Due to the revival of interest in all things Vancouver Punk engendered by the showings of Susanne Tabata's feature-length documentary Bloodied But Unbowed, there has been unprecedented public demand for access to Les Wiseman's ephochal and earth-scorching article Punks on Parade, which first appeared in Vancouver magazine's September 1978 issue. Herewith, a link to that fabled document provided by El Dub himself.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/33565094/Vancouver-Punk-1978
Excelsior,
Les. Wiseman
Friday, June 25, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Stillwater: A Memoir of Boyhood Part 6
King Tut’s Mummy
(for Chris Sherwood)
I remember a time, so long ago, that affected me for the rest of my life. I was about nine years old. The Tutankhamun exhibit came to Vancouver. We lived in Squamish. I was this beautiful blond lad with a brylcreem flick at the front of his hair, large front teeth, the future world my oyster. I was going to become an archaeologist. (There’s a bright idea --actually no dumber than what I ended up doing with my life, truth be told.) My parents always being supportive, said, we had to go to the exhibit of the treasures of the boy pharaoh’s tomb.
It was in downtown Vancouver, what is now Skid Row, but was then the home of Woodward’s, the town’s biggest department store, which also had a major food floor and hence was a very decent area. My dad, Charlie Wiseman, only went to Pierre Paris on Hastings Street for his shoes and I believe he ordered the caulked boots for the M&B logging camps and was thus a somewhat important fellow to Mr. Paris.
In those days, there were no more drunks than a usual downtown, a few junkies, but they were quiet and sophisticated and hung to clubs like the Smilin’ Buddha. Most of all, there was no crack and what that causes, and no crystal methedrine.
Every Christmas, we’d drive Highway 99 to Hastings Street and park the green Mercury Montclair in the fabled Woodward’s parking lot (on the enclosed downward spiral Dad used to like to lay on the horn and delight me with the echoes, while my mother gave him the evil eye) and go visit Woodward’s proscenium. This was the seasonal stroll of young Vancouver and by young, I mean children. Woodwards had a walk-through that had huge Christmas displays behind glass. Fake snow, big sleighs, polar bears, penguins and reindeer - plus a Santa - that moved. In these days of CGI, that might not seem like much, but robotic marionettism in 1961 was quite the crowd puller.
Mom, in her gloves and fur coat, that I nestled in to sleep on so many car rides, would move me awestricken from giant window to giant window along with most of Vancouver and its whelps. Dad, with his fedora and pipe smoking, sportjacket and open collar, would stride along -in Pierre Paris shoes, no doubt. I felt so secure. (I recall that 20 years later I told my mother that I had a perfect life as a child, “And it wasn’t until I moved out on my own that my life went for a total shit.” Language aside, it was an anecdote my mother would often bring up, vindicating her upbringing skills.)
Another sidebar: At Krak-A-Joke, purveyors of fine plastic dog doodie and vomit, in the 500-block Seymour Street, my dad, brother and I had found a plastic pipe -black stem and brown bowl, just like Dad’s.
While we would walk the street, I’d ask Dad to fill up my pipe with smoke. Which he would do, covering the bowl to not allow the smoke to escape and handed it back to me. Then, two roués on the town we would walk the street. I was always heartily pleased when proper ladies would look shocked and lift their gloved hands to their lips in shock as this insouciant youngster puffed his old briar while perambulating with his obvious corrupter. Dad enjoyed it, too. All ladies wore gloves in those days.
But, back to the point. On one of our trips to Vancouver, we went to see the Treasures of Tutankhamun exibit, which was housed in the Carnegie Centre. Through high-ceilinged corridors cordoned with scarlet velvet ropes, we walked and peered at gold and stone sarcophagi, hammered gold necklaces and bracelets and all manner of Egyptiana. Yessir, this was to be my destiny, to roam the sands of Egypt, to enter the chambers of the pyramids that no one had entered for thousands of years. My destiny, face to face.
We came to the mummies and they really looked like hell, all wrapped or partially unbound to reveal sepia and black leathered skin. Their eyeless, noseless faces grinned in a dehydrated rictus, their teeth charred stumps. I knew what I was getting into; one day I would be unwrapping these guys myself.
Then we saw the mummified remains of a baby laying in a rotted wooden coffin. I remained cool, but something inside me snapped quietly. Oh God, the poor little thing was all wizened with a bald head barely the size of a hardball. Small shreds were torn out of the scalp revealing the bone beneath and little whisps of reddish hair sprouted haphazardly from its head. The same leathery smile as all the others on its black, torn lips.
I was quiet on the drive home. Just snuggled into Mom’s fur coat and watched the raindrops on the windshield race and merge.
That night, snug in my bed, my faithful stuffed lion, Lambert, and his best friend an ocelot named Simba, tucked in my arms I drifted off to a place that would never be the same again.
