A story based on recollections of my childhood in Canada – a happy childhood for the most part.
When my family moved from Canada to New Zealand, I lost touch with all my childhood friends, but I haven’t forgotten them. There was one special friend I’ll never forget. Even his name, Earl, had a special quality to it, like a regal title, like a duke or a prince. He even looked kind of regal with his high cheekbones and aquiline nose, and his black hair was long enough to swish back, unlike the crew cuts most of us had. Earl’s surname was pretty flash too. Goldberg. It means Gold Mountain, but I used to think of it as an iceberg with a golden glow, instead of a green sheen, like in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which we studied for high school English exams.
Ice mast high came floating by
As green as emerald
or as Earl read it in English class for a laugh:
Mice ass high came floating by
As green as emerald
I remember having to read poemsby Coleridge and Robert Frost.
I’ve never known anyone else called Earl, which is as it should be. Earl was unique. He was more daring, more creative and had more wit than any of the rest of us. He had more chutzpah. That’s the word. I didn’t know this word chutzpah when I was a child, this Yiddish word, but when I first heard it I liked the sound of it. Chutzpah! And when I found out what it meant I immediately thought of Earl. He was the one with the chutzpah.
I could see where the chutzpah came from. Earl’s mother would give her son a tongue lashing when he was naughty, but she never hit him. Why couldn’t my mother be like that, I wondered, instead of whacking me with a coat hanger? Earl and his mother would argue and their language would become quite rude. I had never heard a woman use the F word before. My mother referred to Mrs Goldberg as ‘that foul-mouthed woman’. Earl would answer his mother back and she would cut him down, verbally. He was good with a retort but he was no match for his mother. Things would blow up and soon blow over as though nothing had happened. I was there once when they were shouting at each other and Mr Hofmann next door complained about the noise and the language. Mrs Goldberg shouted back over the fence,” Kiss my ass, you old Nazi.” Earl and I had a good laugh over that.
Earl had a few unique talents. One of them was belching. He could belch at will by swallowing air and bringing it up in big rolling belches. Not just the usual croak, but modulated sound effects, words and phrases like barf and bjork and wasps. One of his really outstanding accomplishments was reciting the entire alphabet on a single belch. He would gulp mouthfuls of air and load his stomach and let rip with a rapid fire ABCDEFG… all the way to Z. None of the other guys could match this feat, couldn’t even get half way through the alphabet. Girls would be grossed out by this performance but I think that secretly they were just as impressed as the guys.
Farting was another of Earl’s talents. We could all do the hand in the armpit fart but Earl could produce real flatus, seemingly at will, perhaps as a result of swallowing all that air for belching. No special effects required. Farting was inherently funny. Once when he ran out of fart gas and the guys were egging him on for more he produced an impromptu fart machine by bending over and pointing his butt at us and cranking an imaginary handle at his hip. The Gatling gun fart effects were all mouth percussion but the performance was pretty creative and gross and funny. We all played along and fell down dead under a hail of fart bullets.
Earl had lots of energy; we all did when we were playing together, but he seemed to see clearly the energy of whatever was happening and feel it more keenly, and he had a way of seeing possibilities. He also had a genius for creating noise. He pegged strips of cardboard to the mudguard struts of his bike so they flapped against the spokes like a motor. He stamped on tin cans so the top and bottom folded up to grip his shoes and he ran clanking along the concrete drive.
But Earl wasn’t just all noise and gung ho action. He also had a quiet appreciation of the beauty of nature. He could hoot like an owl by cupping his hands and blowing into the gap between his thumbs. He even got a reply from an owl one night when we were out in a field, catching fireflies and putting them in a jar to make a lantern.
One day I turned up at the lake where we went skating and found him lying face down on the ice and I called out, “Hey, Earl, are you all right?”
“Yeah, fine,” he said. “Come down here and have a look at this.”
I put my face against the ice and peered into the water below. I didn’t think there’d be any life in a frozen lake but there was a whole world of small fish and little critters, some kind of crustaceans, I suppose they were. I would never have thought of looking beneath the ice. Snow began to fall silently in the stillness of the air as we crawled and slithered along the ice. Usually the snow fell in amorphous clumps but these were individual flakes and another spectacle with their perfect stellar, crystalline form outlined against the dark background of the frozen lake.
*
Earl also had a fascination for fire and fireworks. He loved to set fire to things. He made paper planes, set them alight and launched them while we watched them crash and burn. I wouldn’t say he was an arsonist but he did build model houses out of cardboard boxes and set fire to them. We bought fireworks when they were on sale leading up to Dominion Day and got together at Earl’s place. He’d built a cardboard model of our school with cardboard cut outs of certain teachers, who would perish in the flames. Fountains of coloured sparks shot out the chimney and windows, black snakes crawled out the doors, a jumping jack hissed and battered the school from the inside and crackers blew the burning walls to pieces. We watched in awe till the whole school was reduced to a pile of smouldering embers. I was amazed that Earl’s parents were okay with all this pyromania. His father stood by with a garden hose ready to douse anything or anyone that got out of control but I don’t think he knew about the teachers trapped inside the burning school.
