Chapter 3- A Juggernaut Is Born
As you can see, hockey got into my blood early, what with the weekly visits to the orphanage by many of the lesser Leafs and even by Harold Ballard himself. I can’t be sure, but I always had the feeling that we wee orphans were not the sole reason for their visits. Orphan Jimmy suggested that there might be some courting going on. But he had a welcome propensity for tall tales.
Once a year, usually in March, Uncle Harold used to take selected inmates to skate on the real ice of Trinity Park pond. He would pull up to the orphanage in his big white limo, boldly emblazoned with the Leafs’ logo and with their motto: “A Cup Every Year From Now On”. His trunk would be half filled with old, discarded Leafs equipment from circa 1916. Unfortunately, there was never enough equipment for all us orphans. Although I was a gifted with tremendous hockey talent from age 2 onward, I was too small to battle the older Leviathans from the “Broda”. Consequently, until I was a little older, I was not able to wrestle from the trunk even the crappiest pair of dilapidated skates or a splintered hockey stick.
When I turned 6, I made my first trip to Trinity Park. Earlier in the day, I had managed to grab from Uncle Harold’s trunk half an elbow pad and a rivet from Ike The Spike Tannenbaum’s 1927 practice helmet. I played horribly on the pickup game, even by Gawdawful Gumby’s standards (more about him later). The pickup game also served as the tryout for the orphanage’s tournament team. I did not get chosen to represent our esteemed establishment at the annual Inner City Home For Discarded Kids Hockey Tournament (the renowned “ICHDKHT”). I left my first outing to Trinity Park crestfallen, dejected and nursing a bad case of frostbite which soon cost me half of each of my feet.
I may have been dejected, but I was determined to make the school team the following year. For the next twelve months, I worked daily to improve my strength and agility. Of course, we didn’t have anything as fancy as a training room. I was forced to improvise. I roped off the less dingy part of my refrigerator box/bedroom and turned it into my very own gym. Using as a starting point the cracked rivet from Ike “The Spike’s helmet, I went on to fashion a set of barbells by adding some reworked tuna cans and some discarded hosiery found in the Charm School’s refuse containers. Every day, I exercised relentlessly until I doubled my playing weight to 46 pounds of strapping orphanhood. To increase my agility, I practiced hanging from the top of my bedroom by wetting my fingertips and toetips and placing them gently against the ceiling, thus creating the capillary vacuums needed to stick to the cardboard above my head. It wasn’t my best use of science. But it worked.
As my next outing to the tryouts at Trinity Park approached (age 7), I felt confident I could make it to the ICHDKHT despite having to compete for a place against much bigger and better seasoned orphans than I. My biggest problem would be getting one of the few pairs of rotten skates and some kind of hockey stick from Uncle Harold’s trunk. Even if I were able, by some miracle, to get skates, they probably would not fit for two reasons. Firstly, I was only 7 years old at the time and men’s skates would undoubtedly by way too big for a kid, even a handsome and taut 46 pounder. Secondly, I had suffered from frostbite in the previous year and, if you were to add together what was left of my feet, you have ended up with just the equivalent of one. It looked like old Leafs skates were out of the question.
Well, I could have given up then and there. But I was no quitter. And I had a plan. A good plan. A plan I carried out to perfection. While Uncle Harold’s chauffeur was busy untangling the other orphans, who werebusy beating each other up while fighting in the enormous trunk for hockey equipment, I surreptitiously removed the steel studs from the limo’s tires. Using a jerry-rigged arc welder I fashioned out an old Raid spray can (it’s flammable, you know), I melted down the studs and turned them into makeshift hockey blades which I sharpened with my own teeth. Then, I secured the blades to my half feet by strapping them onto my socks with some barbed wire I had, only hours earlier, stolen off some escape-proof windows at the orphanage.
The stick problem was a little trickier. Luckily, I was able to collect enough wads of previously enjoyed bubblegum from under the baseball bleachers when we got to the park. I warmed up the abandoned rubbery wads to a workable level of malleability by salivating like a rotweiller in a hamburger factory, and then chewing on them quickly. From there, I applied the reworked gum to a couple of birch branches to form a stick. It looked like an awkward version of the Teeter Kennedy Slapper 5000. I reinforced the “blade” with leftover barbed wire and was now ready to show off the fruits of my ingenuity and demanding training regimen.
