Table of Contents
1- Playin' The Slots
2- “What Are You, An Idiot?” : A Pump Jockey’s Small Victory
3- The Legend of Shitboy Monster
4- Stop Bugging Me!
5- The New Gurus
6- The Monopoly
PLAYIN’ THE SLOTS
At Dawson College I had a drinking buddy named George. He was rather fond of saying that a good pool player was indicative of a wasted youth, (you see he was a few years older than me, and far better at the billiard table). Once, after beating me quite soundly at a game of 9-ball, he asked how I wasted my youth, because I obviously didn’t spend it shooting pool, playing sports, or studying (I was attending Dawson College after all…most of the kids there were turned down by their first choice CEGEP; in my case I was rejected by Vanier’s music program).
I told him about how, when we were about sixteen, me and my high school buddies Slim, Stretch, Paps and Big Jerry would spend every Friday immediately after school at a sleazy dive pool hall on Bernard Street that was so low class it didn’t even have a name, (we however called the joint “Fat Tony’s” because the overweight owner was an Italian guy who looked like he should be named Tony).
Every Friday we’d play pool, and on Monday in homeroom I’d compile the stats and winning percentages for what we referred to as the W.P.A., or World Pool Association (good God, we were pathetic!). We had a champion and if someone were to beat him they would be the new champ. The honour sometimes changed hands several times a session, but it was never won by me, and I was usually at the bottom of the weekly rankings.
Now George grew up in rural Chateauguay and often went to the redneck bars in his area, but we city boys did something different with our Friday nights. When we turned seventeen and were finished with high school, we would have a unique Friday night ritual. At about 7 pm we’d go to a Chinese buffet on Van Horne Avenue for supper, and then go downtown and hit the video arcades. It goes without saying that none of us had girlfriends at the time.
During most of my youth the City of Montreal, in its infinite wisdom, banned anyone under eighteen from the amusement arcades. I’m not sure why, but it was a royal pain, and it made no sense. I mean, who else but hopelessly undatble and terminally uncool minors would waste so much time and money at a place like that? At the time the movie rating system banned those under eighteen or fourteen from the cool movies. What else was there for non-athletic youths to do? Read? No thanks!
I recall one time when, during a day off from school, me and my cousin Christos walked up Ste. Catherine Street from Atwater to Bleury looking for arcades that would let us play. We were thrown out of every one. Looking back now, I should be grateful. My father was right; those places were a colossal waste of time.
The unfair ban was lifted when I was in my mid teens, so me and my crew spent our dateless Fridays defending the earth from invaders, re-fighting World War II, or trying to outrace our competitors.
We would sometimes run into others of our kind from Outremont High School. I recall one time seeing a kid we knew named Ish (I think it was short for something like “Ishvalal” but I can’t remember). He was one of the smart, science class kids and really into arcade games. Ish even knew how to fix the games with a quarter on a string, and got us some free plays. That particular establishment’s owner was a 300-pound biker, and Ish was quick to point this out, adding: “He looks like the kind of guy who gives the kids he catches fixing the games a sound beating. Well, enjoy guys!”
Biker types were sometimes a necessity, because arcades could be rough places. One evening, at the Alexis Nihon Plaza arcade, Slim was playing pinball while right next to him a couple of punks were slapping around some other kid for his quarters. At one point they were banging their victim’s head on the side of the machine Slim was using. He decided not to get involved, but strangely enough didn’t walk away from the scene, either. Slim just kept his head down as low as possible and kept on playing. He got the highest score, too.
We’d usually cruise several establishments in an evening, depending on which games we wanted to play or how busy they were. One fateful evening we went to the arcade in Old Montreal and had an epiphany.
At the time the most realistic racing simulator was a Formula 1 style game called Final Lap. It was fun to play, but only two people could use it at a time. However at the Old Montreal arcade they didn’t have two or three, but four Final Lap machines. And they were wired together so eight (yes…eight!) people could race against each other at the same time. It was like discovering a new element! From then on, we only went to that arcade, and only played that game, greedily hogging it for hours. Each of us would get a roll of quarters (sometimes two) sit down and race each other until we were broke.
Slim and Stretch had an especially fierce rivalry. I was never as good as they were at that game, (for me the greatest victory in a field of eight was making it to the podium), but it was courtesy of their intense desire to defeat one another that I won my first race.
