Cardboard Ocean Read online

  Cardboard Ocean

  Also by Mike McCardell

  Chasing the Story God

  Back Alley Reporter

  The Blue Flames that Keep Us Warm

  Getting to the Bubble

  The Expanded Reilly Method

  Everything Works

  Here’s Mike

  Unlikely Love Stories

  Haunting Vancouver

  Cardboard Ocean

  A memoir

  Mike McCardell

  Harbour Publishing

  Copyright © 2014 Mike McCardell

  1 2 3 4 5 — 18 17 16 15 14

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, [email protected].

  Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.

  P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0

  www.harbourpublishing.com

  Cover photograph by Nick Didlick

  Interior photographs are from the author’s collection, with the following exceptions: Page 43—refurbished ice cream truck photo courtesy Harry Wilkinson, Bungalow Bar Ice Cream Truck; Page 243—Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers, 1954, photo by Bob Sandberg, Library of Congress; Page 302— Jackie Robinson comic book cover, 1951, Fawcett Publications; Page 305—postcard of Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, NY, created by Acacia Card Company, circa 1930-45, Boston Public Library; Page 352—abandoned Bungalow Bar Ice Cream truck, 1973, photo by Arthur Tress, National Archives (412-DA-5440).

  Edited by Lacey Decker Hawthorne

  Dust jacket design by Anna Comfort O’Keeffe

  Text design by Mary White

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Harbour Publishing acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

  978-1-55017-664-3 (cloth)

  978-1-55017-665-0 (ebook)

  This special book is dedicated to my wife, Valerie.

  I met you after I left my life on the street in this story.

  You have been my life since then.

  B.C. — Before Computer Games

  First, and most importantly before you start reading, I want to thank you. You who have this book in your hands. Yes, you. You, or your friends or your relations or some schmuck you know who was shovelling chicken droppings or someone else who saved some ducks crossing the street or helped a woman crossing the street, you have given me a wonderful life. Thank you.

  I have written stories about you, or your friends. They are average, everyday stories, but to me they are better than Greek dramas or Broadway musicals.

  And now I would like to tell you about my favourite story. This one beats everything because this is what made me whatever I am. You all lived through the years when you were eight and nine and ten and eleven, just before and just when the juices started to run inside you and the world flipped over on its back. And there you were trying to figure out which way was up and no matter which way you pointed, you were wrong.

  This is when I swam in the cardboard ocean. You had adventures just like this in different places and different times. But it was all the same. It was wonderment.

  This is what helped create us all before video games. Everything in here is true. It all happened over three or four years but in my memory, as with most kids, it all happened at once.

  As in my other books, start anywhere, each chapter is a story. And if you don’t want to start at the beginning, read the chapter called “World War” (page 285).

  This was your life as well as mine.

  Love to you all,

  Mike

  Always Tell the Truth

  “Honest, Miss Johnson, me and all the kids on my street, we go swimming in the Mediterranean every summer.”

  That was in the 1950s in P.S. 54 in Queens, New York. Don’t worry if you have no idea where that is. Most New Yorkers don’t know either. It is not the part of New York that has big buildings. It is not the famous part. It is like East Vancouver, or Whalley. They are in greater Vancouver, but a universe away.

  Miss Johnson looked down at me. She wore a long skirt. She always wore a long skirt and told us she would never get married because we were her family. If she married she would have to quit teaching because that was the law. So she did not get married. I thought that was terrible because she would never have sex, which I knew you should have because it made you happy.

  Actually, it did not make you happy if you were married because married people I knew were always yelling at each other so I thought they could not have sex because they were not happy. This was one of the things I did not understand. You had to get married to have sex and sex made you happy, unless you were married, then you were not happy. We wished Miss Johnson would get married so she would have sex, even if it would make her unhappy.

  “Don’t lie to me,” said Miss Johnson. “It is good to have imagination, but don’t lie.”

  “Honest, we are going swimming in the Mediterranean like we did last summer. I can still remember how some stuff in the ocean tastes.”

  “Mickey, if you lie again I will send you to the principal.”

  “But Miss Johnson, I am not lying.”

  “Have you ever been on an airplane?” she asked.

  “No.”

  I did not see what that had to do with it.

  “Have you ever been on a boat?”

  “No.”

  This was plain silly now.

  “Have you ever met a Greek?”

  Okay, now we’re talking. Things were going to go my way.

  “We know lots of Greeks. They are right next to the Mediterranean,” I said.

  “What do they look like?”

  Miss Johnson was getting angry. I could tell because she was breathing deeply and the bumps underneath her blouse were getting bigger. We all liked it when Miss Johnson got angry.

