We're almost finished July and as yet there are still no new J.D. Salinger books being released! I heard they'd be released by 2020. Get a move on you slow pokes! Before everybody who wants to read anything new by the man is dead. We're assured by Salinger's son, who whets fans' appetites with promises of more news of the Glass family and even Holden Caulfield, yet for a decade has obdurately left us with the extant stories, that he is working "as fast as he freaking can." Not a chip off the proverbial block. If he'd said, "as fast as he Goddamn can," he'd have been more convincing.
Short of world war, global catastrophe or Jesus' return, the long awaited release of a half century of my favourite author's writing should prove to be the most significant event in the latter half of my life. And like most major events in my life, it has been tantalizingly delayed. Read into that what you like.
Imagine if J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter, maybe the first two, then waited 50 years to finish the series. Choose an author: Tolkien just wrote "The Hobbit;" George R.R. Martin just wrote "A Song of Ice and Fire;" Stephen King just wrote "Carrie," "Salem's Lot" and "The Shining;" Tom Robbins only wrote "Another Roadside Attraction;" what if Shakespeare only wrote "Taming of the Shrew" and a couple of "Henries?" … and then spent 50 years writing in seclusion keeping us in excruciating suspense? Well that's just how I roll, folks. You should know that about me by now. I happened to choose as my favourite author, the most frustrating bastard a fella could possibly have chosen. Thanks for that Jerry!
Oh, how can I stay mad at old J.D.? Given all his eccentricities as a person, not the least of which was his reclusiveness, a trait I have termed in my own life "leave-me-aloneliness," he has written one HELLUVA first act! I have an endless list of questions about what lies ahead! But that, I gotta believe, is the method to all Salinger's madness. Some authors, like John Kennedy Toole, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac, Emily Bronte may have died before their greatest works were written. So they're dead. There's no way of knowing. There's a satisfactory finality in that. It's a bit frustrating but whatareyagonnado?
With Salinger, his greatest work may have existed unpublished for 50 years! FITTY YEARS! It's WORSE than if he had died! I could have enjoyed it for fifty years. Well, the world could have. I wouldn't have discovered it till college but a good thirty years of my favourite book could have been denied me already! In this way it will almost be a relief if when all of his new/old stuff is released, it absolutely stinks, but I am almost positive it won't. I think he was just rounding into top form when he "went away." Why do I think this? There is so much the average person doesn't know about the few writings of this Prospero with a pen! I don't want to get myself all worked up only to have to wait another year, but it's so hot today, I could anonymously drink Tom Collins' with the family of the bride my brother just left at the altar. < Probably the funniest of Salingers' short stories in which Buddy, Seymour Glass' brother, and sole representative of his family to make it to his wedding, invites infuriated members of his would-be wife's family to his apartment for drinks after they learn that Seymour got cold feet. (In the end Seymour and Muriel elope only to have Seymour blow his head off on his honeymoon after a girl from his hotel pretends to see a rare bananafish Seymour had made up) There is just so MUCH! So with nothing better to do, on a day unfit for man or bananafish, I suppose I'll catch you up a bit if you'll allow me. Beware lest you too become an unsatisfied fan held hostage by his family.
I suppose we should start with "Catcher." Everybody knows "Catcher in the Rye" and thinks since it is so well known, it's the best thing he ever wrote and the best he ever will. You're not a true fan if you do. If you are, you'll understand that this novel is just an aside, a mere footnote, a book written by the second best writer in the Glass family, Buddy Glass. Much like his hero and contemporary, who he met, shared "Catcher" with and received rave reviews from, Ernest Hemingway, Salinger's short stories are his strong suit. I didn't even like Hemingway's books. Being intentionally wooden does not translate to "macho" or cleverly stylistic in my opinion. Many, including Salinger, would disagree. But I DID like Hemingway's short stories. And I include "The Old Man And The Sea" as just a long short story. The aforementioned "Raise High The Roof Beams Carpenters" was also a long short story. Call it a novella if it makes you more comfortable, but both these guys were aces at the short story!
