Other Blogs And Books

Here is a quick look at my other blogs before you start reading this one. The other blogs, like this one, are designed to be read like a book from top to bottom.

My main blog is http://www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/

http://www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/ is about economics, history and, general human issues.

http://www.markmeekprogress.blogspot.com/ concerns progress in technology and ideas.

http://www.markmeekearth.blogspot.com/ is my geology and global natural history blog for topics other than glaciers. www.markmeekworld.blogspot.com is my natural history blog concerning glaciers.

http://www.markmeekniagara.blogspot.com/ is about new discoveries concerning natural history in the general area of Niagara Falls.

http://www.markmeeklife.blogspot.com/ is my observations concerning meteorology and biology.

http://www.markmeekphysics.blogspot.com/ is my blog about physics and astronomy.

http://www.markmeekcosmology.blogspot.com/ is my version of string theory that solves many unsolved mysteries about the underlying structure and beginning of the universe.

http://www.markmeekpatterns.blogspot.com/ details my work with the fundamental patterns and complexity that underlies everything in existence.

http://www.markmeekreligion.blogspot.com/ is my religion blog.

http://www.markmeekcreation.blogspot.com/ is proof that there must be a God.

http://www.markmeektravel.blogspot.com/ is my travel photos of North America.

http://www.markmeekphotos.blogspot.com/ is my travel photos of Europe.

My books can be seen at http://www.bn.com/ http://www.amazon.com/ or, http://www.iuniverse.com/ just do an author search for "Mark Meek"

Introduction

This is my autobiography, as I remember things. I may spell the names of songs with proper spellings instead of the way it is spelled in the actual songs titles. For example, the title of a song may include the word "gotcha", while I may spell it correctly, "got you" here. I have put the names of songs in lists, rather than in block paragraphs, for ease of reading.

Spellings will be that of the country where the story is taking place. If the story takes place in Canada, then Canadian spellings will be used.

Ignore the dates on some of the postings because this is actually a reactivation of an old blog.

There are fourteen chapters altogether. The list on the side can only hold ten. Click on one of the later postings and the rest will be displayed.

The contents are:
1) Early Childhood In The Forest Of Dean
2) A New Country
3) Another New Country
4) Fourth Through Sixth Grades
5) Junior High School
6) High School
7) Back To The Old Country
8) The Rest Of The Seventies
9) 1980 And 81
10) The Eighties
11) The Nineties, Part One
12) The Nineties, Part Two
13) Travelling And The Rest Of The Nineties
14) The New Millennium

ATTENTION: BLOGSPOT WILL ONLY HOLD SO MUCH DATA IN A CONTINUOUS BLOG. SO, READ WHAT IS HERE AND THEN COME BACK TO THE TOP AND CLICK ON THE NEXT CHAPTER TO BE READ IN GREEN AT THE SIDE, WHICH SHOULD BE "5) JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL", UNDER PREVIOUS POSTS. THEN, THE REMAINDER OF THE CHAPTERS WILL BE DISPLAYED.

1) Early Childhood In The Forest Of Dean

I was born on September 20, 1960, at home, not in a hospital, at the house known at the time as "Sunnybank Bungalow" in the village of Lydbrook, which is on the northern edge of the western portion of Gloucestershire just on the England side of the border between England and Wales and known as the Forest of Dean. The "border" is, of course, not actually a border because England and Wales are both parts of the United Kingdom and so is more like the borders between U.S. states or Canadian provinces.

I remember it as a typically English village with stone walls and hedges and patchwork fields outside of the trees of the forest. Our house was actually half of a duplex with a porch (known as a "veranda") which offered a nice view of the hill on the other side of the valley along which Lydbrook is laid out. Our house faced west so that the sun shone in during the late afternoon. The words "bungalow", which is a one-story house and "veranda", which is a porch, were not originally English words but were, I believe, borrowed from Hindi.

My mother, Vera, was from Worrall Hill, a satellite village of Lydbrook atop the hill opposite our house. My father, Les, was from Drybrook, another village to the north of Lydbrook. My maternal grandmother, who I knew as "Nanna" lived with us and my father was a bus driver for the Red and White Company.

We had no central heating but there was a fireplace in each room. I had a plastic pail such as the ones that children use to make sandcastles. One day, my mother decided to use the pail to clean the ashes out of a fireplace and to this day, the scent of burning plastic reminds me of this time.

There was no electric refrigerator but in it's place was a small, cool room known as "the larder". Occasionally, I was punished for misbehaviour by being shut in there for a brief period of time. Outside, I had a swing set and there was a pile of coal for use in the fireplaces. The most important industry in the Forest of Dean was originally coal mining.

My prized possession was a blue toy plastic motorcycle. However sometimes I would ride it into the woods nearby, leave it to look at something and then be unable to find it. I also placed high value on a traditional British policeman's hat that I had been given. One Easter, I was given a chocolate egg mounted inside an elaborate cup, which I still have today. In fact, I have the cup here in front of me to help to bring back memories of this time.

The Forest of Dean also once had extensive iron mines. There were slag heaps in various places in the forest and my father would take me to climb one preiodically. They seemed like huge mountains that took me a long time to reach the top.

There were many squirrels all around and I tried in vain to catch one. One day, there was a hedgehog outside our house. At another time, there was a fox going around the area stealing chickens.

Sometimes, I would be taken for a walk and we would go past a window in which there was always a radio on the windowsill from which music would be playing. But I do not recall having any contact with music myself at this time.

One day, while in Hubert Evans' Barber Shop, I asked where Heaven was because I had heard of it but did not know where it was. I was told that it was straight upward and for years, I thought that for someone to get to Heaven, they had to go to Lydbrook first because Heaven was directly overhead there.

I had heard of Jesus. I knew that he was an important character, although I did not understand what he did. I thought that Jesus was a local, from around the Forest of Dean. One day, I noticed a large group of men in a room having some kind of meeting and I thought that Jesus must be among them.

At night, I could see the vertical bar of light moving across the wall opposite my bedroom window from the headlights of cars on the road below shining through the gap between the curtains. But one night, there was a loud rumbling such as I had never heard before. It sounded like the footsteps of some kind of giant.

However the following morning, none of the adults seemed to have the slightest concern about any giant. Maybe it was a friendly giant that came out of the forest occasionally to visit our village. The ground was wet and I eventually realized that what I had been hearing was thunder.

One of the first things that I remember learning is that numbers can be expressed either by their symbol, such as "6", or written out, such as "six". Another prominent name is that of Dr. McMinn, the village doctor who delivered both me and my brother, Paul, when we were born.

We would go, in our Volkswagen Beetle, to the shops in Cinderford, a larger town near Drybrook. There was a Woolworths there along with numerous smaller shops.

The nearest city to the Forest of Dean was Gloucester. It was very different from our village. There were many more people and I could see that most of the people in Gloucester did not know each other because they would rush past each other without saying hello. In Lydbrook, it seemed as if everyone who met stopped and greeted one another.

There was a store in Gloucester, the Bon Marche, which was much bigger than Woolworths. I do not know where the name originated but "bon marche" means "inexpensive" in French. (The Bon Marche was later known as Debenhams).

A magnificent building was Gloucester Cathedral. I learned that a cathedral was more important than an ordinary church. I have vivid memories of the light through the stained glass windows and the echos off the walls in the cathedral. Maybe this was where God actually lived, there probably was not enough room for him in the church in Lydbrook.

One day in Gloucester, Westgate Street near the cathedral was being paved and a passing horse knocked over some flammable liquid. There was a massive fire on the street but it did not appear that any buildings were damaged. My father wrapped his coat around my younger brother as we passed by on the other side of the street to protect him from flying sparks.

I was taken to visit Lydbrook Primary School, the village school, because I was to soon start school there. But it was not to be, there were other plans in the works. We were soon to move to a place far away. The Canadian Government had been loaning money to would-be immigrants to pay their way to settle in Canada and we were going to live in a place called Saskatchewan.

We had sold our car to Eric Webb, the village mechanic, and he was to drive us to the dock at Liverpool, where we were to board a ship. We dropped off my grandmother at my mother's sister's house and then began the long drive ahead. We drove further than I remembered having gone before. The landscape became flatter and with fewer trees than there was in our forest.

It was announced that we were soon to enter the Mersey Tunnel at Liverpool, which ran under the Mersey River. Finally, we were at the dock and a massive ship with several chimneys stood in the water in front of us, the Empress of England.

Eric Webb left in our car so, whatever we were doing, there was no turning back now. Even if we changed our minds, we would have no way to get back home.

We boarded the ship and after what seemed to be a long time, things began to move. The ship was so big that it appeared that it was standing still and that all of England was floating away. The ship had a large dining room for meals.

For the first time, I saw people that were completely different from us and speaking in ways that were incomprehensible. At the time, I thought that a person was born as either a child or an adult and would be that way all of their lives. I did not yet know that children grew into adults. I walked all around the ship's decks with my father and there was a ceremomy in which balloons were released when we were halfway across the ocean.

2) A New Country

We arrived by the ship in Montreal around the first of July 1965. I cannot remember anything about the landing. My father had been to Canada previously and had a brother living in Vancouver. We still had a long way to go by train to get to our destination of Saskatoon in the province of Saskatchewan. I have no memory of Saskatoon either, I know that we stayed in a motel while my father looked for a job.

It was decided that this was not the place to live. The flat and treeless prairie was so utterly different from our native England. We headed back east on a train. I do remember being on the train and walking with my father at the Winnipeg Train Station.

We ended up in Niagara Falls, Canada. Staying in a tourist's bed and breakfast on Hiram Street near the falls and the Rainbow Bridge. It was run by a woman named Mrs. Fyfe.

There were train tracks nearby and when walking around the tourist area at the top of Clifton Hill, it was often necessary to wait until a train had passed. When the brightly painted caboose became visible, we knew that the end of the train was near.

Queen Victoria Park was adjacent to the falls. There were fountains with coloured lights under the water that would make it seem to glow at night. There were large coloured lights that illuminated the falls at night. First, the white lights would be turned on and then varying colours afterward. To someone who had never seen anything like it before, it was really awesome.

