Marty's Blogtacular Thoughts: January 2022

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Zen Snowfall

The beauty of a snowfall

transcends magnificence

to the moment the

shovelling begins

Zen Master Marty

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

A Mennonite Walks into a Bar: Growing up Mennonite

Lake freighter on Lake Ontario

Hockey action in our backyard

Chapter 4

The Funeral and other Backyard Secrets

Camping in our rugged backyard always proved to be a continuous highlight during our summers. Our family owned an old canvas tent that looked very much like the tents one might see on the news today used by refugees from any major global disaster, with the exception that their tents were better. Our tent had no floor, was not-water proof and with its awkward wooden pole system was barely stable, but it effectively serve its purpose which was to give us as campers a focal point for night survival and a base camp for our nightly reconnaissance sojourns into the surrounding neighbourhoods.

Camping in the backyard with some friends in no way meant that we actual stayed on location and slept through the night, or even slept at all. Our parents had concerns on some levels as my mother would often say things like, “Marty you look so haggard did you not sleep well in the tent last night.” I always, and with great gusto, tried to alleviate those fleeting maternal concerns because there was no way that I wanted to lose my sleep outside privileges as that held the threat of totally ruining my summer if not my entire childhood, at least on the trajectory that I had mapped out. It was best to placate my parents into thinking everything was good, all is fine, love the outdoors, slept like a baby. “It must be the morning light, mom, I feel great!”

Camping equipment in 1962 was still at a pretty basic and primitive state, in a addition to a floor-less tent that allowed in every manner of bug known to men in the mid-latitudes, we also had a kerosine lamp, just like they used in Klondike days. Our sleeping bags had not one stitch of synthetic fabric, lacked much insulation and were about as effective as a blanket from my bed. We did not have the sense to lay down a ground sheet to add an extra layer of protection so slept directly on the cold hard ground. We did have flashlights, usually ones that were quite dim because D sized batteries cost money, something my income from my small paper route could not support. I’m not certain if insect repellent had been invented or even conceived as a possibility, so we had none of that. Our camping if nothing else was character building.

One staple to our inventory was my brother’s transistor radio with which we could pull in station WKBW from Buffalo that station played what we call today, classic rock. Songs like, the Locomotion, Twist and Shout, Wimoweh, I Only Want to be With You by Dusty Springfield and any song by Elvis were favourites at the time. It was the pinnacle of the music age. Sadly, these song were all frowned on by our parents and some banned by the Mennonite church itself as was the radio station we listened to and especially Elvis who on the Ed Sullivan Show wiggled his hips. We enjoyed these songs and others we heard brought to us on some errant radio signal that originated in the United Stated of America, bounced off the stratosphere and touched down in our backyard refugee camp, where we soaked up all the secular music we were banned from in our regular lives. Camping was a high point in our cultural education.

We slept in our PJ’s in order to convince our parents that our intentions for sleep were pure in nature, but smuggled out our regular clothing as well because once the light was out in my parents bedroom that was the bat signal signifying it was cruising time and we needed our civvies for our late night manoeuvres.

My friends were not all Mennonite. In fact I kept two sets of friends, one Mennonite, through the Scott Street Mennonite Brethren Church an organization that gives Southern Baptists a run for their money in terms of its conservative theological nature. A second set of friends derived from the secular world, mainly school friends. I usually only saw my church friends on Sunday’s and at other church related events, so all my camp outs were with my secular crowd. My mom referred to them as, English. That was a title that often confused me because I was under the false impression that I was an English by virtue of the fact that I had actually been born in Canada. As I recall at the Hotel Dieu hospital in St Catharines, weighing in at 8 pounds 8 ounces at about eight in the morning, possible evening. I was Canadian and therefore English. But, no apparently not, according to my mom at the time, English was anyone who was not a Mennonite; so my origin story was irrelevant to the facts and the Mennonite reality.

Our backyard crew was usually made up of my brother and some combination of the Motely crew: Arthur Reece, Kurt Lakite, Walter Klassen, or the Kaettler brothers, Vic and John. There were some seasonal variations but those were of the core heathen crew with whom we hung out.

As Mennonites we were not allowed to go to movies, play cards, listen to rock music, go to school dances, watch certain taboo TV shows and were generally expected to live a low action stagnant life by English standards. Our camp-outs managed to help us surmount some of these cultural barriers and elevate our life experiences. My English friends could never quite wrap their heads around most of the stuff we could not do and therefore were eager and more than accommodating to help my brother and I down the slippery slope of sin. One of our favourite night time camping activities was to go to the local drive-in movie theatre about 2 miles from our backyard.