Now, I know it’s a sin to brag, so I won’t go into a lot of detail about that improbable day on Trinity pond. Suffice it to say that, on the strength of my 132 goals in 32 minutes of playing alone against the seventeen other hopefuls from the “Broda”, I was selected to my orphanage’s team. Sister Schadenfreude, normally taciturn and demurre, was so emotionally overwrought by my performance, that she kissed me on both cheeks and made a gift to me of the moniker I still cherish today: The Little Ice Marshal.
We went on to win the coveted ICHDKHT that year and in every subsequent year of my stay. Often, we played against richer orphanages and even sometimes against teams from well-funded homeless shelters who would bring in ringers from as far away as North Bay and Nipissing Junction. It did not matter. We were a juggernaut: my first but certainly not my last.
Friday 27 April 2012
Thursday 12 April 2012
The Absolutely True Adventures of Orphan Bob and The Killer Strawberries-Chapter 2
Chapter 2- Orphan Bob Enters The Raffle Ticket Sweepstakes
It took a day or two to marshal all the arguments I wanted to use to get the waffling Vice to choose me to accompany him to the big Senators-Leafs match set for February 2. After many rewrites, here is what I sent to him by Special Delivery.
Raffle Sweepstakes Entry
January 14, Year of Our Lord MMMMXXOX
Re: Orphan Bob’s Plea To Accompany His Hero to The Upcoming Sens-Leafs Match
Dear Excellency, Mr. Vice,
I have been waiting desperately by the phone, hoping beyond all hope that I might possibly be chosen as the lucky fella to attend the BIG GAME with my superhero, Red Greentree (aka you,The Vice), the man without whom the earth would not revolve about the sun. It was only two days ago that I learned there would be a formal application process for this glorious honour. Perhaps you may have told me earlier, but I guess my whole body and brain were still frozen from scraping and watering the big rink we’ve been building together since New Year’s Day at The Compound For Minor Vice, the gorgeous roost you share with Madame Lachaise. I know it was only 45 below on most days. I should have worn a third toque. The horrible head cold I have been fighting at the “rink building work bees” hasn’t helped much either.
As I humbly perceive the situation, this honour would be best bestowed upon a constant fan who has, for innumerable arid years of desperate cheering, supported the Leafs in their quest to repeat the glory of 1967. I understand, ex post facto, the idiocy of such hope, but that’s what true fans do, despite decades of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
February 2nd is a very special day in my life. Approximately 11 months after I was born (my birthday is March 10, 1955 for those of you who send cards and small heartfelt tokens of friendship like $2 tickets for hockey raffles), my parents perished in a terrible catastrophe. I was left an orphan with no relatives anywhere in the world. My parents were orphans themselves and mere children on their wedding day. Somehow, on February 2nd, 1956, I ended up on the steps of the Turk Broda Sisters of Mercy Orphanage and Charm School on Church Street, just across from the Carlton Cash Box, also known as Maple Leaf Gardens. I was swaddled in a couple of tattered tea towels placed inside a crisp new Hush Puppies shoe box. Although I cannot recall the exact temperature, I have been told that it was about minus 72F outside that day. Fortunately, there was no wind chill.
The Sisters took me in and educated me, pro bono, until the age of 15. During my stay at the orphanage, we were visited weekly by one of the lesser stars from the Leafs, and one time ,even Harold Ballard came by to hand out penny candy emblazoned with the Leafs’ logo. You could not believe how this cheered us up. I still have all that candy in my Tickle Trunk of Treasures. The treats were a very rare occurrence at the Broda and I would dearly have loved to eat just one. Treats were uncommon, not because the Sisters were cruel, but because they were strict vegetarians with a fetish for perfect teeth.
We were never given any tickets to actual games as a result of the rampant TB and pneumonia which seemed to never leave the premises. Luckily though, in 1965, a small 4 inch black and white TV was donated to the orphanage and we all got to watch the first two periods of Saturday Leafs games, 9 pm being our curfew. We always managed to keep up with our favourite team from information gleaned at the infrequent player visits, shortened Saturday viewings, and from reading reports printed on the old newspapers used as curtains in our building. Sometimes the articles were three months old, but we were happy to have this small contact with the outside world.