  “They are hairy,” I said. “And they wear heavy winter coats all summer long—”

  “That does it, Mickey. You’re not only lying, you are making fun of me. Go see Miss Flag right now.”

  Darn, darn and worse. I am going to be held in again, and that would mean I would miss a game on the street and worse, I would miss a swim in the ocean, which was the Mediterranean even if she did not believe me. And at the end of the summer the ocean would be gone and I hated to miss even a half hour of swimming.

  “Go sit in the corner,” said old Miss Flag, when I arrived at her office.

  I had been there before.

  “What’s it for this time?” she asked.

  I said, “Miss Johnson said I should see you because she said I was lying, but I was not lying.”

  “Well, stay there until you decide to tell the truth.”

  So I went over to the big chair in the corner – at least it was not facing the corner – and I sat. I liked the chair. It was smooth and hard and all wood and I could look at the grains and follow them with my fingers, but it was still a prison. I had to sit and sit and sit while people came in to see Miss Flag, and they would wait in the outer room with me until she would see them and I would sit and they would go in her office and close the door and time would pass very slowly and they would come out shaking their heads and walk away and I was still sitting.

  Or sometimes they would come out and shake Miss Flag’s hand and say they would try harder. Then someone else would come and sit on the bench across the room
from me and look at me and say nothing, and then go in to see Miss Flag. And I would sit. Then they would come out of her office and go home. They hardly noticed me when they left. I was just part of the furniture.

  About five o’clock, Miss Flag walked out of her office with her coat on and noticed me and said, “Are you still here? Go home and next time, do what your teacher says.”

  I shot out of the chair and banged through the office door and I prayed to God I didn’t break the glass on the door and ran down the hallway and pushed the panic bar on the inside of the outside door. It flew open and I jumped down the entire flight of stairs. That was a great jump. I never did it during the day because I might fall at the bottom and the other kids would laugh at me. But now I was in a hurry and no other kids were there.

  It was still light out, just heading into summer, and I ran down the street. The elevated train, the El, was running overhead and I loved the sound because it was loud and I tried to run underneath it as fast as I could, trying to keep up with it.

  The B.C. Years:

  Before Computer Games

  “Kar!”

  I flattened myself against a fender. The game had already begun and I took over as pitcher because Johnny had to go to the bathroom.

  “Kar, Kar!”

  I had two strikes against Jimmy Lee and one ball but every time a car came by, he would say I only had one strike.

  This is why I love the East Side of Vancouver. It is like the East Side of New York. Kids on the street making up games and making up how to play them while they were playing them. This is life before computers when skill of playing and skill of cheating were equal skills.

  “Kar!”

  Later in life I learned how a crow sounds. It says “Kar!” But on the street in the third inning of the ball game, it was just another car that was as much of a pain as crows are in other places.

  The car came and went. Damn, that was close. I think he was trying to hit me. The street was narrow, but that was really close.

  “You bum,” I shouted at the car. “And your ‘kar’ is a piece of junk.”

  Sometimes the cars stopped and the drivers got out and we had to run because you’re not allowed to have fights with adults. That was one of the rules.

  “I’m still up,” said Jimmy Lee. “I got three balls and one strike.”

  “Do not,” I said. “You got two strikes.”

  “One strike.”

  “Two.”

  “It’s a do over, I don’t remember what he got,” said Tommy. Tommy was catching for both teams. We had one extra guy, and Tommy was a good catcher, but he couldn’t remember which foot to place in front of the other if he was walking.

  He was also a terrific fighter, but sometimes he forgot which side he was on. One time he punched me in the face while we were fighting another gang.

  “Tommy!? I’m on your side. Those are the other guys.”

  “Oh.” It looked like he had just been told a super big secret, and he thumped three guys in a row, all unlucky members of the other guys.

  “Kar,” said Vinnie.

  Oh, man. This was not like the middle of summer when we could get in three or four pitches in a row. Then traffic was light because some people had vacations, but now the factories were working overtime and the cars and trucks were messing up our games.

  I flattened myself against a parked car again. This time a ’48 Chevy went right down the middle of the street and gave us plenty of room. I liked the ’48 Chevys because they had big fenders and you could hop up on them and sit and play bongo drums between your legs until the owner came out and tried to play the drums on your head.

  “Truck,” said Vinnie. Vinnie was on Jimmy Lee’s team today. He had hit a single and was waiting at first base for Jimmy Lee to get a hit. It would be closing time for the factories in a few minutes and then the trucks would really screw up the game.

  We would have to quit and read comics or something but it would be another game Jimmy Lee would swear he won. His record so far this season was ten or twenty wins and no losses.

  “Truck,” Vinnie said again.

  “I’m giving up,” I thought. By now Jimmy Lee would have the count at 3 and 0.

