ROPING IN MEMORIES OF MY PAST AS THEY STAMPEDE THRU MY MIND

This next post, will break away from of our time in Calgary, and drift back to visions, of earlier times. Because of the fragile state of my mind, I must grasp and write down memories as they thunder past me. Otherwise, they will be gone forever. The timing for these short clips is during the Early Years, which is everything pre-’70’s. They are in no particular time frame, but basically recounted in the order they enter my mind. I am sure that most of my memories, of the past, have little interest to anyone on this earth. Please humour an old man, I will move on to more contemporary times soon.

The first one, is of my grandmother, on my father’s side. She lived alone in the small village of Rosalind, deep in the Alberta, prairies. After our departure from Rosalind, “remember the great inferno”, where dad’s welding shop burned to the ground, we would visit gramma as often as dad could load us all in his car. The timing was probably in the late 1950’s, but the same incident took place many times. It helped to shape my obsessive compulsive personality. This time it was a lesson about compromise, priorities and portion control. It went something like this.

One of my gramma’s favorite indulgences was peanut butter. She absolutely loved it and ate copious amounts. I believe she bought it in truckload lots. We were allowed to eat her hoard of peanut butter, with thick toast, at breakfast everyday. However, there were rules attached and this is where my visions of self control and compromise come from. Gramma would set us all around her table, cook toast on her wood burning stove top and bring out a big barrel of peanut butter. You could have your toast, one of two ways. Either with butter and a thin layer of peanut butter, or, no butter and a 1/2″ thick layer of peanut butter, on the bare toast. You could not have butter and thick peanut butter. A choice must be made, either both in moderation, or a compromise foregoing butter for unlimited peanut butter.

Believe me, if you chose to forego the butter, then there was no limit to the amount of thick, cloying peanut butter you could eat. Our gramma understood that butter along with peanut butter, could not be good for you on a daily basis. She therefore, practised self control by limiting her butter intake, and then going crazy on the other topping. Somehow, to a young mind it kinda made sense. I have used her method to balance things out, often in life. For instance, at times when I eat two or three burgers, I might well cut the intake of French fries. Sometimes when drinking copious amounts of beer, I would refrain from eating, to balance the calories. My standards, now, have a lot to do with, how gramma saw life. I bellied up and ate my share of 1/2″ thick peanut butter alongside her. I was her favorite.

Because the previous memory was a little long, and perhaps boring, I will keep the next one short. This event happened in the mid ’60’s. It consisted of a horrible trick, played on me by my mom and evil sister Murt. You remember her, the one of the “peeing under the swing” fame. At this point in time I was about 15 and living alone in my basement lair. My evil older brother, L, had left for university in Montreal. By this time in my life, I was quite full of myself and had decided that I was fully mature enough to start smoking. Money was not easy to come by, so each and every package, I managed to purchase, was special to me.

I used to enjoy one before school, sneak off the property for one at lunch, and have one or two on the way home, after school. I was real proud of myself, felt grown, powerful and manly. My self image, was that the girls saw me as the “Marlboro man”! Geezus how our classroom must have smelled. It was not only me sneaking the odd puff, but me and everyone of my friends. We never smelled the odor and thought we were very clever hiding the evidence of our sins. At home, I would hurry directly downstairs and hide my precious smokes in my bed. Oh, I thought I was so clever. Everybody except dad and I smelled my smoke. At the time dad was furiously “pulling” on his pipe every chance he had. He could smell, nothing!

This went on for a while, me enjoying my new found manhood, and my mom and sisters hating the smell, as well as, my new found manhood. One day my mom and the evil Murt, get a brilliant idea. While I was otherwise occupied, they snuck into my room, found my stash and had their way with them. I can hear them now; my mom saying, “this will fix the little buggar”, and my sister cackling her shrill witch’s cackle. Oh how funny they were! They took each and every one of my smokes out of it’s precious box. They then proceeded to poke fifty holes in each one with a tiny needle. Pretty funny, eh? After completing their evil task, they replaced my precious sticks of pleasure, in the box and returned it to its hiding place. I’m sure I can still hear them cackling.

My little sis S, was not brought into the scheme, as she would not have been able to keep the secret. She would have spilled her guts before they had made it back upstairs. The next day dawns, and off to school I go. I must say, that during this period of my young life, I was never so happy too leave for school each day. No one had to push me out the door, I was never too “sick” to get up and head out each day. Outside and on my way to school, I pull out my little treasure and fire one up. I huffed and I puffed, but could not get that satisfying lung full of tobacco smoke. At first I thought that I must have a hole in my lungs. Usually, one puff would fill me with smoke and start me coughing.

Searching for an answer, I went through different scenarios. I had been sold defective smokes, nah; maybe I needed a stronger brand, nah. What could be wrong? I took out a fresh piece and looked at it quizzically, only to discover tiny holes in it. Immediately, defective smokes came to mind. No wonder I couldn’t get a satisfying pull on it. Then realization floods me and I see my evil sister’s satisfied smirk at me, as I left for school that morning. “The witch”, I screamed out. “What am I to do”? One of my friends offered a solution. It seems like, if you use some scotch tape, you could tape over enough of the holes to achieve some sort of satisfaction. So that is how I smoked for the next few days.

Two lessons I learned from this, were; too better hide my smokes and that, if I confronted big sis, I was going to be in so much trouble for smoking, with my dad. I seethed inside but stayed silent, while she tortured me for weeks, mimicking me smoking, and gasping for breath once her “holes” kicked in. It was a long time before I forgave her for this.