High School

In September 1964 I started high school at Western Canada High School. The School was about 2 miles from my house so I was able to get there on my Honda in about 15 minutes. My classroom was on the second floor of the West Wing; there were lots of new people from all over the south side of the city. My classmate CJ, who sat next to me, was from Ogden, he suggested I come out and visit him some weekend. Now Bowness, Forest Lawn, and Ogden had reputations as being tough districts, I mentioned to one of my classmates that I was going out to Ogden, he replied that people get knifed out there. Anyways, one nice Saturday in September I hopped on my Honda and made my sojourn out to Ogden to visit CJ. It was quite interesting, Ogden was like a time warp it reminded me of the 50s, it was working class district and a lot of the residents worked in the CPR's Ogden shops. CJ introduced me to some other students from Western, who had motorcycles; we went riding around the district, and down to a place by the Bow River called the Beaverdam. It was like a big island isolated by a channel that beavers had used. I found out later that this was a big camping site for the First Nations people, and they had used it as a buffalo jump. Ogden was home to the cities Single Men's Hostel that was located since 1935 in the old Ogden Hotel that had been built in 1912, more on this later. Across the street was Chuck and Beulah’s dairy bar, affectionately called the "Greasy Spoon" this was the local hangout, and reminded me later of American Graffiti. Two blocks down on 26 Street was Cable’s and Featherstone general stores, they were old-fashioned stores with oiled wooden floors and along with South Hill and Millican were the only grocers until Safeway's built in 1966.

Back to my education, I rode my Honda to school on till Winter set in, then I had to ride the Calgary Transit Systems buses, I had to walk three blocks down to 33rd Ave. to catch No.7 the South Calgary to 14th St and 17th Ave S.W. where I had to transfer to one of the Killarney buses that went down17th Ave to 6th Street where the school was. I hated riding buses, I always seemed to just miss one and have to wait 15 minutes for the next one. The only interesting thing I saw riding the bus was during December 1964. There was a café called Jimmy's on the NW corner of 14th St and 17th Ave SW that had caught on fire and burned during the night. It was cold winter weather at that time and the whole building was like an Ice Palace, from all the water the fire department had used trying to put out the fire. There was an interesting accident on the NE corner of the intersection in 1920 that my father talked about. There was a business called Crooks Drugstore at that time there were street cars that had to make a sharp right turn at the bottom of 14th St hill, a streetcar coming down the hill had a brake failure, and could not make the sharp right-hand turn, and ended up on its side, inside of the drugstore. I have attached a photo by Calgary photographer, W. J. Oliver. Not much exciting happened at school, and finally spring arrived and I was able to ride my Honda again. One evening in April I was driving home from Ogden, it was dark, and I was three blocks from home, going up 29th Ave behind King Edward School on 16th St. there was a controlled intersection was stop signs on both sides of 29th Ave, which gave me the right of way. There was a car stopped at a stop sign on the North side of the intersection, a car ahead of me went through this intersection safely. I approached the intersection and the car stopped a big 1958 Buick decided to proceed into the intersection, he was on a hill so he really gunned it, resulting in him hitting my bike square on. Luckily I was thrown from the bike, and ended up landing on my tailbone on the SW side of the intersection. My bike was a mess with both front tires of the Buick sitting on top of it. I was wearing rubber boots, and the bumper of the Buick drove my brake pedal through the boot and in to the ball of my right foot, they took me by ambulance to the General Hospital for x-rays, which they looked at, and seeing no fractures they sent me home. My family doctor looked at the x-rays next day and found three fractures in my right ankle. So this laid me up at home for the rest of the school year. I failed some of my classes, and would have to make that up. In the fall I was to register for Grade 11, but me and a buddy from Ogden decided to spend our textbook money on beer. The school was really full this year due to the closing of Central High School, so by the time I got around to registering most of the classes were full, I ended up with one class of Chemistry at nine o'clock in the morning, and one class of Social Studies at 3 p.m. in the afternoon. The chemistry class was really hard, I found out later they were teaching from the wrong textbook, one from grade 12 so it was no wonder it was so difficult. After a couple of weeks of this, I was fed up and decided to quit school and go look for a job. Me and my friend Dave went looking for a job we were going from business to business in the Bonnybrook District, we went into a place called Meldon Roofing, and asked if there were hiring, to which they said no. We started walking down the road a couple of blocks, when a truck from Meldon's pulled up beside us, and the driver said he needed one of us. So we flipped a coin, and Dave won the job, which I found out later was a job from hell. Working around hot asphalt, and lots of physical work, pulling up pails of fine gravel to the rooftops of the buildings they were repairing. I continued on and through a friend found a job at Canadian Trail Mobile, a shop where they repaired truck trailers. My job was in the Store Department doing inventory, and later sweeping up the shop. After a couple of weeks I Was laid-off, and in search of employment once again.