Monthly Archives: December 2022

Losing the Bait

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This is a story from childhood that involves a simple mistake that led to a lifelong regret.

My parents were good friends with another couple, the Drabicks. The Drabick’s had a cottage up north in Algonquin Park north of where we lived in Ontario, Canada.

The Drabicks invited our family to join their family for a vacation up at their cottage.

So we loaded up our stuff into our car, picked up a bunch of groceries and followed them up to their cottage and had an enjoyable time, except for one simple mistake…

We were out on their boat collecting minnows with a net to use as bait. The minnows were collected after hours of collecting and put in a metal container that hung from the boat. The minnows were being kept alive in this container until they would be used for fishing.

Somehow I touch something or moved a lever, or something and the minnows escaped causing us to have to start over catching the minnows. I felt so bad that I made everyone work so hard and then have to start over. They forgave me – a simple mistake – but I never forgave myself.

Drabick’s Boat

A funny thing happened a couple of years ago.My brother and I were talking at our niece’s wedding and that incident somehow came up in conversation. I think we were talking about regrets. My brother mentioned that he had made that mistake of releasing the minnows. I quickly corrected him and told him I had done it, not him.

‘Turns out, we both had been living with this regret. We both thought we had done the mistake and had lived with the regret all those years.

At this point I have to be honest, either I did it or I somehow I vicariously covered for my brother.

The truth is that there never was any evidence that either of us did it. They asked if anyone moved the lever and I said I thought I may have done so.

How crazy to think we both held on to that regret for so many years and it wasn’t even anything worth regretting…

Drum Lessons

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When I was 10 years old my father asked me and my brother if we wanted to take music lessons. I had taken piano lessons at 7 in elementary school. After piano lessons for one year at school I had to go up in front of a large audience and play Frere Jacques which was nerve racking but somehow I managed. After that year I lost interest in playing piano and stopped taking lessons.

In the meantime I got interested in playing the drums. My brother wanted to play the guitar but he was told he was too young to play Spanish guitar and that he would have to take Hawaiian guitar instead since his fingers would not be strong enough. He hated taking Hawaiian guitar and quit after a year. He looks back now and wishes he had stuck with it.

I took drum lessons but the method I took was military style and only with a snare drum, not a whole drum set. It seemed like I was never going to learn to play the styles of music I wanted to.

After a couple of years of this my father decided one day that he was going to buy me a drum set, so he did. We took the set to my drum teacher and my father asked him to tune them up. My teacher didn’t teach modern styles of playing and basically with the fact that I seemed to want to go a different direction I stopped taking lessons from him.

Then I found a different teacher that taught more modern styles on a drum set and I started taking lessons from him. It still wasn’t rock and roll but at least it broadened my knowledge and coordination on a drum set.

Meanwhile my new next door neighbor Rick, who was a couple of years older than me, decided we should form a band. I do not remember the details of how it all happened. He knew a couple of guys that wanted to join us.

We built a stage and painted the basement wall behind the stage at my house and set up the drums there. He knew Steve that played organ and Steve knew Brent who sang. Brent lived on my street for a few years previously so we already knew each other.

By a miracle I found out a couple of my grade 8 fellow students played guitar and bass respectively. We formed a band with Steve on organ, John G. on guitar, John A. on bass, and me on drums and called the band The Shadows of Time. Later we thought the name was too long and changed it to The Grape. Personally, I never like the name change…

Shadows of Time band pic

In another post I will elaborate on how I found out about my schoolmates, or better said, how they discovered that I played drums and were eager to come over after school and see if we could play together.

We stayed together for the most part for about 3 years from grade 8 to grade 10 but finally broke up over issues with the band leader… Steve and I tried to form another band but it fell apart as the new bass player and new singer needed to get jobs to pay their bills and things were not coming together fast enough in the band.

In another post I will tell of my adventures with another band, namely 2125 AD that I was part of in Montreal, Canada.

At one point I was going to be part of another band in Argentina and I will tell that story in another post…

My Childhood Jobs

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One of my first jobs was working for the corner fabric store, ‘Passmores.’ My job was to go each morning before school and lower the awnings so the sun would not shine in on the fabrics displayed in the store front windows. The sunlight would cause the colours to fade. I would also go in on Saturday mornings and clean the storeroom and restock the paper bags and supplies needed at the checkout counter.

Another job I had was helping my father by sanding cars. We had to sand the paint on the cars before being able to repaint them. My father paid me well for doing this. Over time my enthusiasm waned and I was not doing a very thorough job so my father had to chide me and sometimes I had to redo parts of the car that I passed over too quickly.

Once I took guitar lessons I started teaching guitar to new students and worked myself up to teaching 12 hours per week. I would teach Wednesday nights after school and all day Saturday. I made $1.00 per half hour lesson I taught which at the time was reasonable…

Before all this I did chores around the house and would get 25 cents a week allowance. With my 25 cents I would usually get a Crispy Crunch chocolate bar and a 16 ox. Pepsi from the local variety store.