These two images were taken a year apart, the first in July 1974 and the second in July 1975. I was 10 and 11 years old, respectively.
In the first photo I am at Disneyland, standing in front of Monstro, the puppet-swallowing whale from Pinocchio that serves as the entrance for the Storybook Land canal boats ride. Even as a little kid the ride was cool because the miniature models work on the same level as model trains, slot car racers and other things shrunk way down in scale. To a kid — to a boy, well, to this boy at any rate — these things take on a certain kind of magical quality when made miniature.
And speaking of cool, look at the self-assured pose I’m striking, as if to say, “Yeah, that’s right, I’ve got it, baby.” All while ignoring the fact that my jeans are several inches too short. What can I say? I was growing.
In the second photo I am at the San Diego Zoo, dressed remarkably similar to the year before. And look how I’ve grown! This time I am fitting the jeans a bit better. Perhaps by then my mom was buying ahead of the curve. This picture also reveals the early stages of my Big Hair, a phase that I wish I could go back in time and apply George Lucas-style after-the-fact special effects to because my Big Hair was also Bad Hair. Try telling a kid his hair looks ridiculous and his answer will likely be a thumbs up and “Right on!” As I type this my head is completely shaved.
The most noteworthy thing in the picture has to be the strange grip I have on that poor semi-domesticated animal. Am I trying to choke it? Preparing to kiss it? There are no good answers here. The little girl in front of me is wisely beating a hasty retreat. Perhaps I am trying to stop the animal from going through the EMPLOYEES ONLY door behind us, to keep it from getting into trouble. Yeah, that must be it. Not the choking. Or the kissing.
Here’s a photo of myself, my cousin Dan and some midget dressed up as Mickey Mouse. Those red pants with the big white buttons always bugged me. That may be why I’m not smiling, because I’m thinking how much those stupid giant buttons are bugging me. Dan is holding a pack of cigarettes. Okay, maybe not. I believe his t-shirt is a depiction of birds in flight whereas mine is a groovy rainbow-colored advertisement for Zion National Park, which was a pretty cool place, even for a relatively lazy out-of-shape kid like myself (I was 14 at the time the picture was taken).
Dan’s big smile is ironic because he came down with a nasty 24 hour flu bug that same day and threw up in the Circle-Vision theater as it was playing the film “America the Beautiful”. As far as I know he was neither making a politcal statement nor trying to start an international incident. He was just throwing up.
I was going to recount some of the highlights of 1979 but the Wikipedia page on the year is entirely depressing. McDonald’s introduced the Happy Meal and smallpox was eradicated. Other than that it appears 1979 mostly sucked.
Also, that is hair on my head, not some small furry animal.
I did something over the past weekend that I haven’t since I sold my car way back in 1986 — drove over to Vancouver Island. Technically I wasn’t driving, as Jeff did that. We ventured over Saturday morning and returned Sunday afternoon, heading to sunny Duncan via Nanaimo and Departure Bay. Strangely, we picked what was probably the hottest day of the year to visit, noteworthy only in that it has not been hot this year at all.
Once we had arrived in my hometown, I dragged Jeff around various old haunts and took a picture of the giant hockey stick at the Cowichan Community Island Savings Centre. This stick — the world’s largest — came to Duncan after I had moved away. Ironically, I first saw it at Expo 86 after moving to Vancouver and away from Duncan. We noted, with some curiosity, that the big swimming pool/slide area adjacent to the centre was apparently only opened for two hours in the morning on Saturdays. Indeed, an inspection through its darkened windows revealed it was abandoned. Maybe they want people to go muck about in the river or something in the summer.
Giant hockey stick:
Speaking of abandoned, a walk around Cowichan Senior Secondary School proved depressing. Although the small sign out front exhorted everyone to enjoy summer, the school grounds looked not merely empty but desolate. The track had weeds popping up through its surface, the creaking wooden bleachers nearly blasted free of paint, the buildings were faded, paint peeling from their walls. The bus area looked like it had not seen a bus in years; likewise the teacher parking lot. The grassy areas between buildings were unattended and wild, though the fields appeared to have been cut sometime this year. The main photo on the school’s website seems to be from the 1920s* when a horse livery was situated next door. The buildings are actually the same color today. Maybe the school lets things go fallow, so to speak, during the summer months as a cost-saving measure.
This abandoned/depressing theme continued at nearby Kinsmen Park where the monster slide I remembered from my youth had been replaced by a community garden. No kids is going to face the risk of breaking his neck in a community garden. Bah. The jumbo swing set was likewise gone, replaced by a little sissy set in a new kiddie play area. Despite being the middle of a sunny Saturday afternoon the park was pretty much empty.
We crossed over behind the community centre to what we thought might be the rumored new high school building. It had a certain scholarly aspect to it and indeed it turned out to be the new Island University campus. Signs on the doors revealed it had a lien on it, so good luck to getting in come September, students!
None of this is to suggest that Duncan itself is deserted. Far from it, the island highway was choked with traffic as usual, the city streets hardly affording a chance to just toodle around without someone tailgating you. We made our way to my mom’s place and I suggested ice cream so we hit the Dairy Queen and it was good.
After a supper at Romeo’s we went for a walk along the river dike with Sophie the wonder dog in tow (you wonder what she finds so fascinating about every blade of grass she stops to sniff).
Here we see mom and Jeff looking over a li’l foot bridge at the many minnows darting about in the water below:
There were a decent number of people frolicking about in the Cowichan River. Some had dammed off a section of it to make a wading pool while others chose to park their chairs square in the middle of it just because.
While at the river I got bitten by something, which has been my unofficial theme for the summer (“I’m delicious, suck my blood!”) and the bite became as itchy and annoying as all the others I’ve dealt with the last few months. Today — four days later — it’s finally pretty much gone. Stupid bugs.
