CHAPTER 1
Introductory Stuff

Wednesday, May 25, 1955. Nothing really special about that day, other than a huge storm crossed the central USA with as many as 42 tornadoes touching down and all but destroying Kansas City and Oklahoma. You know, your ordinary biblical end of days kind of thing. I was hoping that something cool happened on that day, but the closest I can come is, 24 hours earlier Bob Dylan was celebrating his 14th birthday several years before writing his masterpiece "Maggie's Farm." You probably thought I was going to say, "Blowing in the Wind", but I have always been an "I Ain’t Going To Work On Maggie's Farm No More" kind of guy. What can I say, there are classics and then there are classics? Anyway, so much for the day I entered the world being something significant. It was just another day in Fraserview, a subdivision that sat on the southern slope of East Vancouver, Canada.

I suppose it was kind of a special day for my parents, having yet another son born. They had already experienced this three times before. Marc, my eldest brother was born in Prince Rupert six years earlier and moved to Vancouver with my parents a year or so after his birth. Don arrived two years after Marc and was the first of many Creamore children to be born at Burnaby General Hospital. Chris was just two years older than me and was probably the brother I interacted (fought) with the most in our childhood. 

Something of a rarity is the fact that I am a third generation Vancouverite. My Mom, Irene Elizabeth Evans was born to James Evans and Elizabeth Harper at their home at 1225 East 18th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. On October 12, 1926. My father Alexander Middleton Creamore was born to James Joseph Creamore and Ina Masson in Vancouver on August 4, 1927. Mom and Dad were married at the IOF Hall, 30th Avenue and Main St. Vancouver on October 6, 1945. Shortly after their marriage the newlyweds moved to Prince Rupert, B.C. where Dad was stationed in the Royal Canadian Armed Forces. After a brief few years, Mom and Dad, with their firstborn in tow, were again back in Vancouver living on Borden St. near 62 Avenue.

With my arrival the Creamore clan had to find a bigger place to call home. Not that the little house on East 63 Avenue, Vancouver B.C. was exactly big. Just large enough for the six members of the Creamore family to move in and become part of a neighbourhood that can only be described as a very special place for four young kids to grow up. Two years later my younger brother Robin was born. Make that a special place for five young kids to go up. Followed by my two sisters Kathy and Teresa and as if that was not enough, my youngest brother Jim was born October 1962. In case you have lost track, our new neighbourhood can only be described as a very special place for eight young kids to grow up. Mom, Dad and eight children all tucked into a thousand square foot, one bathroom, three-bedroom bungalow with no basement and no upstairs. Very cozy! Yeah, that's the word, cozy. Mom and Dad had one bedroom which left two bedrooms for eight kids. Nothing that four sets of bunkbeds couldn't solve. I was assigned to the righthand side, lower-bunk, boy’s back bedroom. This would be my place to go not just for sleep but for damn near anything. It was the one place in the house that I knew was mine. 

That bunk bed was made of metal and covered in white paint that was all chipped up. Not much to look at as beds go. Probably not very good in the support department either. As a matter of fact, it was more like a hammock than a bed. Big dip in the middle that damn near swallowed you whole. It was my bed and the only thing in the whole house that I did not have to share with someone else. My oldest brother Marc was in the bunk right above me. Chris was across from me and Don was in the top bunk above Chris. We had just one chest of drawers and each one of us had just one drawer for our clothes. At the time I didn’t know any different, so it was perfectly normal to me. Besides a few pairs of socks and some underwear really don’t take up much room. 

