First Trip to Morocco

December 1972 - January 1973

As November 1972 dawned I was deep into my second year of an MBA program at U of T. My head which should have been focused on getting a job and growing up was instead lost in a fog of wanderlust I hadn't expunged while vagabonding in Europe and Asia in 1971.

My girlfriend was scheduled to head home to Vancouver over Christmas so I decided to use a late arriving student loan and the teeny tiny bit of lunch money I had and head over to Europe during the break.

I landed in Madrid on December 15 with the expectation of hitchhiking for two weeks and then flying home from Amsterdam. I wanted to see the big cities of Europe. In 1971 I had landed in Lisbon with the same plan but ended up in Nepal.

Two days later after touristing thru the Prado, the Modern Art museum known as Reina Sofia, and the El Rastro flea market I was on my way  to Granada, an iconic destination in the wrong direction.

I remember at El Rastro agonizing about buying a man’s lonely wedding ring with a date in 1937 engraved inside. That was during the Spanish Civil War. I wonder how long he survived after the wedding. Or whether the wizened vendor was selling a family jewel because he needed the money.

The unstable thing about hitchhiking long distances  is that each morning when you wake up you don't know where you'll be sleeping. You're a slave to the rides you get and the people you meet. Six days later on the 23rd after many rides and meeting about a dozen people I arrived in Fez in Morocco. From Granada I had drifted thru Malaga, Torremolinos, Marbella, Algeciras, Ceuta and Tetuán.

Torremolinos was a place I wanted to go after devouring The Drifters by James Michener but there was nothing to hold me there. Marbella was a more appetizing place. It reminded me of Palm Springs. I would have stayed longer but I didn't have the right clothes.

My time in Fez was a magical few days. I suppose Christmas can produce special memories no matter where it is celebrated.

My ride into Fez was with a couple from California circulating around Europe in a van. We fell in with a number of travelers in our hotel and at a close by campground. This group included people from six countries. Another couple was schlepping two cute toddlers.

I took on an out sized role in the planning, shopping and preparation of our international Christmas dinner. That included buying a live turkey in the medina and later wringing and slicing the neck of said turkey as the menu came together.

It was a really good party. We bonded over a crumb of sadness brought on by being away from home and loved ones.

One woman, Charley, asked me to call her mom when I returned to Toronto. Charley was a North Yorker and had been away for some time and outta touch. She wanted me to tell her mom she was alive and OK.

My trip lasted another 10 days with visits to Marrakesh, Essaouira, Goulimine, Mirleft, Sidi Ifni, etched into my memory.

Like anyone who’s been to Marrakesh I loved it. The medina and central market, Jemaa el-Fnaa, seemed timeless. I doubt this old medina would have looked different 100 years earlier. I bought a goat skin jacket for $26.

For the next few days I hooked up with a guy named John who had a Land Rover and a few other passengers for a tour to the south.

We reached Essaouira as the sun was setting over the Atlantic. This is the number one sunset of all the beauties I’ve been privileged to see. It had everything. Amazing sun bathed colours. Ominous clouds. Winds buffeting the audience. It was my first sunset over the Atlantic. You always remember your first.

We drove five hours to Goulimine in the south the next day. It’s a small city that’s grown up at the western edge of the Sahara. If I hadn’t been so broke and hadn't already paid for the next semester at U of T I would have bought into the 21 day camel journey to Timbuktu offered up to travelers looking for a sandy thrill.

Sidi Ifni on the coast had different architecture than the rest of Morocco. For most of the time between the 1400s and just three years earlier in 1969 Sidi Ifni was owned by Spain. So it had some of the same architecture as old Los Angeles near where I lived in the 60s. But Sidi Ifni was in a state of decay. I remember the Spanish architecture, beaten down Moroccans, a morose atmosphere. I loved it there.

Mirleft was up the coast a bit. It was a substantial bit of nothingness, including no running water or electricity. Lots of mud buildings. A few restaurants and places to stay and because of the beach a number of backpackers called it home for weeks on end. I asked one guy who was just sitting around sunning himself, not unlike a dog, what he did all day. He slowly looked up at me “Been busy today. Took a shit.”

