Part Three – Growing Up in Forest

          As near as I can recall, the first time I was ever outside Forest was when my Aunt Nora took me to Kettle Point when I was about 4 years old. I also went with her to Grand Bend. She did not have a car but one of her friends did and on the trip to Grand Bend (it seemed to me at the time it was all day), we stopped about half way through the Pinery at a tea room called Rimbedost. My recollection was of a dirt road through the woods but I don’t remember Grand Bend at all. During the twenties we used to go into London once a year on the train to buy shoes. The train left Forest at 6:30 am and we changed trains at Lucan Crossing. On one of these trips we went out to Springbank Park on a street car. They had a merry-go-round, a miniature train and a roller coaster there then.

          I also remember going to Windsor but I don’t remember how we got there. We took a street car or trolley to Amherstburg to visit some of my grandfather’s family. We also went to the Toronto Exhibition by train a couple of times during the twenties as mentioned earlier and on one of these trips, I saw my first talking picture. I had seen a couple of silent movies earlier at the Kineto Theatre in Forest: “Noah’s Ark” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.

          It was around 1930 when we rented a cottage at Hillsboro for a couple of weeks. It was on top of the hill on the east side of Hickory Creek, quite a walk down to the store or to swim.

          When I was 6 or 7, I went to the dentist to have one of my baby teeth taken out by Dr. Walters. His office was above Laurie’s Hardware Store on the corner of King & Main Streets. When I was 10, I broke my collar bone fooling around at recess at school. The bone was set by Dr. Smith downtown, and I was off school for a month. I’m told I hollered loud enough to be heard down the street because I wouldn’t take any anaesthetic.

Birthday parties were a rarity. I had one during my growing up years and only attended about three. One of the earliest was when I was in First Book. Frank Alpaugh’s father drove the Sarnia Bus and at his party we went for a bus ride, I think to Ipperwash.

          There was, and still is, a fall fair held in Forest every year, and we felt it to be one of the highlights of the year. While in public school each class would dress up to illustrate one theme and we would march from the school to the fair grounds. When I got older these marches which drew from rural schools all over the area, were discontinued but I still marched, first as a member of the Boys Band and later with the Excelsior Band. We would also play from time to time during the fair. As members of the band we would often be invited to other fairs, such as Exeter, Parkhill, Seaforth and many others. The Boys Band also used to play concerts at Grand Bend on Sundays in the summer. The Senior Band also played Sunday evening concerts on the band stand. On one occasion during the fair when I was 8 or 9 I talked my father into letting me go up in an airplane. In those days, barn-stormers used to travel from fair to fair, put on shows including parachute jumps and take people for rides. I went up in an open air biplane for about ten minutes at a cost of $2.00

          I was taken to London a couple of times during the early 30’s, by Bob Horne, father of one of my schoolmates. I can remember seeing the movies “Trader Horn” and “Wonder Bar”.

          In exchange my father took me & young Bob to Detroit to see baseball games a couple of years in a row. We stayed with one of his friends and during our time there we saw all the teams in the American League and some of the legendary baseball stars including: Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. There were 8 teams in the league then including the Washington Senators and St. Louis Browns. We also saw movies, e.g. “San Francisco” and “Poppy” with W.C. Fields. In those days the big movie theatres had stage shows as well and we saw Fred Waring and Shep Fields dance orchestra. I had only been to Detroit once before; it was on the steamer Tashmoo on the band excursion to Belle Isle.

          The first time dad took me to Detroit to a ball game we stayed at Jack Barke’s place. He was from Forest but worked at one of the auto plants. On Sunday morning he took me up to station WJR in the Fisher Bldg. and saw Uncle Walt read the funnies over the radio. Uncle Walt read the comics every Sunday. We also stayed and watched a dramatic program and enjoyed watching them do the sound effects while the actors read their lines. We also went to the Fox Theatre and saw Fred Waring and the Pennyloanias.

          In the 1930’s the road from Forest to the end of the 9 miles at Highway 22 was paved. It was during summer, cars were routed around Forest and we would sit at my grandmother Harper’s and keep track of all the different license plates we spotted. In those days an airplane was a novelty and we rushed out to see whenever one went over. They didn’t fly very high then. A highlight was seeing the dirigible R-100 go over on its way to Chicago.

          While in high school I started going with Eunice McDonald and one summer she took me to visit her cousin in Toledo, Ohio. I can remember seeing a movie “Gold Diggers of 1935” but not much else of the trip.

          Every year the 5 schools in the area held track and field meets. In the local meets I won medals four years. High School teachers were Jessie Saunders, Irene Reton, Angela Hammer, Albert Williams & J. Stevens principal.

          During the summers in high school I would get a job. One year I worked for Bob Horne, who kept bees, in various localities and collected the honey from the hives and extracted it in a building on one of the farms. One year I worked two weeks at the basket factory at 15c an hour. I made enough for spending money at the Toronto Fair where I went with the band. Another year I worked at the Canning Factory (Aylmer) which was very busy in the summer. I got 25c an hour and some days we would work as much as 15 hours in a day. The next day we wouldn’t be called in at all. I worked through the spinach and pea season.

