I found the following story about Irvine's from the archives of the online Norwich Gazette, a small town newspaper that published scores of my parents’ columns over the years.
Preamble: How the tarmac became marred
Norwich Gazette, Wednesday, November 24, 2010
My brother Timothy (Timmy in his Norwich days) talked me into working on this story. He said he was going to send it to the Norwich and District Historical Society for the 200th anniversary. After being skeptical, I worked on it myself aimed at my family members. I realize the active anniversary celebrations were during the summer, but I submit this to you as one of my fond memories of Norwich. I actually lived in Norwich from mid-way Grade 1 to early Grade 7, but I simplified. My father was the minister at First Baptist Church, leaving in 1963.
How the tarmac became marred
I've lived in 11 Canadian municipalities from the largest city to small villages. From Grade 1 to 6 I lived in Norwich, Ontario, then a village of 1,700. Although I haven't been back for decades, my memories from Norwich capture my imagination more than almost anywhere else I've lived. This summer Norwich celebrated the 200th anniversary of its founding. When I was eight years old, I inadvertently left my mark on the village's gift to itself on its 150th birthday.
One hot summer morning I received my allowance, 10 cents if I recall correctly. Allowances were paid on Saturday. The best place to blow 10 cents in Norwich in 1960 was Irvine's Five and Dime and that was my destination. I arrived soon after it opened at 9 a.m.
["Irvine's Five and Dime was mid-way down the right side of the first block of Main Street, Norwich"]
The attraction at Irvine's was a series of tables with the tops broken by wooden slats marking off subdivisions of perhaps 12x18 inches. A pile of crayons filled one subdivision, some marbles filled another, then plastic cowboys, toy soldiers, etc. Lying in one rectangle were pea shooters, basically a heavy duty plastic straw in an era when all drinking straws were still made of paper. The "peas" for sale were really some sort of white bean. I made an inspired choice and emerged onto Norwich's main street armed with shooter and peas.
It was already a hot day and perhaps made hotter by the sun being absorbed by the pristine stretch of fresh black pavement the village had laid over the quaint bricks that had covered the main street until the day before. The pavement hadn't had time to fully harden and summer temperatures had delayed that process.
Heat and pavement played no part in my consciousness. I looked for a victim and beaned the first kid I saw. That sparked an immediate arms race on pea shooters. By late morning the village's supply of pea shooters had been exhausted. One boy offered me a quarter for mine, but I wasn't bright enough to accept it. I should have because by then the beans at Irvine's had been bought out and spit out.
Kids crossed the main street to buy feed corn from the feed store opposite Irvine's. The corn may have had some sort of vitamin supplement on it because it tasted horrible. My technique was to store the ammo in my cheeks. It made for a soggier shot, but a more satisfactory hit, from the shooter's point of view. You got familiar with the taste of the ammo before it was expectorated.
As the sun got higher, the not yet cured asphalt got softer. Adults started to notice that beans and corn were being trampled into the expanse of virgin black asphalt, a permanent blemish on Norwich's sesquicentennial advance into modernity. The village fathers banned all pea shooters and stores were forbidden to sell peas, beans or kernel corn to any little boy who asked.
My family members have teased me about this incident all my life. After 50 years, this is my best recollection. I wonder if my contemporaries who corroborated in this tarmac desecration even remember it at all, boys with classic names such as Billy, Doug, Randy, Kim, Brian, Monty and Mac.
Daniel (then Danny) Johns, Edmonton, Alberta
["Danny and Kim, and Timmy and Gord attended classes together at Norwich Public School in the 1950s and '60s"]
Click here to visit Norwich Gazette
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Timmy Johns was my best bud in Grade 8. I recall that Danny had a good sense of humour and my brother Kim got along with him well.
Brother Kim assures me that the ‘boys with classic names’ are the following: Billy Hopkins, Doug McLees, Randy Bishop, me (i.e., Kim), Brian Arn, Monty Fish, and Mac Cunningham.
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