Memoirs of a Worldly Guy
As anchoretic and lethargic as I am now I tend to look back with amazement at
the number of activities I had undertaken in the four years between 1946 and 1950. I had gone to Cominco in Trail in the fall of 1946 but I was there only about four months before returning to go to work for Cominco at their Nitrogen Plant in Calgary.
Every time I try to relate my progression of activities in those years I recall some other activity that doesn't seem to fit conveniently into the scheme. I've canvassed
several people about the timing involved but they have contributed only minimally and usually end up by saying that they don't really remember. I've decided to abandon my initial attempt to list things in order and will mention events as I remember them, not necessarily in the order they occurred.
Sometime during the spring of 1947 I had gone up to Edmonton to deliver an ultimatum to my campus sweetheart. 'Set a wedding date or return the engagement ring!' I said. She returned the ring!
Sometime later, probably in early 1948, I travelled to Vancouver; I don't remember how I got there but I booked a trip on one of the CN boats to Alaska. I fiddled a special rate on the basis that I would eat and sleep with the crew on the lower deck. We stopped at Ketchikan and Juneau and visited all the bars up and down the main streets. The only other memorable occurence was my sighting of a small iceberg off the port side of the vessel.
I disembarked at Skagway and took the narrow gauge railway as far as Whitehorse and began a series of hitchhiking rides until I got as far as Dawson Creek. I spent the night sleeping in a bunk at the Salvation Army hostel listening to the coughing and hacking of the rest of the ne'er-do-wells that kept me company. I had a ride as far as Pouce Coupe the next morning. Since Pouce Coupe was only thirty or forty miles from Dawson Creek I sat gloomily by the roadside figuring that it would take me about three weeks to reach Calgary at that rate.
Lo and behold! a Shell Oil '4x4' truck slowed down within minutes and stopped for my thumb. 'Where ya headed?' asked the driver.
'Calgary,' I replied, resigned to another short fifty mile ride.
'Hop in,' said the driver, 'I'm heading straight through to the Calgary office!'
'Hallelujah!' I thought. The following day I walked into Picardy's Coffee Shop and received a surprised and joyous welcome from my Calgary sweetheart. She claims that sometime, probably in late 1948 or '49, she accompanied me three or four times to the Turner Valley Oilfield to pick up boiler water samples at the tank farms all the way from Longview to Millarville. We can't establish whether I was working for Bird-Archer at the time or had started my own company by then. I definitely know that I started my company in November of 1949 and she left Calgary in September of 1950. Her decision to go East was not an abrupt decision. We had been engaged to marry since the middle of 1948. When I suggested that we set a wedding date she said she'd have to think about it.
When she said she was ready I said I had some other things to do. This Micawberish procrastination continued until the fall of 1950. The ball was in my court at the time and she finally put an end to my dawdling by accepting an invitation to visit some old friends of her parents in Ontario and we waved goodbye to her at the Greyhound Bus Depot. She met and married an Eastern type within a couple of months. Bother!
Billl Friendly and I borrowed his mother's Dodge coupe sometime, probably during the summer of 1947, and drove it to New Orleans and back. We spent nearly $100 on tinned food before we left (you could buy a lot of tinned food for $100 then) and set off with pleasure and adventure in mind. We stopped at a military surplus store in Northern Montana and bought a couple of unused surplus sleeping hammocks. We were told they had been manufactured for use by the American soldiers fighting in the tropical jungles during the Pacific War. They had a plastic roof and a zipper which secured the mosquito netting along one side. A brilliantly conceived and utilitarian piece of equipment without doubt unless, regrettably, there were Japanese patrols crawling around in the darkness of Guadalcanal.
According to the Surplus Store salesman the Japanese patrols could scarcely believe their good fortune when they saw the Americans swinging like defenceless cocoons in the gloom. They simply reached up and bayoneted the mosquito-free soldiers from below the hammocks. It wasn't long before the Americans spent their nights crouched in foxholes like everyone else. There were a lot of mosquito-proof hammocks available for the surplus stores.
We headed on south without a great deal happening until we approached Salt Lake City. Presumably we weren't breaking any speed limits because we were overtaken by a car somewhere north of Ogden. Its persistent horn honking made us wonder if we had a tire that was flattening but as it passed we saw two individuals waving at us. Maybe they knew us! Nope, but I concluded that they were planning to! They were attractive American girls in their late twenties returning to their home in Los Angeles following a holiday in Canada.