Living so close to Lake Huron, we used to go to the beach often, other than our holidays at the cottage. My earliest recollection was riding to Hillsboro on the handle bars of a bicycle with Gerry Chafe. Later we would sometimes walk there and back. Once I walked to Cedar Point. Later we would get rides to Ipperwash where they had a dance casino and we’d listen to records on the juke box.

          Pastimes among others were: gathering hickory nuts out in the country in the fall; once we went for walnuts at Geo. Lougheed’s farm. He was a cousin of my mother & was the local milkman. I also went with the mailmen on all the rural routes around Forest, and too on Gerry Chafe’s bread route all over the local countryside.

          While in high school for two or three years in the fall I would go out into the country to gather hickory nuts, once with a kid from school, John Marburg. Once I collected coalnuts but they weren’t very good. When I was smaller you could get beechnuts near the Forest cemetery. You can’t do this anymore – the hickory, coalnut and beech trees are all gone.

          At one point I sent for information on taxidermy, and also a flying school at Lincoln, Nebraska. I was interested in model planes and built several flying models; I got to know Bruce Lister who lived on a farm in Bosanquet Twp. and was bit of an expert on model airplanes. Once I had a chemistry set and made some chlorine gas and nearly choked myself.

          The last year at high school I went to Toronto for 2 weeks in summer to look for a job and was unsuccessful. One place I went was the deHaviland aircraft factory, which was out in the country then. It was a long walk from the end of the street car line. That fall I went to the U. of T. One weekend there I hitch hiked to Buffalo for the weekend, just to say I’d been there, no other reason, but it was the first time I had seen Niagara Falls. It was also the first time I had ever been in a bar. In Ontario we had been in parlors but no bars. Forest did not have a beer parlor; Thedford had the closest and Sarnia was the closest liquor store.

          On Sundays in Toronto there was nothing open there except a few restaurants and some museums. I often rode the different street car lines to familiarize myself with the city and I also visited the Royal Ontario Museum and Casa Loma. One Sunday I walked from the university to the waterfront and back. I lived in residence at St. Michael’s College.

          One evening I went to see “Romeo & Juliet” at the Hart House Theatre put on by students. I also went to a dance at the roof garden of the Royal York Hotel to which I had been invited by a girl I knew in a sorority. I had to rent a set of tails and a car (Eunice had taught me how to drive on the roads around Thedford), as well as a corsage.

          In 1939 the King and Queen came to Canada. The closest they came was London and arrangements were made to take all the school kids by bus to see them. The Forest Band was invited to play at the Rectory St. Station, the site allotted to Forest. However the tour ran late and the train did not stop at Rectory St. The kids were disappointed so the buses took them all the way to Niagara Falls, their next stop. My sister got to see them but I did not as the band returned to Forest.

          The war broke out while they were here at the Toronto Fair so they cut short their visit and returned to England. I applied to join the Navy and stayed home and waited until I was called. I can remember listening on the radio to the progress of the Battle of the River Plate when the Graf Spee was sunk. During the 30’s we were able to hear speeches by both Hitler and Mussolini on radio.

          Uncle Fred had heard Hitler speak in Hamburg during the early thirties when he sailed with the Hamburg-American Line. He travelled a great deal and prior to that had sailed to Alaska and the Middle East and to India. He stopped going to Germany in the middle thirties, and made two more trips before the war, one to Indonesia and Thailand, and one to Angola. He sent me stamps from both trips. I collected stamps and also baseball cards, which came in bubble gum. Cigarettes also included collectors cards, I can remember golf cards and poker hands. My dad collected the poker hands and was able to get several premiums including a card table and chairs and a bridge lamp.

          In the early thirties, the advertisers were much more imaginative and generous than today when they spend all their money on television. One of the earliest were the cigarette manufacturers who placed cards in their cigarette packages. One I remember used cards with poker hands, which my father collected. There were two in a pack of 25 for a quarter and one in a 10 cent pack of ten. If you collected the full set they could be redeemed for prizes and I know my dad got a card table, a floor lamp and an umbrella for a specified number of sets in their catalogue. Even earlier one of the companies put golf cards in their packages; a full set was of the 18 holes. Also Moirs chocolate bars each contained a card with a letter on it and if you could spell, for example “Moirs XXX Hard Centers”, you would get a 2 lb. box of chocolates free. Needless to say, the X’s were the hardest to find.

          Every box of cereal had a prize in it and every box of soap had a tea towel or a face cloth. Some contained dishes. All of the kids radio programs had clubs you could join for free by sending in a wrapper from their product. I joined the Little Orphan Annie secret society and received a code book and a ring and every night on the program there would be a secret message which we had to decode.

          Then came the bubble gum cards. Each penny package of bubble gum contained a card of a sports star, movie star, pirates and plane cards, or other topics of interest which could be collected into sets, and traded with others. It was always fun to trade a Lou Gehrig for a Hank Greenburg, or a Greta Garbo for a Clara Bow. You could buy a lot for a quarter in those days.

          One time I was persuaded to sell needles or garden seeds and after selling so many we would get prizes. It wasn’t hard to sell when you are 8 or 9 because everyone tends to humour you.

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