Elmer The Safety Elephant's Negative Side

Elmer the Safety Elephant's Negative Side 

The teachers I remember from Lakeshore Public School in those days of the early 1960's, included Mrs. Stilwell, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Bielby, and Principal Schantz. Outside of scanning through the old student lists to find my name, they would only have remembered me as the "black face kid," or, that odd looking boy with the "Dumbo Ears."

     One incident that did impact me quite profoundly, occurred during the lunch break, or so I believe. I didn't see the accident myself. I think Elmer the Safety Elephant did. The flag pole was close by, and he was likely flapping in the wind…..yea, like my ears. The school yard, at this time, didn't have much in the way of resources. I don't remember if we had swings, but compared to playgrounds today, it was a tad spartan. So in the winter, the older kids found a way, of creating an ice-strip by packing down an area of snow, and creating a sort of runway in front. They would work over many recesses, attempting to initially, slide on the hard-packed snow. Eventually, they would be able to slide over it enough, to create a fairly long length of black ice. It would have been about thirty feet long, by only several feet across. So the big thrill, was to get it to this level of perfected natural ice, and take a run at it, for a memorable and dangerous slide. You might find twenty or thirty kids lined up for the cheap thrill. It was generally in the same place, each winter, and the teachers on patrol passively tolerated our innocent fun. The problem, as it is for bored kids today, the sliding gig got stale quickly. As the slide was precariously close to a maple tree, or oak in that part of the yard (closest to the front of the school), a few kids got the idea, to jump while in the middle of the slide, and grasp an over-hanging tree limb, to swing from. I remember watching it, and thinking it was pretty neat, to be traveling ten to fifteen feet, at a break-neck speed, and then leaping to grab this overhanging branch. The kids got pretty good at it, but I was still too short to manage it, even with an exceptional leap in the air. (I know, I know, you're thinking about the ears, right).  Well, one day at lunch, after I'd come back to school, there was a lot of activity in this zone, and I'd seen an ambulance leaving the driveway. What I heard had happened, was that a kid had been whipping down that black length of ice, jumped for the branch, missed, fell flat on his back, and hit his head so hard on the ice, that his eye popped out of its socket. No kidding. It was just dangling there. Gross. What makes a kid go and stare at the sawdust layered on the blood, still laying on the ice. I had that stupid image in my mind for decades. It made me sick that day, like the twenty or thirty kids that had to go home ill, after the incident. The kid lived. He got his eye back in the socket. Elmer? Do you know, I can't remember what happened to the flag, on this occasion. I think it was already down because of the other kid's accident…..so maybe this kid got off easy…..other than the eye-popping incident.

     As for academics, cripes I sucked. I had attention deficit disorder before they knew what the hell it was. All I wanted was to be outdoors. Mucking along the banks of Ramble Creek, sending our hand crafted battleships off toward the lake. I had a million outdoor projects that were being delayed by school studies. The lesson I detested the most, was when the teacher, Mrs. Bielby, if memory serves, used to give us these crazy assignments to cut and paste. You had to cut from one page, to glue onto the other, matching up words with drawings. It's not that I didn't know the differences, between a cow and a freaking rabbit. I would just get all excited because everyone else would be half done, before I made my first cut-out. I had a way of getting glue all over myself, as I still do with fix-it projects here at home. Well, when you're working with paper cut-outs, it's definitely a disadvantage to have glued-up fingers. I'd get so angry, with pieces of paper attached to three to five fingers, that inevitably, I'd attach a cow where the rabbit was supposed to go. As the glue got a little gummy, when it was exposed to the air for more than a couple of minutes, there were no "do-overs" once the adhesive met paper. I can still recall the horror, of trying to get the paper square off the wrong category of beast, and looking at the clock to see, that once again, I was in an out of control spin of "stupid." How could you not feel like an idiot, covered in cut-out paper, even glue to my new sweater, and some on my pants. Every time the teacher gave me this assignment, the second verse was the same as the first. "How does this happen Teddy," she'd ask, with a look of shock on her face, that any student of hers could be such a klutz. Well, I can tell you one thing for sure. If I found myself having to do the same exercise today, and she had survived to see me get to this age, let me tell you, history would most certainly repeat. I'd just be older to watch myself crash and burn. The funny side of this, is that I did become fairly proficient in the art of cutting and pasting in the newspaper business, when I worked as an editor with Muskoka Publications. I just had the advantage of having lay-out artists and my beck and call. And no marks given.