Next to Queen Victoria Park was the magnificent Oakes Gardens and right by the brink of the falls was Table Rock House, with an extensive gift shop inside. The Maid of the Mist was a tour boat that would approach right up close to the falls. In the upper river, above the falls, was the wreck of an old boat from which the crew had been rescued in 1918, it is known as the "Scow".

There were two observation towers, for tourists to look at the falls, nearby. The Skylon was still under construction. A hotel was also being constructed right at the bottom of Clifton Hill, it was to be the Sheraton Foxhead, alongside the older Sheraton Brock Hotel.

There were people walking around and looking at the falls from all over the world. It was rare to see a Japanese tourist without a significant amount of camera equipment. I was puzzled as to why we had round eyes but some people from other places had slanted eyes. The air was filled with not only the roar of the falls but the clattering of sightseeing helicopters.

On the Canadian end of the Rainbow Bridge was the bell tower known as the Carillon. It's chimes would become very familiar. The landscape has been changed since those days. For one thing, the Oneida Silver building was demolished and the space is now occupied by the casino. Also, there used to be a stone arch on the road that goes under the Rainbow Bridge but that has long since been removed also.

The red and green of the traffic lights around the Canadian side of the falls seemed to me to be so vivid. The most memorable falls souvenir was those plastic miniature television sets that were actually slide viewers with various scenes of the falls.

In September of 1965, I began kindergarten at the old Kitchener Street School. It was an old building that has long since been removed. I would be walked there and back every school day. My father was working at a factory called the Cyanamid, not the one that was in the north end of the city, there was another Cyanamid in Niagara Falls as well.

We moved from the bed and breakfast on Hiram Street to a house on Jepson Street. It was not far away but I would be going to a new school. I was taken to Valley Way School and met it's amicable principal, Mr. Nott.

Kindergarten was in the room with the large windows in the front of the school. Students had kindergarten for a half day, either in the morning or the afternoon. I was in the afternoon session. Behind the school was courts for people to play badminton, a sport that I had never heard of.

Aside from working at the Cyanamid, my father also began driving bus tours around the falls in the summer.

Not far from our new home was a large, old brick building (since replaced by a new building) called the Eventide Home. It was run by the Salvation Army and was for elderly people. There were large oak trees around it any myriads of squirrels attracted by the acorns.

I was away from home for several days at Niagara General Hospital to have my tonsils taken out. The room was a certain shade of green which brings back memories to this day whenever I see that shade.

There were other immigrants all around, the family who lived directly behind us was Italian and in the summer when windows were open, the scent of tomato sauce from their house would remind me that it was nearly dinner time.

The local shopping area was on Queen Street as well as Victoria Avenue. On Queen Street was Kresge and Rosberg's. There was also a hobby shop on Queen Street in which any boy would be glad to spend hours.

The supermarket, where food was bought was closer, Steinbergs was withing easy walking distance of our house. The Steinbergs were a well-known Montreal Jewish family who operated many supermarkets in Canada.

We found a favourite place to eat. La Fiesta, on Main Street, was a fish and chips shop that seemed to have been transplanted directly from the old country. It would remain a favourite place for many years.

In the summer, we would go to King's Bridge Park. This was a park along where the Welland River meets the Niagara River in the village of Chippawa, just east of Niagara Falls. This would also remain a favourite place for many years, although we also went to Dufferin Islands sometimes. We once went to a place called Shalamar in Queenston but decided that it could not replace Chippawa. Another favourite summer outing was to St. Catharines, to watch the ships go through the locks on the Welland Canal.

However, at least from my point of view, there was nothing to replace the park, Leslie Park, right by our house. In the summer, life revolved around the large swimming pool in the park where anyone could go swimming for a nickel (five cents or .05 dollar). There was a smaller round pool for young children but I wanted to get into the big pool as soon as possible. There were also swings and slides and things like that, but the pool was the main thing.

Near the entrance to the Leslie Park Pool, there was the large red boulder by the flagpole that is still there today. But the original building has been replaced. The life guards had sharp memories and knew who was allowed into the deep end of the pool and who had to stay in the shallow end. To be allowed in the deep end, a swimmer has to pass a test witnessed by a life guard. I had to swim across, back and, across the shallow end in order to be admitted to the deep end.

We had a black and white television that always seemed to be on. There was, of course, shows and cartoons like Superman, The Flintstones, Popeye, Flipper (the dolphin), Dick Van Dyke, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, Casper The Friendly Ghost and, Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Other shows of the time have largely disappeared from memory. There was Daktari, about a woman veterinarian looking out for animals in east Africa. Hercules, a cartoon about the mythical hero with tremendous strength and, Dr. Kildare, about a medical intern. There were also two wartime serials, Combat and The Rat Patrol.

Brand names of various products were to be seen on television advertisements and elsewhere. Borden is a dairy products brand that had a facility in Niagara Falls, Canada and used Elsie the Cow as a mascot as it still does today. My younger brother ate Gerber Baby Food, which also had a facility in town.

By the way, the same baby is on Gerber Baby Food as has been there for generations. The Gerber baby is surely a senior citizen by now.

Other memorable and prominent brands of then and now are Canadian Tire stores, Crisco Cooking Oil, Fresca soft drinks and, Fruit Loops breakfast cereal. There was a new soft drink called Wink. A van pulled up one day in the parking lot of Leslie Park by the pool that gave away free samples of Wink to anyone who waited in line. Green Giant was prominent in canned vegetables and all around town, there was signs from Wylie real estate. Station Wagons and convertibles were popular car styles in the later sixties. My father smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes and liked Roleflex Cameras.

It was found that my younger brother was deaf. We would take him to Children's Hospital in Toronto for specialized treatment. I really enjoyed going along on those drives along Lake Ontario to Toronto. But I was somewhat alarmed by the skyscrapers in Toronto, what would happen if someone were on the roof of a skyscraper and they could not get back down and no one knew that they were there?

While we lived on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, a relative came to visit us from England. We were driving back from Toronto Airport and as we were crossing the Skyway at Hamilton, she asked my father to turn on the radio and a whole new interest opened up, that of music. The Beatles song "Hello, Goodbye" was on and I was immediately hooked. I cannot remember for certain, but it was either that song or "A Hard Days Night" which was the first song that I ever listened to.

The later sixties was the heyday of rock and roll music. Back in Niagara Falls, there was the radio station CJRN or there was WKBW broadcasting from Buffalo on the American side. I was only a child but those Sixties classics moved me as much as any adult.

There was, of course, the Beatles. It was virtually impossible to turn on the radio without hearing them. Some other bands produced music that was as good as the Beatles, but none could match the sheer number of hits. Other good bands would get a few hit songs, but everything the Beatles touched was a hit. In fact, I cannot think of a Beatles song that was not a hit.

But the Beatles were only the beginning. Simon and Garfunkel had the three classics "Mrs. Robinson", "At The Zoo" and "Feeling Groovy" while we were living on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.

Petula Clark had "Downtown" and "My Love".

The Monkees sang "Daydream Believer", "Pleasant Valley Sunday" and their own theme song.

There were The Hollies with "Look Through Any Window" and "Stop, Stop, Stop".

The Union Gap was probably underrated and around this time, "Young Girl", "Woman, Woman" and "Lady Willpower" were very popular songs.

The Association was there with "Along Comes Mary" and the haunting love song "Cherish".

There was The Seekers with "Georgy Girl" and "A World of Our Own".

The Doors had "Light My Fire" and the unique rocking instrumentals of "Hello, I Love You".

One of the most cheerful and light-hearted songs of the Sixties would long be a favourite of mine. "The Rain, The Park And, Other Things" by the Cowsills was a Sixties classic.

If any band could match the Beatles, it was the Rolling Stones. The song of theirs that I remember the most from around this time was "Jumping Jack Flash".

There was also a popular song that was not considered as rock music, "Strangers In The Night" by Frank Sinatra.

Other Sixties classics were "MacArthur Park" by Richard Harris (There really was a MacArthur Park, in Los Angeles)

"Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" by the Buckinghams

"Expressway To Your Heart" by the Soul Survivors

"A Lovers Concerto" by The Toys

"Love Is Blue" by Paul Mauriat

We would drive around and explore the area with the radio always on. Eventually, my parents bought a radio for the house so that I could listen to music at home as well.

Music was not all that I was interested in. I had been given a world atlas that I studied with great interest. I also had a street map of our town and I memorized every street in Niagara Falls, Canada. There some really nice parts of town, such as Cherrywood Acres.

I was interested in books although I usually just looked at the drawings and pictures. I had a book about animals with drawings of all the great animals of the world. There was going to be a karate class and my father bought me the book "Super Karate Made Easy" by Moja Rone.

At school, we had the world-renown Dr. Suess books in first grade (usually age 6-7). There was a girl named Nancy Rand that was in school book stories.

Finally, I remembered the story in school of G.I. Ant. This ant had a large family and thus a large house. But when he put up a sign in front of his house identifying himself, he alarmed the other ants because he forgot to use punctuation. The sign read "GIANT" and the other ants thought it was a giant that lived there who might step on them.

In fact, I was already fascinated with ants. I watched them whenever I got the chance and I learned all of the parts of an ant's body and how an ant nest functions. There were grasshoppers around too, particularly in the field by the school, along Homewood Avenue.

There was one book that was by far the most important that I had at the time. At Steinbergs, there was the encyclopedia of world history being sold titled "Universal History Of The World". I only got the first volume, the one on ancient history. I merely looked at the drawings at this time but the book would prove important to me later. As far as ancient history goes, near the falls was a musuem with all manner of exhibits, including some of artifacts from ancient Egypt.

Books were not all, there were also games. I spent quite a bit of time with the children's classics Lego Blocks and the drawing contraption, Etch-A-Sketch. I had another toy called the Green Ghost. From somewhere I got a periscope with mirrors, like they use in submarines, so I could crouch down in the car and watch what was happening outside the window.

The neighbors next door gave me a large, plastic beach ball. They also had a jet-black female dog with the appropriate name of "Jet", which would be the first dog I would get to know. For a while, I had a pet turtle. Among other diversions were a train set and an expandable watch.

One boy had a fort at the end of his backyard built between two of those straight larch trees and bordering a large, open field with electric transmission lines overhead. Another boy near there had a massive, old willow tree at the end of his backyard that had several possible ways in which it could be climbed.

