Nov. 7: The old neighbourhood
To me, Haysboro is the old neighbourhood.
Haysboro is a primarily white middle class community in southwest Calgary. It is bordered on the south by Southland Drive, the east by MacLeod Trail, the north by Heritage Drive and the west by 14th Street. My family moved to Haysboro in 1977 and we left there in 1990. We never should have left. Talk to my parents today and they'll tell you that moving out of the old neighbourhood caused a lot of financial hardships.
My best friends lived in Haysboro. If I wanted to visit them, I could walk to their houses. I sort of had two sets of friends. I had my nice friends - who never swore and liked to play video games and street hockey - and I had my bad friends - who swore and smoked cigarettes and talked about sex all the time. I tried to balance my friendships but I don't think I ever did it well.
On Saturday nights, Jason and Larry and I would cross 14th Street, go to the McDonald's at Glenmore Landing, and then rent a movie at Video Show Place. These jaunts were characterized by profanity. We swore because we thought it made us sound cool and tough and grown up. In reality, we were probably about as scary as a ten-year-old boy wearing Power Ranger jammies.
My family lived on Hooke Road. When the weather was nice, our favourite pastime was road hockey. One day I got the idea that our road hockey games should have meaning so I decided we should realize an entire NHL season. We would divide ourselves into two teams and one might be declared the Chicago Black Hawks and the other the St. Louis Blues and the first to score three goals won. I'd mark the winners in a book and at the end of the season, we'd have playoffs. The others let me do this and I think I was the only one who enjoyed it.
We went to elementary school at École St-Gerard. Hooke Road ended at 12th Street and across the street was a chain link fence that bordered the west side of the St-Gerard's schoolyard. It was a cinch climbing that fence and doing so made me feel more grown up than I had a right to be. Since I lived so close to the school, I was dismissed early for lunch when I was in Grade 1. I would leave the classroom and I would imagine that my classmates were jealous of me because I was going home to a hot bowl of tomato soup while they were eating baloney sandwiches.
But then my mom got a job and that practice came to an end.
It was in that Grade 1 classroom that I had one of the best experiences of my life.
We'd be having storytime, which necessitated the group of us sitting on the floor by the teacher's feet while she read us a book. I would be paying attention and then, suddenly, someone would start drawing on my back. They would use their finger in a perfect combination of nail and fingertip. It was heaven. I don't know who that person was. It could have been a boy or a girl. I never looked. I knew that if I looked, that person would mistakenly believe I was not pleased with them touching me. I still don't know who that person was. It remains a great mystery of my life.
Across the street was Eugene Coste, which had a tire park. We were jealous of that tire park because we didn't have anything except a big yard (a massive playground fundraiser when I was in Grade 3 would later solve that problem) and the Eugene Coste kids were fiercely protective of their property. We would threaten to go to their school on the weekend and play on their tire park (and maybe even pee on it) and they would get indignant and threaten to beat us up.
And then some safety expert declared that the tire park was a fire hazard and it was torn down and replaced with a boring more traditional playground. And now Eugene Coste is no longer a school - student population numbers are dwindling in Haysboro - and it is just an empty husk of a building. My brother lives across the street from it today and we both suggested that the school will eventually be turned into a retirement home. I think we both wonder if the same will happen to St. Gerard's too.
Haysboro is bisected by Elbow Drive. There is a plaza on the corner of Elbow and 96th avenue. That plaza used to house two businesses that were avatars of my childhood - the 7-Eleven and the pool hall.
The 7-Eleven replaced the Haysboro Drug sometime in 1983. Our parents would have had us believe that "Sev" - as we called it – was a dangerous place, a hangout for drug dealers and petty criminals. But I was never accosted at Sev. My friend once stole a case of Coke from Sev and the police caught him and all of us were in trouble but that was 25 years ago and I think enough time has passed where we can laugh at it.
There was space in the 7-Eleven corner for two video games. Once they got Dragon's Lair and this really excited me because I was 10 and I believed - as everyone my age believed - that Dragon's Lair was the best game ever. Jason once said that he had beat Dragon's Lair and so everytime we went to Sev, I would give him a quarter to see if he could beat it again but he never could and when I was in my 20s, it finally occurred to me that Jason had been lying. He'd never beaten Dragon's Lair at all.
The Haysboro Pool Hall was run by an Italian guy named Yvonno. His hall was filled with pool tables and snooker tables and there was a room in the back that was full of video games. There were some older kids who went to the hall and they bullied me for quarters. Sometimes I would pony up a coin or two but usually I just told them I was broke. On one occasion, I was playing pool with my friend, Matt, when the bullies came in. They wanted money bad and they started razzing me, threatening to beat me up if I didn't hand over my wallet.
At the next table, two bodybuilders were shooting a game of pool. One of them looked up and into the eyes of one of the bullies. "You bugging my kid brother?" he asked.
"No," the bully stammered.
"Good. Then take a hike or I'll shove this pool cue up your ass."
The bullies left. I said thank you to the bodybuilder but he didn't say anything. Didn't even look at me. Just went on shooting his game.
I have been back to the old neighbourhood. Sev isn't there anymore. Neither is the pool hall. The house where my family lived has been upgraded and landscaped to the point where it may as well be a different house. I looked at the window where my bedroom used to be. It had curtains with Disney princesses on it.
Once when I visited my brother in the old neighbourhood, he suggested we order Chinese food from August Moon, the takeout place that was just a block away. I told him that would be foolish. We had takeout from there when I was ten and it was awful.
"Things change," my brother said. We ordered from August Moon and it was delicious.
August moon was in Haysboro when my family moved in. It's still there. It will probably be there long after I'm gone.