The happiest day of my life (February 2, 1960) was when I learned I was going to be adopted by one of the Leaf alumni. Some speculated that it was to be Bill Barilko. I know now that this could not have been possible, since he went missing well before that time. In any event, the adoption never did occur, leaving me crestfallen and shaken. Perhaps it was for the best because, instead of getting to stay at the orphanage with its close ties to the Leafs, I could have ended up as a child labourer on some farm in the backwoods of Kemptville, the Smoking Capital of Canada, where every new mom is given six cartons of cigarettes by the Health Unit to ensure she still has enough money for formula for the first month. Don’t get me wrong. I am not afraid of hard work. I’ll shovel anybody’s rink, under any conditions, especially if that rink belongs to a friend.
We did not get formal schooling at the orphanage. There was very little time between the constant chores which I gratefully accomplished in return for my warm refrigerator box bedroom and that wonderful single square meal-a-day of carrots and slightly smelly tofu. We drank rainwater by sticking discarded straws, found on the sidewalk just outside the front doors, into the eavestroughs of nearby buildings. The water was not good but there was plenty of it.
Despite the lack of schooling, I was able to write a university entrance exam when I turned 14 and was accepted to Harvard, Western and Oxford. To pay for the entrance exam, I had to sell, for cheap, almost all the Leafs memorabilia I had managed to collect over the years. The buyer was some guy named Stavros. In turn, Stavros sold the goods to rabid fans and purchased a grocery chain with the proceeds. What can you do? I wasn’t then the businessman I am today.
Sister Perpetual Suffering helped me get a full scholarship to Western, where I dedicated myself for four years to the study of Anatomy, Nuclear Physics and Competitive Batik. I was also able to establish Leafs fan clubs at every university and college in Canada (Alberta and Quebec excepted), as well as in Mali and the United Arab Emirates. I designed the under-the-bench pyramids used successfully by coach Red Kelly in the 1975 playoffs against Philadelphia and the Islanders. (Note: my favourite players were Darryl Sittler and Errol Thompson). I singlehandedly ended the Harold Ballard Reign of Error, helped Cliff Fletcher acquire Dougie Gilmour, talked Molgilny into signing with Toronto and I continue to advise Paul Maurice on a daily basis. I do this last duty while holding down two jobs: head of the Einstein Children’s Science Development Project at Sick Kids during the day, and late night doorman at the Brass Rail. My anatomy education has not gone to waste.
Mr. Vice, I guess this is just a long-winded way of saying that I believe your Sens-Leafs game companion on February 2 should be someone who bleeds Leafian blue and who has an extremely strong attachment to February 2. This trip, not to put too fine a point on it, would be the highlight of my life.
Thank you most magnanimously for considering my candidacy.
Humbly yours,
Orphan Bob
P.S. The Brat is stealing your beer when you are not home.
Well, I’m not sure what swayed the Vice to my point of view. Maybe it was the missing beer. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was the strength of our friendship. No matter. We went to Ottawa together. Our Leafs won 4-3.
It took a day or two to marshal all the arguments I wanted to use to get the waffling Vice to choose me to accompany him to the big Senators-Leafs match set for February 2. After many rewrites, here is what I sent to him by Special Delivery.
Raffle Sweepstakes Entry
January 14, Year of Our Lord MMMMXXOX
Re: Orphan Bob’s Plea To Accompany His Hero to The Upcoming Sens-Leafs Match
Dear Excellency, Mr. Vice,
I have been waiting desperately by the phone, hoping beyond all hope that I might possibly be chosen as the lucky fella to attend the BIG GAME with my superhero, Red Greentree (aka you,The Vice), the man without whom the earth would not revolve about the sun. It was only two days ago that I learned there would be a formal application process for this glorious honour. Perhaps you may have told me earlier, but I guess my whole body and brain were still frozen from scraping and watering the big rink we’ve been building together since New Year’s Day at The Compound For Minor Vice, the gorgeous roost you share with Madame Lachaise. I know it was only 45 below on most days. I should have worn a third toque. The horrible head cold I have been fighting at the “rink building work bees” hasn’t helped much either.