'Those were babes!' I exclaimed.
'Really?' Bill said sarcastically, 'I thought they were Mormon dirt farmers!'
'Very funny,' I said, ' Speed up and we'll pass them, maybe get acquainted.'
Following a number of reciprocal passes we were not only acquainted, we had convinced them that we could prepare a dinner they would never forget. We followed them to a motel they chose and after a brief period of introduction we waited while they went into the office and reserved a room for the night.
'We've got lots of food,' I said, 'Why don't we go out to the Salt Lake and have a barbecue?'. Marge and Eileen were agreeable to my suggestion but suggested we go in their sedan since there was hardly room for all of us in the Dodge.
'Good thinking,' Bill said, 'I guess we'll have to move the food box from our trunk into yours.' That chore completed we set off happily to the beach. It was dusk when we arrived and we were interested to find that just beyond a bordering climbable fence was a yard with a pile of charcoal from which we "borrowed" a small portion. We soon had a hot fire burning and were able to prepare a 'gourmet' dinner. Would you believe baked potatoes and tinned sausages with pork and beans topped off with a dessert of tinned peaches? Elegance to a fair thee well! Since we were washing this incredible meal down with canned beer things progressed marvellously. It was only a matter of time before a swim in the Salt Lake became an imperative. In the absence of bathing suits there was obviously only one alternative--skinny dipping! What the hell? It was nearly dark so even in such hallowed Mormon ground no one could be offended.
The salt-saturated water in the lake was amazing to one who'd always swum in fresh water. I had the impression that we were being buoyed up on a lake of mercury, barely sinking into the resilient liquid. I didn't know whether the salt water had certain arcane generative powers or that it was a result of larking about with a naked female but a specific part of my anatomy displayed significant short (long?) term growth. Regrettably a short session of wrestling about on the beach did not avail me of a desirable place to put it so I eventually capitulated.
'You boys are welcome to come in and rinse off if you like,' Marge said when we arrived back at the motel. Naturally we agreed willingly because we had discovered that we were heavily encrusted with dried lake salt. I sat and talked to the girls while Bill showered and after he had towelled off and dressed I took my turn.
'Where's Bill?' I asked when I was dressed.
'He's over at the office talking to the manager,' one of them replied. I excused myself and walked over to the office. From the sound of angry voices I knew before I reached the office that things were not progressing amicably. The elderly manager had snapped the latch on the screen door and was arguing through it with Bill.
'I'm wise to what those women are and what they're up to!' the manager said.
'Thats's ridiculous!' Bill said. 'They're perfectly innocent; they merely invited us in to wash off the lake salt we've accumulated.'
'So you say,' the man replied, 'but I know a couple of prostitutes when I see them, allright!'
'Well, if that's your attitude,' Bill said, 'you can, you can---just go piss up a rope!' What a powerful threat! I thought. This Bill can deliver some vicious comments when he's aroused. Not!
'Excuse me please, Bill,' I said. I nudged him aside and pressed my face up to the screen door.
'Listen to me, you stupid old cocksucker! If you don't quit harassing us I'm going to kick this goddam screen door down and come in there and shove it all the way up your sad ass!'
'I'm calling the cops,' said the old boy who had backed away from the door.
'Call anybody you like,' I said, 'but we're coming around here tomorrow morning and if we're told you caused trouble I'll kick your ass so hard you'll have to loosen your tie to take a crap!' With that, the old boy came back and closed and locked the inner door.
'We may have a problem,' Bill said when I turned back to him.
'You may be right,' I said after a moment's thought.
'You chewed him out real good, I'll admit that, but if the cops really do show up we may come out second!'
'You're right! We're a long way from home and I guess I threatened him with violence; they may take a dim view of that!'
'I feel like we should get as far as possible as soon as possible from this sanctimonious environment!' Bill said.
'No time to lose," I said and we climbed into the Dodge and headed south.
We kept right on going until we had passed through Provo and finally found a grove of trees next to the road bordered by a clear stream. It was approaching midday and Bill was close to falling asleep at the wheel.
'I'll just get my head down for about an hour then I'll be fit as a fiddle,' he said. I gave him a hand to get his jungle hammock rigged then went back to the car.
