of immigrants, the Prime Minister and smearing the reputations of people he didn't like with his all-inclusive "Whatta *stud*."
Mugs had been playing organized baseball all his life and truth be told, wasn't the worst pitcher to ever be put into rotation. His big dream in life was to be spotted by a major league scout, signed to a million-dollar contract, not be good enough to be the starter or even the second or third string pitcher and so spend all his time sitting on the bench and thinking of all the money he was earning for only having to change his clothes and sit on his ass doing absolutely nothing.
Whatta stud. And I mean that as a compliment.
"She took off from home and went to Montreal."
"Alone!"
"Then she hitch-hiked to Vancouver."
"With a guy!"
"And now she's back here."
"Alone!"
"She wanted to stay at my place, but my mom wouldn't let her. She looks different now. She's not normal."
"She was so quiet. I never thought she'd be on drugs!"
"My mother says those are the ones you can always expect that of."
"Well, people change. I guess I'm not that surprised."
"My mother wasn't either."
"If I ever turned out like that, my mother would kill me!"
With the arrival of Coates, the two boyfriends came out of their lethargy and soon the three of them were off and running down memory lane, dribbling a basketball all the way and beer off their chins in the process. Nothing bores the hell out of me more than than sort of stuff and so I opened a window, felt the cool air from the river a few feet away, nursed my beer and thought of that girl being orally dissected across the table from me. She had escaped by moving out of town and her reward upon returning as the prodigal daughter was to have her two former best friends talk about her as if she was an article in the National Enquirer. I guess it's true what they say - you can't go home again. Because why would you want to. "Well, people change. I guess I'm not that surprised."
Using a trip to the washroom as an excuse to leave, I got up and took a tour of the place. It was packed more than usual and a great number of people seemed to be in the same restless mood I was.
In the ballroom, I came across Mugs sitting with Hays, churning out stories fortified with bullshit to a couple of young skeptics when I joined them. They had heard the same story probably at least three times at that point and were getting tired of hearing the variables change. Hays called me over with this story about Mugs' baseball game that night, the anecdote culminating with Hays, his face as red as his hair from holding back laughter, suddenly forcing out in a quick stream - "I almost pissed myself laughing!" before collapsing into a fit of giggles, while all this time Mugs endured all this with a passive stoicism, refusing to give the story any dignity or merit by even commenting on it. Just the same, it struck me as a great story and had brightened my evening and so when Coates wandered by, I called him over so he could hear it for himself.
"Hey Wes, we missed a good game tonight. Mugs was up, hit a triple and then tripped over second base."
Mugs wasn't going to keep quiet this time. "Oh fuck off, Howie, you weren't even there!"
"I wish I was. Tripped over second base and landed on his ass! Damn, I wish I could have seen that. They tagged him out at third."
"Okay Howie. You don't have to tell the whole world, you stud!"
'Stud.' That was one of Mug's favorite putdowns at the time. Like calling someone a jerk or an asshole. For some reason, Mugs took a word which would be considered a compliment in most social circles and turned it into a form of derision.
Mugs quickly changed the topic. "What are you made up for anyway Coates? You get paid today or something. What's with the white pants? You turning queer or something? Geez, look at this guy. All dressed up and wearing a jacket with the sleeves half ripped off. You oughta let your mother finish the job once she's started it. Eh, Howie? He oughta let his mother finish, eh?"
"Well, I won't be living with her much longer Mugs," Coates says.
"Oh yeah? Mister Working Man. Hey, why don't you buy Howie's old man's place? It's only one street over from you, ya stud."
"Nah. I don't want to move that far away from home. Actually, I'm going to California."
"Yeah? Maybe I'll come with you. I wouldn't mind seeing a few Dodgers games."
"I can see you tripping over second base as we speak. No Mugs, I'm not going for the ballgames. What I had in mind was the beach, Sunset Strip, California Girls. Just thinking about it makes me screw up my words at times. Tonight at dinner I was telling my old lady about these small sea animals I saw on the news the other day and they come out on the beach only one night a year to 'procreate.' And so I'm giving her this Jacques Cousteau type report, straight out of National Geographic, only instead of calling them 'organisms,' I fuck my words up and say 'these orgasms on the beach.' Bit of a Freudian slip. I didn't bother to correct myself."
"Shit-snowflakes, Coates! Take me with you! I wouldn't mind some of those orgasms on the beach! Eh, Howie? In between Dodgers games of course. Say, how 'bout that Kofax, eh?"
And I left them to their talk about California, although we all knew that Mugs didn't have the least intention of going. Something like that would interfere with his way of life - which for the most part consisted of sitting around coffee shops, high-school cafeterias, pool halls and neighbourhood taverns and just shooting the bull, making fun of immigrants, the Prime Minister and smearing the reputations of people he didn't like with his all-inclusive "Whatta *stud*."
Mugs had been playing organized baseball all his life and truth be told, wasn't the worst pitcher to ever be put into rotation. His big dream in life was to be spotted by a major league scout, signed to a million-dollar contract, not be good enough to be the starter or even the second or third string pitcher and so spend all his time sitting on the bench and thinking of all the money he was earning for only having to change his clothes and sit on his ass doing absolutely nothing.
Whatta stud. And I mean that as a compliment.
posted by Sonny Drysdale at 3:38 AM
0 comments
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Riverside Revisited - Chapter 4, Getting Primed for Yaybars
At six o'clock that Friday night, after I'd had my nap, supper, a shower and brushed my teeth, I was feeling refreshed. The air outside was still hot and humid but a soft warm breeze made walking on the shadeless streets bearable. I walked around the corner to Coates' street, up to his house and off we went down Belleperche on our way to the liquor store at the K-Mart plaza.