     Of other memorable events, at Lakeshore Public School, included the time-honored, kid-adored "Field Days," where even the most athletically challenged kid, could win a ribbon as a participant. I got a lot of "Participant" ribbons back then. I wasn't a bad athlete, and I did get a lot better as time went by, but you see, they didn't have events I might have excelled in……like Ramble Creek jumping, and soaker-getting. I was an accomplished smelt fisherman, and I could catch Suckers with my bare hands. I could climb the trees in the ravine like a monkey, and when someone was chasing me, I could run like an Olympic sprinter. I could catch the "Goody Man's" truck when he turned up on Harris Crescent, even if I was at the lake-end of the creek. If they had conducted races like this, where there was a popsicle treat involved, I would have changed those participation ribbons, to ones of first place gold. But I enjoyed getting out of the school, and the only heartbreak, was when it started to rain before we got outside. If it started raining while we were outside, unless there was a thunderstorm brewing, we usually carried on with the event. So I became very hateful of nature for raining on my parade. I liked my education outdoors. This was a trait through my entire school career.

     Merle was a very defensive parent. She hated when any of my teachers would reference that "Teddy is very shy, and doesn't participate in classroom discussions." "Teddy is always looking out the window, and doesn't seem interested in what is going on in the class." I knew by the look on her face, while she was folding up the report card, that my teacher was going to get a surprise visit. I was never wrong about this either. I went with her once, for a parent-teacher meeting, and all my instructor could do was answer, "But, well, but, but, okay but, well, maybe but, yes Mrs. Currie." I was proud of her for standing up for me, because I was habitually shy. Still am. But Merle felt it was wrong for teachers to feel it was their incumbent duty, to break what I had been born with. "There are many successful people in this world, who have overcome shyness, in time, and never suffered any long lasting disadvantage, because of it." It was written onto an accompanying note, attached to the report card that I had to return to the school. Merle had actually run out of room, on the report card, where it allowed for parental response, and had to use extra note paper. She also chastised the teacher, about the comment she had made about my looking out the window, and not paying attention to the the lesson being taught. 'Well, maybe Teddy is telling you something about the way you're teaching the lessons……because he's interested in a lot of things, if he's presented them with enthusiasm." Merle, in the fog of war, as she saw it, had defended my honor, and privilege of being the kid I was. I have always been a dreamer; a shy kid who saw more potential in the field, with nature my instructor, than jammed into a classroom watching the clock define my day. As a writer, I still seek liberation from the same old, same old. So Merle was both timely and quite perceptive. And as I've also written a biography, of one of Ontario's well known Outdoor Educators, David Brown, of Hamilton, one of my closest friends, my destiny was to learn from paddling a canoe, and being immersed in the wilds……as I so dearly loved in the Ravine of old Ramble Creek. Dave Brown was a teacher, but his classroom was outdoors. This I could enjoy.

     My few years at Lakeshore Public School, were quite memorable, and once I stopped trying to escape, actually became quite enjoyable. There was a basement area, where they'd take us for art classes, and I can always remember the aroma of the watercolor powders, in big cans, and the must of a cool basement. I liked art because there were a lot fewer rules to follow. I was an expressionist painter right off the bat, and despite having to wear a smock, I painted myself handsomely, as well anyone who happened to be sitting beside. I was better than Jackson Pollock. I could paint a Campbell's Soup Can as well as any man, including Andy Warhol. Damn thing, I always got a crappy grade. It may have had something to do with the fact, the exercise wasn't supposed to promote abstraction, and there was never an option to paint a soup can. I always had such a vivid imagination, you see, that I just painted what seemed appropriate, including Ray Green's red hair, "blue." Looked good.