Most of us know the shady reports of several killers, most notably Mark David Chapman, who assassinated John Lennon then read directly from the book during his hearing. Robert John Bardo, Lee Harvey Oswald, and John Hinkley (HEY a guy with only two names!) who either murdered or attempted to murder Rebecca Schaeffer, JFK, and Ronald Reagan respectively, have also been linked to the book. Ironically its largely overlooked theme of finding joy (Phoebe, Holden's sister) amidst the suffering of life make this book less doom and gloom than people think. But it probably needs to be tempered with the knowledge of some eastern philosophy that the BEST writer, nay poet, nay SEER of the Glass family, Seymour (who really does see more) exudes. In short, don't read "Catcher" till you've read "Nine Stories" "Seymour an Intro," "Roofbeams," "Franny and Zooey" and "Hapworth 16 1924." And there are several more stories that are harder to access that might shed some light on the whole story. For instance, I sincerely hope that the short story only available at the Princeton library entitled, "The Last and Best of the Peter Pans," a story about Vincent Caulfield, Holden's older brother, discovering that his mother had hidden his draft card is included in the new writings. He's angry but his mother mentions brother Kenneth who has already been killed in the war. Holden is briefly mentioned and there is a reference to babies crawling off a cliff. The mother was trying to protect her child. The title, "Catcher in the Rye" is from an old negro spiritual that goes, "When a body catch a body runnin' through the rye." And it's about kids running through grain higher than their heads toward a cliff, but they can't see. They need a "Catcher."
Ah ha! See how it all starts to come together? In this body of work, you are constantly feeling like a detective trying to piece the story together. Like, for instance, the part about Seymour being kicked off the radio show, "It's a Wise Child," for saying the Gettysburg Address was basically dishonest. He contended that 51,112 men were casualties at Gettysburg and "if someone had to speak at the anniversary of the event, he should simply have come forward and shaken his fist at his audience and then walked off-that is, if the speaker were an absolutely honest man." I am, however, quite certain John Wilkes Booth (why do so many assassins have three names?) did NOT read "Catcher in the Rye." But could this have contributed to the other killers' interpretation of Salinger's writing that triggered their murder attempts? Again, ah ha!
I got interested in Salinger by reading "Nine Stories" in high school. It is the best way to start your J.D. Salinger journey. I have three times given my copy of "Nine Stories" away. It is a book that SHOULD be given away if my reading of it is accurate. Like Waker, one of the Glass twins, gives away his expensive, brand new bike. His twin brother Walt, the college boyfriend of Eloise Wengler, was described in "Uncle Wiggily In Connecticut," (from Nine Stories) as the sweetest, funniest man she ever knew. Walt was killed in WWII. Waker spent WWII in a conscientious objector camp and went on to become a Carthusian Monk.
In another story, the narrator, Buddy Glass, goes to a college in Montreal to teach art by correspondence. He overstates his qualifications in his resume and changes his name from John Smith to John De Daumier Smith claiming family relation to Picasso. There are two spiritual epiphanies in the story, a common theme in Salinger, linking banal things like bedpans and shoe lifts to visions of God. I was the only one in my class to put forth a conjecture that John DeDaumier Smith might be J.D. Salinger (same initials) and that Buddy (this is commonly believed/known) represents J.D. Salinger in the Glass family. Hence, Buddy (JDS) was the author of "Catcher in the Rye." This is suggested in "Seymour an Introduction." He considers himself a phony like DeDaumier Smith. Probably one of the reasons behind the seclusion.
Webb Gallagher (Buddy) Glass is the author, narrator, and protagonist in some of the short stories. "Teddy," from "Nine Stories," is probably his best. Sometimes more than one at the same time. As such, I expect a buttload of new stuff from Buddy when and if this treasure trove of new JDS material is released. I consider him to be the translator for Seymour. Sometimes Seymour is on another level and can't be understood by any but those who know him best. Like the story with the wedding party in which, after a few Tom Collins' Buddy proceeds to tear the guests a new one (except for the ever agreeable short old man who is funnier than any Shakespearean comedic plant) for their ignorant disparaging of such a great man. I sometimes feel I need Buddy as a translator. He admits many times in his writing to be regrettably down-to-earth in comparison to his other-worldly brother, but it's that which makes him more loveable. Perhaps this is a modesty in Salinger that few experienced from the man himself.