The spring thaw had been over weeks ago and so we cut through Schiller's Bush, what had once been our earlier childhood magic playground, a deep and mysterious forest from pre-pubescent summers spent furrowing deeper into the woods and discovering the furtive pleasures of cigarettes, matches, bonfires, Playboy magazines and tree-forts. On nights like this, the bush would be alive and fresh - still muddy in spots, Polliwog Pond still full of water and the sound of young frogs around it, no mosquitos out yet and only the sound of birds and scared rabbits running as you walked along the wagon trail, stepping around puddles, pushing branches out of your way and listening all the while, never knowing what was behind the bush, feeling a little apprehensive remembering those old stories of bums that lived in Schiller's Bush and lived on lost little kids and then finally reaching the open fields that lay before the railroad tracks and your nerves would begin to settle down as if a great danger had been passed and in the next moment your heart lept into your throat as a pheasant would take off into the air from the knee-high weeds three feet in front of you, startling the whole forest into silence and scaring the shit out of you.
We would walk along the tracks, breaking the monotony of the lack of passing trains by walking balanced on the rails for half a mile, walk over a few planks that made a bridge over the ditch which ran along the tracks, climb K-Mart Hill, cross the back parking lot and go buy two bottles of 'Rat' our favorite sherry - a dollar eighty-five a bottle, 19 per-cent alcohol. Minutes later we would be on the back side of K-mart Hill, hidden from the plaza and parking lot, looking down the tracks at the Detroit skyline, looking straight ahead at the fields and bush we had just crossed and looking down at the screw-on bottle caps that lay dropped at our feet, clink bottles together in a toast and then look into the bottom of those bottles tilted to our mouths and see in the distorted reflections of the scene around us, the promise of things to come.
"So, Howie. Have you figured out what this book of yours is going to be about yet?"
"I don't know. Harlequin Romance seems to sell pretty well." This cheap shot gets a chuckle out of both of us and I continue, "Seriously. My mother reads them all the time. I don't think it would be that hard to write one."
"Well, what if you're just going to write by formula, why don't you imitate Harold Robbins? They sell a lot more than Harlequin Romance and are probably easier to write."
"Can't. Too much sex. First rule about writing? Write about what you know. I'd better stick with the heartache and traumas of wealthy virgins for the time being."
"Speaking of the rich," says Coates. "I was with Terry at this party in Detroit last weekend and there was this chick from France who says she's a model and wants to stay in the States and so she's thinking of getting a marriage of convenience just to be able to stay there."
"Well, that lets you out. Wes, you're Canadian!"
Coates gets a kick out of this. "Yeah, but I didn't tell her that. No, I'm serious. If I'm going to live in California, I have to become an American citizen and marrying one might just be the way to do it."
"I knew you'd give up on that idea about joining the Marines."
"Yeah, this is less painful and has better benefits."
"Sure, and if you play your cards right and find a rich babe willing to marry you, you can file for divorce and get paid alimony."
"That's what I'm banking on, Howie."
Our conversations on The Hill always went like that. For the most part, the talk circled around the future - images of money and less boring places to call home and images and fragments of dreams. With Coates and I, escape was a tangible reality. Something we had in common and seemingly shared with no one else. I was moving north; he to California. Other people always complained of living in Windsor. I think it was an expected civic duty, like taking out your garbage. But for many Windsorites, their talk was as flatulent as the city's nickname, 'The City of Roses' when considered in the context of the expression 'to drop a rose.'
For Coates, escape was forthcoming. With each pay-cheque, two-thirds went into a special bank account. This was his California account. He had already asked for an indefinite leave of absence from his job and had paid for and booked a one-way flight to Los Angeles on September 21st, a day deliberately chosen because it was the last day of summer. Supposedly it's always summer in California. I was escaping to a less exotic locale and the only conceptions of London I had which endeared it to me was that someone had once described it to me as 'quaint.'
Coates that evening looked resplendent. Seemingly having just stepped out of a travel brochure for southern California, he was a beautiful sight to behold after a hungover hot afternoon. He was dressed in light colours. A pair of tan suede brogues worn without socks, white pants and white linen shirt, a soft brown belt. On his head he wore cheap bright yellow plastic sunglasses he had bought on a whim and had set him back fifty cents at Bill's Confectionary. This was topped by a light brown derby, a nice touch and a hat I admired with envy even though I knew it would only get him into trouble at Yaybars. This elegant ensemble was compromised by an old, much loved beige windbreaker whose sleeves had been cut off at the elbows with a pair of dull scissors.
With his deep tan, blond hairs climbing out the top of his open-collared shirt, his lean strong build, sharp facial features - all this crowned by mane of golden curls, he looked like the son of Apollo, appropriately the Greek ideal of male perfection and upon meeting him outside his house set against the grimy drabness of that suburban asphalt driveway, I looked at this young Adonis, blinded and stunned by his radiant beauty and called him 'Sunshine.' It is thus, I always like to remember Coates.
I myself was dressed also in West Coast fashion, only mine was a style found north of San Francisco. Dressed in Levis (it was the mandatory dress code at Riverside High - if you were new to school and showed up in Wranglers, it would only happen once,) black&white P.F. Flyers (far too hot for work-boots,) a Neil Young flannel shirt and long, straggly hair, I was the epitomy of the 'California laid-back' look.
After finishing our wine sometime after sundown, hitching a ride up to the river, we made an unlikely couple entering through the back door of Yaybars.
... Next Installment - Yahoos at Yaybars.
