Burlington Arena and The Rink Rat of Once

THE LIFE OF A KID, TRIUMPHS AND DISASTERS - HITS AND MISSES

MY BURLINGTON DAYS WERE PRETTY SWEET-

     I WAS EITHER INCREDIBLY LUCKY, OR UNBELIEVABLY STUPID. HERE'S HOW THAT GOES. THERE WAS THE TIME WHEN I BECAME SO PROFICIENT RIDING MY TRICYCLE, ON OUR SIDE OF HARRIS CRESCENT, WHERE THE NAGY APARTMENTS WERE SITUATED, THAT I HAD GRADUATED IN SKILL, (IN AN UNWARRANTED WAY) TO STUNT RIDER. I HAD QUITE A LARGE TRICYCLE, AND I WAS ELEVATED A PRETTY FAIR DISTANCE OFF THE TRAVELLED PORTION OF THE SIDEWALK. I WAS ORDERED BY ALL MY GUARDIANS, MY PARENTS, AND ANN AND ALEC NAGY, MY ALTERNATE PARENTS, TO STAY OFF THE ROADWAY, EXCEPT WHEN CROSSING BACK AND FORTH, TO OUR APARTMENT. SO ON THIS PARTICULAR EVENING, I WAS PERFORMING DEATH-DEFYING FEATS ON THE SIDEWALK, TRYING TO GET MY BACK WHEEL AS CLOSE TO THE EDGE AS POSSIBLE. I WAS PRETTY GOOD BUT YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT THAT?  CLOSE ONLY COUNTS IN HORSESHOES. SO I GOT TOO CLOSE, AND THE BACK WHEEL TIPPED OVER THE EDGE OF THE CURB, AND I WAS TOSSED INTO A SPECTACULAR CARTWHEEL ONTO THE TARMAC. SO GUESS WHAT MADE THE EVENT SO MUCH MORE SPECIAL? AND POTENTIALLY LETHAL? WELL, I FOUND THE ONE PLACE ON A LONG STRETCH OF SIDEWALK, WHERE AN INTERESTING PIECE OF METAL (LIKELY OFF A CAR), WAS LAYING ON THE ROADWAY. IT FOUND MY THROAT. RIGHT UNDER MY CHIN, IN FACT. THIS SHARP PIECE OF METAL, ABOUT EIGHT INCHES LONG, AND TWO INCHES WIDE, BOUNCED WHEN I HIT IT ON THE ROAD, AND SOMEHOW TURNED KNIFE-LIKE AS WE TUMBLED THROUGH THE AIR.

     I LANDED ON THE ASPHALT, CHIN FIRST, AS MANY OF US STUNT RIDERS WIND UP EVENTUALLY. THE PIECE OF METAL CAUGHT ME JUST UNDER THE CHIN, IN MY SUMMERSAULT AGAINST THE ROAD, AND GAVE ME A DEEP GASH. MISSED THE ARTERY. I HAD ALSO ERASED A SUBSTANTIAL PORTION OF THE SKIN ON MY CHIN, AND BADLY SCRAPED LEGS, ELBOWS AND THE PALMS OF BOTH HANDS. I IMMEDIATELY KNEW I WAS IN TROUBLE, BEYOND ANYTHING I HAD DONE BEFORE, BECAUSE THERE WAS BLOOD ALL OVER THE PLACE. SO AFTER ASSESSING THAT BOTH LEGS WERE STILL ATTACHED, I STARTED RUNNING AND BLEEDING. I'M NOT SURE WHO CAME OUT OF THE APARTMENT BUILDING FIRST. ANN NAGY OR MY MOTHER, BUT THERE SEEMED TO BE A LOT OF PEOPLE YELLING AT THAT MOMENT, WHEN I CROSSED THE THRESHOLD OF 2138 HARRIS CRESCENT. AFTER THEY STOPPED THE BLEEDING, MERLE WENT OUT TO GET MY TRICYCLE OFF THE ROAD, AND THAT'S WHEN SHE FOUND THE JAGGED PIECE OF METAL, THAT HAD SOME OF MY SKIN ON THE EDGE. THEN SHE FREAKED-OUT. SO I WAS HUSTLED INTO A CAR, AND TAKEN TO THE HOSPITAL FOR A TETANUS SHOT. I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANT, BUT I HAD WATCHED A MOVIE, WHERE ONE OF THE CHARACTERS GOT RABIES, FROM AN ANIMAL BITE…..AND I STARTED TO WORRY I MIGHT START FOAMING AT THE MOUTH, AND POTENTIALLY FEEL THE NECESSITY TO BITE SOMEONE. ONCE AGAIN, WHEN ALL WAS SAID AND DONE, MERLE MUTTERED, "YOU ALMOST KILLED YOURSELF TODAY TEDDY." FOR WEEKS AFTER THIS, EVERY TIME I WENT OUTDOORS, MY PROTECTORS COULD BE SEEN AT WINDOWS, BEHIND BUSHES, AND PRETENDING TO BE WORKING AT THE OUTSIDE MAINTENANCE SHED, IN ORDER TO INTERVENE, IF I, OUT OF BOREDOM, DECIDED TO DEFY GRAVITY ONCE AGAIN.

