Camp Swampy Trailer Park

Camp Swampy Trailer Park – Fort Polk, LA

October 2011

From late June to early September 2011, I lived in a trailer park at Tigerland, North Fort Polk, LA, aka Camp Swampy. Why the Army named it Tigerland is beyond me but I think it has something to do with the Viet Nam war days when soldiers trained at Polk before shipping out. Today, Tigerland is a base for military personnel going through Combat Advisor training prior to deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq; it is overseen by the 162^nd Infantry Brigade. Why the soldiers renamed it Camp Swampy is far easier to understand than the Tigerland name especially to those of us who trained there in July and August, the months with the most oppressive and swampy Louisiana weather. I never did see alligators at Camp Swampy but I can vouch for the snakes, black widow spiders, and some larger critters such as wild pigs and ponies so I’m willing to bet 

the alligators actually were in the mix in some swamp or another; we just didn’t cross paths.

I arrived at Camp Swampy after completing 77 days of school house training and 2 weeks of pre-mobilization at The Landing, Fort Leavenworth, KS. Each member of our class was housed in their own hotel suite in near-by Kansas City, which incidentally, is a great town. Our rooms had kitchens with full sized refrigerators and dishwashers; housekeepers came in regularly to vacuum, dust, and change the linens. The hotel also served free breakfast and an evening “happy hour” snack bar. Additionally, each of us was given a rental car for which our gas payments were reimbursed, plus we received a daily per diem for meals. We lived close to many, many (chain) restaurants and bars, Zona Rosa Mall, every big box store you can think of, and several nice grocery stores. At the time, most of us thought we were sort of hard done by, being away from our families and our usual routines, but hell, in retrospect we were living large!

Of 29 people in the Human Terrain System (HTS) March class, I think 18 of us hung on until graduation. Along the way the other students either bailed or did not make the cut at some point or another when we had to reach a certain goal in order to stay in the program. At any rate, on the last weekend of June those of us who had successfully graduated and sworn in as Department of the Army Civilians (DACS) flew to Alexandria, LA about an hour from Fort Polk where we were picked up by our liaison officer and toted off to Camp Swampy.

We arrived mid Sunday afternoon and Tigerland was surprisingly quiet. We were assigned our barracks and had a quick look around after dumping off our heaps of luggage in our rooms. While we were not actually housed in trailers, Tigerland was highly reminiscent of a trailer park the way the barracks were laid out in rows on little gravel roads just wide enough for, say, a half ton truck with giant wheels and a shotgun rack in the back window to race through. The barracks were medium sized modular buildings with 8 bedrooms and two latrines at the end of the hall. Thank god they were air conditioned and we had plenty of hot water but we shared rooms and there were only 6 showers and 4 toilets for as many as 20+ people in each building. (Now I don’t know about you, but if I’m in charge of a situation like that where a bunch of women are sharing a bathroom, I am not giving them weapons … just saying.) This being the army, males and females lived in separate barracks although I have extremely reliable intel confirming there was some very shady and clandestine fraternizing going on behind the scenes in the laundry room, team rooms, and other shadowy places. As it turns out, Swamp People can be very creative…

Historically the Camp Swampy trailer park has a shifting dynamic that more or less reflects the character of each class. Still, the overall vibe is constant and some things don’t change much from class to class like damp uniforms hanging from improvised clothes lines strung between buildings, stinky army boots dangling from metal handrails of barracks steps in order to air them out before the next morning, people hanging-out smoking and (often) drinking late into the night, or playing poker on top of Styrofoam beer coolers while sitting on Wal-Mart camping chairs strategically stationed on what passes for the lawn in order to catch the best view of who was coming and going. I do, however, think that Class 128 – my class – was maybe more “lively” or “spirited” than some other classes that had come through Tigerland. We adopted the trailer park – hell, we embraced the trailer park and all of its funky red neck culture. Its attributes were our attributes and we were A-OK with that. After all, as it turns out, Combat Advisor training actually prepared us for life in a real deal trailer park, although somehow I don’t think that was the Army’s intention.

Moreover, the trailer park was the great equalizer in a lot of ways. Our class of 46 people was made up of the HTS DACs, an Ohio National Guard OMLT (Operations, Mentoring, and Liaison Team), a selection of Air Force reservists, plus one lone Navy helicopter pilot - all of differing ranks and ages. From the Puppies to the Mullah, and from the advocate of genocide to the small town paramedic, we covered a lot of bases. We were not one of those nicely coordinated classes all from the same service branch, sharing a similar culture, and wearing identical uniforms. Oh, not even close; we looked like a bunch of mutts in our various get-ups and man-oh-man, did we bring a range of cultures and experiences to the table. But right off the bat we had one thing in common - the trailer park – and we enthusiastically took it on and made it our own.

Our section of the trailer park was across the street from the DFAC (mess hall), gym, and MWR (sort of like the community center). Just down the street was a little Shopette that carried some essentials like mini shampoos and conditioner, soap, razors, magazines, and things like that but mostly it was where you went for snacks and booze. It didn’t have a huge stock of alcohol but it had a pretty good selection of beer and besides, if you were in need of a whole keg of beer, for example, you could always hitch a ride to the Class 6 Military Liquor Store at the PX. Next to the Shoppette was a small Pizza Hut. Bottom line: we had booze, chips, and pizza almost within spitting distance of home. You could walk to the Shopette, buy a Styrofoam cooler, fill it with Bud Light and ice, snag some Doritos and teriyaki beef jerky, then slap the whole kit and caboodle on your shoulder, pop in a plug of dip, and be home in 10 minutes. Not a bad set up. And just think, the army actually prepared us to handle this critical mission with finesse by making us run around in the sun for days on end wearing full battle rattle. Once you took all that army weight off of your body, throwing a cooler of beer on one shoulder seemed like a reward.