Fraserview was largely made up of very small houses. These houses were mostly built in the forties & early fifties long before the so-called Vancouver Special came along. They were all around 1000 square feet, some had a basement, and some did not. Much of the development in the neighbourhood came in the 1940s, when land was needed for returning veterans of World War II. Eleven hundred new homes were built in the area for these veterans, on land owned by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

When World War II broke my father volunteered and joined the Royal Canadian Army. Dad was only seventeen when he joined and was much too young to be sent overseas. Fortunately for Dad the war ended before he saw any action. Since Dad was in the Army during the war, he met all the qualifications that allowed our growing family to rent our little house on East 63rd Ave. Mom and Dad rented that house for many years before they were given the option to buy it in the late sixties. While we were renting the house every few years a painting crew would show up in the neighbourhood to do basic maintenance and repaint all the houses. We could have any colour we wanted as long as it was gray with white trim. Mom and Dad tried to have the house colour changed many times, to no avail. They would always get the same answer “this is 1722 East 63rd and according to our documentation 1722 East 63rd is a gray house with white trim.”

As kids we loved watching all the work going on in our little neighbourhood and would follow the painting crews as they went from house to house. It usually took no more than a couple of days per house to replace any damaged areas and give the entire house a fresh coat of paint. This work would go on for several weeks during the summer months and keep all of us kids entertained for days at a time. There was always something going on out on the streets of Fraserview. You could join in on a game of "Kick The Can" that covered several different properties and went on until the streetlights came on, indicating it was time to go home. If sports were more to your liking, there was always a street hockey or a football game going on. As far as picking teams went. That was a job easily completed by putting your foot in the circle for an eeny-meeny-miney-moe selection. 

Every morning we would run out to join our friends in a new adventure. We never meant to get into trouble, but sometimes it just happened. Like the big red truck that rumbled into the sub-division to pour thick black oil on all of the laneways to keep the dust down. Us kids would all come home just covered head to toe in this sticky black oil. Mom would have a fit and forbid us to go back. The next day we would all show up at the laneway to watch the oil truck just like clockwork knowing full well we were going to get it when we got home. You see when you were a kid in the early sixties there were some basic truths in life. One of them was that oil trucks had to put oil on dusty laneways, and another was dozens of small boys had to chase the oil truck up and down that laneway. One final truth was even-though young boys promise to stay clean ... oil is still oil. 

The whole subdivision was built on a fairly steep slope so each street that ran perpendicular to the slope was cut like steps into the hill. This meant that on one side of the street the houses were sitting about eight feet up off the road with a rock wall and a set of stairs that went up to the front of the house. The other side of the street was the exact opposite. The houses sat about eight feet below the road and had a retaining wall made from rocks and a set of stairs that led down to the house. I know this sounds very weird by today's standards but was very normal back then. Jumping off these walls and learning to climb up them was like the first rite of passage for all the kids in the neighbourhood. We knew every rock in those walls. Every hole to place your foot, every stone to cling to and most importantly every crevice that the snakes lived in. I don’t believe the city planners realized just how much fun they built into that subdivision. Then again, a rock wall looks much different through the eyes of a six-year-old then those of a city engineer.

There was nothing better than taking toys outside to play. Back in the early sixties kid’s toys were very different from today. A boy only needed to see the commercials on the television to see the next object of his desire. Johnny Seven O.M.A. Now there was a toy every boy wanted. You were a One-Man Army with that multi-functioning toy gun in your hands. That thing was amazing. It even had a grenade launcher! I don’t know if it was knowing that I would never own one that made me want one even more. That and every other combat toy I saw on the television. Secret Sam and Mighty Mo were two other destroy everything in sight toys that I wanted back then. It was almost like a status thing. Showing up at the next combat with something more than a stick in my hand would have turned more than a few heads.    That was the thing back then. It only took a stick in your hand and a whole lot of imagination to have hours of fun. Just think what I could have done with a plastic cannon the size of a house! Mighty Mo! The biggest bad ass gun in town. I could have been Sgt. Sam Troy with that thing in my hands. It just couldn’t get any better than playing “Rat Patrol” up and down the streets of Fraserview! Yes! Sgt. Sam Troy and I would have kicked some serious butt with Mighty Mo on our side!

There were many games played and many wars fought on the rock walls of Fraserview. Tie your pillow to your back and you...