To thine own self be true

My father had gone down to Sioux City, Iowa on the Labor Day long weekend and ended up on Aug, 31 (my birthday) in a head-on car collision, requiring the ‘Jaws of Life’ to pry him free.  (The car was a write-off and the doctors were surprised that he survived.) My mother, who was working back in Winnipeg, had to take a leave of absence to go to Sioux City’s hospital to help nurse him back to health. They flew home together about 3 weeks later.

At the time, here in Edmonton, age 26, I was about to start teaching in Edmonton Public and, when I heard of his accident, wanted to go to be with him as well. I asked if I, too, could get a leave, but the school board refused my request, so I had a dilemma on my hands. I felt I should go to be with my parents, but, at home, I had my wife and a six-month-old child, and I was told in no uncertain terms that I would lose the job if I didn’t show up for work on the first day, Tuesday. Basically, I would lose the job I had planned on after teaching 3 years in the country. (We would also have no income since my wife was at home with our child.)

I thought long and hard about this dilemma. What would you have done?

(newspaper photo of the accident from the Sioux City Journal, Monday, Sept. 1, 1975)

In the end, after much deliberation and consultation with my wife and mother, I reported to work on Tuesday, reluctantly deciding that my mother’s being there for my father would have to be ‘enough’.

As for my Dad, he made an amazing recovery, though he had stomach problems and claustrophobia for some time after. My parents came to visit at the end of the month to attend my sister-in-law’s wedding and they both danced together at the banquet! But for another year or more, my father kept picking glass particles out of his eyes from the near-fatal accident.

(Recalled to life: Delmar Vernon Davies, by Christmas that year, wearing my cap and muffs)

What was equally amazing, he appreciated his second chance at life, becoming a non-tippler, a doting grandfather, and a much better person. The character change was like night and day; his ego vanished and he began to look out for others all the time. The rest of the story: the accident happened when he was 49 and he lived to be 72, being able to see both of our kids graduate.

(fall 1972: first teaching job)

By day, I was teaching full-time senior-high English in Grand Centre, AB (now Cold Lake).

Eventually, by ‘night’, 1973-1975, I was performing in two groups: Four, which became Betty Plus Four. In 22 months, we performed about 150 gigs, averaging 4+ hrs. a show (well over 600 hrs. of live performing, plus another 400 hours of setting up, taking down, travelling, and practising, so closer to 1,000 hrs. devoted to music in that time). (BTW/ we never heard ourselves playing–no monitors then.)

Many of the gigs were on school-day evenings (some running to 1 am or later, plus takedown and drive home). School started around 8 a.m.

We sometimes drank if there was a bar open when we set up, between sets, and often after a show. When I left the band in July 1975, I was on the road to becoming an alcoholic and, for months after, I experienced sweats as my body readjusted. I also had also been exposed to way much smoke since this era preceded smoking bans in public places. Some band members also smoked.

The band really wanted me to stay as their leader, lead male singer and rhythm guitarist, but my wife and I had just had our first-born and the door was open in Edmonton Public to return to teach in the city after I’d acquired three years of experience. I was a now-or-never situation and I had maxed out the living-in-a-small-town life. Much as I loved the music, my family needed a change of scene and I needed to change my lifestyle before serious health problems developed.

BTW/The bands played in Grand Centre, at CFB Cold Lake, Cold Lake town, Pierceland (SK), Bonnyville, CFB Red Deer, CFB Wainwright, and CFB Namao. I would estimate that we played for about 10,000 people in that time.

I don’t quite know how I managed this dual life, but I was still young and really had a passion to play live–a dream I got to live out bigtime, fronting two bands. (Later, though, I would continue to front teacher bands until 2002, so my dual life of music and teaching ran for 30 years in totality.)

(Best and longest-running of the teacher bands (Ken Klause-l, Ken Kulka-r): Fudge, 1990-2002, Scona Room, Strathcona High, Edmonton)

…………………………

A second, much different, dual life began around 1978 as a senior-high English textbook writer with my fellow grad student/teacher-friend Glen Kirkland (later Jerry Wowk) which ran to about 2010.

(Glen)

took me back to when I was 7 and having lunch with our elderly neighbor in her kitchen. Her cat Biddy was hanging around the kitchen and the neighbor wanted to let me play with the cat so she cut a piece of string and tied a crumpled piece of paper to one end and gave it to me to tease the cat.

A simple, but fun thing to do which spared my hands from the scratches of hands-on play?

Beginning at age 3, when I was left for long periods of time with our radio console and record player. From age 4 to my mid-20s, I spent a good chunk of time listening to top 40 radio, amassing collections of 45 rpms and 33 lps. I walked around everywhere with my 2 transistor radio playing the songs of the day from grade 4 to 11 till it finally gave out.

Moved by the ’60s hootenany era, I picked up and learned to play a guitar beginning in grade 10, performing in high school musicals and started forming and playing in groups in university and in my first years of teaching. Later, buying electric guitars, amps, a percussion machine, and a mike allowed for many public performances and dances over the years. Up to 2002, I played each of my 30 years of teaching for student and staff functions again in programs and groups of my own creation. I have played literally for thousands of people.

Beyond 2002 when I retired, I’ve explored the depths and breadths of jazz and classical music as a listener and have collections of each, including videos. These two genres are complex, more soulful genres.

Looking back, listening to and performing music accounts for much of my life–what I have happily done and truly enjoyed. My life has been much, much richer by music and I have seen music change many other people’s lives similarly, too.

Mostly deception these days, designed to separate consumers as much money as possible.

trolling, suing, and physically attacking strangers in public, I continue to support peace, reason, and diversity.

We know that nobody is perfect, but that is no excuse for dumping others to satisfy our egos, jealousy, and what Golding called “the Beast within”.

Screwball Central has major consciousness, thinking, and Big Picture problems. There is a movement afoot to deconstruct and tear down everything including the benefits that Western civilization has given us. To reduce everything to the lowest, dumbest common denominator which Vonnegut wrote about, presciently, in “Harrison Bergeron” and Birkerts in The Gutenberg Elegies.

There is also a strong desire to move back to the ‘master-race’ colonial era and eliminate all civil rights, particularly among women and non-whites. In short, a return to injustice, inequality, and public racism.

The Western moral compass is in great jeopardy and will be utterly and irrevocably smashed if Trump is irrationally re-elected, eluding justice and finishing the job of destroying the U.S., the West, global economy, and enabling the other dictators and crazies of the world from taking over.

The world, as we knew it, changed forever with Covid, but all we value and hold sacred and necessary for survival and success will come to an end if Trump gets in.

That he would control the nuclear button should terrify everyone on the planet yet again. He is the crazy madman of Edwin Brock’s “Five Ways to Kill a Man”.

are the many men spitting shamelessly in public, ignoring former no-spitting city ordinances. Like so many other courtesy signs fallen by the wayside.

I’d have to add, though, that professional athletes and media have vetted spitting on camera and the public takes its cues from its highly-overpaid professional athletes.

at my daughter’s place in Ellerslie.