If I include Vacation Bible School and Kindergarten, I attended eleven schools by the end of Grade Twelve. Two different schools in Grades One, Six, Nine and Twelve. A different school in Grades Seven and Eight. Two different cities in Texas, two different cities in Louisiana and one city and one village in British Columbia for a total of two different states, two different countries and three distinct accents. I lunched on red beans and rice, chili con carne and fish and chips. Many of those moves occurred at Christmas time which diminished my enthusiasm for that holiday, considerably.
Spanish was mandatory in Texas and French was mandatory in Canada. Down South, the teachers were mostly ladies and Up North the teachers were mostly men. Down South there was a strict dress code. A boy's hair could not touch his shirt-collar and a girl's skirt couldn't ride over four inches above her knees.
Up North, in Lynn Valley, British Columbia the children wore whatever they wanted to and were cussing, smoking and drinking by Grade Six. I had a half year of attendance at Lynn Valley Elementary when my family moved there from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
My family split up when my mother left my father and took us children back to Texas for the start of Grade Seven. Our father re-joined the situation and we all lived in Beaumont and then Houston until I was halfway through Grade Nine.
When I was fourteen and finishing Grade Nine in North Vancouver, I announced at dinner one night that I was done cutting my hair. My parents told me that I must continue for the sake of school but I would not be moved. I asked my mother to meet my little sister and I at the Lynn Valley Dairy Queen after school where all the children and some of the teachers hung out. She complied and acquiesced to my hair growing after seeing the teachers' flowing locks and the Mackinaw jacketed sons and daughters of loggers in their torn jeans. I never cut my hair again until I was twenty years old. Ten years after that cut, I balded on top like an Appalachian hill.
During high school in Lynn Valley I worked as a broiler man at the first Keg N Cleaver Restaurant from four PM until well past midnight. I ate free teriyaki baseball-cut steaks, lobster tails, salads, onion soup and cheesecake. I began to drink liquor for the first time in my life. Most of the waiters were university students and one of them showed up at my high school, Argyle, in the role of teacher in practicum. It was a great learning experience to work all night with him, sit in the restaurant bar and get inebriated together after work and then have him as my English teacher a few hours later.
At the end of Grade Eleven, my family split up for the second time. My mother had found a new man. I was told about it in a tearful interview and asked if I still respected her. I told her that I was happy for her. A meeting was set up for us to get acquainted. He would come for dinner at the restaurant and wait until I was finished my shift, whereupon we would retire to his apartment.
Twenty cold beers and a stack of old jazz records later, I could honestly say I had met that Dane. He was about thirty-seven years old and an alcoholic divorced father of two girls. He could speak five languages, was an ex-semi-pro tennis player, a jet pilot, a self-taught jazz pianist and he earned his keep as a gas-fitter.
My mother meanwhile, had taken my younger sister to an undisclosed location in Texas out of fear of my sadistic father. I was left living in our rented basement suite with my psychotic father. And was expected to learn the whereabouts of my mother through the grapevine at a later date after the school year was finished.
My meeting with my prospective step-father occurred in the last week of school and when I got home from the last day of school there was a brand new Westphalia camper van in the driveway. Once inside the house, I went straight to the bathroom, flipped on the light switch and glanced at the bath-tub. There was a teenage girl passed out in a half tub of water. She woke up and introduced herself as my father's new girlfriend. She looked part First Nations and part Caucasian. She had track marks on her dainty wrists.
The next day my father and that girl left for Mexico after stealing my 22 calibre rifle that a friend from Texas had given me as a gift. There had been no discussion as to whether the rental suite was to be maintained by my occupancy or not. There was no note. I cleaned up the place, quit my job and went down to Texas to track down my mother and sister. I had two months to do this before school started up.
Arriving in Beaumont, Texas on a Greyhound bus, I learned from my grandmother that my mother and sister had been there several days before. She said they had likely gone to Houston, Texas. My elder sister lived there with her husband and I decided to check at her place. I took another bus to Houston and arrived to learn that I had again missed the ladies by the smallest of margins. Their destinations were being kept as secret as the key to the Enigma Code and it was anyone's educated guess where they might possibly have gone next.
I stayed in Houston for a few days. Next door to my sister's little house was a Navy recruiter. I combed my long hair, walked in and asked to sign up. The man at the desk started asking lots of irritating questions. How old was I? Where were my parents? Where did I live? Had I graduated high school yet? What was my nationality?
