A charter member of the discipline club

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Published on Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Photo courtesy of Cecil Pittman archives. Hamilton St. east in the 1950s.

By Rick Sparling

Neepawa Press

This is part three in a three part series about the places we loved growing up in Neepawa.  It’s not just from my generation, but also from those younger and older.

One other activity we had was rabbit hunting. There was many a bush on the outskirts of town and these bushes were generally full of rabbits. 

There was a bounty on them and you could get 10 cents a rabbit from Mr. Ryerson, who had a mink ranch located where Bob Birnie's house now sits, across from the #1 hole at the Neepawa Golf & Country Club. Most of the kids owned a .22 rifle and would go out hunting a couple of times a week.  Barry Deveson, a member of The Junior Rifle Club, formed a group of hunters called “The Scared Rabbit gang.” I’m sure these creatures shuddered when ‘the gang’ was on the way. Some of the members were Ed Fearns, Bob Birnie, Dennis Foley and Ron Kleven, all brandishing .22 caliber rifles.

Safety patrol

Who remembers being a ‘safety patrol’ over at West Park School? This was a big responsibility for a young kid. There were classes held to explain the duties prior to being able to wear the white belt. Another area of responsibility later on was that of being a ‘blackboard monitor.’ Usually, a force of two kids per class was responsible for cleaning the blackboards and all the brushes. A couple of monitors took the brushes outside and they were banging the brushes against the exterior of the school when the janitor became aware of it, after that, the boys had to use different means in order to remove the chalk from the brushes. The yellow chalk used didn’t look good on the white stucco. 

Chewing gum was a big no no in school. I remember one time when I was caught, the teacher drew a circle on the blackboard, stuck the gum inside the circle and pushed my nose against the gum for the remainder of the class. Very tiring! 

Valentine’s Day we all had boxes pre-made and they sat on the window ledge until the end of the day, when we would all open our boxes to see who our “valentines” were.  They don’t do that any longer, apparently because of some kids getting more than others. 

I remember a girl getting her tongue stuck on an iron fence pole near the entrance of West Park School (Hazel M Kellington now). Someone came out with hot water to get her tongue un-stuck. It was bleeding and hurt a lot. That someone just sent me an e-mail telling me about this and she was Jackie Dalton (Schwab). Why do kids do that?

Neepawa Cricket        

We used to play a lot of marbles up against the walls of West park School. Everyone had their prized marbles kept, for the most part, in a Crown Royal whiskey bag. I still have one, but I’ve lost my marbles (at least, that’s what my friends tell me)! I can remember my favourite ones were turquoise blue and I liked the blue and green “cat’s eyes” as well. Some kids would bring stainless steel plunkers with them, but we outlawed them and would only allow marble plunkers. We had many holes dug for our marble games and the teachers used to make us fill them back up. We had a baseball diamond over in the north-west side of the school grounds and played a lot of scrub games there. Also, some sort of rotation game where you would go from field to third base, second base, first base, pitcher, catcher and then get a chance to bat. We played at recesses, lunch and after school too. In the winter, a popular school ground’s game was soccer. We wore white moccasins, which were warm and durable and you could slide pretty well besides. That was a very rough game, but we played for hours.                                               

We played a game that was our own version of Cricket. We used a baseball bat and would insert it in a shallow hole with two tin cans, one on top of the other in behind the hole. If the pitcher knocked the cans over, it was an out, three outs to an inning. If you hit the ball, you had to get to the base and back home for a run. The game was called “Can Can.”

I suppose we lost our innocence shortly after becoming teenagers or maybe even a bit earlier than that, but most of the things we did were likely fairly normal and more ‘prankish’ than criminal.

The Discipline Club

I remember “The Discipline Club.” It was a club initiated by Principal John Voth. Anyone who was caught doing something that he didn't appreciate would become a member. I was a charter member.

Mr. Voth would hold an assembly in the gymnasium about 11:30 am and when it was finished at noon, he would say, “Class dismissed....oh....and would the Discipline Club please stay and put away all of the chairs!” All the other kids would get to leave for lunch, but we'd have to stay and work. Any dirty job that needed to be done was put onto the club.     

John Voth wore a pair of hush puppies for footwear and he'd sneak up behind you and before you would know he was there, you could feel him breathing down your neck. You had to give him credit because he never missed a thing. 

Back in 1960 and even prior to that, the strap was commonplace. Teachers wouldn't get away with it today, but we had to endure it.     

A little locker problem

This story comes up most times we get together, so I will share it with you.

Cam Smith and I had a little locker problem in the hall. In order to make a quick escape at the end of the school day or at lunch break, we would enter our combinations in full, only needing to yank down on the lock to make for a quick departure. 

John Voth somehow found out about it and he opened our locks, switched them and locked them up.  He was there watching us long after the rest of the school was already in their class rooms and we were the only two in the hallway, still struggling with our combinations.

He told us to switch lockers and re-try our combinations. They both opened with ease and we were doomed! John Voth was ‘Johnny on the spot’ once again. Of course, we were disciplined for that and I think he made us pick stones off the track out back or something like that. John Voth was one principal who didn’t give the strap, but he had psychological ways of getting to you that were just as effective.

When Al Olsen was the principal, Cam and I chose to miss classes on a Friday afternoon, as it was a beautiful fall day and we decided to go out to the fairgrounds and play catch and shag a few flies.

