Passion and the Prostate (eBook)

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A bit of background on Glenn

The first big shock of my life, and the precursor to my wandering ways, came somewhere in the middle of 1964 when my father, Crawford Reid, informed my mother Greta, my brothers Paul, Roy, and Brent, and me, that we would be leaving Waverly, Nova Scotia, and moving to Moncton, New Brunswick. My dad worked for the railroad (Canadian National Railways) and had been promoted to foreman of the machinists. Promotion aside, my eight-year-old self just couldn’t fathom it. Leave Waverly? You might just as well have asked Opie to leave Mayberry.

Waverly was an idyllic place for a young boy to grow up. There were two lakes for swimming in summer, and skating in winter. I say skating, but it was almost always hockey. There were also lots of woods to explore and to build forts in. It was a safer, or perhaps a more naive time, when my friends and I could hop on our bikes in the morning and disappear till suppertime. Lunch would be taken care of by raiding neighbours vegetable gardens or fruit trees.

My dad was a member of the Waverly Volunteer Fire Department. I remember watching him help wash down the big beautiful red fire truck at the fire station which was situated beside the river that connected the two lakes. I remember seeing a band called Woody’s Termites play at the fire hall (the band named for the decrepit diving tower that our parents warned us had termites and would fall down one day with us on it, situated just offshore from Woody’s restaurant). That band would one day wisely change their name to April Wine and go on to much more prestigious shows.

Dad was also a C.N.R. machinist, as I mentioned, and a part time drummer. In his youth he had been a member of a fairly successful band in his native Hamilton, Ontario, but had given up his full time pursuit of the dream, initially to join the navy and to fight Hitler’s gang. While stationed in Halifax during WW2 he had met my mother and married, and put the dream aside again, I think to take the CN job and provide for his new family, but he never stopped playing his drums.

I have a very early memory of curling up at the foot of his kit and listening to him drum to big band tunes and other popular songs of his generation. The kit I recall was sparkly red, and Dad played without a single flaw to my young ears. I was fascinated with his passion for the music, and I absorbed the melodies and lyrics of those great writers from the twenties, thirties and forties. Louis Armstrong, Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, and on and on. I’ve since learned that Dad opened shows for, and so, met, several of those greats, like Mr. Armstrong, but as a kid it was just a magical thing to me that my dad could put on a record and play along with them. None of the other kids had a father who could do anything remotely as amazing, making my dad the best dad ever, in my eyes. He still is.

Meanwhile, I was surrounded by other kinds of music as well. Mom sang alto in the local United Church’s choir so there were hymns for her to rehearse. If Mom had control of the radio, as she often did, I’d hear a lot of country greats like Hank Williams, Hank Snow, Loretta Lynn, Connie Francis, Patsy Cline, Marty Robbins, etc. My oldest brother Paul had all sorts of records from people like Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers, The Kingston Trio, Ricky Nelson and later on Gordon Lightfoot.

I liked them all. Story tellers, they were to me. How could Elvis’s girlfriend treat him so shabbily in “His Latest Flame?  Why would Hank sing “I Can’t Help it if I’m Still in Love with You” when the woman had obviously dumped him for another guy? Marty Robbins should have known better than to go back to El Paso after he shot that guy that Felina had been making eyes at, but he went anyway, and got killed in the bargain.

Every summer the fire hall parking lot would host Bill Lynch’s traveling amusement fair and we’d beg our parents for more dimes so we could test our skill at hitting balloons with darts or trying to circle milk bottles with rings. Also in warm weather every year came the Strawberry Shortcake Festival. I’m sure the local ladies prepared some fine meals for the festival but for all of us kids the focus was on the prize at the end. As much strawberry shortcake as we could eat, and we could eat a lot.

