Читать книгу Eavesdroppings - Bob Green - Страница 14

6 Crocodiles in Soper Park

Soper Park was the favourite summer haunt of developing boys because we could swim under the murky water of Mill Creek and grope the girls. It was also the site of the world’s largest peony plot, confirmed by Earl Werstine in his Galt Reporter column several times each spring. Horticulturists came in buses to visit the peony plot. I always intended to visit it myself but never did. Just below the world’s largest peony plot a merry-go-round serenaded the big kids frolicking in the upper-creek bathing pool. The big kids ranged in age from thirteen to thirty-seven if you counted Tink Clark.

We used to hide behind the spirea bushes and watch the big boys play. Everything they did led up to throwing the big girls into the creek. The girls were always in the way, preening themselves on blankets right where the boys wanted to wrestle. Constable Steele, patrolling on his bicycle, would watch the big kids from behind the spirea, too. He smiled.

Inspired by the big kids, we would run down to the lower pool by the Dundas Street tunnel where the little kids swam. The little kids ranged in age from five to thirty-six if you counted Tink Clark’s brother, Da Da. The lower pool was a great place to play crocodile. The object of the game was to slide through the water with just our eyes showing, like crocodiles, and grab the girls … some of whom were visibly developing … and pull them under. The girls pretended to hate this and called out to their mothers.

I recounted these good times recently with Janet Elliott of St. George. “I always knew you were a crocodile,” she said. “Wes Lillie was another. And that Grenfell Davenport. My mother wanted to kill you.” In those days boys were always in danger of being killed by someone’s mother, sometimes their own. Janet said she got water up her nose and that her sinuses hadn’t been right since. “You pinched, too,” she said, getting shrill, “and you haven’t changed.”