The lifecycle of the trailer park was ten weeks – the length of the Combat Advisor course – and I do believe that in our ten weeks Class 128 set some type of record for most “visits” to the Company or Battalion Commander’s office to discuss some allegation or another. Seriously though, most of it was made up bullshit started by crazy people with an axe to grind, but think about it – don’t you imagine that every trailer park needs a good gossip mill to keep the world turning? Some of the rumours that took flight actually were pretty damn inspired. I would have to say the winner was the one about a male officer regularly having 3-ways with two female class members in a team room located in a male barracks. It didn’t matter that no one ever saw this go down (bad pun!) or offered any proof of this ménage a trois, the idea was so off the wall that no one cared that it was in no way, shape, or form true. It was great theatre if nothing else and it helped to pass the time talking about how this could possibly be going on right under our noses and none of us had been lucky enough to have seen it!

There also were charges made that students were threatening other students, sexually harassing folks they had never even acknowledged, and this being a trailer park, there just had to be reports of fighting. “Allegedly” there were one or two end-of-the-night locals vs. military fights in Leeseville that “maybe” spiraled into a few punches later being thrown in the trailer park but who knew for sure. Then again, what else is a guy to do when he’s had the better part of a case of Bud chased with enough Jack and Coke to float a small navy and nothing better to do with himself than get all riled up? As one of my esteemed colleagues noted, “the only real way to end a trailer park party is with a fight.” So that is what might or might not have happened, maybe kinda sorta, once or twice …

Combat Advisor training – the real reason we were at Tigerland – is intense, especially for those of us without a military background. Our days started with formation and PT at 06:00, that is unless it was one of those days when we drew weapons at o’dark thirty, staged our vehicles, had breakfast at the DFAC, and were on the road with our convoy by 06:30 enroute to one of the many Tigerland ranges for weapons training. We worked hard six days a week often for 12-16 hours a day, but come Saturday night we were ready to play even harder. And that is exactly what happened. Surprisingly the local constabulary never made a house call (trailer park call?) in our entire ten weeks.

Saturday night parties in the trailer park were customary but we had a few that were real doozies. More often than not, there would be a group of folks who in the early evening would set up shop on the little gravel road between the female barracks and the first male barracks. They would hold down the fort until everyone else came home. People returned from Leeseville in waves – some right after dinner at the Wagon Wheel Steak House, Hana Japanese, or one of the many Mexican joints; others came back after a few post-dinner Monkey Wrenches or Octane 93s at the Daiquiri Station; and the rest would wander in all wound up after the Leeseville nite clubs closed. By 02:00 there would be critical mass on the trailer park road. 20 or 30+ lawn chairs would be scattered around with folks smoking, drinking, and even belly dancing (no, not kidding). Most times there was music - usually someone’s IPod shuffle - but towards the end of our stay there was a guy from one of the new classes who brought out his guitar and played while we sang old songs that we thought we knew all the words to but as it turned out really only knew the chorus and flubbed the rest.

In the course of one particularly active Saturday night some of the guys got tattoos (with interesting artwork – “titties and a moustache” on one guy’s butt, a happy face on another’s toe where the nail was missing) and one of the gals took off her shirt on the dance floor at a Foam Party at a Leeseville nite club and traded it with a local guy for his shirt because she liked it better than hers. (She later explained that at the time she thought it was OK to take off her shirt in a bar because she was wearing a fancy bra...) Belly dancing lessons were given in the trailer park after much beer and Jack Daniels was consumed, and of course, clandestine romance simmered. Later that night, or rather early the next morning, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 04:00, one of the gals decided she needed a shower after the party wound down. Needless to say she was more than a little toasted. After showering and wrapping herself in a towel, she walked back to her room only to discover the door was locked. Now here’s the thing: we were not given keys for our rooms so we put duct tape over the latch to keep our doors from locking. Well, maybe not all of us did it because this gal was definitely locked out of her room, in the middle of the night, wearing nothing but a short towel. As she described it the next day, she decided the solution was to try and break in through her bedroom window. She pulled a chair outside and put it under her window, climbed up, and attempted to reach the pane but oops ... the window was too high. Back inside she went and stood in the hallway for quite some time staring at the wall trying to make herself focus so she could figure out what to do. After a bit, it registered that she was looking directly at a phone so she picked up the receiver and dialed the number for emergency services. Some guy with a master key came over and let her back into her room. Apparently he was not prepared for her to be standing there in just a little towel because that seemed to make his job all the more difficult for him. Bottom line is she got into her room without losing her towel and the next day it made for an excellent story. Sadly there was no 

photographic evidence …

As romance blossomed in the trailer park, one couple actually took the plunge and legally were married. We joked that it was our trailer park shot gun wedding – the one thing that was missing from our portfolio – but in fact there was no shotgun needed. Colleagues of mine from the HTS program had been dating quietly while we were in Kansas and by the time we got to Polk they were crazy in love. It didn’t take long for the rest of us to spot this and once the cat was out of the bag we began lobbying for a wedding. As it turned out they were thinking the same thing and on the weekend before we graduated, they were married in the little wooden chapel at South Polk. The chaplain was a laid back dude in cowboy boots who performed a very touching ceremony. He told us there had been many weddings in that chapel over the years but this would be the last one because the army in all of its wisdom was tearing down the little wooden chapels and replacing them with modern structures. What a shame. The reception was held, of course, back at the trailer park. We had a big BBQ with two kegs of beer, loads of hamburgers and hotdogs, and cupcakes with Care Bears on them (it was what the Wallyworld bakery had fresh that morning). After the bride and groom left for their 36 hour honeymoon in beautiful downtown Leeseville, the party continued way into the night as we shared our kegs with just about anyone who walked by. That was the night I got my tattoo but that is a whole other story.