And Seymour! The greatest of all Salinger characters by far! Holden just might, MIGHT, be in the top 5 in my opinion. Only because, as Seymour advises Buddy while teaching him to shoot marbles, he's aiming too much. In other literary advice he says that Buddy needs to write more from his heart. This, ostensibly, is what Salinger loved in Hemingway and what he tried to make "Catcher" a largely unsuccessful attempt at. So now that you know it was written by Buddy, a good, but not evanescent artist, you know "Catcher in the Rye" was written intentionally second rate. Which is why, way back at the start, I said you need to know more about Salinger if you consider "Catcher" his best work.
I've heard, and of course there is no way to verify this, but, I've heard there may be an appearance made by Seymour in these new writings FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE! How can I NOT get excited about that? Not like "Hapworth," a bit of a contrived letter from camp from a guy who despised letter writing, written by Seymour and posthumously discovered by Buddy, there may be some kind of story related by the now dead Seymour! Not sure how but I bet Salinger could have done it in a not-too-suspend-your-disbelief kind of way. Like maybe telepathy between Buddy and Seymour? Buddy learns to meditate? They touch upon a meditative state of "satori" or that state of pure consciousness that is to be with God before He said, "Let there be light." The family are all versed in world religion and mysticism. In Everything really. They began training early. In "Raise High the Roof Beam" we see Franny says she remembers Seymour reading a Taoist allegory to her while she was an infant. This allegory, parenthetically, I retold from memory as my speech at my best friend Gilbert's wedding. It's about judging horseflesh so I'm not sure how flattering his wife Jeanne considered it, but to this day I know no man more worthy a judge of seeing beyond the surface and looking to the heart of someone. That was the message of the allegory.
So you see why I'm excited. I've read everything I can from Salinger and I've seen wisdom, action, mysticism, religion, politics, personal relationships, inciteful social observation, the list goes on. This is why Salinger is my favourite. And this is why I am champing at the bit to read 50 years more of his work! It could contain almost anything. Or maybe they (not so disappointingly) just find some other lost writings of Seymour the eldest. The sage. The seer. Why oh why are they withholding this from me???
Well there, I've gone and done it. I've gotten too excited. Now I'll have to re-re-read some Salinger to calm me down. Over the years I've found re-re-re reading his stuff to be soothing. Succor in times of trouble. lol Again, maybe this was his purpose. Some writings are meant to be read more than once. I would absolutely qualify almost everything Salinger wrote as re-reading necessity. Which is why I'm going to finish up this post and do some re-reading.
Contrary to several highly unstable individuals, I always feel comforted when I read J.D. I hope you, my readers, can come to an understanding of him that is similar. This will probably prepare you for the greatest reading of your lives! If it ever gets out there!
Patience Grasshopper. The new stories will arrive when the time is right.
What? Seymour? Who said that? Old Kung Fu guy?
I want to tell you more but I fear I have said too much. Go now, Grasshoppers and read of the Great Oracle Jerome David Salinger. I challenge thee.
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Monday, July 1, 2019
Canada Night In Korea
Well another June come and gone. That's one less hot, muggy, Korean summer month to go. So that's nice. July first was a Monday this year so I really couldn't go hog wild for Canada Day but I thought at least there'd be some place in Itaewon putting on an event taking advantage of patriotic Canucks to sell their overpriced food and beer. Maybe even poutine. But only found one place in Hae Bong Chon that I am not familiar with and it would have required a trip into Seoul, most likely an overnight stay and a trip back. I'm less and less likely to take a chance like that these days for whatever reason, old age, anti-socialism, I dunno, so I stayed in, flashed up an old hockey game on YouTube from back when Canada was still a good place for me to work and live and I had a few beers.
I watched game 5 in a series between Boston and Montreal from 1978! I remember that series clearly! I was living with my grandparents that year. In the summer I had taken so many thousands of shots on my Christmas present hockey net from the cement slab path between my grandparents' front and back doors that I had become quite adept at patching holes in that net. I wore the fuzz right off a few dozen tennis balls so they were just black rubber. And I probably bought a superblade a month for my Koho shaft. And needless to say I had developed an absolutely wicked shot! Particularly my snapshot. I took pride in that.
Then winter came and I tried my best to teach myself how to skate. I had the skates but needed to find some frozen water. I found a patch in the back yard creek that bordered my grandparents' property and the neighbours', but it was only just long enough to get two strides. I was not yet good at stopping so I practiced right leg first stopping. I tried a few left leg stops too once in a while, but with little success. The school I went to, John Knox Memorial Christian School, had a rink between it and the church next door. Kids could use it at recess and sometimes after school. I went to Stockaders, a kind of boyscouty sorta thing, in the church one day a week and afterwards, while waiting to get picked up and driven home, I strapped on the blades and practiced. But my grandparents lived on Hamilton Mountain and the school/church was way down in Fruitland, so I couldn't use it often.