He was informed that my father was a Canadian Merchant Navy sailor and by the age of sixteen was torpedoed by a German U-Boat in the North Atlantic. Further, that my Swedish grandfather was a Texas based Merchant Marine sailor who had sailed for over fifty years and was currently the Chief Engineer of an oil tanker. He had been commissioned as a Lieutenant Commander by the President of the United States during WW II and was gifted with a set of Forty-Five Calibre Navy Colt Revolvers by that same man. I reminded the recruiter that there was an unpopular South-east Asian war underway and that it was rare for a long-hair to be asking to join the fray.
That almost brought him around to my side but he was only willing to play if I could furnish the signatures of both my parents. Alas, this was an impossibility. I told him that one was at large in Mexico with a teenage girl and the other was in hiding. My fantasy of three square meals a day, a clean warm bunk, a structured environment and beautiful Hawaiian wahinis disappeared like a chased rabbit melting into a thicket of thorns.
I told him in grave tones that he had missed his last chance to get one of the “few good men” that all the TV commercials talked about and not to ever expect to see me come begging around his door again. I bid him adieu, bought a pack of Marlboro and a bus ticket to Vancouver. I had three dollars to keep me until my arrival three days later.
Thankfully, I had a plan and decided to sleep when everyone got off at the numerous little whistle-stops to eat. My only luggage was my guitar and a few clothes. The second day I was awakened by something dropping into my lap. It was a brown paper bag. An old man smiled at me as he waddled down the aisle to his seat. I opened it up and found a pound of peanuts, a can of Coke and a ham sandwich. I ate them with great relish and immense gratitude.
Walking down the aisle, I thanked that man and he invited me to sit in an empty seat next to him and his wife. He was an Aussie and had been in a Japanese prison camp in Burma. He told his story of being starved to the brink of death and tortured on a daily basis for four long years. He said he had noticed that I hadn't eaten or drank for two days and that he couldn't bear it. He began to cry and his wife shot me an angry look. He was a ham radio operator and had invented a method of bouncing signals off the moon to reach farther than was thought possible at the time. He called its practitioners, the Earth-Moon-Earth Group. We swapped addresses and he wrote down his radio call sign, if I ever should need it.
Once back in Vancouver, I headed for the Keg N Cleaver to claim my work shifts. I slept on the restaurant roof and then in a waitress's van until she fed me some mescaline and subsequently thought that I was snuggling up a little bit too close to her during the night. Later that Summer, I contacted my grandmother in Beaumont, Texas and was given instructions on how to find my mother, sister and the Dane.
I took a passenger train from North Vancouver to Alpha Lake near Whistler. I was supposed to go to Alta Lake and as a consequence of this error, I had to walk ten kilometres of track with my gear. At the end of that road was a nice modern apartment with separate rooms for all of us. The mountain air was so clean that it hurt to breathe. I was given a lecture on responsibility and on family values by the Dane and my mother and was told that times were going to be tough and that I would have to really pitch in and help pull my weight.
I said, "Let's get ‘er started."
Before long, we moved down the Sea To Sky Highway to Squamish where there was more pipe-fitting work for the Dane. He owned an old station wagon, his tools, a trumpet and his jazz records. I began Grade Twelve at Howe Sound Senior Secondary. I still enjoyed catching minnows in a slough that ran along our apartment complex. I had begun to enter a poetic phase and used to cross the railroad tracks behind my building, run the gauntlet down a dike past the Municipal Dump with its clusters of feasting black bears and sit beside the Squamish River to muse.
I had taken up smoking rather full-time by now and had been introduced to Old Port cigars by my Danish mentor. I smoked them like cigarettes, due to the brevity of the lunch breaks at school. One night at a drinking party with the Danes’ Scandinavian friends at our apartment, a shifty little Danish man that I had been chatting with over copious ales, took me aside into a corner of the packed living room and told me a very strange story from his bush-pilot days.
He had been flying a fresh corpse out of the wilderness and it had filled with expanding gas. After releasing a thunderous fart at 12,000 feet, it then sat bolt upright in the small plane due to the interaction of pressure drop, rigor mortis and temperature. His wife had to throw a jacket over its head so he could concentrate on flying. We cracked another ale and were joined by his pretty wife. She was a raven-haired French woman about the age of my mother, that is thirty-something.
