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.

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.