One day shortly after Christmas I took a long walk (which is redundant on Hamilton Mountain. EVERYTHING was a long walk away!) to the radio tower down the road just past Rosie's farm. I was in grade 6 and Rosie was a few grades ahead of me but I still went over to her place for a visit now and then. Her family had a real farm with animals and crops so it was interesting. My grandparents didn't really farm any more.
I tied my skate laces together so I could throw them over one shoulder. I took my good, curved blade, wooden stick that I'd received for Christmas, and a smaller, cheaper, straight bladed one that I had bought just in case. I put a few stocking stuffer pucks and hockey tape into my pockets and started walking. I couldn't shoot pucks at my net because the netting would just break. Besides, the net was too awkward and heavy to bring on this long a journey. I'd say it was close to an hour's walk.
At the radio tower, where there was a puddle of swampy, standing rainwater that had frozen over. It was much larger than a hockey rink although in sections cattail stalks and thick, wild grass made for bad skating. There was a nice sized clear spot in the middle though and when I arrived there was a man skating on it. He was a smooth skater and he could raise a puck with his slap shot. Both were things I hadn't mastered by that time. So I joined him and we took some shots at a wooden section of fence or old door that was sticking through the ice. It was roughly the size of a hockey net and though it was not perfectly rectangular, it was a good enough target for us. I think it might have been set in the ice for this very purpose because there was another one on the other side of the ice and there were so many skate marks on the ice I knew they couldn't all have been made by just this one man.
The man offered some advice for me on how to get my speed on my shot by getting more flex on my stick. He told me I needed to practice crossover turns and stopping both ways. He also showed me how to raise a slap shot. My slap shot was not as hard or saucer-like as his, but it was the first time I had raised the puck with anything but my wrist shot. So it was a great day for me.
It turned out that this guy was my grandparents' next door neighbour. I hadn't recognized him! They had come over a few times during the summer of the year I lived with my grandparents, to give them some of their homemade wine and I think once to borrow a tool from my Grampa, but I didn't really talk to them much. I was probably busy taking shots on my net, practicing handstands or high jump, or maybe raking the grass. Grampa always cut it with his prized riding mower.
Later that winter, or really, closer to that spring, I was invited over to his house to watch the Canadiens vs. the Bruins at the neighbours' place. He turned out to be a really great guy! I cheered for the Canadiens and he cheered for the Bruins. But that just made for some good, manly trash talking. And his wife brought down really great snacks! We were watching on the basement TV. I remember all that, though I don't remember their names. I think I watched that whole series next door. If I remember correctly, and I do cuz I Googled it, the Canadiens won it. It was a tremendous series! I thought it was Lafleur, but, no, it was Mario Tremblay with the series winner.
The game I watched on Canada Day was game 5. Boston had won two home games and so had Montreal. This was in the Montreal Forum and Dick Irvin and Danny Galavan were announcing with guest colour man Chico Resch. There were commercials too! So very, very few, but there were commercials. Some for Molson Light. (4.5%) Remember that song? Molson Light has got heart, miles and miles and miles of heart. If yer gonna brew a beer with great taste, there's only one place to start. Molson Light has got heart. Course you're right to try a light beer. But it's gotta have the heart. If it doesn't have the flavour, then you're beat right from the start - there's nothin' to it but to brew it - You gotta have taste to put a smile upon your face... and on it goes. I wonder who wrote that. There were ads for the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton that year. North Star running shoes. Oh how I dreamed of owning a pair of North Stars! Some for the wonderful Ford Pinto (ha ha ha). One with a mustachioed man speaking to a bottle of Canada Dry he just pulled out of a creek, "Canada Dry, I was ready for you!" Molson Export Ale - Keeps on tasting great. Then there was one for... are you ready for this?... Molson Brador! I totally forgot about that! And Molson Diamond Lager? I've NEVER heard of THAT! Do you remember? Member? Member? Possibly the best commercial though was for a BJ Thomas album. Record or 8 track. Available at Dominion, Towers and participating Mac's stores!