The bespectacled, Woody Allen-look-alike aviator introduced us and then suggested that I might find it much more stylish to smoke cigarettes rather than the cigars. I reflected upon his suggestion and quickly agreed. Next, with no preamble whatsoever, he asked me if I would like to go upstairs and have sex with him and his wife! I nearly spewed my mouthful of beer. He looked hurt, the way a puppy does after getting scolded for peeing on the carpet, when I declined the offer. He quickly countered with another offer to watch me having sex with his wife without participating. I declined, excused myself and went for a cold, wet walk in the dark along the railroad tracks to clear the effects of socializing out of my young head.
At high school, I made two acquaintances. One was a pretty Squamish Band girl who never spoke and always had a different new Herman Hesse book in her hand. We sat and read together outdoors when the weather permitted and though this was the extent of our communication, I know she enjoyed those peaceful moments before returning to her home, just as I did.
My only other acquaintance was an effervescent Russian lad who showed me what to do on weekends. He would secure a bottle of Scotch and bring it to a small rusty, green trailer. There inside was a strange old man that the Russian had befriended. After the three of us had killed the bottle he would recite Baudelaire. It was an epic oration every time, but I hated that twisted poet's work at the time. I would usually salve my soul with some Robert Service after one of these sessions. My school-mate gave me a copy of the Communist Manifesto. I saw the ugly truth behind that tripe faster than you could say, Flowers of Evil.
On weekends, I took my younger sister to the picture show at a tiny theatre on Cleveland Avenue. There were always old John Wayne westerns being featured. My sister loved it because the owner had a large cat with a bell that roamed the darkened aisles and jumped from lap to lap during the movies. Sixty percent of the crowd were First Nations and every time there was a shoot-out scene where a cowboy bit the dust, that contingent rose to their feet and clapped thunderously. In this exuberance, they were joined by us two Texas Cherokees.
I was very bored in my classes and only looked forward to English and Literature. Not for the curriculum, but because I had devised a way to do my own writing without getting caught during those classes. I had the same teacher for both classes and the poor man tried in vain to catch me at it as I built up a tome of poetry. When I saw the tubby white whiskered Hush Puppy wearing gentleman coming up the aisle, I quickly palmed my poems and replaced them with Catcher In The Rye or whatever the mandatory reading material was that day.
One afternoon we had a fire drill during Literature class. We all had to leave our things in the room as we exited the building. It was at this time that my teacher had an opportunity to look at my private writings. He kept his secret until Christmas Season drew near. At home there was talk of our having to move back to Lynn Valley in North Vancouver at Christmas due to a lack of gas-fitting work in Squamish for the Dane.
Just before school concluded for the holidays, I was summoned by loud-speaker to the office. Due to my up-bringing and my experiences, I automatically assumed that I was in trouble and was on an ultra-defensive stance due to hormonal changes as my physical maturity outstripped the bonsai of my battered emotions.
Straightening my shoulder length hair, I walked in and glared at my tormentors like a Chiricahua Apache brave facing a party of renegade Quohadi Comanches prior to being roasted alive. A panel consisting of the Principal of Howe Sound Senior Secondary School, my English and Literature teacher and two strange men in black suits was already assembled. The men in black both had briefcases and wore expressions that matched their luggage.
I demanded in an angry tone to know exactly why in the precious hell I had been called into that mysterious conclave. My teacher adopted a mischievous grin and winked at the Principal who, looked honestly distressed. The other two sat like stone lions, briefcases poised on their Popsicle-stick laps with faces as expressionless as lobsters.
My teacher took the floor and gave a little speech while looking right through me,
“Michael, these men are from the MacMillan Bloedell Corporation and I have summoned them here. The purpose of their visit today is this: I have arranged for you to receive a full scholarship to attend university in Vancouver. It will be paid for by the Corporation and these two gentlemen have brought the necessary papers for you to sign. The only condition is that you must pursue Literature within those studies.”
Engulfed in a maelstrom of tears, anger, relief, hope, confusion, I could not speak for some pregnant moments. My emotions were legion and inextricably entangled. I was deeply honoured by the recognition of my potential and I had full cognition of the great gift that had just been offered to me. I was relieved to have a direction pointed out for me.
I was at the same time, profoundly conflicted by childhood programming from my grandmother and father. I had been routinely drilled that it was my job and my responsibility to look after and to take care of my mother. The implication being, that she was not capable and my father was not reliable. It was true because they had decided it was true. That message had been pounded home by both a grandmother’s velvet hammer and a father's leather strap. At bottom, it was not my raison d’etre. It was a cop-out. At the time, it was stronger than my germinating tendrils of self-hood could overcome.
