Then he smiled and went on his way. We should have aborted the operation then and there, but we really needed gas and had no money. We drove to South Hill and parked close to the big gas transport truck. Somehow I was the guy nominated to put the hose in the truck gas tank and suck on it. I will never forget the awful taste of gas in my mouth. Yuck! The taste stayed with me for days. We never tried stealing gas again.
My job on the order desk at Canada Packers was good while it lasted, but adventure beckoned. In early 1952, I decided to quit the job and head out to Alberta with Willie Flahr.
By this time we jointly owned a yellow 1941 Ford convertible. We bought it from Scotty Goodman, the friendly cop who looked the other way when we went out to steal gas. It was a sharp-looking car, or so we thought as we cruised the streets of Moose Jaw, mostly the so-called Golden Mile from North Hill to the CPR station at the foot of Main Street. One night we took the car out on the highway east of Moose Jaw and were challenged to a race. As we roared down the two-lane highway side by side with another group of kids in their car, our hood suddenly sprang up. The latch had come loose at our high speed. I happened to be driving and was able to still see the road through a narrow opening as Willie guided me to pull off the highway. Our racing days were over after that close call.
After we had the hood repaired we drove to Edmonton and applied for work at the Unemployment Office. We were told of jobs at a sawmill in Whitecourt, Alberta. Willie was a stocky guy, better built than me. That was one reason the people at the sawmill decided they would hire him in the mill, while I would take a job in the office. My brief office experience at Canada Packers in Moose Jaw was likely also a factor. In any case, our jobs didn’t last too long. The mill’s union went on strike after we had been there only about three days. We had very little money but decided to hang around for a few more days to see if the strike would end.
During that time our car was stopped by the RCMP in what I was sure was just a routine check. Willie and I were not involved in any criminal activity but the RCMP wanted to know who was in their area and what they were doing. They separated us, leaving Willie in our car while I was taken to the police car. In the end, our stories about what we were doing were similar and we were allowed to go on our way.
I found a job in a small logging operation, and Willie wound up working on a nearby farm. I kept our 1941 Ford convertible at the logging company, owned by a man named Bert and his wife. They asked to borrow our car to go to Edmonton. I agreed to let them take it and was left in charge of the place, a small log cabin on a piece of land surrounded by bush. Bert told me to look after the place and their pet monkey, which was chained to the stove. When I tried to light the fire one morning I found the wood was too damp. I remembered that Bert had used an accelerant in a red gas can, but the can was empty so I filled it with gas I found in the yard. What I didn’t know was that Bert mixed the gas with oil, which I failed to do. Of course, when I poured the gas on the stove and lit a match, it exploded with a bang. Flames shot out of the stove and into the nearby wall. I tried to untie the monkey but it was screaming, and I knew I stood the risk of being bitten. All I had to fight the fire was a small saucepan. I used it to run outside and get water, making several trips back and forth, pouring water on the walls and hoping the fire would go out. I was so scared that I ran to the neighbour at least a kilometre away and asked him to come back with me. As we approached we saw a glow in the sky. The cabin was engulfed in flames. The next morning in the charred ruins of the cabin, I found the monkey’s chain, but not the monkey. It had obviously perished in the fire.
There was nothing more I could do except make my way to the nearest town, Mayerthorpe. I knew Bert and his wife had relatives there. As I trudged into town, having walked several kilometres, I ran into Bert on the street. He said, “What the hell are you doing in town? You’re supposed to be looking after our place.” When I told him the house had burned down, in shock, he asked, “What about the monkey?” The monkey had died, I nervously reported. Understandably he was enraged. I was just a scrawny kid and he was a tough, hefty man. He hit me hard, the blow striking me in the face. I fell to the ground and struggled to get up. He hit me again and I decided the best plan was stay down for a while. When Bert cooled down he told me to go back to the logging operation and clean up. He said I was to get rid of the monkey’s chain. Even as a kid, I knew what that monkey had meant to Bert and his wife—it was like a child to them. Bert and his wife planned to carry on to Edmonton in our car, but I never learned why they didn’t want to return to their cabin to survey the damage and perhaps salvage things. I suspect his wife was so overwhelmed that she could not immediately face it.
Meanwhile, I trudged back to the logging operation in the pouring rain. On the way I thought I saw an illusion. It was a man on a white horse; he called out my name. As I looked up through swollen eyes and a battered face, I recognized it was my buddy Willie. He had borrowed a horse to come looking for me. In a rush, I told him the story of the fire that destroyed the cabin and the monkey. We should return to Mayerthorpe, he said, and recover our car. We rode double on the horse several kilometres back to Mayerthorpe, a small Alberta town that was to become infamous decades later when four RCMP members were killed by a gunman who then turned the gun on himself, taking his own life.
When Willie and I arrived in town, we took a hotel room even though we didn’t have a lot of money. I can still remember hanging up our soaking wet clothes on a hanger on the inside of the hotel room door. Puddles of water seeped out into the hallway. When we went for breakfast a man approached us, looked at my battered face and asked what had happened to me. I told him I had been punched a couple of times by a man whose house I had burned down by accident. He said, “No one has the right to hit a kid like that.” He took me to the RCMP detachment where I reported the details of the fire, the monkey and the assault.
As darkness fell, Willie and I quietly returned to the house where Bert’s relatives lived. There in the backyard was our ’41 Ford convertible. Willie noticed the hood was not properly closed and guessed something had been done to prevent the car from starting. We lifted the hood and found the distributor cap had been unscrewed but was still there. We fumbled in the dark and got it on, then started the car. Willie jammed it in reverse and roared the motor. Unknown to us the front bumper had been caught in a wire fence. Rip! We tore out some fence and sped off down the road. We knew that was the only way to get our car back.
Later, I felt terribly remorseful for what I had done; in fact, I’ve regretted it all my life, especially taking off without trying to make amends. Bert and his wife had lost their home and pet monkey because of me, a stupid kid who wasn’t thinking straight. There was nothing I could do but try to tell them I was sorry, but Bert was so angry he hit me before I got the chance. I know I deserved it. I have thought about it many times and wondered if I had been told he mixed oil with gas or if the can had been full the fire might never have happened. Seventeen-year-old kids have a lot to learn.
Several months later, after I had moved to North Battleford, Saskatchewan, I received a phone call from the RCMP. They asked me to come to the local detachment. The Mayerthorpe detachment had received a complaint about theft of tools from the owner of the cabin I burned down. He accused me of stealing some heavy tools. I told the RCMP all about the fire and the death of the monkey, plus the subsequent assault, which I was sure was already in their files. I explained to the RCMP that since I left the logging camp on horseback, there was no way I could carry heavy tools. I guess they accepted my explanation and the file was no doubt concluded.
In any event, that was the last I heard of it.
The adventurous trip to Alberta with Willie Flahr in our ’41 Ford convertible was my second trip to that province. The year before, at age sixteen, for some reason I thought it would be a