On the final lap of that race I was running a strong third. Just ahead of me was Slim and Stretch, who were not above forcing a competitor off the road in order to secure a win. I could see them violently battling for the lead. They kept aggressively bumping each other, determined to triumph. You guessed it: They ran each other off the road on the last turn and I sailed to an easy victory.
There was another occasion when Slim did not win any of the races, which really pissed him off. We all agreed to go back the next night and play again. On that evening Slim didn’t finish lower than second, and won two-thirds of the time. We later found out he had gotten up early that day and spent all morning (and a substantial amount of money) at the arcade practicing.
We had a gentleman’s agreement not to tell anyone else about our discovery. Final Lap was the hottest racing game of the day, and if word got out about the four linked games at the Old Montreal arcade (which was away from the usual circuit…it was mostly frequented by out-of-towners) we would have to wait like losers to use the game. Then it happened.
Slim showed up at my front door one Saturday morning with a copy of The Gazette. In the entertainment section was a large advertisement that read: “Play Final Lap with eight of your friends! We have four games linked together!” or something stupid like that. The asshole owner of the arcade must’ve put that ad in the French language papers as well, because the next evening the place was jammed with gamers. We didn’t get anywhere near a chance to play all night. We all knew it was too good to last, anyway.
After some time, we started college, got jobs and girlfriends and had no more free time to spend at arcades. But I think it was more than just that. We also matured.
Over time things like PlayStation and Nintendo wiped out most of the old arcades. Now all the places that used to dot Ste. Catherine Street have become boutiques and cheap restaurants; peepshow palaces and strip joints. Sure, there are still a few left, but I don’t go in anymore. The kids there would probably think I was a father looking for his missing son or something.
I stroll over to the video games at the movie theatre sometimes, but they look so complicated and fast I dare not chance a quarter. I would probably be embarrassing badly at them. I do occasionally play the pinball machines. I was pretty good at that when I was young. It’s refreshing to see yet another classic that hasn’t gone out of style.
These days, when I look at the kids today “playin’ the slots” and the machines with their over-the-top sounds and flashing lights, I have mixed emotions. Did I waste my time and money in arcades? Hell yeah! Would I give up any of my memories? Hell no!
True, those games take time and money, and offer little in return except some mild entertainment. But then again, I know lots of guys who spent their entire youths playing hockey, and never made it to pro. Not even to Junior B. I’ve known plenty of people (me included) who dreamed of being rock stars and practiced guitar day and night, and never made it. How many PhD’s are now managing bookstores?
When you think about it, who among us hasn’t wasted their youth?
“WHAT ARE YOU, AN IDIOT!?!”: A PUMP JOCKEY’S SMALL VICTORY
For about a year and a half while I was studying at Concordia University, I worked as a service station attendant. Because I spent most of my weekdays at school, I was relegated to weekend and overnight shifts.
During my tenure, I worked nights at three different stations in three different areas: Cote-Des-Neiges, N.D.G, and St. Jacques & Cavendish. Anyone who knows anything about Montreal knows that those are not the exactly nicest areas on the island. In fact, a number of my regular customers were scuzzos and prostitutes and various other night denizens.
I liked my shift, though. It was slow, there was no boss around looking over my shoulder, and after cleaning the small kiosque (which took about twenty minutes), I would just sit around with enough time to read some of my English Literature assignments, including the entire five hundred plus pages of Wacousta.
Late one afternoon, while working the St. Jacques Street location (which is now a Tim Horton’s), two Mercedes cars pulled up into the station at the same time and parked at neighbouring pumps. One was driven by a middle-aged blonde woman, the other by an older, bald man. He got out of his car, put some gas in the other Mercedes, then returned to his pump, and put some gas in the car he was driving.
At the time, I didn’t pay any special attention to them, but when I looked at the amounts, I noticed something odd. The man had put 25 litres of gas in his car, and 15 litres of gas in the woman’s car. Self-serve customers sometimes confuse the dollar amount and the litre amount, especially with the pumps we had at that particular station, which displayed the litres above the dollars.
