Memoirs of a Worldly Guy
When we moved to our 'new' house in Scarboro we were only about one hundred yards west of the Scarboro United Church, but I guess I've already touched on the history of this ecclesiastical organization. Since we weren't Jewish, Roman Catholic or Muslim, the Protestant church seemed to be the logical (and most convenient) choice. The sceptical attitude I have acquired in the many years since then has more to do with the things I have witnessed and the conclusions I have drawn than the original peremptory decision reached by my mother. I agree with Pyrrho in that certain knowledge is not available or attainable and that the human brain is not capable of assimilating certain possibilities currently implied. The substitution of 'faith' for the incomprehensible or the unknowable is not sufficient to satisfy me. I guess I fall into the agnostic classification.
When we were sent off to Sunday School about the same time as we started public school we were grouped together at the back of the downstairs assembly area and taught to sing Christian songs like 'Bringing in the Sheaves', 'Jesus Loves Me' and 'Onward Christian Soldiers'. 'Gibber' told me years later that he had been terrified on his first day at Sunday School as a result of a misunderstanding, laughable today but terrifying for him at the time.
The Gibbs lived in a large house on Hillcrest Avenue near Earl Grey School. There were two vacant lots to the east of their house completely filled with vegetables of every kind complete with a full-time gardener, Mr. Parse by name. Every autumn all fit hands were busily engaged in harvesting and preserving-- 'canning' --all of this produce. Gibber told me that the first song they were required to sing was 'CAN A Little Boy Like Me'. He said he had a grisly mental image of himself squeezed into a Mason jar with his nose pressed against the glass and had unpleasant memories of the Sunday School for a long time.
One Saturday a group of us were playing on the huge pile of sawdust behind the box factory down by the railroad tracks. The company was engaged during the week in the manufacture of wooden butter boxes before they were rendered obsolete by the corrugated cardboard box. Two significant things happened to me that day. The first was when Hubert, one of our public school classmates wandered into the enclosure and asked if he could join in. We readily agreed but he began grumbling after having slid down the sawdust pile only a couple of times.
'I don't know why I'm wasting my time with you guys, anyway.' he said. 'I probably could have been fucking those girls I met down the tracks by now!' There was a stunned silence as we watched him amble slowly out of the enclosure and start down the tracks again. Was he serious or was this just another example of the Hubert braggadocio? On my next slide down the sawdust pile I saw what I thought was a discarded bit of crumpled blue paper. On my next slide down I took a closer look and discovered that it was a FIVE DOLLAR BILL! I was an instant celebrity. I had a quasi-Secret Service escort on the way home that would have warmed the heart of any American President. My Dad said he would be glad to invest the money in a gold stock but my mother was in favour of thinking it over for a while first.
The following day we were back at Sunday School. After the customary spell of Christian song singing we broke up into parties of seven or eight and retired to the smaller side rooms for a session of 'Bible Study'. Our proctor on this occasion was Tommy Rutherwood, a slight, blond-haired young man whom my mother said sang 'adorably' in his church choir solos.
'Well', he said, 'now that we're all seated I think I can tell you that Ronald has something very interesting to tell us.'
'Really,' I said. 'What's that?' I was genuinely surprised.
'Don't play games, Ronald,' he said with a confidential smile. 'You know what I'm talking about--the five dollars that Our Lord put next to you yesterday.' This was the first time I knew that 'Our Lord' had anything to do with it. I wasn't very surprised to know he had been told about the windfall I had received; it was as difficult to keep a secret under the circumstances as concealing a death in the Royal Family.
'I'd like everyone to close his eyes and bow his head and we'll remain silent while Ronald waits to hear a little voice telling him what to do with the money he found.'
We all bowed our heads and remained silent. After what seemed like five years instead of five minutes Tommy cleared his delicate throat and said, 'All right, you can all relax now. So, Ronald, what can you tell us?'
'Nothing I can think of,' I replied blandly. Unfortunately for Tommy the class was exclusively male. Had there been a few sweet young girls with blond curls and freshly-pressed ribbons in the group I might have been tempted to make a macho move of some kind and claim that I had heard 'The Voice'. But there were no girls and there was no voice.