Our final week at Polk was crazy as we wrapped up our training with the three day capstone exercise in “the field.” Thursday afternoon was graduation and immediately after people began to split for vacation. We’d been together for ten weeks, night and day, and had become like family with all of the same drama, bickering, and jealousy you would expect of the Louisiana Swamp People we’d become. However, we also had a lot of great times, forged a lot of bonds that will last lifetimes, and shared some truly remarkable experiences that no one outside of our trailer park and Class 128 will ever understand. And that is the real reason the trailer park worked for us. We had our own little universe, inside the Tigerland universe, inside the wider Army universe. It was our Camp Swampy trailer park/Combat Advisor bubble and it worked. And as ridiculous and frustrating as it was, some days I really miss it.

The Daiquiri Station - Leesville, LA

Week 1 at Camp Swampy was over and it definitely was time to blow off a little steam -- OK a lot of steam -- because god knows it had been a crazy week. And since it also was the Thursday night before a 4 day weekend, we were primed for action and a little strategic investigation of the cultural overlays in Leesville, the town just outside of the Fort Polk main gate.

Our primary mission, aligning with the Commander’s CCIRs and PIRs was to check out the local wildlife and observe them in their native habitat. Our secondary mission was to get stupid, something we knew we could handle. A warno was issued and the mission restated and defined as a recon detail to The Daiquiri Station in booming downtown Leesville. Transport was secured, GPS locked in, and a designated driver in place along with Navy helo support for backup in case we needed immediate air evac (assuming we just happened upon a helicopter…) Contingency plans were formulated and relevant personnel were alerted and standing by. We were confident that our mission was solid and on track.

The Daiquiri Station is one of several places in Leesville that features a wide selection of flavoured daiquiris. It is located on the main road that goes through town where most of the “action” takes place: Burger King, McDonalds, the Wagon Wheel Steak House, and numerous nail salons, gas stations, night clubs, strip joints, and sundry other shops and service centers. The Daiquiri Station is at the far end of town from Fort Polk which really doesn’t say much because Leesville isn’t that big so a few more blocks in any direction really doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference.
It was not early/not yet late when 4 of us rolled into The Daiquiri Station. Truly, it is one of the coolest places you will ever visit. Once upon a time it was a gas station so there is a fairly large parking lot surrounding the building with designated parking spots for motorcycles and a special lane marked out with stanchions and chains that leads to the drive-through pick-up window. Honest to god, you can get take-out daiquiris and yes, it is fully legal. The only trick is that you can’t have an unwrapped straw sticking out of the plastic lid that covers the Styrofoam cup containing your daiquiri. Apparently no one is concerned that people might take the lid off and drink straight from the cup while driving but they are concerned that people will put the straw in the daiquiri and somehow end up with a DUI. Logically this seems senseless to most folks but here in the depths of Louisiana it makes perfect sense: who in their right mind would drink a daiquiri without a straw? No straw = no daiquiri. It is just that simple. Life does not need to be so complicated, as it turns out.

We parked the car at the back of the lot by the swampy little pond and looked for alligator eyes peering back at us. Nothing seemed to be moving so we determined that the car was safe and unlikely to be pulled into the swamp by an overzealous alligator looking for a new set of wheels to park in his alligator garage. We walked around to the entrance at the front and crossed the deck that extends out from the building where the big service bay door used to be. Actually the garage door is more or less still there because it can be opened exposing the whole inside of the bar or closed as it was on a subsequent visit when we saw a bunch of serious looking old guys sitting inside at a substantial round table playing cards. The Daiquiri Station is not a big place; it’s really only the dimensions of the former gas station’s shop/office area. There are a few high-tops, a couple of regular tables, two TV screens (one was playing a polo match, of all things), an old jukebox, and behind the bar, a wall of daiquiri-slushies with cool names like monkey wrench (banana), lemonator, and 93 octane (orange). Robin was tending bar. We like Robin. She is 40ish, friendly yet reserved, and attractive in a home-grown sort of way. While I was waiting for her to prep my drink (the el grando monkey wrench), I started talking to a local guy who was nursing a beer at bar. I asked him if he’d had a good day and he proceeded to tell me he’d been at the DMV trying to get his driver’s license back. He did not offer an explanation of why he’d lost it in the first place so I decided it was not good form for me to inquire. Apparently, he got into a “discussion” with the DMV clerk and instead of letting the clerk have his way in order for our guy to collect his driver’s license and escape without incident, our guy decided he needed to take a stand against the injustice of it all (I know. I wasn’t following either.) He said something of consequence to the clerk and then stormed out … without his driver’s license. He and I pondered this situation for a moment because he was going to have to go back at some point to try again to get his license. In the end, however, he didn’t think it would be a problem and we left it at that. All of this led to me asking what I thought was the obvious question of “so how did you get here tonight if you aren’t driving?” and him responding with the not quite so obvious reply of “through the woods.” I might have known.

Robin gave me my daiquiri and I joined my fellow warriors/recon scouts at the table. We noted that as a field research project there were few places in this world as culturally rich as The Daiquiri Bar. Just then, another guy – a short, skinny dude about 50 years old with long hair pulled back in a ponytail wearing a black T shirt, and jeans-- came over and asked us if we would like to buy raffle tickets on a gun which was a fundraiser for some local family. I’d seen him pull in to the parking lot a while earlier on a motorcycle as big as he was. He only had three tickets left at $1 each so I said I would buy them because this was all so highly amusing to me. I said I didn’t want the gun if I won and told him to put his name or the bartender’s name on the tickets instead. This caused no end of consternation; here’s dude yelling across the bar to his girlfriend about how to handle this, whose name to use, how to spell it correctly. It was a riot! In the end I believe he wrote his girlfriend’s name on the tickets and everyone was happy.

