From: Alan Skeoch
\nDate: January 29, 2014 11:53:27 PM EST To: Marshall Leslie, Alan Skeoch, Marjorie Skeoch
\nSubject: Idyllic Runnymede P.S. 1949-1952 or thereabouts<\/p>\n
note:\u00a0 Marshall…this article is centred on Runnymede but really is designed to give readers\u00a0 a feeling for those times so long ago…more to come if you are interested…will add pictures.<\/p>\n
RUNNYMEDE PUBLIC SCHOOL…1950 (Temporary title for now)<\/p>\n
by Alan Skeoch January 2014<\/p>\n
Mom wanted to get us away from the gangs roaming Dufferin Park in 1949 so she scraped together a down payment on weird little house at 455 Annette Street.\u00a0 Dad came along for the ride although he would dearly miss access to Dufferin racetrack.<\/p>\n
New school.\u00a0 Runnymede Public School for Grade 6, 7 and 8. Runnymede remains a beautiful place for kids.\u00a0 High on a hill overlooking the forest canopy of West Toronto.\u00a0 A nice walk form Annette Street, down Gilmour, over to Runnymede Road, past the fire station.\u00a0 Then the iron fence of R.P.S. which could be vaulted with a good run and a flip.\u00a0 Only once did my pocket get caught on an iron spike and rip my pants off.\u00a0 Most times the vaulting was second nature.<\/p>\n
Grade Six with Mrs. Sharpley was like a second home.\u00a0 She really loved her students and did not choose favourites.\u00a0 Took me a while to accept that since I had been badly burned in Grade Five when both my teacher and the VP at Kent School informed me “You are heading for Reform School” because of an essay I wrote. “Just write about something you have seen,” said Miss Behan.\u00a0 I had just seen a car accident on Bloor Street and embellished the story with “his head rolled down the street like a bowling ball”…juvenile words no doubt and poor spelling but the idea was there. “You go see Mr. Dargaval, Alan, and take this essay.”\u00a0 He was a tough man who I had already alienated with a snowball.\u00a0 Tried to see how high I could throw it.\u00a0 Did so. Gravity brought the snowball back down on Dargaval’s head.\u00a0 I looked the other way at the time but maybe he knew it was me. No matter. He read the essay and made his judgment.\u00a0 “Juvenile delinquent for sure”<\/p>\n
So I did not trust teachers.\u00a0 But loved them at the same time.\u00a0 Distrust and\u00a0 love sound like oil and water.\u00a0 I know that.\u00a0 Mrs Sharpley bridged the gap.\u00a0 I was in the middle of the pack.\u00a0 Tried to stay there through all\u00a0 my schooling.\u00a0 Comfortable place to be.\u00a0 Not the teachers pet and not the teachers nightmare.\u00a0 Anonymous and invisible.\u00a0 Really liked school at Runnymede.<\/p>\n
Finger painting was great.\u00a0 Some called it art.\u00a0 I called it lunch. The coloured pastes were really edible.\u00a0 Slop the stuff on your hand, Whirl it around the art paper making some kind of goofy design and then lick your fingers.\u00a0 Loved that stuff…especially the green and blue.\u00a0 Probably some kind of lethal concoction.\u00a0 I was not the only person dining at the finger painting cafe though.\u00a0 All still living.<\/p>\n
In Grade Seven I had an epiphany moment…changed my life forever. It was garbage day on Gilmour Avenue.\u00a0 Always a good day for finders keepers.\u00a0 Usually hard goods like tools or broken roller skates but this day I did an extraordinary bit of garbage retrieval.\u00a0 A book!\u00a0 Paperback with a wild west cover titled ‘Frontier Doctor”.\u00a0 No idea why I grabbed it.\u00a0 No interest in medicine…no career intentions.\u00a0 Shoved the book in my back pocket under the huge hand me down plaid shirt mom got from a friend in subsidized housing near Malton Airport.\u00a0 A great shirt, four sizes too big so it covered my pockets.\u00a0 So I flipped over the Runnymede fence and settled down with not much to do.\u00a0 Friends not there yet.\u00a0 Too early for school.\u00a0 My brother, Eric, had buzzed off to do something somewhere else.\u00a0 The book!\u00a0 I opened it and was rivetted right away.\u00a0 A good writer can get his reader hooked with the first line.\u00a0 This guy did it.\u00a0 Read a couple of pages that transported me to the Western United States in the pioneer period.\u00a0 Cowboys and Indians in a print form.<\/p>\n