As I humbly perceive the situation, this honour would be best bestowed upon a constant fan who has, for innumerable arid years of desperate cheering, supported the Leafs in their quest to repeat the glory of 1967. I understand, ex post facto, the idiocy of such hope, but that’s what true fans do, despite decades of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
February 2nd is a very special day in my life. Approximately 11 months after I was born (my birthday is March 10, 1955 for those of you who send cards and small heartfelt tokens of friendship like $2 tickets for hockey raffles), my parents perished in a terrible catastrophe. I was left an orphan with no relatives anywhere in the world. My parents were orphans themselves and mere children on their wedding day. Somehow, on February 2nd, 1956, I ended up on the steps of the Turk Broda Sisters of Mercy Orphanage and Charm School on Church Street, just across from the Carlton Cash Box, also known as Maple Leaf Gardens. I was swaddled in a couple of tattered tea towels placed inside a crisp new Hush Puppies shoe box. Although I cannot recall the exact temperature, I have been told that it was about minus 72F outside that day. Fortunately, there was no wind chill.
The Sisters took me in and educated me, pro bono, until the age of 15. During my stay at the orphanage, we were visited weekly by one of the lesser stars from the Leafs, and one time ,even Harold Ballard came by to hand out penny candy emblazoned with the Leafs’ logo. You could not believe how this cheered us up. I still have all that candy in my Tickle Trunk of Treasures. The treats were a very rare occurrence at the Broda and I would dearly have loved to eat just one. Treats were uncommon, not because the Sisters were cruel, but because they were strict vegetarians with a fetish for perfect teeth.
We were never given any tickets to actual games as a result of the rampant TB and pneumonia which seemed to never leave the premises. Luckily though, in 1965, a small 4 inch black and white TV was donated to the orphanage and we all got to watch the first two periods of Saturday Leafs games, 9 pm being our curfew. We always managed to keep up with our favourite team from information gleaned at the infrequent player visits, shortened Saturday viewings, and from reading reports printed on the old newspapers used as curtains in our building. Sometimes the articles were three months old, but we were happy to have this small contact with the outside world.
The happiest day of my life (February 2, 1960) was when I learned I was going to be adopted by one of the Leaf alumni. Some speculated that it was to be Bill Barilko. I know now that this could not have been possible, since he went missing well before that time. In any event, the adoption never did occur, leaving me crestfallen and shaken. Perhaps it was for the best because, instead of getting to stay at the orphanage with its close ties to the Leafs, I could have ended up as a child labourer on some farm in the backwoods of Kemptville, the Smoking Capital of Canada, where every new mom is given six cartons of cigarettes by the Health Unit to ensure she still has enough money for formula for the first month. Don’t get me wrong. I am not afraid of hard work. I’ll shovel anybody’s rink, under any conditions, especially if that rink belongs to a friend.
We did not get formal schooling at the orphanage. There was very little time between the constant chores which I gratefully accomplished in return for my warm refrigerator box bedroom and that wonderful single square meal-a-day of carrots and slightly smelly tofu. We drank rainwater by sticking discarded straws, found on the sidewalk just outside the front doors, into the eavestroughs of nearby buildings. The water was not good but there was plenty of it.
Despite the lack of schooling, I was able to write a university entrance exam when I turned 14 and was accepted to Harvard, Western and Oxford. To pay for the entrance exam, I had to sell, for cheap, almost all the Leafs memorabilia I had managed to collect over the years. The buyer was some guy named Stavros. In turn, Stavros sold the goods to rabid fans and purchased a grocery chain with the proceeds. What can you do? I wasn’t then the businessman I am today.
Sister Perpetual Suffering helped me get a full scholarship to Western, where I dedicated myself for four years to the study of Anatomy, Nuclear Physics and Competitive Batik. I was also able to establish Leafs fan clubs at every university and college in Canada (Alberta and Quebec excepted), as well as in Mali and the United Arab Emirates. I designed the under-the-bench pyramids used successfully by coach Red Kelly in the 1975 playoffs against Philadelphia and the Islanders. (Note: my favourite players were Darryl Sittler and Errol Thompson). I singlehandedly ended the Harold Ballard Reign of Error, helped Cliff Fletcher acquire Dougie Gilmour, talked Molgilny into signing with Toronto and I continue to advise Paul Maurice on a daily basis. I do this last duty while holding down two jobs: head of the Einstein Children’s Science Development Project at Sick Kids during the day, and late night doorman at the Brass Rail. My anatomy education has not gone to waste.