The man just came into the station, put forty dollars in the sliding money slot, and marched out of the station without so much as looking me in the eye. Gasoline at the time was just under 70 cents a litre (man, was that a long time ago!), and the actual cost of the fuel he pumped was about $28.00.
I quickly made change, left my protective booth and stopped the man as he was pulling away.
“Sir, sir,” I yelled, “You gave me too much…”
“What? I put $15.00 in one car, and $25.00 in my car. That’s $40.00 total! What are you, an idiot?”
Two things became apparent to me at that moment: One, he thought that I didn’t know about the other car and I was bringing him $15.00 in change, and two, he was a douchebag. He looked at me as though to say: "I'm a rich guy and you're a lowly Pump Jockey...of course I know everything and you know nothing! I'm always right and there is no way that you can ever be, you peasant!"
I stood there in silence for a moment, looked at the money in my hand, and said: “Yes, yes I am an idiot.”
He sat in his car with a confused look on his face for a second or two, and said, “Okay then. Good!” as he drove off.
Needless to say, I pocketed the cash. I don’t remember what I did with the money; probably bought cigarettes and a cheap meal, which you could do with about twelve dollars back then.
To this day I’m not sure if I had done the right thing. Maybe I should’ve tried harder to explain to the man what had happened. I did at least attempt to give him his money back. It was only when he called me an idiot and I got pissed that I decided to screw him.
So now the score is:
Andreas : 1
Rich Douchebags: 10,000,000 (and counting every day)
The moral of the story is to be patient and listen. You can’t be sure what someone has to say, and it’s unfair to assume you are always right and know everything. The Mercedes driver probably never realized what he did wrong, and didn’t learn a thing. I, on the other hand, will forever be grateful for the lesson he taught me.
THE LEGEND OF SHITBOY MONSTER
When I was about seven or eight years old, my family lived on the top floor of a duplex on Stuart Avenue in beautiful Park Extension. Our landlord was a kindly old Jewish man named Mr. Davis. Next to the house was a parking space for my Dad’s car. Because Mr. Davis was so old, and all of his grandchildren were grown, my brother and I had the yard pretty much to ourselves. Behind the backyard fence was a narrow, grassy lane owned by the city. It divided the block in half.
My brother and I often climbed our backyard fence and joined a bunch of neighbourhood kids in games like tag and hide-and-seek, or would otherwise engage in regular childhood mischief. The other kids ranged in age from about six to eleven years old and were, without exception, of Greek origin (as was Park Ex at the time).
We arrived in the lane one summer morning to find the whole gang assembled in a circle behind our backyard fence, using sticks to poke and prod what looked like a pile of sand. Upon closer examination it turned out to be a huge pile of used kitty litter dumped by some asshole damn smack in the middle of our grassy playground. The mystery of who did it and why was never solved.
Using their sticks, several of the children tried to gross us out by attempting to flick some of the deposits in the pile on us, but they only succeeded in hitting some of the gang with a few grains of the litter. Then one of the younger kids, a skinny, pale boy with a hook nose and elephant ears, saw an opportunity to distinguish himself in the history of Park Ex and gathered enough nerve to pick up one of the larger pieces of shit with his bare hand, and threaten us with it. We scattered like scared rabbits in all directions, with the young boy hot in pursuit, excrement clasped firmly in his hand.
One of the parents noticed this from her back balcony, and eventually she came down with a shovel and garbage bag and cleaned up the mess. But the damage had already been done. The boy (whose real name I can’t remember) began to call himself “Shitboy Monster”. For some incomprehensible reason, this became to him some sort of misguided badge of honour. For him I guess being known as “Shitboy Monster” was better than dwelling in anonymity. Until that day, most of us never gave him a second thought. Now he had a nickname. Now he was unique.
As time went by, Shitboy Monster and his family moved away. Mr. Davis died and the new landlord evicted us (the fucking prick…we lived there so long we paid next to nothing in rent!). My family scattered like little children being chased by some idiot kid waving around a piece of shit. Park Ex went from being Greek to mostly Southern Asian. Someone built a triplex where our parking space was. Everything changed.
About eight years ago, my mother showed me a newsletter from her church. She made it a point to show me a photo of a half dozen newly ordained Greek Orthodox priests who were from the Montreal area.
“So what?” I said, “I really don’t care about that sort of thing. You know that.”
