CHAPTER EIGHT

Lunch was called “dinner” at the School, not that it matters, but it struck me as a bit out of place. I couldn’t get used to it back then, so let it be “lunch” from now on. Lunch was also the biggest meal of the day, and after that first morning at school with Mrs. Beaton, and not having eaten much the day before, I gobbled the salt cod with potatoes and carrots like it was Chinese food.

The dining room was like another world within the School. For one thing, all the boys were there at the same time, from me in Grade Three to those studying for graduation in Grade Eleven. It was a noisy room and yet, seated at tables for four, it wasn’t that hard to hear. Seeing large pitchers of fresh milk at every table, and dishes of real butter, I was wishing my brother was there.

I can’t recall exactly where I went after lunch, but on a typical day, before noticing the girls, I would have been outside with the other kids, playing hockey with a tin can, wrestling or playing baseball, the same fun and games I did at home with Earl.

The school playground was more like a park with a wrought-iron fence all around. The far end of the property, facing South Street, was like a section of the Public Gardens, with tall mature trees, lilac bushes, and a walking path of grey crushed stone, around the perimeter. I hardly went there in Grade Three, but, later on, when walking hand in hand with a girlfriend was the highlight of the day, I walked marathons.

We had a sand lot for playing baseball in the fall and spring, easily converted to an ice rink in the winter. There was some playground equipment for the younger kids, but I only remember the dark green jungle gym that managed, every winter, to freeze someone’s tongue to its iron bars. It happened every year, I’m sure, but only once per kid.

Around the school building, inside the fence, there was a sidewalk and a small area paved in asphalt, directly in front of the Juniors’ residence.

When I was twelve, I was on that asphalt late one night, smoking a cigarette with a friend of mine, when, suddenly, a bright light was flashing in my eyes. “Put out those cigarettes and come with me.” It was one of our supervisors.

When inside the building, he brought us up to the office and explained that it was Mr. Allen, the Superintendent, who saw the flickers of light in the dark, through his binoculars. And without explaining any further, he told us first to stop smoking, and, secondly, that if we had to smoke, to do so on the other side of the building, away from Mr. Allen’s house. What a surprise that was, an unusual form of discipline, but well received, nonetheless.

On rainy days, we congregated in the TV room, in the dorm, or in the classrooms. The lunch break ended when the buzzer sounded for a sixth period at 2:30 p.m. The sixth and seventh periods were taken up with more of the three Rs, but that wasn’t the end of the day, as it would have been in public school.

There were three more periods, the eighth and ninth, which I spent down in the woodworking shop. The tenth period was marked “free,” which you seldom got in the higher grades.

In the woodworking shop, we were taught one on one, and, in that first week, I learned to cut a lion free from a block of wood. I had sanded it down to the size of a kitten by the time it had passed Mr. Burgher’s inspection. In the months that followed, I learned to make wooden toys, to cane and rope chairs, to make mats from coarse twine, and to use power tools without losing fingers.

The boys’ workshop was in a large room with work benches lined up, side by side, right back to the far wall on the left. To the right was a heavy-duty lathe, and scattered throughout the room were power tools of all kinds, from jigsaws to drills to the loud and scary bench saws. It was a statement of normalcy within the School, a way of showing us that most anything is possible with due care and proper training. In time, I got to know all those saws and what they could do, and, despite the risk of accidents, there were none, as I recall, beyond a splinter or two.

The work benches were filled with interesting projects in various stages of work, and helter-shelter about the room were chairs in all stages of being roped or caned, and twine mats still on the frame. I saw the workshop as a place to play, I liked it that much. I felt at home in that playroom and why not: my grandfather was a carpenter; Dad could build a house literally from the ground up; and likewise for my brothers, Earl and Brian.

Nina and the other girls from Grade Three would have been just as busy in Domestic Science, learning to cook, sew, knit, crochet, or whatever other manual skills might be useful later on, either for working at home or in the workplace.

On that first evening of school, I spent most of my free time in the TV room. There was one channel only, CBC, the same as at home and with all the same programs. A few more years would pass before even CTV was on the scene, offering, as I remember most, a Wednesday night hockey game to rival Saturday’s Hockey Night in Canada on the CBC. You had to be there with one channel and nothing but a test pattern until 4:30 p.m. to fully appreciate the excitement of another network.

I played checkers that evening with Clifford Clayton and never once beat him in the few years we played, but no one else did either. Clifford was one of a few black kids to enrol at the School, one year younger than me but more like an older brother, being so strong and athletic. If you ended up on his side, no matter what the sport, you’d come out on top. And, by the way, kids were teased like at any school, but never because of skin colour, as I remember it.

A few weeks later, I even watched the New York Yankees win the World Series, with Hall of Fame players like Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Yogi Berra. An older boy, Brian Lucas, was in the TV room for every game, and he told me all about his team, the Baltimore Orioles. I’m still an Oriole fan and for no other reason than that.

On that first day of school, I filled up more than once when thinking about home, and I cried myself to sleep for days after, but I had turned a corner that morning in Mrs. Beaton’s class. My whole world had been turned upside down in just a few days. There I was, unlike my former self, liking school, dreading long weekends with little to do, enjoying homework, and talking to lots of kids. I was still very shy and withdrawn, but as the days passed, there were fewer tears and less time for thinking about home.

Bedtime for Grade Three was 8:30 p.m. and it took me a while to get used to that. Most nights before lights out, Mr. Hawes would lead us in the same prayer as always: “Now I lay me down to sleep…” He never left the dorm without hollering back: “You boys keep your hands above the sheets and go to sleep.” As soon as the jingle of the keys in his pocket faded away, we didn’t dare get up, but talking and laughing was far from over and sleep not far from that.

When Mr. Hawes was in a good mood, it was like summer camp in the dorm. We’d gather around or just lay in bed while he read to us. He seemed always to pick the kind of books that kept us waiting for the next chapter. We’d live in Africa one week with Bomba the Jungle Boy, and the next week, back in Nova Scotia, with one of Helen Creighton’s Bluenose Ghosts. And once in a while, he’d pass around cookies and loose candies, or, on the best days, chocolate bars.

As he read, it was like the ghosts were in the room, waiting for the end of the chapter and lights out.