Up to that point I had not been an avid reader.\u00a0 The Wizard of Oz was the only hardback novel I can remember before Frontier Doctor.\u00a0 Oh, kids, picture books…lots of them.\u00a0 But our parents were never forcing books down our throats.\u00a0 They were too busy making a living.\u00a0 Not quite true.\u00a0 Mom made THE (bold print dliberate) living while Dad’s money was wagered through para-mutual windows at racetracks.\u00a0 Mom read a lot though.\u00a0 The most common reading material tossed around the house, however, was the Daily Racing Form…and that was impossible to read.<\/p>\n
Mom and dad were our pals not our slavemasters.\u00a0 Never raised a hand to us.\u00a0 Seemed to like us no matter what we did.\u00a0 No ‘wash your mouth out with soap’ if we discovered\u00a0 a new juicy word.\u00a0 Dad knew and used them all except, weirdly, never the ‘f word.\u00a0 The result was that Eric and I did not swear much…at least when we were kids.<\/p>\n
Runnymede P.S. was not a rough school.\u00a0 A lot different from our former public school where some rough characters lurked near Dufferin Racetrack. Runnymede was a really nice place for kids to grow from childhood to pre-adolescence.\u00a0 Lots to do.\u00a0 Believe it or not we even had ‘elocution’ sessions in the assembly hall where I remember the Rankin boys and others giving long flowery dissertations as if they were politicians seeking votes. Made me envious.\u00a0 I wondered if the school would want me to give a speech on wild horses and wily westerners fighting over sheep ranging versus cow pasturing. Or maybe how to dig a hole for your hips when sleeping at night on the open semi-desert of Nevada with a saddle for a pillow.\u00a0 No one ever asked me to do so.\u00a0 Of course no one knew that my fantasy life at Runnymede could be traced to that garbage pail on Gilmour Avenue where Western novels were always ready for the pickings.<\/p>\n
Runnymede was Not entirely non=violent however.\u00a0 I got the strap once and for the life of me I do not remember why.\u00a0 I do remember sitting in the outer office with another boy.\u00a0 And I remember the strap…big piece of leather.\u00a0 “Hold out your hand, son.\u00a0 Don’t pull it back.\u00a0 This must be done.”\u00a0 My eyes were watering before the blow fell.\u00a0 Fast reflexes though.\u00a0 Pulled my hand back as the leather descended and the strap hit the principal’s knee.\u00a0 “I said hold your hand steady!”\u00a0 And I think he took another swing. Probably made contact that time.\u00a0 I don’t remember it hurting much. Nor have I been traumatized by it.\u00a0 Sort of a rite of passage.\u00a0 I may have cried…no memory of that.\u00a0 Locked away deep somewhere in my brain.<\/p>\n
Mr. Hambly’s room, Grade 8, is the most vivid memory of the day to day experience as\u00a0 Runnymede student.\u00a0 I remember the room so well.\u00a0 First floor near the front door.\u00a0 Mr. Hambly loved science…the natural world around us so he was in harmony with my western fantasy world. I always had a western novel rammed into my pocket…ragged as a tumbleweed but rivetting as a streak of lightning.\u00a0 Hambly understood that feeling for he gathered all kinds of things to decorate his room.\u00a0 Biggest was the giant paper wasp nest which hung near the door.\u00a0 It was huge.\u00a0 And it got heavier and heavier as the year progressed.\u00a0 Why heavier?\u00a0 Because many of the boys had elastics which became paper clip guns.\u00a0 The nest was loaded with them.\u00a0 Every time Mr. Hambly turned to the board there was a gentle “thwack!”.\u00a0 Target hit again.\u00a0 Today, as I write this, I have come to believe that Mr. Hambly must have known what was going on.\u00a0 I never took a shot for my respect for Mr. Hambly was deep.\u00a0 Roger Pugh and John Rae, however, were deadly as I remember.\u00a0 Hope they won’t be offended.<\/p>\n