“Rhe, stupid guy! I said look at the fucking picture, you good-for-nothing!” Mom said in her usual polite, respectful, pleasant, and diplomatic way.
Upon second look, I was flabbergasted.
“Hey! Is that…no…it can’t be!”
“Nai,” Mom said, “enai o Shitboy! Eftos exi yini Pappas! Kai esi? What are you doing with your life?”
She had me there. Shitboy had done pretty well for himself. Never thought a guy who once proudly referred to himself as “Shitboy Monster” would end up anywhere other than a circus sideshow. I especially would not have envisioned Shitboy Monster as a Holy Man.
I wonder how those who attend his services would feel about taking communion from someone who, as a boy, had no qualms about not only touching, but closing his hand on rotting cat feces, and took pride in being “Shitboy Monster”? And do they call him "Father Shitboy Monster" now?
I find it kind of funny how he got a nickname by handling excrement, and now he makes a living by shovelling it.
I also find it a little inspirational that in this world, even a creepy, skinny, goofy kid branded with the unfortunate moniker of “Shitboy Monster” could rebound and eventually be a spiritual leader for an entire congregation. It just goes to show that in life, no one has a clue what’s going to happen. And there’s hope for all the "Shitboy Monsters" out there.
STOP BUGGING ME!
During winter Montreal becomes a frozen, unliveable artic tundra. One year, during an especially harsh season, I asked my father how bad could it have possibly been in Greece that he had to come here of all places. Was Florida full? Rio de Janeiro was too much fun? Australia too far?
His answer was that at least Canada has four distinct seasons, while Greece has only two: Summer and unbearably hot and dry summer. He also added something I never thought of…Bugs! He said that Greece has huge, aggressive insects all year long, while in Canada we at least get a break from that during the winter.
I’ve been to Greece twice. The first time was in the late seventies, the second in 1991. Both times I understood what he meant. The insects there are gargantuan, hairy, armour plated freaks of nature with attitudes to match.
Once, during my second trip to Greece, my Uncle Vangelis was taking me over a secluded dirt road to the other side of a mountain in a van he had built himself from the ground up by scavenging parts from junkyards and wrecks found on the side of the road, (I wouldn’t be surprised if he stole a part or two as well). While navigating the treacherous road from Meligalas, where my father grew up, to Acovos, where he was born, an insect that looked like something dreamed up by a Hollywood special effects wizard for some B-level horror/sci-fi flick, flew in through the window and landed on my lap.
The creature looked like a cross between a mosquito and a dragonfly…and by that I mean all the ugliness of the former with the size of the latter! The beast had two shiny, see-through wings, a round body, and six hairy legs that bent in the middle. The hairs on the legs were so pronounced that individual strands could be distinguished with the naked eye.
“What the hell is that!?!” I shouted.
Vangelis looked over, saw the great beast, grabbed it by the wings, and casually tossed it out the window saying the Greek equivalent of: “What? This? That’s nothing!”
I was still taken aback. I never knew such a hideous creature existed in nature. But it got worse.
A few days later Vangelis took us to his favourite outdoor eatery. And when I say outdoor, I don’t mean on the street. It was in the fucking forest! No houses, paved streets or lights or anything indicating civilization was in sight! In the middle of a clearing in the woods, there was a restaurant, surrounded by a dark and eerie forest! And it was full of customers. I think that place’s motto was: Fuck the asshole who said “location, location, location”.
We sat at a table near the outside corner of the place. To my left and right were other tables, but directly in front of me was darkness. We had just ordered (surprise…we has souvlaki!) and I was going off on one of my rants about some stupid thing or another when from out of the abyss…WHAM! I was knocked right out of my seat.
What had hit me?
No, it wasn’t another diner who thought I was too loud. It was a large insect.
As it approached I caught a last second glimpse of the monster out of the corner of my eye. It looked like a grasshopper on steroids. And the bastard hit me square in the face, on my right cheek. And man, I’m not kidding that sonnava bitch really hurt!
Of course everyone there saw what happened and thought it was funny, especially my uncle and cousin. And they were right, I guess…but if it had been them, I wouldn’t have laughed. Okay, maybe I would’ve, but not as much.