I was running along the twisting corridors of Carnegie Centre. I was alone and it was dark. Behind me came the click clop of something following. That dead leathery baby, its arms unswaddled and reaching out for me. The coffin clomping along the floor, swaying from side to side as one would presume the standard form of locomotion for vertical square-bottomed coffins in a hurry. I knew its touch would instantly tranform me into something similar, tight, black, knotted skin tugging at my bones. I could feel the tension of my skin pulling tighter into strands and blackening, dying. No moisture, only eternal darkness, trapped within that little immobile body, stuffed under thousand of tons of stone for millennia. Shoved in a slot, stone on all sides, tight as a bullet in a barrel, there to hear my mind scream for all eternity. Urgently, that little child was trying to catch up with someone to be its friend, to keep it company in the dark where it was trapped, afraid, desperate.
Night after night, though I’d struggle to stay awake, that child would chase me down those darkened halls wanting me to join it in its forever damned fate.
I overheard my mother once recounting to a friend about the exhibit, “The mummy of the baby quite disturbed Leslie.”
And it still does, it still does. To this day, I can hardly look at that page in the souvenir book that we bought at the exhibit. Like the mummified child, that book lies packed deep in boxes, surrounded by masses of other books, pounds and pounds of books, paper, screaming to get out, wanting me to open it to its page and share its horrible fate. It waits in terror and desperation. Waiting for me.
Epilogue: A few years back, I was recounting this tale to some of the ladies in the art department where I worked. My friend Chris Sherwood listened intently and with brow furled, said, “You know that mummy from the Tutankhamun exhibit is at the Museum of Man at UBC. It stayed here. If you wanted to go out and see it....”
Truly, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I felt dank, entombing blackness pour into my skull. It hadn’t left. It was waiting still.
-- 30 --
(for Chris Sherwood)
I remember a time, so long ago, that affected me for the rest of my life. I was about nine years old. The Tutankhamun exhibit came to Vancouver. We lived in Squamish. I was this beautiful blond lad with a brylcreem flick at the front of his hair, large front teeth, the future world my oyster. I was going to become an archaeologist. (There’s a bright idea --actually no dumber than what I ended up doing with my life, truth be told.) My parents always being supportive, said, we had to go to the exhibit of the treasures of the boy pharaoh’s tomb.
It was in downtown Vancouver, what is now Skid Row, but was then the home of Woodward’s, the town’s biggest department store, which also had a major food floor and hence was a very decent area. My dad, Charlie Wiseman, only went to Pierre Paris on Hastings Street for his shoes and I believe he ordered the caulked boots for the M&B logging camps and was thus a somewhat important fellow to Mr. Paris.
In those days, there were no more drunks than a usual downtown, a few junkies, but they were quiet and sophisticated and hung to clubs like the Smilin’ Buddha. Most of all, there was no crack and what that causes, and no crystal methedrine.
Every Christmas, we’d drive Highway 99 to Hastings Street and park the green Mercury Montclair in the fabled Woodward’s parking lot (on the enclosed downward spiral Dad used to like to lay on the horn and delight me with the echoes, while my mother gave him the evil eye) and go visit Woodward’s proscenium. This was the seasonal stroll of young Vancouver and by young, I mean children. Woodwards had a walk-through that had huge Christmas displays behind glass. Fake snow, big sleighs, polar bears, penguins and reindeer - plus a Santa - that moved. In these days of CGI, that might not seem like much, but robotic marionettism in 1961 was quite the crowd puller.
Mom, in her gloves and fur coat, that I nestled in to sleep on so many car rides, would move me awestricken from giant window to giant window along with most of Vancouver and its whelps. Dad, with his fedora and pipe smoking, sportjacket and open collar, would stride along -in Pierre Paris shoes, no doubt. I felt so secure. (I recall that 20 years later I told my mother that I had a perfect life as a child, “And it wasn’t until I moved out on my own that my life went for a total shit.” Language aside, it was an anecdote my mother would often bring up, vindicating her upbringing skills.)
Another sidebar: At Krak-A-Joke, purveyors of fine plastic dog doodie and vomit, in the 500-block Seymour Street, my dad, brother and I had found a plastic pipe -black stem and brown bowl, just like Dad’s.
While we would walk the street, I’d ask Dad to fill up my pipe with smoke. Which he would do, covering the bowl to not allow the smoke to escape and handed it back to me. Then, two roués on the town we would walk the street. I was always heartily pleased when proper ladies would look shocked and lift their gloved hands to their lips in shock as this insouciant youngster puffed his old briar while perambulating with his obvious corrupter. Dad enjoyed it, too. All ladies wore gloves in those days.
