The Power of Babble Siete: el Virus Edicion

If you examine the timeline of this blog ... I basically was boarding away from home in the fall of 1969 .. with no prep for anything outside the home .. dealing with a number of issues that only in the last decade have I come to even barely understand ... and then it gradually accelerates to marriage 7 years later ... it is hard to comprehend and hard for me to believe looking back on it ...  Knowing what I know now .. I would have sought counseling in June/July 1974 .. instead I was starting a new job and a new life ... so take all my issues ... add to it a serious break-up .. a new job .. away from school and home .. not knowing anybody ... it was a recipe for fucking disaster .. but I was saved by Bill Jaques ...  Bill loved to laugh .. and act a fool .. but he was a brilliant mechanical engineer ... and meeting him and having him accept me as a friend .. saved my life .. I am not the suicidal type ... but death by misadventure was well within reach based on my behaviour a...

There will be one more blog post tomorrow night that will complete the story for now .. and I will explain tomorrow what the future will bring now that I have documented all of this. I just want to alert you to another blog I will be starting on Sunday dedicated to what I and my camera are seeing as I walk around the local area here .. and for those interested to know a little bit more about the area Yvonne and I are in ... please visit this web site . You will be able to read the new blog right here . See you tomorrow right here for the finale and catch you Sunday for the debut of Melaque Malarkey. Phil (22 January 2021 - San Patricio de Melaque - 7:19 PM) Krome Koan - 'I never finish anyth'

There are three days that I remember being the best in my life ... 14 August 1976 .. when Yvonne and I got married ... 16 January 1987 when Yvonne gave birth to our oldest daughter .. and the 11 September 1992 .. . yes 9/11 .. when Yvonne gave birth to our youngest daughter ...  I remember all three very well ... I will now focus on 14 August 1976 ... the wedding party was all located in a motel in the centre of town ... the wedding was being held in the church in the small town where Yvonne was born and brought up ... old friends .. new friends .. relatives from both sides were all gathered ... we were all in the motel together ... Bernard Lundy was there ... my old connection to my youth and the west side of Saint John ... my sister was there .. a rare chance to connect that I probably wasted .. I remember spending time with Bernard and my old friend from university ... and with Bill and RC .. we had a few beer .. but  not as many as we would normally sink ...  When the...

With the date for the wedding set ... there was one more thing to be taken care of ... usually ... Yvonne would be marrying a Catholic .. and what was required by the church was that Yvonne and I would take a five part marriage prep course ... basically a guide for younger couples ... you can now do it online ... but back in the day it was usually given by married church members ... I forget what the cost was then ... but it is big dollars today .. more if you buy the workbooks and want longer term access to reference materials ...  Of course I wasn't catholic .. or anything ... and anybody who knew me then would have told you there is not a religious bone in my body ... whatever it is religion does for the people who believe in it and need it .. it does the opposite for me ... and I have not changed in that regard ... but I have something a lot of folks don't .. tolerance ... I know that Yvonne was extremely nervous about this .. thought it might be a deal breaker ... but it t...

Well the next step for me was 'the ring' .. how the hell was I going to do that and keep it a secret .. I needed to get the size right ... well I was in luck .. Yvonne had taken to wearing my Engineering Ring as a kind of a friendship thing ... like those Irish rings .. cladagh rings I believe .. so I must have gotten it from her on some excuse that I needed to wear it for some reason and took it to Peoples Jewellers ... I have no idea how I decided what design or how many carats ... but the purchase was made and now it was just a matter of timing and circumstance ...  I had my old hockey game from Xmas past .. the kind where you articulate the players by pushing and pulling rods that you could also spin to create a shot .. the goaltender simply moved from side to side .. I had taken to having tournaments .. drew up schedules ... everything .. another excuse to party like crazy ...  So .. on the 14 February ... yes Valentines Day ... I had scheduled a big tournament ... people...

In the New Year 1976 .. Yvonne and discussed plans to marry .. she said yes .. so now all we needed to do was travel to Saint John to meet my sister and my mother .. and Bernard and Joe Lundy ... and so on the 24 January 1976 we headed out on the 7 hour drive to my mother's house ... I didn't remember the date .. but Yvonne will never forget it ... I don't know how much I had told her about my mother but Yvonne was very nervous ... I don't remember very much .. I remember us sitting there talking to my mother .. I can still see what Yvonne had on .. I don't remember the conversation .. but I am sure it had a lot to do with Yvonne's parents and their Pizza Delight businesses ... we never said a thing about getting married ...  The next day was Sunday .... so I took Yvonne down the street to see Joe Lundy and his mother ... his mother let us in .. and the first thing I see is that Joe is asleep on the couch in the Living Room ... and there is this huge dog in the ...