I stayed at my Aunt Dora’s apartment in Athens the days before my return home. She had a small, but nice place in the heart of the Greek capital. I was out one night and returned at about 3 am. I wasn’t sleepy, so I went to her living room and watched some CNN International. I was just learning that Montreal Expos pitching ace Dennis Martinez had thrown a perfect game the day before when I heard a loud, shuffling noise. I looked around the darkened room thinking it was a mouse or something. It turned out to be a cockroach!
If you have ever encountered a Mediterranean cockroach you would understand my shock. Those things are black, armour-plated monsters the size of Volkswagens, with an aggressiveness to match.
I quickly pulled my feet onto the couch (lest the cockroach eat them!) and reached for a nearby rubber beach sandal. Gathering my courage, I took careful aim and launched the sandal at the great beast with all my might. It struck the cockroach with tremendous force, bounced up again, and landed firmly on the floor, directly in the beast’s path. Unharmed, the surprised cockroach ran forward, right into the sandal, moving it across the floor. The only audible sounds were its panicked and frantic footfalls, and the squeak of the sandal as it was pushed several feet toward the open balcony door. The monster then changed direction, and fled behind one of my Aunt’s curtains. I wasn’t about to go after him without a machine gun or hand grenade.
I was so creeped out I couldn't sleep that night. I kept imagining the cockroach gathering together some of his friends and telling them I tried to kill him. Then they’d sneak into the bedroom, pick me up and toss me out the window in retaliation.
Now whenever I dig myself out from under a Quebec winter, I think of those humongous insects in Greece, and say “this ain’t so bad!”
Man, I hate bugs!
THE NEW GURUS
The last decade has seen a rise in the number of motivational speakers who feel they have all the answers and possesses the keys to everyone’s happiness. They use catchphrases like “with my system, which I call 3D, you will achieve all that you desire. What are the three D’s? Desire, Dedication and Devotion…” or something equally asinine.
I see these “New Gurus” as little more than hucksters and snake oil salesmen flogging quick fixes, easy answers, and, to quote Ambrose Bierce, “explaining to ignorance the nature of the unknowable”-1. They are no better than clergy, praying on our fears, and telling us that there is only one true path to success, and they are the fortunate chosen who will guide us to that superficial “paradise”, and all they need is our credit card number.
One such Guru featured celebrities like Casey Kasem and Quincy Jones, (both of whom were more popular before they were involved with that Joker), and is an outstanding example of why these “New Gurus” shouldn’t be taken seriously. Our story begins in the spring of 1993.
The Montreal Canadiens were in the Stanley Cup final against the Los Angeles Kings, coached by a career minor-leaguer (as both coach and player) named Barry Melrose; a disciple of the aforementioned Guru. Melrose’s counterpart for the Habs was a former winner of the Jack Adams Trophy for coach of the year, veteran NHL bench boss Jacques Demers, (who to my knowledge never went to a motivational speaker to get where he was, he just worked hard…image that!).
Berry Melrose was also featured prominently in the Guru’s infomercial singing the praises of his system for success. How did a career minor-leaguer with no proven track record suddenly find himself coaching Wayne Gretzky and the L.A. Kings? The team’s owner, Bruce McNall was also a devotee of the same freakishly huge, charismatic, cap-toothed smooth-talking Guru.
The stage was set, and the Kings won Game 1 at the Montreal Forum. Game 2 didn’t go well for the Habs; they found themselves down by a goal late in the third period. Coach Demers suspected Kings defenseman Marty McSorely was using a stick with an illegal curve, and called for a measurement: A perfectly legitimate manoeuvre and huge gamble, because if the blade of the stick turned out to be legal, it’s the Habs who would’ve been assessed a 2 minute minor penalty. The gamble paid off! McSorely was sent to the box for 2 minutes, and during the ensuing power play, Canadiens defenseman Eric Desjardins scored the goal that tied the game, and sent it into overtime, where he scored again, winning the game for Montreal.
After the overtime loss in Game 2, the press asked Barry Melrose what he thought about the call for a stick measurement. Not one to be a gentleman, or gracious in defeat, he said he wouldn’t want to win that way.