Mr. Vice, I guess this is just a long-winded way of saying that I believe your Sens-Leafs game companion on February 2 should be someone who bleeds Leafian blue and who has an extremely strong attachment to February 2. This trip, not to put too fine a point on it, would be the highlight of my life.
Thank you most magnanimously for considering my candidacy.
Humbly yours,
Orphan Bob
P.S. The Brat is stealing your beer when you are not home.
Well, I’m not sure what swayed the Vice to my point of view. Maybe it was the missing beer. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was the strength of our friendship. No matter. We went to Ottawa together. Our Leafs won 4-3.
Friday 6 April 2012
The Absolutely True Adventures of Orphan Bob and The Killer Strawberries
Prologue
Some people call me a bold-faced liar. Funny thing is, I can only recall fibbing once and that got me into a lot of trouble with Sister Schadenfreude at the Turk Broda Sisters of Mercy Orphanage and Charm School where I was raised. “Sin” was a four letter word there and “lying” was the biggest four letter word of them all. I told my last lie on February 3, 1956. I still bear the scars today.
Chapter 1- The Raffle
Sometimes it’s best to start in the middle and work your way out. Sort of like eating an Oreo cookie. So that’s what I am going to do.
My best friend this week, and for the last 857 weeks has been Red Greenfield, also known to his teammates on the Killer Strawberries Hockey and Gentlemen’s Club as The Vice, short for Vice Ice Marshal. He presides magisterially over The Compound For Minor Vice on Driftwood Lake, but only when his life companion, the unflappable Madame LaChaise Lounge is not around. She is frequently absent from the Compound and can usually be found tearing strips off the numbskulls who run the provincial Government. When she is around, the Compound is run a little differently than under her paramour’s dictatorship. I still go there when she is residence, especially when I feel the urge to improve my posture or to relearn the meaning of the word “obsequious”. I owe a lot of the humility in my humble nature to her firm tutelage.
Not only is The Vice is good hockey player in his own mind, he’s a darned good procrastinator. He once burned down his house just to get rid of a pile of dirty dishes which had accumulated during one of Madame Lachaise’s absences. In any event, my friend, the Vice, is an avid Leafs fan…maybe a little too avid according to his amateur psychologist and sometimes defence partner, Dr. Bonehead Butc her Brophey.
Last February 2, in the Year of Our Lord MMMMXXOX, The Vice’s and my much maligned Leafs, heartbreakers extraordinaire, were to play the hated Senators in Ottawa, the City That Fell Asleep. Now, The Vice is a very lucky man…luckier than good…much luckier. I had bought for him at Christmas a small yet significant $2.00 token our friendship. It turned out to be the winning raffle ticket for the game against the Senators. Not only did he win a pair of once-in-a-lifetime tickets on the glass at the blueline, he also got princely accommodation for two at the same hotel where the Leafs would be staying. Upon learning of his great fortune, he was delirious with joy. I think he may have wet his pants too.
Upon hearing of The Vice’s good fortune, I waited by the phone, deliciously anticipating the invitation to Ottawa. But a strangely ominous silence emanated from the Compound for over 72 hours. And then, out of the silence, a heart-wrenching missive appeared on the Vice’s internet vanity site. The scoundrel was going to run a contest to determine who would go with him to see the sainted Leafs. I clutched my choking heart and almost passed out from the pain of disillusionment. My buddy, my favourite abettor in escapades best left unreported, had failed me miserably.
Once I regained what remained of my composure, I dialed the Compound’s unlisted number (705-456-8743) and caught the Vice at home, mixing margaritas in his bathtub. In his most unctuous voice, he explained to me that he had not yet got around to purchasing a Christmas present (already over two weeks late) for his impudent spawn, The Brat. He wanted to make up for his inexcusable procrastination by allowing her the opportunity to make a reasoned claim on the second half of his raffle prize. I understood his dilemma immediately, having met The Brat on several regrettable occasions.
I will not go into the sickening sycophantic depths to which The Brat sank on this occasion. Suffice it say that she tugged unashamedly upon her poor father’s aging heartstrings. What was truly galling was the fact that The Brat wasn’t after the extra ticket at all. She hates sports, men and little rabbits. What she wanted was to get even with me for outsmarting her on numerous previous situations. Hell hath no fury like a woman scotched.