Mr. Hambly did not play favourites.\u00a0 Treated me as just a semi-invisible\u00a0 part of the class.\u00a0 That is the sign of a good teacher I think.\u00a0 He loved teaching and in the first flush of spring he invited all of us up to his ‘farm’ near Mount Dennis…only 15 minute from Runnymede and not really a farm but a big lot that hung over “Chinese” valley where Chinese market gardeners had black soil fertility to exploit.\u00a0 We had a great time that day especially sliding down the tree clad hill on our butts.\u00a0 I noticed Joan McReynolds was attractive that day but she could care less that I even existed.\u00a0 I got back to my Westerns where I belonged.\u00a0 Hambly would have been a great trail boss herding those longhorns from Texas to Chicago.\u00a0 Their fate in Chicago was never discussed.\u00a0 And there were no girls on the dusty trail to distract me.<\/p>\n
Girls!\u00a0 Teachers dealing with Grade 8 kids know just how powerful human chemistry can be at that age.\u00a0 Big changes happening.\u00a0 In ancient times those changes meant marriage and reproduction.\u00a0 It is fortunate however that males remain ignorant of these changes for a longer time.\u00a0 The girls mature earlier and look upon their male age cohort as totally immature.\u00a0 And even stupid.\u00a0 That fact prevents trouble.<\/p>\n
I had a very short romance with Beatrice Cioci in Grade 8.\u00a0 Nice girl with Italian parents who did not seem to want me hanging around when I walked her home a couple of times. The relationship ended in the Runnymede schoolyard when I was asked to join Beatrice and Eileen Wykes and some others , male and female, in a game of spin the bottle.\u00a0 New game to me.\u00a0 Take a milk bottle. Spin it.\u00a0 When it stops the bottle points to two people.\u00a0 And they are supposed to kiss.\u00a0 Kiss! Are you kidding?\u00a0 The game made me very nervous.\u00a0 Beatrice, by this time, recognized I was a bit of a goof anyway.\u00a0 I got out of there fast.\u00a0 End of romance. Back to Zane Grey and Luke Short.\u00a0 Beatrice and I went on to Humberside together but we never spoke again.\u00a0 Strange.<\/p>\n
Roger Pugh was a big time leader, at least to me he was.\u00a0 And his Dad\u00a0 must have been a great guy because he never caught us doing the ‘trick flip’…nasty thing.\u00a0 Gilmour Avenue did not go straight to Runnymede so there was a short cut needed.\u00a0 And it was one way shortcut only to be used coming home.\u00a0 Especially good if we could sucker someone to come along.\u00a0 Cut down one mutual drive to a board fence then vault the fence fast.\u00a0 The other side was not a lawn or garden. It was steep drop to the Pugh garage because the next street was about ten feet lower.\u00a0 We got used to the drop but a new kid would not know and end up flat on his bum or back or both.\u00a0 Seemed funny at the time.\u00a0 Then we would hotfoot it down the Pugh lane and head home.\u00a0 Mr. or Mrs. Pugh must have seen us. Their kids, Roger and Yvonne must have seen us.\u00a0 But nary a hostile word.\u00a0 Juvenile?\u00a0 That’s what immature males are good at. Better than spinning bottles for sure.<\/p>\n
On that subject, I must bring up the pea shooters. Everything had its season back around 1950.\u00a0 Late fall was pea shooting time. Pea shooters were long hollow tubes into which white beans or wrinkled dry peas could slide freely.\u00a0 And with a blast of air from the mouth, those peas could go some distance with great accuracy.\u00a0 Lots of fun shooting each other.\u00a0 More fun shooting at an unsuspecting target.\u00a0 Needless to say pea shooters were unwelcome by the general public.\u00a0 There was one house on Runnymede Road where there was a woman who did not like us.\u00a0 Obviously for good reason.