The spring thaw had been over weeks ago and so we cut through Schiller's Bush, what had once been our earlier childhood magic playground, a deep and mysterious forest from pre-pubescent summers spent furrowing deeper into the woods and discovering the furtive pleasures of cigarettes, matches, bonfires, Playboy magazines and tree-forts. On nights like this, the bush would be alive and fresh - still muddy in spots, Polliwog Pond still full of water and the sound of young frogs around it, no mosquitos out yet and only the sound of birds and scared rabbits running as you walked along the wagon trail, stepping around puddles, pushing branches out of your way and listening all the while, never knowing what was behind the bush, feeling a little apprehensive remembering those old stories of bums that lived in Schiller's Bush and lived on lost little kids and then finally reaching the open fields that lay before the railroad tracks and your nerves would begin to settle down as if a great danger had been passed and in the next moment your heart lept into your throat as a pheasant would take off into the air from the knee-high weeds three feet in front of you, startling the whole forest into silence and scaring the shit out of you.
We would walk along the tracks, breaking the monotony of the lack of passing trains by walking balanced on the rails for half a mile, walk over a few planks that made a bridge over the ditch which ran along the tracks, climb K-Mart Hill, cross the back parking lot and go buy two bottles of 'Rat' our favorite sherry - a dollar eighty-five a bottle, 19 per-cent alcohol. Minutes later we would be on the back side of K-mart Hill, hidden from the plaza and parking lot, looking down the tracks at the Detroit skyline, looking straight ahead at the fields and bush we had just crossed and looking down at the screw-on bottle caps that lay dropped at our feet, clink bottles together in a toast and then look into the bottom of those bottles tilted to our mouths and see in the distorted reflections of the scene around us, the promise of things to come.
"So, Howie. Have you figured out what this book of yours is going to be about yet?"
"I don't know. Harlequin Romance seems to sell pretty well." This cheap shot gets a chuckle out of both of us and I continue, "Seriously. My mother reads them all the time. I don't think it would be that hard to write one."
"Well, what if you're just going to write by formula, why don't you imitate Harold Robbins? They sell a lot more than Harlequin Romance and are probably easier to write."
"Can't. Too much sex. First rule about writing? Write about what you know. I'd better stick with the heartache and traumas of wealthy virgins for the time being."
"Speaking of the rich," says Coates. "I was with Terry at this party in Detroit last weekend and there was this chick from France who says she's a model and wants to stay in the States and so she's thinking of getting a marriage of convenience just to be able to stay there."
"Well, that lets you out. Wes, you're Canadian!"
Coates gets a kick out of this. "Yeah, but I didn't tell her that. No, I'm serious. If I'm going to live in California, I have to become an American citizen and marrying one might just be the way to do it."
"I knew you'd give up on that idea about joining the Marines."
"Yeah, this is less painful and has better benefits."
"Sure, and if you play your cards right and find a rich babe willing to marry you, you can file for divorce and get paid alimony."
"That's what I'm banking on, Howie."
Our conversations on The Hill always went like that. For the most part, the talk circled around the future - images of money and less boring places to call home and images and fragments of dreams. With Coates and I, escape was a tangible reality. Something we had in common and seemingly shared with no one else. I was moving north; he to California. Other people always complained of living in Windsor. I think it was an expected civic duty, like taking out your garbage. But for many Windsorites, their talk was as flatulent as the city's nickname, 'The City of Roses' when considered in the context of the expression 'to drop a rose.'
For Coates, escape was forthcoming. With each pay-cheque, two-thirds went into a special bank account. This was his California account. He had already asked for an indefinite leave of absence from his job and had paid for and booked a one-way flight to Los Angeles on September 21st, a day deliberately chosen because it was the last day of summer. Supposedly it's always summer in California. I was escaping to a less exotic locale and the only conceptions of London I had which endeared it to me was that someone had once described it to me as 'quaint.'
Coates that evening looked resplendent. Seemingly having just stepped out of a travel brochure for southern California, he was a beautiful sight to behold after a hungover hot afternoon. He was dressed in light colours. A pair of tan suede brogues worn without socks, white pants and white linen shirt, a soft brown belt. On his head he wore cheap bright yellow plastic sunglasses he had bought on a whim and had set him back fifty cents at Bill's Confectionary. This was topped by a light brown derby, a nice touch and a hat I admired with envy even though I knew it would only get him into trouble at Yaybars. This elegant ensemble was compromised by an old, much loved beige windbreaker whose sleeves had been cut off at the elbows with a pair of dull scissors.
With his deep tan, blond hairs climbing out the top of his open-collared shirt, his lean strong build, sharp facial features - all this crowned by mane of golden curls, he looked like the son of Apollo, appropriately the Greek ideal of male perfection and upon meeting him outside his house set against the grimy drabness of that suburban asphalt driveway, I looked at this young Adonis, blinded and stunned by his radiant beauty and called him 'Sunshine.' It is thus, I always like to remember Coates.
I myself was dressed also in West Coast fashion, only mine was a style found north of San Francisco. Dressed in Levis (it was the mandatory dress code at Riverside High - if you were new to school and showed up in Wranglers, it would only happen once,) black&white P.F. Flyers (far too hot for work-boots,) a Neil Young flannel shirt and long, straggly hair, I was the epitomy of the 'California laid-back' look.
After finishing our wine sometime after sundown, hitching a ride up to the river, we made an unlikely couple entering through the back door of Yaybars.
... Next Installment - Yahoos at Yaybars.
posted by Sonny Drysdale at 3:11 AM
3 comments
Riverside Revisited - Chapter 3, The Last Day of School
The last day of school was unusually hot and humid for that time of year. Appropriate weather for those beginning a summer vacation. But for me and the rest of my class, it was the end of school and the beginning of life, and so I was more in the mood for a nice warm spring day with fresh breezes stirring the air with the fragrance of dandelions and budding leaves.
