Brazil Street Page 12

  While I counted the money, Dickie looked for any sign of his home address.

  “The guy who owns it is a Mr. Collins,” I heard him say, “and he lives in on Southside Road. It’s a little bit of a walk for us, Bobby, if he doesn’t come to pick it up.”

  There was a police officer directing the traffic coming down one of the side streets intersecting the Boulevard, but we thought twice about telling him about the money. We knew we might miss out on a reward if we gave it to him. Also, though he could be an honest cop, we didn’t really put a lot of faith in authority in those days. It was up to us to return the wallet to the gentleman.

  So, off we went to find a place to get his phone number and make contact with him. Maybe it didn’t belong to the same man we had helped. We stopped at the Royal Canadian Legion and asked a lady there if we could use the phone. She put us in a small room, where we read Mr. Collins’s address on his driver’s licence and looked it up in the phone book. I dialled the number.

  It rang for a few seconds before a rough, hoarse voice answered.

  “Could I speak to Mr. Collins, please?”

  “Yes, this is him speaking. What can I do for you?”

  “Mr. Collins. My friend and I were at the regatta today, and we think you could be the gentleman we helped up over the hill by the bandstand. Are you not him?”

  A pause. “Yes, I am. Two boys did help me. I guess you’re calling because you found my lost wallet?”

  “Yes, sir, we found your wallet by your car after you left us.”

  “I just finished searching my car and house for it. I’m happy that you called. I do hate to go back to the regatta with all that traffic down there. Is there a way that you can bring it to me? I will give you guys a reward for returning it.”

  I looked at Dickie and asked Mr. Collins for a moment to chat with my friend. We agreed to bring the wallet back to him on Southside Road. It was noon, and we didn’t want to give up the rest of our day at the pond, but the wallet was his. We decided to walk all the way to Southside Road, about six miles away, and come back to the regatta later. It was a long walk, but surely there was a big reward, meaning extra money for us to spend at the regatta.

  So, off we went, up King’s Bridge Road, down Hill O’ Chips to Water Street, and then on to Southside Road. It was a long walk, even for us, and by the time we reached Mr. Collins’s house we were pretty exhausted. Dickie walked up the front steps and knocked on the door. When it opened, the same man we had helped up the hill took the wallet from him.

  He looked at it and thanked us both, then started to back into his house. I’m sure Dickie thought the same thing as I did: no reward. But all was not lost. He sat on a chair in the hallway and looked at us both before saying, “I have some money to give to you. But first I would like to ask you to do me just one more little favour, and then I will pay you.”

  Dickie and I looked at each other and shrugged. Why not?

  He nodded toward his car in the driveway.

  “I find it very hard to wash my car, and I was wondering if you boys could do that for me. I will pay you when you are finished.”

  “Okay,” Dickie said, “but it will cost you four dollars. We did return your wallet, we helped you at the regatta, and now you want us to wash you car, so we think that should do it.”

  It would only take us another fifteen minutes, then we would collect our reward and head back to the pond with lots of time to kill and some extra money to spend. We were going to head back later for the championship race anyway, so this delay wouldn’t hurt.

  Mr. Collins reached to the side and, as if by magic, a bucket, soap, and cloths appeared in our hands, as if he’d anticipated us agreeing to the task.

  We spent about thirty minutes on the car, and when we were done it gleamed in the sunlight. It was a 1960 Chevy, white and green. We walked up the steps with the bucket and knocked on the door. There was no answer.

  We knocked a second time, then a third and a fourth. It was then we realized we had been duped. He wasn’t going to answer his door. We felt stupid as we stood there in front of his door.

  All the time I had known him, I had never seen Dickie as mad as I saw him that day. I tugged on his arm and said, “Come on, Dickie. We’ve been had. Just grin and bear it. Shag him.”

  But Dickie wasn’t going to let it go. He banged on the door twice more. Again there was no answer. He threw the bucket and cloth over the side railing into the bushes. We thought we saw a glimpse of the man behind the curtains as we walked away from the house. Probably laughing at us. A real nice guy.

