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I played all the team sports as a kid, soccer, baseball, hockey and lots more. I even won a few trophies. I played goalkeeper most of the time and was a pretty good one. I always had Ed shoot at me and got to play with the big guys. We even had some friends make it to the NHL. My team won the championship for Barrie in the mid seventies. We were great.

One day I remember the bridge over the creek on Grove street was getting repaired. Ed, Jr., Bobby and I scratched our names and stuck our hands in the cement. The year was 1970. I know this as Ed and I stopped by a couple of years ago and found it.

When grandpa passed away we moved into the house he was living in. It was on Cook street. 13 Cook Street Barrie to be exact. I had made it to grade five at Maple Grove School. I really never passed in my class. I was more like passed on or pushed to the next level.

When we moved into Grandpa's house I went back to Coderington School. The principal there was the same one I had at Maple Grove School. His name was Mr. Broker and he knows me very well. He moved there at the beginning of the school year. I was always at his office. I really didn't learn much because I wanted to be back at my old school. I didn't learn much their either but at least I was with my friends. I was pushed through to grade 8 and graduated because I was getting too old for public school.

My best friend at the time was Steve Gray. We had been best friends for about two or three years. When I was thirteen his mother and boyfriend moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba with all the kids. That summer I was fourteen. I worked half the summer with dad and made enough money to go and visit Steve. I took the train out and the night I got there they were going to have a big party. I stayed for two or three weeks then Steve's mother's boyfriend Clarence drove me back to North Bay. You see he was a truck driver. Then he got me a ride with another truck driver who drove me right to the front door of our house in Barrie. The summer was now over and back to school I went

This was the year I started high school. I was put in level three because I was slower than most. At least I would get my credits. I got passing marks but still wished I wasn't there. I didn't have a girlfriend in grade 9. The one I had in grade 8 went to Quebec on summer vacation and we never got back together when she came back in the fall. Some of the things that happened to me at Eastview Collegiate are as follows: One day at lunch time two friends, Guy and Kirk were sitting in the stairwell and Mr. Wilson came through. When he got past us I threw an apple at him and hit him in the head. Well I got a three day suspension for that. When I got home that day dad took me for a ride to where one of his employee's lived. He told me that the car that had two or three feet of snow all around it was to be shoveled out. I thought it was my punishment for what had happened in school that day. But the next day he gave me the car. All I had to do was fix it up and get it on the road. It was an 1970 Plymouth Fury an old police car.

A few weeks later Ed got himself a new car. Dad already had the insurance on his old car so he got it and gave it to me until I fixed up the Plymouth. The second car was a 1972 Ford Grand Torino. I didn't have it very long when Guy and I went out to Midhurst to see his sister and brother in-law. They were not home so we went for a little ride. We came to a T intersection and turned around and started home. All I remember was a big flash and the car was spinning around. We had been hit by another car. Guy got a cut on his forehead and I didn't get hurt at all. There were three people in the other car. All of them were hurt. The driver cut his head open, the lady in the passenger seat broke her back and the guy in the back seat got the worst of it. The rescue team took what seemed to be hours to get him out.

The driver tried to sue me for an unsafe vehicle. The amount was for seventy five thousand dollars. When it went to court I was proven not guilty and his insurance company paid my father for the car. While all this was going on I was getting the Plymouth fixed up by Steve's dad because he is a mechanic. In the mean time I got a full time job doing prep body work at Centennial Chrysler in Barrie. I was already working part time doing the same thing at Georgian Pontiac and at Tim Hortons donuts as a baker.