On Monday morning, he called Cam into the office, closed the curtains and proceeded to lay a lickin’ on Cam with his strap.  He said, “This is what you get for playing hookey!” After a few blows to each hand, Cam fumbled to try to open the door upon leaving the office but his hands were so numb he couldn’t open the door. Mr. Olsen opened it for him and as he was headed back out to go to his class he overheard Mr. Olsen telling his secretary to “page Rick Sparling to come to the office.” To Cam this was heart-warming! There were a few of the teachers who used the strap and imagine the guilt they had to live with all of these years!

Heck of a way to get downtown

I’m not going to elaborate about Hyra’s Pool Room, The Roxy or the bowling alley as I’ve touched on them in recent articles. We did spend much of our youth at those places though.

I will talk about “bumper shining.” I’m not proud of it, but it was a heck of a way to get downtown in a hurry. We used to be just casually walking along near a stop sign and disappear behind an unsuspecting vehicle and grab on for the ride. Sometimes there would be as many as three of us hanging on for dear life. I do recall, closer to the spring, when I was coasting along nicely, until I hit a patch of exposed gravel. Some rides were quite smooth and the driver was none the wiser. With today’s moulded bumpers, it’s near impossible so don’t even bother trying!

John Birnie did his bumper shining behind the milk wagon, which would have been considerably slower and more dangerous, with having to worry about sliding over road apples, since it was a horse drawn vehicle. Usually all of these things we did were learned from the older boys and George Howden  told me that he got into trouble for bumper shining as well, so we might have learned from him and his friends.

Photo courtesy of the Beautiful Plains Archives. The Bamboo Garden restaurant in late 1950s, the site of some pranks.

We were arrested

Some of the stupid things we did as kids! One night there were four or five of us in Allen Hyra’s car and we went out to “German John’s” farm and stole a couple of chickens. We took them down to the Bamboo Garden and let them fly down the aisle between the booths. Feathers were flying all over the place and the patrons were in shock and total panic. We were arrested and made to pay $6 per chicken and given a verbal reprimand. 

On another occasion, we were chased by the owner of SK Laundry, after the third time of letting off a fire cracker inside his front door. He chased us for three or four blocks before giving it up. The story, perhaps somewhat embellished, told of us being chased by the owner with a meat cleaver. 

Tossing eggs at the police on Halloween: They lined us up along in front of the Bamboo and  squashed whatever we had in our coat pockets. In my case, I had an egg in my pocket, which was a difficult thing to have to explain to my mom. Some of the older kids in town brought in a half dozen bales of hay and set them on fire at the traffic lights on Mountain and Hamilton. John Birnie told me that he read Neil Young’s autobiography which told of his (Neil’s) grandfather racing his horse down Main Street, which provided lots of entertainment. I guess he must have lived in Neepawa.  Just a note to advise that I have checked out all of these things we did as kids and they fall well beyond the statute of limitations. I’ve left some stories untold, for fear of having to go into the witness protection program.

Boys and cars

Earlier, Cam spoke about getting his driver’s test from one of the car salesman at a local garage. Because my mom worked at Murray’s garage, I had Peter Cottingham give me my test. I didn’t drive our family car that much (1957 Ford), but instead, I practised with Bozo Kinard’s Austin Mini Minor, which had the gears all reversed. Low on his car was where high was on my mom’s car and second gear was where reverse was and so on. I almost drove through the front showroom window as I accidentally had mom’s car in second gear instead of reverse. A couple of other moments during that road test I found myself grinding the gears. I suppose because he knew my mom well, I passed my test.

When I had just turned 16, a bunch of us chipped in and bought an old 47 Plymouth. I think we paid about $50 for it and we used to take it up to the garbage dump and jump over piles of garbage. That car had stability like no other. We drove down the town hill at a top speed of 68 mph, with a tail wind and cranked the steering wheel and slammed the brakes on at the bottom and the car spun around three or four times, but never rolled. 

We took it up to Clear Lake one weekend and had containers of motor oil we got from Mike Pasosky’s used oil barrel (from oil changes). We strained it through a pair of panty hose and likely used about 20 quarts of oil to the lake and back. That car used more oil than gas! After we blew the clutch out on it, we just took it out to one of the auto grave yards. I don’t think my mom even knew we had that car. It wasn’t one that I’d ever park in front of the house. I think we kept it over by Tremain’s house out back. Ron Bell and Jack Tremain were proud co-owners, along with three or four other boys. 

Black Cat Club

There was an old tin shack belonging to Dalton’s Plumbing, that was on their property beside Hipwell’s on First Avenue. We took it over as a club house, as it wasn’t used for anything by the Daltons. It was the Black Cat Club and we had ID cards which were made out of the black cat logo off Black cat cigarette packages. I was a charter member of that club too! We would invite other kids in and offer them a black cat “cork” cigarette (unless we were out of them, which was about 95 per cent of the time) and spend several hours in the club house spitting out cork! Directly across on Second Avenue, on a vacant lot, sat an old abandoned Nash Rambler and we spent time in that old car pretending to drive and learning how to shift gears. Those two places of interest only lasted less than a year before we got into other things. 

Note: There will be an extra article by Rick Sparling, featuring more stories about growing up in Neepawa, from the memories of various other individuals.