But, back to the point. On one of our trips to Vancouver, we went to see the Treasures of Tutankhamun exibit, which was housed in the Carnegie Centre. Through high-ceilinged corridors cordoned with scarlet velvet ropes, we walked and peered at gold and stone sarcophagi, hammered gold necklaces and bracelets and all manner of Egyptiana. Yessir, this was to be my destiny, to roam the sands of Egypt, to enter the chambers of the pyramids that no one had entered for thousands of years. My destiny, face to face.
We came to the mummies and they really looked like hell, all wrapped or partially unbound to reveal sepia and black leathered skin. Their eyeless, noseless faces grinned in a dehydrated rictus, their teeth charred stumps. I knew what I was getting into; one day I would be unwrapping these guys myself.
Then we saw the mummified remains of a baby laying in a rotted wooden coffin. I remained cool, but something inside me snapped quietly. Oh God, the poor little thing was all wizened with a bald head barely the size of a hardball. Small shreds were torn out of the scalp revealing the bone beneath and little whisps of reddish hair sprouted haphazardly from its head. The same leathery smile as all the others on its black, torn lips.
I was quiet on the drive home. Just snuggled into Mom’s fur coat and watched the raindrops on the windshield race and merge.
That night, snug in my bed, my faithful stuffed lion, Lambert, and his best friend an ocelot named Simba, tucked in my arms I drifted off to a place that would never be the same again.
I was running along the twisting corridors of Carnegie Centre. I was alone and it was dark. Behind me came the click clop of something following. That dead leathery baby, its arms unswaddled and reaching out for me. The coffin clomping along the floor, swaying from side to side as one would presume the standard form of locomotion for vertical square-bottomed coffins in a hurry. I knew its touch would instantly tranform me into something similar, tight, black, knotted skin tugging at my bones. I could feel the tension of my skin pulling tighter into strands and blackening, dying. No moisture, only eternal darkness, trapped within that little immobile body, stuffed under thousand of tons of stone for millennia. Shoved in a slot, stone on all sides, tight as a bullet in a barrel, there to hear my mind scream for all eternity. Urgently, that little child was trying to catch up with someone to be its friend, to keep it company in the dark where it was trapped, afraid, desperate.
Night after night, though I’d struggle to stay awake, that child would chase me down those darkened halls wanting me to join it in its forever damned fate.
I overheard my mother once recounting to a friend about the exhibit, “The mummy of the baby quite disturbed Leslie.”
And it still does, it still does. To this day, I can hardly look at that page in the souvenir book that we bought at the exhibit. Like the mummified child, that book lies packed deep in boxes, surrounded by masses of other books, pounds and pounds of books, paper, screaming to get out, wanting me to open it to its page and share its horrible fate. It waits in terror and desperation. Waiting for me.
Epilogue: A few years back, I was recounting this tale to some of the ladies in the art department where I worked. My friend Chris Sherwood listened intently and with brow furled, said, “You know that mummy from the Tutankhamun exhibit is at the Museum of Man at UBC. It stayed here. If you wanted to go out and see it....”
Truly, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I felt dank, entombing blackness pour into my skull. It hadn’t left. It was waiting still.
-- 30 --
Thursday, November 26, 2009
The Great 1971 or 1972 Pink Floyd Caper
The Great Pink Floyd Caper
[This is dedicated to Randy Dahlquist, who also snuck in and was dealing with his own set of circumstances.]
I was in first-year university. Age 17 or 18. Didn’t have tickets for a band we loved called Pink Floyd, who were playing at the PNE Gardens auditorium. Creedance Clearwater Revival was filling the Pacific Coliseum with soon-to-be rednecks that night. So, I went in the back door of the Gardens about 3 p.m., said I was with the band. Had long hair, got waved through (just like an Obama event). I sat -zen like- onstage, under the piano, until a roadie asked me to help set up the gong --yes, the gong (that launched a thousand trips) on the back of Umma Gumma. Helped the guys out with various things, finding groupies to mend their trousers, which were those thin things Brits called loons. Roger Waters came out and nodded to me and sound checked One of These Days. When I nodded that it was cool, he nodded back and walked off.
Then they let the crowd in and I was standing centre stage and in walked the most beautiful hippie princess I loved from UBC.
She saw me.
It was awesome.
Finally, someone said, get off the stage and I went down and saw the Meddle show, with speakers 360 degrees (unheard of at the time) at the Vancouver Gardens. Mindblower. Floyd had strippers for the encore. I was about 18; I didn’t know that a large part of my life would eventually revolve around naked women. (It was a different time, you laughing fkrs.)
Couple nights later, the hippie princess is working the commisary in residence. I buy a chocolate bar and she says, "Hey, I saw you onstage with Pink Floyd the other night."
My chest and other parts grew large. "What did you think," I asked, referring to both the Floyd and myself. "I fkn hate Pink Floyd," she said. "I only went because my boyfriend said he'd cut me off if I didn't go."