I heard of the idea of putting a message in a bottle. One day, I tried it. I wrote my name and address and put it in a bright red plastic bottle. It was one of the bottles that hold the liquid that children use to blow bubbles. When we went to see the falls, I threw the bottle over.

Several months later, I got a letter in the mail from a boy in Toronto. He had found my bottle on a beach there. The bottle had made it's way right across Lake Ontario.

There was another field further away than the one with the electric transmission lines. Where the Laura Secord Apartments are now located, next to Houck Park, there used to be a field with a pond in it and many large boulders, which were probably dumped from some construction project. To any boy, it was a delight to explore.

One side of Leslie Park was made for summer. This was the side with the pool. But the other side of the park had a slope and was made for sleds and toboggans in winter. I was given a sled but I left it in the wrong place and my father accidentally ran over it. While sledding one night, I noticed a bright star to the east (probably Sirius). It was the first star that I remember noticing.

Canadians often have a better attitude toward winter than Americans do. Canadians try to make the best of winter while the American ideal is to get on a plane and get away from it. Or better yet, move to where there is no snow.

By 1967, my father had gotten a job on the American side in a medical supply company, Jeffrey Fell. He worked in Buffalo and one day there had been a lake-effect snow storm there while it had not yet snowed in Niagara Falls. He drove to get me from Valley Way School so that I could see the snow before it melted. Other children coming out of school were also delighted by the sight of snow and could not wait to make snowballs out of it.

Skating was a part of school and we would be periodically marched with our ice skates to the ice rink which was next to the old Kitchener Street School.

In first grade, we were taken to see a farm outside Niagara Falls on Thorold Stone Road. To this day, it is the only farm with animals that I recall being on. I was taken horseback riding once around this time but that is the only time I have ever been on a horse.

My great fascination at this time, maybe even more than music, was aircraft. I really wanted to fly in a plane. It did not have to be any type of special airplane, a simple Piper Cub would do. I had a model of a military jet and a book about airplanes.

I wonder why, if kids could build a fort, why couldn't they build a plane that would fly as well? At any rate, I set my ambition for when I grew up to be a pilot, possibly a cropduster pilot. The Beatles song "With A Little Help From My Friends" always reminds me of airplanes.

Other technology that impressed me was the first time I went through a door that opened automatically. It was at a store on Queen Street.

One day, a really large new store opened in Niagara Falls. It was at the intersection of Dorchester Road and Morrison Street. The store was called Towers and it became a magnet for shoppers. It was also exciting when the first tunnel under the Welland Canal opened. I believe it is called the Thorold Tunnel.

On another day, we went to see a new concept in shopping known as a mall. The Pen Centre in St. Catharines is now known simply as The Pen. It's most important store of this time was Simpson-Sears. I was impressed with the apartment buildings with balconies near the mall.

This may have been an idyllic time for me, but there was news of the wider world in the sixties. America, the country just across the river, was involved in a war in a distant place called Vietnam. America had plenty of trouble at home as well. News on television showed an American city on fire because of rioting.

In both America and Canada, there was a new type of people known as Hippies who disagreed with the existing order. In fact, I later wondered why the summer of 1967 is known as "The Summer of Love", there was a war in the Middle East as well. In Canada, there were signs all over with a triangular logo promoting Expo 67, which was held in Montreal.

We would read the Bible in school and I had a Bible that I would bring. I would sometimes begin to read it at home, not any particular book I would just read the first chapters of Genesis. The most memorable reading from school was the well-known 23rd Psalm. There were some other children who would go to some type of Bible class and would then be talking among themselves about the wonders of God.

One day, I was in the field with the electric transmission lines overhead near the intersection of Valley Way and Homewood Avenue. I was just looking around with another boy. There was a cloud overhead, one of those fluffy cumulus clouds. The cloud seemed so bright, I was amazed at how bright it was. I am not saying that this was a miracle, but it started me thinking about where God was.

I had wondered if there was a place where a guy could go and he would become super-strong just by going and receiving the energy there, a kind of "Powerland". But I began to think that maybe the real object is to form a connection with God.

At last, I got what I had really wanted. My first bicycle was gold-coloured and had what used to be called angel handlebars and a banana seat. It did not have hand brakes, but stopped when the pedals were reversed. The logo on it was of the Canadian tire manufacturer, Uniroyal.

My father took me to get it at the Canadian Tire store that was on Queen Street. The scent of fresh rubber would always remind me of the new tires on that bike and the catchy instrumentals of the song "Tighten Up" by Archie Bell And The Drells would remind me of how delighted I was to ride it.

I did not like to be told how far I was permitted to go on my bike, I rode all the way to Hamilton Street, which was the extent of our neighborhood. Another time, I rode to the street that goes around in a circle, Epworth Circle, with a school in the middle.

Sometimes, me and another kid would ride to a store called "The Shady Nook", which was behind the Eventide Home. The store is still there today but under a different name. A delicious blueberry pie cost a dime there. I was also fascinated with cherries at this time.

But no matter what other diversions there were, music had become extremely important. There were always new songs on the radio that I was hearing for the first time.

There was "Can't Get Used To Losing You" by Andy Williams

"This Guy's In Love With You" by Herb Alpert

"Green Tambourine" By the Lemon Pipers

"Delilah" by Tom Jones

"Little Green Apples" by Roger Miller

"Those Were the Days" by Mary Hopkin.

Other memorable songs were "The Good, The Bad And, The Ugly", which was a movie soundtrack.

"Out Of My Head" by Little Anthony And The Imperials

"The Look Of Love" originally by Dusty Springfield

There was the pleasant instrumental "Cast Your Fate To The Wind".

One of the catchiest Sixties-style tune that I liked was "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight" by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. Although I was, of course, too young to comprehend why a guy would care enough about what some girl was doing tonight to make a song about it.

Other things that got my interest were colours. I was fascinated by the turquoise of robin eggs and also by how people had different eye colours. The blueprints used by architects was also something of great interest to me. Lilac seemed to be the most beautiful scent in the world and I wondered if Heaven might be filled with lilacs. Some people that lived not far away had a backyard pond with brightly-coloured goldfish such as I had never seen before.

One thing that I wanted but never got was one of those bright yellow plastic raincoats that people used to wear, there was another type of raincoat, called oilskin, but I preferred one of the yellow plastic ones. I also wondered why I had not been given a middle name and I thought of assigning myself such a name, maybe Andrew or Kenneth.

One boy had learned how to say "Do you speak French"? in French, "Parlez-vous francais"? One day, when my parents were out, it seemed like fun to pick names at random out of the phone book, call them up and, ask "Parlez-vous francais"? Most people just hung up on us.

I pondered a question about the depth of water. One day, near the Welland Canal at St. Catharines, I filled a candy box with small stones and threw it in water. But I did not know how deep the water was and how long it took the box to get to the bottom. There is even a possibility that it is still sinking today. That is unlikely but how can I know for sure?

One word that really mystified me for a while was "catalog". At first, I thought it was something to do with a cat and later that it was something to do with a log.

It was obvious that there was a much bigger country nearby, at least in terms of population. We had learned Canadian geography in school but on the news, there were so many place names that we had not learned in school. One day, my father confirmed that there was a place called "Louisiana" that I had never before heard of.

My brother began going to a school on the American side, St. Mary's School For The Deaf. It was on Main Street in Buffalo, not far from where my father worked.

We sometimes visited the American side. In Buffalo, we went to the zoo and to the large Sears store that used to occupy the building at Jefferson Avenue and Main Street. In Niagara Falls, NY, just on the American side of the Rainbow Bridge, there was another Sears store and another store called Neisners, near a prominent building titled "The Imperial Hotel". (This was before urban renewal). One evening, the police were chasing a car along this street, called Falls Street.

The time came when the decision was made to move to the American side. It may have been that St. Mary's School For The Deaf made it more complicated for non-residents of the U.S. to attend the school.

In the summer of 1968, we had to go to the U.S. Consulate in Toronto to get approval to move to the United States. The consulate is the one on University Avenue. We waited for what seemed like most of the day. There was an older couple waiting near us who were moving to New Jersey. There was a man there who looked like the Riddler on Batman, but he wasn't laughing like the Riddler. I was told about the man with the double name of Sirhan who had shot the brother of the former U.S. president, who had also been shot.

One thing that I wanted to do in Canada but never got around to is to swim at the Cyanamid Pool. Those who had been there said it was much bigger than the pool at Leslie Park. I also had only been to another nearby park, Oakes Park, only once and I had wanted to go there again. There was some type of religious instruction or scouts for children beginning in the church across the street from the Shady Nook, but I would be moving away.

During my last summer living in Canada, a veritable earthquake rocked across the airwaves. "Born To Be Wild" was a song by a band called Steppenwolf. It was about motorcyclists, but it may as well have been for us seven and eight-year olds riding our bikes.

Another memorable tune of this time was "I Got To Get A Message To You" by the Bee Gees. It was about a guy who was about to be executed for a crime and was trying to contact a girl one last time.

There was also "Hurdy Gurdy Man" by Donovan

"Time Has Come Today" by the Chambers Brothers

"Sunshine Of Your Love" by Cream

"Dream A Little Dream Of Me" by Mama Cass

"Angel Of The Morning" By Merrilee Rush.

I was the last one in the family to see what would be our new home on the American side. The daughter of the couple from Scotland that lived in the home adjoining ours worked in real estate and had gotten us connected with the home.

Around the time that we were leaving Canada, a new name appeared that would be possibly the most prominent Canadian in history, that of the Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

3) Another New Country

Our new home in Niagara Falls, USA was on 60th Street, the same as my birth year. Our house was detached, unlike the one on Jepson Street, which was a duplex. There was a hedge along the north side of the yard with a willow tree within it.

The owner of the house, Mrs. Scalzo, was the first American that I met. We drove down to the end of 60th Street so that I could see what would be my new school. We could not move into our house until November 1, 1968, so we stayed for two weeks in the nearby Fallsway Motel.

A most important possession of the time was a roll of string that I collected, I wound the string around a frame of metal and whenever I would come across a piece of string, I would tie it onto the end so that my collection of string would get ever-longer. I made sure that my string did not get misplaced when we moved.