School that last day began as a celebration and ended as many parties do, having dragged on much longer than the fun has lasted, a sense of relief that it is over, tired and quickly said goodbyes, the last guests bored and lingering, unable to leave.
As was the tradition with students who were finished school on a permanent basis, long and lanquid liquid lunches in local lounges were pretty well the norm. But myself and a few others began that much earlier. On that morning, I found myself sitting in my pajamas by my bedroom window an hour earlier than usual having breakfast in my room: it consisting of half a brick of Colby cheese, an orange and a bottle of cheap sherry - Baccarat, reknowned for its high alcohol content and reputation for getting you high or sick very quickly.
Getting high or drunk became almost commonplace that last semester of school. A joint was usually shared on the walk to school in the morning. Fridays became Freak Day. As for mid-day boozing, that precedent had been set in April when Steve Matlock and Del Morris spent the morning in a cornfield with half a case of beer. I ran into them after class that day bombed out of their minds and chatting up Bob Driscoll's mom in her driveway as they waited for Bob to get home.
The sun had already been up a couple of hours and I looked out upon our backyard covered in long shadows and a shimmering jeweled blanket of sun-sparkled dew. The morning was quiet. No cars, no kids on their way to school, but alive as only nature can be before Man makes his first appearance heralding the beginning of a new day with the noise of eight cylinders and a faulty muffler, drowning out the songs of starlings and sparrows and telling crickets it's time for bed. I sat there listening to the early hour sounds, feeling as alive as the morning around me, chilled by the cool morning air working its way into my pajamas, feeling more delight with the quiet beauty I was watching and feeling apart of with each tilt of that wretched tasting liquid to my mouth.
With the arrival of garbage trucks and milkmen, my neighbours began their day, going to their cars and pointing them in the direction of their awaiting pay-cheques. For me, it was time for school.
The morning went by quickly. Classes consisted simply of finding out whether or not you were exempted from having to write the final exam. Unless you wanted to stick around for the review, it was only a matter of putting in a brief appearence and then a trip out to he smoking area which was then giving off an overpowering aura of high spirits.
For the most part, that was the routine. The one bright spot was watching people get sick. I was not the only one who had spent the post-dawn hours imbibing and there were many stomachs which would not stand for this early morning poisoning.
In homeroom, where we sat as heads were counted before nine o'clock, the general air of excited yapping was abruptly interrupted when Mickey Watkins suddenly leapt into the aisle with a speed surprising for one of such girth.
"A little edgy about the exams?" asked Mr. Columbo, our history teacher, in a sarcastic voice that betrayed a sense of being both startled and outraged. Then, in silence, his eyes followed the turned heads of everyone as we watched the kid behind that now empty seat wretching out his early morning digestion of cornflakes and vodka-laced bile, all the while smiling apologetically and then nonchalently making a quick exit as Mr. Columbo then addressed a more sarcasm tinged inquiry about anxiety at his fleeing backside. He ended up spending the morning wiped out behind a fence along he perimeter of the school yard. As I said, that was the highlight of the day. All the more so because being bombed yourself in such similar circumstances you feel a strange mixture of comradeship and contempt.
At noon, the closest dining-room style restaurant was taken over by all the envious students who did not have the foresight to start drinking before the school day had begun. By noon, I was feeling appalingly sober and an hour in Riverside Tavern was just the little pick-me-up I needed, and so in search of refreshment, along with Mugs and the Bunhead, I trundled off to an early happy hour.
The rest of the day was downhill. By two-thirty, many people had left for the day, while the rest of us in our last year wandered the halls with the beginnings of hangovers, an awful thing to experience without the cushion of sleep. I ended up leaving early to go home, take my body's advice to ignore those rumors of an after-school party at Riverside Tavern, but to instead walk the hot streets to home, eat aspirins, then some food and take a nap. I began my life of freedom as an old man does retirement.
There had been a misconception in the air that day that *that* night at Yaybars would be the last of all Big Nights. For some reason, people thought that with a Grade 12 or 13 diploma in their possession,they would no longer be privy to the same desires and sense of youth. No longer high school students, they now had all the freedom they had been dreaming of the past four or five years. But they traded that freedom from one confinement for a another far more strict routine. Instead of the free spirits they had the potential of becoming, they would become insurance agents, work on the line at Cryslers or Fords, or trade in their high school textbooks for university texts. Their freedom would be forfeited and the few alloted hours of their own time would be governed by worries of quotas to be met, essays to be written, exams to be crammed for and the dead thud of a time-clock being punched. I had no similar concerns and listened to my friends' point-by-point life plans or dreams to simply work on the line in an automotive plant making a guaranteed $250 a week ("that's a grand a month, Howie!")- with detached amusement.
I had no such plans. I was escaping Windsor. And so my choices and possibilities lay beyond getting that B.A. in Sociology at the University of Windsor and inevitably end up selling life insurance to my friends and relatives. My family was moving to London, and due to the lack of options in Windsor, I with them. My plans were to get a summer job and then collect unemployment insurace for as long as possible and at the end of that time I would have a best-seller ready to be published. This I told to no one but Coates. To all others, I simply said that I was going to collect pogey and live off the fat of the land - and then watch the wide range of expressions that would cross their faces as they would ultimately ask, "but what about after that?", to which I would simply shrug and give the envy-inducing smile of the chronically irresponsible.
Next installment - Getting Primed for Yaybars.
School that last day began as a celebration and ended as many parties do, having dragged on much longer than the fun has lasted, a sense of relief that it is over, tired and quickly said goodbyes, the last guests bored and lingering, unable to leave.
