Posted on February 11, 2014 under Storytelling with no comments yet

That’s me on the far right

Quickly.  Answer the following trivia questions: What nationality was Chopin?  Who said “I think, therefore I am”? (Hint: it wasn’t me).  Who was the main actor in “Cocktail”?  How many wives did Henry the Eighth have?  Who won the gold medal for cycling for Spain in the 1992 Olympics?

Let me confess.  I am no Ken Jennings.  Unless you just climbed out from under a rock or have never invested in a television, Ken Jennings was a trivia wizard winning 74 straight games on the television show “Jeopardy”.  Who eventually dethroned him?  Everyone knows that it was Nancy Zerg.  Everyone, that is, who has a computer and can Google for obscure bits of useless information.

I am attending a course on social media and before the start of each class, our instructor plays a trivia game as a warm up exercise.  We are paired off and my partner, Gwen, has discovered that I am lacking when it comes to trivia.  I have a solid but unspectacular university education and am reasonably well read, but when it comes to dredging up obscure motion picture characters, I am a total loser.

My wife and I go to Florida each November and one of our activities is joining a group of our friends and going to a local bar on trivia night.  I am fortunate that there are trivia teams because I would be embarrassed if I had to go it alone.  I normally sit there like a bump on a log watching a ball game on one of the 50 or so TV sets adorning the walls of the bar.  This past year our team won for the first time, mainly because my brother was with us.  He has had his nose in a book since his umbilical cord was cut and knows something about everything.

Back in my high school days there was a very popular television series called “Reach for the Top”, which pitted high schools from across the province against each other in a glorified trivia game.  Our grade twelve class had many very bright students from which to choose to make up the team.  Four of the five could be considered brilliant.

So, why was I on the team, you might rightfully ask?  The other four could legitimately be called academics and they weren’t sports and music freaks like me.  That was my principle role on the team.

We travelled to Sydney to face off against the best and brightest from around the province.

If you are a golfer, you know all about tournaments.  You get to play a practice round the day before the actual competition starts, to get a feel for the layout, the speed of the greens and the location of the 19^th hole.  Reach for the Top is no different except there is no 19^th hole.  You get to do a trial run with the hot lights of the studio shining on you.

The quiz hosts asks a question and each contestant has a buzzer that is hit when you know, or think you know, the answer.  The practice round and the first set of five questions were on golf.  As an avid golfer at the time, I had no trouble knocking off all five answers in warp speed.  The next set of questions was on classical music and I was spitting out Handel and Bach like a baseball coach spitting out sunflower seeds.  The questions were sweet music to my ears.

The practice round ended and my fellow classmates and coach showered me with praise.

And then the action began in earnest.  Physics, chemistry, Greek mythology, old movies, ancient history, mathematics formulae.  I sat in the sweltering studio lights sweating bullets.  The moderator might as well have been speaking Swahili, as I sat there in a state of paralysis, with my dorky black rimmed glasses and soup bowl haircut.  I did not answer a single question.  I resembled the proverbial “deer in the headlights”.  My buzzer could have been disconnected and no one (especially me), would have been the wiser.

After more than three decades of daily instruction, my wife contends that I’m still a work in progress.  Obviously life-long learning is not a trivial pursuit.

 

Posted on February 10, 2014 under Monday Morning Musings with no comments yet

Wow! What a magnificent weekend. Cold, sunny days with not a cloud  in the sky. Over the years, I have become more and more appreciative of sunrises and sunsets. On Saturday, I was out for a walk with my former running partner, Charlene, her husband, Ben and their dog, Bailey. We witnessed a sunrise that was beyond description. A flaming golden orb came up over the horizon with the rays hitting the white snow  , producing an image that was absolutely stunning. As many of us who take amateurish photos with our cell phones  know, they never do justice.

I received lots of feedback from my story “Band on The Run” which was published on Saturday. A lot of locals remembered the bands The Escorts and The Strangers. No surprise that we were  both playing Beatles tunes during that time, as we celebrate the 50th. anniversary of the “Fab Four” coming to America.

I would like to give a special welcome to those of you from across Canada who recently signed on to my Week45 Facebook page.

I had a lot of fun on the weekend writing a story about an apartment that I lived in back in the 1970’s. You would hate to admit it publically, but at one time or another, you probably lived in a dumpy apartment or shared a house with a bunch of friends that made “Animal House” look like the Taj Mahal. The apartment building in which I lived in Victoria, B.C. was simply put, a dive. It’s primary attraction was price. I paid $85. a month. Besides a roof over my head, the added bonus was that I lived with the oddest assortment of humanity. Coming up soon, The Bongo Pad.

I am a big fan of lifelong learning. I am currently taking two courses on “social media” as I try and unravel the mysteries of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Having said that, I am not much when it comes to trivia. I was never great at Trivial Pursuit and when I go to trivia night at the pub in Florida, I sit there most times like a bump on a log. Back in the late ’60’s I was part of the high school team that took part in Reach For The Top. It was a television series pitting high schools across the province against each other for trivia supremacy. My performance was less than stellar as you will find out in “Reach For The Bottom.”