Wouldn’t want to win that way? What did he mean? Did he mean that he wouldn’t want to win by using the rules and a coaching strategy employed by Hall-of-Famers like Dick Irvin, Scotty Bowman, and Al Arbour since hockey began, but rather win by having one of his key players using an illegal piece of equipment? Now while having illegal equipment is common practice in the NHL, it is prohibited, and Melrose knew the consequences. Most NHL coaches know enough to have their players switch to legal sticks with the lead late in a game. Could he be upset with himself because he failed to do that? Was he embarassed that a handsome, strong, younger man like himself was outdone by a homely, balding, overweight, aging, uncool, and as it turned out later, illiterate four-eyes like Jacques Demers? Or was he upset because he thought for some reason he was the greatest bench boss ever, and that there was no way he could be out-coached?
Rather than be a good sport, in my opinion he was essentially saying: “Hey! I didn’t really lose! You’re the loser, because you had to call for a stick measurement! I’m still better than you! I have to be! I just have to be! Because I said so, so there! Na-na-na-na-na-na! You see, Daddy, I am good enought!”
That’s the problem with the “New Gurus”. They create paper lions. They take people of limited talent, and inflate their egos and self-esteem to artificial levels. When confronted with smarter, harder working, more gifted and truly confident people, they always lose. Just because someone looks competent, it doesn’t mean that they are. But to these “New Gurus”, it’s more important to look able than be able: A unique kind of smoke and mirrors show.
The Habs didn’t lose another game in the series, and went on to win The Cup in five. Bruce McNall was later convicted of fraud and went to prison. Barry Melrose and his mullet, who no longer appear in the Guru’s infomercial, are back in the minor leagues were they belong, only this time as a commentator, all but forgotten by the “Big Time”.
Jacques Demers continued to coach for a few more years, and now does television commentary on the RDS broadcast of Montreal Canadiens games wearing his Stanley Cup ring. He wrote a memoir where he confessed to being an illiterate, which begs the question: How does an illiterate write a book?
The Guru Melrose followed had a simple technique for getting people to call you more often. All you have to do is say something like “so good to hear from you!” when you answer the phone, no matter who they are, and whether or not you are actually glad to get the call. That will make them more willing to call, because they are likely to get a positive, albeit insincere, response. So what one does essentially is cut a slice of phoney-baloney; be dishonest. We have a saying where I come from: “Shit always floats to the surface”. If one wears a fake mask, like Melrose wore the disguise of an NHL calibre coach, one will get ahead until, of course, they are inevitably exposed as a fake.
The Guru is still at it, reeling in the next generation of no-talent suckers with short-term memories.
As for myself, I am able to avoid these charlatans by following two simple rules:
1- NEVER trust anyone who always says exactly what you want to hear.
2- NEVER trust anyone who claims to have all the answers.
THE MONOPOLY
Growing up I never dared to imagine that one day I’d wear a communication device on my belt that would enable me to make calls whenever I wanted, just like Captain Kirk; not to mention miracles of science like caller i.d., text messaging, camera phones, voice mail, call waiting, or MP3 players.
When I ponder the mixed blessing that is telecommunications, I am reminded of how Ambrose Bierce defined the telephone in the early 1900’s:
“Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of
the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.” -2
But enough with trying to prove I’m well-read by using obscure and pretentious quotes from dead pompous-ass know-it-alls.
My favourite telephone tale began one night when I was about four years old. My father shouted “Dina! Come here!” excitedly as he came home (he was living with us that week) to our Birnam Street flat, carrying some sort of contraband in a wrinkled old brown paper bag.
“Come see what I have!” he said.
My parents rushed into the kitchen, where Dad emptied contents of the large bag onto the dinner table.
“Oh my!” my mother gasped, “Where did you get this?”
“Someone at the taxi stand sold it to me!” he declared.
For almost forty years my father was a Montreal cab driver who spent most of his days waiting for fares at a taxi stand on the corner of Wiseman and Jarry. The aforementioned stand was notorious in Park Extension as a magnet for every low-life sleezoid petty thief and scuzzo loser hocking ill-be-gotten loot. Dad once had his taxi radio stolen, only to buy it back later that same day from the very thief who ripped it off.
My brother Peter and I were anxious to see what all the excitement was about. When we finally squeezed our way past Mom and Dad, we were shocked to discover what was on the table: A telephone. A stout, flat black, rotary dial telephone.
