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The Creek - part two

       Steve held up a baby food jar half-filled with clear liquid.   We were in his father’s garage, preparing for a mid-winter’s evening foray across the creek to the edge of the woods, where we had constructed our first make-shift fort.   He returned the can of camp stove fuel to its place beneath the workbench and assured me we would need this if we had trouble getting our campfire going.   We hadn’t been to the fort in over a week, and it had snowed.   Prudent forethought. The creek behind the neighbourhood of my adolescence was a much different place in winter.   Gone were the insects and birds.   The reptiles and amphibians were hibernating.   The constraints of the canoe were abandoned; everywhere was accessible by foot.   When conditions were right, not too much snow or wind during a decisive drop in temperature, the slack current of the wide channel would freeze to a crystal gloss.   We’d skate and play hockey.   First rule:   everyone had to bring a puck.   Errant shots co
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The Money Changers

  All lights red.   We were standing between the double-tracks of the Canadian National main line, about a mile west of the Kingston train station.   The signal lights, three to a standard, one standard on each side of the tracks for a total of six lights, were a short distance beyond the station.   Steve handed me a stick of Doublemint.   I unwrapped it, folded it into my mouth, and began to chew. Steve was never without candy.   He lived around the other side of the crescent, and we would walk to high school together.   He always had five dollars for his daily candy stash.   Each morning, our first stop was the corner store, so he could load up.   Back in the early 1970s five dollars was a lot of money.   And candy was cheap.   He would emerge with a paper sack stuffed with an assortment to get him through the day.   Rolo caramels, Hall’s mints, Twizzlers, Caramilk bars, Peppermint patties, an assortment of gum - everything sweet.   Steve was not pudgy or overweight, he was tough,
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The Creek - Part One

  There is something magical about flowing water.   Every kid should have the privilege of growing up with access to a small stream.   Hours of fascination can be spent exploring cool shallows for minnows and polliwogs, or floating pretend vessels along in the mild current.   As spring turns to summer the tadpoles become frogs, to be caught, examined, and released.   Reports of a mythical, monstrous snapping turtle lurking in the gloom below an overpass adds fear and danger.   As does ice.   When it forms in the winter or crumbles in the spring, the risks of breaking through weak ice elicit dire warnings from protective mothers, even though the stream is still only eight inches deep.   Coming home with a soaker is a dead giveaway that you have survived being through the ice. As I entered adolescence, we moved from the proximity of a small tributary, closer to a much broader and deeper channel of what was known as the creek.   Here, we could launch a canoe and navigate narrow passages
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Gone With The Trash (excerpt)

Many years ago I proposed a collaborative writing exercise with some colleagues.  I sat down and pecked out the beginning of the following scene.  The collaboration mostly fell apart, but the idea did spin into something much more substantial.  This starting point is now chapter four.  For the complete tome, visit  Gone With The Trash          "Stop, Dave."        "Don't call me Dave."        "Sorry, Dave. I just thought you would like to know that there is a garbage scow in Sector Five."        "Sector Five?"        "Yes, Dave. Sector Five."        "There's nothin' but asteroids and debris out there! What the hell would a garbage scow be doin' in Sector Five?"        "Orbiting, Dave."        "Of course it's orbiting, and stop callin' me Dave! It's Geronimo, you... you..."        "I'm a Dig Tech Model Number Four Byte O'Matic, revision two-a, Dave, bu
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How Not To Have A Heart Attack

It is 2 am, why am I feeling weird?  Shivering, sweating, feeling unsettled... hmmm?  I get up and go to the bathroom.  The discomfort has passed, only took an hour, I wish I could get back to sleep. Breakfast went down well, but not feeling completely right... a little shaky, off .  I get on the bus, light-headed, maybe.  Is that tightness in my chest?  Did I pull a muscle digging in the garden the other day?  I try a few deep breaths.  Better, yes? Time to get on the train... is that really tightness in my chest?  Should I walk up the escalator or ride this time.  No, I will walk, just like I always do, it will be a test.  There, see, all good, tap my pass card and head for the second escalator, yeah, go ahead and climb.  Join the queue on the platform and relax.  Why is my heart thumping in my chest, I do this everyday, is this shortness of breath, am I dizzy?  Deep breaths, deep breaths, here comes the train.  I sit and concentrate on breathing; it is not dizziness. City Cent
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The Package