Our new house faced west so that the sun shone through the window in late afternoon, in the same way as in our house back in England. The Great Lakes Carbon factory was nearby, as well as several other factories, and at night we could hear the sound of cars and trucks on the nearby 190 interstate highway.

Our move from the house in Canada to our house in the U.S. was barely four miles, going in a straight line. Our earlier move from our house in England to our house in Canada had been nearly 4,000 miles. But I had been too young then and this move was much more vivid and would have more of an effect on me. It may have been only four miles and I would still spend plenty of time on the Canadian side, but it was a move to a whole new country.

I was very impressed with my new school as my father took me to the office to get registered. My parents were English and kept talking of seeing the "head master" instead of the principal. The school was two-story and was constructed of pale green brick on one side and white brick on the other side. There were bathrooms and sinks in the classrooms and lockers for coats in the hallways. It was within easy walking distance of home, just as Valley Way School had been.

There was an indoor library on the second floor and next to it, a room with long tables called the All-Purpose Room, which was used for meetings and as a cafeteria. Outside, there was a set of monkey bars for children to climb on for exercise and also a paved basketball court. I had never heard of basketball before. There were two baseball diamonds, in the corners of the school grounds furthest from the school building.

This was a new country and there was some inevitable confusion. I was told to come back into school from the schoolyard from lunchtime when I heard the "bell" sound. On the first day, I did not go back in because it was the sound of an electric buzzer, rather than an actual bell, as it had been at Valley Way. We did not have recess at the new school like we did at Valley Way.

There were differences in spelling, American spellings often omit a U that is included in Canada and Britain. In Canada we lived near Sixth Avenue, but in America we lived on 60th Street.

Terminology was also different. What we called a "rubber" at Valley Way School was called an "eraser" here. This was the Sixties and the word "cool" was everywhere. I had never heard it previously. In Canada if a kid was acting silly, someone would tell him to "smarten up" but over here, I never heard anyone say that.

Going to school in America also meant learning about new places. I first heard that there was a place called Yonkers and I began the American childhood ordeal of learning to spell Mississippi. Although if we had stayed in Canada, it would have been Mississauga instead.

American students started the day by saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag that was in every classroom. Canada had not been as nationalistic.

I had never seen black people up close before. This was an era when "busing" was an issue in the U.S. and there were several black students in each class, although very few black people lived in the neighborhood. By the end of my first day in school, black people were just people like anybody else.

The surface on which the teacher writes is called a blackboard. In Valley Way School, the blackboards had actually been green. But here, they really were blackboards.

We sang songs in class, as we had on the Canadian side, but the songs were different. "Suwanee River" and "Clementine" were two new songs that were sung in class. Years later, as I was travelling around the U.S., I was surprised to find myself crossing the Suwanee River, I had thought that it was just a song and not a real place.

Finally, the school had a big indoor pool and swimming was a weekly activity. The scent of chlorine always reminds me of my first time in that pool. The pool was about the same size as the one in Leslie Park, but there we could only swim during the summer. I was used to swimming and received my red button for swimming accomplishment during my first week at the new school. Across the hall from the pool was a large gym, the gym had a stage so it could also be used as an auditorium.

My transition to our new country was helped by the girl that sat next to me in class. She watched what I was saying and nicely corrected me when necessary, such as informing me that a rubber was called an eraser here, before I used the wrong word to the teacher or to other students.

On one of my first class trips to the library in school, I had one of those life-changing experiences that come along every so often. I had heard about the Apollo Space Program, in which America was sending astronauts into space, gaining knowledge and experience and working toward the goal of putting men on the moon. I took out the book "Space" by Marian Tellander, a Follett beginning science book.

It was the first book that I ever actually read the words, instead of just looking at the pictures. Reading this book began my lifelong interest in both science, particularly space, and general reading. There was also a popular series of children's science books called the "How and Why Wonder Books".

I became deeply intersted in astronomy and space exploration. I read all that I could about it and learned all about the planets, why stars are different colors, how telescopes work and how a rocket uses stages to get to the moon. This was an era of great confidence in science and technology and extensive space travel seemed certain for the future. The distances involved in space were of an order that I had never imagined, distances to nearby planets were measured in millions of miles and distances to stars in light-years, the vast distance that a beam of light will travel in one year.

I got my parents to buy me a small telescope for Christmas so I could look into space for myself. The colored lights on the Christmas tree seemed to be a model of the different colors of stars. I also got a new train set, but now space was my main interest and I did not use it as much as I had the one on the Canadian side.

There was a big open field nearby, as well as a smaller one behind our house. It was where Home Depot and The Regal Cinema now stand. There was a large pond in the field with reeds that would freeze over during the winter and sometimes dry up altogether in summer. The pond was full of frogs and tadpoles (pollywogs). The smaller field behind our house had a small hill, several large rocks, a pile of broken pieces of concrete and, what was left of the foundation and parking lot of a motel that had been there long ago.

The rest of the field was long grass, goldenrod and, milkweed. Sometimes, as one was walking through it, a pheasant would fly up all of a sudden. An old dog from down the street named Bullet was often out there hunting rats.

I would spend hours looking around that field. One of the first things that I did after landing in the U.S. was to build a tepee from several pieces of wood as I had seen on television. I drew a map of the field and named some of the sections after the planets. People who lived nearby would throw their Christmas trees onto a pile and when they had dried out for a while, they would be burned in a bonfire.

A new country brought a new set of music. There was "Hush" by a band called Deep Purple.

"Classical Gas", an instrumental by Mason Williams

"Hair" by The Cowsills

"98.6" by Keith

"Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf (These were the Sixties and a "Magic Carpet Ride" was, of course, a euphemism for a drug trip.)

A band with the unusual name of "1910 Fruitgum Company" had a hit with "1,2,3 Red Light".

There was a heavy rock song that seemed to be made for people doing drugs called "In A Gadda Da Vida" by Iron Butterfly.

A Spanish band, Los Bravos, did "Black Is Black".

The Beatles had one of their biggest hits with "Hey, Jude". They also had "Fool On The Hill" at the time we were moving to the U.S. That song was later done by the Brazilian Sergio Mendes.

Every weekday morning after we landed in America in the autumn of 1968, the morning children's show, Rocketship 7, would be on Channel 7. The theme of "I Love Lucy" always seemed to be on and there was a frontier adventure serial, "Daniel Boone". There were cartoons that I was already familiar with like Popeye, Porky Pig and, Roger Ramjet. The Honeymooners, in which they were always in the same room, was another popular show.

There was a show about space exploration to go along with my new interest in space. Lost In Space was about a space-travelling family that was trying to find their way back and ran into all kinds of adventures along the way. Of course, there were the westerns such as Gunsmoke.

There was a movie on every Sunday, called "The Big Show Of the Week". The one that I remember best is the H.G. Wells classic, "Time Machine".

There was also news on television every evening. One of the first things that I recall after landing in the U.S. was the big upcoming election for president. There were three men for voters to choose from. One named Nixon, one named Wallace and, one named Humphrey.

I knew nothing about any of them. A lot of people seemed to like Humphrey, but it was Nixon who won and who would be our new president. His vice-president would be a man named Spiro Agnew.

Politics was always much more visible in the U.S. than it had been in Canada. While living there, I cannot remember that I even knew the name of the prime minister. It was Lester Pearson, for whom Toronto Airport is named.

There was much more on the news. There was the war in the jungle in Vietnam every night. There were the protests against the war at home. The news was filled with helicopters and soldiers and places named Saigon, Hanoi, Danang, Hue and, Haiphong.

The newscasters were always on about the NVA (North Vietnamese Army), The VC (Viet Cong or Vitenamese Communists) and the DMZ (The Demilitarized Zone) and the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The protesters at home were carrying peace signs and demanding an end to the war. In our third grade class, we drew cards that would be sent to the soldiers in Vietnam.

There was also racial tension in America on the news. The race riots peaked in 1967, before we lived here but earlier in 1968, Martin Luther King had been assassinated, as well as Bobby Kennedy.

Then there was the Cold War in the news. This was the big picture of world events of which the Vietman War was just one manifestation. Names like Leonid Brezhnev, Andrei Gromyko (The Soviet premier and foreign minister) and, Mao Zedong were often heard on the news, as well as discussions of fantastic nuclear bombs.

It was easily to believe, by watching the news, that the world was really messed up. In fact, there were hippies who wanted to change the whole social order and who used less-polite terms than "messed up" to describe the state of the world.

Another name that suddenly appeared on the evening news was that of Joe Namath. There was a game of great national interest called football and he had led his team, the Jets, to be the best team of all. I learned that we had a team nearby also, the Buffalo Bills, but that they were not the best team.

I joined a Cub Scout den, at my parents' encouragement. I enjoyed reading the Boys' Life periodicals that I began receiving as a result. The Cub Scouts were a junior version of the Boy Scouts. I think that scout membership is a good thing although I realized later that the primary purpose, along with games like warball that we played in gym class as well as fraternaties in high school, is to prepare boys for being in the military.

Along Pine Avenue (or Niagara Falls Boulevard, as it is now called), the main road near our house, were numerous motels to accomodate tourists coming to see the falls in the summer. The line of motels on both sides of the street went right down to where the city ended at the airport. There were two notable fast food restaurants along the way, the Red Barn and McDonalds. The Red Barn is long gone but McDonalds is still there.

We began doing our grocery shopping at the A & P, in the Pine Plaza about a mile from home. Unlike in Canada, the denominations of money in America were all the same shades of green.

A new country meant many new brands of products that I would be seeing. There was Jif Peanut Butter that was often used to make a sandwich with Welch's Grape Jelly. There was a competition to be the best toothpaste between Crest and Colgate. There was a brand of coffee with the unusual name of "Chock Full O' Nuts", but it must be doing something right because it is still on store shelves today.

To drink, we usually bought cans of Hi C Orange Drink. So-called because it was supposed to contain a lot of vitamin C. I got one of my first lessons in physics when I was shown that to effectively pour out the juice, it was necessary to punch a hole in both sides of the can. One hole was where the juice poured out and the other was so the air could enter in to take it's place.

The product in the supermarket that got my attention was Land O Lakes Butter. There was a native Indian woman on the package holding a box of the butter. Of course, on that box was the same Indian woman holding a box of the butter. And on that one, the same thing. This meant that there must be the same image within itself indefinitely.