As was the tradition with students who were finished school on a permanent basis, long and lanquid liquid lunches in local lounges were pretty well the norm. But myself and a few others began that much earlier. On that morning, I found myself sitting in my pajamas by my bedroom window an hour earlier than usual having breakfast in my room: it consisting of half a brick of Colby cheese, an orange and a bottle of cheap sherry - Baccarat, reknowned for its high alcohol content and reputation for getting you high or sick very quickly.
Getting high or drunk became almost commonplace that last semester of school. A joint was usually shared on the walk to school in the morning. Fridays became Freak Day. As for mid-day boozing, that precedent had been set in April when Steve Matlock and Del Morris spent the morning in a cornfield with half a case of beer. I ran into them after class that day bombed out of their minds and chatting up Bob Driscoll's mom in her driveway as they waited for Bob to get home.
The sun had already been up a couple of hours and I looked out upon our backyard covered in long shadows and a shimmering jeweled blanket of sun-sparkled dew. The morning was quiet. No cars, no kids on their way to school, but alive as only nature can be before Man makes his first appearance heralding the beginning of a new day with the noise of eight cylinders and a faulty muffler, drowning out the songs of starlings and sparrows and telling crickets it's time for bed. I sat there listening to the early hour sounds, feeling as alive as the morning around me, chilled by the cool morning air working its way into my pajamas, feeling more delight with the quiet beauty I was watching and feeling apart of with each tilt of that wretched tasting liquid to my mouth.
With the arrival of garbage trucks and milkmen, my neighbours began their day, going to their cars and pointing them in the direction of their awaiting pay-cheques. For me, it was time for school.
The morning went by quickly. Classes consisted simply of finding out whether or not you were exempted from having to write the final exam. Unless you wanted to stick around for the review, it was only a matter of putting in a brief appearence and then a trip out to he smoking area which was then giving off an overpowering aura of high spirits.
For the most part, that was the routine. The one bright spot was watching people get sick. I was not the only one who had spent the post-dawn hours imbibing and there were many stomachs which would not stand for this early morning poisoning.
In homeroom, where we sat as heads were counted before nine o'clock, the general air of excited yapping was abruptly interrupted when Mickey Watkins suddenly leapt into the aisle with a speed surprising for one of such girth.
"A little edgy about the exams?" asked Mr. Columbo, our history teacher, in a sarcastic voice that betrayed a sense of being both startled and outraged. Then, in silence, his eyes followed the turned heads of everyone as we watched the kid behind that now empty seat wretching out his early morning digestion of cornflakes and vodka-laced bile, all the while smiling apologetically and then nonchalently making a quick exit as Mr. Columbo then addressed a more sarcasm tinged inquiry about anxiety at his fleeing backside. He ended up spending the morning wiped out behind a fence along he perimeter of the school yard. As I said, that was the highlight of the day. All the more so because being bombed yourself in such similar circumstances you feel a strange mixture of comradeship and contempt.
At noon, the closest dining-room style restaurant was taken over by all the envious students who did not have the foresight to start drinking before the school day had begun. By noon, I was feeling appalingly sober and an hour in Riverside Tavern was just the little pick-me-up I needed, and so in search of refreshment, along with Mugs and the Bunhead, I trundled off to an early happy hour.
The rest of the day was downhill. By two-thirty, many people had left for the day, while the rest of us in our last year wandered the halls with the beginnings of hangovers, an awful thing to experience without the cushion of sleep. I ended up leaving early to go home, take my body's advice to ignore those rumors of an after-school party at Riverside Tavern, but to instead walk the hot streets to home, eat aspirins, then some food and take a nap. I began my life of freedom as an old man does retirement.
There had been a misconception in the air that day that *that* night at Yaybars would be the last of all Big Nights. For some reason, people thought that with a Grade 12 or 13 diploma in their possession,they would no longer be privy to the same desires and sense of youth. No longer high school students, they now had all the freedom they had been dreaming of the past four or five years. But they traded that freedom from one confinement for a another far more strict routine. Instead of the free spirits they had the potential of becoming, they would become insurance agents, work on the line at Cryslers or Fords, or trade in their high school textbooks for university texts. Their freedom would be forfeited and the few alloted hours of their own time would be governed by worries of quotas to be met, essays to be written, exams to be crammed for and the dead thud of a time-clock being punched. I had no similar concerns and listened to my friends' point-by-point life plans or dreams to simply work on the line in an automotive plant making a guaranteed $250 a week ("that's a grand a month, Howie!")- with detached amusement.
I had no such plans. I was escaping Windsor. And so my choices and possibilities lay beyond getting that B.A. in Sociology at the University of Windsor and inevitably end up selling life insurance to my friends and relatives. My family was moving to London, and due to the lack of options in Windsor, I with them. My plans were to get a summer job and then collect unemployment insurace for as long as possible and at the end of that time I would have a best-seller ready to be published. This I told to no one but Coates. To all others, I simply said that I was going to collect pogey and live off the fat of the land - and then watch the wide range of expressions that would cross their faces as they would ultimately ask, "but what about after that?", to which I would simply shrug and give the envy-inducing smile of the chronically irresponsible.
Next installment - Getting Primed for Yaybars.
posted by Sonny Drysdale at 1:54 AM
0 comments
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Riverside Revisited - Chapter 2, A Typical Friday Night
The social life at school was unusually bearable near the end of that last year. More than anything, this was due to the fact that soon we would be free and had no illusions about ever seeing each other again. There was not much love in that senior year of Riverside High. However, as the year wound down to the point where there was a point to start counting off the days, a spirit of camaraderie came lumbering out of the rank walls of locker rooms - throwing arms around the shoulders of football players you previously couldn't stand and fixing smiles (if only condescending ones,) onto the faces of all those girls who for the past five years would walk past you and give you the same acknowledgement they would to the locker you were leaning against. It was an atmosphere of superficial impermanence where the underlying sentiment was akin to 'Sure, I'll be nice and pleasent. Why not? In a matter of days, I'll never see you again.'