'Help!' I heard him cry a few moments later. We had concluded that the hammocks could only be used with effectiveness if there were a separate rope strung above them for the occupant to hold onto while climbing in. We lacked that refinement; as a result the hammocks were able to deliver some punishing reprisals to the unwary. Bill hadn't quite mastered the technique and had over-rotated when entering his hammock. As a result he was now hanging upside down lying on the plastic roof.
'Get me out of this stupid thing!' he said angrily when I arrived.
'Whattsa matter, worried about Japanese bayonets? I chuckled, 'Just lie still and I'll rotate you around to where you should be.' I reached below him with both arms and rolled him a half turn until he was facing upward again.
'Goddammit!' he cried, 'you've turned me the wrong way; now I'm worse off than ever!'
'Oh, sorry!' I said, suppressing my laughter; I wanted to say 'The devil made me do it!' but managed to suppress the urge. I eventually got him sorted out and walked back to rig up my own hammock as he lay grumbling and bitching, no doubt too upset to sleep.
I had considerable previous experience with the diabolical hammocks and managed to vault into mine without incident. We slept for about two hours before we packed up and got on our way again. It was late in the day before we crossed the Green River and pulled off the road into a flat open space.
'I'm starving,' Bill said.
'Gimme the car keys, I'll get the box out of the trunk.' I went round to the back of the car and opened the trunk, speculating on whether we should have ham or tinned chicken. When I looked into the trunk I thought for a moment that I was hallucinating--- there was no box of food! After a moment of confusion the awful truth dawned on me---the food was back in the trunk of the girls' sedan. We had made such a swift and clever getaway from the motel we had left our victuals abandoned. Dang!
'What do you fancy for dinner?' Bill asked as he walked back.
'I'm afraid that what I fancy is purely academic!' I said.
'Oh, shit!' Bill said after he had looked in vain for the groceries.
About six weeks following my return to Calgary I received a perfumed letter from California.
Dear Ron,
Eileen and I thought it was very thoughtful of you and Bill to leave us a gift of 'food for the needy'! Not to worry, it was put to good use! We had fun!
Kind regards,
Marge
In case I was wondering about what we did during the day as we worked our way southeast across America Bill claims we had a total of twenty-seven tire repairs to deal with. I have only vague memories of our transit after leaving the Green River, most of them dealing with problems with the car or our hammocks. We were well south in Colorado before we were able to pass through the Rocky Mountains into the Central Plains without having to climb through a mountain pass.
In Dodge City we felt it was imperative for us to visit Boot Hill, the famous last resting place of many of the gunmen eulogized in Wild West lore. Ironically, I can remember only one headstone I thought of as marvellously succinct:
Here lies Joe Smith
Run fer Sheriff 1869
Run from Sheriff 1872
Died 1872
The name and the dates are fictional; I guess I should have kept notes!
I clearly remember one astonishing rainstorm we encountered halfway through Kansas. I was familiar with the term 'cloudburst' but this one beggared my previous experience. Although the road was slightly rounded the torrent was so fierce that the rain was unable to drain quickly enough for it to leave the suface and it was nearly two inches deep. This proved to be a downfall for the car which Bill had maintained at only slightly slower speed. Eventually it came to a full stop.
'Probably got rain splashed up on the distributor,' he said, 'why don't you nip out and raise the hood; see if you can spot the trouble!'
'Why don't I, indeed?' I said, removing my shoes and socks. I was drenched by the time I had reached the front of the car and lifted the hood. I had just leaned in toward the engine when there was a bright flash and a tremendous 'Crack!' as a lightning bolt struck the telephone pole no more than fifty feet away. It may have been a hundred feet but I wasn't counting. I was back into the car so fast it's a wonder I didn't shoot out the other side.
'Sumbitch! Did you hear that lightning strike sizzle?'
'I didn't hear anything except the initial crack,' Bill said; 'you mean to say it actually sizzled?' Bill said.
'Sounded just like bacon frying--it was spooky!'
'You've got astrapophobia!' Bill said pompously.
'My thoughts exactly,' I said.
When we finally arrived in New Orleans we headed straight for the old French Quarter (Vieux Carré). The rest of New Orleans we ignored. The narrow streets of the French Quarter were reminiscent of both French and Spanish architecture. Every building had an ornate cast iron-sided porch running around it about twenty feet above the sidewalk. Moss green seemed to be the popular colour. Although Jackson Square is the heart of the French Quarter we never got far from Bourbon and Basin Streets and wandered in and out of bars that were playing Dixieland jazz. We couldn't afford the famous gourmet restaurants like Brennan's, Arnaud's and Antoine's. We rationalized by agreeing that the food would probably have been too rich!