America was a new land of Captain Crunch Breakfast Cereal, Cracker Barrell Cheese, Sealtest Ice Cream and, Morton Salt. The newspapers that my father brought home from his job in Buffalo were the Buffalo Evening News and the now-defunct Courier Express.

If I went on a ride to Buffalo, we went past the Dunlop Tire factory and there were signs for the Big E bank everywhere. Sometimes my father brought home a blueberry pie from Freddie's Doughnuts, which was on Main Street in Buffalo near his job.

As always, there were new songs on the radio. The Hollies had another memorable hit with "Carrie Anne".

One of my really favorite songs was "Build Me Up Buttercup" by The Foundations.

There was "Touch Me" by The Doors

"Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" by The Ohio Express

"Gimme Gimme Good Loving" by Crazy Elephant

"Let Me In, Cinnamon" by Derek.

Glen Campbell had "Wichita Lineman" at this time and also did another memorable song, "Galveston".

I first heard of Motown. It was a record label out of Detroit with all black singers and groups. They had a big hit with "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" by Marvin Gaye, although it was recorded by several bands.

I came across another new interest. While living on the Canadian side, I had been fascinated with airplanes. My father had been in Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) and also liked watching planes. This interest returned.

One disadvantage of being interested in space is that it was so inaccessible. I could read about it and look up at the sky but that was about it. With airplanes, I could watch them at close range and had much more chance of flying one someday or at least flying in one.

Niagara Falls, NY had an airport adjoining an air force base. My father took me to look at small airplanes, like Cessnas, and sometimes he was able to talk his way into having us shown the cockpit of airliners. There were often Pan Am and TWA (Trans World Airlines) planes at the airport. One German pilot of a Lufthansa jet showed me all around the controls in the cockpit of the plane.

I read all about airplanes, just as I had about space. There was an elegant French airliner, the Caravelle. Britain and France were working on what was to be a supersonic passenger jet, the Concorde. Belgium had an airline called Sabena. Boeing manufactured the majority of the large jets but Britain had a jet manufacturer called Vickers that made planes for BOAC, British Overseas Airline Corporation. There was also the X-15 experimental rocket plane, operated by NASA.

In one book, I had a detailed diagram of a jet airliner that I really tried to study. In the school library, there was a book with photos and descriptions of military jets. Next to Niagara Falls Airport, there was the massive Bell factory where so much of the equipment that pioneered flight was manufactured, including the "Huey" military helicopters that were being used in Vietnam at the time.

In school, I enjoyed word searching. We were given a long word and had to find as many smaller words as we could that could be spelled with the letters in the long word.

As the weather got warmer in the spring of 1969 and third grade neared it's end, a bunch of us decided to play hooky from school and hide in the large field that I described previously. We didn't get caught so we tried it a second time. (Playing hooky means skipping school).

But apparently, one of our group had told someone in school about what we were doing. That student must have told the teacher, who called the office, who called the mother of one in our group, who drove up to the field, walked over to us and, marched us all into the office at school.

It was decided that our punishment would be to make up the number of hours of school that we had missed sitting in the office after school. It was warm and beautiful weather outside while we were sitting in the office of the school. Playing hooky definitely had not been worth it.

A boy had been bitten by a strange dog and the parents did not know where the dog was. There was a frantic search going on all over the neighborhood to find the dog and be sure it wasn't rabid.

The highlight of the school year at 60th Street School was Play Day. As the name implies, this was a day of play in the warm weather near the end of the school year. Students in the three classes of each grade would be divided into four teams; Red, Blue, Yellow and, Green. Teams were chosen to be as closely matched as possible and the day would be spent on all kinds of athletic events from races to tug-of-war.

I went bowling for the first time at Frontier Lanes in Lewiston. There was a company called Brunswick that seemed to have it's name on so much that was associated with bowling.

As the end of school neared in late spring of 1969, there was a series of new songs and the future seemed as brilliant as the weather. A band called The Fifth Dimension was all over the radio with "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In".

The South African musician Hugh Masakela had "Grazing In The Grass", which was also done by The Friends of Distinction.

Mary Hopkin appeared again with "Goodbye".

There was "Red Rubber Ball" by the Cyrkle

"The Israelites" by the Jamaican Desmond Dekker

"You Made Me So Very Happy" by Blood, Sweat and, Tears.

Topping it off were those two late-Sixties classics; "Dizzy" by Tommy Roe and "Crimson And Clover" by Tommy James And The Shondells.

The summer of 1969 was a special time in America, and many other places, and I could feel how special it was even as a child. That is one reason that I wanted to write this autobiography. There is a saying that "The past is another country." But it is not really another country. Another country is a place that we can go back to visit, but we cannot actually go back to visit the past in the same way.

The trouble with special times is that they are gone so soon. The summer of '69 meant so much to so many people but it lasted for only a few months and then was gone. One way to go back for a visit is to write about it.

When school let out at the end of third grade, it gave me the opportunity to get my bicycle out and do some exploring in my new country. I spent time in that large field nearby, of course. There were plenty of those red-winged blackbirds and the pond often dried up altogether in the heat of summer.

But I went further on my bike. I became intrigued by the shimmering water mirage that makes it look as if there is water up ahead on a hot summer day. But when you get to where the water appeared to be, it has moved further away.

There was a stretch of ground known to locals as "The Tracks" that beckoned to be explored. This was the land between Frontier and Stephenson Avenues east of 56th Street. The original plan had been to build some type of highway there but the plans never materialized and it was left vacant.

It is still vacant today, but in 1969 it had a lot more bushes and shrubbery than it does now. Near the tracks, along the sloping side of the Interstate 190, kids often climbed to the top with a piece of cardboard and then slid down while sitting on the cardboard.

There was also the building of forts in the summer. There were several large pieces of folded steel sheet laying around. Pieces of wood could be found and put across the tops of the steel sheets to form a roof.

I obtained a map of Niagara Falls, NY and noticed that there was a distant place called Cayuga Island with a park there called Jayne Park. I could not get as far as the moon like the astronauts were doing but me and some other kids rode our bikes all the way to Jayne Park and back.

With school out and my bike ready to ride, I also got more of a look at the other factories nearby over on 56th Street. There was Union Carbide and Goodyear, aside from the Great Lakes Carbon closer to our house. There were also many more large factories along Buffalo Avenue and smaller industrial buildings, along with a scrap yard, along 56th Street.

All kinds of alarms and other sounds would come from the factories. Those were the days before the pollution controls of today and we would often see the yellow smoke (probably sulfur dioxide from rubber vulcanization) coming from the Goodyear plant.

One day, much of the long grass and weeds in the large field near our house was mowed to make way for a travelling circus. There were quite a few elephants there as well as rides. But it was a shock when I asked how much a soft drink cost at the circus and was told 25 cents. At the Red Barn, a similar drink cost only 10 cents. There was also travelling rides that set up for a while in the parking lot of the Pine Plaza. For swimming, we would still go back to Canada to the pool at Leslie Park and to Chippawa.

Around the house in the summer of 1969, my father set about planting a number of trees. Soon after moving in, we had uprooted the willow tree within the hedge and replanted it in the middle of the yard. We also got a dog of our own, an Irish Setter which we assigned the appropriate name of Rusty.

I was maybe getting a little too fond of food and drink and was gaining weight. There was, of course, the Red Barn and McDonalds a mile or so from home. My father often brought treats home from Freddy's Doughnuts in Buffalo. There was a delicious snack food during the summer of '69 known as Pizza Spins. The motel across the street had a vending machine that sold Johnnie Ryan brand sodas, which were made nearby in Niagara Falls. I also favored Mountain Dew and Hires Root Beer, although Dad's Root Beer was good too.

My father took me to the airport to watch the airplanes quite a few times. One day, a small Cessna plane taxied right in front of a passenger jet which was on a perpendicular runway. The pilot of the larger plane managed to stop quickly enough to avert a collision. There was a squadron of jets stationed at the Air Base and they were always practicing flights and maneuvers over Niagara Falls.

Then came that incredible day when men first walked on the moon. This was certainly the most important event of the summer. People had existed for maybe a million years, civilization for about five thousand years. But this was the first time a human had walked on a world other than the earth. I wondered if the signers of America's Declaration of Independence could have dreamed that the new nation would be the first to reach the moon.

My father took us to see the movie "Bonnie and Clyde". I have never doubted that America was a great country that could do awesome things like putting people on the moon. But it also creates so many of it's own problems and one of the ways it does so is by glamorizing crime. There was a car with numerous holes in it touring around that was claimed to be the car in which Bonnie and Clyde were killed.

In this movie, and far too many others, a life of murder and crime is portrayed like some exciting, alternate way of life. Shows like Gunsmoke may be a fictionalized portrayal of part of American history, but they also send the message that the surest way to solve a problem is with a gun.

Of course, the summer of "69 meant a joyous festival of new music, even for those who were not at Woodstock. I thought that the four most memorable songs of the summer were "Good Morning, Starshine" by Oliver"

"Poke Salad Annie" by Tony Joe White

"Spinning Wheels" by Blood, Sweat and, Tears

"Get Together" by The Youngbloods.

But that was only the beginning. A band called Kenny Rogers And The First Edition had two 1969 hits with "Ruby" and "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)".

The Canadian band The Guess Who had "These Eyes" and "Laughing".

There was "Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies

"Honky Tonk Woman" by The Rolling Stones

"It's Your Thing" by the Isley Brothers

"Soul Deep" by The Box Tops

"Love Child" by The Supremes

A look into the distant future with "2525" by Zager And Evans. (By the way, since the summer of 1969 we have come more than 7% of the way to the year 2525.)

Creedence Clearwater Revival was on the radio with "Proud Mary", "Green River" and "Who'll Stop The Rain?"

"Guitarzan" was a song by Ray Stevens about a version of Tarzan that played a guitar.

"A Boy Named Sue" was a 1969 song by Johnny Cash. A father wanted his son to be a tough guy. So, he got the novel idea of giving him the name of "Sue", which is a girl's name. The idea was that the boy would be picked on and bullied with such a name and would have no choice but to be tough.

