HANGING BY A THREAD

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IT CAME AS QUITE A SHOCK!

One of the perks upon entering junior high from grade six was the opportunity to take Shop class, or, as it is called now, Industrial Education. While the girls went to Home Ec, we boys ventured off to the old converted skate house behind the school. The building had been transformed into a wood working shop. A lathe, drill press, table saw and other power tools adorned the east wall. Along the west wall were a series of numbered boards, each with it's own set of hand tools all with matching numbers. Screw drivers, squares, chisels, hand drills, etc. were all neatly arranged. Below each tool board was a small work bench. The class, taught by Bud Kowalsky, embarked on various projects including a spice rack and a lamp to varying degrees of success. Toward the end of the year we were each allowed to build a project of our own choosing.

I chose to build a stereo cabinet. In my mind this was to be the stereo cabinet to end all stereo cabinets even though I didn't even own a stereo of my own, but that's where faith comes in. I drew up a little plan on graph paper and presented it to Mr. Kowalsky. He probably thought I was nuts but with that typical twinkle in his eye, he nodded his head giving me the green light to go ahead. To save costs, we decided that the "box" part of the cabinet would be Arborite laminated on plywood. The doors were constructed out of nice veneered oak plywood which I would stain to match the rest of the cabinet. I selected some good heavy hinges and door handles and set to work. constructing each shelf to be pulled out for easy access to my as yet to be acquired stereo. With some hard work, a lot of advice from Mr. Kowalsky and some trial and error, by the end of the school year I was the proud owner of a very large stereo cabinet. Valuable lessons were learned such as measure twice, cut once and a little about laminating, sanding and staining. My poor mother had yet to lay eyes on the behemoth, but I would be introducing it to her in short order. I wasn't sure where I would put it, but that seemed a rather minor concern at the time.

George Martin had been our next door neighbor for many years when I was growing up on Prairie Crescent. His wife, Avonelle and my Mom became life-long friends. Hailing from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where George had been in the automotive business, the Martins moved to Prairie in 1962. After enrolling as students, George became the foreman of the garage in 1962. Later he worked in the Stewardship Department and then the Post Office, retiring in 1974.

Not unlike the George Martin of Beatles fame, this George Martin loved electronic gadgets of all types. He would acquire all manner of radios, electronic clocks and tape players and resell them out of his little garage. I first became acquainted with George's shop when my Dad paid him a visit and purchased a small, light green, battery operated transistor radio. This little Sony radio, with the brown leather strap, sat on the kitchen table and brought the nightly CBC news and As It Happens into our little home. For some reason, Dad thought the back of that little radio would be a good billboard for the Chiquita banana stickers and adorned the back with a bunch of them.

I don't recall how I got the stereo cabinet home, but after seeing it, my Mother graciously suggested that maybe it could go in my bedroom. Maybe that was to insure that it didn't end up in her living room . . . I'm not sure. I cleaned up a corner of my rather small bedroom and proudly made a place for my latest piece of furniture. No stereo to put in it, but I sure thought it looked good sitting there. I had been saving my pennies and thought it was time to go and visit my friend George Martin and check on what he might have in stock. George who by now had moved out to Grantville where he had a bigger house and an even bigger garage.

I could have lived in his garage - shelves piled high, stuff hanging off the ceiling and piled high on the floor, really eclectic stuff. Weird colors, odd shapes, off beat brands. I loved it! After explaining what I was after, George rummaged around and came back smiling from ear to ear. In his hands he held a stereo receiver. A Lloyds 8-track stereo complete with AM and FM tuner and amplifier. He plugged it in and the dial glowed a soft orange color. The little black buttons along the bottom lit up with red lights when you pressed them in. WOW! This thing was calling my name. "How much?", I asked George. "Well, Stevie," (he had called me Stevie since I was knee high to a grasshopper), "There is just one slight problem."

"O no", I thought, "What now?". "There are no speakers," he continued. "Well", thought I, "Who needs speakers anyway? I can get those later . . . maybe I can build some . . . maybe Dad woudn't miss his if I borrowed the ones from the living room."

"No problem, that's fine", I said, "I'm sure I can work something out." George then said, "Well, I do have this really nice pair of headphones that I could sell you to go along with it". "Aha", I thought, "Of course, I would be needing a pair of headphones. They would be ideal for listening to rock music late into the night and I wouldn't disturb anyone."

He proceeded to produce the largest pair of headphones that you have ever seen. They were Quad phones, meaning they had two speakers in each earpiece and looked every bit like two gas masks stuck on either side of my head. Quad was a very short-lived attempt at surround sound and never really caught on. I thought those headphones were the coolest thing I had ever seen and struck up a package deal with George on both the stereo and the headphones and returned home a very happy camper!