In mid September 1975, Yvonne invited me to go home with her for the weekend ... this was not a 'meet the parents' thing .. just an offer to get away from the routine of carousing all the time ... so off we went 2 hours to Yvonne's home turf ... well actually a relative's place who was celebrating an anniversary .. of course I didn't know anybody so I just sat by the front door .. but I had strategically located a case of beer out there .. and Yvonne's brother just kept quietly and surreptitiously passing me one ... I got hammered ... The next morning we were off to her parents place about 25 minutes away from the old homestead ... they had an apartment over one of the Pizza Delights they owned .. it was closer and made more sense for management and operation of the enterprise .. I was as hungover as you can be and still function .. during the full dinner I had to excuse myself a couple of times because I thought I was to vomit ... but professional partier I am ...

At the end of July .. Bill Jaques cottage rental was over ... but sometime in early August there was another massive party .. either in the same area as Bill's cottage or out in country somewhere .. I just can't remember ... we were all there .. all the individual party groups .. and we were well stocked with beer ... weed .. and hard liquor ... I took my guitar ... and ended up playing a bunch of Neil Young songs  ... Yvonne was there .. apparently my guitar playing and singing made an impression .. we all ended up staying there overnight .. passed out on the floor or chairs or couches ... and the next morning I drove Yvonne home .. by way of introducing her to 'The Beast' ... I have no idea why I did that ...  By now I was very interested in this young woman who could party as hardy as we could .. and I sensed she was interested in me ... so .. the only time I ever asked a woman on a date in my ,life was when I asked Yvonne if she wanted to go with me to the Holiday I...

Upon my return from Ontario, I picked up with Bill Jaques and RC right where we left off ... if there was an excuse to have a drink we found it .. and the laughs came from everywhere ... we had the Athletic Club and the Holiday Inn lounge on the weekends .. and during the week we had the local tavern just across from Bill's townhouse .. The Roma ... a huge dance floor ... and a Chinese Restaurant where if you ordered food, you could drink beer to all hours of the morning .. and of course any excuse for a party at Bill's place ... and there was another music venue that we all frequented when the right band was playing .. I just have no memory of where it was ... As we roamed the urban landscape ... we would run across other groups of friends .. and sometimes we would all join .. others just acknowledge the mutual pursuit of fun and laughter and carry on ... literally ... at some point in time here I was promoted and moved to the project engineering section as a planner .. this i...

I was sent to Ontario with another engineer at the beginning of November 1974 to get operating experience and would stay there until early March 1975. I was attached to the process control group and responsibility for me was given to LVW ... LVW and I have been very good friends ever since and have shared some great travel adventures .. and hopefully there are a few more left in us.. we did Route 66 together about 30 years or so ago now ... one of the world's truly great road trips ... I also met JS there .. and I was to make his acquaintance again in 1987 when I ended up working in Toronto ... one of the smartest people I know .. On the weekends for the first little while .. I would travel to Toronto and spend the weekend with my cousin who shared an apartment with a friend at Yonge & Davisville ... I would show up with a 24 of beer .. and then we would hit the roads .. parties .. restaurants .. visit his friends ... I was like the country hick learning the ins and outs of the...

So the company librarian and her friends took me to a small club in the industrial heart of town .. ostensibly an athletic club ... but if there were athletics associated with it .. they were well disguised. It was a two story building .. basically about 35 feet square .. so not a lot of room inside ... but what a place it was. The owner's son was the drummer in the house band .. they played against the far wall from the side entrance to the club ... and they played hits of the day .. top 40 .. Bad Company .. BTO .. early disco songs .. Kung Fu Fighting ... The Hustle ... all the music had a heavy groove ... and after a few beer and some weed ... that was generously being passed around .. the room had a vibe ... it was the second best music room I have ever been in .. pure magic in there ... they had a scene going on .. and I would spend many nights in there as part of it ... Around this time, I met three more people at work that would be a big influence on me; two who basically to...

