Memoirs of a Worldly Guy
Ron Helmer went to Sunalta school from 1930 to 1939. He describes the rules of behavior in those days and the activities of himself and his buddies from the days when he was three or four years of age and still has a clear recollection of his mischievous behavior. His description of fist fights and strappings may surprise many of the readers who have attended schools in latter days.
Some of the mischief the members of the Scarboro group were involved in may be too outspoken for delicate readers but the story is told as it unfolds. Cruel jokes were considered to be simply routine to boys of every age.
The tales Ron recalls of the group's activities when they were dumped each summer at their Uncle's farm in Saskatchewan is probably the most descriptive of the memoirs. Cousins of the same age as he and his brother merely added to the mischief. The arrival of the threshing crews in years of good crops was a signal event, when there was not only participation in the threshing, there is the description of magnificent food they shared with the threshers.
I live on Fourteenth Avenue in a row of joined houses called a terrace. I am usually in bed asleep before the Holy Rollers go into their act. I meet and fight with Hymie Kredentser years before my brother and his pals call him 'Slob'. I am a naughty boy long before it occurs to Robbie Alomar.
By the time I have spent eight or nine years at Sunalta School I feel like I know it all. Of course I am mistaken. But I have learned to get a black eye and to fight with my fists, suffered the sadists who enjoyed giving the strap and discovered that girls were more than boys wearing skirts.
Wee-wee and I are in deep doo-doo for carrying gopher skins about in our pockets but soon turn our attention to the magical putt-putt boats and dig up the lawn to build a marina to accomodate them.
Uncle Jim hooks up the democrat and takes us into De Winton. He amuses us with his non-stop recital of Ivan Skavinsky Skvar. His trips to the basement of the store to sample the hard cider reminds him of the poem of 'The Flea of the Polar Bear'.
I am in Grade Three and am introduced to the black eye. The infiltration of the bully boys from below the hill is the prime mover. I soon catch on and with Bill's management take on a variety of contenders. I usually think I win but I usually lose. I am fascinated as Murray McInnes relentlessly slashes to ribbons the face of a larger bully.
The winds of the thirties send us home from school at high speed. No one is decapitated en route although the danger exists. I relate the euphonious sounds of Lloyd's flatus while sliding down the roof of the garage to the cries of pain from Murray McInnes as he experiments with fart lighting.
Masturbation is regularly mentioned these days, especially by standup comedians. When I am a youth the mention of the practice is definitely a no no! The prank we conduct on Creamy is considered as just that; in retrospect I assume it was slightly cruel.
Al and Tiny commit some spectacular naughtiness the day they are chased from the church after being discovered examining the oddities of the organ loft. Our deacon is sorely disappointed when I fail to hear the voices that are ostensibly going to tell me what to do with the five dollar bill I have found. Tiny is undoubtedly provocative when he keeps amusing us all with his protruding toe, but I am convinced that Al's performance with the Indian clubs does us in!
My brothers think it'll be quite fun for someone to go down the clothes chute. That someone turns out to be me and I still have the scars on my leg to this day.
I am involved in the latest fad. The October harvest has left behind some carrots and potatoes in the fields behind our house. Jim starts out with a simple boil-up but it progresses until there is a complete cooking rig, with dingle sticks above fire in five or six locations. Jim has achieved a fabulous foaming additive to his brew but is reluctant to divulge the recipe.
Dad is involved in athletics and forms a baseball team comprised largely of the professional hockey players who are looking for some diversion during the summer months. Lloyd and I are particularly interested when the House of David is booked and we know they will do their pepper ball routine. I am honoured on one occasion by being allowed to keep one of the player's gloves warm. On another I am allowed to sit with Bob Mamini and signal the number of runs achieved by each team. Wizard!
How would you like to be doing heavy work for $30 a month? That's what construction workers are getting paid at the turn of the century. Calgary is known as the City of Sandstone. I compare what is present in the quarry at the turn of the century and what is left when I play there.
After a week or so of caddying at the Calgary Golf and Country club I begin to refer to it as Alabama North. I realize now that it is run much in the manner of a wartime concentration camp. I suppose that the members were as pecuniary as their own income in those days but a Caddy's Union would have been appropriate. The description of the caddy master's instructions are unusual.
