A Yankee in the Canadian Bush -- Bullies

Chapter 7

Enrolling in Grade 2 at Red Lake Public School should have been a wonderful experience for me but it turned out to be anything but. A year earlier I had started Grade 1 in the one-room schoolhouse at Pickerel River and then transferred that winter to a school in Eastlake, Ohio. Dad spent that winter renovating the upstairs of a historic farmhouse for my uncle, Ervie Kitzel. We lived in the upstairs while he worked.

Before I could be admitted to Thomas Jefferson Elementary School I had to have an assessment which I failed, miserably. Although I could read and print simple words I just didn’t seem to be able to follow instructions. The evaluators also could barely understand me. I did not speak clearly, mispronouncing or slurring words. The evaluators were not amused by the way I could count either.

When I was a young child my mother was busy looking after my dying maternal grandmother and also my dad who had been badly injured in a car accident. My sister, Sandi, who was 11 years older than me, and my brother, Bill, who was 14 years older, largely were in charge of bringing me up. They likely weren’t as strict with me as regular parents would have been.

Bill liked to play cards with his friends and used my interest in poker games to teach me to count. I learned ace, deuce, tray, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king.

They knew what I meant when I talked about seeing “pishers” in the photo album and so didn’t correct me.

The school evaluators wanted to send me to special school for “slow learners.” Mom and Dad were surprised and demanded I be allowed to attend regular classes; however, they did agree to let a speech pathologist conduct home visits to see if my vocabulary could be corrected. Every week for the rest of the winter a lady would come to my uncle’s house with new words for me to pronounce, starting with PIC-TURE. I was made to practise the new list and the old ones every day with my mother. Sure enough, my diction improved. An unintended consequence, however, was that the Northeastern Ohio accent was forever etched into my brain, something that would occasionally cause me problems for decades to follow.

My work at school was barely passable. When I was asked to copy new words from the blackboard onto paper I wrote total nonsense. Instead of printing LOOK, I might write down HMR. It did indeed seem like I suffered from a learning disability. Then my perceptive teacher moved me from the back of the class to the front. Instantly, I did better. She sent a note home to have my eyes tested.

I was found to have acute astigmatism in one eye and mild impairment in the other. With this revelation the school evaluators wanted to re-test me and later met with my parents beaming from ear to ear. They had found I had an IQ of 154 and wanted to enroll me in special school for gifted learners!

“Just a few weeks ago you told us Dan was a slow learner,” I remember my dad saying. “Now you’re saying he is, what? A genius?”

“Exactly!” said the two ladies.

“You know, I think we will leave him right where he is, in regular school,” Dad said.

Any chance of showing what a “genius” I could be with corrected vision was thwarted by my optometrist who was determined to train my “lazy eye.” I was prescribed glasses with the lens for my “good eye” covered. I could barely see at all. These were the glasses I wore when I entered Grade 2 in Red Lake.

It has often been noted that children can be cruel but I would add that kids are no different than chickens. They instinctively pick on anyone who is different from themselves.

I started Grade 2 with three strikes against me. 1. Not only was I the only child with glasses but one of the lenses was black; 2. I sounded “funny” and finally, 3. I was the new kid. I was a virtual beacon for bullies.

It started on my second day. I had to walk about three-quarters of a mile to school, right down the main street of town which should have been safe enough; however, there were several spots that were not in the public eye and this is where big kids would wait for me. They would beat me up, steal my lunch and, eventually, snapped my glasses in two.

Once I knew the ambush spots I would go out of my way to avoid them. The bullies, however, quickly figured this out and laid in wait on the alternate routes.

After getting a late start one day and seeing the bullies ahead of me running to beat the bell at school I thought I had found a solution – be late every day. However, as I would tear down the sidewalks at top speed so I too wouldn't be late, I would trigger a chase instinct from the dogs that roamed freely everywhere. In short order, I would be eye-to-eye with a pack of snarling huskies ready to tear me to bits. There was nothing to do but stand with my knees knocking until some adult came along.

For awhile my sister, Sandi, would walk me home each day and that saved me from a beating in each direction. However, she and her husband, Cliff, eventually left for Ohio when Cliff’s truck-driving job ended and he could find nothing else in Red Lake.

I started faking illnesses to avoid school. The bullies, to my surprise, came looking for me. One weekend I was walking on the sawdust roads behind our house when I was accosted by one of my usual tormentors. He kept me occupied while an accomplice slipped in behind and got on his hands and knees. The first thug gave me a sudden shove and I fell backwards over the other. They had picked a spot on a small cliff. I fell about 10 feet, right onto my head. Likely the only thing that saved me from a broken neck was that sawdust from the road had spilled down to this spot and cushioned my fall. I was still hurt but made it back to the cabin.

Fortunately, a calamity occurred soon afterwards that made us move back to Ohio. The airtight heater refused to burn and since the outside temperature was getting down to 15 below zero Fahrenheit at night, a remedy had to be found immediately. Dad got a ladder and went up on the roof only to discover that the block chimney which had been brand new when we moved in two months earlier was totally blocked by creosote. It was as solid as glass. The only possible remedy would be to tear down the chimney and lay another.

There was another growing problem with the cabin as well. The sawdust insulation in the walls was settling and a band of frost on the walls was growing in width each day. It was then about a foot wide. It could be fixed by taking off the top inside board and shoveling in more sawdust but all the sawdust at the mill was frozen as hard as a rock.

The final straw was that Dad was finished building cabins and could not find any other work. It was also plain that nothing else would be built anywhere in town until spring.  

A funny thing happened just before we left. My mom and I were home alone one night when a loud, eerie sound arose from atop the hill. My mom, who had grown up in Athens, southern Ohio, was sure she knew what it was.

“It’s Holy Rollers!” she exclaimed, obviously scared.

 I didn’t know what she meant.

“They’re a church where people start talking in tongues and pass around poisonous snakes!”

“Where do they get the snakes in the winter?” I asked and started to go outside to hear everything better.

Mom jerked me back in and locked the door. Now I was scared too.

We sat in the dark so no one would know the house was occupied. I envisioned that the screaming Rollers were going door-to-door, thrusting rattlesnakes onto anyone who answered.

Eventually Dad came back.

“Did you hear the powwow?” he asked. “Boy, that was really something!”

It was now early December. We took off in our old car for Uncle Ervie's again. 

We made it to Chicago when the engine started to fail late at night. Dad always had his trusty toolbox handy and worked on the motor while I held the flashlight.

There was no fix to the problem other than to get a new part, or at least, a good used one. It was late, all the garages were closed and we couldn't afford to stay at a motel. The engine still ran, but badly.

Dad started driving slowly around the back streets of Chicago, getting deeper and deeper into the city.

Mom was worried.

"I don't like the looks of this place," she said more than once.

Dad kept going. Eventually, he found what he was looking for -- a gas station with a bunch of teenagers with slicked-back hair and dressed in black leather jackets. They were lounging around souped-up cars. Likely every one of them carried a switchblade.

Dad parked the car and walked over to the group. Pretty soon they all came over to the car to look under the hood.

"It's a Canadian engine," said Dad, "but I think that distributor is the same as an American  Chevy."

They were all interested. 

"Yeah, 250 cubic inch," said one of the hoods.

"Think you can find one?" asked Dad. "It would be worth $20 to me."

A couple of the guys put a toolbox in a car and disappeared. They were back in half an hour and helped Dad put a distributor in our car. We reached Eastlake the next morning.

…to be continued

Other postings in this series:

Prologue

Rough Draft

Bad Ice

Why Here? 

A Gold Mine

Talking Bill into Selling

Red Lake in the '60s  

First Winter