      The favorite part of my early school years' experience, without a doubt, were the "hunt and gather" walks to and from Lakeshore Public. I most often went the back-way, running past Dooley the Irish Setter (it was a good day when I didn't get nipped) through a laneway at the end of our cul-de-sac, which abutted a hydro right of way, with massive towers that I fantasized about climbing…….but only ever touched them, just to say I had! When I walked home along the busy Lakeshore, it was most often at the time when Chestnuts were falling. The first part of the Torrance hillside, heading up to Harris Crescent, had about four to six chestnut trees, and it was what all the neighborhood kids stuffed into their pockets, even with the thorny green husks. The real joy was cracking the brown (toe-like) nuts out of the thick covering, and a lot of my chums took them home, where their mothers helped them drill holes, and make them into long strands on string. You used to see them hanging over hydro lines, all up and down the Lakeshore. I really never understood this part of the chestnut-thing, but what I did appreciate is how bad they smelled, when I'd forget about them in a corner of my room, and they'd begin to grow into something other than a tree.

     But whether I was coming or going, my intent was to enjoy the walk, find interesting things to get-up-to along the way, and pocket what ever I found that seemed too good to throw away. Garbage day was my favorite. As I've written about many times before, I got my start in the antique trade, on these walks to and from Lakeshore Public School. Anne Nagy and my mother, always scanned me thoroughly, before I got to the apartment sidewalk, for undesirable items I might be concealing in my jacket, or trouser pockets. I could see no good reason to let a big iron hinge get thrown out, in someone's garbage, just because it was a little rusty. I knew what Alec Nagy did with spare parts, and how he used them to fix his lawn mower and other groundskeeping equipment. I looked for things to add to my bicycle, and a hinge might have looked neat. By time I'd round the corner off Torrance, they could tell by the droop of my pants, approximately what weight of garbage-picking treasures, I had on my person. I was pretty good at concealing even big pieces, like old hockey sticks I'd find, if I swung by the arena first. I was a junior hoarder. What I did sneak into the apartment….with some minor livestock (crickets and a couple of injured birds; maybe even a squirrel), Merle would begin tossing out, the moment I left for school the next day. If Anne Nagy wasn't careful to disguise the garbage, as only kitchen refuse, I'd have my head stuck in those metal pails every time. "Teddy's in the garbage again, Alec." Anne would yell from the front door. "Get out of there," someone would yell, and I'd be off in a flash. I used to find my own treasures Merle had chucked, so I'd haul them in a second and third time. It was all neat stuff, that would have been wasted at the dump…..when I had a use for it all. Or I thought I did, (the hoarder's credo) at the moment, rescuing some neat article, even clothing, from the wet coffee grounds, and grease covered newspapers. Someone was throwing out an Easy-Bake oven, complete with one cake mix. Geez, how neat was this. So I told Merle that I traded a kid a rusty metal hinge for the oven and cake mix. She actually seemed good with this, though she wasn't sure how Ed was going to react to his son having, what he would have called, "A toy for a little girl." I couldn't have argued about this, because that's how it was marketed on television and in the catalogues of department stores. So we just didn't dwell on the subject, and Merle helped me make the last cake. The light bulb didn't cut it, so I was disappointed. Merle took the still-wet mix, and stuck into her kitchen range, and within minutes, it was done. We both had slices. It tasted like it smelled, when I first took it out of the box for a peak. Well, if "musty" can actually translate into "a taste," then this would explain the most horrible cake ever! "Where did you get this Teddy," she demanded. "You didn't pull this out of the garbage, did you?" she asked, still spitting-out musty cake into the sink. I may have. And then I ran out of the apartment before she could grab one of my big ears.