For me, it was a great relief. Despite its jocular tone and blatantly phoney air of geniality, it was very clear to me that this was the same behaviour I had noticed in all the adult situations I was ever privy to witness. The same condecension, the same excessive politeness that covered a repressed 'fuck you.' In awe I watched my classmates pretend to be grownups and in horror realized that this behavior had been going on since the May 24th weekend up in the Pinery where, not only did they play at being grownups - drinking too much and welcoming like long lost friends the same familiar faces they had ignored only two days earlier in Biology. But more absurd yet, they were playing house - the girls cooking and fetching beers and then later, in tents, holding in their arms the men who could hold no more beer, like brides on their wedding nights.
There was no better place to observe this behavior than at Yaybars which quickly became 'the' place to be on a Friday night. It was an era when the word 'partying' became synomonous with Friday night and increased in popularity at a rate which rendererd the word truly moronic.
Friday nights in Yaybars were conducted with all the empty-headed enthusiasm that went into the fall of Rome. The evening shared a sense of abandonment which seemed straight out of the Roaring Twenties - nothing but mindless, impersonal fun. No one was exempt from ridicule and everyone was everyone else's good friend.
It was at this circus that I would later find myself after leaving The Hill. Sometimes Coates would come along and if it was a good night in Yaybars, he would stay. In the spring of that year, Yaybars was packed as early as seven-thirty and it was the first bar I've ever had to stand in a line-up to get into - something which made it a local phenomenon. And stand we did. But never for long, for there were three other bars within a five-minute walk.
But to the pleasant surprise of its owners, Yaybars was everyone's first choice. With the roll-back of the drinking age to eighteen, business was booming and its success rested solely on the fact that of all the local bars, it was easily the largest. If you tired of the company at one table, you simply moved to another. An amazing number of people would wander around, lean against a wall, be asked to sit down or leave and end up sitting at the end of a half-deserted long row of tables. Girls came in with their boyfriends, spot their girlfriends as pre-arranged and the boys would push tables together so that after a while the table would be the length of the room. Conversation at these tables was almost impossible except for for whoever was sitting on either side of you. But with the mobile population of Yaybars, you were never sitting next to the same person for long anyway. People were always moving - flitting from one chair to the next, one table to another, from the ladies & escorts room to the back room. This was Yaybars most redeeming quality, you never had to spend an entire evening in only one person's company. You could have fifty conversations with fifty different people and they were all bombed enough that it made no difference that hours earlier in school you felt that you each thought "asshole" as you passed in the hall.
Although it never held much appeal to me, I went there because everyone else did. If I wanted to find a few people I liked, that was where they would be. Packed with so many people, you were bound to come across a friendly face or two. Not only that, there were a number of people who until then, you never had the chance to get familiar with. There was such a large number of good-looking Grade 11 or 12 girls there that you were astounded at how they even got to stay up that late, let alone get past the front door of a bar. Part of the reason for the Roaring 20s speakeasy atmosphere could be attributed to the fact that at least half the clientele were underage.
Most of the others had recently turned eighteen and there was a small group of graduates a year or two older who had become regulars. To all the impressionable Grade 11 girls, or for that matter all the girls who had once had hallway crushes on them, these were 'men' compared to us schoolboys who still had to carry books, could not talk of sharing classes with older sisters and and were not yet old enough to wear fading football jackets on off-hours from selling insurance or working on the line at Chryslers.
To give you an idea at what an overnight sensation that bar was, you would even get the odd teacher in there who would be greeted by shouts of their first name and even applause by the same people they were flunking. The whole thing was like a high-school reunion gone wild, only for the majority of people, they had only last seen each other a few hours before. And when I think about it now, it must have been that reunion aspect which appealeld to Coates - although he took a night in Yaybars about as seriously as I did.
... next installment - 'The Last Day of School.'
For me, it was a great relief. Despite its jocular tone and blatantly phoney air of geniality, it was very clear to me that this was the same behaviour I had noticed in all the adult situations I was ever privy to witness. The same condecension, the same excessive politeness that covered a repressed 'fuck you.' In awe I watched my classmates pretend to be grownups and in horror realized that this behavior had been going on since the May 24th weekend up in the Pinery where, not only did they play at being grownups - drinking too much and welcoming like long lost friends the same familiar faces they had ignored only two days earlier in Biology. But more absurd yet, they were playing house - the girls cooking and fetching beers and then later, in tents, holding in their arms the men who could hold no more beer, like brides on their wedding nights.
There was no better place to observe this behavior than at Yaybars which quickly became 'the' place to be on a Friday night. It was an era when the word 'partying' became synomonous with Friday night and increased in popularity at a rate which rendererd the word truly moronic.
Friday nights in Yaybars were conducted with all the empty-headed enthusiasm that went into the fall of Rome. The evening shared a sense of abandonment which seemed straight out of the Roaring Twenties - nothing but mindless, impersonal fun. No one was exempt from ridicule and everyone was everyone else's good friend.
It was at this circus that I would later find myself after leaving The Hill. Sometimes Coates would come along and if it was a good night in Yaybars, he would stay. In the spring of that year, Yaybars was packed as early as seven-thirty and it was the first bar I've ever had to stand in a line-up to get into - something which made it a local phenomenon. And stand we did. But never for long, for there were three other bars within a five-minute walk.