Reluctantly, I decided to enter the contest, an underdog at best. With the fumes of unforeseen betrayal still lingering in my sobbing bosom, I composed myself and my thoughts. It was the first time I would ever let anyone know so much of my hidden past. My entry follows.
TO BE CONTINUED
Some people call me a bold-faced liar. Funny thing is, I can only recall fibbing once and that got me into a lot of trouble with Sister Schadenfreude at the Turk Broda Sisters of Mercy Orphanage and Charm School where I was raised. “Sin” was a four letter word there and “lying” was the biggest four letter word of them all. I told my last lie on February 3, 1956. I still bear the scars today.
Chapter 1- The Raffle
Sometimes it’s best to start in the middle and work your way out. Sort of like eating an Oreo cookie. So that’s what I am going to do.
My best friend this week, and for the last 857 weeks has been Red Greenfield, also known to his teammates on the Killer Strawberries Hockey and Gentlemen’s Club as The Vice, short for Vice Ice Marshal. He presides magisterially over The Compound For Minor Vice on Driftwood Lake, but only when his life companion, the unflappable Madame LaChaise Lounge is not around. She is frequently absent from the Compound and can usually be found tearing strips off the numbskulls who run the provincial Government. When she is around, the Compound is run a little differently than under her paramour’s dictatorship. I still go there when she is residence, especially when I feel the urge to improve my posture or to relearn the meaning of the word “obsequious”. I owe a lot of the humility in my humble nature to her firm tutelage.
Not only is The Vice is good hockey player in his own mind, he’s a darned good procrastinator. He once burned down his house just to get rid of a pile of dirty dishes which had accumulated during one of Madame Lachaise’s absences. In any event, my friend, the Vice, is an avid Leafs fan…maybe a little too avid according to his amateur psychologist and sometimes defence partner, Dr. Bonehead Butc her Brophey.
Last February 2, in the Year of Our Lord MMMMXXOX, The Vice’s and my much maligned Leafs, heartbreakers extraordinaire, were to play the hated Senators in Ottawa, the City That Fell Asleep. Now, The Vice is a very lucky man…luckier than good…much luckier. I had bought for him at Christmas a small yet significant $2.00 token our friendship. It turned out to be the winning raffle ticket for the game against the Senators. Not only did he win a pair of once-in-a-lifetime tickets on the glass at the blueline, he also got princely accommodation for two at the same hotel where the Leafs would be staying. Upon learning of his great fortune, he was delirious with joy. I think he may have wet his pants too.
Upon hearing of The Vice’s good fortune, I waited by the phone, deliciously anticipating the invitation to Ottawa. But a strangely ominous silence emanated from the Compound for over 72 hours. And then, out of the silence, a heart-wrenching missive appeared on the Vice’s internet vanity site. The scoundrel was going to run a contest to determine who would go with him to see the sainted Leafs. I clutched my choking heart and almost passed out from the pain of disillusionment. My buddy, my favourite abettor in escapades best left unreported, had failed me miserably.
Once I regained what remained of my composure, I dialed the Compound’s unlisted number (705-456-8743) and caught the Vice at home, mixing margaritas in his bathtub. In his most unctuous voice, he explained to me that he had not yet got around to purchasing a Christmas present (already over two weeks late) for his impudent spawn, The Brat. He wanted to make up for his inexcusable procrastination by allowing her the opportunity to make a reasoned claim on the second half of his raffle prize. I understood his dilemma immediately, having met The Brat on several regrettable occasions.
I will not go into the sickening sycophantic depths to which The Brat sank on this occasion. Suffice it say that she tugged unashamedly upon her poor father’s aging heartstrings. What was truly galling was the fact that The Brat wasn’t after the extra ticket at all. She hates sports, men and little rabbits. What she wanted was to get even with me for outsmarting her on numerous previous situations. Hell hath no fury like a woman scotched.
Reluctantly, I decided to enter the contest, an underdog at best. With the fumes of unforeseen betrayal still lingering in my sobbing bosom, I composed myself and my thoughts. It was the first time I would ever let anyone know so much of my hidden past. My entry follows.
TO BE CONTINUED
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