The Daiquiri Station not only has slushies with cool names, there’s also a menu of shots with exotic names that one needs to try. The list is posted on a blackboard that hangs beside the wall of slushie machines. First up for us was the Chicken Fucker. Yup. That is the name. It is a lemony sort of thing if I remember correctly (but I would not swear to that). Next time we will test the Alien Secretions. A couple of those shots and a daiquiri or two and I guarantee you are going to appreciate Louisiana like you never did before.

A few hours later we wrapped up our field research. We’d “interviewed” several locals, did a little participant observation, and tested some of the local customs and foodways. We’d also had a lot of weird liquor, admired acres of body art (aka tattoos), and talked to guys with odd teeth and interesting hair, and women with really tight shirts and jeans.  All in all, even though we had gathered loads of data to analyze, we decided that some follow up research was going to be necessary and it was highly likely we would need a return mission to The Daiquiri Station. Soon. Very soon.

On the way back to mission headquarters we made a brief provisioning stop at a gas station. We needed beer and Doritos to bring as an offering to our KLE meeting with the Ohio National Guard OMLT. One last piece of data was collected at the gas station that we found useful and encouraging: as you enter the door to the convenience store, right where the register is located, there was a big tub of single beers on ice. Yes, on ice. We determined this was damn fine planning on the gas station owner’s part. Not only can you get your take-out daiquiri in this state, you also can get an ice cold single beer as a chaser without having to buy a whole 6 pack. If that isn’t strategic planning, I don’t know what is. Throw in a bag of Doritos and some salt and pepper kettle chips and suddenly life is looking pretty darned civilized in the backwoods of Louisiana!

End result: it was a successful and well executed mission. Several follow-ons subsequently were completed and additional data was gathered. We expect to brief the Battalion Commander in the near future but are secretly hoping he will ask for a more in-depth study …

Kansas City, MO June 17, 2011


I have been in class with a guy from South Carolina for the past 10 or so weeks who has the perfect response to almost any situation that goes haywire, is totally ridiculous, or completely unnecessary. It also perfectly describes the idiots of the world who, for example clearly just do not get “it” (whatever “it” may be), steal your parking spot while you are waiting right there with your signal lite on, or simply are taking up valuable real estate on this earth for no good god damn reason. And that phrase is... Clown Shoes. I have no idea where this came from or for how long he has been using it, but I am adopting it. I think it is succinct and has great clarity; it is expressive and visual all in one phrase. It is the English language at its best.

Let me explain: currently we are sitting in a classroom in Leavenworth, KS with not a frigging thing to do. We have completed all of our paperwork, handed in our packets, and finished any and all assignments. We are bored out of our skulls. People are killing zombies, crushing castles, and shopping online. One of our classmates is reading out loud from the benefits manual; that is how bad this situation is. Another one of our classmates walked down to the bakery down the block and bought a huge box of cookies with piles of really rich icing on top of them. So now we are not only bored to tears, we also are all strung out on sugar. It the same as being all dressed up with nowhere to go.

This is Clown Shoes. For sure, totally Clown Shoes.

And all of this cuz we are waiting for some Clown to come and give us a briefing about something we don't give a hoot about.

Oh, and by the way, it is Friday afternoon and this has been going on all week.

Clown Shoes. You get it.

Grade 7 Class Trip

February 8, 2011

I live in the city that is the primo destination for almost every class trip in America. Each spring and fall thousands upon thousands of students, teachers, and parent chaperones descend on Washington, DC from Middle America. All of the kids look insanely bored as they trudge from museum to historic site to yet another monument. I’m sure every single one of them is thinking, “I could Google all of this stuff in two minutes on my I Phone so why not just do that so we can go to the Hard Rock Café already?” A handful of adults with clipboards and whistles shepherd the students around the sites while trying to maintain some semblance of control. They too are deep in their own thoughts but their internal conversation trends more towards, “Why in hell did I let my wife/husband volunteer me for this gig?” and “there isn’t nearly enough booze in this whole city to make this right.”


Back in the Dark Ages when I was a kid in Saskatoon, the class trip was to the provincial capital of Regina. We went in Grade 7 which would have made us about 13 years old. I remember 13 well, and trust me, visiting Regina was not at the top of my “To Do” list. In fact I vividly remember thinking Regina was a dump. Now whether that was true or not is not relevant; it was just one of those city rivalries that are deeply rooted in the past. In this case it went back to the formation of the province in 1905 when Regina was made the provincial capital and Saskatoon was awarded the province’s university. From that time on, the two cities competed for everything and residents bickered constantly over the worth and value of their fair city as compared to the other which clearly was substandard. Moreover, a big chunk of Regina started out life as a slough, and masses of mosquitoes and god knows what other critters populated the city, so people in Saskatoon easily wrote off Regina as a Nowhereville dive. After all, Saskatoon had the university so clearly we had the intellectual wherewithal to articulate such a well thought out yet concise analysis of the Regina landscape…

At any rate, Regina was the destination for the Grade 7 class trip for all kids in the province. Our class, Miss Mills’ Grade 7 students from Hugh Cairns VC School, took our grand tour on March 31, 1970. There were 25 kids in our class – 14 boys and 11 girls and most had been in the same class since Grade 1. You can well imagine that by Grade 7 we pretty much knew everything about everyone which made school and school activities – even field trips --exceedingly boring from a social point of view. We were 13 and restless although we really didn’t know why. Energy ran high but our interests were firmly grounded in the present. No one was dying to see the provincial Legislature or visit historic sites except maybe Walter Orr, our class nerd. The past was, well … past and the future was incomprehensible. Still, going to Regina was better that sitting in Miss Mills’ class doing math or social studies so I do remember looking forward to the trip. The real hook though, was that we were going on the train!