The moment our parents’ bedroom light was out, we quickly got changed and dashed for our bicycles strategically parked at the side of the house opposite of my parents’ bedroom. It was approximately a vigorous fifteen minute ride over to the Drive-in. On the way we stopped off at a near by gas station, a Texaco, en route to stop for a refreshing drink. A sacred commodity only found in our home over Christmas celebrations, so very rare in our home.

The design of some pop machines at the time allowed glass bottles with, convenient bottle caps, to slide along a metal row to a spot in the machine where when coins were inserted the bottle could be pulled up and out for consumption. We bypassed the cumbersome and wasteful coin stage by bringing straws and bottle openers to circumvent the entire design and liberate our drinks. In this way we could simply open any number of bottles bend over the pop machine, with opened lid, and with straws drink our fill. For some strange reason and to our collective disappointment, as technology advanced this design of pop machine quickly became obsolete. I could never understand why fix something that’s not broken through a new design.

Once satiated with Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Dr Pepper we approached the drive-in from the rear through a vacant field of tall grass. We moved with stealth parking our bikes a good hundred yards from the edge of the back rows of speaker poles. From the bikes, with great stealth we slinked through the grass like ninja warriors bordering the nearest speakers. One of us crouching so as to avoid sniper fire moved forward and turned about ten speakers to full volume and faced them in our direction back in the grass.

Lying in the deep thick grass we were able to see the big screen and hear the wondrous movie as the action unfolded in such action adventures as the Great Escape,with Steve McQueen and James Garner. The lusty Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, the ever popular Beach Party with the love of my young existence Annette Funicello who I grew up with on the Mickey Mouse Club, but here she had breasts. There was Dr No with actually Bond women and lots of gratuitous sex and a crazy amount of violence and chase scenes. On some trips we sent an advanced scout into enemy territory to the snack booth, there to buy a large bag of popcorn to be shared. Our adventure was a Mennonites boy’s wet dream. We rarely stayed long enough to watch a full movie, but with frequent visits pieced a full movie together.

It was not just my parents I had to be wary off in terms of seeing theatre movies, although they eventually loosened up the moralistic code and actually took my brother and I to drive-ins when we were slightly older, sometimes smuggling us in by hiding us in the trunk or covering us with blankets in the back seat of the car. It was an effective method used for ticket avoidance. I think what broke their resolve was when Ben Hur and the Ten commandments came out. It was their Christian duty to see those movies.

It was my sister Marg who was the ‘witch hunter’ in our family and we literally had to sneak by her to avoid being detoured from our mission of seeing Charleston Heston’s interpretation of the Bible. The first movie I was official allowed to go to on my own was Disney’s A Swiss Family Robinson. It was a surreal secular experience escaping the bounds of my upbringing through a full length feature presentation of parentally approved Disney characters.

On other summer camp out nights the agenda varied according to the vagaries of our collective moods. One crazy night of childish debachary we went throughout our neighbourhood and removed all the metal tags from every hydro meter we could find. I have no idea then or now what the purpose of tags wired to the meter were for, but they seemed to attract our attention like any shiny object would. I am certain that this caused Ontario hydro no end of inconvenience, irritation and we were the unknown cause of this agitation. Our only possible rationale was the tags were there so we took them. What we eventually did with them I have no recollection. We did know it was forbidden fruit and that was enough for us. Our neighbourhood was the Garden of Eden rife with a multitude of temptations to which we readily succumbed.

On nights when we weren’t stealing hydro tags we went into the areas on our own street where construction was on going. Vine Street at the time was basically at the edge of the city and a site of some new housing construction. It was therefore our sworn duty to investigate and explore these sites. It was fun touring through an unfinished house but our main purpose was to find sources of wood for our various projects, including but not restricted to: fort construction, both tree houses and under ground lairs, boards for ice rinks, plywood for backboards for the hockey nets and planks to form the perimeter of the rink for flooding purposes. Finally, we needed lumber for our raft construction as we hoped to sail on Lake Ontario near to our secret Diving Board.

Rafting in the Age of Discovery

Lumber was in constant demand and it was imperative to keep the supply chains fluid in order to keep production and creation of our projects in high gear. At that time our lake raft construction plans were in full swing and proto-typical designs called for a huge need for more wood.

There was no real danger in invading a construction site late at night as no actual construction was going on. However, on some nights to our great annoyance builders or perhaps owners would also wander by to inspect, or maybe guard their assets as there seemed to be a theft problem in our neighbourhood.