\u00a0 I can sympathize with her now but back then she was regarded in the same category as the “wicked woman from the west” in the Wizard of Oz.\u00a0 So someone in our gang of boys.\u00a0 Hardly a real gang for we spent more time singing ‘Heart of my Heart’ and other pop songs than causing trouble.\u00a0 But this woman did not like us.\u00a0 So someone peppered her windows with peas and white beans on the way home from school.\u00a0 Might have been Ross Stevenson or the Rankin kids or maybe my brother Eric.\u00a0 I was blameless…as I remember.\u00a0 Selective memory at work here. Anyway, we continued home and were at\u00a0 supper when the knock came on the door.\u00a0 Who could that be?\u00a0 Dad answered the door and the next thing we heard was a loud “Get the hell off our verandah!”\u00a0 And a few other choice expressions.\u00a0 We had been followed home by the Runnymede Road lady.\u00a0 She would have been wiser to have gone to the principal at the school.\u00a0 The guy with the strap.\u00a0 Our dad had certain clear cut values most prominent of which was loyalty to his kids whether they were right or wrong. Mom asked “Who was that at the door Red?”\u00a0 His answer is best not printed here.<\/p>\n
Dad never darkened the door of Runnymede Public School parents nights.\u00a0 His job was to defend his kids verbally and, if necesssry physically.\u00a0 Like the time a kid took a shot at Eric with a BB gun as we walked to school.\u00a0 “Yowww!”\u00a0 He yelled.\u00a0 And we ran home. Dad was not at the racetrack that day.\u00a0 He hustled out the door and hammered on the BB shooters and then plowed that father a good one.\u00a0 The poor guy probably did not even know his son was targetting kids from an upstairs window.\u00a0 Maybe my imagination has made this incident more physical than it really was.\u00a0 Maybe it was just verbal which, with Dad, would be strong enough.\u00a0 He could string a lot of cusswords together before getting to a verb.<\/p>\n
Runnymede had some pretty good teams.\u00a0 i tried to excel but never seemed to make the grade.\u00a0 Track and Field Day at Christy Pits gave me one chance in the hundred yard dash and some of relays where we tried to pass a piece of wood from one to the other. Noting great on my part but at least I was part of the team. There was room for all of us not just the record holders.\u00a0 I got really nervous for I believed the measure of school success was determined by these inter school competitions.<\/p>\n
Baseball was the sport that scared me the most. I played but had a bad handicap being left handed and using a left handed catching glove.\u00a0 That does not work very well.\u00a0 Catch the ball with left hand…grab the ball with the right hand..throw down the glove…quickly pass the ball to the left hand…throw the ball to the first baseman.\u00a0 Time lapse usually guaranteed the runner would be safe.\u00a0 And I would look like a jerk.\u00a0 Did so too often. Banished to left or right field…as far from the action as possible and I fervently wished that no batter would hit the ball my way.\u00a0 Marvelled at the kids who were do natural at the game.\u00a0 I could hit passably but that was my limit.\u00a0 I knew there would be no laurels showered on Runnymede P.S. from my play.<\/p>\n
One thing I did have that some lacked and that was compassion. Even here, however, I was no shining knight of the round table. We had tied Edward* (not real name) up in our cardboard fort in Billy Jackson’s backyard.\u00a0 A huge and jerry built affair with three rooms held together by scavenged lumber and dozens of flattened cardboard boxes. In the centre was a huge Manitoba Maple that towered over surroounding houses.\u00a0 wooden slats and wooden perches made the fort seem like a pirate ship.\u00a0 Quite a place. For no particular reason we treated Edward as a captive that day. He was really part of our juvenile gang.\u00a0 Freed him after supper. Next day his mother called us all together.