     I have written in a previous blog about the time I did roughly the same stunt, but with a two-wheeler, when that brush against the asphalt cost me a chunk of flesh from my leg. On that occasion, the greater amount of pain, came when Alec Nagy treated the injury with iodine. I screamed that day, let me tell you. It was the kind of burning sensation you don't easily forget. If ever anything taught me about bicycle safety, it was that little brown bottle, Alec kept in an emergency kit in his white storage building, at the side of the apartment. In the westerns I used to watch, the injured cowboy always got to bite on a bullet, when there was some medical procedure about to happen. I would have exploded a bullet, accommodating the pain from that open wound. I still have the gouge in my leg to remind me of this stunt gone wrong. But I didn't get an infection thanks to Alec's quick thinking, and that wicked germ-killer, iodine.  He did the same thing when I smashed my hand in the trunk of Ed's car, and Alec came along first, before my dad found out. In this case, I had no choice. Alec covered for me, but I had to get another iodine treatment for the twelve or so scrapes from the trunk lid, that had cut the skin on the back of my right hand.

     There were a lot of funny incidents on old Harris Crescent, that I start recalling, as I push forward on this compendium of "a young lad's glory days." Like the time Ray Green had found this small snake in the grass. We used to have lots of them, especially in the late spring for some reason. Mating? We were standing in the driveway of the Nagy apartment, and my dad came home from work. He wandered over to see what we were up to, and noticed the snake in Ray's hand. In those days, Ray may have been holding a hand grenade, so every one who knew him, double checked what weapon of destruction he was fondling at the time. This time it was a garter snake. I don't know what possessed Ed to stick his finger in front of the snake's mouth. Ray was holding the poor critter from just behind the head, to avoid even the remotest possibility the snake would swing back and bite. So the snake couldn't believe its good fortune. Here was this big adult finger in its face, and well, it took a real big bite into the flesh. So Ed instantly pulled back with the snake still attached, and it pushed itself, at the same time, out of Ray's hand. It may have been the funniest sight in the Nagy parking lot, ever! Ed couldn't shake it loose. He was trying to  grab its body with his other hand, while trying to fling it back into the ravine. It was getting pretty frenzied, and it gave the appearance of some magic show, where the magician pretends to be in some dire consequence, only to free himself suddenly; the whole incident nothing more than an illusion. This snake had locked its fangs in the fleshy tip of his finger, and was not letting go. It wasn't until Ray finally caught the snake's tale, and yanked hard, that Ed was finally freed of the serpent. He had a fair amount of blood on his finger, mostly from the ripping of the tiny fangs across the skin. Let's just say, the snake was returned to the wilds. Ed went into the house and asked my mother Merle if there were any poisonous snakes in the ravine. That's when Merle gave him the iodine treatment. Could snake venom be matched with a dose of iodine? You know, it was the era of iodine. By time I had got past my awkward stage (my wife maintains I never grew out of it), of falling and skinning all parts of my body, Alec's iodine bottle was empty.