My mother, in addition to being the principal of the Windsor Junction one room (at least six grades, I seem to recall) schoolhouse, also taught square dancing, and all of her boys became quite adept at the practice. You might think a young boy would revolt at the prospect of dancing with a bunch of girls a couple of times a week but I liked it. You got to put your arm around a girl’s waist and hold her hand as you danced. I never did go through a “girls are icky” stage.

Winters were hockey and snow forts and snowballs and more hockey. My maternal grandparents Nana (Lucilla) and Granddad (R.M.) Bambrick lived right next door and my mom’s oldest sister Freda and Uncle George “Dint” Meagher lived on the other side with my cousins Fred and Carol. Every Saturday night Nana would have my brothers and I, and sometimes our cousins, down to her place for what we referred to as the “Bean Banquet”. She would make a huge pot of beans with molasses which we would devour, along with several loaves of fresh bread and, if we were extremely lucky, one or two of Nana’s famous homemade doughnuts for desert. I don’t believe I’ve tasted better food to this day anywhere.

So, as I say, who would want to leave Waverly? But leave it we did. We spent almost three years in Moncton, during which time Paul, who is ten years my senior, went out on his own working, I believe, in banking and eventually marrying his wife Sandra. They are still together as of this writing some forty years later. Roy, to whom sports, and particularly hockey, are a passion, eventually followed, joining the R.C.A.F. as a “Rec-Spec”, or recreation specialist, basically a phys-ed instructor. In the air force he met the love of his life, Karen, and they wed. Again, they are still together today. Those Reid boys are pretty steady guys.

That being said, there were signs that all was not well between Greta and Crawford. Being the youngest I was probably a bit slower to see those signs, but eventually I did. Meanwhile Dad kept getting promoted. He was taking courses in the very new and sure-to-disappear field of something called “computers”. Smart guy, my Dad. The upshot being that, after a few years in Moncton we were off to CN’s head office in Montreal, where, apparently, they spoke something called French.

I was terrified at the prospect. We moved there in September of 1967, approaching my twelfth birthday, just in time to see Expo ’67 where I first tasted that strange yet delicious delicacy called pizza. I entered Grade six and was pleasantly surprised to note that my classmates all spoke English. We were living on the West Island in a suburb of Montreal called Roxboro, in a house for the first couple of years until my parents’ marriage finally broke down completely, then in an apartment on Sources Road in Dollard-des-Ormeaux. The area at the time was an English enclave and taught Parisian French in school, so I didn’t learn to speak Quebecois French until much later, when I found myself in the work-force with unilingual co-workers. Immersion is the only way, I think. But I digress.

Entering high school, the subject that exited me the most was music. There I had an opportunity to actually learn to play an instrument, and if I got to be proficient enough at it, to play in the Riverdale High School Band. I had a hard time finding the Band room that first day, and by the time I arrived most of the really “cool” instruments were already spoken for. My first choice would have been the saxophone, then the trumpet (just like Louis), and then the trombone. I wound up with the trombone.

As it turns out, the trombone was a fortuitous choice. I became, rather quickly, I think, a pretty good trombone player, and in my later high school years I wound up as the trombone section leader and soloist. My good friend Peter Harris, an extraordinary talent as a trumpet player, was the trumpet section leader and soloist. He taught me how to play trumpet as well, although not on his level, at least adequately. But I’m getting ahead a bit.

When my parents finally broke up, Brent was, I believe, 18 and ready to be on his own, more or less. Crawford and Greta were trying to wait for me to finish high school before they split, but I had just started, at 14, and they were obviously miserable together. I recall advising them not to wait. They took my advice.

Also around this time came the FLQ Crisis. I remember walking to school and passing the house of a neighbour who was a Minister in the Quebec Provincial Government. Standing outside were several military guards with machine guns at the ready. I couldn’t tell if it was more scary or more cool.

As the last son left at the break-up, the question became what to do with me. The first solution was for me to move to Oakville, Ontario, with my mother, which I did that summer, but I was so homesick (most of that was a girl named Sherry) that they eventually relented and let me move back to...