I’m willing to bet that at that point very few kids in my class had been on a train so most of us were a lot more interested in the trip once we learned we would ride the rails. This gave the whole exercise a bit of glam or even drama that was appealing. BUT THEN WE GOT TOTALLY SCREWED. Every Grade 7 class in our school that had gone on this trip before us had taken the train to Regina but at the last minute there was a change of plans we got stuck on a bus. Not kidding. It was a regular old everyday bus with no redeeming qualities. What a come down. We were some kind of pissed.

But here’s the thing, in my diary that day I wrote across the top of the page in capital letters: MY LUCKY, LUCKY DAY!!! Obviously it had not been a total write off, so what happened? It’s elementary: we met boys from another Saskatoon school who also were on the Grade 7 Regina class tour. And they were cute. Me and my group of friends immediately were in love. I mean seriously, boys we did not know from another school who were really cute looked in our direction and smiled. We were hooked.

Here’s how it all went down: between Saskatoon and Regina is Davidson, a small town that is more or less the half way point between the two cities. Most people stop there to get gas, have a snack, and use the facilities. The trip to Regina was unremarkable other than we got off the bus in Davidson for a few minutes and then kept right on driving to Regina. The whole trip would have taken about two and a half hours. In my mind I remember it as a typical grey, wintery Saskatchewan March day. I don’t recall any sunshine or blue sky which often means it is goddamn cold, so lets assume it was cold but not more than about 10 below, snow all over the ground, and we were all bundled up in parkas, boots, and gloves, kind of like we were every other day but our “outfits” under our jackets would have been a little nicer than on a regular school day because we were going on a “TRIP.”

We arrived at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum (was it called that in 1970? I think it had a different name) and began our tour. There was a lot of archeological history, plants, stuffed animals etc. and I found it all rather unnecessary. Until, as I noted in my diary, “we saw some cute boys” from Greystone Heights School. Now this was interesting. We didn’t know any of these boys; Greystone was just far enough away from where we lived that we would not have interacted with them. Forget the dioramas, teepees, and stuffed buffalo; we were hunting cute boys from Greystone.

The Greystone kids were on tour behind our class so if we hung back just long enough from our group, we could watch them and “flirt” in our giggly 13 year old girl fashion. One of the Greystone boys had a camera and started taking pictures of us. WE LOVED it! I mean WE REALLY LOVED it! We each picked out the boy we liked and began to spin stories in our head (“I bet he is probably my soul mate for life!”) and then assured each other we were definitely perfect for the boy we had targeted. We were just on the front end of puberty and were entirely clueless as to what romance and love was all about, but we knew for sure that it was what we wanted. This trip occurred at the height of my major crush on the Monkees and the Cowsills so I was looking for a boy who fit that mold –cute, great hair, big smile, nice teeth, and by definition was sweet, fun, and very popular. Hey, I read 16 Magazine all the time and was very familiar with how sweet and nice all the boy stars were in real life! I wanted someone just like that. And on that day, in that moment, it was Dean Houston of Greystone Heights School.

At any rate, as the day went on we crossed paths with them several more times: at the RCMP Barracks, the Legislature, and finally in Davidson when the bus made the requisite half way home stop. No one exchanged phone numbers or suggested plans to meet again – we never did get that close --but it was clear as a bell to the girls from Hugh Cairns that the world was way bigger than we’d thought and there were cute boys at Greystone who thought we were cute too. There was life outside of South Nutana where we lived and we were now determined to find out how to make that work for us.

And so the games began. As it turned out, Kim Davidson’s grandparents lived in Greystone and Kim frequently stayed with them while her troubled parents did whatever they were doing. We visited Kim’s grandparents and had sleepovers in their basement and snuck out at night to walk past the homes of the Greystone boys in case they would suddenly come out. But that’s a whole other story.

Bowling: Frame 1 - 1969

August 12, 2010


Somehow in the fall of 1969 we got involved in a bowling league that ran concurrent with the school year. I haven’t the faintest idea anymore how this all came to pass but I remember all of my friends were involved at one time or another. I wrote in my diary on September 12, “Today we started bowling. Rolland is in bowling too.” Rolland Gillies was in our class at school and I had an on again, off again crush on him, but mostly on that fall.

We were in a Saturday morning kid’s league at the King George Bowling Alley downtown. Once upon a time the King George was a nice hotel with a fancy lounge and restaurant but as the years passed, it became somewhat shabby. When we were older, but still underage, we would go to the bar there and drink draft beer. Sadly, it had become that sort of place.

The bowling alley which was on the basement level of the hotel was typical bowling alley-esque. You came down the stairs and entered a sort of foyer situation that had soda and candy machines. We were crazy for cherry Coke back then and that was the only machine I remember that had it. Just past the vending machines was the desk where you checked in, got your shoes, found your lane assignment, and talked to dreamy Jerry Phillips. Jerry worked at the bowling alley part time and played football for the Hilltops, Saskatoon’s Junior Football team. I noted in my diary the first week that his number was 55. I also wrote down his phone number which I must have looked up in the phone book. I had a real habit of recording phone numbers, for some now unknown reason. Two weeks after the start of bowling we went to the Hilltop’s game and I wrote in my diary, “After supper we went to Jerry’s game. They won 32-0. YAY!”