And that's the old neighbourhood.
Haysboro is a primarily white middle class community in southwest Calgary. It is bordered on the south by Southland Drive, the east by MacLeod Trail, the north by Heritage Drive and the west by 14th Street. My family moved to Haysboro in 1977 and we left there in 1990. We never should have left. Talk to my parents today and they'll tell you that moving out of the old neighbourhood caused a lot of financial hardships.
My best friends lived in Haysboro. If I wanted to visit them, I could walk to their houses. I sort of had two sets of friends. I had my nice friends - who never swore and liked to play video games and street hockey - and I had my bad friends - who swore and smoked cigarettes and talked about sex all the time. I tried to balance my friendships but I don't think I ever did it well.
On Saturday nights, Jason and Larry and I would cross 14th Street, go to the McDonald's at Glenmore Landing, and then rent a movie at Video Show Place. These jaunts were characterized by profanity. We swore because we thought it made us sound cool and tough and grown up. In reality, we were probably about as scary as a ten-year-old boy wearing Power Ranger jammies.
My family lived on Hooke Road. When the weather was nice, our favourite pastime was road hockey. One day I got the idea that our road hockey games should have meaning so I decided we should realize an entire NHL season. We would divide ourselves into two teams and one might be declared the Chicago Black Hawks and the other the St. Louis Blues and the first to score three goals won. I'd mark the winners in a book and at the end of the season, we'd have playoffs. The others let me do this and I think I was the only one who enjoyed it.
We went to elementary school at École St-Gerard. Hooke Road ended at 12th Street and across the street was a chain link fence that bordered the west side of the St-Gerard's schoolyard. It was a cinch climbing that fence and doing so made me feel more grown up than I had a right to be. Since I lived so close to the school, I was dismissed early for lunch when I was in Grade 1. I would leave the classroom and I would imagine that my classmates were jealous of me because I was going home to a hot bowl of tomato soup while they were eating baloney sandwiches.
But then my mom got a job and that practice came to an end.
It was in that Grade 1 classroom that I had one of the best experiences of my life.
We'd be having storytime, which necessitated the group of us sitting on the floor by the teacher's feet while she read us a book. I would be paying attention and then, suddenly, someone would start drawing on my back. They would use their finger in a perfect combination of nail and fingertip. It was heaven. I don't know who that person was. It could have been a boy or a girl. I never looked. I knew that if I looked, that person would mistakenly believe I was not pleased with them touching me. I still don't know who that person was. It remains a great mystery of my life.
Across the street was Eugene Coste, which had a tire park. We were jealous of that tire park because we didn't have anything except a big yard (a massive playground fundraiser when I was in Grade 3 would later solve that problem) and the Eugene Coste kids were fiercely protective of their property. We would threaten to go to their school on the weekend and play on their tire park (and maybe even pee on it) and they would get indignant and threaten to beat us up.
And then some safety expert declared that the tire park was a fire hazard and it was torn down and replaced with a boring more traditional playground. And now Eugene Coste is no longer a school - student population numbers are dwindling in Haysboro - and it is just an empty husk of a building. My brother lives across the street from it today and we both suggested that the school will eventually be turned into a retirement home. I think we both wonder if the same will happen to St. Gerard's too.
Haysboro is bisected by Elbow Drive. There is a plaza on the corner of Elbow and 96th avenue. That plaza used to house two businesses that were avatars of my childhood - the 7-Eleven and the pool hall.
The 7-Eleven replaced the Haysboro Drug sometime in 1983. Our parents would have had us believe that "Sev" - as we called it – was a dangerous place, a hangout for drug dealers and petty criminals. But I was never accosted at Sev. My friend once stole a case of Coke from Sev and the police caught him and all of us were in trouble but that was 25 years ago and I think enough time has passed where we can laugh at it.
There was space in the 7-Eleven corner for two video games. Once they got Dragon's Lair and this really excited me because I was 10 and I believed - as everyone my age believed - that Dragon's Lair was the best game ever. Jason once said that he had beat Dragon's Lair and so everytime we went to Sev, I would give him a quarter to see if he could beat it again but he never could and when I was in my 20s, it finally occurred to me that Jason had been lying. He'd never beaten Dragon's Lair at all.
The Haysboro Pool Hall was run by an Italian guy named Yvonno. His hall was filled with pool tables and snooker tables and there was a room in the back that was full of video games. There were some older kids who went to the hall and they bullied me for quarters. Sometimes I would pony up a coin or two but usually I just told them I was broke. On one occasion, I was playing pool with my friend, Matt, when the bullies came in. They wanted money bad and they started razzing me, threatening to beat me up if I didn't hand over my wallet.
At the next table, two bodybuilders were shooting a game of pool. One of them looked up and into the eyes of one of the bullies. "You bugging my kid brother?" he asked.
"No," the bully stammered.
"Good. Then take a hike or I'll shove this pool cue up your ass."
The bullies left. I said thank you to the bodybuilder but he didn't say anything. Didn't even look at me. Just went on shooting his game.
I have been back to the old neighbourhood. Sev isn't there anymore. Neither is the pool hall. The house where my family lived has been upgraded and landscaped to the point where it may as well be a different house. I looked at the window where my bedroom used to be. It had curtains with Disney princesses on it.
Once when I visited my brother in the old neighbourhood, he suggested we order Chinese food from August Moon, the takeout place that was just a block away. I told him that would be foolish. We had takeout from there when I was ten and it was awful.
"Things change," my brother said. We ordered from August Moon and it was delicious.
August moon was in Haysboro when my family moved in. It's still there. It will probably be there long after I'm gone.
And that's the old neighbourhood.
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