The end of the ride with John and the Land Rover found me in Agadir retrieving my passport. My diary doesn’t indicate why I was handling that peculiar task again. It had also happened in 1971 twice, on Corfu and in Kandahar.

From Agadir my travel up to Casablanca to catch a plane to Lisbon and Toronto was a mish mash of failed hitchhiking, unexpected bus rides and different sleeping arrangements.

One nite I was stuck in a very small coastal village that had no hotel or bus station. I was taken in by a good samaritan who let me sleep in a small room in his small house next to the big highway.

When I got back to Toronto I had to borrow money and sell valuables to survive. And boy was it worth it. Great memories that would be cheap at twice the price.

November 14, 2018

January 10, 2019

The Basketball Court

1989

I can count on three fingers the number of times I've done manual labour.

The first time was in 1966 when I took a job as a dishwasher in the Valley State cafeteria as my sophomore year there was starting. Oh vey that was hard work and it started dark and early. Not for me. I quit after a week.

The second time was in 1969 when I was recruited to do construction schlepping on a new house in the Hollywood Hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley. I was traumatized within minutes when I realized I was doing the same work as the slaves in The Ten Commandments movie. Not for me. I didn't return for a second day.

The third time was in 1989 when my wife left me at home for ten days and took the kids to Vancouver leaving me one small job which was to supervise a father and son handyman team, Rocco and Serverio, putting up a pole and basketball net beside the front walk of our annex row house. She left on the Friday before the July 1st weekend. I was looking forward to having the pole in the ground and the basketball net up by noon the next day followed by nine days of peace and quiet having accomplished the one item on my ‘Honey do’ list.

Within minutes after arriving Rocco, the son, and his father, Serverio, let me know it was dumb to put the basketball net where we planned. After surveying our lot they suggested replacing the grass in our backyard, a 30 by 30 square behind a spacious deck.

They said the right way was to cover the grass with paving stones, and while we were at it we should redo the 3 foot wide lane between the next house and ours and our front walk. We'd save on the cost of the bricks and they had the time over the two weekends. If karma was on our side we'd finish before my wife got home. And, oh yeah, I would have to help with the schlepping.

I had to say yes immediately so they could get started and buy the paving bricks before all the suppliers closed for the long weekend holiday.

That was a challenge which I gladly accepted and made even more interesting by deciding to go ahead on my own authority. I learned long ago that surprise is one of those loving strategies I should use to keep romance in the marriage.

Rocco and Serverio were both stocky and muscular from doing lots of heavy labour. Serverio was maybe five six and Rocco was a handsome five eleven. They were entirely industrious. That is they were wound up tight so when they started working they just kept going. There weren't rest breaks to take a breath or wipe sweat off the forehead. They just kept going. They arrived at 8 a.m. from Woodbridge and except for lunch worked straight thru till five. Lunch was a production of its own. It was a huge bread and cheese sandwich that took exactly 30 minutes to eat. I supplied a coke and water at other times during the day.

Once the paving stones were delivered the work was to dig up and smooth the areas where the paving stones were to go, then there was the carrying of the stones to the various places they were to be laid, the laying of the stones including cutting many to fit in small places and finally filling in the small spaces between stones with sand.

We included a free throw line in the design which seems simple but when you think of all the stones that had to be uniquely shaped ours became one of the most expensive free throw lines in the western world.

The pole to hold the basketball net was a lanky twelve foot tall four by four piece of lumber to which the backboard and net would be attached. Easy peasy except for the cutting of more stones to accommodate the square bottom of the pole.

Now let's talk about me, the forty one year old barely in shape advertising executive doing construction work for only the second time in his blessed life.

Well I'm here to tell the story but at the time I struggled mightily to keep up with Rocco and Serverio. I couldn't quit because I had committed to work with them. In truth they gave me some slack to overcome my occasional bouts of exhaustion and mistakes made due to my dwindling mental acuity.

Since we lived on a street of row houses the neighborhood was a close community. Some of the homeowners who lived nearby were interested in the unscheduled and rather extensive landscaping project. I, of course, was more than happy to talk with any nosy neighbor. It was an excuse to stop digging and schlepping and have a rest.