I am guessing that when we first met him, Jerry was about 18-20 years old – and we were 12. He was tall and athletic and had dark wavy hair. Moreover, he was the sweetest guy any of us had ever met. He teased us and flirted with us all of the time, but not in a weird older guy - little girl way. I suspect it was as much fun for him as it was for us because we were wild about him and I’ve never met a 20 year old guy who wasn’t completely flattered when a whole herd of little girls think he is the best thing since pizza. As you can imagine, this let loose the perfect storm of prepubescent raging girl hormones culminating in lots of excuses to go the front counter. We wanted to keep tabs on our Jerry.

The bowling alley was a total zoo on Saturday mornings – filled with rangy kids. I think there were 20 or more lanes and all were in use. There were both girls and boys teams which led to a certain amount of additional tearing around but I really don’t remember any of us actually being interested in any of the boys from bowling. Officially there were 5 of us on the team but the rest of the girls bowled with us sometimes when we needed a sub if someone wasn’t able to show up for one reason or another. We struggled at first to agree on a team name, but in the end we settled on the Godly Goons. No, I am not kidding. Eventually it was shortened to the Goons and we came to really identify with the name. It made us feel funny and silly and somehow it gave us license to act goofy – as if we needed any more encouragement for that. And because we had a wacky name and were always laughing and carrying on, not a lot of teams took us seriously. Big mistake. As it turns out, we were pretty good AND we had our secret weapon – Barb Olson who was a spectacular bowler and won all kinds of tournaments. Plus she had long blonde hair and was really cute, definitely a team advantage!

Barb was one of the original Grade 1 crew at Hugh Cairns, our local public school, but later her family moved to a bigger house just far enough away that she attended a different school than us for a few years. Still, she came to bowling with us. And let me tell you, that girl had a great eye and superb aim. There rest of us were not bad and could usually hold up our end of the game reasonably well, but without a doubt, Barb was the star of the show. In October I wrote in my diary, “Today at bowling our team went to watch Rolland’s team. They are lousy. We are a lot better.” Always the modest one …

This is how it generally played out: we either took the number 4 bus going downtown or someone’s parents dropped us off at the King George. We would be there for about 2 hours bowling, messing around, eating junk food, and visiting with other friends who came down to watch and hang out with us. After bowling we would always go across the street to The Bay for chips and gravy in their third floor cafeteria. Oh, and chocolate milk. I went through a big chocolate milk phase then and liked it best at The Bay. Plus if you got a straw, or used a Twizzler as a straw, you could blow mega chocolate milk bubbles and make a huge mess. The cafeteria was usually busy with lots of Saturday shoppers so it seemed lively and filled with energy to us. Once in a while you would run into your Mum at The Bay which was good if she bought lunch but bad if she crimped your style or got mad at you for “bothering” the other shoppers.

Anyway, these were the days before the Midtown Plaza opened a few blocks away where the old railroad station used to be so The Bay was almost the only game in downtown. Eaton’s also was downtown but it was just far enough away that we didn’t usually want to walk those 3 or 4 blocks in cold Saskatchewan weather. We would come straight over from bowling, head up to The Bay’s top floor, have our lunch, and then “run away” on each other. Essentially this meant two or three girls on a sort of team would go hide somewhere in the store and the other team would have to find them. We did that for hours and hours. It is a total wonder we were never thrown out of the store. Occasionally we would steal a Crunchie from the candy department, especially when it was on the main floor near the Second Avenue entrance. We were such hardened criminals. The only thing I ever stole was chocolate bars because I was too scared to go big time. I had a big fuzzy gold parka then with a hood that had fake white fur trim around it and I would mosey past the Crunchies and slide one up my sleeve. Then I would panic because I was absolutely positive I was going to get caught and be sent to reform school. (I didn’t actually know anyone who ever was sent to reform school, or for that matter what reform school was, and honestly I can’t actually be certain there was such a thing in Saskatoon, but the notion that it might exist was enough to scare me silly.) One or two of the other girls would periodically steal cheap makeup, but that was not common. Well, unless we are talking about Kim because I think at one point she had a nice little stash of Mary Quant lip pots going on and I seem to remember she got caught at least once shoplifting at the Bay.

Sometimes we would go to a matinee after bowling at either the Capital or the Odeon. The Capital Theatre was spectacular. It was an old fashioned movie house with a long red carpeted entry that had an incline ending on what would have been the equivalent of the second floor. The candy counter was just past where you handed off your ticket. From there you could go straight in to the lower level or up to the balcony. I LOVED the balcony. Inside the theatre was painted gold with stars and clouds and lots of ornate design. This was also in the days before cup holders became standard in theatres so you would stick your drink under your seat and hope you remembered not to kick it over. I also remember there was a fairly big stage with velvet curtains because before the Centennial Auditorium was built, we used to go to the Capital to see the Royal Winnipeg Ballet or the National Ballet when they were on tour.

At any rate, bowling was a major social event for us. Sure we actually bowled and really cared about how we placed, but we loved bowling mostly because it was a way to hang out downtown without being supervised, meet other kids, and just generally pretend we were older and more sophisticated than we were. And in Saskatoon in 1969, it was about the biggest adventure available to us. It was the next year when we were in Grade 8 that everything changed and our universe expanded. Of course, that was after we met the boys from Grosvenor at Murray Livergant’s bar mitzvah …

Fireworks!

July 28, 2010

I may be a day late and a dollar short on this but I am still shaken up by the recent Fourth of July fireworks spectacle on my block. It was insane. I’ve lived in this house for four years so this is not my first rodeo but goddamn, this was one for the ages.

Frankly, I don’t think of myself as a total pussy but I have to say that the Fourth of July in DC scares the bejesus out of me. I don’t know if this is a Canadian vs. American cultural kinda thing, but maybe there is something to that. At least for now, that is my cover.