'I think maybe we should give it one more try,' Tommy said, to the accompaniment of groans of boredom from the group. Nevertheless, we were all once more sitting silently, heads bowed for a further six or seven minutes.
'I think I may have heard something,' I said.
'What did you hear?' Tommy asked excitedly.
'Well, it was very faint, but it sounded like girls talking.'
'So, what did they say?' Tommy urged.
'I really couldn't make out what they were saying, it was just too faint!' I said.
This was too much for Al and he emitted a loud burst of laughter. Tommy's fair complexion turned bright red and he invited Al and me to leave the church forthwith. The advantage of using the back door to the church was that it was just below my mother's line of sight from her kitchen window.
'Keep your head down and go straight across the street to the alley behind the concrete wall.' I said to Al. Half an hour later, when the class was dismissed, Al and I were sitting with our backs against the concrete retaining wall watching the infidels playing tennis at the Calgary Tennis Club on the flat below the hill.
When I told the family about my experience at the dinner table that night my mother laughed uproariously, much to my surprise. 'They were hoping you would hear God telling you to give it to the church,' she said. 'I suspect Dr. Paton's fine hand in this.'
'Imagine those cute buggers trying to trick a young boy out of the biggest windfall of his life,' my Dad said angrily. 'It just confirms my long-standing opinion of the church!'
'Now, Rosie,' my mother said, 'don't go getting yourself all worked up; they do a lot of good work you know.'
'Bunch of meddlers, in my opinion,' he said grumpily. He subsequently invested my five dollars in Minto Gold, which I watched for several years as it slowly slipped into obscurity in the Stock Exchange listings.
Tiny showed up at one of our Friday night Trail Ranger meetings (under the supervision, this time, of Jimmy Bereston) wearing a pair of running shoes that had obviously seen much better days. He had a tendency to drag his feet and there was a hole worn through the toe of his right shoe. With a bit of careful manipulation he was able to work his big toe through the corresponding hole in his work sock and on out of the end of the shoe. As a result, while we were standing with heads bowed reciting The Lord's Prayer at the beginning of the meeting we were able to observe Tiny's restless toe, poking its head out and looking around like a curious gopher.
Al's initial giggling sounded more like smothered snuffling but I soon identified the object of his arcane titillation and found it impossible to refrain from joining in with what now had become barely restrained snorting. Tiny remained impassive. When we all sat down he crossed his legs so that the activity of his big toe was hidden from Bereston but not from us.
'Perhaps you can tell us all what you find so amusing about The Lord's Prayer,' Jimmy said stiffly. Wordless, Al responded by beginning to roll his tie up between his two forefingers, a la Oliver Hardy, a move I found irresistible.
'Well, it's a fine pickle you've got us in this time, Ollie,' I said in a passable imitation of Stan Laurel's line in the many movies of the famous comedians we had watched in the past. Then I assumed the proper idiotic facial expression and scratched my head. At this point Al flicked his tie up in typical fashion, drawing a burst of laughter from the rest of the class. That tore it! As we made our premature departure from the classroom Tiny remained straight-faced, apparently unperturbed, but with his big toe continuing to move up and down as though waving goodbye. Al and I were in our customary resting place against the retaining wall when Sunday School broke up a couple of hours later. We were preoccupied with putting the finishing touches on our slingshots. Summer holidays soon arrived and we had seen the last of Jimmy Bereston.
The next year we were gifted with a leader called Glenn Sutphin, whose most redeeming factor was his sense of humour. He also was the possessor of a vintage Model 'A' Ford, which added a certain 'je ne sais quoi' to his 'persona'. His crowning achievement was undoubtedly 'Johnny Schmoker's Band' which he engineered for the annual church concert. Most of the presentations were solo songs and I remember for some weird reason a couple of these; one of the Huffman boys singing 'Red Sails in the Sunset' in doleful fashion (I think we called it 'Fred Sales in the Sunset') and Roger Flumerfelt singing 'There's Something About a Soldier'. He was dressed in a pale blue page boy uniform similar to that worn by the Philip Morris advertising model, with shiny brass buttons down the front. We decided that was all marginal but the fact that his face was heavily powdered was not acceptable in our opinion. Therefore, he was a sissy! God only knows what Roger thought of Johnny Schmoker's band.