     A little older, I had arrived at the apartment after school (I was a latch-key-kid some of the time), one afternoon, and gathered my hockey gear together for a little game of shinny, at Dick and Henry Bosevelts's house, across Ratkowski's farm field (not sure of either spelling of family names). I decided, before going, to make myself a roast beef sandwich, from leftovers in the fridge. I made the mistake of using the sharp butcher-knife my mother ordered me to "never touch," and while cutting a slice toward (not supposed to do this) the hand steadying the slab of meat, it slipped, and I directed the blade into the side of my thumb. "Blood everywhere," as my screaming mother would have yelled, had she been in the apartment to see the aftermath. I did a real number on my thumb. Running down to Ann's apartment would have meant another date with iodine. As well as a scolding, I'm sure I deserved at that point. What was so pressing here, was that I really wanted to play shinny with Ray Green, and Dick and Henry. So I forced the two pieces of my thumb together, mysteriously avoided collapsing at the sight of blood, wrapped it with toilet paper, and a bandage, put some catalogues under my socks for shin protection…..grabbed my Toronto Maple Leaf Jersey, my stick and gloves, and while still bleeding…..I headed out to play that great Canadian sport on a cold winter's day. Obviously, I didn't bleed to death. We had a great hour and a half game before dinner. I always remember that particular game, because we were all very upset Leaf fans that day. Recently, maybe even the night before, the last place Boston Bruins had defeated the front-running Maple Leafs 11-0…..with back-up goalie Don Simmons in net. Bower must have been injured. Like today, it was tough for the rest of that season, shaking-off that drubbing at the hands of the cellar-dwelling Bruins. When I got home, you ask? "Were you making a sandwich Teddy," Merle asked, knowing full well that I had done just that, leaving the beef on the counter, the bread bag open, and blood on the edge of the sink. "Have a little accident with the knife?" I just showed here the big bloody bandage on my finger. "One day you're going to kill yourself," she responded, yanking me by the arm to the bathroom for a closer look. Wouldn't that be a way to go? Death by sandwich misadventure! Son Robert one day, asked me where I got the large scar on my finger. I said it happened because of the Toronto Maples Leafs. Nuff said! 

     There were lots of interesting sights, sounds, and current events in our neighborhood, that interested me to take a closer look. Maybe you remember some of the same wonderful intrusions in your home town, or happening on your street. I was always interested in the peddlers who came calling. The delivery and service folks who drove up to our street in various contraptions, and styles of motor vehicles. For example, I loved to hear the clanging bell of the "Knife and Scissor Sharpening Man," who arrived about once a month, except in the colder months. It was a strange vehicle and I'm not sure whether it was gas powered or foot pedaled. The neighborhood ladies would come out with a plethora of cutlery and scissors, and he would engage some type of wizardry, (a grinding wheel) to sharpen what had become dull since his last visit. He was quite a character, and was very loud with his greetings and small talk. I guess you had to talk this way, when conversing over the sound of a grinding mechanism. Then there was the "Goody Man," although each seemed to call themselves something different. Merle only ever had money for a popsicle, but on occasion, she didn't have any money to spare. So I was an unfortunate bystander. I hated these occasions, but I didn't blame my mother. It was when my chums would get honking big ice cream treats, and I had to watch as they licked them slowly……and they loved every minute of my suffering. In fact, they licked so slowly, most of the ice cream had melted, and dripped onto their shirts. I may have…..may have I stress, accidentally knocked one or two out of my friends' hands……just to be an ass. If they could lick slowly, I could be acceptably clumsy.

    There were all kinds of neat delivery vehicles from companies such as Simpson-Sears and Eatons, and the drivers wore nifty uniforms and caps. I was always interested to see what one of our neighbors had purchased, and frequently Merle had something delivered. Usually clothes. That didn't interest me too much, but I was always eager to answer the door, to the next most interesting character to happen by the Nagy apartment. Of course there was the milk man, and bread man. I don't remember a female delivery person. I may be wrong. Merle used to leave our glass bottle in the hall, with money inside. I was in heaven, if Merle found enough coins to buy me a bottle of chocolate milk….maybe once a month, and raisin bread, or cakes from the bakery. I can still remember the clink of the glass bottles in the metal carrier, the milk man toted around, and I seem to remember a large tray carried by the bread man, that I always thought was anchored around his neck for walks through our hallway, looking for bread orders, and requests. Gads I miss those days. He also had a selection of cakes in his big basket as well, and by golly, Merle often surprised me, by making an impulsive purchase. The problem, in those days, was that Merle and Ed worked most weekdays, and that limited my access to the bread and milk salesmen as a customer. I'm not sure if this is how Ann Nagy purchased her milk, but I can't imagine her having bought any bread or treats from the bakery chap. As she was one of the finest cooks on the block, or in the whole town, I can't imagine her needing to buy what she could produce better, in her compact little kitchen up on Harris Crescent.  

