But the thing I remember most about growing up on that little farm on Neaves Road was that I had the biggest back yard imagineable: Pitt Polder! Walking the dikes, hiking the mountains, fishing and swimming the rivers, playing hockey on the frozen sloughs and ponds... what a daily adventure!
There were run-ins with bears, cougars, and other assorted wildlife... I even got to nurse a raccoon back to health... (I named him Rocky!) And I hung around a lot with my grampa who lived next door. We'd go visiting all his friends like Doug McMyn, Bill Park, Harold Sutton, Sidney Rippington... Heck, these guys have roads named after them now!
Grampa was on Pitt Meadows Council and, even when he retired, he'd still run around trying to get things done for people.
We used to have to go to Port Hammond to get our mail so grampa lobbied to get our own rural route. And lo and behold, we got a string of mailboxes at the end of Neaves Road for all the farmers.
Then later, they actually paved Neaves Road and moved our mailboxes in front of our houses! Sounds funny today, I know...
Let's see... back then the only stop light was at Harris and Lougheed and the next one wasn't until what is now 224th and Lougheed in Haney. Those were the days, eh?
The only 24 hour gas station was Mussallem Motors (remember riding on fumes at 3 AM trying to make it to Muzzy's?)
In the town of Pitt Meadows, you had Carlson's Esso, Bert's Food Bank next to the Midway (Joan's Greasy Spoon) Grill, Ben Schlick's Hardware, Hales Lumber and Roraph's General Store,(which now houses the Pitt Meadows Museum)... across Harris Road from Hoffmann & Son.
And who could forget Davie Jones' Locker and Davie Jones himself... now there's an elementary school named after him!
A lot of us not only went to high school together, we also went to elementary school together! I remember going to Pitt Meadows Elementary until Grade Three when they built Meadowland for all the farm kids...
One tradition my brother Jim and I had was beachcombing. Every Saturday and Sunday morning, we'd comb First, Second and Third beaches for bottles and any other treasures we could find. Jim always had a knack for finding money!
Another weekly occurence was the Farmer's Auction every Saturday. We loved going to the auction to buy, sell or barter items and livestock. And listening to the auctioneers was always a trip!
Pitt Meadows/Maple Ridge in the '60's was very rural and it still had kind of a '50's feel to it. I remember teenagers would cruise around the A & W showing off their "wheels" before pulling in... it was like something out of "American (Canadian) Graffiti"...
In 1964, me and Stuart Hagan were flagbearers in the Pitt Meadows Day parade. Janet Leyenhorst was Miss Pitt Meadows and Janet Granger was a Princess. Janet L. had her pigtails cut off for the the big day... In 1966, my brother, Jim, and Kenny Pinch were flagbearers.
Pitt Meadows Day always had a special memory for me because of all the fun we had at the dances in the old hall... Remember?
One time, instead of having it in the hall, they decided to have it in the tennis court behind the bowling alley. Billy Rogers was playing guitar.
What a sight we were: band and dancers all crammed inside that tennis court, enclosed by the metal fence. We must have looked like rock and roll animals in a zoo!
The Summer Of '67 was the sunniest on record. I spent that endless summer with my brother, Jim, (and friends like Janet Laity, Mona Loveridge, Laurie Roseland...) diving off Neaves Bridge into the Alouette River.
People would park their cars on both sides of Neaves Road and then walk along the dike to go swimming at First Beach.
And the Pitt Meadows town kids would ride their bikes down to the river and we'd all hang out there until suppertime.
It was "The Summer Of Love" with The Beatles' "Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" as its soundtrack.
The "'60's" era had begun and life as we knew it would never be the same again.
The times indeed were a'changin'...
And the music being played on CKLG and CFUN radio was psychedelic: "Strawberry Fields Forever"... "Light My Fire"... "Incense And Peppermints"... "White Rabbit"... "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)"...
The previous year at Meadowland, I'd been a big fish in a small pond. Now I would be a little fish in a big pond.
But I was so excited to be with all my friends on this brand new adventure.
... September, 1967, at long last... Grade Eight.
Day One. Girls in mini-skirts... Everywhere!...
I think that's the day puberty officially kicked in for me!
And I was reunited with the kids from Pitt Meadows Elementary. There were also kids from Hammond... local First Nation kids... Northern B.C. First Nation kids...
John Klingler showed me the ropes and introduced me to a whole new circle of (older) friends like Bob McMyn and Jim Barz. John also introduced me to the "hippie lifestyle"...
Our principal, Mr. Finnigan (Zeke), and vice-principal, Mr. Ferguson (Lurch), really had their hands full at times with our mischievous antics. But, as I look back on it, we were actually pretty tame compared to some schools... like the time John and I stole the letters from the front of the school and somebody finked on us.
We'd buried the letters in Lasser's gravel pit and some of them got lost.
So we got the strap from Lurch... and our parents were called into the office...
And I remember Zeke, wearing his trademark sunglasses, used to hide and try to catch us smoking, then confiscate our cigarettes...
I got my last "A" that year: in Mrs. Bisbee's English class.
Grade Nine was quite memorable for a couple of reasons: an "older woman" made a man of me and I developed a schoolboy crush on my mini-skirted Art teacher, Miss Dare. She had such a groovy, far out class...