I went back to my small Place Vanier room and thought a lot. There was a great lesson to be learned there. And oh how I learned it year after year after year....
--30 --
[This is dedicated to Randy Dahlquist, who also snuck in and was dealing with his own set of circumstances.]
I was in first-year university. Age 17 or 18. Didn’t have tickets for a band we loved called Pink Floyd, who were playing at the PNE Gardens auditorium. Creedance Clearwater Revival was filling the Pacific Coliseum with soon-to-be rednecks that night. So, I went in the back door of the Gardens about 3 p.m., said I was with the band. Had long hair, got waved through (just like an Obama event). I sat -zen like- onstage, under the piano, until a roadie asked me to help set up the gong --yes, the gong (that launched a thousand trips) on the back of Umma Gumma. Helped the guys out with various things, finding groupies to mend their trousers, which were those thin things Brits called loons. Roger Waters came out and nodded to me and sound checked One of These Days. When I nodded that it was cool, he nodded back and walked off.
Then they let the crowd in and I was standing centre stage and in walked the most beautiful hippie princess I loved from UBC.
She saw me.
It was awesome.
Finally, someone said, get off the stage and I went down and saw the Meddle show, with speakers 360 degrees (unheard of at the time) at the Vancouver Gardens. Mindblower. Floyd had strippers for the encore. I was about 18; I didn’t know that a large part of my life would eventually revolve around naked women. (It was a different time, you laughing fkrs.)
Couple nights later, the hippie princess is working the commisary in residence. I buy a chocolate bar and she says, "Hey, I saw you onstage with Pink Floyd the other night."
My chest and other parts grew large. "What did you think," I asked, referring to both the Floyd and myself. "I fkn hate Pink Floyd," she said. "I only went because my boyfriend said he'd cut me off if I didn't go."
I went back to my small Place Vanier room and thought a lot. There was a great lesson to be learned there. And oh how I learned it year after year after year....
--30 --
Friday, August 14, 2009
Stillwater: A Memoir of Boyhood Part 5
The Beatles Come to Stillwater:
I remember a summer game of tag on a big lawn beside a house that overlooked Stillwater’s main industrial area. Below where we played, a tiered set of sun-faded,grey, wooden stairs led down to what was essentially a marshalling yard. The big old building where my Dad worked as a personnel man and timekeeper was on the left side as you looked down. Logging trucks were parked on the right by a huge airplane hangar-like corrugated-aluminum machine shop like the top half of a giant culvert. Arc-welding constantly flashed through the doors. The rest of the land was dust, bordered by tall alders. An ancient wooden dock stuck into Stillwater Bay and, from about forty feet out, it was all log booms from one side of the bay to the other. Boom boats, those stubby little cartoon ships, bumped and rocked and shoved the booms around into some sort of order. Men in caulked boots ran along them with pike poles and pickaroons. Dust roads ran off to tattered residences converted from old bunkhouses along the shoreline.
There was a sort of gravel pit along one of these roads and it was full of trimmings from the alder trees that had overgrown the logging roads. It was a massive pile of small-cut branches and leaves maybe twenty feet tall. We could climb up the shell of this sort of amphitheatre and, huffing and puffing at the effort, could stand at the top of the precipice and with a hop, skip and jump go soaring through the air to land on our bottoms twenty-five-feet below on a soft cushion of flora. Today, the very idea makes me sick to my stomach. The potential for a stick prodding through somebody was there, but no one got hurt. Despite repeated attempts. It was one of those mystical, blessed summers.
Anyway, safe on the lawn of the foreman’s white picketed yard, overlooking the dustbowl and the bay, we were in a tizzy. All week, the TV was promoting the appearance of this group that all the bigger kids were listening to on their radios. They were called The Beatles and at The Hudson’s Bay in downtown Powell River, you could buy grey Beatles sportsjackets with black velour collars and even Beatle wigs. It was rumored that one of the big kids who went to high school in Powell River was actually sighted buying one of these toupees.
And this musical combo was to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show, this night, Sunday. We were all crazy for it, especially the girls. We constantly quizzed each other on the four bandmembers’ names. Ringo was the flat-out favorite throughout North America and so he was with the girls in our crowd. He shook his hair a lot, girls screamed and gave those of us who would grow to be big-beaked a lot of hope. (Especially years later when he married the luscious Barbara Bach.)
As the appointed hour neared, we spun madly around on the lawn, even the simple rules of tag forgotten in our excitement. I would yell out the word, “Ringo!” and Mousie and Penny would scream. Then they’d regroup and tell us how they were going to do exactly that when they watched in their living rooms tonight. We -me and my buddy Kimbo- in no way thought that was excessive. With the small bit of testosterone that a nine-year-old lad has, I felt I might make a peep myself.
