On The Road With Denny D

When you’re hot you’re hot   The summers of my youth were hot and humid, and the nights were a muggy mess. We didn't have air conditioning, and the only cool place was on the floor beside the front screen door. In fact, I don't think anyone used their interior doors in summer. Catching a breeze My sisters, who figured out where the warmest place in the house was in winter (the floor vent in the dining room) had commandeered the coolest place in summer. They invented the, you snooze you lose phrase. I remember racing down the stairs only to see a ghost in a sheet hovering over the floor vent. It was no different in summer. Now my mother was with the girls catching a summer night breeze. My brothers and I would try to sleep with just our fruit of the looms on. Our screen windows caught nothing but the sounds of crickets and the sounds of the odd hot rod racing down the road. There is nothing like sleeping in sweat and drool and hoping it was your own. Still, the sun rose,...

Hopscotch Boys never skipped. The boys never played hopscotch.  Most importantly boys never played with girls. I didn't care; I was in love. Well, the kiddy version of it. Her name was Dee Dee. That's what everyone called her. She lived one block down the road. I couldn't tell you what house it was because in front of my house is where we played.  Boys don’t play with girls I must have been five or six at the time. It was in the late afternoon hours just before dinner. She'd come over and I would draw a hopscotch on the front sidewalk with the edge of a rock.  Chalk would have been easier, but the rock worked. We were together and when we weren't hopping, we were skipping. She was the best skipper on Buckingham Dr. Single or Double Dutch it didn't matter. She just loved to skip. I wasn't very good at it, and I didn't care. My brothers and the kids across the street gave me the googly eyes. "You're going to get the cooties," they all sai...

Where did I begin?     Well, I'm not going that far back. Besides, who wants to see that? Not me.  It was September 2nd, 1959. My mother was in labour. It was my fault; the baby was me, and even though I was born five days before Labour Day, I was born on Labour Day. How I entered the world was a little strange.  Ready for the dance? It wasn't her first rodeo, and I wasn't the first clown; I was to be red nose number five.  My journey started in a hospital shower. That's when she saw it. My foot. Hanging out. My right foot was ready for the show. They must have looked down and said, Oh no . There I was doing the hokey pokey. I had my left foot in and my right foot out. They must have pushed my right foot in and shook it all about. Turned me upside down, and that's when I came out. That's what it's all about. The hokey pokey and the twist were my first dance moves. Throw in the mashed potato and the crawl, and you sum up my life as an infant.  Lo...

To the rink, okay, the floor   It was the late sixties or early seventies. We invented the indoor sports craze known as sock hockey. If the weather was bad outside, we would bring the hockey game inside. It was before the evolution of mini sticks and mini hockey nets. The game was played on a floor, usually consisting of vinyl or carpeting. My mother was a fan of Berber, and so were we. Our house had two rinks: a carpeted rink that stretched from our living room entryway to the built-in shelving unit just off the kitchen and the other, a narrow sheet of vinyl, which was the upstairs hallway floor. The upstairs hallway had bedroom doors on both sides. These doors were closed at game time. The rink stretched from the stairs leading down and the bathroom at the end of the hall. Our goalposts consist of door frames, entryways and cupboard doors.   The rules   When playing upstairs there was one rule everyone needed to agree on. The toilet lid had to be down. Nobody want...