But to the pleasant surprise of its owners, Yaybars was everyone's first choice. With the roll-back of the drinking age to eighteen, business was booming and its success rested solely on the fact that of all the local bars, it was easily the largest. If you tired of the company at one table, you simply moved to another. An amazing number of people would wander around, lean against a wall, be asked to sit down or leave and end up sitting at the end of a half-deserted long row of tables. Girls came in with their boyfriends, spot their girlfriends as pre-arranged and the boys would push tables together so that after a while the table would be the length of the room. Conversation at these tables was almost impossible except for for whoever was sitting on either side of you. But with the mobile population of Yaybars, you were never sitting next to the same person for long anyway. People were always moving - flitting from one chair to the next, one table to another, from the ladies & escorts room to the back room. This was Yaybars most redeeming quality, you never had to spend an entire evening in only one person's company. You could have fifty conversations with fifty different people and they were all bombed enough that it made no difference that hours earlier in school you felt that you each thought "asshole" as you passed in the hall.
Although it never held much appeal to me, I went there because everyone else did. If I wanted to find a few people I liked, that was where they would be. Packed with so many people, you were bound to come across a friendly face or two. Not only that, there were a number of people who until then, you never had the chance to get familiar with. There was such a large number of good-looking Grade 11 or 12 girls there that you were astounded at how they even got to stay up that late, let alone get past the front door of a bar. Part of the reason for the Roaring 20s speakeasy atmosphere could be attributed to the fact that at least half the clientele were underage.
Most of the others had recently turned eighteen and there was a small group of graduates a year or two older who had become regulars. To all the impressionable Grade 11 girls, or for that matter all the girls who had once had hallway crushes on them, these were 'men' compared to us schoolboys who still had to carry books, could not talk of sharing classes with older sisters and and were not yet old enough to wear fading football jackets on off-hours from selling insurance or working on the line at Chryslers.
To give you an idea at what an overnight sensation that bar was, you would even get the odd teacher in there who would be greeted by shouts of their first name and even applause by the same people they were flunking. The whole thing was like a high-school reunion gone wild, only for the majority of people, they had only last seen each other a few hours before. And when I think about it now, it must have been that reunion aspect which appealeld to Coates - although he took a night in Yaybars about as seriously as I did.
... next installment - 'The Last Day of School.'
posted by Sonny Drysdale at 10:09 AM
2 comments
Friday, December 02, 2011
Riverside Revisited - Chapter 1, The Hill
A lot of you have written in lately asking me to do another serialization of some story I wrote back in my youth. Hence, Sonny Drysdale presents, 'Riverside Revisited' written almost 30 years ago about 'events' which had happened about seven years before.
This is for the kids in the 'PTBFR' group on The Facebook, of which I am proud to be a member. It involves the last day of Grade 13, a typical night in Abars and is a love story about being young and stupid. There are some clunkers in there (apprently dialogue isn't one of my strengths,) some funny reading - both intentional and otherwise and possibly a few recognizeable situations, characters and locations from back then. But keep in mind, this is 'fiction.' Heck, I didn't even go to Grade 13 at Riverside High.
It's either the first or second short story I ever finished and as such it shows the influence of my then two favorite literary influences - Jack Kerouac and Holden Caulfield. It's also about bittersweet nostalgia and with no apologies it owes a lot to my favorite TV show of the era in which when it was written, 'Brideshead Revisited.' As you sit down and read the first few paragraphs, open a window by your favorite reading chair, light a cigarette (even if you don't smoke,) sip a fine vintage wine, have the soundtrack to 'Brideshead' playing softly in the background - and most importantly, imagine the narrator speaking in the voice of Jeremy Irons.
... and away, we go!
... On warm spring evenings, Coates and I would walk down to the hill known as 'K-Mart Hill', sit on the side of it, drink a bottle of wine each, look down the railway tracks to the Detroit skyline, watch the occasional lone solitary figure walk down the tracks against the backdrop of Schillers Bush and then simultaneously launch into an imitation of ol' Neil warbling "see the lonely boy/Out On the Weekend," burst into laughter even though both of us were secretly moved by the sight of it - perhaps by the wine but more likely due to kinship and relating to that lonely soul recreating a cliche before our eyes as he moved down the rails on that backwards edge of suburbia.
We took our time drinking the wine, appeciating the combination of the relaxing effects of it flushing our cheeks as they were brushed by soft pre-summer breezes while the sun began its slow, gradual descent over the Detroit skyline eventually being swallowed up somewhere behind the Penobscot Building sometime after we had left the hill and gone on our own separate ways into the twilight of those oh-so-promising Friday nights which then held the potential that we could feel and believe that anything could happen, wild exciting things and if the situation was boring, the cheap wine carrying our giddy humour on wings of high-flung ecstacy acted as a guard which would stop anything that threatened to slow things down and bring the evening to any kind of banal finish. If any situation became mundane, it was only to all others, not ourselves.
That was the spring I was to leave Windsor. And when I look back on that time, those nights on 'the hill,' are the memories I am most fond of.
I was just finishing high-school then, Coates having graduated Grade 12 the year before, declining the opportunity of the Grade 13 education which I took, more out of a lack of better things to do than with anything else.