    I remember owning a red metal pedal car, that today would be worth a grand. I loved that old toy automobile, and I drove it everywhere I could possibly navigate. I think Ed had purchased it second hand, but I couldn't have cared less about its provenance, just that it would perform magic for me. It gave me a lot of blisters and scrapes, as my legs kept smashing into the metal interior controls, but my chances of falling were greatly decreased by the fact I was six inches off the ground. You know, it was one of the things I wanted to ask my dad, when he was in the hospital, after his stroke…..and he had those few precious moments of clarity. I got outside the hospital after the last good chat we had, and I remembered what I had wanted to ask about the old car. By the next day, he had slipped back again into dementia. I suppose they gave it to some other neighborhood kid, when I outgrew it, but I think it must have happened quickly and quietly, and I don't remember ever being asked if I wanted to keep it. My mother was masterful at giving my toys away, and always had such compelling arguments, to soften the blow of finding out my room had been sucked free of debris. "His parents couldn't afford toys for him, and yours were just gathering dust in your room." Merle's excuse for getting rid of my keepsakes, nine times out of ten, was "dust" related. It was the collateral damage of being a neat freak. She was pretty good hearted, and she was very generous to those kids she knew, who didn't have many toys, from families having a tough time keeping food on the table….let alone spending money on metal pedal cars and table-top hockey games. That was the only time I had an argument with Merle, about her benevolence with my possessions. She gave my Munro Hockey Game away, when I went off to university. I adored that game, and no matter how old we were, it was great party entertainment. The the brothers she gave the game to, had been forced to live with a grandmother, because of marital problems with their mother and father, and they truly didn't have a toy in the world. So I learned to live without table-top hockey. I'd like to have it now as an investment. It had the first expansion teams, when the NHL left the six team era. I got my game from Munro industries in Burlington, which made it even more special. But, I survived.

     As I got older, I wanted to spend more time at the arena. My parents had registered me for minor hockey, and I probably played for several seasons, starting as a tyke or novice. It was the beginning of a lengthy jag as a rink rat, which I carried on in Bracebridge, the home of Maple Leaf great, Irvin "Ace" Bailey, and of course, Detroit Red Wing All Star, Roger Crozier. I worked with Roger's Foundation in later years, and as an eventual curator of the Bracebridge Sports Hall of Fame exhibit. Not bad for a former rink rat. Now in case you don't know what a rink rat is, well, it means I hung around the rink until they told me to go home. In Bracebridge, a rink rat was not only a kid who had no better place to go, but who worked around the rink, shoveling the ice and cleaning, in return for snack bar rations. I was too young in Burlington to work at anything, so I was just a hanger-on. As with many activities in my youth, my side-kick Ray Green was with me for most of this arena time. One memory stands out, during this period of hockey discovery. We had heard that Detroit Red Wing star, Gordie Howe, was going to make an appearance at a special all-day (Saturday) tournament that was going on at the Burlington Arena. I told my mother I wanted to meet Mr. Howe, no matter how long the wait. She gave me some money to buy a hot dog and pop, which was very generous considering our financial limitations then, and Ray and I settled in for the long haul. By lunch, we both had two or three "sliver" and otherwise broken sticks, that had been thrown over the boards during the tournament games. A sliver stick by the way, has about an inch deep length of blade left on the bottom, which was perfect for shinny but dangerous as hell, if you got hit with it, as a high stick. We'd always have a couple of pucks in our pockets, we had chased down, when they were deflected over the end barriers. And we smelled like "Thrill" gum, which was some sort of grape concoction, that was more like cologne, but was trendy amongst the hockey players we admired.

     We waited at that rink for about six hours, and no Gordie Howe. People were still talking about it, and that he had been delayed, but that the visitation was still a "go." My dad came to the arena at one point, to see if Ray and I were okay. Late in the afternoon, I remember a mob of kids running to a rear exit, and Ray and I thought there must be a fight going on……because it was in a dark corner of the arena. Ray and I might have wrestled with each other, but we were not fighters. Not even on a dare. So we just kept an eye on the apparent donnybrook, from a safe distance. We were told, once the mob had dispersed, that Gordie Howe had been ushered in through a back door, but the kids rushed him, ripping his jacket nearly in half, and he had fled the building fearing for his safety. Gordie Howe…..the one and only, had graced our arena with his presence, only to be attacked by souvenir hunters, who apparently wanted a piece of him……and may have got portions of his Red Wings' jacket. Now I lived with this memory for most of my life. I've come to the conclusion that it must have been an urban legend, that this is what happened. First of all, I don't think, with the tough players Howe was used to elbowing face-first into the boards, he would have been intimidated by a small group of enthusiastic autograph seekers. I think this was the story used to get us to go home, after a long day, which may have been perpetuated, in part, by the arena staff. I never saw a swath of red fabric, or tuft of his hair, so I think now, it didn't happen the way Ray and I thought it had, on that long, long day, waiting to get our sliver sticks signed by the famous, legendary "Number 9."