Arriving with my new acquisition, I rushed into my room carefully placing it on the top of my stereo cabinet. Plugging in the monster headphones, it suddenly dawned on me that I had nothing to listen to as the unit only played 8-track tapes. Disappointed, I realized that I would have to fashion a makeshift antenna and be satisfied with listening to the radio until I could purchase some 8-track tapes. I began to collect a few 8-track tapes, but was never very happy with the sound. "Borrowing" Dad's new Sony turntable I recorded some of my LP's onto blank 8-track tapes, purchased from the Prairie Bookroom.

One of the very first LP's I bought was the brand new Olivia Newton John release, "Have You Never Been Mellow". This mega selling album had the song, "The Air That I Breathe" on it and I fell head over heels in love with the song . . . and with Olivia. Many hours were spent trying to figure out how to breathe some of her air. The song, initially written and recorded by Albert Hammond on his 1972 album, "It Never Rains In Southern California", was later covered by the Hollies in 1974 and became a smash hit for them. I had pretty broad taste, even in those days, and went through a big Irish Rovers and Peter, Paul and Mary phase as well. The summer of grade nine, I was out at Camp Homewood off the coast of Vancouver Island, where Olivia Newton John's yacht was docked in Gowlland Harbour. We could see the boat from the camp and visited with the crew one day. I never did meet Olivia.

Over the next few months, I built a set of speakers in rather crude boxes. They got the job done if Dad telling me to turn them down was any measure of success. Cassettes were just coming into fashion and I thought it would be really cool to be able to record some of my LP's onto cassettes to share with my friends. Again, there was a slight problem in that I didn't own a cassette player. After puzzling over this dilemma for a while, I remembered that in my Dad's office was a small mono Sanyo portable cassette deck. By portable, I mean only 20 pounds, not ipod portable. The origin of this cassette deck is a bit of a story in itself. Evidently some years previous, a Prairie college student had gone to our local drug store, owned at that time by a man named Austin Sawdon. He confessed to Mr. Sawdon that he had stolen the cassette machine in question from his store and was there to return it and make amends. After the student left, an inventory was taken, and there was no record that they had ever even carried such a model, let alone were missing one. Mr. Sawdon called on my father and brought the machine to his office explaining that perhaps the student had the wrong store. Dad made contact with several of the other stores in town, but the origin of the cassette recorder was never discovered. He saw no reason why I couldn't borrow it and so I added it to the growing collection of gadgetry in my room.

One evening just before supper, Mom and Dad were in the kitchen when I decided to make a couple of modifications to my rig. By then I had wires and cables going every which way in my room. I'm sure it looked like a complete rat's nest. I had seen David Hartt, one of the electricians at Prairie, wiring all manner of appliances in the electric shop and thought I could follow in his footsteps. On several occasions "Grandpa Hartt", as we called him, would grab a live electrical wire and as his hand would shake he would exclaim, "I think there's a little power there". In later years I would watch him as he would lick his finger and stick it in a light socket to check if it was live. I guess his skin was so dry that there was minimal conductivity occurring and he wasn't hurt.

The little Sanyo had a white electric cable with the plug that went into the wall on one end and a small rubber nub with two recessed holes that mated up with the two pins inside the case of the machine on the other. Trying to be as efficient as possible and utilizing all of my resources, I decided that as I was moving the little machine onto another shelf, I would hold the corresponding cable between my teeth for just a little bit. Now I was smart enough not to get my tongue in the way, but I forgot about the moisture equation. I had barely started to lift the cassette machine when there was a loud exploding sound followed by a WHOOOOSH! and a huge ball of blue flame shot right out of my mouth. I was facing my Dad who was sitting at the kitchen table and saw a look of great horror written all over his face. There was a black scorch mark on the end of the cable. I felt a tingle in my mouth and tongue and a strange aftertaste, but other than that I wasn't really hurt. I have however, never put another electrical cable in my mouth.

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© 2010 Stephen J. Rendall - All rights reserved

GUNS AND MATCHES

Camp Homewood is situated on Quadra Island just to the east of Campbell River on Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. Campbell River is the salmon fishing capital of the world and in the summer tourists flock there by the thousands to fish and take in the incredible sightseeing. The view from the deck of Rivendell Lodge out over Gowlland Harbor and on to the mountains in the distance is a breathtaking sight. I have been privileged to travel a fair amount and I have to say this is one of the most stunning locations in the world. I have always thought it would make the ideal artist retreat and recording studio.

I first learned of Camp Homewood when I was a fairly young child. Many students and staff at the school had either attended as campers or worked on the staff. Every conference a representative from the camp would come out to the school and hold an informational seminar. They would distribute literature, show slides or a film and recruit for the summer.