Away from adult supervision, which was most of the time, we tossed crackers around recklessly and used them to blow stuff up. We set them off among the toy soldiers in Earl’s sandpit, which made our war games more realistic. Earl had a toy gun that fired ping pong balls, a simple plastic thing that worked on air pressure when you squeezed it. He dropped a cracker down into this gun and held it with a hockey glove on his hand, just as a precaution. He aimed it at nothing in particular and it went off with an impressive bang. He ripped the glove off and blew on his stinging hand and said, “Wow, that was like getting the strap.”
Earl didn’t care much for school and the teachers mostly didn’t like Earl. They thought he was lazy and cheeky. One day in English class he was dozing and yawning and Miss Cruikshank said, “Earl, am I keeping you awake?”
“No Miss,” said Earl. “You’re putting me to sleep.”
Miss Cruickshank didn’t appreciate Earl’s humour as much as I did. She kept him in after school and made him finish his assignment and made him miss hockey practice.
Mr Bustin, our hockey coach, liked Earl a lot. Earl mastered a vicious slap shot and he was the highest goal scorer on the school hockey team. When we weren’t playing hockey we would often skate around the rink playing tag, just for the fun of it, after school and even in the evenings under the lights. It got dark by four o’clock in the winter. Earl lived next door to the school and he was often at the rink to help Mr Bustin plough and shovel snow off the ice and flood the rink with the fire hose when the ice needed resurfacing and the weather was cold enough to freeze it. One really cold night Earl went over and turned the hose on the trees at the side of the rink. They were all hardwood trees, which were ablaze with colour in the fall, but it was the middle of winter so they were all just bare branches. We all admired Earl’s handiwork in the morning. He was there sitting on the boards gazing at the ice encrusted trees, dazzling in the morning sun like an enchanted crystal forest.
*
We used to play outdoors a lot, as boys did back in those days, all year round, even during the bleak Maritime winter. We know that in the Northern Hemisphere winter North America suffers occasional blizzards: freezing temperatures, winds and shitloads of snow that shut down whole cities. Here in New Zealand we sit in our January midsummer heat and on the TV news we see scenes of winter in American cities: trucks shoving snow ploughs through the streets of New York and Boston, with massive, curved blades curling the snow up in long rolling waves, trying to keep the roads clear, while more snow continues to fall, and cars skidding and slewing helplessly on the icy roads, and more trucks spreading salt on the roads. American sourced news in New Zealand makes no mention of Canada, so Kiwis might get the impression that the blizzard stops at the border but of course Canada cops it too and it’s usually worse north of the border, especially along the Atlantic seaboard.
On days when our roads were blocked with snow the schools closed down and we would go out and play, even in a blizzard. It was just a matter of dressing for the conditions, like Arctic explorers. Opening a gap in all the layers to take a pee outside in these conditions was always a challenge and needed to be accomplished as quickly as possible, while our hands were exposed without mittens and our dicks were also in danger of getting frostbite. I half expected my arc of urine to freeze midstream but it just seared a small, yellow hole into the snow.
Winter was my favourite season. Not many adults would have said that but it was true for me and my primary school buddies that were into winter sports. Hockey was what winter was really for and the NHL was our inspiration. The school hockey rink was surrounded by a wall of boards, of course, so the snow piled up pretty quickly on the ice. The wind drove the snow into deep drifts but we had other options for skating. There was the lake near Jimmy Kneebone’s place, exposed to the wind so the snow swept across it. I went to Jimmy’s with my skates, my hockey stick and a puck. We all practised our hockey skills even when we were just skating around on the ice. Earl turned up with two hockey sticks wrapped in a sheet. He unfurled the sheet, which was attached to the sticks, and held it up like a sail in the wind. Earl swept across the lake faster than I’d ever seen anyone go on skates.
*
Everyone liked Earl, all the boys I mean, not the girls particularly, and definitely not the teachers. All the boys, except Gerald Dromgool, Jimmy’s freckle-faced cousin. I think Gerald envied Earl and tried to match, or preferably outdo, Earl when it came to games, adventures and exploits, but he never had the chutzpah, the imagination or even the co-ordination. Gerald was an achiever at school but getting lots of marks was not a means to becoming a natural peer group leader like Earl.
