Posted on October 7, 2014 under Storytelling with no comments yet

Proof that I kissed the Blarney Stone

 

 

“If you ever go across the sea to Ireland…”

Galway Bay – Arthur Colahan

I was chatting with a friend the other day. It was a business meeting, but invariably these kinds of discussions always get around to the family.  I asked him casually, and a bit tongue in cheek, how many of his children were still “on the payroll”.  He knew what I meant.   As it turns out, his daughter is currently working for a year in Ireland, the home of leprechauns and Guinness beer.  She is employed in the city of Cork.

Upon hearing this I had an immediate flashback. I was lying flat on my back, holding on for dear life to two iron bars, kissing a stone that was centuries old.

Ten years ago I ventured to Ireland on a golf vacation. The first week I explored the island with my brother and we were joined for a second week by six lawyers from Vancouver.  Sounds like the start of a lawyer joke to me.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to arrive in Ireland (Shannon Airport, to be precise), take the wheel of a standard shift car rental and navigate your first roundabout … on the wrong side of the road? It is slightly disorienting and extremely nerve wracking.   Now try this with no sleep for the past thirty hours.  Welcome to Ireland.

On or about day five we headed for the city of Cork, the home of Blarney Castle. It would be deemed sacrilegious to pass through Cork without kissing the Blarney stone, not that either my brother or I needed extra help with “the gift of the gab”.  You see, our mother’s people were from Tralee so we already had the proper DNA to ensure verbosity.

We arrived on a particularly drab and miserable day. It was foggy, rainy and the air had a decided chill.  We saw the first sign for the castle.  It wasn’t the last.  Some places on this planet are simple to navigate. Either the streets are laid out on a grid or signage is easy to follow.  Let me say this to the Fathers (Mothers) of the city of Cork; your streets make no sense and your signs might as well be in Gaelic.  Oops.  Most of the signs were in Gaelic.

In most countries where we speak the language, asking for directions is a reasonably simple exercise. We hopscotched all over Cork trying to find someone who could explain to us (in English or a reasonably good facsimile) how to make our way to the Castle.  Oh, they all did a fine job explaining but we couldn’t understand a word they were saying.

“And the women in the uplands digging praties speak a language that the strangers do not know.”

Slightly exasperated, we arrived at the Castle, purchased our tickets and made our way to kiss the stone. To get to the top of the castle you have to navigate a very narrow, winding staircase which, in and of itself, is no big deal.  Except for one thing.  The stairs were a series of smooth stones completely exposed to the elements.  Treacherous does not even begin to describe the footing.  Walking on sidewalks after a mid-February ice storm is child’s play compared to our ascent to kiss the blessed stone.  Luckily they had stolen some huge ropes from local tug of war teams and these allowed us to reach the top.

The deed of kissing the stone was somewhat anticlimactic after several hours of trying to find the damn castle and risking life and limb to fulfill our quest. Travelling back down those same stairs was every bit as daunting an exercise as the ascent had been.  We were in dire need of refreshments.

With rain pelting on our backs we hustled to the car.

Our vehicle was locked. Not so unusual seeing that we were the ones who had locked it.  Problem was, the keys were inside the car.  And the downpour continued.

It took some time, skill and several strings of expletives to finally gain entry to the car.

We had indeed received the gift of the gab. Luckily it was “in a language that the natives did not know”.

Posted on October 4, 2014 under Storytelling with no comments yet

Check out Part 1 and Part 2

 

Life is a series of learning opportunities. You survive some hard knocks along the way, and when it comes to a job or career it can take a very long time to decide what you want to do.  The flip side is that most of us can quickly discover what we don’t want to do for the rest of our lives.

After a few months in the mill and having worked in two different departments, I was beginning to wonder if the administration saw some hidden aptitude in me and might be grooming me for a management position. Nothing could have been further from the truth.  Any talent I had was clearly buried under mountains of sawdust.

My last shift with the construction crew started and ended with an accident. We were building a new shipping and receiving dock and, of course, the old one had to be dismantled first. The beams were truly massive and despite having been in place for decades they still had a distinct smell to them … the smell of railway ties.  Come to think of it, I think that’s what they were.  I was helping a fellow worker move some of them.  They were very long and we had to take opposite ends.  One lesson I had learned early about lifting heavy objects was to bend at the knees to protect the back.  As we hoisted the timber, I felt a tear in my jeans followed by a stabbing pain in my thigh.  This plank had an old rusty nail protruding from one end and it had made a nasty gash in my leg.

I was hustled off to first aid and immediately dispatched to the hospital to get a tetanus shot. The needle found its target. Let’s just say that it got to the bottom of the matter.

Recognizing that I was now a serious threat to the mill (and myself!), I got my transfer papers and was moved to the maintenance crew.

All of the equipment in the mill had to be maintained. Time was money and they couldn’t afford to have work stoppages because of malfunctions.  My new job was to keep the machinery cleaned and oiled.  I wandered the floor like a gypsy, largely unsupervised, cleaning the huge machines that spit out sawdust and profits.  I spent a lot of time underneath conveyor belts and I will never forget the feeling of wet sawdust going down the back of my flannel shirt.

From Day One, my boss didn’t like me. It only took me two days to be able to say, with certainty, that the feeling was mutual.  He was a joyless, menacing troglodyte.  And I’m being charitable with this assessment.  No amount of draft beer at The Colony pub could shine a brighter light on him.

I had a pretty good work ethic and often finished my tasks long before the whistle blew to indicate the end of a shift. These gave me time to day dream and yes, even write letters.