I don't remember much of my first day on the new job .. other than I had my own office .. and was taken on a tour of the industrial site ... the first thing I noticed was that the construction workers had a bar set-up in one of the uncompleted process towers ... par for the course as Iwas to learn over the next few months .. I worked for operations .. our job was to assist in commissioning the new construction and then write the operating procedures for it's start-up and operation. Usually a fresh graduate works under a seasoned engineer for a few months before taking on individual responsibility .. not so here .. I was given responsibility for water treatment .. the front end of the process .. again .. sort of a harbinger of things to come for the whole enterprise ... My apartment wouldn't be available for a month or so so I was staying in a motel .. I would eat out somewhere .. come back and play guitar ... and watch a bit of tv .. have a beer or two .. I didn't know ...

I  just need to take an aside here to talk about these last series of blog posts on BD ... writing them has not been easy ... in fact it has taken 47 years ... the precipitating events were spending 4 months with my mother 2 years ago and having every demon I had locked up ... finally and suddenly unleashed ... and then subsequently reading Lori Gottlieb's great book .. Maybe You Should Talk To Someone ... but it has still be an act of bravery on my part to do this ...  You see when BD left .. and let me state for the record it was the ultimate act of self-preservation on her part .. when she left ... I hung on to something .. and that was all the pain and anguish I experienced between February to July 1974 ... so when I realized she was truly gone forever ... I boxed it all up and put it away somewhere in my head ... instead of seeking professional help ... I kept that part of 'us' .. and it has caused me many problems over the years ... let me give you one example .. I ha...

I really do not have much memory of the period between when BD basically disappeared in February 1974 and the end of the university term; mid April 1974. I completed the thesis project; I managed to do actually quite well in the exams with no memory of how the hell I studied for them ... and I did secure an interview with Canada's nuclear agency and eventually secured a job ... I don't remember any details at all ... All this while basically operating in some kind of PTSD haze ... I remember some kind of party or get together at the at a restaurant to celebrate my graduation ... it's the vaguest of memories ... maybe late April or early May ... my mother at some point gave me $1,000 to go to Europe ... the timing on this is very hazy .. it wasn't at graduation but a bit earlier ... before the breakup ... I think it caused an issue with BD because I was talking about going to Europe with this money with some friends and and of course she thought she was being excluded .....

Ever have a time in your life where you think you had it as good as it was going to get ... that you just couldn't imagine it being better or needing or wanting another thing ever again? ... well it happened for me in the summer of 1973 ... BD was taking a couple of summer courses to stay current in her chosen profession .. I had landed a job with the Department of Regional Economic Expansion ... and I had sublet an apartment from a friend of mine for the summer just adjacent to the university ... so I had gone from failing second year to this in 3 years .. unbelievable ... At the end of that summer I began my final year .. and the pressure was on ... BD was expecting marriage .. I had a thesis project to come up with ... I had a job to find .. but there was another issue rearing its ugly head between BD and I that I only figured out when it was too late ... being my mother's son ... there were a few things that in my behaviour patterns that were right out of my mother's pl...

At the end of the 1971-72 university term we decided to change it up a bit regarding roommates and location .. one roommate returned .. one new one was added and we moved to Needham Street .. a little further away from the University but a similar apartment layout and more room with just three of us. By now BD had finished her studies and was practice teaching .. she had her own car ... and we were able to travel on the weekends .. once to Calais, Maine .. I bought Catch Bull at Four there .. and once to Moncton to see Lighthouse ... Bob McBride was a force of nature ... one of the best rock male vocalists of all time .. gone too soon from drugs and alcohol. But over 1972 and 1973 ... some behaviour on my part started to be a problem for BD .. and I say this looking back ... not in the moment back then. The first problem was I wanted to be with her all the time ... she literally had a hard time carving out space for her own family ... and there was a reason for this ... and it wasn...

It didn't take too long after meeting BD that we became constant companions ... she would come over the apartment to study .. we would go the library together to do homework ... I would visit her where she was staying with relatives ... she was intelligent and had a great sense of humour .. and loved to laugh ... I don't remember much about that first Xmas break .. but I assume I spent a fair amount of time at her home .. taxiing back and forth as neither one of us had a car ...  I don't remember when my mother first asked for more information on BD but I do remember the conversation .. she asked about her mother and father .. especially the maiden name of the mother .. and my mother then made the comment that she was related to family the she considered had low breeding and a bad background ... so .. she didn't approve obviously ...  So here's my mother .. from a place in Nova Scotia ... that is simply a signpost on a road .. went to school in a one room schoolhous...

