[MG1]

Where are all the old farts?

Thunderbirds chocolate bars. Biggest thing to hit the stores back in?????


ok, that has nothing to do with Vancouver. Back on track.

Back in the day, Oppenheimer Park was home to the Industrial Baseball League. I'm not sure if anything like this still exists. Oppenheimer park, as of today, has no signs of a full size baseball park ever existing, but it was very popular years ago. The industrial league had representative teams from municipalities Burnaby, Coquitlam, and a few other places. Home town team was the Vancouver Longshoremen. I worked at the baseball park as batboy, scoreboard attendee, ball shagger, etc. I worked for 25 cents a game as a batboy and made 50 cents as a score keeper. It was actually a two person job. We had a box full of heavey metal plates that weighed, what felt like, a ton each. We hooked these metal plates that had numbers neatly painted on them up on the scoreboard on bent nails. Pretty primitive, but it was like the most prestigiuous job ever. Let me tell ya, if you messed up, the crowd got on your case real fast. Ball shagging was right up there, too. Because the operator of the ball park was on a limited budget, baseballs were to be retrieved by a shagger. As a shagger, you risked life and limb chasing homeruns and doubles. That meant dodging traffic on Powell Street and Cordova. Foul balls, too. A buddy of mine, who wasn't careful got run over by a speeding car. He survived with a few cuts here and there. Rolled off the hood. Back in those days, cars were made of real steel. If you got hit dead on, that what became of you, dead. When the balls got dirty, the owner/operator used a cool homemade device that consisted of an old bench grinder that had erasers mounted on it. Worked really well. Admission to the games was 5 cents. At the end of the game, I got paid in nickels, duh. I would treat myself to a soda, which was 7 cents back then. No deposit, but you did get money for empty bottles. I collected bottles after the games and made extra money that way. I think the rate was one cent. Man, those were the days.

I said my family was the poorest of the poor. I lived in a rooming house building, where all the families there, about 20 or so, shared the same bathroom facilities. The building was run down, full of mice and cockroaches. My god, cockroaches. I still hate those fucking things. To this day I still have nightmares about them. The way they scatter when you turn the lights on or open the doors into the room. The stove........ I gotta stop. It freaks me out. As for the neighbourhood, Powell Street was no cake walk. At night, the hookers and drug addicts took over the street. I lived above a night club. Danned, you think you have it bad with a pie plate, try deep bass all night long and neon lights flashing all the time into your bedroom. In the morning, there would be a drunk on the doorstep to the building. Piss and whatever everywhere. Once in a while if the rear doors to the building were left unlocked, a drug addict would sneak into the bathroom and shoot up. Many a needles and spoons left behind.

I look back at the living conditions I went through as a child and wonder now how the hell I got through that shit, but at the same time, they were the best times I ever had. Never a dull moment. We played hard and had lots of fun. A colleague of mine once told me you are richer than a lot of rich people out there. At the time, I never really understood, but now I really do.

I don't know why I am spilling my guts out here on RS, but I feel it has some importance. I visit the old neighbourhood every once in a while. I cannot help but to shop at Kay's Seafood or Sunrise Market, or New World Confectionary. The same people still run the place. They still recognize me. I walk the streets and I get a real strange feeling. Most outsiders walk around that neighbourhood and they get stared at. I don't. Kind of freaky.

I took my kids out to the neighbourhood a few times. I stopped taking them there, because one of them said to me, yeah, yeah, dad we get it....... What's that saying again? There by the grace of god go I.

Poverty. It sucks.