The corner of Seventeenth Avenue and Fourteenth Street is the centre of many of the activities of our teenage years. Let's face it, we were hanging out where the girls were. One day when he is in Calgary, Al phones me and we go over to the 'Palace' to call on the Bishop. He is one of the few 'cat lickers' (catholics) who played in the vacant lot behind his place. He implies that as 'pot likkers' (protestants) we don't have a chance! I am not too cheap in those days to put a nickel in the Wurlitzer; I just don't have a nickel!
Mom and Aunt Margaret have a good laugh about the story of Grandma Hope and the turkey dressing. Grandma informs my mother that she can't "abide" turkey dressing with onion in it. Mom assures her they would have a separate dish for her containing onion free dressing. I catch Mom and her sister having a good giggle in the kitchen about the dressing Grandma thought was onion free. The separate dish was the only change!
This is a collection of seventeen short stories that all take place around the farm of Uncle Munro, my mother's brother, located a few miles northwest of Swift Current in the Cabri, White Bear district. I was prohibited from jumping from buildings and strawstacks the first year of the visit, but once I had the 'operation,' I was able to jump with the best of them. For the next four or five summers I spent the summer months with my brother at the farm. We picked potato bugs, drowned-out gophers, fished for chub and goldeye in the South Saskatchewan River and pretended we were race car drivers. Some summers there were mouse plagues and we sharpened our slingshot aim with target practices in the farm yard. I collected cuts, scrapes and punctures when I tried to be helpful and woke up with post and pans on the bed when we had a rare rainfall. We were accused of smuggling cigarettes on one occasion and astonished by the comedics of a local lad in White Bear on another. We thought is was all great.
Go To Beginning of "The Farm…"
Individual Stories in "The Farm…"
A group of us are fooling around in the school grounds one day when a tall, slim lad in his mid-twenties walks up. He is doing remarkable things with a Yo-Yo. He introduces himself as Dave and commences to show us the basic eight rules of the Yo-Yo. He invites all of us to come to the Palace Theatre the following Saturday where his expert brother performs. His brother invites us to the Plaza Theatre for the big contest. I admit with a touch of modesty that I am triumphant. My mother says I am too young to accompany the troop to Winnipeg. Her decision is vindicated at the last moment by Dave.
I work at Dad's billiard parlor for a few weeks every summer. Dad has a man who hustles down to rack the balls when players bang their cues on the floor. I am browned off to go around to each table when the red balls have all been sunk. The pockets are made of twine and I have calluses on my knuckles that any Kung Fu expert would have envied.
Four of us have formed a secret society. When we have grown tired of lengthwise banana sandwiches and the practice of hurling soda pop at each other we decide to publish a newspaper. It lasts for only about six editions. Reading it in retrospect is amusing. The stinginess of some of our prospective customers is more so.
The YMCA is the meeting place for youth before the age of television. Large yawns would greet the exhibitions of wrestling and Indian club derring-do by the audience of today, but it was hot stuff then. Bob Robertson's English setter would have been a winner but for a few bad habits. Maybe it is just poor supervision. Ray's invitation to have a jolly week or two while preparing the camp for summer drill turns out to be a disaster.
Jack arranges to have us carried free of charge to Vancouver on the Canadian Pacific Railway. We only have to feed and water the cattle and hogs that are being transported to Vancouver. We have two hamburgers each puchased from a Chinese restaurant in Field B.C. They taste just like Canadian hamburgers. It is our only food in three days. The trainmen discourage us from doing our duty and I still feel a bit guilty about the animals.
Kenny already has a job at North Vancouver Shipyards but is kind enough to help me find my way to the employment office at the Burrard Dry Dock. They employ me almost before I've finished my full name. The Safety Council has stopped filling in the details of the death count at the yard. There are three deaths a week on average in our yard. The record is three deaths in one day. I decide not to tell my mother when I write the weekly letter.
I turn out to be a wizard at scrounging free rides. My engine fitter's elderly folks are returning to Saskatchewan and I am chosen to drive them. They never say a word when I drive into the ditch short of the railway crossing. I guess you could say I learn as I go along. I insult the Canadian Immigration officers by driving by their building and not noticing it. They seem to not mind, although their building is a dark brown colour not much larger than a double garage. The old couple I was transporting seem anxious to get home so the subsquent visits become progressively more brief.