Memory Lane: Friday’s adventure took me back to 1955. Scary.

Scary is right. I remember a great deal about my first childhood home and first school. I recall my first teacher, several friends, certain antics and even a spot of trouble I got myself into at the age of 5 or 6 years old.

I liked school so much I once stayed to play at noon hour rather than head home for lunch. My mother arrived 10 minutes later, with a very worried and angry look on her face, and dragged me home by the ear.

My teacher, Miss Brooks (not of Hollywood or TV fame), called on me to escort Rhonda Wettlaufer home early in my first school year because she wouldn’t stop crying during our lessons. Rhonda and I were after-school playmates (her folks owned and operated the general store at the main corners of the village of Burgessville), I knew the way to her house and I was more than happy to get out of school.

Rhonda and I re-connected in high school and later attended the same teachers’ college. Small world.


["The broom sticks out from the back of the bike": photos GH]

Some readers have likely been holding their breath in suspense, wanting to know why I was delivering an old corn curling broom by motorcycle to Rick Lees last Friday.


["One broom, signed and sealed"]

(I like keeping people in suspenders, eh.)

My family moved to Norwich, just 5 miles down the road from Burgessville, and I became good friends with Rick during our early school years together in the 1950s.

While at Teachers’ College in London in 1969 I joined a curling team and remembered that Rick’s dad made corn curling brooms, so I bought two of them at my next opportunity.


["Three members of our Olympic Gold Curling Team"]

I had one of them, still wrapped in its original plastic sleeve, signed by Canada’s Gold Medal Olympic Curling team last spring and thought Rick might like to have it. He wasn’t home on Friday but I gave it to his oldest daughter.


["Now, this is a real curling broom, boys."]

She recognized it as her grandfather’s broom even before I made it to the front door of the house and was quite excited to see the signatures of our gold medal winners.

Hopefully, Rick will get a kick out of it too.

And this concludes my stories about my Friday motorcycle adventure.

***

I’ll save other stories (e.g., I saw a dead cow once behind our home in Burgessville, I tasted a cow’s salt lick, made a great sword out of real tin and won an award for perfect attendance at the local Baptist church - how exciting) for another time.

See, I do like keeping people in suspenders.

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