Nowadays the telephone is a piece of technology that all western society takes for granted. When I was a child, however, the Telephone Company was a monopoly. Only they were permitted by law to provide telecommunication service. And if you wanted a phone, you had no choice but to rent it from them.
There was no such thing as a cordless phone at the time, and the unit’s wire could not be removed from the jacks, so its roving radius was limited to about ten feet, unless one leased a phone with one of those ridiculously long cords that could stretch from here to China and often entangled small children.
The luxury and expense of two telephones in the same household could only be afforded by the C.E.O.’s of multi-national corporations, the President of the Untied States of America, the Emperor of Japan, and The Pope.
Telephones were especially a status symbol for my mother, who grew up poor in the mountains of Greece. Her hometown was barely a town at all, but more like a loose association of a dozen or so houses and a church, all built into the side of a mountain and divided in two by a winding dirt road.
About a year before she left there at the age of seventeen, someone in the town (its wealthiest occupant, no doubt) got a telephone. Everyone from miles around rode their donkeys over to see the marvellous, magical device. He even started a little business, charging people to use the phone. He would have made money too, if the only people in the village had someone to call.
When I was growing up Mom would gossip with other women while hanging up laundry on the back balcony. Now my seventy-two year old mother has a cellular phone for such purposes.
In order to defend their monopoly, the Telephone Company would from time to time put inserts into the bills they mailed out that read like Orwellian propaganda. I recall one that announced that there would soon be two varieties of telephones available in three flat, bland colours. Order now and you may receive one of these fine new units in three to five years!*
*Supply is limited. All orders subject to government approval on a case by case basis. The Telephone Company reserves the right to refuse service to anyone, even for not liking their face. What are you going to do about it? We’re a MONOPOLY, loser! You have a problem with that? Didn’t think so!
Mom and Dad swore us to secrecy, and warned that our family would be in serious jeopardy if it were discovered that we had an illegal telephone. My parents, one must understand, grew up under Nazi occupation, as well as several other not-so-free regimes, and had an instinctive fear and distrust of any authority. To this day, even though she has had citizenship for the last forty plus years, my mother still fears sudden deportation.
They spun for us a tale of armed men kicking down our door and storming our house like some sort of Telephone Company Gestapo. The “phone cops” would then separate us; my parents would be sent back to Greece, and my brother would be sentenced to some Dickensian children’s forced labour facility where we would make leather Oxford shoes for the offspring of Telephone Company executives. I, on the other hand, was young enough to be sent to a Telephone Company re-education camp where I would be brainwashed into loving huge monopoly corporations, and later work as one of those creepy drones who install the phone lines in people’s houses.
My parents told us that if anyone were to ask, the phone was already in the house when we moved in. Dad then scraped the “Property of The One and Only Telephone Company…DO NOT remove under penalty of deportation” sticker off the bottom. If caught, he probably figured he’d pretend not to be able to speak English or French, and use the old “ignorant immigrant” excuse that occasionally got him out of traffic tickets.
The stolen merchandise my father brought home was more often than not in poor condition, rarely worked properly and usually found its way to the garbage a week later. The “hot” telephone, however, was no lemon; we used it for several years without any problems.
My father decided to install it into the unused jack in my parent’s bedroom. Tampering with the phone lines was strictly verboten, but the way he saw it he had already gone this far, so why not go all the way? Besides, Dad thought that calling someone who knew how to install a black market telephone would just create another witness he would have to eliminate.
My father grew up on a farm and was very handy around the house, albeit sometimes clumsy. My Mother would often remark that in order to repair something, my Father had to break something else. So if he were to fix a chair, he would damage the ironing board. Fixing the ironing board somehow damaged the frying pan. Fixing the frying pan broke the coffee table, and so on. Dad was always working on one damn thing after another, in a perpetual loop, like some sort of infernal punishment concocted in Hell by The Devil himself.
A political activist in Greece, Dad was more adept at making Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, and various other weapons from regular household items. But repairing complex electronic and mechanical items brought him nothing but frustration.