Since Al denies any recollection of the band I think I do quite well to remember as much of it as I do, even though I'm sure he thinks I'm hallucinating. The band consisted of about eight volunteers and all of our comments and singing were in attempted Germanic accents. Glenn had arranged to have about eight 'costumes' made, consisting of loosely fitting red satin skullcaps with broad beige-coloured cuff-like bands encircling them. Dangling from the rims of the caps and circling the heads of each band member from temple to temple were unravelled strands of bright yellow sisal rope giving the appearance of blond, shoulder length strands of hair.
Naturally, Glenn made a pretentious speech by way of introduction, speaking of the famous imported orchestra from Germany. As our ragtag band made its way onto the stage spontaneous laughter erupted immediately amongst the audience. When we were all in place Glenn gave a signal and we sang the first chorus of Johnny Schmoker:
'Johnny Schmoker, Johnny Schmoker ....Yadda, yadda, yadda--I wish I could remember the rest of the chorus but I just can't--maybe it wasn't rude enough!
When we had finished the first run-through of the chorus we each introduced our imaginary instrument:
'Pilly willy wink, das ist mein fifel..!' I sang, while holding up my hands as though playing a fife,
'Boom, boom boom, das ist mein drummel..' said the next lad, whom I think was Stewie Brower.
'Toot, toot, toot, das ist mein tooter..!' sang the next lad and so on until we had reached the end of the line and repeated the chorus. When we all 'played' our instruments simultaneously the sound was cacophonous but the effect on the audience was uproarious. I assume we did not get a standing ovation because the practice was not yet in vogue. As for why we didn't get several curtain calls I am still bewildered.
One Friday near the end of the Trail Ranger season Glenn suggested that we do something out of doors. He was agreeable to a picnic but wondered where we should go.
'The caves, the caves!' was the unanimous response. The caves referred to were a series of open-sided cavernous limestone grottoes that had been carved into a hillside near Bowness by aeons of wind and water erosion but difficult to see from the road because of the surrounding undergrowth. As a result we stocked up on soda pop and chocolate bars, spending all of the money in the kitty (four or five dollars) and crowded into the Model 'A'. There were three of us jammed into the front seat with Glenn and another five piled into the back of the car. Incidentally, the 'kitty' we had exhausted bought a lot of pop and chocolate bars in those days. It was comprised of all the weekly dimes that were 'supposed' to have been brought along each Friday night as 'dues' by each of the Trail Rangers. Regrettably, many times the dime had been 'forgotten', so the kitty was smaller than it should have been. Ironically, the only member to have had perfect attendance and who had never failed to bring his ten cents was Stewie Brower. Did I mention that he was ill that weekend and did not attend the picnic? Ah, well, luck of the draw! I don't remember anyone getting stomach cramps resulting from excessive guilt feelings.
Speaking of nourishment, I shouldn't perhaps leave the subject until I've mentioned the highly celebrated 'bean feeds' in which we were privileged to indulge. We called them bean feeds but that would have to be classified as a misnomer. Bean feeds at the YMCA usually included some if not all beans. At the Scarboro Church we had a Trail Ranger feed that had more than eight hundred items on the menu. Unfortunately they were all scalloped potato slices, even though it's hard to believe that potatoes were less expensive than beans. They came in different shapes of glass and crockery containers but they were all scalloped potatoes. There were thin, thick and medium slices, some in cream and onion sauce, some in a crust of baked milk and some with what appeared to be a thin layer of melted cheese, but they were all scalloped potatoes. Some people like scalloped potatoes; I'm still particularly fond of them now, I don't know why!
When I mention Glenn Sutphin's car I am usually asked by Al about the 'secret' pedal he had found below the floorboards near the front seat of the car.
'Don't you remember!' he asks incredulously, 'if you pressed down at a certain place the car would speed up! It used to drive Glenn crazy!' Al remembers different things than I do!
Al had discovered that by pressing his foot down on a certain covered board on the floor in the front seat of Glenn's car he could make the engine accelerate. It didn't take him long to recognize an opportunity for mischief. When he pressed down with his foot on the floorboard the car accelerated until it was going too fast to suit Glenn. Glenn then adjusted the spark on the steering column to slow the vehicle down. Al would then release the pressure on the floorboard and the car would gradually slow down until the spark would need adjustment again.