There was one particular incident that really seemed to set Gerald against Earl. We were playing in the school grounds one Saturday. One after another we climbed up the underside of the fire escape, hands and feet on the back edges of the steel steps. It wasn’t a hard climb but it was challenging for me because I didn’t like heights. Then Earl started a challenge of vaulting over a railing on a concrete landing, and landing on the frozen ground five feet below. Jimmy and I managed it all right but Gerald caught his foot on the railing and crashed on the ground. He was a bit dazed for a moment but then got up and went home crying, clutching a broken arm. When Gerald turned up at school with his arm in a cast, Earl said, “Them’s the breaks.” I had a laugh over that crack but Gerald looked like he was going to cry again.
Actually, come to think of it, there was an earlier incident as well. It was at the lake by Jimmy’s place early in the winter. The lake had just frozen over and we were testing it for skating, stepping out onto the ice cautiously and it was cracking and pinging. Gerald, in a show of daring, ran out and slid across the ice. The ice cracked open and Gerald took a bath in the freezing water. We all laughed as he sloshed about trying to get back onto his feet. It was only shallow water. We wouldn’t have laughed otherwise. Gerald was gasping with the shock of the cold and then sobbing. Earl thanked him for testing the ice for us.
The rink and the lake weren’t the only options for skating. Everything froze over, including the stream that ran through the field beyond the lake and out of the forest and the hills. I’m not sure whether you’d call it a big stream or a small river but anyway we, just Earl and I on this occasion, skated quite a long way into the woods and saw a bit of wildlife: a rabbit, almost invisible in its white winter coat, till it hopped away, and we caught a glimpse of a whitetail deer. We had to clamber over a few fallen trees but we kept going until we came to a beaver dam, which we couldn’t get past.
*
A good dare when there was plenty of snow about was jumping off the roof of the Exhibition Hall in the Showgrounds into the bank of snow on the ground. We climbed and jumped from higher and higher up the pitched roof till the most daring of us worked our way up to the peak. I really didn’t like heights and dropped out early on. Earl was there at the end of course. He stood, poised on the peak of the roof with arms raised like an Olympic high diver while we all gazed and wondered if he would really do it and if he would survive. He was taking so long about it I thought he might be chickening out. I think he was psyching himself up to overcome his survival instinct, that primitive part of your brain that tells you, “If you jump you’ll die.”
Suspense was turning to impatience. Gerald taunted him, “C’mon Earl. Don’t chicken out. Cluck, cluck, bock, bock, bock.”
Just when I thought, Nah, he’s not gonna do it, he leapt off with a shout, “Geronimo!” He landed like a torpedo into the snow with a muffled whumf and the snow compacted so tightly around him up to his waist that we had to dig him out. He was shivering from the cold or maybe exhilaration, or maybe fear.
The Showgrounds were actually the venue for one of the highlights of the summer season, the annual Exhibition, with pens of farm animals and captive wild animals, and all the sideshows and fairground rides. We all saved up pocket money for the event, especially for the rides. We got on the Scrambler, the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Octopus together, but I never went on the really high rides like the giant Ferris Wheel or the Rocket. Earl, Jimmy and Gerald bought their tickets for the Rocket and Gerald said, “Hey, Nick, get your ticket for the Merry-Go-Round over there.”
Despite all his bravado and chutzpah, Earl had one weakness, an Achilles heel. He was needle phobic. I remember lining up at school to get our jabs for whatever diseases from the visiting nurse. Earl got really anxious and I asked him if he was all right. “Yeah, I’m okay,” he said. But he fainted when the needle went into his arm. We were all standing around him when he came to and Gerald was clucking like a chook and he said, “What happened Earl? Did you faint?”
“No,” said Earl,” I got so bored I fell asleep.” He tried to brazen it out but he had suffered a minor humiliation, much to Gerald’s delight. Earl was not invincible. It gave Gerald hope.
*
In the spring thaw, Earl scouted around the rink for hockey pucks that had shot over the boards and disappeared into the snow. He just picked them up and kept a stash for sale for the following hockey season. After all the snow had disappeared, the playground became potholed for marble games. Most of the guys played marbles on the school grounds, while the girls played with hula hoops and skipping ropes. Earl seemed to be the only guy who wore proper leather shoes, with heels, while all the rest of us wore black and white canvas and rubber sneakers. So it was Earl who made the pots by grinding his heel into the compacted dirt and pirouetting around to drill a hole in the ground. A bit of shaping and smoothing around the hole and it was good to go.
Gerald wasn’t very sporty but he was quite good at games like marbles. He was on a winning streak and his marble bag was bulging with his winnings, including some of my favourite cats’ eyes. I dropped out of a game with him and he challenged Earl to a game. They stood side by side on the line Earl scraped in the dirt and tossed and rolled their marbles at the pot. One up. Gerald’s was closest so he went first. He flicked his marble into the pot and then Earl’s. Two up. Earl’s marble was closest and he flicked three of the four into the pot. The fourth rolled up just short of the pot and Gerald nudged it in for an easy win.