Eight o’clock and we were all ushered into the living room of the foreman’s big house. Stilted Ed murmured a few things about having met these “fine young men.” He’d been around the entertainment scene as the Talk of the Town columnist for eons before he unexpectedly became the biggest thing on television. He knew that long hair and loud music was to be tolerated and that, if it drew in an audience, he only stood to win.
Looking back on those performances of She Loves You and I Wanna Hold Your Hand, I can see how much appeal that band had. I can’t really listen to them anymore as I’ve heard all the songs ad nauseum. But when I was researching this piece and watching that performance on YouTube, there was definitely some great music and incredible charisma and magnetism. The New York audience screamed themselves silly, as did Mousie and Penny. I was charmed by the lads, never realizing their later songs Revolution #9 and Good Night would be the only songs of theirs I could tolerate, some forty-five years later.
A few weeks later on the Sullivan show, I saw a band that I knew would make everyone forget about The Beatles, they were just so much better: The Dave Clark Five.
I remember a summer game of tag on a big lawn beside a house that overlooked Stillwater’s main industrial area. Below where we played, a tiered set of sun-faded,grey, wooden stairs led down to what was essentially a marshalling yard. The big old building where my Dad worked as a personnel man and timekeeper was on the left side as you looked down. Logging trucks were parked on the right by a huge airplane hangar-like corrugated-aluminum machine shop like the top half of a giant culvert. Arc-welding constantly flashed through the doors. The rest of the land was dust, bordered by tall alders. An ancient wooden dock stuck into Stillwater Bay and, from about forty feet out, it was all log booms from one side of the bay to the other. Boom boats, those stubby little cartoon ships, bumped and rocked and shoved the booms around into some sort of order. Men in caulked boots ran along them with pike poles and pickaroons. Dust roads ran off to tattered residences converted from old bunkhouses along the shoreline.
There was a sort of gravel pit along one of these roads and it was full of trimmings from the alder trees that had overgrown the logging roads. It was a massive pile of small-cut branches and leaves maybe twenty feet tall. We could climb up the shell of this sort of amphitheatre and, huffing and puffing at the effort, could stand at the top of the precipice and with a hop, skip and jump go soaring through the air to land on our bottoms twenty-five-feet below on a soft cushion of flora. Today, the very idea makes me sick to my stomach. The potential for a stick prodding through somebody was there, but no one got hurt. Despite repeated attempts. It was one of those mystical, blessed summers.
Anyway, safe on the lawn of the foreman’s white picketed yard, overlooking the dustbowl and the bay, we were in a tizzy. All week, the TV was promoting the appearance of this group that all the bigger kids were listening to on their radios. They were called The Beatles and at The Hudson’s Bay in downtown Powell River, you could buy grey Beatles sportsjackets with black velour collars and even Beatle wigs. It was rumored that one of the big kids who went to high school in Powell River was actually sighted buying one of these toupees.
And this musical combo was to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show, this night, Sunday. We were all crazy for it, especially the girls. We constantly quizzed each other on the four bandmembers’ names. Ringo was the flat-out favorite throughout North America and so he was with the girls in our crowd. He shook his hair a lot, girls screamed and gave those of us who would grow to be big-beaked a lot of hope. (Especially years later when he married the luscious Barbara Bach.)
As the appointed hour neared, we spun madly around on the lawn, even the simple rules of tag forgotten in our excitement. I would yell out the word, “Ringo!” and Mousie and Penny would scream. Then they’d regroup and tell us how they were going to do exactly that when they watched in their living rooms tonight. We -me and my buddy Kimbo- in no way thought that was excessive. With the small bit of testosterone that a nine-year-old lad has, I felt I might make a peep myself.
Eight o’clock and we were all ushered into the living room of the foreman’s big house. Stilted Ed murmured a few things about having met these “fine young men.” He’d been around the entertainment scene as the Talk of the Town columnist for eons before he unexpectedly became the biggest thing on television. He knew that long hair and loud music was to be tolerated and that, if it drew in an audience, he only stood to win.
Looking back on those performances of She Loves You and I Wanna Hold Your Hand, I can see how much appeal that band had. I can’t really listen to them anymore as I’ve heard all the songs ad nauseum. But when I was researching this piece and watching that performance on YouTube, there was definitely some great music and incredible charisma and magnetism. The New York audience screamed themselves silly, as did Mousie and Penny. I was charmed by the lads, never realizing their later songs Revolution #9 and Good Night would be the only songs of theirs I could tolerate, some forty-five years later.
A few weeks later on the Sullivan show, I saw a band that I knew would make everyone forget about The Beatles, they were just so much better: The Dave Clark Five.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Stillwater: A Memoir of Boyhood Part 4
The over-rated science-fiction author Harlan Ellison has always had some pretty good things to say. One of them was: “Mothers are meant to do three things: love you; feed you and give away your comic book collection.”