  The truck was coming toward second base, from Jamaica Avenue, and going to the factories and we knew the Chevy going the other way would have to squeeze over almost rubbing the paint off the parked cars. It was fun to watch because the trucks did not care who they hit.

  “I quit,” said Jimmy Lee. “We can’t get any more game in today. We’ll just say we won.”

  “Did not,” I shouted. “You were losing, you always do that.”

  He grabbed the bat and started walking off the street. When he stepped on the sidewalk I knew the game would be over. You can’t get to the sidewalk and change your mind. That would be like giving in.

  “I’m pitching anyway,” I said. “If you’re not there, you lose.”

  I grabbed the Spalding rubber ball in my fingers and wound up. I stood at the crack in the middle of the street, the same crack everyone used facing the sewer plate in the middle of the street which was home plate.

  My arms were up, the ball was above my head when Jimmy Lee ran back to the sewer and held up the bat. I let go of the pink ball, he swung and bam!

  Damn. Even with the fat pin that we stuck in it to keep it from flying too far, the ball was really flying. It was over the wires heading over the elevated train, which meant a home run. Vinnie took off from first, which was the fender of the car parked where first base should be, and he was running for the pothole that was second and then rounding the bases for third, which was the unlucky other car that was parked where third base should be. By the time you got to third you always slammed into it, so the fenders on that side of the street were pretty scratched up, usually from the rivets of our Levi’s.

  Jimmy was strutting toward first. He knew it was a homer. It was the only way he could hit a ball because he was so slow that if he hit a grounder he would be tagged out. But a home run was his territory.

  “See,” he said as he touched the first base fender and strutted past me. “See, we won.”

  The game went on, briefly. “Kar,” shouted Buster. Buster was on our team. He was playing first. He later joined the Marines so you knew from the beginning that he was tough and if you tried to reach first base while he had the ball, it was better that you turned around before you got there.

  The game today did not much matter. There was no end of the season results. They won because there was too much traffic for us to go on. Tomorrow we would have another game and half the kids would be on the other team. It would be game number one hundred before the summer actually started. Or maybe it was game two hundred. It depended whether you counted games that only went a couple of innings before being called off due to cars.

  It was like playing street hockey in Vancouver. That is, street hockey before computer games were invented. In the b.c. years, Before Computer years, the streets were filled with hockey sticks and kids. Not now.

  The closest I saw of street games in Vancouver after computer games was a group of girls who made the longest hopscotch game in the world. At least that is what they called it and it probably was. It was near Nat Bailey Stadium, two blocks from Main Street, and they made a game with chalk on the sidewalk that went on for five blocks, no six blocks, no, “come around the corner,” one of the girls said to me. Seven blocks, without stopping. You don’t get that on computers.

  But the best part of the game for me, and the worst for them, was when the neighbourhood boys started playing and using their own rules.

  “NO! You’re cheating,” said the girls.

  The boys were skipping numbers, and throwing the pebble off to the side, and then running ahead. Rotten boys. Just like Jimmy Lee. Bless them.

  Back to Jimmy Lee.

  He stuck his tongue out at me and grabbed the bat and bounced the end of it on the street and it bonged and bounced up into his hand. That was a nea
t trick. You could do it if you banged the stick down just right. It would shoot up like a ball. But if you were slightly off when you slammed it down, it would crash like a stick hitting the ground and you would look like a dumb-ass kid who could not bounce a stick.

  “I got to get this back to my mom before she sees it’s missing,” said Jimmy.

  He ran up the steps to his house which was across the alley from my house and if he was quick enough he would get the stick jammed back into the broom before his mother caught him. She said he was not allowed to use it anymore after he broke the last one – she had to buy a new broom and she said she could not afford that.

  Fifty years later in Vancouver, my daughter said she wanted to show me something.

  “You lived for stickball, right, Dad?” she said. “You’ve got to see this.”

  She was holding her daughter’s hand when she led me down Granville Street.

  We went into Restoration Hardware, which does not sell hardware. But they do sell stuff that you say, oh man, I gotta have that, followed by, oh boy, I can’t afford that.

  She took me past the silver candlesticks and the gold picture frames to a pile of long boxes with stickball bats inside. They were not for sale, they were on sale.

  Each box had written on it: “From the Bronx and Brooklyn the asphalt field of dreams spreads out to the world.”

  The bats were a handcrafted maple wood stick with electric tape wrapped at one end. The tape was to make it look authentic. Sticker price, $29.

  My baseball goodness god. I was now living in a city of street hockey. You need nothing but old hockey sticks, a ball and kids to play. But you never paid for the stick. They were pulled out of the garbage cans behind some skating arena and the broken pieces were taped back together and they started a new life on the rink that was made of black asphalt.