In the song, the now-grown boy hunts down his father with the intention of killing him for giving him such a name and causing him such grief. But when the old man explains the logic to him, he comes away with a different point of view. (Why didn't he just get a nickname?)

Niagara Falls, NY was a different place in the summer of '69. Dozens of teenagers were always gathering at the City Market in much the same way, I reckoned, as they did at Woodstock. I watched the construction of what was then known as Spallino Towers, a tall building as a home for the elderly. It was easy to feel the hope for the future in the air.

4) Fourth Through Sixth Grades

When school started back, it may not be the same students in one's classroom that there was the previous year because there were three separate classes in the school for each grade. For the first time, I took what was known as the Iowa Tests for aptitude in various things that were given to students across the U.S. early every autumn. We were to read the question and then fill in one of several dots in the multiple choice answers.

Religion was not permitted to be taught in school by this time, but there was a once-a-week activity known as church school. Late in the day, Catholic students walked from 60th Street School to another nearby school for religious instruction and Protestant students went to a nearby church. We did, however, have both a holy scene during the Christmas play. I went once, but I went to the Catholic school by mistake. It was confusing and I didn't go again. I really did not understand the difference between the two or the concepts of religion.

There were large department stores where we would go shopping. The most popular two were K-Mart and Twin Fair. There was also another such store called Grant's. One day, I noticed a hand axe in the hardward section of Twin Fair that I decided I wanted. My father bought it for me and I had a new prized possession.

I ventured into the large field near our home and cut down a small tree. I stripped the bark off it and put tape around one end so that it was like a staff that I could carry around. I got the knack of how to cut a tree down and went and cut another one down. This one took me much less time than the first one.

My next big interest was cars. Once again, it was a matter of accessibility. All I could do with space was read about it and look up into the sky. There was an airport in town and planes were much more accessible than space, but still all I could do was look at or in a plane occasionally. Cars, in contrast, were right in front of me. I was not old enough to drive, but there was our car right outside in the driveway.

My father bought one of several Volkswagens that he had owned at Amendola Volkswagen down by the airport. I looked through the brochures of the different types of car available, the Beetle (or Bug), the Karmann Ghia and, the Minibus. If you asked a boy around this time what kind of car he wanted when he was old enough, the answer would most likely be a Chevy Corvette or a Ford Mustang.

I was nowhere near old enough to drive but I did find a go-kart one day and I brought it home and kept it in the basement. It did not have a motor or anything and I noticed later that it was actually the bottom half of a shopping cart without the basket. But it was my junior version of a car.

I was always interested in how the physics of things work. What would happen if a car happened to run into a fence? It would crash right through, a fence cannot stop a speeding car. But if the car hits a sizable tree, it will demolish the car.

I came to appreciate the structure of those high steel towers used to support high-tension electric transmission lines. There were three sets of them running along 56th Street not far from home. I was also interested in the set-up of the wooden telephone poles that held the wires which delivered electricity and phone service.

There was another open field with a pond nearby. It was not as big as the other one but it had a hill that kids could play and slide on. The hill was actually a pile of dirt used in construction. It was referred to simply as the "Dirt Hill", over by 59th Street. Across 59th Street from the Dirt Hill was a deep trench in the ground.

There was the inevitable mischief. An older boy had gotten hold of a pack of True brand cigarettes and gave one out to any of the younger kids who wanted to try smoking.

Of course, there was new music on the radio. In the autumn of 1969, The Beatles had "Revolution", "Obla Di Obla Da" and "Lady Madonna".

A band called Three Dog Night appeared with "Eli's Coming".

There was "Time Of The Season" by the Zombies

"Venus" by Shocking Blue

"Shiloh" by Neil Diamond

"Suite Judy Blue Eyes" by a band we would hear much more from called Crosby, Stills, Nash and, Young.

One of the most charming songs of the rock era was a one-hit wonder band called The Flying Machine singing "Smile A Little Smile For Me".

I first heard of a band called The Grass Roots. This would become of my favorite bands ever and one that I feel was very underrated. Their autumn 1969 hit was "Midnight Confessions".

There were new shows on television that I had not yet seen, as well as music. A new cartoon had been introduced, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. There was My Three Sons and I Dream Of Jeannie. There was the movie Snow White and Charlie Brown's Halloween. A show with contestants called Truth Or Consequences seemed to be on nearly all the time.

Astronauts went back to the moon again in November 1969. It seemed only a matter of time before space flight became routine. Closer to home, a dam was built to shut off the water to the American Falls in order to determine how the cliff face of the falls might be preserved. The Mets won baseball's World Series and a prominent new name in football on our local Buffal Bills was O.J. Simpson.

As far as food goes, there were two more fast food restaurants around, Henry's and Carolls. All had the usual hamburgers, french fries, soda and, milk shakes. The weight concerns that I should have had were put aside. There were delicious candy bars like Three Muskateers, Mars and, Milky Way. There was a Texaco filling station nearby that installed a vending machine selling hot chocolate.

There were many attractive houses around our area. I liked ranch-style houses but also ones with shutters on the windows and trees in the yard.

I suddenly became concerned with being cool. My parents bought me a pair of purple bell-bottom pants. This was the psychedelic era of tye-dyed shirts, peace signs and, bright colors.

There was soon more music. There was the Everly Brothers with "Dream", although this was an older song, it was often on the radio.

There was also "All Right Now" by Free

"No Time" and "American Woman" by the Guess Who

"Let It Be" by the Beatles.

A new band was introduced, The Jackson 5. Their first hits were "I Want You Back", "The Love You Save", "Mama's Pearl" and "ABC".

I first heard a song that would become one of my favorites years later, "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes" by Edison Lighthouse.

On television, there were several family shows such as The Partridge Family, The Brady Bunch and, Ozzie And Harriet. There were childrens comedies, most notably The Three Stooges, who were certainly geniuses at acting ridiculous. There was also Abbott And Costello, but I watched that much less than The Three Stooges.

We were offered movies in the school gym after school and there was the famed detective show, The FBI, on TV at home. My father took us to the movies to see "The Battle Of Britain" when it was released.

There was more news. The environmental holiday, Earth Day, was established. By that time, nearby Lake Erie had actually been declared as dead due to pollution.

In our town, a massive reconstrucion of the downtown area began, known as Urban Renewal. It was to focus on the building of a new modern convention center. There was a high-profile campaign for the mayor of our city, one candidate was named Lackey and the other Ingrasci.

But one event happened that was to overshadow everything else. In the spring of 1970, the decision was made to widen the Vietnam War by sending troops into neighboring Cambodia to root out Communist supply networks. College campuses across America were in an uproar with protests against the war. It culminated in four student protesters at Kent State University in Ohio being shot to death when the U.S. National Guard opened fire on them.

As always, there was still more music. The Beatles had "Come Together".

There was a band called Marmalade with "Reflections Of My Life".

Eric Burdon sang a bizarre song called "Spill The Wine".

Simon And Garfunkel were there with "Cecilia".

There were also "Hitching A Ride" by Vanity Fair

"In The Summertime" by Mungo Jerry

"Come And Get It" by Badfinger

"Love Or Let Me Be Lonely" by The Friends Of Distinction.

I never decided what my all-time favorite song was. But if I had to choose, I just might pick "Cry Me A River" by Joe Cocker. This rocking song was a hit around this time.

Before we knew it, Play Day had arrived at school. For our end-of-year field trip, we went to Tussaud's Wax Museum across the border in Canada. And then, it was out of school for the summer.

During the summers, the roads around Niagara Falls would be filled with cars having out-of-state license plates that were here on vacation to see the falls. During the summer of 1970, I became really fascinated with the view from the observation towers on the Canadian side of the falls and I got my parents to take me up the Skylon or what was then called the Seagram's or Minolta Tower as many times as I could. I can see now how looking at the view from high up helped me to develop a way of big-picture thinking.

There were also museums that I wanted to see, aside from the one that was near the Canadian end of the Rainbow Bridge and had things from ancient Egypt, as well as barrels that had went over the falls and all kinds of other artifacts, there were museums on Clifton Hill, including Tussauds, and the Burning Spring Wax Museum, which was on the high ground right above the falls. A wax museum simply means that it features images of people carved from wax. In the pavilion at the base of the Skylon Tower, there was a museum of elaborate wood carvings by an artist named Potvin.

I had a collection of all of those free brochures offered about all of the tourist attractions in the area. There was always construction and changes going on. A new hotel, which was to be called Michael's Inn was being built around this time at the bottom of Hiram Street, where we had first stayed in Niagara Falls.

The falls were still of interest to us, even after having lived in the Niagara area for five years, and we would often go there. The upper Niagara River was interesting to look at, as well as the falls. Cars could park at the water intakes, where water was pulled in from the river to generate hydroelectricity, and from where a good view of the upper river was offered. We took a tour on the river from Chippawa, around Navy Island and back, on a tour boat called The Niagara Belle. This remains the only time that I have been out on the Niagara River.

Swimming was a prominent part of childhood and I would often go, in the pool at the motel across the street from us, or to Chippawa. I got a new shiny black bike to replace the one that I had brought from the Canadian side. This one was an adult bike, without angel bars or a banana seat. It had hand brakes and a three-speed gear shift.

But I was still having too much in the way of calories in food. There was several brands of soda in the store to choose from; Fanta, Faygo and, Shasta. There was an ice cream van that went around neighborhoods and stopping periodically so that people could order ice cream or milkshakes. We started going to Kentucky Fried Chicken, as well as the other fast food restaurants.

Finally, in the summer of 1970, a new fast-food restaurant was built that would become a favorite. The Burger King that is still at the corner of Niagara Falls Boulevard and 74th Street. I watched it's construction and waited for it to open. It was closer to our house than McDonald's or the Red Barn.

If there was ever a best summer for music, it may have been that of 1970. There was no end to the awesome new songs that were on the radio. Some songs were more easy listening.

There was "Snowbird" by Canada's Ann Murray

"Fire And Rain" by James Taylor

"What The World Needs Now" by Jackie DeShannon

The Carpenters had "Close To You" and "We've Only Just Begun".

There was a song, "Joanne" by Michael Nesmith, who had been one of the Monkees. It was about a really sweet girl who lived in the countryside.

Other songs of the summer of 1970 were more rocking. There was "Hand Me Down World" by the Guess Who

"I Can See For Miles" by The Who. This may have been an earlier song but this is when I remember it from.

