In those days streetcar tracks ran from Vancouver fifteen miles to New Westminster. I shifted the car into second gear, put the wheels in the streetcar tracks, and drove at twenty miles an hour to my destination. My sister was so frightened that she took the bus home. I drove the company car all summer on assignments and learned to drive. Three months later I took the driver’s licence test. That was another form of learning on the job.
Years later I was in Palm Springs, California, speaking to the Canadian-American Friendship Society. I walked into the hotel, and there was Don Cromie, by now of course long retired in his winter retreat. The society had asked him to introduce me, and he told a story I had never heard.
Six months after he hired me he called Erwin Swangard in and asked, “Whatever happened to that kid from UBC that we hired?”
Swangard said, “Well, he’s lazy, he’s a troublemaker, he won’t take orders from anybody, and he’s always late for work.”
“Well, get rid of him,” Cromie said. “Don’t keep him around just because I hired him.”
“Oh, no,” Swangard said. “He’s the brightest guy in the whole newsroom and has a tremendous future in journalism.”
As a sportswriter, I covered lacrosse, hockey, and football. One person I met while covering football was a young guy named Bobby Ackles. He was the water boy for the B.C. Lions. Bobby worked his way up the ranks — equipment manager, et cetera. He then somehow was hired by the Dallas Cowboys as a scout. Bobby advanced through the National Football League ranks and eventually became a coach with the Las Vegas franchise.
The smart guy who owned the Lions, now Senator David Braley, brought him back to Vancouver and made him president where he used to carry the water buckets.
I put Bobby in touch with a ghost writer and a publisher to tell his amazing life story, which was published in 2007. He then had a boat called The Water Buoy, also the title of his book. Sadly, in 2008, he died of a heart attack on the dock at Bowen Island while walking back to his boat with his morning coffee.
At the last birthday bash for me that Bobby attended on Bowen Island in 2006 he and his wife, Kay, brought me a B.C. Lions jersey with my name and the year of my birth on the back. It is something I will remember him by and cherish.
When I graduated from UBC in 1954, I was appalled at the low wages journalists were paid, so I made a deal with myself. I vowed to stay in the business for three years, and if I didn’t reach a certain level of advancement, I’d quit and go to law school. I was within six months of the self-imposed deadline and thought I was destined to be a lawyer. Then two things happened.
Like all sportswriters, I worked at night, covering a hockey game, a football game, whatever, then came back to the office to write the story and, of course, ended up in Chinatown past midnight with the boys telling one another lies and gossip. Such a lifestyle meant I woke up at about noon and had all afternoon free. One afternoon I was at Kitsilano Beach, looking for girls as usual, when I ran into Bill Popowich, who I had graduated with at UBC where he was captain of the university soccer team.
Bill had just returned from Europe, and he changed my life when he told me his tales of youth hostels, London, Paris, Rome, and all the other delights. I wondered what I was doing sitting on Kitsilano Beach, and at that moment I decided to travel to Europe as soon as I had enough money.
Shortly thereafter there was a shuffle at the newspaper and I was offered the job of sports editor. I was only twenty-four, and that was the most unusual promotion. So I knew I could make it in the business and immediately quit and went to Europe to bum around for three years. Everyone in the building thought I was nuts. It was 1957.
I went to New York, saw Mickey Mantle play at Yankee Stadium, and took the Holland-America liner Statendam to Southampton. Onboard I met two girls who had just graduated from Vassar, the female Ivy League school. They were going on the usual grand tour of Europe and had picked out all of their hotels and restaurants in London, Paris, and Madrid. They were great fun, and when we got to London, they persuaded me to go to these fancy restaurants with them.
Me, who had saved $1,500 and was going to do Europe living in youth hostels.
One night we were in a Greek restaurant in Soho and suddenly there was a huge crush of men walking in, guarding a couple. It was Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, and I realized I was in the wrong league and told the girls goodbye.
I then took a ferry across the English Channel to begin my great adventure and bunked into a youth hostel at Dieppe. Wandering down the beach, I saw a nice little restaurant and went in to have a beautiful steak that I discovered to my amazement was very rare and bloody. It was the first time I ever knew there was blood in meat, having come from Hearne, Saskatchewan, where all meat was done to the texture of a boot.
The suitcase I was going to use for six months was so heavy that I had to take a taxi out of town to get to a highway to hitchhike. Reaching Holland, I was picked up by a magician going to a magicians’ convention. He got a flat tire, and I helped him change the tire. Some miles down the road I realized that my glasses had fallen into the ditch. So I had to hitchhike the opposite way and figure out where, in a country that had four million identical ditches, my glasses might be.
I was down on my hands and knees when a car stopped and the driver asked, “What are you doing?” I explained, and he said I would never find the glasses and to get in his car. I told him my great plan to conquer Europe by foot and he said, “Come with me.” Then he took me to his home, and it turned out he was a Vespa dealer. The dream answer to my unplanned life.
It took three days to get a two-wheeled Vespa shipped in. Because it was late in the afternoon and I wanted to get to Hamburg that night, the Vespa dealer offered to give me a lesson on the scooter. In my hurry to get out of town, I said, “No, don’t worry.” (This, of course, was in the days of no helmets being worn.)
I got about a half-mile out of town when a huge truck went by. With a blast of air, the next thing I knew, I woke up in the ditch with the Vespa on top of me. I looked up and saw four huge wooden shoes occupied by two farmers, who pulled me out.
Rain or shine, through Denmark, Sweden, and East Germany on the way to Warsaw, I had to exist with just my sunglasses. When I made it to Stockholm, I stayed with Dr. Lusztig, the Hungarian father of Peter Lusztig, my university roommate in Vancouver. I was preparing to leave Stockholm to drive back through Denmark and then into West Germany to make my way to Berlin. He told me there was a ferry from the tip of Sweden to East Germany, which would cut miles and countries off my itinerary.
I landed in East Germany with no papers or relevant documents. The authorities, after much puzzlement, gave me a one-day pass, saying I had to go straight to Berlin without stopping to get there that night.
Under a heavy rain, I was frightened to death and was speeding as fast as I could when the road suddenly changed into cobblestones. The Vespa and I parted company once more. I was just outside a farm, and the farmer hauled me into the barn while the cows stared at me strangely and mooed as he hammered the damaged scooter into operation.
This took so long that there was no way I could reach Berlin as ordered that day. So I stopped at a small inn, went downstairs for dinner, and to my horror saw three East German policemen in their ominous uniforms. The chef came over and handed me a menu which, of course, I couldn’t understand, so I just pointed at three different items.
“Nein,” he said, becoming quite agitated. And I, not wanting to cause any attention, insisted on what I had ordered. He kept shouting at me. By this time, everyone in the restaurant was gazing my way.
I understood why when he finally returned with the three items I had ordered. Baked potato, fried potatoes, and boiled potatoes. And I, knowing everyone was gawking at me, ate them all down happily as if I did that every day. The three policemen, laughing, sent over a quart of beer. Trying to escape being jailed, I sent them back three quarts. They