I still plan to publish a story on the joys of being a glasses wearer for nearly sixty years. I tried contacts once and had corrective eye surgery which didn’t work out, so I’m still stuck with my lifelong friends. Look for “Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory” coming in the next week or so.

And don’t forget, it’s Valentine’s day this Friday. Surprise your loved ones with a copy of my book. I will inscribe it with sweet nothings and will make a VD special offer: 2 books for $25 ( regular price $15. each ). You need to get them from me.

Have a great week.

Posted on February 8, 2014 under Storytelling with one comment

 

 

“Get your motor runnin’ … head out on the highway…”

Born to be Wild – Steppenwolf

Do you remember?  The Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons.  The Lovin’ Spoonful, the Rolling Stones and Elvis.  The list is a long one but you catch my drift.  This was the music playing on the Top 40 back in the ‘60’s.  And this was a golden age of live music and every band worth a lick was copying these musicians and bringing their songs to life at dances in every town and village in the country.

Antigonish was no exception.

If there was such thing as a battle of the bands back then, the two that went toe to toe, in the friendliest way possible, were The Strangers and The Escorts.

The Strangers, simply put, were terrific.  The Lowe brothers along with Jody and Pat mastered any song they touched.  One of my favorites to this day is the classic hit by Paul Revere and The Raiders, “Him or Me”.   I have seen many great acts over the years but The Strangers will always be one of my favorite groups of all time.  Am I just a hopeless romantic for the good old days?  Possibly, but they were that good.

The Strangers plied their trade in our neck of the woods and were most often seen playing at the Parish Centre.  When they weren’t performing at that iconic venue, then there’s a very good chance that another local band was on the stage: The Escorts.  The band had many configurations, but when I played in the band in the late ‘60’s I was joined on stage my two of my brothers, Mike and Don, along with Joe on rhythm guitar and Richard on drums.

For an eighteen year old kid, it was as good as it got.  I had an opportunity to be on stage, singing harmonies and putting some cash in my pocket.  And maybe a chance to impress a member of the opposite sex.  That was wishful thinking.

Besides performing in our home town, we took our show on the road and played at dances and graduations throughout North Eastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton.  It was not uncommon in the summer to do back-to-back nights in Baddeck and Ingonish.

And speaking of Ingonish, that was where my love affair with that part of the world began in earnest.  We had a regular Saturday night gig at St. Peter’s Hall for four summers in a row.  And what a gig it was.  Being in close proximity to several camp grounds, it was not uncommon to turn over three different audiences in one night, with the accompanying increase in gate proceeds. This was great because back then we split the gate with the parish.

The matriarch overseeing the hall was Mrs. D. and she kept a close eye on things because, back then, it was strictly a cash economy.  I vividly recall at the end of each night brother Don, who acted as treasurer for the band, arriving back at our accommodations with a grocery bag full of cash.  Ones and two dollar bills. fivers and ten spots and the odd twenty and fifty.  After taking out the money to pay on our loan for equipment, everyone got an equal share of what was left.  To this day I never had so much cash in my pocket … literally and figuratively.

Very often, the next day at Mass, the priest would be watching carefully to make sure that the band returned some of the profits in the collection.  The Lord giveth and He taketh away.

Back in the late’60’s James Brown popularized the dance “The Hustle” with his tune, “Get on the Good Foot”,  a precursor to break dancing.  Another form of brake dancing was invented on a traumatizing trip coming down Cape Smokey after a dance.

The band had acquired a “new to us” half ton truck ($800 worth) to transport band members and equipment.  Another new purchase was a Hammond organ picked up in Sydney the previous day.  The aforementioned treasurer had noticed a few days earlier that the brakes on the truck were faulty; so much so that he jury rigged (disabled) the brake on the front passenger wheel.  I still haven’t figured out the mechanical logic behind this.

Driving without operational brakes on level terrain is dangerous but manageable.  Descending a 925 foot mountain is another matter entirely.  The combination of five band members and hundreds of pounds of gear put additional strain on an already fragile braking system.  The driver realized very quickly that not only could he not stop the truck, he could not even get it to slow down.  He stood on the brakes, applying his significant weight to the effort.

Somebody commented that they smelled smoke in the cabin.  No kidding!  The pungent aroma of burning asbestos became apparent as the truck hurtled down the mountain.

We band members, all Catholics, may have been a little rusty in the prayer department at this stage in life.  On this day, more than one of us muttered a silent Hail Mary, fearing that we may just have played our final gig.

The cabin was completely filled with smoke (Cape Smokey smoke) as we neared the bottom of the mountain.  And then we saw it.  A runaway lane, built especially for logging trucks.

Moments later, the truck came to a halt, aided by Mother Nature in the form of a stand of alders at the end of the escape route.

After extracting tree branches from the bumper and grill, we got back on the road.  We flipped on “Friendly 58” CJFX radio.  The unmistakable voice of Del Shannon could be heard singing his classic 1961 hit, “Runaway”.