\u00a0 Only person missing was Edward.\u00a0 Red Stevension, Billy and Bobby Rankin,\u00a0 Gary Tushingham, Eric and myelf.\u00a0 We were ready for a lecture.\u00a0 What we heard I will never ever forget. Nor will I ever tie another person up in a fort\/pirate ship ever again. “Boys,” said Ed’s mom, “I want to tell you something about Edward that you need to know even if you are just kids.\u00a0 Edward will never change.\u00a0 He will be the same as he is now for the rest of his life.\u00a0 You boys on the other hand will get older.\u00a0 You will become grown men some day.\u00a0 Edward will grow but he will always be the same as he is now.\u00a0 I hope you understand me.\u00a0 I just wanted you to know.”\u00a0 There were tears in her eyes.\u00a0 There were tears in my eyes well.\u00a0 Terrible tears of guilt.\u00a0 Wish we had not tied him up in the fort.\u00a0 And true enough Edward did not change as we changed.\u00a0 By Grade eight I was no longer eating finger paint and was losing myself in great and not so great novels.<\/p>\n
There is a sequel to the story.\u00a0 Next day we tore down the fort. The lady next door, Mrs. Booker, gave us a quarter for doing so but we would have wrecked it anyway.\u00a0 The fort had lost its charm and we had learned a sad lesson about the human condition.\u00a0 Edward just drifted away from the rest of us.\u00a0 He began to seem younger than we were with every passing month.<\/p>\n
Compassion?\u00a0 Or was it guilt?\u00a0 Are compassion and guilt sometimes linked together.<\/p>\n
What is compassion anyway? Is it the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes.\u00a0 Or in the lingo of the western novels ‘to wear another’s mocassins.’\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thinking of Edward, alone, tied up in the fort with no supper.\u00a0 Tied up by what he thought were his friends.\u00a0 Guilt!<\/p>\n
Which leads me to bullies at Runnymede.\u00a0 All schools have them. Again, it seems to me that being bullied is also a rite of passage. And, again, the scene was Gilmour Avenue.\u00a0 There was a big tough boy who lived near us.\u00a0 He was older by a couple of years and built like a tank.\u00a0 A loner.\u00a0 We tried to stay away from him for he liked to fight. Unfortunately, one day I had no choice. We were walking together. I was super nervous but had to make some semblence of conversation so I said as nonchalantly as possible, “How’s your old car, Mike?” They had a couple of cars, one of which was something from the 1930’s. It was old to me but not to MIke.<\/p>\n
“Old?\u00a0 Don’t you go calling my car old,” Perhaps he added “you little prick” but maybe that was just inferred.\u00a0 Then he hauled off and punched me a good one.\u00a0 To Mike it may have seemed a love pat.\u00a0 Maybe that was how it was meant.\u00a0 It hurt but I didn’t cry. Growing up. Boys don’t cry.\u00a0 I stayed away from Mike thereafter. Now, as an adult, I wished I had reached out to him.\u00a0 He was so alone.\u00a0 Immigrant kid from Eastern Europe trying to make his way in new world. Older than the rest of us.<\/p>\n
I never told Dad about that incident.\u00a0 Mike’s Dad seemed to know a lot about horses and racetracks…and their conversations were peppered with some salty language.\u00a0 Who knows what would have happened. Dad regarded us as always in need of protection. Comforting but also disconcerting.<\/p>\n
MORE TO COME<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From: Alan Skeoch Date: January 29, 2014 11:53:27 PM EST To: Marshall Leslie, Alan Skeoch, Marjorie Skeoch Subject: Idyllic Runnymede P.S. 1949-1952 or thereabouts note:\u00a0 Marshall…this article is centred on Runnymede but really is designed to give readers\u00a0 a feeling for those times so long ago…more to come if you are interested…will add pictures. RUNNYMEDE […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions\/333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}