A group called Badfinger hit with "No Matter What", one of my favorites.

There was "Vehicle", sung by the Ides Of March.

Some songs had a political or sociological message. There was "Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell. It was about the destruction of nature by development. About "Take paradise and put up a parking lot" and "Take all the trees, put them in a tree museum and, charge the people a dollar and a half just to see them".

There was the signature anti-war song, "War" , by Edwin Starr. It had the refrain "War can't give life, it can only take it away".

There was "Mama Told Me Not To Come" by Three Dog Night. It was about a guy who ignored his parents' advice not to go to a party, and then found that the people there were doing drugs.

The ultimate political rock song was probably "Ohio" from 1970. It was by Crosby, Stills, Nash and, Young and was about the shootings at Kent State University in Ohio, that had happened a few months previously.

There was also "Question" by the Moody Blues, a song that would always remind me of the time of the Vietnam War. The local Air Base held an open house to help public relations and showed the airplanes stationed there.

But there were far more memorable songs during this summer that did not fit into any of the above categories. There was a song about a fugitive, "Indiana Wants Me", by R. Dean Taylor.

There was a song about an poor orphan boy left to provide for his family, "Patches" by Clarence Carter.

There was "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" by Stevie Wonder.

There was two older songs that I first noticed at this time, "Well-Respected Man" by The Kinks and "House of The Rising Sun" by the Animals.

The Chairmen of The Board had "Give Me Just A Little More Time".

Freda Payne did "Band Of Gold"

Eric Clapton had "After Midnight", which is one of the best rock songs.

I first heard the band Chicago. The song "Beginnings" almost always seemed to be on the radio.

The song "25 or 6 to 4" by Chicago is about a songwriter who is suffering from writer's block while up in the middle of the night trying to write a song. He looks at the clock and sees that it is just past 3:30 in the morning, it is 25 or 6 to 4 (which would be 3:34 or 3:35).

Around Niagara Falls, we were reading and hearing more and more about the Urban Renewal that was getting under way. It was to be the complete reconstruction of the downtown area of the city.

I learned of another project that I thought would be a disaster for me. Right in the middle of my beloved field nearby, a Chevrolet car dealership was to be built. It would not take up the entire field, only about 1/3 of it. The pond in the field would be reduced in size and changed in shape by the construction, but it would still be there. Plans were also made to take up a part of the field behind our house with an Exxon gasoline station.

In the summer of 1970 I first played both basketball and baseball, which are two all-American sports. There was a basketball rivalry between Niagara University and St. Bonaventure University, some distance away. The boy across the street was really into basketball and had a basketball net set up. I first heard of famous basketball players, both from Niagara University and national, such as Calvin Murphy, Wilt Chamberlain, Ed Street and, Bob Lanier.

I joined a Little League Baseball team. I was on a team called the Yankees. We wore black shirts and were sponsored by a store called Baio Appliance. Each team in the league wore a shirt of a different color and was sponsored by a different business.

It was a summer of baseball diamonds. I thought that we were better than the Red Sox, which we played twice. The Cubs were better than we were, but were not as good as the Orioles. The best team of all in the league was probably the Senators.

We had a big tournament at a school called LaSalle Junior High School, which had several baseball diamonds. This was the first I saw of the big old brick school where I would be going myself in a couple of years. Although we the could see the tall smokestack of the school from the east windows of 60th Street School.

Baseball season finished for the summer with a big picnic at Oppenheim Park, just outside Niagara Falls, beyond the airport.

Fifth grade began in September 1970, with a teachers' strike. Some of the teachers of our school were walking a picket line outside the school. My class was in the same second-floor classroom that third grade had been in, when I had first landed in the U.S. and started at this school.

During this school year, a favorite activity would be drawing designs of the rocketships that we might someday build. My father wanted me to start learning a foreign language and would take me to weekly French classes that were then being offered at what was then the high school downtown.

I would first begin to be interested in my English heritage. I had a world atlas with a map of Britain. My father would pick out a town in England, give me the map and I would see if I could find it. I was interested in the maps of the rest of the world as well.

The crime show taking place in England's countryside, the Avengers, was popular at this time and I first went to Fort Niagara, which had been held by British forces in the colonial era. Our social studies at school for this year focused on early American history, including Britain's involvement in it.

I also began learning about what had actually happened in the Second World War, which was on television in movies constantly. Some movies about the war which had ended fifteen years before I was born were The Longest Day, The Dirty Dozen, Anzio, Operation Crossbow and, The Battle Of The Bulge. There was The Bridge Over The River Kwai, which was about the Pacific Theater of the war.

My father had been through the war on an RAF Sterling bomber plane. He was actually assigned to fly with a crew of New Zealanders instead of fellow Britons. There were any number of books about the war in our home. In school, I took out the How And Why Wonder Book Of World War One, which was yet another world war before that one. Boys often played guns or with toy soldiers.

My fitness was poor. In gym class tests, I was unable to do one push-up properly. Still, there was a Neisner's Store in the Pine Plaza that served delicious chocolate milkshakes and I got one whenever we went there. I watched the large Chevrolet building being constructed in the nearby field.

I had my first experience with death when our Irish setter, Rusty, was killed by a car on the nearby highway. The police called us on New Years Day, 1971, to tell us that both Rusty and another dog had been killed and I went with my father to pick up his collar.

On television, there was The Partridge Family, Hawaii Five-0 and, Mary Tyler Moore. There was Redd Foxx, starring in a serial as Fred Sanford. There was the comedian Flip Wilson and a new serial that was supposed to be scary called The Addams Family.

There was a very interesting show every weekend about wild animals, Wild Kingdom, sponsored by the insurance company, Mutual of Omaha. There were horror movies on Friday night that many kids stayed up to watch and the surreal serial, The Twilight Zone. The most memorable movie, other than the war movies, was Airport.

And, of course, there was music. I was given a record player for Christmas 1970 that made it much easier to listen to music than with just a radio.

There was "Carolina In My Mind" by James Taylor

"Let's Work Together" by Canned Heat

"Jingle Jangle" by The Archies.

The Osmonds had "Sweet And Innocent" and "One Bad Apple".

The Beatles did "Isn't It A Pity" and "My Sweet Lord".

Joan Baez sang a song about the U.S. Civil War, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".

Sugarloaf had "Green-Eyed Lady".

There was "Montego Bay" by Bobby Bloom

Melanie with "Brand New Key"

"Cracklin' Rosie" by Neil Diamond

"Spirit In The Sky" by Norman Greenbaum

"Joy To The World" by Three Dog Night

"Our House" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and, Young

"Fresh As A Daisy" by Emmett Rhodes

"Sweet Mary" by Wadsworth Mansion

"Westbound Number Nine" by Flaming Ember.

The first record that I bought was "Tears Of A Clown" by Smokey Robinson.

The possibility arose that we would move to Williamsville, a suburb of Buffalo. We went to look at a house there that was offered to us but it was an old two-story house and we liked our own home better. But the trip was significant because I heard two new songs on the radio on the drive back home; "Lonely Days" by The Bee Gees and "Candles In The Rain" by Melanie.

For some reason, there were several songs about rain around this time. There was "Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again" by the Fortunes, "Rainy Days And Mondays" by the Carpenters and "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" by B.J. Thomas.

Before we knew it, Play Day was here again and then school was finished for the summer.

The summer of 1971 was another idyllic summer of riding my bike, swimming, roaming around the nearby field and sometimes building a fort. The construction of the Chevrolet dealership in part of the field had left some new hills of excavated dirt for kids to play on.

At the pond in the field, it was fun to throw bottles or cans into the pond and then sink them by throwing rocks at them. Around this time, aluminum soda cans were introduced. They were easy to sink, I sunk one and then when the pond later dried up in the heat of summer, I noticed the can and saw that my rock had gone right in one side of the can and out the other side.

Some kids down on Stephenson Avenue, just across The Tracks, had built a really impressive tree house, maybe the best one I have ever seen. They had even dug holes around the tree as traps for any unauthorized person who might try to access the treehouse, as if it were a medieval castle or Fort Niagara.

I had my first real encounter with crime when my bike was stolen from beside our house. But I was given a new one to replace it, this time a gold-colored ten speed.

Sometimes we would go bowling at a local bowling alley, but I was not a regular bowler like some kids and I never had my own bowling ball or bowling shoes.

The falls were still of interest to us, as well as the museums around the falls. There were many museums, particularly on the Canadian side of the falls. Tussauds was the best known but it was only the beginning. There was the Movieland Museum on Clifton Hill, as well as the House of Frankenstein with all kinds of features about the creations of Boris Karloff.

I ran into a new scientific interest in the summer of 1971 between fifth and sixth grades. I was given a book The How And Why Wonder Book Of Atomic Energy. I gained an understanding of how atoms are structured as well as how nuclear reactors and bombs worked.

A new soap simply called Lava was introduced. It was supposedly based on lava from a volcano and was more effective than ordinary soap. I was given a bar of it.

There was some tourists from Pennsylvania staying at the motel across the street. I and the boy whose parents operated the motel guided them all around the falls area and the Welland Canal.

Of course, there was too much junk food during this summer. Sometimes we would ride our bikes to Kentucky Fried Chicken or Burger King. There was delicious Shasta brand root beer and Faygo introduced a berry-flavored drink called redpop. Two rival cereals appeared on store shelves, Frankenberry and Count Chocula, but it turns out that they were both actually manufactured by the same company.

One strange thing happened around this time. I and two other boys rode our bikes to the grounds at 60th Street School, which was out for the summer. Suddenly, three teenagers with dazed looks walked over to the school grounds. They walked right past us and did not seem to even notice us. One of them fell down to the ground and started pounding on the ground with his fists, as if he was in the middle of a terrible nightmare. One of the others watched him with a vacant expression on his face while the other one simply stared into space.

I suppose that they must have been using drugs.

On television, a show called Family Affair always seemed to be on. It was about a family in a New York City apartment with a butler called Mr. French. There was Mission Impossible, Room 222 and, The Partridge Family. There was the detective and law shows Cannon, Ironside and, of course, The Andy Griffith Show. The thing that I remember best about television that summer was the Batman movie where the bad guys; The Riddler, The Joker, The Penguin and, Catwoman get together and obtain a submarine.