My last day at the mill was like many others. With an hour to go and all my work done, I crawled under a conveyor belt, just far enough away to avoid the sawdust.  With pen in hand, I dashed off a note to my folks back home.  And then old sourpuss himself showed up unexpectedly.  He was in a near rage.  I had a broom beside me and after listening to his diatribe for about ten minutes; I grabbed it and threw it at him.  I said something to him and I don’t think it had anything to do with having a great day.  I had learned a lot of new language at the mill and I gave him my best shot.

I calmly walked to the time shack and punched out for the last time. I sauntered over to The Colony and sat with a frosty glass of beer, contemplating my next move.  Teaching, which had always intrigued me, was starting to look like a great alternative to a career in a saw mill.

And so the next chapter began … with a move back east.

Posted on October 1, 2014 under Storytelling with no comments yet

An X – planation

 

 

Run to the hills, run for your lives – Iron Maiden

You can smell fall in the air. The days are shorter and cooler and the leaves are just starting to turn colour.  The rhythm of life has resumed and we feel some form of normalcy after a summer of road trips, vacations and visitors.  And in a university town, the return of the students is a sure sign that summer is in the rear view mirror.

Living in such a town, you take the good with the bad. An influx of 4500 young people is good for the economy, even though the townspeople have to put up with a fair amount of shenanigans.

For as long as I can remember, St. F. X has had a stellar reputation in the sports arena.  Several of our teams have won conference titles, and a handful of squads have brought home national honors; most recently our women’s rugby team.

In the 1960’s it could have been argued that football was the most successful program at X under the steady and sometimes unyielding hand of Don Loney.  He had played professional ball and knew a lot about recruiting.  He tapped into large talent pools in Ontario and Quebec and was not reluctant to go south of the border into the New England States to find hot prospects.

Some of you might even remember hearing on the sports report, “He has recruited an end from New York”.

High school football was virtually non-existent in this province at that time so it was very rare to see a local boy on the gridiron.

As a youngster I patrolled the sidelines as a water boy for the St. F. X. football team. I watched Loney’s men rack up impressive and sometimes jaw dropping wins, year after year.  I clearly remember the scene in the locker room prior to each home game.  Don Loney had come from a military background and sometimes I wondered if the football team wasn’t just another battalion.  The pre-game ritual included rousing marches pumped into the dressing room to fire up the troops.  Snoop Doggy Dog would not have been impressed.

Eventually the rest of the conference caught up to Loney’s coaching and recruiting prowess, and by the early 70’s parity among the Atlantic universities had arrived.

In the fall of 1972, during my second year at X, I was the equipment manager for the football team. When the squad was out training and all of my duties had been fulfilled, I hung out with the punters.  That years’ assemblage was weak.  I’m being charitable.  As a water boy years earlier, Loney had taught me how to boot a football.  And so I could often be found kicking the ball around with the punters during practice.

The Friday before the first exhibition game, Loney tapped me on the shoulder and instructed me to go in and put on some gear. He wanted to see how I could do punting a football in full gear with twelve angry men running in my direction.  Saying no was not presented as an option.

You must be aware of two things: I was a scrawny specimen at the time and I had an enormous head of hair. Finding suitable equipment was a challenge … especially the helmet.

I ended up becoming the starting punter and in that exhibition match that weekend I happened to score the winning point. You could almost see the headlines in the paper: “Local Boy Does Good”.  It did cause quite a stir and there was a group of local businessmen who showed up at every practice to watch a new local legend.  Levi from the radio station referred to me as Leonardo de Punt.

The legend was short lived. As I mentioned earlier, the other teams in the league had caught up to X and that year was certainly the beginning of the end of the Loney era.  Our season ending game was a thriller … a 2-1 loss at Dalhousie.  That was as close as I ever saw the tough guy come to tears.

Homecoming is always a special time at any university. At St. F. X. the football game is still the centerpiece of the weekend.

Homecoming 1972. The grandstands at Oland Stadium were jam packed on a magnificent sun draped day.  The air was electric and we were primed to put on a great show for the alumni.  Early on in the game we were deep in our own end in a third down kicking position.  I trotted onto the field prepared to launch the pigskin.  In order to execute a good punt you must first receive the football from the center.  The ball sailed over my head.  I wouldn’t be kicking this ball.

A few weeks earlier, Loney had had a chat with me. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was never to run with the football. Ever.  He didn’t want to have a fatality on his hands.  I was told that in the unlikely event that the snap from the center was poor I was to simply fall on the ball and play dead.

I picked up the ball and turned around. I had visions of Pamplona and the running of the bulls.  Several very large, angry men were heading in my direction.  I did what any self-respecting long haired hippie would do.  I ran.

Fear is a tremendous motivator. I knew that I was not one of the fastest runners on that particular squad but on that day, at that particular moment, I discovered a gear I never knew existed.  I dodged a few of the slow linemen and headed for daylight.  I could hear the snarling and panting of the linebackers as they hunted me down.  Sixty yards later, I gingerly (and wisely) stepped out of bounds.

I was on the far sideline and had to make my way across the field. The roar from the crowd was deafening.  I had survived … for the time being.  I knew that I was about to come face to face with Don Loney.

As expected, I was in a wee bit of trouble. Hard on the heels of the old cigar butt angrily tossed at my feet was a list of expletives that only a seaman could appreciate.  He was furious that I had taken my life into my hands and that I had disobeyed his orders.  Remember – he was in the military and in that world disobedience is never tolerated.

My football career lasted one short season.

I thought about joining the track team the following year … as a sprinter.