This is my tale of that.
I had ‘em all: Avengers #1, X-Men #1, Fantastic Four #4, Daredevil #1, Marvel Tales #1, The Hulk when the Hulk was grey, Tales to Astonish with Ant-Man, Journey into Mystery with that early Kirby or Ditko Thor.
And, lo, there came to be a thing called a rummage sale at Stillwater Community Hall. My mother, though I had proved to her that reading comic books gave me superheroic grades in reading in school, decided that my comic book collection was a waste of space. And, after all, you’ve read them, they’re finished. My mother, one of the great readers of all time, could not understand the joy of rereading or collecting. Not getting collecting, I sort of understand. We were always surrounded by what would now be called tchotckes -beautiful figurines of birds and courtly ladies and gents. Mom presents. I’ll never forget, one time, breaking something and my Mom just sitting down and holding her head and saying, “I’ll never have one good thing, kids keep breaking them. Everything I’ve got has been glued together.” It was a horrible moment. Certainly I didn’t break much. I remember years later when I broke something and she said, “Don’t worry about it.” And years later when she broke a Persian glass goblet, one of a pair I had given her with a bottle of Kahlua for us to toast a lonely Christmas, alone together, I remember telling her, “I didn’t give you those to cause you any pain. It’s gone, let’s just be happy we have each other and don’t have to worry about it.” A few years later she knocked over a brand-new television, but that wasn’t her fault. She had her routine for going to bed and drawing the curtains around the house and suddenly this new thing was in her way, not on a proper stand. Ah breakage, it all comes down to it doesn’t it? Breakage of spirits, of bodies, of lives. Such loss. Life, it isn’t for the faint of heart. Life, it doesn’t end well.
Mom’s favorite book was Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth. If you’ve read it that explains much.
Anyhow, the comics were donated under much duress and, likely, tears. That night, at the same hall incidentally as the unfolding of the Tale of Hot Dog Suit (see further back in this blog), my friends swarmed me. It was a wilding of sorts. “Man, get over there, there’s all these great comics and they’re all in PERFECT CONDITION. And, the lady there is selling them for A NICKEL EACH OR THREE FOR A DIME!”
My stomach and nuts descended that night to levels that I’m not sure they’ve ever recovered from.
While my Mom was compis mentis, I would recount this tale to her. She would always look guilty and say, “I didn’t know!”
“Those comics are worth $200,000 each now, Mom! I could’ve been a millionaire.”
When she had lost her mind, I still occasionally muttered it to her.
Now, I’m a semi-pro comic dealer. I’m not a millionaire. Though, Mom, I could’ve been.
And, yes, she loved me and fed me. She gave away my comic collection. She was a great Mom.
This is my tale of that.
I had ‘em all: Avengers #1, X-Men #1, Fantastic Four #4, Daredevil #1, Marvel Tales #1, The Hulk when the Hulk was grey, Tales to Astonish with Ant-Man, Journey into Mystery with that early Kirby or Ditko Thor.
And, lo, there came to be a thing called a rummage sale at Stillwater Community Hall. My mother, though I had proved to her that reading comic books gave me superheroic grades in reading in school, decided that my comic book collection was a waste of space. And, after all, you’ve read them, they’re finished. My mother, one of the great readers of all time, could not understand the joy of rereading or collecting. Not getting collecting, I sort of understand. We were always surrounded by what would now be called tchotckes -beautiful figurines of birds and courtly ladies and gents. Mom presents. I’ll never forget, one time, breaking something and my Mom just sitting down and holding her head and saying, “I’ll never have one good thing, kids keep breaking them. Everything I’ve got has been glued together.” It was a horrible moment. Certainly I didn’t break much. I remember years later when I broke something and she said, “Don’t worry about it.” And years later when she broke a Persian glass goblet, one of a pair I had given her with a bottle of Kahlua for us to toast a lonely Christmas, alone together, I remember telling her, “I didn’t give you those to cause you any pain. It’s gone, let’s just be happy we have each other and don’t have to worry about it.” A few years later she knocked over a brand-new television, but that wasn’t her fault. She had her routine for going to bed and drawing the curtains around the house and suddenly this new thing was in her way, not on a proper stand. Ah breakage, it all comes down to it doesn’t it? Breakage of spirits, of bodies, of lives. Such loss. Life, it isn’t for the faint of heart. Life, it doesn’t end well.
Mom’s favorite book was Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth. If you’ve read it that explains much.
Anyhow, the comics were donated under much duress and, likely, tears. That night, at the same hall incidentally as the unfolding of the Tale of Hot Dog Suit (see further back in this blog), my friends swarmed me. It was a wilding of sorts. “Man, get over there, there’s all these great comics and they’re all in PERFECT CONDITION. And, the lady there is selling them for A NICKEL EACH OR THREE FOR A DIME!”