I finally managed to speak, “I am honoured by this gift you offer and I thank you very much for it. Unfortunately, I will not be able to accept it.”
The businessmen looked like they had just seen a dog climb a tree backwards and they turned aggressively towards my teacher who turned to me and demanded to know, “Why not?”
“My family is going through some very rough times just now and they need me to be with them. They are also moving to North Vancouver in just a few days.”
“That is patently ridiculous! Let them move. You can live in my house and rejoin them when you start university in Vancouver. I have only one rule. You cannot smoke in my house.”
After hearing that, I asked if I might give my answer on the morrow. My teacher managed with some difficulty to convince the two corporate men, who were clearly irritated, to let me have this chance to consult with my family. We all agreed to meet on the next day.
I returned to the apartment and told my step-father-to-be and my mother about my scholarship. The Dane congratulated me, handed me a beer and then kept fairly quiet. My mother burst into tears. She made it very emotionally clear that she wanted me to be with her. That slid a keystone into place that held up the arch of my programming, which I experienced at the time as unwavering loyalty and diamantine resolve. On the next day, I met with the same contingent and gave my negative answer and again expressed thanks for their generous offer.
A few days later, I was driving a U-Haul trailer full of our family possessions back down the Squamish Highway with my young sister riding shotgun. My mother and the Dane were in his station wagon ahead of us. We arrived at an address they had rented and I began to unload boxes straightaway.
I carried a few of my mother's marked boxes to the obvious master bedroom. I carried a few boxes of my sister's things to a smaller room. I hefted a big box of my own books and went down the hall to drop it in my room. I cannot adequately describe my feelings when I discovered that there was no room for me. Disappointment, anger and a feeling of betrayal coalesced into a white-hot rage which collapsed in on itself like glass in a furnace.
Speaking of this to no-one, I continued to move boxes and furniture. The owner of the house was standing in the yard and I asked who lived in the basement of the house. He told me that there had been three Quebecois folks but that they had skipped out on the rent for two months and he hadn't removed their things yet. I asked him how much the rent was and if he'd rent it to me. He said yes and I told him to wait a few minutes.
I ran the eight blocks to the Keg N Cleaver and demanded my old job back with a full forty hours per week. I obtained this and went by bus to a friend's house and cajoled him into moving out of his parent's house and being my room-mate. Miraculously, he agreed. I went to a bank on Lonsdale Ave. and got cash to pay the landlord his rent and damage deposit.
I ventured inside and soon began to vent my rage by cleaning up the premises. The three people had evidently left all their possessions in the suite and were slipping in at night to collect their mail and perhaps to sleep and cook. There was a big fireplace and beginning with their scattered clothes and paperwork, I stoked a big fire in the grate. The furniture was next. I rent it into small pieces over my knees and burned everything that would fit in the opening. Meanwhile, the Dane's friends had begun a rowdy drinking party upstairs.
I had almost finished burning all the former tenant’s possessions when they decided to visit. I heard an angry French explication and turned from my stance at the fireplace to see two men and a young woman peering into the living-room in wide-eyed horror. The woman became hysterical and the men began to advance in a threatening manner. I calmly kept tossing their things into the fire and stirring it with the poker.
They surrounded me and began screaming and gesticulating in French and in English. I ignored them while trying to compute how long I had before they became physical. It would be sooner than later. Next, I heard a godawful whoop from the foot of the stairs which connected to the upper floor. A woman I had seen at one of the Dane's previous parties was the maker of the sound. I didn't even know her name.
She was a Squamish Band woman and married to a Danish fisherman. She spoke in English. She was drunk and her tone of voice was the most threatening thing I have ever heard in my life down to this day. She told those people that she was going to take bites out of their livers if they touched a hair on my head. That was just for starters. She would twist their heads off and relieve herself down their necks. My blood ran as cold as theirs. The trio muttered defeated epithets and wisely vacated the premises.
The warrior woman gave me her warm, soft hand in greeting and introduced herself. Her voice was as sweet as cinnamon toast with butter and honey. She said she completely understood what I was all about that day and to just carry on with it. As a show of solidarity, she grabbed a piece of the furniture I had smashed and chucked it into the flames before winding her way upstairs back to the party in progress. God Bless little girls, I thought then and still think today.
Thus began life in my first rental suite. I checked into yet another new school for the second half of Grade Twelve and cooked at the restaurant at night for my money. I didn't bother trying to make any friends during the last six months of school and I remember being very annoyed by carefree individuals acting their age. At work they called me the thirty-seven year old seventeen year old. I developed an unexpected interest in gardening and I plowed up the entire back yard.