While I floated through an undemanding timetable of two English classes, two History's and countless spares, Wesley Coates slept. While I took my first lunch with Mugs and the Bunhead, standing and shuffling around in a courtyard which had been usurped into the 'smoking area,' Coates began to stir. As I took my second lunch the following period down at Matthews Confectionary, sipping a coke, leafing through the soap-opera magazines and bumming a smoke from one of the other student regulars, Coates would be drinking his first coffee. As I wandered through the rest of the afternoon's classes, almost lulled to sleep by the last period, Coates would be eating his main meal of the day and getting ready for work. As I walked home down the sun-baked gravel of Edgar Street, or if it was too hot, along the cool, shaded sidewalks of Saint Rose until I got to Isabelle, *my* street, and walked again in the direct heat of the sun, Coates was on his way to work. After I had eaten supper, I sat by the open window of my bedroom, feeling the spring air blow past as I read the current novel for one of my English classes. During all this time and for a number of hours after I had put away that particular book by Hemingway or Fitzgerald and had gone to sleep, Coates continued to do what he had been doing for most of that evening - taking hubcaps off a conveyor-belt and building them into tall ascending columns until it was time to start a new tower. At one o'clock, as I lay dreaming and silence lay over most of Windsor, Coates would punch a time-clock and count off another day until Friday when he would wake up at his normal time in the afternoon, this time not to get ready for work, but to get ready to go out and do what he had been waiting all week to do.
"See the lonely boy, Out on the Weekend, trying to make it pay ..."
... next installment - 'A Typical Friday Night'
This is for the kids in the 'PTBFR' group on The Facebook, of which I am proud to be a member. It involves the last day of Grade 13, a typical night in Abars and is a love story about being young and stupid. There are some clunkers in there (apprently dialogue isn't one of my strengths,) some funny reading - both intentional and otherwise and possibly a few recognizeable situations, characters and locations from back then. But keep in mind, this is 'fiction.' Heck, I didn't even go to Grade 13 at Riverside High.
It's either the first or second short story I ever finished and as such it shows the influence of my then two favorite literary influences - Jack Kerouac and Holden Caulfield. It's also about bittersweet nostalgia and with no apologies it owes a lot to my favorite TV show of the era in which when it was written, 'Brideshead Revisited.' As you sit down and read the first few paragraphs, open a window by your favorite reading chair, light a cigarette (even if you don't smoke,) sip a fine vintage wine, have the soundtrack to 'Brideshead' playing softly in the background - and most importantly, imagine the narrator speaking in the voice of Jeremy Irons.
... and away, we go!
... On warm spring evenings, Coates and I would walk down to the hill known as 'K-Mart Hill', sit on the side of it, drink a bottle of wine each, look down the railway tracks to the Detroit skyline, watch the occasional lone solitary figure walk down the tracks against the backdrop of Schillers Bush and then simultaneously launch into an imitation of ol' Neil warbling "see the lonely boy/Out On the Weekend," burst into laughter even though both of us were secretly moved by the sight of it - perhaps by the wine but more likely due to kinship and relating to that lonely soul recreating a cliche before our eyes as he moved down the rails on that backwards edge of suburbia.
We took our time drinking the wine, appeciating the combination of the relaxing effects of it flushing our cheeks as they were brushed by soft pre-summer breezes while the sun began its slow, gradual descent over the Detroit skyline eventually being swallowed up somewhere behind the Penobscot Building sometime after we had left the hill and gone on our own separate ways into the twilight of those oh-so-promising Friday nights which then held the potential that we could feel and believe that anything could happen, wild exciting things and if the situation was boring, the cheap wine carrying our giddy humour on wings of high-flung ecstacy acted as a guard which would stop anything that threatened to slow things down and bring the evening to any kind of banal finish. If any situation became mundane, it was only to all others, not ourselves.
That was the spring I was to leave Windsor. And when I look back on that time, those nights on 'the hill,' are the memories I am most fond of.
I was just finishing high-school then, Coates having graduated Grade 12 the year before, declining the opportunity of the Grade 13 education which I took, more out of a lack of better things to do than with anything else.
While I floated through an undemanding timetable of two English classes, two History's and countless spares, Wesley Coates slept. While I took my first lunch with Mugs and the Bunhead, standing and shuffling around in a courtyard which had been usurped into the 'smoking area,' Coates began to stir. As I took my second lunch the following period down at Matthews Confectionary, sipping a coke, leafing through the soap-opera magazines and bumming a smoke from one of the other student regulars, Coates would be drinking his first coffee. As I wandered through the rest of the afternoon's classes, almost lulled to sleep by the last period, Coates would be eating his main meal of the day and getting ready for work. As I walked home down the sun-baked gravel of Edgar Street, or if it was too hot, along the cool, shaded sidewalks of Saint Rose until I got to Isabelle, *my* street, and walked again in the direct heat of the sun, Coates was on his way to work. After I had eaten supper, I sat by the open window of my bedroom, feeling the spring air blow past as I read the current novel for one of my English classes. During all this time and for a number of hours after I had put away that particular book by Hemingway or Fitzgerald and had gone to sleep, Coates continued to do what he had been doing for most of that evening - taking hubcaps off a conveyor-belt and building them into tall ascending columns until it was time to start a new tower. At one o'clock, as I lay dreaming and silence lay over most of Windsor, Coates would punch a time-clock and count off another day until Friday when he would wake up at his normal time in the afternoon, this time not to get ready for work, but to get ready to go out and do what he had been waiting all week to do.
"See the lonely boy, Out on the Weekend, trying to make it pay ..."
... next installment - 'A Typical Friday Night'
posted by Sonny Drysdale at 11:13 AM
4 comments
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Previous Posts
- New and Old Dark Shadows
- The Art of Calling on Friends
- Riverside Revisited - The Last Chapter
- Riverside Revisited - Chapter 5. The Funniest Guy ...
- Riverside Revisited - Chapter 4, Getting Primed fo...
- Riverside Revisited - Chapter 3, The Last Day of S...
- Riverside Revisited - Chapter 2, A Typical Friday ...
- Riverside Revisited - Chapter 1, The Hill
- Son of 'Best of Sick Jokes'
- Your Morning Chuckle
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