'Have you had enough fun yet, Al?' Glenn said eventually after several repetitions. Al made an heroic attempt to look innocent but failed.
'Whatta you mean?' he said.
'You know what I mean,' Glenn said with a smile. 'I think you'd better leave off now, though, it could be dangerous.'
'So you knew all along what I was doing,' Al said with a tone of wonderment in his voice. 'Geez!' he said, sitting back somewhat diminished.
Not long after we had reached the caves I had climbed up as high as I could go and was wedged into a tiny hole twenty-five or thirty feet from the bottom of the grotto. It's not something I would undertake today. I remembered that I had done the same thing the previous time we had come to the caves with Jim Fowles. At that time I had shouted 'If I fell from here I could go all the way down to Hell!' There was a gasp of surprise and dismay from the pious Mister Fowles and I was severely tut-tutted for my use of such language.
'But we hear about Hell all the time at Sunday School,' I said, 'and I'm sure it shows up frequently in the Bible.'
'Well, that's different,' Jim replied, hedging adroitly. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out what was different about it.
Stewie was not too pleased when we informed him the following week that we had spent his annual contributions to the kitty in his absence. We explained that it was traditional not to leave any money in the kitty. As it turned out there was one more Friday night meeting scheduled. It might have been better if it had not occurred. Al had come early and found the basement hall unoccupied. Unable to find a basketball he decided that an Indian club would have to do. He was practicing 'free shots' but found the behaviour of the club to be extremely erratic. Then there was the matter of the noise, which, in fact, resulted in Dr. Paton descending from 'on high' to investigate the cause. He caught Al in 'full throw' as it were, and disciplined him severely.
'Rats!' Al said later. 'I was just getting on to it, too!'
This put Al in such a foul mood that he was later told by the usually mild-mannered Glenn Sutphin to 'take a walk' in concert with Billy whom he had co-opted into some form of mischief. On second thought, this might have contributed as much to our subsequent problems as the Indian club incident.
Instead of going out the back door of the bottom floor as usual, Al and Tiny decided to depart in style from the main entrance. They ascended the stairs at the front of the hall which led them directly to the bottom of the winding staircase to the organ loft above the choir rows. They continued on up without interruption until they were in the organ loft itself. They soon found a light switch, so all was exposed. They soon found levers with which they were able to stop and unstop the various rows of pipes. There were other levers which seemed not to produce any visible effect when moved but they shifted them anyway. Naughty boys!
Mr. Wilson, the portly, red-faced janitor (or was he the sexton?) was in the main part of the church making preparations for the Sunday service when he heard strange, un-mouselike sounds coming from the organ loft.
'What the hell do you guys think you're doing up there?' he bellowed from the bottom of the spiral staircase in decidedly un-Christian tones. 'Come down immediately!'
'I think he means right away,' Al said with a giggle. So they descended the staircase where they were confronted by the irate Mr. Wilson.
'So, what're ya gonna do to us?' Tiny asked.
'I don't know yet,' replied Mr. W.,' but I'm sure Dr. Paton will have a few things to say!' At the mention of Dr. Paton's name Al immediately bolted down the aisle in the direction of the front door; Mr. Wilson set off in pursuit. Tiny, unwilling to try to sprint past Mr. Wilson for fear of being grabbed, jumped up onto the back of the nearest pew and began running ALONG THE BACKS OF THE PEWS! Match that if you can, Mr. Moses! Tiny actually caught up to and passed the other two 'greyhounds' and reached the front door first. Luckily it was unlocked so Al and Tiny were halfway down the street before the janitor gave up the chase.
'What was that all about?' asked Dr. Paton, who was standing in the vestibule when the still-winded Mr. Wilson arrived back, puffing from exertion.
'I caught a couple of the young Trail Ranger rascals up in the organ loft,' said Mr. Wilson with difficulty.
'What were their names?' snapped Dr. P.
'I didn't catch their names,' Wilson replied. I presume that what he really wanted to say was 'What am I, a goddam mind reader?' But he didn't say it.
'Hmm, we'll see about that!' Dr. Paton said, flaring his nostrils as he returned to his office.