In all of the years I’ve been in DC I’ve never lived in a ‘hood where fireworks were as integral to every July 4th party as they are where I live now. The first year I closed on the house June 30 but didn’t move in until the middle of July so I missed the whole Fourth gig. When the next July 4th rolled around, I COULD NOT BELIEVE what was going on out in front of my house on the sidewalk and in the little park across the street, as well as in the alley out back. (Necessary random factiod: the park was built by Steven Spielberg for Minority Report and my house has a cameo early in the movie!) As soon as the sun started to set, it was as if Caesar announced “let the games begin” because all hell broke lose at the same time. I think my neighbour George and his relatives from Maryland were largely responsible for the whole fireworks setup that year. Despite me being afraid, I could see that George (who is fairly imposing at 6‘ 8”) was in control and making sure nothing weird happened so I tried to go with the flow … for a while at least. Moreover, they were lighting little rockets that really just fizzed up a ways and made a high pitched whistley sort of sound before they popped. There wasn’t much colour or big spectacle, all things considered. I was actually in bed when it all came down. I’d NEVER experienced anything like this before so I went outside and sat on the porch for a few minutes to survey the situation. I was scared but not terrified. George’s wife Regina saw me hiding on the porch so she came over and insisted I come out to the street so I could see better. Oh yeah. Just what I wanted.

I didn’t know what was worse – letting my neighbours know I was a ‘fraidy cat or possibly getting burnt to a crisp by a rogue rocket thingy. I had no intention of becoming a crispy critter. I ended up sitting on the steps with Regina at the end of my front walk and watching for about 10 or 15 minutes until I was over it and went back into the house. I finally fell asleep a while later when the hoopla began to peter out but the artillery-like sound didn’t completely stop until the wee hours.

The following year, I was all ready. I expected the light show and all of the noise. I had a dinner party that night and sent my friends off to watch the “official” Mall fireworks from the roof deck of a nearby apartment building one of them owned. Now those are fireworks! Big booms, colours splashing and dripping all over the sky, and giant sparklers that whizz all the way to heaven then explode into teeny white diamonds that are so bright it seems like daytime. Very cool. Produced by professional fireworks guys and backed up by big burly firemen with shiny fire trucks and high pressure water in hoses that can reach a hundred miles if should there be “a fireworks malfunction” which there never is because the professionals are in charge. Did I mention that these are designed and staged by professionals – people whose career it is to do this safely? Yes. Professional firework guys. Love ‘em.

Anyway, back on my block I was armed and ready for chaos but there was just a fraction of the activity of the previous year. You see, George and family had moved and there was no one really coordinating the “show” so it was pretty haphazard and relatively tame, thank god. Sure there was stuff popping all over the ‘hood, but nothing like the year before. I was immensely relieved.

July 4, 2010 rolled around and while I was worried, I was not in a panic. BIG mistake. Michael and I were at home because I had insisted we needed to secure the premises and make sure no 13 year old pyros burned my (brick!) house down. Right at dusk, the entire neighbourhood went nuts. Seriously. This made George’s production look like candles in paper cups at a protest march. And LOUD. My god it was unbelievably LOUD. In the Spielberg Park across the street and in the back alley there must have been a million rockets shooting in every damn direction. And here’s the other thing: these were really big fireworks that sped into the sky and exploded into a million different colours just like the “real” fireworks on the Mall.

Never in my life have I heard so much noise. Understand that this was not just popping of little firecrackers or half-assed bottle rockets that kids sometimes set off to scare one another. NOOOOO. This was serious business and I was TERRIFIED!!

One of people down the block was having a party on her deck that sits on top of the garage behind her house. It has a charming view of the back alley which has no appeal to me, but on that nite, it sure was the center of attention. That crew and others were setting off endless strings of fireworks in the alley and on occasion throwing them into a metal garbage can for maximum sound effect. I asked Michael if we were in 1970s Beirut. It was incredible.

At first I was pacing from back door to front door trying to determine where the first giant fire would start because I just KNEW there was going to be a raging inferno soon. I have two fire extinguishers in my house (I know, a bit extreme but my Dad would be so proud!) so I was relatively confident that I could control a fire while Michael called 911. Then a huge crew of fire trucks and lots of really good looking firemen would descend and save us. (Well, a girl can have a little imagination, yes?)

As the sounds intensified and even more people were shooting off even more fireworks, I finally came unglued and hightailed it upstairs to my bed and crawled under the covers and stuffed my fingers into my ears. In the past I have found that when all else fails, hiding under the covers is a reliable survival strategy. It is sort of like when wee little kids cover their eyes and can’t see anyone so they assume you can’t see them either. I can hide in bed and if I don’t know what is going on, it can’t hurt me. Trust me; there really is some sense in there.

Meanwhile, Michael, the American, was having a grand ole time. He was out back, then out front, then out back again watching the spectacle which he thought was quite marvelous. He loved the sparklies and the bright colours and the trails of smoke. Even the noise didn’t faze him. While he was busy chatting up the neighbours and being totally delighted by the whole thing, I was making a cave in my bed and burrowing down as far as I could go.

It took a while but eventually he realized I was MIA. Of course I couldn’t hear him calling my name over all of the noise. Plus my fingers were in my ears and I was humming (I forget what) to block out the machine gun fire I was sure was right outside of my second story bedroom window. (I never claimed any of this was rational!) When he found me, I think his first instinct was to laugh out loud at my lunacy but being a polite Southern boy, he restrained himself nicely. He assured me we were not in Beirut or even Afghanistan and that the world most certainly was not coming to an end. He put on the bedroom TV and we watched some of the “real” fireworks from the Mall which were SO beautiful. Then we watched the production from New York which too was SO lovely. Around midnite most of the racket from outside began to poop out and I drifted off to sleep.