  The package on the sideboard glared at him.   The courier delivered it just after breakfast and it had been doing so all morning. “It’s not going anywhere,” Karen said.   She shifted the bundle of dirty laundry under her arm. Gary kept his eyes fixed on the intruder.   It was not the first time the Sir Laff-A-Lot Novelty Company had insinuated itself into their home.   “I could get rid of it,” he said. “No, you can’t.   He ordered it.   He’ll wonder why it hasn’t arrived.   Anyway, he’ll be back from golf soon, just relax.” How could he relax?   At least the old man wasn’t making a fool of himself with his golf buddies. Karen rolled her eyes and glanced out the window.   “Your brother is here,” she said and disappeared down the hall. The door burst open and the foam nose dangling on the coat hook flicked at the sudden breeze.   Dean, witnessing the standoff, shifted his eyes from the package to his brother and back again.   “Jesus, not another one,” he exclaimed. Gary
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Playing With Fire

  There was an urban myth, way back in the mid-1970s, that certain teachers at my high school liked to perpetuate.   It went like this:   Somewhere, in some other city, a smart-ass kid felt it would be cool to falsely pull the fire alarm at school.   In so doing, a fire engine was dispatched.   During the race to the scene, the fire engine broadsided a car in a busy intersection.   Both occupants of the car were killed.   They were the parents of the kid who pulled the fire alarm.   It was meant to be a deterrent, of course.   The red fire alarm pulls, regularly spaced along the hallways, were always there, daring us.   Someone would succumb to temptation at least once a year. Chemistry class was the most thrilling and dangerous, and our teacher seemed to thrive on minor spectacle.   After demonstrating the power of concentrated acids, he added a dash of hydrochloric acid to a beaker of water and drank it.   There were gasps.   Hydrochloric acid is naturally produced in the stomach.
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The Beer Run

It was 1976 in south eastern Ontario and my friends, Steve and Greg, and I were entering our senior year at high school.   We were average kids, not the most recognizable or popular, just a nondescript bunch blending in with the general school population.   And like many boys our age, our thoughts revolved around cars, girls and beer. Steve had two older brothers already at university studying engineering, as evidenced by the crude dune buggy parked at the side of his parent's garage, a Volkswagen beetle with the body removed and the chassis shortened by a foot and a half where the rear seats used to be, and in the basement rec room by the home-made strobe light consisting of a wooden box, three feet per side, with a six-inch diameter hole in the front.   Inside was a cardboard disk with a matching hole, an old turntable motor and a light bulb.   It had two speeds:   45 and 78.   It was in this rec room, listening to The Doobie Brothers, Santana and Grand Funk Railroad, and playi
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The Peanut Scramble

  “Peanuts.” “What?” The screen door clapped shut. “In the yard.” She stopped mixing the tuna.   “Salted?” “In the shell, scattered.” “Oh.”   Her eyes dropped to the mat by the door, the big red shoes sat there, looking innocent. Gary slid onto a kitchen chair, tossed his cap onto the table, wiped the back of his hand across his forehead.   “That was always my favourite part.” Karen laid out some slices of bread.   “Favourite part?” “At the company’s family picnics dad would take us to, or the Victoria Day picnics the city would hold at Lake Ontario Park.   The peanut scramble was my favourite.   Herbie the Hobo would suddenly appear, and all the kids would be trailing after him.   He tossed them right at me once. That and sandcastles.”   “The clown threw sand?”   “No. Near the water’s edge, you’d dig a moat around your castle and water would seep in from below and fill it.   And fireworks, of course.” She took some sprouts from the fridge. “I guess they’re illeg
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Location: Delta, BC, Canada
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