Miss Dare would let us play "Donovan", "Beatles", and "Jefferson Airplane" records for "artistic inspiration". I got my highest grade that year in her class: a "B".
By 1969, Flower Power was in full bloom at Pitt Meadows Secondary. And my favourite school activity was "skipping out".
One time Gary Irving and I conned somebody into letting us "play a song" for the sock hop. So we put Led Zeppelin Two on the turntable, cranked it up full volume, fed it through the entire school PA system, then locked the door from the inside and escaped through the trapdoor where they stored the chairs...
There was a lot of commotion as Zeke pounded on the door and Gary and I blended into the crowd to the refrain of "Whole Lotta Love"...
By Grade Ten, I'd completely lost interest in the academic part of school. I really just went there now to hang out with my friends. Besides, I already knew what I wanted to be: a rock and roll singer!
My grades were so poor in Grade Eleven that I wasn't passing anything except English and Social Studies. So that Spring, my brother, Jim, and I quit school (along with my girlfriend, Holly Martin, Patti Collier, Byron Newberry, Gary Irving...)
But I just had to come back on April 27th because that day marked the return of one of the most gifted musicians ever to attend Pitt Meadows Secondary: Jim Barz.
Jim gave a rocking noon hour performance featuring his own unique style of barrelhouse blues and boogie woogie piano.
That summer was one of the best ever... I'd go haying during the day and party every night. Jim Carruthers and I even went on a hitchhiking adventure around B.C. and I saw a UFO... or maybe it was just something I ate...
And it seemed like there was an outdoor rock festival somewhere every weekend. There were the endless parties at Silver Bridge, down the dikes, at the end of Hale Road... The Summer of '71 went by way too fast. And soon it was September and time for school again.
Except I was a working man now... (actually I was "Mud Boy" at Pelton Reforestation on First Avenue). My job was to mix water, soil, peat and clay in an old oil drum with this giant egg beater so the workers could roll the seedling roots in it.
But it was a drag when my old school bus drove by and I'd watch my friends get off and walk the remaining mile and a quarter home. I started feeling kind of nostalgic. Like I was missing something...
So, in January, 1972, along with my brother Jim, we returned to Pitt Meadows Secondary to pick up where we'd left off.
In Grade Eleven: The Sequel, my former classmates were now a grade ahead of me and all set for graduation. And my old nemesis, Mr. Finnigan, had been replaced as principal by some new guy named Mr. Carmichael, who also happened to be my MATH TEACHER... Yikes!
All I wanted to do was get through the rest of the year. So I did something I hadn't done since Grade Eight: I stopped skipping out. I just sat there in class and learned. And it was kinda fun!
By Easter, I was getting "B's" and "C's" in most of my classes and I realised that I just might be able to pull this off. On the last day of school, there was the obligatory school assembly.
I remember going out at lunch hour for a smoke and Mike Husband asking me if I was going to skip out. I said I might as well finish my streak and we went to assembly...
We sat there, not paying much attention to the goings on... when Mr. Carmichael came to the mike and read the name of the winner of some award. I didn't actually hear my name being called but Mike did and he said: "You won, man!"
It felt so surreal but I do remember Carmichael shaking my hand and Mrs. Davis saying she was proud of me and handing me this humungous trophy.
I didn't even know there was an award for "Most Improved Student Of The Year" but that's what I won. Who'd a thunk it?
That summer was even better than the one before. I did a lot of jamming with Bob McMyn and Billy Rogers, among others. Music had always been my one true passion. Now all I had to do was get through Grade Twelve...
I went to Maple Ridge Secondary for my final year and it was a blast. MUCH bigger school... new teachers... new friends... old friends... and I fell a couple of credits short of graduating. But my girlfriend, Dorothy Weber, did graduate and I accompanied her to the ceremony. We also went to Peggy Sullivan's Grad Pool Party which was totally outasight!
Looking back, I realise how lucky we all were to have spent our formative years at Pitt Meadows Secondary. With only 400 students: farm kids... Pitt Meadows town kids... Hammond kids... local First Nation kids... Northern B.C. First Nation kids... we were actually an incredibly diverse bunch for that time.
But it was the smallness of the school and the closeness of the students that set us apart from other schools like Maple Ridge.
Yup, I sure did love my time at Pitt Meadows Secondary and all the life-long friends I made there. I even liked most of the teachers (Mrs. Cox, Mr. Erickson...). And what they taught me actually came in handy quite a few times. Funny how that happens, isn't it?...
Here's one of the last pictures taken of my grandfather, Ben Crow, proud as hell of his four grandsons
(Bill, Frank, Jim, Tommy), Christmas, 1974...
Opening for Bryan Adams and Sweeney Todd, Trooper, Headpins, Loverboy... Lots of adventures, lots of travelling...
Then I got into commercial construction and ended up doing really well during the building boom after Expo '86.
In 1993, I became an educational social worker to help folks change their lives for the better using all the resources I found on this new thing called The World Wide Web.
After a while, I expanded to include anybody who wanted to use their own knowledge and passion to create a successful business using The Web. I'm semi-retired now and I do a lot of travelling.
In Montreal with Site Build It! Inventor Dr. Ken Evoy