My stomach and nuts descended that night to levels that I’m not sure they’ve ever recovered from.
While my Mom was compis mentis, I would recount this tale to her. She would always look guilty and say, “I didn’t know!”
“Those comics are worth $200,000 each now, Mom! I could’ve been a millionaire.”
When she had lost her mind, I still occasionally muttered it to her.
Now, I’m a semi-pro comic dealer. I’m not a millionaire. Though, Mom, I could’ve been.
And, yes, she loved me and fed me. She gave away my comic collection. She was a great Mom.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Stillwater: A Memoir of Boyhood Part 3
My Mom and I were sitting in the Westview Mall at the Woolworth’s lunch counter where they had that awesome grape pop bubbling away in some plastic vat and fairly palatable burgers. She said to me, “What do you want to go as for Hallowe’en.” Ever the freak, I looked around me and said, “A hotdog.” Never one to be daunted, Mom said, “OK.”
So, my dad, my brother, and my Mom got some chicken wire and formed a hotdog bun, my size from knee to neck. Then my Mom got some vinyl of a hot-doggish brown color. From this, she made a semi-elliptical skirt to my knees and a helmet, with eyes, of course. She covered the chicken wire with an old sheet that she died bun brown, and to make the edges authentic, she couldn’t spring for yellow paint, so we used French’s mustard. Nobody in our staid British family ate anything as spicy as French’s mustard except my bro, so he was SOL and Mom used up the jar. Right before we had to go to the town hall for the Halloween, she slathered my sides with French’s. Naturally, with any sort of mask, you lose a certain portion of your vision and with this mask a major portion. Also, because of the vinyl hood, hearing was highly impaired as well. Still, Mom, God bless her, had given me what I wanted, despite the patent absurdity of the concept.
Proud as Punch, I waddled out to the car and everyone got in. But me. This was a problem we had not considered. I could not bend, plus I was massive. I believe, because of the masses of French’s mustard that I was wearing, someone fetched a tarpaulin and covered the back seat. Then my brother and father tipped me over and, getting French’s mustard all over their shirts, loaded me horizontally in the back of the 1960 green Ford Mercury Montclair.
The ride to the town hall was reminiscent of Edgar Poe’s Premature Burial. I couldn’t see, hear or move. And I was particularly concerned that my chicken wire exoskeleton was denting out of bun perfection.
Eventually, we got there and I was unloaded in complete indignity, rather like a log being pulled off the greenchain. So, thus discombobulated, with only the most rudimentary vision and virtually no hearing, I went in to the gala event.
Of course nobody recognized me and I couldn’t eat or drink anything, so I just wobbled around. Some girl kept coming up and trying to be lovey-dovey to me and I kept telling her to leave me alone. It was the next day that my parents told me that the girl was my friend Reg. I don’t know if Reg carried on with his cross-dressing practice in later life, but he certainly had talent.
Then there was the judging of the costumes. I couldn’t tell this was going on as I was deaf and half blind, but someone shoved me in a ring and I shambled around in circles. The system was that they would call you out as you were eliminated, but since I was effectively removed from communication with the rest of the world, someone eventually had to grab me by the shoulders and lead me away from the competition. I hope the fkr still smells of French’s mustard to this day.
To say that the hot dog-costume episode was a disaster would be understatement. I eventually got removed from the iron-lung-like apparatus so I could enjoy the party. But, I was one tuckered little cowboy by then and all I wanted to do was go home to bed and take comfort with Lambert my lion.
* * * *
So, my dad, my brother, and my Mom got some chicken wire and formed a hotdog bun, my size from knee to neck. Then my Mom got some vinyl of a hot-doggish brown color. From this, she made a semi-elliptical skirt to my knees and a helmet, with eyes, of course. She covered the chicken wire with an old sheet that she died bun brown, and to make the edges authentic, she couldn’t spring for yellow paint, so we used French’s mustard. Nobody in our staid British family ate anything as spicy as French’s mustard except my bro, so he was SOL and Mom used up the jar. Right before we had to go to the town hall for the Halloween, she slathered my sides with French’s. Naturally, with any sort of mask, you lose a certain portion of your vision and with this mask a major portion. Also, because of the vinyl hood, hearing was highly impaired as well. Still, Mom, God bless her, had given me what I wanted, despite the patent absurdity of the concept.
Proud as Punch, I waddled out to the car and everyone got in. But me. This was a problem we had not considered. I could not bend, plus I was massive. I believe, because of the masses of French’s mustard that I was wearing, someone fetched a tarpaulin and covered the back seat. Then my brother and father tipped me over and, getting French’s mustard all over their shirts, loaded me horizontally in the back of the 1960 green Ford Mercury Montclair.