“Let’s step it up,” Earl said. “Ten up.”
Gerald balked a little but agreed. “Okay, let’s go.”
Gerald started and they took it in turns till there were sixteen marbles scattered around the pot and three in the pot, two of Earl’s and one of Gerald’s. Gerald took aim with his last shot, hesitated for a moment, spat on the ground and dropped the marble just in front of his feet.
“Dropsies, eh,” said Earl. It was a legal move and a risky tactic. Earl potted a few marbles lying close to the pot and missed one a bit further out. Turns alternated with each miss till eventually all but the long distance dropsie were lying in the pot. Earl gave it a nudge on his turn, then Gerald, and so on, nudging it a bit closer on each turn until one of them was game enough to shoot for the pot. The marble was about three yards from the target when Earl got down and dusted a path to the pot. With as much studied concentration as Arnold Palmer lining up a putt on the green, he poised his curled finger against the marble, took careful aim and launched it with a flick of his wrist. It would be in, or close. It rolled right up and dropped in the pot all right, and Earl pocketed the twenty marbles.
“Fuck!” That was all Gerald said, just “Fuck!” I’d never heard him swear before, not the F bomb. Earl, yeah, sure but not Gerald. I guess it was Earl’s influence.
*
The bare ground of the outdoor rink in summer became the arena for a new sport when Earl started kicking a soccer ball against the boards and we got two teams together for a game which was like futsal (which we’d never heard of), except that the ball was always in play off the boards. There was no ice hockey in the summer, of course, but there was road hockey with a tennis ball, and indoor table hockey. Earl had a rod hockey game that used a small disk like a checker for a puck and Gerald had one that used a marble. We all adopted NHL teams. The fiercest rivalry was always between Earl’s Toronto Maple Leafs and Gerald’s Detroit Red Wings. I preferred Earl’s game as it required more skill and dexterity but we agreed we would play both games. I also liked the pretzels and pop we got at Earl’s better than the cookies and milk at Gerald’s. Gerald’s mother worked at a drug store that sold comics and she regularly brought home unsold remainders with their front covers torn off. I lay on the floor in Gerald’s room reading Superman and Batman while my Chicago Black Hawks waited for their turn at the table hockey. We could read as much as we liked from Gerald’s huge collection of comics but we couldn’t take any away.
*
One week in January it snowed just about every day, not enough to close the roads and the schools, but by the weekend there was heaps of snow on the ground. Not the light powdery stuff but the damp snow that packed down hard for snowballs and building forts. Earl and I went to Jimmy’s and found Jimmy and Gerald building the walls of a fort. Earl and I got to work building a fort within firing range for a snowball war. We were still building up an arsenal of snowballs, when the first shots arrived from the enemy fort. We returned fire and there was lots of throwing and ducking for a while and then a bit of a lull, when suddenly Gerald popped up on our flank at close range and hurled a snowball at Earl, which caught him on the side of the head and knocked him clean out. The sneaky buggers had dug trenches and tunnels. Gerald quickly disappeared into a tunnel and I went after him with an armful of snowballs. I ran across the top of the tunnel and it collapsed under me.
“Fuck, he’s buried,” Jimmy shouted. “Dig him out.”
Jimmy got the coal shovel they’d used for digging the tunnel and started digging frantically and I dug with my hands. People had suffocated buried in snow, not just in avalanches but also in tunnels. We got to Gerald pretty quickly and pulled him out. He was all caked with snow and looked pretty pale and scared but none the worse for wear.
“Whew, thanks for getting me out,” he managed to say. Then, looking around he said, “I notice Earl didn’t help.”
“Well, he couldn’t could he,” I said. “You knocked him out cold, you prick.”
Gerald looked scared again. We went to get Earl and he was on his feet leaning against the rampart of our fort, wondering what had happened.
“Dromgool whacked you with a snowball from the side,” I informed him.
“From the side, eh,” said Earl, still looking a bit dazed. “That’s why I didn’t see what hit me.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Gerald said, nervously.
“That deserves free shots,” I said, picking up a snowball. “Firing squad.”
“I reckon getting buried alive is revenge enough,” Jimmy said.
“Buried alive, eh,” said Earl. “Serves you right, you bastard.” He put his hand on Gerald’s shoulder and Gerald flinched and stepped back.
“We’ll let it go at that,” Earl said magnanimously. “You are pardoned.”
And so the warring factions were reconciled and things went on much as before, but with Gerald more reconciled to his subordinate status in the Earldom.