I was recently in a campground near Grand Falls-Windsor, Nfld. I got to chatting with a guy, I asked him if he knew Jim Beckman from my home in Halifax,who played hockey for years in Grand Falls. He knew him and played with him. I mentioned how Jimmy could shoot the puck left or right handed and could pitch a ball with his left or right hand, He said he remembered that, and then said he would give his right arm to be ambidextrous.

PS: Later that evening, I met the owner of the campground, it was none other than Alex Faulkner, Newfoundland's first player in the National Hockey League.

I only owned one dog all my life as a kid, he was just called Boy, yes Boy! Here Boy, here Boy.
Hank Snow's mother -in -law (Mrs Alders )gave him to me and he hung on our back porch for more then ten years.

I first saw Hank Snow about 1950 driving down Duke of Kent Street combing his hair in his yellow Cadillac, coming home from Tennessee to visit his in-laws. Minnie Snow (Alders) his wife, happened to be in Halifax when my mother died and came to her funeral.

At the Fairview fire hall on Saturdays they would show movies for us kids, Tom Mix, Ken Maynard and his horse Tarzan are two I remember. I remember being very exicited when they started Fairview Fish & Game at teh fire hall, us kids got to go to meetings with the adults and be part of the club. So exciting. Stu Beckman was probably the most successful hunter in Fairview, we would go to his place to see, deer, moose, bears when they were harvested.

We kept a pig around 1953, his first house was the dog house,then a rain barrel , he was so intelligent, when my fathers bus arrived ,about a quarter mile from our house, the pig knew he was getting off the bus, this bus went by every hour, but the five-thirty bus drove the pig crazy. When we slaughtered the pig, my father cried. You wouldn't be able to own a pig in Halifax, but we lived in Fairview, just this side of Dutch Village Road, the boundary between the city and county. I always said I had the best of both worlds, the city in my frontyard and the wilderness in my backyard.


Penny candy, actually three for a penny in most cases, green leaves ,licorice, black balls, ju jubes,pop was seven cents and you got 2 cents back for the bottle. If you had 25 cents you could go to the movies, have a pop and a chocolate bar or chips or popcorn. And that was two full length movies. We usually walked three miles to the Armview theatre, and sometimes downtown to the Oxford, the Casino, the Garrick, the Paramount, the Capitol, the Gaiety, the Empire. What was that other one on Gottingen Street?

I served in the army, navy, and air force. I did six years in the Army as a paratrooper in the medical corps, serving with the Van Doos in Valcartier, Que. Eight years in the Navy as naval aircrew, on the Bonaventure and Annapolis, flying in Trackers and Sea Kings. Then six years in the Air Reserve doing the fisheries patrols in Trackers. I was also twenty -four years a jail guard. I also sold real estate, and life insurance. I was a Tourist Development Officer for the Province of Nova Scotia, a radar operator on the DEW line, a hospital orderly, a mature student at MSV and Dal, took a run at politics, I ran for Alderman in Hfx, in my teen years I workedon the railroad,shovelling snow, delivered drugs from various pharmacys in Hfx, worked at the Minut-man auto wash, corner of Robie and Russel, worked at Seven-up on Robie street, delivered the Chronicle -Herald, painted houses,unloaded box-cars at the old sugar refinery.

50 years ago at the Minit-Man Auto Wash we washed more than a hundred cars a day.

There was a little ditty on the wall:

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own , the family car
All covered with dust, and dirt and tar,
If I should wash this car myself,
I shall become as rare,
As the man who ,cuts his own hair!

I joined the army just after my 17th birthday, I served 4 years in the Cdn Armed forces before I was old enough to drink, 21 was the age , you had to have permission to get married under 21. When I did get married I had just turned 21, on our honeymoon my wife and I went into a bar, I ordered a beer and she ordered a coke, they asked our ages, she was only 20 , they wouldn't serve us, she had been married before and had a child, she still wasn't old enough to drink. You could smoke at any age, the Premier of Ontario gave all us army guys a flat 50 of cigarettes each Christmas,no matter your age.