So hows does someone like me meet women .. and yes .. then .. as now ... I identified as cis-gender ... well there are only two ways really ... a blind date ... or through work ... well maybe there is a third .. the woman makes the first move ... which reminds of two times that occurred ... the first was on a train from Truro to Sydney NS .. I was caught in the airplane strike in Toronto in 1977 .. so I took the bus as far as Truro .. grabbed a train from there .. an older woman on the train wanted to me to go to Halifax with her .. I kindly declined the offer ... the second time was when I was in Ontario for 4 months in November 74 - February 75 .. I went to a dance in an adjoining town ,, simply walked through the door and a woman immediately asked me to dance ... she wasn't wasting any time ... I met the woman I thought for sure I would marry via a blind date .. I met the woman I didn't know I would marry at work ... so there you go ...  By the end of my second year boarding...

One time the old man took me downstairs to the basement to show me something .. he had about a 6 foot length of 3/4 inch copper pipe ... I remember he filled it with sand and then worked it into a coil .. the sand prevented the pipe from kinking .. I don't know whether this was to teach me how do do this .. or to show me that he knew how to do shit .. the coil hung by the furnace long after he had died ... there was a bench against the City Line wall of the basement that held his tools randomly spread over the top and a bottom shelf ... I learned to hate that bench and tools .. when I cleaned my mother's next house out .. that one section that contained the dresser I talked about ... I took all those tools to the scrap yard and sold them .. the original plan was to toss them into the harbour .. but I sold them for spare change and gave the money to my mother as part of some books and magazines I sold ... I had exorcised the demon ... Another time we were all in Nova Scotia at m...

Twice I took two trips away from home ... the first one was with Bernard Lundy to his wife's home in Montreal to visit her parents and sisters. I still have the photos from that trip. We drove the American way through Maine ... the White Mountains up through New Hampshire and Vermont through the eastern townships in Quebec and then on up to Montreal. It must have been a long weekend .. maybe thanksgiving. Bernard was always a joy to be around .. always a laugh ... I remember having a Ben's Smoke Meat sandwich the size of a football .. my pix focus on Place Ville Marie and other buildings downtown ... so Bernard must have taken me on the grand tour.  Other than the pix I don't remember much else .. not even the drive home .. I would like to say the trip was remarkable .. but I just have no memory of it other than what I have stated and the pictures ... maybe that is why I take so many. I am guessing it was probably fall 1965. The next trip was one that I find hard to believe...

I remember compiling a list a few years ago of the skills ... you would need as young woman or man ... to navigate your way upon leaving home in the 'real world'. Once I had a list I thought was reasonably complete, I started checking off the skills that I had at that time... but I couldn't check anything off .. I didn't have any of them .. there was nobody ever released from the home environment to take on the world with less preparation than I had. Full credit here to my mother for finding a place for me to live .. I surely would not have known how to do it .. I ended up boarding on Regent Street ... just two blocks from the University .. and as luck would have it the Engineering Building was literally at the lower end of the Campus ... simply two blocks away. This would have been 1969 - 1970. I barely passed my first year which was unusual for me .. my average basically dropped about 20 points. UNBSJ was basically an extension of high school but without the caretakin...

I was thinking today .. what if my parents had of poured tons of effort into me to teach me social skills and physical skills, etc. .. would that have made any difference with me? I don't think it would have ... I arrived hard wired the way I was and I was so living inside my head versus the 'real world' that I don't think any effort in that regard would have changed a thing .. constant sarcasm, bickering and physical criticism aside. Maybe they tried harder than I give them credit for .. but ... My world was my bedroom .. and in my head .. and the books I read .. and the music I listened to .. and the TV I watched .. and sounds of the urban environment that I heard in the warmer months when the windows were open. Living where we were ... we were exposed to the sounds of what was probably the redneck and blue collar heart of the city. The horn blasts from the Digby Ferry that ran twice a day during the summer ... the fog horn on Partridge Island .. which operated just a...

My uncle in Nova Scotia bought an 8mm video camera around 1960 ... I don't know the exact date because I don't have access to the videos from here ... but while he was still alive he gave me access to all the videos he took over the years of us and my cousins families. I sent the videos in two batches to California to have them converted to mp4 digital video files and I have them all on cd-r and as files on my desktop at home. I can comfortably view them all ... with the exception of anything with me in it ... it just reminds me of how I tried to measure up to my cousins and failed ... they were all extroverts ... they could carry on a conversation in any social situation ... they all looked like they stepped out of a magazine or a TV show .. I wanted to be them .. I would try and emulate them ... but you needed moxy that I didn't have ... One of the biggest joys in visiting my grandmother in the summer was my mother's sister's husband talking us fishing down to the...