The area never really got rocking until dark when the bars started filling up with tourists. I learned a couple of lessons in the Vieux Carré. We came to an open fronted bar with a large African lady singing a naughty song for the amusement of a group of American sailors.
'There's a man over there has a boogie like a baseball bat!' she sang, to the accompaniment of roars of laughter as she pointed to a chosen sailor. We grabbed the last unoccupied stools at the bar and ordered a couple of over-priced beers. When the chanteuse finished her turn we were treated to a tasty young lady in high heels and scanty clothes who danced up and down the bar in front of us. She cleverly fended off the attempted clutches of the drunken swabbies as she undulated back and forth along the bar. She had a filmy green gossamer scarf draped loosely around her neck and as she wiggled her way back in the direction of the sailors she slipped it off her neck with an end in each hand. When she drew even with the most outspoken of the swabbies she flipped the looped scarf over his head and let it settle around his neck. A great cheer of amusement issued from the swabbies.
The young sailor, grinning idiotically (read 'drunkenly'), was slowly being pulled up off his stool by the curvaceous blonde. When he was halfway to the 'promised land' she deftly slipped her ends of the scarf between her legs and reached behind herself to grasp them again. As she pulled the young man steadily closer to her groin he offered absolutely no resistance until his head was pressed firmly against the tiny 'vee' of panty covering her 'privates'. Obviously feeling a duty to perform for his buddies the young man pursed his lips in a kiss to the hysterical shouts and cries of his cronies.
'I think we should pay up and move on before she gets to us,' I said to Bill.
'Amen to that,' Bill replied as we threw some bills on the bar and walked out.
'I think I just learned something,' I said.
'You did?'
'Yeah! Never get too close to the performers!'
'Why not?'
'Because within a certain range you can see where the makeup ends and the white skin near their pussy begins; in fact, I'm sure I could see a curly pussy hair or two peeking out below her crotch.'
'So what's wrong with that?'
'It takes all the romance out of it,' I replied. 'By the way, have you ever eaten it?' I asked innocently, "It has a sort of coppery taste doesn't it?'
'Don't be disgusting,' Bill replied.
Bill and I had rented a twin-bedded room near the edge of the French Quarter and returned there around midnight. The room wasn't exactly air conditioned, that is to say, there was a slowly rotating fan suspended from the ceiling. Fortunately we were sufficiently intoxicated not to worry about such niceties and dropped off to sleep shortly after we hit the sack. I had slept spreadeagled on my back wearing only my jockey shorts and not bothering to pull up a sheet because of the unaccustomed heat and humidity.When I woke the following morning I had presumably not moved and the bedclothes that had been below me were completely soaked with perspiration. My body outline was clearly marked on the bed; all that was missing was a chalk outline.
We crossed the street to a 'greasy spoon' and were introduced to ham and eggs and hominy grits for breakfast. There was a rough-looking type sitting on the opposite side of the horseshoe-shaped bar who smiled, waved at Bill and yelled 'Howdy stranger! How the hell are you?'
'Fine, just fine thanks!' Bill replied weakly.
'Where the hell have you been keeping yourself?'
'Oh, around and about,' Bill said. Was this a genuine case of mistaken identity or were we just dealing with another eccentric rubby-dub?
'Who the hell is that?' I said to Bill, 'sotto voce'.
'I haven't got a clue!' he replied. When we paid the check and left the lunch room the stranger was still nursing his cup of coffee and smilling broadly in our direction. Bill smiled and waved then walked down the street with a puzzled look on his face.
While window shopping and browsing we came across a shop that sold perfumes based on local floweres like magnolia and hyacinth. I engaged the lady manager in conversation and asked her for addresses of her suppliers not only of her essences but also of her bottles and shipping containers. It was while I was pressing her for information that a handsome middle-aged lady drew me aside and said she could help me. I was interested until she said she wanted to have me accompany her to her apartment alone! I told her I couldn't desert my buddy so I took a rain check. I've often wondered what kind of 'help' she had in mind.