The neighbors were divided on my decision to authorize the work on my own. Generally the wives admired my pluck to show initiative while the husbands were concerned that I had raised the bar to a place they didn't want to go on the independence and manual labour scales.

The way Margie tells the story is that when she arrived home late on the second Sunday evening exhausted from 10 days with the kids and a long flight there were neighbors standing around our front lawn waiting to greet her, to see her reaction and to give her a divorce lawyer’s card.

She immediately noticed that the expected basketball net beside the front walk was missing. I told her it was in the back and took her around the side to the back. I don't think she noticed the newly paved walk but when she saw the basketball complex I had constructed at the back of our backyard she was momentarily nonplussed but soon very happy realizing that our home would be a destination for our son and his friends, something we agreed was good.

What can I say? How about mission accomplished.

November 23, 2018

January 10, 2019

Nite Out With Avery

December 2018

I'm the luckiest guy. So when my wife told me about her good luck and that I would be taking our 10 year old grandson to see School of Rock I was delighted but not surprised.

Margie's good luck was that her call to buy tickets followed some silver spooner who had called to cancel and Margie got front row seats.

My good luck is perpetual. For example, I almost always have good weather when I travel. I can only remember one trip since 1968 that was rain bothered. But that was to Halifax, so, duh, not much lost.

My fun nite with Avery started when I picked him up after school. All we had to do was travel 10 subway stops and have dinner before the curtain rose in three hours. I was more worried about how to keep a ten year old entertained than I was about being late.

At dinner Avery is a conversationalist. That is he wants to find out about you. “How was your day today? What kind of things did you do?” are typical of the questions he asked. I, in turn, was interested in what Avery was learning at school. I was hoping for reading, writing and arithmetic. And fearful I was going to hear about gender studies and indigenous legal issues. Mostly he just complained about his French teacher so I'd say school was ok.

Dinner was at a touristy Italian restaurant in the Eaton Centre full of after work shoppers and people also on their way to the theater. Our waiter could tell we were a special couple and treated us both like adults.

I'm a big believer that children need to be helped to be very good at at least one thing to give them self confidence. A safe feeling that there is something they can fall back on. For Avery that is skiing. His parents are avid and have brought Avery into the fold. He win races in his age group all winter long.

After dinner with a good hour to spare we went to Indigo to look at books. Avery reads a lot. He's gotten thru all the Harry Potter books and is now reading others of the same genre. One day I hope he reads a book called The Asiatics which I read when I was about twelve. It fueled my wanderlust which I exercised a decade later for fun then and a bunch of stories now.

I promised Avery I would get into Harry Potter this winter. Taking his advice will add to his self confidence.

From Indigo we headed to the theater. On our way, as we were leaving the Eaton Centre, we came across a pop up exhibit that Amazon was using to showcase products that could be operated via the internet. Here's a list of what I remember: door locks, thermometer, stove, lights, music, a refrigerator door iPad that sees in the fridge and make a to buy list, window blinds, a travelling vacuum and more I don't remember.

Then we went to the theater and our front row seats. That was cool. We were sitting right on top of the orchestra spitting distance from the stage. During the performance we could see the whites of the performers eyes. Which meant we could see their every expression and had a full appreciation of how hard they work to stay in character.

The School of Rock story revolves around Dewey Finn, a failed rocker, who stumbles into substitute teaching. It's a busy role for the actor playing Dewey.

Our nite extraordinaire was punctuated with a flash when we met the actor playing Dewey in the lobby after the show and I took a picture of him with Avery. Avery was extra excited on the trip home. All smiles thru every subway station.

And I got an A in the school of grandfathering.

December 16, 2018

December 3, 2019

Slices of My Life With Doctor Lyons

1963 - 2018

At about 8 PM July 15, 1963 I was walking home from the De Havilland Golf Centre in the Bathurst Manor neighborhood of North York when my friend Jerome Lyons told me I was going to have to lose the jokes and become more serious if I was going to navigate my life successfully. Helpful advice I have not managed to use.

These were his last words of advice to me for some time. The next morning my mum and I were flying to Los Angeles to begin new lives there.

