Shuffling Of To Buffalo

Before I post new stories about Parkdale, I want to tell one more Hearse adventure. I'm not sure of the year this happened but probably 1966 or 1967. The Hearse had begun it changes. We had already installed the Olds engine ,but retained the standard transmission. As you can imagine , it was impossible to find a coversion kit for an Olds standard tranmission, they were very rare. This tranny came in a car I bought from Malcolm Ross out in Uigg. I paid $125.00 for the car. I financed it at Household Finance at 8% interest. I was working at Parkdale Pharmacy and made $25.00 for 52 hours work per week. Being only a kid I needed a co-signer. Bill Ross, who worked with me signed for it.
Anyway back to the adventure. The details are lost to time but the core remains.
Roger and I had met two girls, who were camping with their family in Stanhope. For those who remember The Higgins Family ran a store in Stanhope just outside the National Park. We met the girls there and walked them back to their camp site. They were from Rochester New York, very exotic for two yokels.
They gave us their address and number and lo and behold we took off for New York.
The Hearse now had the Olds engine with the three speed manual transmission
was alot faster now so we could make time. As i said before Hurst Shifters for this style were unavailable on little old PEI, so I had to improvise. I had two rods bolted on to the shift levers on the tranny. One was first and reverse , the other for second and third. I got quite good at shifting gears with my foot. When drag racing, I would use my right foot for the gas pedal a and use my left to shift, no cluthch. In previous postings i mentioned that the passenger seat had hinges on the back and one bolt that slid in to hold the front down. Now when we stopped and picked up a girl and put her in the front, and stopped. Then when I pulled out the pin and floored the gas the seat would flip back and she would slide into the back of the Hearse , very quickly.
In a side trip that also is very similar to American Graffiti, we drove to Buffalo to WKBW studio. WKBW was a beacon to us in our youth and Joey Reynolds and The Royal Order of Night People was a nightly ritual for us. As it got darker and later and the airwaves would change WKBW would start to come in our radios and we would listen to all the Rock & Roll hits.
We heard that Joey was a very large man and only came out at night. So Roger and I drove the Hearse to Buffalo, found the studio and parked ouside , we layed on the horn and a man appeared at an upstairs window, waved and left. So did we.
The Hearse did not have sealed beam headlights, but had two bulbs covered by a lens.
The lens had been broken leaving the bulbs exposed. This presented no problem in the daytime on night time, unless it rained.
We were tearing along the highyway somewhere in New York and it began to rain. POP their goes one light, POP there goes the other. We are now without lights.
Roger was prepared, he had taken two 5 cell flashlights from home, his father George always had big flashlights. We roll down the windows and stick the flashlights out and continue on our journey. I wonder if they have the death penalty for that now.
We drove into a town and looked for a place to stay. I parked the Hearse around the corner so it could not be seen.My hair was long and golden at this time also and if I went in we could not get a room.
Roger went it got the key , the room cost $6.00 came out and gave the key to me.
I was wearing shorts, cut off Jeans no doubt, and the Serape that Hickey had brought back from Mexico. I grabbed the key and the luggage , ran in the front door up the stairs and into the room avoiding eye contact with the night clerk.
Roger came in after and we sat down and laughed about the flashlights. Then the phone rang.
"Mr. Newman."
"Yes"
"Your wife didn't sign the register"
Roger: "That's not my wife, that's my buddy"

1968, we thought it was funny.
I don't remember meeting up with the girls but Roger said we did and then we went up to Ontario to meet George Roberts.

ST. AVARDS CORNER

These are a couple of photos from the corner down by my home.
The first is Ginger Mackay in a car he made, notice the narrow gauge of the axels. This was so he could drive in the track that sleighs made. The photo is about 1947 taken in front of the store.
The store at this time was operated by Gilbert Frizzell and later by Albert Dennis.
As a kid I spent alot of time down at the store.
One summer evening , Albert was on vacation, I was engrossed reading comics. The magazine stand blocked any view from the rest of the store. Timed passed and soon it was 6:30 and the store closed at 5:30. Jean Duck and Rowan Beer were minding the store for Albert.
After finishing a comic, Two Gun Kid, I think, I noticed it was very quiet, I looked around and found I was alone in the store, locked in and panicing. The front door needed a key to open it, no panic bars back then. I was scared and trembeling, what will I do?
I waited a while and made my way out through the back of the store three rooms to the back. The door there was hooked from the inside, I slowly opened it and peeked around, no one was watching, I ran out the door and slamed it behind me. The door did not have any closing device as it hooked from the inside. Again panic set in the door was swinging open. I propped a stick against it and hopped on my bike and drove up to Rowan's home. He was outside so i stopped and said, "Hey Rowie, I was just driving by the store and saw the back door is open" Rowie yells" No Way I locked that door myself it can't be open".
"Well man i don't know about that I saw it open" I said with guilt all over my freckled face.
"Were you locked in the store"?
"Noway man, not me noway"
I avoided the store for weeks after that.






This picture is taken in front of the Culvert Plant, Maritime Steel Foundries. The man on the right is Bunn Duffy, he ran the plant.
What a great place to play as a kid. The men working there would let us inside and watch, we would get in side the big culverts as they punched holes in then , NOISY.
Out side they had a small steel trolley that carried the culverts sround the yard it was on rode on rails similar to trains. When the plant was closed we would push that trolley back and forth for hours, and play in the culverts.
In the process of making culverts the men would use the giant punching machine to put a hole in the culvert for the rivets.
The punch pushed out a slug of galvenized metal the size of your small finger. We would take these by the hundreds and lay them on the rail tracks and wait for the train to run over them. When it did we would gather them up and examine them , looking for one that resembled a dime. We where hoping to get a dime to go to the movies. Only once do i recall one of the guys going up to Walter Burhoes and bought a 10ct bar with one of them. Walter probably knew it was fake but went along with it.
Behind the men in the picture you can see a house and barn, no longer standing.
A man named Seymour Gregory lived there by himself. Seymour looked after the cemetry, digging graves and cutting the grass , with a push mower.
Seymour was eccentric, [not at all like me]and drank a bit. As kids when we knew he was drinking and sleeping on the sofa we would sneak up on the front veranda, bang on the window and yell "Seymour sawmore ate the lawn mower and now he's at the grass".
Then we would run up the street laughing.
If I tell too many more stories I might have to follow "Earl's" example and make a list.