Planting corn, marijuana, okra, pintos, tomatoes, squash, green beans, onions, green onions, lettuce, carrots, leeks, zucchini and spinach; I used a book my grandmother had given me as a guide and the crops came up perfectly. As the school year drew nearer to a close I became more and more disaffected. I had already completed all the required courses for graduation, save a single essay for history class. I was filling most of my school time with non-academic fluff courses.
I honestly tried to complete that final essay. The topic I had been given was the Education System In Nazi Germany. As I researched the topic, I became struck by the similarities in that system and the system I was in. This really put me in a quandary. When I spent time among my plants, I was happy as a raccoon at a craw-fish pond.
Two years earlier in Texas, the day my elder sister had graduated from High School, I had been playing with our father’s military attack trained Malamute dog while the family was getting ready to go. My grandparents had driven in from out of town and it was a dress-up occasion. My sister was going to be graduating summa cum laude. I disliked fancy clothes and I had gotten bored of waiting, so I had begun wrestling on the living room floor with the big dog.
While rolling on the floor with the animal, its ear came close to my mouth and I gave it a tiny nip, just like a dog does when it’s play fighting. When I next became aware of myself, I was standing in the bathroom looking into the mirror. My face was numb and had holes in it from the top of my skull to below my jaw. Where my natural smile lines once were I saw rips that laid the skin open down to the bone. I looked like I'd walked into a buzz saw. My father and I had to miss most of the Graduation Ceremony in order to go to the Emergency Room for stitches and Novocain. We arrived late but we got to see the handing of the scroll.
Though I was not consciously thinking of my first experience of a Graduation Ceremony when my own Graduation was only weeks away; with hindsight I can say that there was a good chance that the memory was percolating in my subconscious. As the day drew near, I became increasingly agitated and distraught. Finally, I couldn't take anymore.
My wind-up alarm clock rang one Monday morning for school. It danced off the shelf and spun around on the linoleum. When it ceased, I rose and wrote out a notice of my intention to withdraw from school. I gave a copy to each of my teachers and was making my exit when one of my teachers summoned me in to see the Principal. There were exactly two weeks left until the end of school.
I went in and spoke to the man. I had enjoyed his motivational speech when I first arrived after Christmas and I liked him. He had a good reputation with the majority of students and enjoyed their respect. I was asked what I was up to. I explained that I was done with school and that nothing spiritual nor temporal was going to ever change my mind.
He had my records pulled and went over them. He noticed that I was lacking only a single essay to complete my requirements for a B. C. Senior Secondary Certificate. He pointed this out and said if I was perhaps having troubles at home with my family or experiencing difficulty getting up for school due to working all night that I could complete the work at home and bring it to him before the last day of school. I told him that I would make no compromise and that I refused unequivocally to finish that cursed essay. He said that he wasn't empowered to sign diplomas and hand them out like autographs. He pointed out that I would not get very far in the world outside without that august document.
I told him that I didn't think that very many outstanding doors would fling open because of it either. He was stubborn and I was adamant. We were both part Irish and we reached a Celtic impasse. Someone had to yield in order for us to move forward. I decided to try something novel.
“I'll make you a deal. In my spare time when I am not doing important essays such as the one in question, I write poetry. I have compiled a book of those poems. I will bring you that hand-made book to read. I will return the next day and if you think, based on my poems that I am worthy of a Grade Twelve Certificate, then give me one. If not, I am still out of here, Sir.”
To my surprise he agreed and we shook on it. I went home and got the poem book ready. I brought it to his office and returned next day to hear his verdict. He smiled and handed me a crispy new Diploma signed by his own hand. He asked me what I planned to do next. I told him I would likely be a deck-hand on the Cates tug boats. Only two or three days later, I was busking with my guitar in front of a Bank of Montreal on Lonsdale Avenue in North Vancouver and he walked into the bank. He asked how I was coming along with the tug boats. I assured him that I would likely be sailing soon. I never saw him again.
Six years later, my younger sister and her best friend were summoned into the school office for some misdemeanour they had committed. As the girls sat anxiously awaiting their fate, my sister gazed up on the wall behind the Principal’s big desk. There, suitably framed was one of my poems. Here is what it said:
Speech
is the soul's shoe
it’s always too small
and we cut out
the parts that hurt
fin
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