Larry Big Bird Robinson did his best impression of Bobby Orr that game. The Habs were getting outshot badly in the first when he took it upon himself to just rush the length of the ice and put one in. A beauty! Then he did an Orrian spin move to shake a checker and open some ice to pass to Mondou for the second goal. He got robbed of another assist too. Dave Newell and Leon Stickle had their hands full with the Canadians out ahead of the Don Cherry coached Bruins and sure enough there was a brawl when the game was out of reach. Good old time hockey in the good old days!
I had watched Boston vs. Toronto earlier in the week too. I'm into watching old hockey games on YouTube these days. I usually miss hockey during the summer. 1968 Boston vs. Toronto. Bobby Orr's Rookie year. What a game! While watching I took notes on how different the game was back then. These are 32 of the things I noticed. I'm sure there were other differences too.
1. No helmets. 2. Cheevers had a mask but Johnny Bower didn't. And Cheevers got hit in the face by a stick that game too! 3. LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG shifts! Orr made an end to end rush at least a minute into a shift, then stayed out for another minute after that! These days you won't ever GET a minute into a shift and if you go to the other end, you're gassed, get off! 4. Guys chewing gum not chewing their mouthguards. Nobody HAD mouthguards. Course, nobody had TEETH to guard either. 5. No ads on the boards. Nothing. Blank. White.
The above picture is absolutely shameful!
6. Cheevers came out to the left face-off dot one time to play the puck and another time he almost got to the blue line! 7. Tube skates. Of course there were many equipment differences but this was the most noticeable to me. Apart from the lack of head protection.
8. Two cameras. Some plays you had to take the word of the announcer for what was happening because the cameramen didn't catch it. That announcer? Foster Hewitt. 9. No organ at Maple Leaf Gardens! It was eerily quiet! There was one guy incessantly shouting "Bobby Orrrrrrrrr…" but otherwise just noise for close calls and goals. 10. Few, if any, shifts on the fly! Only changes during breaks in play.
11. Two guys threatening to fight came at each other with their sticks raised like they were going to carve each other's heads up! 12. Goals from the blue line no big deal. A couple or 3 in this game. 13. Goalies rarely off their feet. 14. Three officials. 15. Play called immediately when a player freezes the puck along the boards.
16. I didn't notice a single one-timer and NOOObody played their off wing. 17. Touch icing; Cheevers shot puck into crow resulting in no penalty; two line pass called. 18. Stick handling was abysmal! 19. Perfect ice surface. Not a bad bounce to be seen. 20. Not a single, solitary broken stick.
21. Extra netting in the net. 22. No giant score clock. 23. Fourth lines rarely used. Probably as a result of the long shifts. 24. Minimal play in front of the net. 25. This game was tied... and it just ended!
26. Players much lower on the bench and closer to the boards. Again most likely due to the lack of shifting on the fly. 27. Very few instant replays. 28. No names on jerseys, only numbers. 29. No high numbers. 30. Bell (fire alarm) to end periods.
31. Very solid boards with no give to them. 32. Low glass. 33. No netting above the glass.
Our great game really has changed over the years! I like some of the changes and dislike others. But I have to say watching the old games makes me nostalgic for the old Canada. Like our game, our country has changed over the years too. Some of the changes have been good, but unfortunately I feel like the majority have been bad. Or do I concentrate on only the good things in the past and forget the bad things? I think it says an awful lot that I had to watch hockey on Canada Day while living in Korea and drinking Korean beer. No, I really think the changes have largely been for the worse. In BOTH cases the worst changes have been in favour of capitalism, commercialism and greed.
I really hope my country smartens up so I can one day live there again! As they say, in the old days there were empires run by emperors and kingdoms run by kings. Now we have countries run by ----- I just don't think it has to be that way. So on this Canada Day I raise a mug of foreign beer whilst in a foreign country and say, "Here's to Canada! May the people sack up soon and get it back to the better country that it used to be!"
I watched game 5 in a series between Boston and Montreal from 1978! I remember that series clearly! I was living with my grandparents that year. In the summer I had taken so many thousands of shots on my Christmas present hockey net from the cement slab path between my grandparents' front and back doors that I had become quite adept at patching holes in that net. I wore the fuzz right off a few dozen tennis balls so they were just black rubber. And I probably bought a superblade a month for my Koho shaft. And needless to say I had developed an absolutely wicked shot! Particularly my snapshot. I took pride in that.