     There was one significant rule in our apartment, that my dear mother imposed, based on all the other crap I had, with or without knowing it, got into over the first few years of my life. Like the time I downed most of a bottle of children's aspirin, because not only did they taste good, but I assessed that I would never be sick again, if I sucked back every tablet. I don't think there were a lot of tablets left in the bottle, and to the best of my knowledge, I didn't make a trip to the hospital because of this event of self medication. On another occasion, I fell off the kitchen counter backwards, but somehow I did so without injury. With my aching back today, and my noticeable limp, cripes, maybe it all dates back to the fall I concealed from Merle and Ed. I was a little Dickens, that's for sure. But the last straw for my mother, was if she believed I had crossed beneath the busy Lakeshore, in the Ramble Creek tunnel. Once past this point, I was really at the lake shore. Then we were involved in some seriously deep water, and I couldn't swim.

     Merle was a sucker for a good story. The story teller that I am today, began back then, when I had to convince Merle nothing was wrong, out of the ordinary, or involved my misdemeanor. I played it like a good Euchre player, and I held back enough trump cards to "fix up" almost every situation, I found myself embroiled. She was right to fear that I might drown. I had a lot of close calls, even on a school trip once, when we overturned a canoe in deep water. I never told her this one either. But the Lake Ontario had a fishy smell, and she had the capability of "smelling where I had been," an hour or more before coming home for lunch or dinner. I don't know how many kids got the "sniff test," arriving home from play, but Merle could tell how close I'd been, on that day, to the tunnel. The closer I got, the more my sweaters absorbed the aroma of dead fish. Truth is, Ray and I managed to sneak through the tunnel about a thousand times, and she only caught me on a hundred of those occasions. The water was deep under the road, and yes, we both could have perished long before hitting the actual rock shoreline of the lake. There were two-foot-wide ledges, one on either side, to walk along to the other side of the road, so unless we really screwed up, or were racing across, we covered all the safety bases to stay out of the water. For Ray and I, the thrill wasn't making it to the lake. We just wanted to pass back and forth in the tunnel, and that was the real extent of our civil disobedience. We were quite happy in the relative seclusion of the Ramble Creek ravine. I never once admitted to my mother that I had gone through that tunnel. Even when it crossed my mind, in the days before her death, I decided to let well enough alone, and let her think until the end, she had foiled some of my greatest stunts…….because it just wasn't so. Like when I climbed up the open-sided, under construction, Torrance Terrace, where the wind blasting through the floors nearly swept me off the edge. "You're driving your father and I nuts," she'd yell, while banging the cupboard doors in our apartment kitchen. She liked doing that, and it's where we also made up, and I promised to never, ever, do that (whatever it was) again.

     Once again, I wish to thank my online correspondent, Tracy McKelvey, of Burlington, for linking me to my roots, and to my alternate parents, Ann and Alec Nagy, and their daughter Mary Anne. Tracy found me during an online search, while researching some neighborhood history, of Harris Crescent, and I'm so grateful we connected. It has inspired me to write these most recent biographical notes, and in the process of remembering my childhood days, in Burlington, so many other details and occurrences have been jarred loose from the archives of my mind. Like the sound, I can still so clearly remember, of my grandfather, Stanley Jackson, in his land-whale of a car, pulling up against the curb outside the Nagy apartments. It wasn't the sound of my grandfather's car, but rather the spring sound, when his "curb finders" (spring-like devices. mounted on the wheel-well, or adjacent to the mud flap, that indicated, by sound, if the car was close to the curb) began rubbing against the sidewalk. That's when he knew the beast had landed safely at our place of residence. With fedora on his head, with no slant to either side, Stan would get out of the car, and judge just how proficient he had been, to placing the car precisely six inches from the curb. It pleased him, at his elder age, and with weakening eye sight, that he could still park a car, like he did when he was a kid. Thanks in part to the curb finders.

     Thank you so much for joining today's chapter five, of seven in this short biography, of a kid's life, in a nice town. Please join me tomorrow, for chapter 6. And think about making some copious notes about your own life and times. Bet they make mine look like a kiddy's book. Give it a try and we'll compare notes some time.