  We left Southside Road and headed for home. All the while, my buddy never said a word as he sulked all the way up Water Street. That was strange for Dickie. I tried speaking to him but gave up when he refused to answer me. We went to our clubhouse in Dickie’s backyard and got some money we had hidden there. It was only when we were heading back to the regatta that Dickie spoke again.

  “Bobby, it isn’t fair. It’s just not right.”

  “Leave it alone, Dickie. I don’t like it either, but we were taken. It’s done and we lost one.”

  But Dickie was not be put off so easily. He looked at me and winked. It was then I knew that he had something up his sleeve.

  “Okay, I’ve seen that look before. Tell me what you have in mind.”

  “Just let me take care if it.”

  He was on his own mission, so I let it go. If he wanted me to know, he would have told me then and there. As kids we never bugged one another when we had something on our minds.

  A few days later, Dickie and I went to our clubhouse. He had the biggest grin on his face that I had ever seen. He kept laughing to himself and smiling at me. He was laughing so hard he could hardly talk.

  “Okay, what’s going on?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “You know what that fat buddy did to us after we gave him back his wallet and cleaned his car? Well, he may have to clean it again or at least spray it down.”

  Here’s what happened. The day before, he told his parents after supper that he was going back to school with some buddies for a study session. Instead, he went back to Southside Road and to the wharf farther down the road where some of the fishing stages were located. He filled a brine bag with fish parts and then headed back to buddy’s house.

  The guy was not at home when he arrived, so Dickie waited until he pulled up in his driveway. When he went into his house, Dickie stayed hidden until dark. Then he tried the doors—he wanted to lay the fish on the back floor—but they were locked. He looked around to see if anyone was about. When he knew the coast was clear, he crawled underneath the car and jammed the bag up behind the gas tank, between the exhaust system and muffler. I could guess what happened when the car was started the next day.

  “I may get in trouble for this, Bobby, but it was worth it, and I didn’t want you to be a part of it. But I’m guessing by now he knows that you should pay your debts and never rip people off. I wouldn’t want to smell his car today, not after the hot exhaust burnt the fish. The smell nearly killed me when I was carrying it up the road! It may take him a while to figure out where the smell is coming from. And it will take him another while to get the stink out of his car. And of course, if he ever did find out it was me, well, I was at school with the boys the night it happened. I looked around when I left and saw no one, so I’m sure no one saw me.”

  I laughed until I cried. It was a strange thing for Dickie to do, but then again, it took a lot to get him riled up. We always used to say that what goes around comes around. I guess Mr. Collins found that out the hard way.

  Return To Summer Camp In Bay Bulls

  In the early 1960s, Dickie and I, along with Tommy Dodd, joined the Catholic Boys Club. That was a great move on our part. It made us appreciate what we had in life—we weren’t the richest kids
on the block. The positive influence of the club can be attributed to four wonderful men. Bill Power was the club manager, Cecil Joy the fitness instructor, Tom “Pussyfoot” Benson was a former pro fighter and boxer, and Tom Mason was another great instructor who, I was told, had been a great hockey player who played with many teams in the St. John’s area.

  The club was located where the Knights of Columbus now stands, on St. Clare Avenue. It was an old wooden building that could have gone up in flames if a match had been put to it. The club catered to young men all over St. John’s who wanted to put their energy to constructive use instead of using it to cause trouble. We were taught to do something valuable with our lives.

  The top part of the building was reserved for boys who would eventually become Knights of Columbus members. The Knights were located in the lower part of the building. I’ve been a member since 1976.

  It had everything. My friends and I loved anything to do with the NHL and street hockey, and we played some of the roughest floor hockey one could play. We used five-foot-long wooden sticks and, for a puck, a black circular ring that was taken off a bowling pin. There were also aerobics instructions, floor mat exercises, boxing, and many more games that taught sportsmanship and healthy competitiveness.