Jerome and I had been friends for about five years from grade six thru grade 10. We were classmates in six but by 10 we’d been separated. He got better grades so in its wisdom the system selected him to mix with his kind, so they could evolve faster together, separating themselves even more from the rest of us.

I returned from my time in Los Angeles in June of 1970. At first I didn't reach out to the friends I had left behind in 1963. It was a group of six guys. We had been writing and I even visited Toronto in 1968 and saw them.

Quick aside. During that 1968 trip I visited York University and was struck by the passionate demonstrations against the Spadina Expressway. I had left passionate demonstrations against the war in Vietnam in Los Angeles. Even at my young age then the irony that is Canada didn't escape me.

I travelled back to Toronto with my friend Fred Morse. Between spending time with him and reconnecting with relatives I neglected my old friends.

But finally I did reconnect. My eldest sister lived near Jerome's parents and it happened that I picked him up hitchhiking on a day he was between cars. That was when our lifelong friendship began again.

I was out of school and about to start a job as a wig salesman working for my brother who owned five stores. Jerome was starting his last year in the UofT MBA program.

We decided to share an apartment. I had already rented a basement apartment on the edge of the Republic of Rathnelly but was able to let it go at the end of September.

We rented a swanky 2 bedroom 12th floor  apartment in a high rise near the Park Plaza Hotel. We were some kind of lucky. It had a gorgeous view over the museum all the way to Rochester across the lake. The carpets were an unforgettable shade of royal blue. The bedrooms were at either end of the palace providing privacy. $255 per month. Including parking.

The apartment was a central address for our group because of its downtown location. Three guys were already married by this time. Oh my, we were still in our early twenties.

There were often 10 or eleven people there sitting around stoned listening to James Taylor, The Moody Blues and Van Morrison.

During this year we lived together Friday dinner was reserved for Jerome's parents which also allowed us to empty his mother’s freezer so she could happily spend the next week refilling it for us.

While Jerome's mum was a generous cook his dad had the job of a lifetime. He was an executive at Exquisite Form, the undergarment company. He never talked about his work but always seemed happy.

At the end of that year Jerome, with his newly minted MBA, moved to Hamilton and started medical school at McMaster's new accelerated program.

This was while I was resurrecting my inner student and in September I started the same MBA program Jerome had just finished. Was I following his lead?

We were mostly separated for three years as he was focused on med school while I completed the MBA, travelled to far away places, started my career with a job in Ottawa, returned to Toronto, bought a house and, oh yeah, got married.

When Jerome returned to Toronto to intern and become Dr. Lyons at Scarborough General we were able to spend more time together. We enjoyed tennis and squash which we competed at for 20 years at least. He was always a little better than me. I never had to let him win.

While Margie and I were vacationing in Morocco during the last week of 1975 Jerome had the run of our home to prepare the New Year’s party we were throwing. Margie and I came home to our 12 foot wide mini house not many hours before about 100 people arrived to squeeze in.

Jerome met Jan early in 1977 and they were soon engaged. By this time Margie and I had bought and moved into a duplex. We built a new deck over our garage to host an engagement party for Jan and Jerome in that confined space.

The 1980’s were a blur of tennis, squash, brises and baby namings.

In 1990 golf entered our lives and we and two other men from grade six formed a Saturday morning foursome. We travelled far and wide in the GTA to get to 8 am tee times. Sleep was a standard activity on the drive home but never once did our designated driver fall asleep, and crash, before arriving home. I don't know what the logic was to play dark and early. We were generally useless to our wives in the afternoon.

Jerome’s choice to be a doctor has been consistent with his personality. He is genuinely  helpful. Two good examples related to lapses of memory I suffered. The first time was around 1980. I was talking to Jerome on the phone when the doorbell rang. I said “hold on for a sec”. Whoever was at the door distracted me and I forgot about Jerome. His concern at me leaving him hanging led him to drive over to my house to see if I was ok. Sweet guy eh? The second time I was on my car phone with him when I was in a minor car accident. Once again I forgot about him. And once again he showed up to see if I was OK. What a good man!

We’re still going strong with regular meals and coffee and occasionally golf.

It’s a scary world. My friend Jerome is one of those people who shows that we’re not alone as we face the daily grind.

November 29, 2018

January 10, 2019