On a few occasions we got caught in the act of relocating lumber to our storage area between our garage and our neighbours garage. Some of those chase scenes were epic. On one such episode a very large angry man singled me out for pursuit and eventual capture. I was running as fast as my little legs could carry me and could hear this man rapidly gaining on me as I entered the orchard behind the construction site. I tripped and rolled past a pear tree, but due to my drop and roll skills from evading pursuit in grape vines from angry farmers and drivers whose cars we had hit with alley guns, I was able to leap up, recover and not miss another stride, only to be hauled downwards face down in the dirt by my captor. The gig was up. I felt like the fastest gun in the west had finally been shot through the heart at the OK corral. He was sweaty, red in the face from the great chase scene, if only I phones had been invented then, would look great on camera. In his outrage and rant whose words I could not clearly hear because they were filtered through my many layers of fear he suddenly grew still and was distracted when struck in the back by a clump of dirt. apparently one of my more loyal friends had circled back or followed my tormentor and I and began a counter-attack. I knew this to be my one and only chance, not at redemption but of escape. Not wanting to be collateral damage I jumped to my feet and ran like a vandal into the night.

Fortunately, I was somewhat of a track star and the fastest runner in my school up to an including grade six. When this wild-eyed interloper came to curtail our activities we all as a collective mind meld knew to run like the North Wind through Bonchard’s orchards bordering the construction zone. We also knew to wear dark clothing so not to be seen at night and also by design knew to spread out and run in various directions. Our pursuer than had to pick one person to chase as he couldn’t catch us all and that night for one fleeting moment that person was me. We also knew never to run straight home, back to the tent, as that would be courting discovery and capture. Further to our plan we escaped passed the orchard to the next parallel residential street and again kept our fanned out pattern of flight. We were never caught nor did my father once ask us where or how all the lumber between the garages accumulated in such quantity. If my dad every guessed he never said a word. He gave us free rein.

Some nights we went out to play nicky-nicky-nine doors. I have no idea why the stupid name, but we all knew what it meant. We selected a house, walked to the door, rang the doorbell and then ran like hell. I think the reason I won so many track ribbons at school in competition was because of my constant late night training program of running from my various pursuers. If there was atrophy for running away from farmers and contractors I would have won it hands down, no competition. On a philosophical note I concluded that out of much mischief comes a greater good. All I had to do was focus on the big-picture and not worry so much about my gradual moral decay.

My parents seemed to approve of my friends despite the fact that they were not Mennonite and likely pleased with the fact that we chose such an active outdoor life-style in our own back yard so close to home. As kids we stayed outside constantly playing any number of team sports, hide and go seek, cops and robbers, pagans and Missionaries in addition to our less advertised nocturnal exploits. Life was good until the day we cut off our cats foot. After that things were never quite the same and the camp outs stopped, at least for a time.

We had a large willow tree in the centre of our backyard which my father eventually had to cut down because it was constantly populated by aphids and large, gross, green caterpillars. Although this tree was the site of one of our beloved tree forts we all knew it had to come down, the revulsion caused by the insect infestations exceeded the joy of the fort. It was a simple cost/benefit analysis. Besides who wants to be in a tree fort surrounded by millions of bugs. The tree eventually came down and formed the basis for one of my Dad’s large bonfires at the edge of the driveway, which usually attracted a crowd and often the fire department.

What remained of the tree was a large trunk that we sporadically chopped away at with an axe provided to us by our father. My friends and I were gathered in a circle on one fateful day watching my brother chop at the stump, in fact we all took turns as this was more of a group sport. Sadly, and to my perpetual regret, I was holding close to my chest our pet cat, Toby the IVth. All of our cats, in succession, were named Toby as all of our dogs were named Nipper. We lived on a busy corner, even back then; so the mortality rate for free ranging pets was extremely high.

As my brother chopped and was just in his up-swing, Toby, alarmed scratched me and leaped out of my arms onto my brother’s back synchronized with his down swing. As Toby further panicked made a hasty retreat through my brothers legs tragically coming in direct alignment with the descending axe. The cat howled and we all screamed as we soon realized that the axe had nearly completely severed Toby’s paw. I can still remember her sitting moaning looking at here severed paw hanging by a few ligaments with so much blood. It was horrifying and I have felt traumatized all these years. I can’t even imagine how Toby felt. I have never been counselled through the PTS caused by this carnage and to this day can rarely look a cat directly in the eye with out remorse.

