Going home again

The older I get, the more I remember the past with clarity. By the time I went to kindergarten, I could read on my own. My father had nightly read to me and listened while I read from a range of books including those by Thornton W. Burgess. I can vividly remember pronouncing “gnaw” in The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse with a hard “g” as if it had two syllables – g-naw – and being corrected.
As a result of his fine tutelage I became an early and avid reader at the Carnegie Library in Guelph. The children’s books were downstairs through a separate entrance at the back. By the time I was twelve, I had read everything on those shelves and was allowed to mount the front steps, past the columns, under the dome, and into the inner sanctum of the adult library.
All the librarians knew me which was both a help and a hindrance. When I tried to check out By Love Possessed by James Gould Cozzens, Miss Metcalfe took it off the counter, saying, “I don’t think your mother would want you to read that.”
My 1950 kindergarten graduation included a rhythm band and a musical playlet, called “If We Had Wings.”  Carol Anne Matthews, Leanne Dodge and Donald Kantel were ducks. Ruth Yeates and Dorothy Wells were butterflies. I was something less lyrical, a crow. My role consisted of singing, as rhythmically as I could: “C-Caw-Caw-Caw, C-Caw-Caw-Caw.” I’ve been singing for my supper ever since.
When I was eight, I wanted my own bike. My parents told me to save up and pay for it myself. My allowance at the time was $1 a week. That winter I did all my chores without prodding, including making my bed, shovelling snow, and helping my father take out the cinders from the coal furnace.
By spring, I had enough money, $30 as I recall, to go to Brown’s Bicycle on Quebec Street and buy a new red CCM. One speed only; nothing fancy in those days. I also bought a bell that was attached to the handlebars and an odometer for the front wheel hub. That first day of ownership I went far and wide, 28 miles in all.
What a feeling, not only to have the capacity to jump on a bike and go wherever you wanted, but also to have paid for it yourself. It’s a lesson every kid should learn.