I just want to state one thing about children being celebrities. A child is not supposed to be a celebrity, a child is supposed to be a child. Nothing can replace an idyllic childhood with ample time spent wandering around empty fields, throwing stones at bottles in ponds, riding bikes and, building treehouses. This is what childhood should be, being a celebrity can come later.

But the most important thing in the summer of 1971 was probably music. Possibly the most memorable song of the summer was "Beginnings" by Chicago. Or maybe "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart.

"It Don't Come Easy" by Ringo Starr, a former Beatle, dominated the airwaves.

Possibly the song that I have listened to the most in my life was "Let Your Love Go" by Bread.

Simon and Garfunkel had a major hit with "Mother And Child Reunion". The song was supposedly based on a dinner of chicken and eggs that one of them was having. Since chicken lay eggs, it was a mother and child reunion.

A band called Yes appeared with "All Good People" one of my favorite songs would be another hit of theirs, "Starship Trooper".

I first heard of another singer named Carly Simon with "The Way I've Always Heard it Should Be".

Some songs of summer 1971 were easier listening like "Peace Train" by Cat Stevens

"Precious And Few" by Climax

"How Do You Mend A Broken Heart" by the Bee Gees

"Me And You And A Dog Named Boo" by Lobo

"Ain't No Sunshine" by Bill Withers.

There was a song that I really liked, "Timothy", by The Buoys. I did not pay much attention to the lyrics, something about a mine that had caved in and a lost miner named Timothy. It turns out that the song was about cannibalism. Three miners had survived the cave-in, but when the rescuers arrived, there was only two. The two surviving miners had cannibalized Timothy to stay alive.

There was a real rocking song which I remember from that summer. "One Fine Morning" was by a band called Lighthouse.

Then there was the Grass Roots, which as I have stated previously was one of the most underrated bands ever. They had two magnificent songs with "Temptation Eyes" and "Sooner Or Later". I felt as if I could listen to these songs forever and never get tired of them.

Just before school started back for sixth grade, there were three more memorable songs; "Funky Nassau" by The Beginning Of The End

"Smiling Faces Sometimes" by The Undisputed Truth

And a really big hit, "Signs" by The Five Man Electrical Band out of Ottawa.

What a summer this had been for music.

Sixth grade was a little bit different from the previous grades. There was more camaraderie between the students. Sixth grade was the final year of elementary school. The following year, we would be going on to Junior High School. At least in terms of elementary school, we had made it to the top together.

Almost as soon as sixth grade began, I plunged into a marvellous new interest. In social studies, we began studying the ancient history of the Middle East. I thought the pyramids were awesome but I also enthusiastically studied the Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Phoenecians and, Sumerians.

I dug out that book on ancient history that had been bought for me at Steinbergs, on the Canadian side, several years before and it now became my most important possession. I wondered what it might be like to be an archeologist some day. Later, I took a book out of the school library with European archeology also included such as the Minoans and the Etruscans.

An interest in ancient history provided another expansion of perspective for me. In third grade, I struggled to grasp the astronomical distances that I read about. Distances to planets were measured in millions of miles to the nearer planets and hundreds of millions of miles to the outer planets. Later, looking down from the observation towers on the Canadian side of the falls gave me a look at big picture thinking because the entire city could be seen at the same time. Now, looking back several thousand years gave me the same expansion of perspective in terms of time.

At home, I tried building a fort underground. I covered it over with dirt so that only a hole in the ground could be seen. Everything went fine until a good rainstorm came along and filled it with water.

Near the beginning of each school year, we were timed in running the fifty-yard dash during gym class. I was not proficient in athletics, but I was timed at 8.7 seconds. In fifth grade, the year before, I did 10.2 seconds. 8.7 seconds still was not very good, but this gave me a sense that improvement was definitely possible.

In the news at this time was the prison riot at Attica. I had never been there but it was not that far away from us. This was the main story on the news night after night. Prisoners had taken over part of the prison, demanding better treatment. Eventually, the prison was retaken.

This autumn, I took an interest in football. In one of the first games of the season, our local Buffalo Bills defeated the Detroit Lions. I decided that my favorite team was the Kansas City Chiefs, but I liked the shiny helmets of the Denver Broncos. These were the days when the Colts were in Baltimore, the Cardinals were in St. Louis and, the rams were in Los Angeles. There were no professional teams from Tennessee, Arizona, Seattle, the Carolinas, Jacksonville or, Tampa Bay. The team from Houston was called the Oilers.

Despite the ongoing protests against the war in Vietnam, it was in style to wear an army jacket and I managed to get hold of one. I thought that plastic palm trees looked really cool and modern. I talked my parents into getting one to put in our hallway.

I went through an interest in ships and watched construction projects that were going on along my walk home from school, the apartment buildings on Girard Avenue across from the school and the houses behind us on 61st Street.

Along came more music. Badfinger had a hit with "Day After Day".

The Stylistics had "What You See Is What You Get".

But my favorite song in the autumn of 1971 was "Two Divided By Love" by The Grass Roots.

We still only had our old black and white television. It could only receive what was known as VHF channels and not UHF. The favorite channel of most kids at school as Channel 29, but that was a UHF channel which we could not get at home.

I really wanted a color TV and I especially wanted to be able to watch Channel 29. This got me interested in how broadcasting and electronics and things like that operated. The number one show of the time was supposed to be All In The Family and another major news event was the chess matches between Fischer and Spassky.

Finally, we got a color television that could get all of the UHF, as well as VHF channels. I was delighted.

There was more music. Not only was there more music, but I was given a round plastic transistor radio. It was a bright red color and looked very space-age. I valued this radio almost as much as our new television.

"Heart Of Gold" was a big hit by Toronto's own Neil Young.

There was, of course, "Bang A Gong" by T-Rex.

Don McLean was on the radio all the time with "American Pie" and "Starry, Starry Night".

Three Dog Night hit with "Never Been To Spain" and "Old Fashioned Love Song".

There was the instrumental "Joy" by Apollo 100,

"Yo-Yo" by The Osmonds

"Horse With No Name" by America

The unique instrumentals of "Riders On The Storm" by The Doors

"Rocking Robin" by the Jackson 5.

There was an older song called "Itchykoo Park" by The Small Faces, but it was on the radio at this time.

A band called Tony Orlando And Dawn sang "Candida" and "Knock Three Times".

There was a song called "My Baby Loves Loving" by White Plains. I did not have the record but it was on the radio at a certain time every night and I would wait up just to hear it.

During sixth grade, I read more about that great war that had happened before I was born. I actually knew a lot more about what had happened during World War Two than I did about what was happening in the Vietnam War, which was going on at the time. It was a different type of war in which there were no real front lines that we could follow on a map.

I had a book about the Battle of the Bulge. I also read for the first time about the Soviet role in the war. The most horrific battle that the world has yet seen is probably Stalingrad. I read the story of a German Stuka dive bomber pilot and the diary of a Polish girl in Warsaw as that city passed from Nazi to Soviet Communist control.

On the news, there was suddenly another war. The war between India and Pakistan in late 1971 seemed to focus on a place called Dacca (or Dhaka). There was video of jets dropping bombs night after night on the news. When it was over, there was a new name of a country that I had never heard of before, Bangladesh.

One evening, two salesmen knocked on our door at home. They were selling Bibles that were really well-made with large print and had extensive photos and artwork included. My parents declined the offer. But after a few minutes, my father decided to find them and he bought one and brought it home.

We were not religious. However, my father had known a man from our native England who would denounce the idea of religion to anyone who would listen. I think he made my father a little bit uncomfortable and my father reacted by going in the opposite direction and buying the Bible.

I had some skepticism about God but I was interested in ancient history. There was a photo of a stone wall in the Middle East and I built such a wall along the end of our yard, where there was no fence at the time. At the time, I did not really give God a lot of thought myself but picked up the ideas that were around me.

I had done well in those standardized tests that students took every year and I was informed that I could study a language next year in Junior High School. My father chose French for me. We were studying the eastern hemisphere in social studies that year, starting with ancient times, and I also developed a fascination with anything Dutch.

1972 was an election year in the U.S. and the primaries got underway in the spring. Ultimately, Richard Nixon would win re-election. This was also the year that he really opened relations with China and Russia by visiting both.

In school, we had our own election for class president. There were two boys and one girl running for president. Women's Liberation (usually referred to simply as Women's Lib) was an issue at the time. Indeed the Women's Lib anthem "I Am Woman" was popular. There was talk in school that all of the girls would vote for the girl candidate in the name of Women's Lib. Whether or not that occurred, she won the election.

One evening in May, 1972, it was warm and we were out in the back yard. I looked up and saw a puzzling orange glow in my bedroom window. There was still the transparent plastic sheet that my father had installed over the window to conserve heat in the winter. There was also the smell of smoke. Our house was burning.

My father rushed to get the garden hose to try to put out the fire. But the flow of water had not yet been turned on in the basement. He sent me to a neighbor to call the fire department and then tried to get our new television set out safely. I saw that on the other side of the house, flames were pouring out of the window. It was not long before I could hear the sirens of the fire trucks. A crowd gathered around outside.

The fire did not take long to put out. The smoke did more damage than the fire actually did. I slept at a nearby friend's house. Some neighbors donated clothing to us but I had lost the beloved blue plastic motorcycle and the policeman's hat that I had brought over from England.

I did not miss any school due to the fire. It was near the end of the school year. One day, we were given a tour of the Public Safety Building, the police station. On another day, the class went for a long walk to LaSalle Junior High School, where we would be going in September. Our field trip was to the Buffalo Zoo and, of course, there was our final Play Day.

Around the time that school was letting out of 6th grade to begin the summer of 1972, there was a real rocking song, "Could Have Been A Lady" by a Canadian band named April Wine.

There was also "Immigration Man" by a portion of Crosby, Stills, Nash and, Young. This was one of my favorite songs ever, but I never owned the record.

"Doctor My Eyes" by Jackson Browne

"Me And Julio" by Simon And Garfunkel

"I'm Going To Make You Love Me" by the Supremes and The Temptations

"Last Night I Didn't Get To Sleep At All" by Marilyn McCoo.

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