When my Dad came home a few hours later he drove Toby to the SPCA where he was humanely ‘put to sleep’. We were allowed to keep the body for burial purposes and lay our cat to rest in a shallow grave in the vacant field next to our house. We marked the grave with a circle of bricks, from a near-by construction site, and built an elaborate cross from our lumber supply. It was very impressive. Toby would have approved.

We never spoke of this event again. The appetite for camping-out tapered off following Toby’s death and subsequent funeral.

Despite the funeral life does go on and we put all our energies into the design and construction of our lake raft, our next project. I think the raft project was therapeutic for all of us as we all grieve in different ways. The actual construction had to take place close to the launch site, which of course would be next to the Diving Board at lock number one of the Welland Ship Canal where I had nearly drowned a few weeks previous.

Our hope was to sail our raft with four crew members from the Diving Board across the bay all the way to McNab Creek, a location well familiar to us as we often biked there on hunting expeditions. This is also memorable as the location where by brother and Walter shot each other. Cute story, but I’m sure you want to hear more about the raft.

From the Diving Board could be seen, in the vague general distance, maybe 4 to 5 kms distant out over open water was the McNab Peninsula. Or at least that was our official name for it as it was not labeled on any maps. Not aware of the schedule or sailing patterns of the lake freighters, the direction of the wind or water currents, we figured through virtue of our collective ignorance we could enjoy have a safe crossing. In fact a return trip was a necessity as we did have to get back to our bikes which would be parked at the Diving Board our point of origin for the voyage. However, I think it is safe to say that no where in our plans did we factor in the idea of a return trip as we were so focussed on the destination and getting there.

Much of the larger pieces of wood we found on location in the form of driftwood, flotsam and jetsam supplemented by miscellaneous small and more custom pieces for making seats and a storage bin for water and food. We were determined not to get scurvy, run out of water, although to my estimation lake Ontario is a fresh water body. We were highly cognizant of the fate of the likes of Magellan and his crew and naturally had no intentions of sharing his fate.

Construction proceeded on schedule over the summer. Everyone contributed tools from their own homes. We even had a crude log roller system for moving the raft based on ancient Egyptian design for moving large stones of several tons. Our building site was about 20 feet above sea level and we had determined by attaching ropes to the raft, wrapped around some of the boulders made from the water break we stood on, we could gradually lower on a series of small logs the hefty raft to the water’s edge, there we could finish the last of the construction details, add our provisions, conduct a launching ceremony and set sail for the other side. We had made a make shift sail using flannel shits unknowingly donated by Kurt’s mother. We then fashioned paddles out of hockey sticks. The idea of life jackets never once entered our juvenile minds and considering we were all weak swimmers it never became a concern so focussed were we on our prize of global discovery. Secretly, I hoped to claim all new found lands for Spain, like the early explorers.

What led to our downfall, eventual discovery and house arrest was to be placed squarely on my shoulders and possibly that of my brother. We has promised to stock the raft with some basic food items, like canned beans, hotdogs and many of the other basics of life for such a journey. What I should have factored in was my dad’s frugality and eagle eye. As I smuggled food out of the house, over several weeks, my dad grew anxious and suspicious and so an every increasing web of circumstantial evidence began to close in on us.

On the very day we had planned to launch and sail off into either history or oblivion we were gathered around the raft engaged in the christening ceremony using a vintage bottle of Dr Pepper who would walk out of the woods but my parents. They rounded us up but since they didn’t have actual jurisdictional control over my friends they chose to abandon us to our angry parents and sail of towards McNab, but not before my father still nursing his righteous indignation removed all of the food items that I had taken from our house.

It was a quiet bike ride back home as my parents agreed to meet us there, not offering to put our bikes in the trunk of the car and drive us. We had proven unworthy. At home we only got the silent treatment and to this day I have no real clue if my dad was upset over our safety over our rafting exploits or simply was irritated over the fact we took food from the house. Either way for the rest of what remained of that summer of 1962 we were banned from rafting, the Diving Board and, yes, even camping in the backyard. I think since my parents were not self destructive they did allow us to continue seeing our friends, which got us out of the house, out of their hair and busy.

I did know one thing for certain that after all of these summer activities, of which my parents knew only a small portion, my mennonite mother was praying for me and that has to count for something.

Chapter Five

Stamp Collecting

Friday, January 14, 2022

The Diving Board :Welland Ship Canal

The Diving Board

The Diving Board was an icon in our childhood. It was not just a board to dive from as the name suggests, it was a location. This location was a secret rendezvous spot only known to myself and my group of friends where we went to smoke, camp out, day dream, tell jokes and stories and basically enjoy life away from home and on occasion swim in the depths of Lake Ontario.