Two days later, at the Sunday school assembly, Mr. McMurray said 'Pay attention, please, everyone, I have an important announcement to make! The 'Board' has decided that the Trail Rangers are to be disbanded fom this point on and replaced by a den of Tartan Cubs, for boys ELEVEN YEARS OLD AND YOUNGER!'
Egad! we had been cut off at the knees, so to speak, by the CHRISTIAN CHURCH! This was a further meaningful insight into the methods used by the church to deal with its problems. As I grew older I became more and more aware of this ecclesiastical Pecksniffian behaviour.
It was the end of the school session and we were comparatively liberated for a couple of months. This allowed us to catch up on a number of unsupervised activities that had been neglected during the winter. There were gardens to raid, crabapples to swipe and street lights to shoot at with our slingshots. Two or three of our gang members were of the 'other faith' ; we were the 'potlickers', they were the 'catlickers', apellations with which we were all comfortable. Since they had no special Friday night meetings to attend, we were accustomed to finding them in the vicinity of the vacant lot behind Georgie's after Trail Rangers let out. This Friday night they were nowhere in sight. We finally found Jimmie and Creamy standing silently atop the board fence between a couple of local houses, staring fixedly into the lighted kitchen window of one. The family who lived there had two daughters; one who was fifteen or sixteen years old, slim but shapely and with an incredibly beautiful face. Her sister, a year or so her younger, was attractive in a full-blown, blowsy sort of way. To this day Al eulogizes reminiscently about her splendid breasts.
'What's up?' I said, as three of us came up from behind the fence-balancing voyeurs.
'Yikes! You scared the daylights out of us! Come up here, but be very quiet.'
When we were finally in place on the fence we looked into the lighted kitchen; the complete cast was on display. One of the local blades was embracing the delicious older beauty, his red-headed friend was glued to her sister. Needless to say, their parents were away for the evening. Their Friday night schedule of bridge or whatever must have been quite regular since the girls did not seem to be the least bit nervous. The more beauteous one and her lover eventually drifted out of sight into an adjoining room. The railbird Peeping Toms maintained their prurient interest in the wrestling match involving her younger sister and the redhead. All of the onlookers were sexually aroused by this time and there were undoubtedly five rigidly erect juvenile peckers pointing toward her and her friend. As they slipped slowly out of sight toward the kitchen floor Creamy leaned forward for a clearer view. As he did so he clutched at Jimmie to steady himself.
'Leave go of me, for Cripes sake!' Jimmie hissed, but it was too late; the 'domino effect' was underway and there were five separate thuds as we each pitched forward and landed on the grass below. We quickly decided that the incident might have alerted the insiders, so decided to terminate our viewing for the evening. No one seemed anxious to loiter, so each of us marched quickly home and smartly to bed where we could lie and fantasize and whack off at leisure. Naughty boys!
We should have known it was too good to last! It seems that the viewing was not all one-way and one Friday night the two viewees disappeared temporarily only to come charging around the corners of the house, one from each direction. It was only our remarkable agility that allowed us to flee without being caught. When I say 'us' I mean 'nearly all of us'! Creamy hesitated, considering which way to flee; by the time he had reached a decision it was too late. First the red-head and then his friend grabbed Creamy by the ankle and manhandled him into the car parked out in the alley south of the house.
'Get your jollies out of spying on people, do you?' the red-head asked. Creamy just smiled idiotically. It could have been worse! Expecting to be horribly tortured and left lifeless in a ditch at the city limits, Creamy was surprised when the car stopped and he was let out by the roadside. It was pitch dark, although Creamy thought he could make out the loom of city lights far in the distance.
'Consider yourself lucky, it'll be far worse the next time!' the red-head said. 'By the way, in case you're interested, the city's that way,' and he pointed toward the loom of the city lights. Nearly two hours later Creamy dragged his exhausted body into his house and crawled into bed. He fell asleep with his hands outside the covers.
We lost track of the chesty one and her red-headed boyfriend during the war years but we were constantly reminded of the other couple because the beauteous one was pregnant and subsequently gave birth to a child which she pushed up and down the street in a perambulator. The general citizenry considered this to be scandalous. We thought it was great and that she deserved full marks for bravery. Happily, her lover survived the war and came home in one piece and made an 'honest woman' out of the beautiful young mother.
— The End —