Then winter came and I tried my best to teach myself how to skate. I had the skates but needed to find some frozen water. I found a patch in the back yard creek that bordered my grandparents' property and the neighbours', but it was only just long enough to get two strides. I was not yet good at stopping so I practiced right leg first stopping. I tried a few left leg stops too once in a while, but with little success. The school I went to, John Knox Memorial Christian School, had a rink between it and the church next door. Kids could use it at recess and sometimes after school. I went to Stockaders, a kind of boyscouty sorta thing, in the church one day a week and afterwards, while waiting to get picked up and driven home, I strapped on the blades and practiced. But my grandparents lived on Hamilton Mountain and the school/church was way down in Fruitland, so I couldn't use it often.
One day shortly after Christmas I took a long walk (which is redundant on Hamilton Mountain. EVERYTHING was a long walk away!) to the radio tower down the road just past Rosie's farm. I was in grade 6 and Rosie was a few grades ahead of me but I still went over to her place for a visit now and then. Her family had a real farm with animals and crops so it was interesting. My grandparents didn't really farm any more.
I tied my skate laces together so I could throw them over one shoulder. I took my good, curved blade, wooden stick that I'd received for Christmas, and a smaller, cheaper, straight bladed one that I had bought just in case. I put a few stocking stuffer pucks and hockey tape into my pockets and started walking. I couldn't shoot pucks at my net because the netting would just break. Besides, the net was too awkward and heavy to bring on this long a journey. I'd say it was close to an hour's walk.
At the radio tower, where there was a puddle of swampy, standing rainwater that had frozen over. It was much larger than a hockey rink although in sections cattail stalks and thick, wild grass made for bad skating. There was a nice sized clear spot in the middle though and when I arrived there was a man skating on it. He was a smooth skater and he could raise a puck with his slap shot. Both were things I hadn't mastered by that time. So I joined him and we took some shots at a wooden section of fence or old door that was sticking through the ice. It was roughly the size of a hockey net and though it was not perfectly rectangular, it was a good enough target for us. I think it might have been set in the ice for this very purpose because there was another one on the other side of the ice and there were so many skate marks on the ice I knew they couldn't all have been made by just this one man.
The man offered some advice for me on how to get my speed on my shot by getting more flex on my stick. He told me I needed to practice crossover turns and stopping both ways. He also showed me how to raise a slap shot. My slap shot was not as hard or saucer-like as his, but it was the first time I had raised the puck with anything but my wrist shot. So it was a great day for me.
It turned out that this guy was my grandparents' next door neighbour. I hadn't recognized him! They had come over a few times during the summer of the year I lived with my grandparents, to give them some of their homemade wine and I think once to borrow a tool from my Grampa, but I didn't really talk to them much. I was probably busy taking shots on my net, practicing handstands or high jump, or maybe raking the grass. Grampa always cut it with his prized riding mower.
Later that winter, or really, closer to that spring, I was invited over to his house to watch the Canadiens vs. the Bruins at the neighbours' place. He turned out to be a really great guy! I cheered for the Canadiens and he cheered for the Bruins. But that just made for some good, manly trash talking. And his wife brought down really great snacks! We were watching on the basement TV. I remember all that, though I don't remember their names. I think I watched that whole series next door. If I remember correctly, and I do cuz I Googled it, the Canadiens won it. It was a tremendous series! I thought it was Lafleur, but, no, it was Mario Tremblay with the series winner.
The game I watched on Canada Day was game 5. Boston had won two home games and so had Montreal. This was in the Montreal Forum and Dick Irvin and Danny Galavan were announcing with guest colour man Chico Resch. There were commercials too! So very, very few, but there were commercials. Some for Molson Light. (4.5%) Remember that song? Molson Light has got heart, miles and miles and miles of heart. If yer gonna brew a beer with great taste, there's only one place to start. Molson Light has got heart. Course you're right to try a light beer. But it's gotta have the heart. If it doesn't have the flavour, then you're beat right from the start - there's nothin' to it but to brew it - You gotta have taste to put a smile upon your face... and on it goes. I wonder who wrote that. There were ads for the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton that year. North Star running shoes. Oh how I dreamed of owning a pair of North Stars! Some for the wonderful Ford Pinto (ha ha ha). One with a mustachioed man speaking to a bottle of Canada Dry he just pulled out of a creek, "Canada Dry, I was ready for you!" Molson Export Ale - Keeps on tasting great. Then there was one for... are you ready for this?... Molson Brador! I totally forgot about that! And Molson Diamond Lager? I've NEVER heard of THAT! Do you remember? Member? Member? Possibly the best commercial though was for a BJ Thomas album. Record or 8 track. Available at Dominion, Towers and participating Mac's stores!