A few years later we rented a house on L’Acadie Boulevard. It was the only time we ever lived in a real house, and not the upstairs of a duplex. The place had a backyard and front lawn. In the garage the last tenants left an old lawnmower. My father spent most of our first summer there trying to get the damn thing to work. He would take the engine apart, reassemble it, and then angrily yank on the starter cord for hours to no avail. He never got it close to starting. Not even the tease of a brief sputter. Eventually the grass grew so high my brother and I couldn’t play in the yard without machetes, so my mother decided to call the landlord and asked him to have it done. Two guys with huge mowers came by and cut the front and back yards in less than twenty minutes.
It took several tries, but my father finally got the telephone working properly, and we were suddenly elevated one notch on the old social ladder above most everyone else in Park Ex. But of course, we couldn’t tell anyone, lest they jealously rat us out to score some points with the “Telephone Fascists”.
I remember my brother and I played with the phones. We were too young to have anyone to call, but if we each picked up one of the receivers, we could talk to each other from different rooms, which at the time put us on a higher plane than the infantile kids who still used two cans and a string. It was even better than having a walkie-talkie, because we used devices perceived as being exclusively for grown-ups.
A few years later The Telephone Company relaxed its iron grip, allowed for removable phone jacks, and opened a chain of ridiculous telephone boutiques designed to appease the proletariat with the illusion of choice.
The phone stores were a joke. The service was poor, and not a single outlet was in a convenient location. The closest one to where we lived was in a building above the Jean-Talon metro station, at the time a twenty minute ride on the number ninety-two bus away.
What’s more, now that they had retail outlets, the lineman who installed the phones no longer delivered the product you wanted to your door, or serviced the telephones themselves. Whereas before if your phone didn’t work, the Telephone Company would send someone to replace it, (you’d have to, of course, take a sabbatical from work to wait for them), now there was no option. It wasn’t like you could go to the store at a convenient time, or have them deliver the phone. Now you had to go to the Telephone Company Boutique, and wait in a Soviet-like breadline. And the stores were only open Monday to Friday, from 10 am to 5 pm. A person had to either leave work early or arrive late in order to get a sarcasm laden encounter with a telephone boutique employee.
The line-ups were more depressing than a puppy’s funeral. Women were known to smother their crying babies for fear of losing their place.
Once my brother and I spent a professional day off from school in one of the boutiques trying to exchange a defective phone. The clerk slipped away quickly as she was serving us, returning soon after with an evil grin on her face.
“I called your home number. Someone there answered. According to our records, you only have one phone from us, and it’s the one you just turned in! What’s going on? Do you have two phones? A black rotary telephone was stolen in your neighbourhood several years ago? Do you know anything about this? ”
I thought the jig was up, and was about to panic and spill my guts in exchange for preferential sentencing in “phone court”. Fortunately, my usually tacit older brother, renowned the world over as “Master of the One Syllable Conversation” (and said syllable is usually little more than a grunt) decided to save the day.
“Our downstairs neighbour lent us one of his phones because our mother was expecting an important call today.”
When my brother does speak, it’s usually clever and useful; Peter knew that “His Holiness” downstairs had two legitimate telephones.
“Oh,” said the clerk with a look on her face that said something more like “Okay…you win this round!”
The Telephone Company once tried to soften its image as a cold, heartless, faceless monopoly by selling limited edition children’s toys at the phone stores. The “toys” were plush, shaped like a standard rotary phone, and had an eerie set of smiling cardboard lips glued to the front. The Telephone Company knew that kids were tired of cuddling stuffed renditions of warm and fuzzy creatures like bear cubs as they slept, and were now ready to embrace a piece of technology.
Eventually the government relaxed their restrictive laws and allowed for the free market competition that brought us the cordless and cellular communication technological revolutions for which the pathetic masses had longed. The same legislation probably disbanded the “phone cops” and shut down the re-education camps and forced labour factories. Viva la revolution!
Today I am amazed that half the world’s current population has never spoken on a telephone.
Now every time I use my…wait a minute, my cell is ringing…Hello?...yes…okay, one second…look, I have to take this call. I’ll get back to you later. It’ll just be a couple of minutes, okay? I swear! I knew you’d understand…thanks…yes…how are you? It’s been too long…Oh yeah? And what did she say?...
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1- Bierce, Ambrose; “The Devil’s Dictionary”, Dover Publications Inc., 1958.
2- Ibid.