  A school friend at Holy Cross told me about the club, and in turn I told Dickie and Tommy. Tommy was a great floor hockey player who could outmanoeuvre anyone else who played. He was a great stickhandler, too.

  We joined the club around 1963. Our first year in camp was not as enjoyable as the second—it took us a while to feel comfortable. Our second year in the club, the call came out again to go to summer camp. Tom Mason put up a notice on the bulletin board that all were invited to attend summer camp in Bay Bulls, about twenty miles away. The cost was three dollars, and it promised two weeks of fun for all involved. We immediately rushed home to get permission from our moms and dads.

  We had only left the city of St. John’s twice: to go to the same camp the year before, and on a trip to Holyrood the year before that. We had been bused to Holyrood, and after spending our money on treats, we had to walk the thirty kilometres back, which we fully regretted.

  Our parents, knowing that they would have us out of their hair for those weeks, readily agreed to let us go. The cost was a bit of a problem—we hadn’t saved any of the money we made from our trips down to Water Street doing chores—but we had a month or so to put it together. Our parents wanted to contribute a small amount they had saved, but we wanted to earn it ourselves. For the next few weeks, we scoured St. John’s for employment opportunities. Finally, after many hours of hard work, we had enough to cover the cost and to give ourselves some spending money on the trip. We rushed back to the club and paid in full, and we were told that we would be leaving in the middle of June, the day after summer holidays began.

  We could hardly wait! When the magic day came and we took out our duffle bags—Christmas gifts from our parents—Dickie and I packed our toothbrushes, face cloths, and soap before heading out on our new adventure. We met at the club and boarded a school bus. Tommy couldn’t go with us this year either. I think he went on vacation with his family instead.

  We rode the bus for what seemed like an eternity, but it was really only an hour or so. The camp looked like the shape of an egg had been cut out of the woods. Flags flew in the centre of the field, and two open firepits and a woodpile as high as one could imagine sat beside the flagpoles. At the edge of the oval-shaped field were the headquarters and sleeping compound of the instructors in charge: Bill Power, Cecil Joy, and Tom Mason. A building adjoining theirs was the place where we would all eat. The quarters where we slept four to a hut were arranged in a circle around the area. There were other instructors, too, but they were older boys in the club whom we didn’t know. Most were from a Boy Scout troop and would help the instructors during our three-week stay.

  Our time at camp was a lot different than how we usually spent our summers. It was one of structure and teamwork. We used the time to show everyone that we were the best—however you want to look at the word “best”—campers that one could be. Now that Dickie and I were old hands at this camp business, as this was year two for us, it was now our turn to have some fun with the new campers.

  We took under our wing a few guys who had never been away from home before. One such guy was Ronnie, a kid we nicknamed Batman because he had a Batman knapsack and lunch tin. He was nuts about the superhero, always talking about the Caped Crusader every time we got together. We sent Batman on some of the same wild goose chases we had been sent on in our first year at camp.

  One time, we sent Batman for a “bucket of steam,” and he searched high and low. Someone got to him, though, and told him it was a gag. He turned the trick on us by returning with an empty bucket. When Dickie and I asked him what had happened to the steam, his reply was so funny that we instantly made him our friend.

  “Sorry, boys, but I had the bucket with the steam in it. I walked all the way to Bay Bulls to get it at Crane’s Store, but on the way back to camp, some Protestant guys stopped me and took the steam right out of the bucket!”

  We laughed for days at that one. Ronnie spent the rest of our camp time with Dickie and me.

  Another time, we asked Sam—whom we called Shirley, but not to his face, as he was even bigger than Dickie—to go get us a “thumb puller,” as I wanted to lengthen my thumb by a few inches. Shirley spent several days looking for the imaginary item. We told him he had to find it on his own without anyone’s help. On the second-last day of the week, we told him there was no such thing as a thumb puller, but he said we weren’t telling the truth. His grandfather had one, and he swore that he would show us when we got back to St. John’s! But of course we never saw him again after camp.