Larry Big Bird Robinson did his best impression of Bobby Orr that game. The Habs were getting outshot badly in the first when he took it upon himself to just rush the length of the ice and put one in. A beauty! Then he did an Orrian spin move to shake a checker and open some ice to pass to Mondou for the second goal. He got robbed of another assist too. Dave Newell and Leon Stickle had their hands full with the Canadians out ahead of the Don Cherry coached Bruins and sure enough there was a brawl when the game was out of reach. Good old time hockey in the good old days!
I had watched Boston vs. Toronto earlier in the week too. I'm into watching old hockey games on YouTube these days. I usually miss hockey during the summer. 1968 Boston vs. Toronto. Bobby Orr's Rookie year. What a game! While watching I took notes on how different the game was back then. These are 32 of the things I noticed. I'm sure there were other differences too.
1. No helmets. 2. Cheevers had a mask but Johnny Bower didn't. And Cheevers got hit in the face by a stick that game too! 3. LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG shifts! Orr made an end to end rush at least a minute into a shift, then stayed out for another minute after that! These days you won't ever GET a minute into a shift and if you go to the other end, you're gassed, get off! 4. Guys chewing gum not chewing their mouthguards. Nobody HAD mouthguards. Course, nobody had TEETH to guard either. 5. No ads on the boards. Nothing. Blank. White.
6. Cheevers came out to the left face-off dot one time to play the puck and another time he almost got to the blue line! 7. Tube skates. Of course there were many equipment differences but this was the most noticeable to me. Apart from the lack of head protection.
15 years old
8. Two cameras. Some plays you had to take the word of the announcer for what was happening because the cameramen didn't catch it. That announcer? Foster Hewitt. 9. No organ at Maple Leaf Gardens! It was eerily quiet! There was one guy incessantly shouting "Bobby Orrrrrrrrr…" but otherwise just noise for close calls and goals. 10. Few, if any, shifts on the fly! Only changes during breaks in play.
11. Two guys threatening to fight came at each other with their sticks raised like they were going to carve each other's heads up! 12. Goals from the blue line no big deal. A couple or 3 in this game. 13. Goalies rarely off their feet. 14. Three officials. 15. Play called immediately when a player freezes the puck along the boards.
16. I didn't notice a single one-timer and NOOObody played their off wing. 17. Touch icing; Cheevers shot puck into crow resulting in no penalty; two line pass called. 18. Stick handling was abysmal! 19. Perfect ice surface. Not a bad bounce to be seen. 20. Not a single, solitary broken stick.
21. Extra netting in the net. 22. No giant score clock. 23. Fourth lines rarely used. Probably as a result of the long shifts. 24. Minimal play in front of the net. 25. This game was tied... and it just ended!
26. Players much lower on the bench and closer to the boards. Again most likely due to the lack of shifting on the fly. 27. Very few instant replays. 28. No names on jerseys, only numbers. 29. No high numbers. 30. Bell (fire alarm) to end periods.
31. Very solid boards with no give to them. 32. Low glass. 33. No netting above the glass.
Our great game really has changed over the years! I like some of the changes and dislike others. But I have to say watching the old games makes me nostalgic for the old Canada. Like our game, our country has changed over the years too. Some of the changes have been good, but unfortunately I feel like the majority have been bad. Or do I concentrate on only the good things in the past and forget the bad things? I think it says an awful lot that I had to watch hockey on Canada Day while living in Korea and drinking Korean beer. No, I really think the changes have largely been for the worse. In BOTH cases the worst changes have been in favour of capitalism, commercialism and greed.
I really hope my country smartens up so I can one day live there again! As they say, in the old days there were empires run by emperors and kingdoms run by kings. Now we have countries run by ----- I just don't think it has to be that way. So on this Canada Day I raise a mug of foreign beer whilst in a foreign country and say, "Here's to Canada! May the people sack up soon and get it back to the better country that it used to be!"
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