I can't remember whether my interest in perfumery was initiated by my visit with the shop lady in N'Ollins or that I was interested previously. At any rate I was involved about that time in the production of flower-based perfume that was well received by the young ladies who tested it. I had lovely little one ounce glass containers that could have passed for crystal and had tight-fitting glass stoppers. I ordered the gilt labels separately and called my original magnolia scent 'Gai Nuit' by Munro. There were no sexual overtones in the term 'gay' in those days.
Coincidentally, my wife has found a black notebook that discloses information I had completely forgotten. It's headed 'Perfume Expenses' and has the following entries:
June 10th, 1947 To Lawson for Spanish Jasmin #4...$2.00 (money order) July 9th, 1947 12 oz. 70% Iso-alcohol...$0.59
July 20th, 1947 To Lawson for Carnation #6...$2.00
Magnolia #11...$2.00
Rec'd. Sale to E. Klement 1oz. Sp. Jasmin...$1.00
Aug. 2. /47 To Carr-Lowrey for bottles...$20.00
Aug. 8. /47 Chemistry &Man. of Cosmetics
by De Navarre +customs...$13.96
These notes are revelationary to a degree. I know now that I actually sold a bottle of perfume and I know why Liz smelled so good when we drove to work at the Nitrogen Plant each morning!
I assume I had some other commitment that prevented me from setting out to market the scents myself and the thought of moving to the big markets in the East was anathema to me. I needed a distributor. I arranged an interview with the manager of one of the well-established wholesale drug companies and told him of my plans. He didn't dump a bucket of ice-cold water over my head but he did the next best thing.
'I'm afraid we wouldn't be interested in such a proposition,' he said.
'But you have detail salesmen who call on all of the perfume outlets in the area haven't you?
'That sort of merchandise is usually bought by head offices in the East,' he said disinterestedly.
'There must be some marketing organization or distributor who would be interested in a local product!'
'I'm the President of the Alberta organization and I assure you there is no one of that kind in our group. Thanks for coming in!'
That typifies the kind of enthusiastic support local small business received from the establishment in those days. If there really is a heaven and I should happen to run into him some day please remind me to give the arrogant old bastard a good swift kick in the balls!
That evening we were prowling around again in the French Quarter. We entered a small bar that had a large black woman playing a piano and singing songs that sounded familiar. I was convincd that it was Nellie Lutcher:
I love you 'n you love me
Hurry down the alley so the neighbors won't see...
Her piano was situated close to the wood-panelled wall and she reached over and pounded it rhythmically with her fist and forearm while still playing with her right hand and singing:
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
Come on honey, you must, you must
Hurry on down to my house baby,
Anybody home but me...!
It was hard to believe that one overweight middle-aged woman with a marvellous sense of rhythm, a piano and an adjacent panelled wall could generate such musical excitement. She took a break and since we were reluctant to leave we ordered another beer and glanced around the bar. There was a birdcage sitting on the bar a few seats down from me and a large bird with long tail feathers was climbing on the wire and doing gymnastics on the wooden perch. I don't know if it was a parakeet or a macaw but it was the size of a large mallard and beautifully coloured with red and green feathers. For some inexplicable drunken reason I reached into the cage with a forefinger, ostensibly to scratch the back of its head.
"Be careful, she can bite!' said the bartender from a few feet down the bar. But it was too late; with a lightninglike movement the bird had turned its head almost completely around and seized my finger in its large, hooked bill. I immediately made a reflexive tug back but found my finger to be immovable; the more I tugged the tighter the bird clamped down.
'Jeesus, that's starting to hurt!' I exclaimed
'Don't try to pull it free,' the bartender said as he came down the bar, 'You're liable to tear the flesh.' I took his advice but hoped the bird didn't get a sudden urge to perform a somersault. This predicament seemed to be a fairly frequent occurrence as the barman reached down, picked up a jar from below the counter and removed a dark brown piece of stuff about an inch and a half long.
'Pickled anchovy, believe it or not,' he said with a smile. He held it about a foot away from the bird, just within its vision. My captor immediately loosened its grip and sidestepped over to the proffered delicacy. I pulled out my hand and examined the deep grooves left in my finger.
'Better go and wash your hands right away,' Bill said, 'and don't suck your finger, for God's sake!' I did as I was told and when I returned I got a ten minute lecture on the unpleasant effects of psittacosis. When we left the bar; the pianist lady was once more attacking the woodwork and the parrot was looking around for its next victim.
We toughed it out one more night but the heat and humidity were getting to us and we decided to move on north in the expectation of escaping the unaccustomed sultriness.
— The End —