  One of the instructors played a good joke on us. Cecil Joy and three others ran the camp from start to finish. Cecil was always a great person who lived for a bit of fun. For some reason he took to Dickie and me, and one day he convinced us that he had a look-alike brother living in Bay Bulls. He asked us to see if we could find him when we went down there on the weekend.

  Cecil said he couldn’t go, because his brother hadn’t spoken to him in years and he would feel funny talking to him, so he asked us to do him this favour by finding him and saying hello. He asked us to tell no one of this little mission, because he wanted it kept secret from the other instructors, who didn’t know that he had a brother. We assured him we wouldn’t tell a soul.

  We went to Crane’s several times that weekend, and people must have thought we were nuts: we kept asking everyone we met if they knew a man called “Knuckles” Joy who lived in the area. No luck. We gave up and reported back to Cecil. Cecil, being a gentleman, thanked us profusely. But it didn’t end there.

  Every Sunday, when visitors came to camp, Cecil introduced us to a person he claimed was “Knuckles” Joy, who told Cecil that he had met us several times at Crane’s store. The guy went on to say that he had told us he was Cecil’s brother and that we hadn’t believed him! Cecil and his buddy kept it up, even though we swore up and down that we had never seen the guy before. Finally, Cecil gave in and told us that “Knuckles” was a friend of his and not his brother. He laughed at that many times over the course of the following week.

  Cecil Joy was an outstanding fellow. As I look at pictures of that old building, I think of Cecil Joy and the instructors who were instrumental in changing the way we looked at the world. God love them all. They were all good men.

  Looking at that picture, I remember walking through the huge front doors that deposited me at the foot of a mountain of steps that I had to climb before I even got to the main floor. I counted them the first night, and I continued to do so every time I went through those doors. The steps, all wooden, had to be at least twelve feet wide, and it certainly felt like climbing a mountain. Sixteen steps to climb before you got to the first landing, and the
n eighteen more before you arrived on the top level. Thirty-four in total. I must have counted those steps a thousands times over the years I went there.

  I’ll always remember the smell of that old building. It had a scent like a dusty room or an old locker room. But to us, a group of kids who didn’t have a lot of things in life, it was refreshing like a country breeze. The old wooden building, having outlived its usefulness, was finally torn down in 1972. The new Knights of Columbus Building #1452 now stands in its place.

  The Guy Fawkes Adventure

  On November 5 of each year, Guy Fawkes’ Night, also known as the Gunpowder Plot, is celebrated to commemorate the failure of Guy Fawkes and his group of activists to assassinate King James I and his ministers by blowing up the Palace of Westminster during the opening of Parliament in 1605 in England. Fawkes and his conspirators were to set a fuse to kegs of gunpowder in the basement in the House of Lords, which would destroy all those in attendance in Parliament.

  However, this plot was foiled when guards were alerted by an informer moments before Guy Fawkes lit the fuse. He was then tortured and interrogated to reveal the names of all those involved. Fawkes and his cohorts were bought to justice and were either hanged or imprisoned. Afterwards, Parliament declared November 5, 1606, Guy Fawkes’ Day, a national holiday.

  Guy Fawkes was not a hero to us, not like Superman or Batman. We’d never even heard of the guy, though we knew that the night named after him was commonly lit up with bonfires in his honour. To us, all Guy Fawkes meant was a time to have some fun. We were hesitant to start a bonfire of our own, but Dickie and I did roam St. John’s one year in search of one that was already in progress. Unfortunately, one started without our help.

  At eight or nine years old, Dickie and I knew that fire, gasoline, and children did not mix. Our parents had drilled this into us, so, naturally, we had to find out if this were true or not. We took some matches and decided that our own Guy Fawkes’ Night was going to be very special. But where to start our little fire? We knew that if we started one it would have to be put out right away—if our fathers ever found out that we had matches, we would have been killed.