nonamedufus

When I was a kid I had a grandfather everyone called C.B. The "C" stood for Clarence. I don't know what the "B" stood for. I have only pleasant memories of the man. After all it was a long time ago. He was married to my mother's mom. And he wasn't my mom's paternal father. He married my grandmother, Rita, after my mom's dad had passed away. C.B. used to babysit me. We lived in the suburb of Scarborough. Both my mom and dad worked in downtown Toronto. On our street the houses were mostly all the same. "Strawberry boxes" I remember my dad saying in reference to the squat look of the three-bedroom bungalows that lined the street. A street we used to play in year round since there wasn't a whole lot of traffic. We played baseball in the summer using the sewer lid as home plate and garbage pail tops and somebody's jacket for bases. And of course we played hockey in the winter but we used a tennis ball instead of a puck. It hurt...

One upon a time in the little suburb of Toronto known as Scarborough lived an 8 year-old who loved hockey. Back in the late 50s/early 60s, of course, the National Hockey League consisted of only 6 teams. Thanks to a magical electronic box in the corner of his living room little Noname would, from time to time, be allowed to stay up late and watch his revered Maple Leafs - hazy little black and white figures - skate from one end of the ice to the other and, more often than not, slam home a little black puck into their opponent's net. His heroes included goalie Johnny Bower and players Bobby Baun, Tim Horton, Eddie Shack, Bob Pulford, George Armstrong, Red Kelly, Dave Keon and his very favourite Frank Mahovlich. So taken was Noname with the Maple Leafs that he played street hockey with his friends every chance he got and his Dad would walk with him to the arena in winter where he played little league hockey. He played various positions. He played wing where he checked an opposing pla...

I hate vegetables. There I said it. I feel better now. This has been something I've bottled up inside myself since childhood. And I have my dear departed parents to blame. Well, who else? Safe to blame them now that they're no longer here to defend themselves. They did their best with me, though. They always gave me what they were having. Lima beans. Blech! Creamed corn. Double blech!! Wax beans. Triple blech!!! I think you get the idea. I feel for ya kid But the worst of all, however, was canned peas. We didn't have frozen peas when I was a kid. Although it would have been a cold day in July before I ate them, too. I remember the strategies I'd devise at the dinner table. If I didn't hate the veggies on my plate too much I'd load them up in my mouth and take a big swig of milk. This would more often than not make me choke and I'd spit milk and vegetables clear across the table. I didn't care. At least I didn't have to swallow them. Sometimes I did a...

My pals over at Tribal Blogs are holding their first Blog Carnival today and the subject is the worst Christmas present ever. Remember Ralphie in the movie A Christmas Story ? His, as my readers point out, Aunt Clara sent him a bunny costume. Yeah, it sure sucked to be him. Hey sometimes Christmas doesn't work out for some of us. Look at my grandsons last Christmas. Things went from this... ...to this... Heh, heh. That's one picture my daughter doesn't want to share too widely. So keep quiet about it, okay? When I was a kid, Christmas was such a special time. The snow outside, the tree, the lights, the food, visiting relatives and neighbours. And of course the presents. My own kids loved Christmas too and would pore through the Sears Wish Book Catalogue as soon as it arrived in the mail, dog-earing pages upon pages of pictures of gifts they wanted for Christmas. And they were pretty lucky. They usually got most of what they asked for. Today the grandkids are luckier than e...

The incident's a little hazy now. Lost in the mists of time. Or smoke perhaps is more like it. I was 11 or 12. Me and the guys had just finished shop class where we'd been working on Mr. Carpenter's project of the month - gluing four planks of pine together to lathe into a bowl. We took shop at St. Thomas Aquinas, a French school, every Thursday and then me and my buddies hoofed it back to Queen of the Angels, about a half-hour walk, where we attended Grade 7 the rest of the week. I felt especially good that day. I was sporting my brand new desert boots. We called them deygo boots because wherever you went dey go to. For 12 year-olds we were pretty funny. I recall it was a cool crisp day and we stopped into the corner store just yards from the school where we loaded up on blackballs, ju-jubes, licorice and bubble gum. We liked this convenience store because they also sold us matches and 5-packs of Export A cigarettes. We exited the store and to a man, er boy, we lit up....

Earlier this week Jayne at injaynesworld was talking about trains. She was talking about how President Obama was committing millions of dollars to build a high-speed train service. We don't have a high-speed train service in Canada. Some would argue we don't even have moderate-speed service but that's a subject for another time. Jayne's story got me thinking about my childhood and the role trains played in it. For example, I remember as a kid getting a Lionel train set for Christmas one year. Lionel made smaller, "O gauge" trains and I recall subsequently adding to the set and spending hours and hours playing with it on the floor. I wasn't the only Lionel fan. Singer Neil Young apparently has a huge collection of Lionel trains and used to be a minority shareholder in the company. I also recall my friend's father driving us - what seemed like miles - to the train tracks to watch freight trains go by. We'd lay down a couple of pennies on the tr...

Well, that special day is drawing near. And as it does my thoughts turn to Christmas as a kid: toys, snow, the tree and, of course, Santa Claus. Growing up as a kid, Christmas was probably the most special day of the whole year. I'd looked forward to it for months. I'd pretty much have the Sears Christmas catalogue memorized by the time I had to pull my wish list together. And if we were lucky, it had snowed in the days leading up to Christmas and we'd make snow angels and snow men. A snowball fight or two with the other kids on the street was a certainty. I grew up in Toronto. In the suburb of Scarborough to be precise. There weren't any big hills near our house - and we didn't have a car - so I had to rely on my friends' parents to drive us and our toboggans to the nearest snowy slope. There was an outdoor skating rink nearby, though, and we would spend hours at Clairlea Park playing shinny . I walked to and from Our Lady of Fatima School everyday. A...

When I was a tyke growing up in Scarborough, then a bedroom community of Toronto, our neighbour Mrs. Painter used to babysit me while my mom and dad spent the day at work. I think this was before I attended kindergarten so I must have been 4 years old. Now times were different in the mid 50s. Kids had the run of the neighbourhood and weren't overly chaperoned. Parents and guardians trusted the kids they looked after and there was a high sense of safety and security in the neighbourhood. All kids had to worry about was being home by the time the streetlights came on. In hindsight this was a little odd since most of the adults were kind of freaking out at the height of the cold war. Kids spent a lot of time out of doors and our games of choice were hide-and-seek and Cowboys and Indians. Me and my pals spent most of our time engaging in these games, sneaking through neighbour's yards, climbing fences and hiding behind trees and shrubs. One day Mrs. Painter told me she was g...