It was still a nice walk and would make a decent place to jog, provided you slathered yourself in bug repellent or ran inside a plastic ball like hamsters do.
We ended the evening with two games of Yahtzee. To my surprise Jeff had never played before. This meant he won both games, of course.
Before leaving the island we got one more gift — a cold. I’m just starting to get over mine now after days of a scratchy throat, sneezing and sundry related cold symptoms. I suspect the ferry was the vector for this. The ferry, or as I call it, that big floaty thing where kids scream for 90 minutes solid.
Anyway, it was a fun little trip, even if the high school looked like it hadn’t been touched since I graduated a hundred years ago.
* slight exaggeration, though if you look carefully, it’s probably safe to peg the photo circa the 1950s
I finally got to heading over to the island again for the weekend of August 14-15th (I actually came back on the 16th) and as it happened it was during the annual heatwave, with record-setting high temperatures being set all over the province.
The ferry trip over was mostly pleasant, especially when the father of the family sitting behind me told his young daughter to stop kicking the back of my seat. Thanks, dad! A trip to the sundeck was marred by the presence of (permitted) smokers and a stiff breeze that nearly sent my cap off into the strait. I would have arrived on the island traumatized if that had happened. I really like my green cap.
After meeting mom and the dog, we headed first to Youbou, as it had been several years since I’d seen my sister Carole and her husband Gary. They had new digs on Lake Cowichan and this was my first chance to check them out.
Their house is…big. It has about 20 bathrooms, 15 bedrooms and a kitchen the size of my entire suite. I may be exaggerating a little. But only a little! It took me awhile to figure out where the music was coming from before I realized they had an integrated sound system that piped music into the house, onto the deck and even down to the dock.
We spent a good while sitting in the (relative) cool of the shade on the deck provided by a large umbrella. By this time of the afternoon temperatures were peaking at around 33ºC. We listened to talked o’ the lake, including one centering around a bear that had been seen for a period of several weeks trundling through the properties on this side of the lake. After calling conservation officers about it, the homeowners were informed that two bears had been shot. Poor things. That’ll teach them to wander through no-bears land! Carole pointed to the area just below the deck where the bear had been observed walking westward. A bylaw prevents property owners from landscaping or interfering with the natural growth along the shoreline, so to the bear, it probably just looked like his usual route to wherever it is that bears go.
We next moved down to the dock, which also had a large umbrella. There was a decent breeze coming off the lake and occasionally it would gust very suddenly. Several hats were nearly lost. I had made sure mine was affixed to the top of my head as securely as possible. I don’t swim well, so jumping in the lake after it would probably not have gone well. We then returned inside where preparations were made for a de-luxe dinner of steak, prawns, potatoes, cauliflower and halibut. Mmm. Post-dinner found Gary and me watching a National Geographic program which featured, among other animals, bears, much like the ones that had been shot here. Carole and mom headed outside to check the gardens. Carole pulled a few weeds and threw them down toward the shore. As she did this, the bush the weeds fell on moved. Gary looked to me as she began yelling. “Did she say ‘bear’?” he asked. More yelling followed. My mom was racing up the side of the house and around to the front, to a door that Gary had locked earlier. Much pounding on the door ensued. When all were safely inside, we stepped out onto the deck to see a black bear meandering along the exact same path as the others that had supposedly been shot. “A flesh wound, perhaps,” I suggested. I only managed one somewhat obscured photo but here is a cropped close-up where you can clearly see a bear-like shape in amongst the bushes. You can see the full-size image in the gallery.
After the bear excitement we headed back to Duncan to enjoy the sweltering heat of a mobile home that did not have its air conditioning turned on.
The next day was highlighted by a trip to Barry and Brenda’s for dinner (fresh salmon, potatoes and corn, mmm). The only notable wild presence there were a few persistent bees and one deer that walked up through the vacant lot between their house and the next. Apparently all it took to keep them from coming in and devouring all of their backyard gardens was the construction of a $4,000 fence. Easy!
After dinner I asked for some paper and a pen to record a few thoughts, as I was without my usual notebook. Naturally, this resulted in an inquiry as to what I was writing. I jotted down some details about a rather pampered young man who had been helping Barry with the drywalling. At the age of 18 he still did not know how to tie shoe laces — because he always wore shoes with Velcro. This is more proof of how technology is making us dumber and how Douglas Adams’ future vision of a world run by hairdressers is getting closer to reality. Hairdressers with Velcro shoes.
The other thing I wrote down was something I had quickly dubbed ‘Duncan Interruptus’ though to be fair I don’t think it’s a phenomenon exclusive to Duncan but more just small towns in general. It goes like this: In Vancouver, when there is a conversation taking place, things proceed about how you’d expect. Someone says something, then someone else comments. The conversation continues on like this, back and forth. In Duncan, however, Person A will start talking then Person B will interrupt with a question, comment or some tangential story or even something that has nothing to do with the current topic of conversation. Person C will then do the same to Person B. From this point forward, any of the three might start talking over the others and subjects are quickly abandoned in favor of another or another still. I have lost count of how many unfinished stories I have heard in Duncan. I have to interrupt to find out how they turn out. It’s a little irritating at times but mostly just odd. I haven’t really figured out why it happens.
For the ferry ride back, I took my cap off when I went up to the sundeck, but the smell of smoke kept me from staying long once again. I think smokers should have to climb into a little dinghy being pulled behind the ship, but that’s just me. I remember ferries were for a time exclusively no-smoking. I wonder why they decided to let them open them back up to smoking and at the same time restrict the activity to one pathetically small section of the outside deck (it has lines to mark exactly where smoking is A-OK).
Overall, the trip was rather pleasant, if a mite on the warm side. You can see a gallery of my mediocre photos here.