Sometime during my grade nine year, Dan Krestinski, who was the high school boys dean at the time, approached my parents and suggested that maybe I should attend Camp Homewood that summer. They ran a two week Counselor in Training ( CIT ) program and then a select group were chosen to stay for the remaining six weeks of the summer. Dan must have instinctively known that I could benefit from this program and so I was chosen to spend the entire eight weeks at the camp. He waived the camp policy of requiring you to be sixteen, as I had just turned fifteen. I count this summer as one of those defining moments in my life and am forever grateful to Dan for taking me under his wing at that juncture.

I had obtained a fancy green ladies hat from the Tilly shop and by completely dismantling it down to the felt I was able to shape it to look like a Robin Hood hat. This was to become my trademark hat for the next couple of months. The night before we were to leave I was goofing off in the gym and my glasses fell to the concrete floor smashing one lens. My summer started with having to wear my taped glasses with only one lens until another pair was ordered and arrived in the mail a couple of weeks later.

Beginning with the six hundred mile bus ride out to the coast, to the ferry ride to Vancouver Island, the summer was full of many memories. Highlights included attending the stock car races in nearby Black Creek and early morning salmon fishing trips with Les Foder in the jet boat. The three chords I still know on guitar, I learned that summer. I learned to sail and repel. For a kid from the prairies the ocean opened up endless possibilities for adventure. On our days off we would wander around the big wharfs in Campbell River where luxury yachts of every make and description were docked. Among others I remember the Boeing corporate yacht and the boat belonging to the owner of the Seattle Sea Hawk's. Olivia Newton John's yacht was anchored out in the harbor just some distance from the camp and many a camp meeting was spent hoping for a glimpse of the superstar with no success. We did have a chance to visit with some of her crew and we all thought it would be a pretty good gig.

Alf Bayne, the founder of the camp, had a large motorized, converted fishing boat called the Goforth. Alf would take the CIT's out on trips in the boat and we were able to see whales, seals and sea otters. The phosphor in the water at night was beautiful. Alf was a very good cinematographer and was working on a promotional movie for Reimer Express trucking company that summer. I thoroughly enjoyed visiting with him about the film-making process.

One memorable canoe trip we as CIT's took, was through a series of fresh water lakes out to the ocean. We spent several days camping along the coast. One day we collected as many aerosol cans as we could find washed up on the shore. That evening we built a raft out of drift wood, built a fire on it, loaded it up with the cans and launched it out into the ocean. We had our own fireworks display as one by one the cans would explode, shooting fireballs into the dark night sky.

Every day was an adventure as we performed crazy stunts like sleeping on the steep cabin roof, safely tied to the chimney. We would cook up all manner of practical jokes to torment our poor leaders, some of them with disastrous results. David Dunn was one of our leaders who enjoyed a good time and had a little more affinity for our youthful energy. Many a late night was spent around a table with Dave and a bunch of other CIT's, playing Rook which we referred to as "preacher's cards". At the more remote woodsman camp, some of the guys placed slugs inside the girl's sleeping bags to be met later that night with screams and lots of commotion in the girl's tents.

Contrary to the prevailing public opinion, I did pay some attention in school. In chemistry class I had learned that phosphorus and gelatin under pressure and heat makes for a nice explosion. There was an ample supply of stick matches in the camp storeroom. We procured about a dozen or so of these boxes and proceeded to cut the head off of every stick. We spent a good part of our study time that day getting our materials prepared. We divided up the match heads into groups and carefully placed them into tinfoil packets that we fashioned. Once the pouch was full of match heads, the top was folded over and sealed. We secretly ventured out to the rifle range during lunch time and set up the paper targets on the the heavy wooden structure designed for that purpose. We then took thumb tacks and fastened the pouches in behind each individual target so that it could not be seen from the front.

Rushing back to the dining hall we joined the group that would be going to the riflery range that afternoon. We arrived at the range with our instructor who was very surprised and delighted to see that the targets were already in place and we could begin shooting right away. Being the gentlemen we were we insisted that the girls should go first. The girls, shocked at this new found chivalry, agreed, took their places on the shooting platform and loaded their guns. The call was given . . . ready . . . aim . . . fire! The bullets made their way to their intended destination and as they hit the tin foil packs the entire set up exploded into flames . . . targets and all! The girls freaked out. Needless to say our instructor was not the least bit impressed. We learned that day that it pays to listen in school and that guns and matches don't mix!

To learn more about Camp Homewood and see some of the majestic pictures go to:

www.homewood.bc.ca

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© 2010 Stephen J. Rendall - All rights reserved.