The Diving Board referred to a long thick plank of wood that we had retrieved from the Lake itself. It was rough wood from which we frequently got deep splinters in our tender feet prior to plunging into the lake water. I, as a younger member of the group which also included my older brother and his likewise older friends along with my circle of close confidants met together in the greater group. As a newbie when first introduced to the location and our revered diving board was told unanimously and with enthusiasm that the lake was actually quite shallow at this point.

Why I believed this given that our board was located basically at the entrance to the Welland Ship Canal lock number 1. Here a series of thousands of large rocks, weighing tons, were dumped into the lake in two rows with separation wide enough to allow the passage of the largest lake freighters coming into the canal system. These rocks formed a long entrance way from the lake, providing harbour and sheltered passage for boats heading towards Lake Erie.

Considering our diving board was therefore about half a kilometre measured along the rock wall to the distant shoreline, it would be silly to even consider the thought that the water this far out in the lake would be shallow. Given the encouraging nature of my friends, who knew I could not swim, they enticed me on to the board where I got my first splinter from the rough surface of the wood. The sharp pain and the lasting discomfort did not slow me from taking my first shallow dive into frigid lake Ontario. Having great faith and trust in my brother and friends, I edged to the tip of the board and timidly checked the board for spring. There was none.

I sensed the crowd watching me was fast losing its patience with my slow approach to what should be an action adventure and I knew I would soon have to make the leap into oblivion. I began to shiver as I stood vulnerable and alone perched on the very tip of the board. I don’t know if I was responding to some level of primal fear, or the breeze across the lake was giving me hypothermia. My time of hesitation was near an end. I closed my eyes, plugged my nose and made a mighty leap into the Lake.

My feet made contact with the dark blue water of the lake, momentum and gravity worked to suck me down into the depths. It was not shallow. Panic!! That notion had been a lie. I kept sinking and sinking wondering in my frantic awareness if this was the end. Were I to drown today, in this moment, in this cold deep lake and my mother discovered my stash of playboy magazines in my bedroom, would I actually go to hell. I opened my eyes, there was darkness all around me and lots of bubbles everywhere. It was a surreal assault of madness to the senses. I was still on a trajectory downward.

Then there was a great quiet. The end of times. Looking up, following the bubbles which seemed to be going up, represented hope. I could even see some of the submerged rocks that formed the foundation of the diving board. Calmer now, but not too calm, I thrashed my legs and made frantic movements which I hoped would allow me to follow my bubbles upward towards the light and the air. My lungs with all the frantic activity had developed a sudden craving for oxygen. My ears hurt from the water pressure as I had clearly descended more than any city swimming pool could allow.

At my limits I slowly made for the lightness above me, the sun, and so managed to break the surface some 20 feet from my starting point of the diving board. I was welcomed by a solid wall of laughter as “friends” shouted, “Hey Marty, see not deep at all.” I ignored the taunting jeers from my support group as I was faced with the real and present danger of how to get to the safety of the rocks when for all intents and purposes I could not swim.

I could quickly conclude that no one felt my need, vulnerability and intense fear as this had turned into a spectator sport and I was now the slave facing the lions in the coliseum. Visions of the near drowning of my dog Shadow flashed before my eyes. I likely was owner of the only German Shepherd in the history of dogs that also could not swim. Shadow of course attempted a version of the dog paddle, I mean what were his options, but with a very vertical stroke of his front paws actually causing him to sink. Determined not to replicate the near fate of my stupid dog I stretched my arms in a horizontal fashion while my legs no longer connected in anyway meaningful way to my brain kicked in random directions. The sum total of all this kinetic energy was a slow and ponderous migration towards the rocks and my mocking gangle of friends.

I barely had the strength to pull myself up on the rocks that stood cliff-like in front of me. The wave action from the lake propelled me up allowing me a tentative grasp on solid land and with no help from the crew slowly pulled myself out of the depths. My first reaction was that of relief. I was safe, my mom wouldn’t necessarily find my magazines and I would live another day. The anger, resentment and acid betrayal from my gang quickly broke my consciousness as I screamed at them in true pacifist-Mennonite style to all, “Go just fuck yourselves and rot in hell forever.” My outburst was less than effective as a roar of laughter echoed back at me like a rifle shot in a deep canyon.

And so I began my journey to become a better swimmer and then solemnly vowed I would train my dog Shadow to swim a proper dog paddle as to save him from a fate worse than mine. My mother did not find my magazines for another 7 years. There is a God