The ride to the town hall was reminiscent of Edgar Poe’s Premature Burial. I couldn’t see, hear or move. And I was particularly concerned that my chicken wire exoskeleton was denting out of bun perfection.
Eventually, we got there and I was unloaded in complete indignity, rather like a log being pulled off the greenchain. So, thus discombobulated, with only the most rudimentary vision and virtually no hearing, I went in to the gala event.
Of course nobody recognized me and I couldn’t eat or drink anything, so I just wobbled around. Some girl kept coming up and trying to be lovey-dovey to me and I kept telling her to leave me alone. It was the next day that my parents told me that the girl was my friend Reg. I don’t know if Reg carried on with his cross-dressing practice in later life, but he certainly had talent.
Then there was the judging of the costumes. I couldn’t tell this was going on as I was deaf and half blind, but someone shoved me in a ring and I shambled around in circles. The system was that they would call you out as you were eliminated, but since I was effectively removed from communication with the rest of the world, someone eventually had to grab me by the shoulders and lead me away from the competition. I hope the fkr still smells of French’s mustard to this day.
To say that the hot dog-costume episode was a disaster would be understatement. I eventually got removed from the iron-lung-like apparatus so I could enjoy the party. But, I was one tuckered little cowboy by then and all I wanted to do was go home to bed and take comfort with Lambert my lion.
* * * *
Stillwater: A Memoir of Boyhood Part 2
I remember the day John Kennedy died. (And I love the Lou Reed song of the same name) November 22, 1963. I was in fourth grade. The teachers were called to an emergency conference. Me, being a little keener (suck was the term used in those days) was told to look after the class of mixed grade fours and fives. When Mr. Cooper, our teacher, came back to the room I immediately started launching in to various indiscretions committed by my classmates. He told me that wasn’t important right now. That the president of the the United States had been fatally shot. And we were going to get the afternoon off. Parents were being called and anyone who couldn’t be picked up could be billeted for the afternoon with friends. They were working the phones.
My brother, being in the Canadian Navy, had instilled in me a hatred for everything Yank. I was cavalier, came home to Mom and told her that I was glad we got the day off and didn’t care about John Kennedy whatsoever. Realizing she would be talking to an idiot, she told me he was a good man, that nobody deserved to be assassinated and to be a bit respectful.
When my brother came home from working at the Powell River pulp mill, I laughed about Kennedy being shot. He just looked at me strange and said it was no laughing matter. So, I stayed quiet the rest of the day and spent it reading The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Animals, one of my favorite books, which I still have in the bookcase beside where I write, today.
Maturity gave me some perspective on the Kennedy tragedy, as did the Lou Reed song. Twenty five years later, noir novelist James Ellroy also made me realize I wasn’t a hundred percent off track with my feelings. Jack the Haircut.
They say everybody remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot and that’s my recollection. I’m not proud of it, but I was a kid.
In the early 1980s, I visited Jack Kennedy’s gravesite and leaped over the chain fence to light my Kool 100, just so I could say I did it. Pretty near lost the front of my hair and the guards at Arlington were not impressed. Neither were the United States Travel Service when I recounted the incident in a Vancouver magazine article called Bell, Book & Scandal. To his credit, my editor, Mac Parry defended the onslaught of letters by saying that many readers had written in to observe that my article was “brilliant.” Whether they did or not, I dunno. But I owe Mac for that one --and many others, but those are different tales.
* * * *
My brother, being in the Canadian Navy, had instilled in me a hatred for everything Yank. I was cavalier, came home to Mom and told her that I was glad we got the day off and didn’t care about John Kennedy whatsoever. Realizing she would be talking to an idiot, she told me he was a good man, that nobody deserved to be assassinated and to be a bit respectful.
When my brother came home from working at the Powell River pulp mill, I laughed about Kennedy being shot. He just looked at me strange and said it was no laughing matter. So, I stayed quiet the rest of the day and spent it reading The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Animals, one of my favorite books, which I still have in the bookcase beside where I write, today.
Maturity gave me some perspective on the Kennedy tragedy, as did the Lou Reed song. Twenty five years later, noir novelist James Ellroy also made me realize I wasn’t a hundred percent off track with my feelings. Jack the Haircut.
They say everybody remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot and that’s my recollection. I’m not proud of it, but I was a kid.
In the early 1980s, I visited Jack Kennedy’s gravesite and leaped over the chain fence to light my Kool 100, just so I could say I did it. Pretty near lost the front of my hair and the guards at Arlington were not impressed. Neither were the United States Travel Service when I recounted the incident in a Vancouver magazine article called Bell, Book & Scandal. To his credit, my editor, Mac Parry defended the onslaught of letters by saying that many readers had written in to observe that my article was “brilliant.” Whether they did or not, I dunno. But I owe Mac for that one --and many others, but those are different tales.
* * * *
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