In the end maybe I am a big pussy but I don’t see it that way. I really think this is an “us vs. them” cultural thing. As Canadians we are not prone to setting off fireworks on our front lawns (nor do we often burn down our houses while deep frying frozen turkey on the wooden deck, but that is a whole other thing) and since we are mostly good doobies and don’t want to get on the wrong side of Officer Dudley Do-Right, we tend not to walk on the wild side very often. All I know is that I am already making plans to be far away from DC next Fourth of July so I don’t have to do this again. Oh, and as a risk- adverse Canadian, I will remember to increase the house insurance so if some little pyromaniac does torch the place, I’m made in the shade.

God Save the Queen and God Bless America. Just leave the fireworks out of the mix!

The Decorative Arts?

An earlier version of this story appeared in Voice of the Hill, November 2004

You know … when it comes to Holiday décor, lots and lots of people simply lose control and give in to their basest impulses. We’re talking people who usually have impeccable taste, beautifully appointed homes, manicured lawns, and colour coordinated flower beds, who will after Thanksgiving chuck all of their fine living decorum for a chance to have the biggest honkin’ festival of lights in all of Christendom right in their own front yard. Why? I haven’t the faintest idea but I will tell you that neither money, social position, nor proximity to power guarantees good taste at the Holidays. No matter what area you cruise through, whether it is majestic East Capitol, quaint Park Street, or funky H Street, you will see what I mean.

Like many Hill dwellers, I am not a native Washingtonian or even a Southerner so I don’t always “get” the local cultural folkways. I grew up in Saskatoon, a small mid-western city in the middle of nowhere, north of the 49th parallel, where 40 below zero on Christmas Day is not unknown and people buck up with the fact that “at least it is a dry cold.” (Second favourite local tag line: “at least the sun is shining.” Yeah, well it is so cold that your car battery is completely dead, the dog refuses to go outside, and everyone – male & female – looks like the Michelin man when they do go out, but at least the sun is shining…) When people decorated their houses for Christmas, it was pretty subdued. (And let’s be honest here, in my neighbourhood there were no menorahs and Kwanza was unheard of.) We thought it rather fancy when our parents put coloured lights along the roof line of our houses. Occasionally in a neighbour’s front yard you would see a plywood Santa that Dad made and the kids painted. You could only see this objet d’art in daylight or when the outside light at the front door was on. Some blocks were slightly more dramatic putting on a thematic display – Candy Cane Lane, Bell Crescent – but again these were uniform home-made cutouts, a little cheesy but definitely cute. Granted this was in the Stone Age but I’m willing to bet that many of you would agree that the ghosts of Christmas past were a lot less fussy than they are today.

Now, right after Halloween the stores start rolling out as much holiday kitsch as they have space for. Sure we complain to one another that it is way too early to be thinking about Christmas but then fall all over ourselves at the big box retailers to get the best “stuff” before anyone else can get it. Rational, sensible, conservative professionals we Washingtonians are, but when it comes to our Christmas décor rituals, it’s a slam dunk that good taste loses out to raw emotional sentiment every time.

Check this: $149 will get you a “4-pc. grapevine-style sleigh-set with motion” that is covered in little lights. You won’t want to forget the accompanying “grapevine-style buck and doe with motion” that has even more teeny lights for an additional $49. Throw in the “4-pc holographic indoor/outdoor train set with chasing lights” for a mere $29 and you are well on your way to having your own personal winter wonderland. But wait! You still need Old St. Nick or at least a snowman to complete your diorama. For a measly $49 you can have a “42-inch twinkling snowman” with a red bow, top hat, and scraggly arms that if you squint might look like real sticks that fell from your “6-foot downswept twig tree” (with more lights, of course), that too was just $49. Now you are all set having enough wattage in front of your house to light the entire Capitol dome, to say nothing of the dizzying array of perpetual motion animals that could, if harnessed, run an artificial snow machine if you could just get your hands on one!

I’m just asking, but what is the deal with Santa these days? I mean when I was little, Santa rocked; I loved going to the Bay with my Mum (that’s the Hudson’s Bay Co. for those of you not from God’s country), dressed up in a red velvet dress with lace around the collar to get my picture taken with the Big Guy. The Bay was the best place to visit Santa because you also got a little white ceramic bell to tie onto the zipper of your jacket that made little tinkling sounds when you moved just so. Now that I am a teeny bit older & hopefully wiser (although there are those who may dispute that) I think Santa is a very existential dude. However, I really could live without seeing him in every retail outlet from Baby Gap to Midas Muffler, and certainly I would die happy if I never again saw him bobbing up and down in all of his 25 foot tall glory in the parking lot of just about any mall, grocery store, or car dealership you can name.

Not to be overly critical of the sacred, but I need to know: what’s with the over-the-top Vegas inspired manger scenes you see in front yards and some churches? Is it necessary to have quite so many multi-coloured spotlights poised on the crèche? Did the angels really wear tinsel on their heads? I know there were animals in the stable, but reindeer? In Bethlehem? And honestly! Do you really think it is appropriate for Bing Crosby to be crooning White Christmas to the Baby Jesus? I’m just sayin’ …

In all seriousness though, no one loves the holiday season and a festive décor more than I do. I adore sparkly twinkle lights on a real fir tree placed strategically in the front window so passers-by can admire it from the street (giving you an indoor-outdoor decorative action -- a nice two-fer as it were); underneath should be beautifully wrapped parcels (done by the nice church ladies at the mall) evoking memories of the 15 different unsolicited Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma catalogues received since Halloween; hand stitched, monogrammed stockings (at only $50 each) hanging from the fireplace mantle; and best of all, billions of cookies and gooey squares you couldn’t possibly eat but spent the last 4 weeks baking.

Any of this sounding familiar? I knew it! Santa told me you would understand. I saw him picking up a few things at Frager’s last week …