rem·i·nisce
ˌreməˈnis
verb
gerund or present participle: reminiscing
indulge in enjoyable recollection of past events.
synonyms: remember, remember with pleasure, cast one's
Beautiful walk today downtown to grab a few things at King's Place... Usually on the weekends I come in KP via Carelton/King St. but today I had walked down Westmorland, so I had entered KP via York and King. I notice, 'what the?? Shoppers Drug Mart is open Sunday's?' I asked the cashier how long that had been going on and she said since like "last November"... 'Oh'.... So they are open from Noon to 3, just for a plug haha.
As I'm walking through King's Place I'm reminded of my past with the place.
George Street Jr. High School was probably the only 'school' in town that didn't have a playground, I mean the place has property and today they actually have some playground equipment, but back in the day, they had nuttin'.
So our 'playground' was downtown. Not like kids from Albert st. didn't take the hike downtown, but it was really ours. For some of us it opened up access to some great places; Tony's Music Box, Strange Adventures (which originally was in a building on York st. upstairs) and of course Backstreet Records.
But back to King's Place, and this was ages before they had a food court. On our lunch hours, much like the kids at FHS, we did the 'Mall Crawl', endlessly walking up and down Kings Place (especially in the Winter). There was of course 'Bill the security guard', a near permanent fixture of King's Place for probably 30 years... If you stopped walking to 'congregate', Bill was on ya, "You kids move along, keep moving" he'd say... No one really ever argued with Bill and so we just kept moving, from grades 7 to 9.
After my first bomb of an attempt to break out on my own as a kid of 17 and living on the streets in Victoria BC (ok, I lived in my best friend's car, but it was ON the street) and returning to Fredericton.
I didn't really finish grade 10 the year before and I had no desire to go back to that place. It wasn't that I was a bad kid or that I was dumb, I just didn't like school and my Father knew it quite well. Our discussion on NB's educational system back then was that my Father, then teaching Economics at the University of New Brunswick, was getting in students that he'd have to teach math to. So he saw first hand that the NB education system was failing it's kids.
Just because it's a great glaring example, my grade 10 math teacher was a 'shop teacher', who would leave the class and go to the math department to ask teachers there how to teach US math.... Yeah, what the hell eh?
Anyhow, so upon my return from the West coast, I didn't go back to school and of course to live at home, I had to have a job.
My good friend Mike Field's got me my first 'job' (in New Brunswick) at CFB Gagetown in Oromocto doing janitorial for Modern Building Cleaning. It wasn't a bad job, but the commute was brutal.
I had to get downtown from the upper Golf Club road for like 6 or 630am and then catch a bus to the base. The bus didn't leave Oromocto for Fredericton until I think 4:30 or 5PM, so by the time I got to Fredericton it was pushing 6/6:30 and by the time I got home it was around 7/7:30 and by the time I got showered, eaten and to bed it was around 10ish... That sucked.
So I got the foreman on the base for Modern Building Cleaning (MBC) to put in for a transfer to ANYWHERE in Fredericton. it wasn't long before I got the call.
The phone rang at home and it was my soon to be boss Randy Arbeau and he told me that he had work for me at King's Place. So back to my old stompin' grounds it was.
The first night at King's Place was a killer. I was hired with this older guy Doug Kennedy and our job, was to clean the mall of King's Place... This included, the bathrooms, the garbage cans and garbage the stores put out, the doors and entry ways, light bulbs, glass and the mall's floor.
So, we divided up the tasks and of course, I got stuck with cleaning the entryways while Doug got to run the floor machine (because he was older)... So, off we went, cleaning King's Place mall...
It was after midnight and I was on I believe the entryway at King and York, when I noticed Doug had stopped working. He was messing around with the floor scrubber down by where Shopper's is now. I stopped what I was doing and went down to see what was up. The floor machine had broke down. Neither Doug or I knew what was wrong nor how to fix it (obviously) and I don't remember, don't think Randy had left us his pager number (this was 1989, so no cell phone's for anyone that wasn't uber rich)... We began to question, 'What do we do now?'
The best I could come up with was that we were there to clean the mall by hand, Doug helped me finish the rest of my work and then we broke out the mops and buckets, we'd have to clean the floor by hand. Doug was grumbling the whole time.... You'd think a young insolent jackass like me would have been the whining... But no, twas not I.
So, since the machine had broken down by where Shopper's is, that's where we started. We had got just about to the corner in King's Place where it turns (by the York and King entrance), when Doug gave up.
"Fuck this!" he exclaimed, "This is fucking ridiculous" and with that, Doug walked away, went and got his stuff and left.
So now, it was one. I continued to mop the floor, at some point the mall night time security guard had found Randy's pager number and finally got a hold of him. I was past 'Cig's'N'Things' by the time Randy and Allen (Randy's boss) showed up. They were kinda blown away that I had stuck it out and had mopped nearly the entire mall by hand, by myself. When they asked what had happened to Doug, I told them, 'Well, he said "Fuck this" and walked out...' They both just shook their heads and gave me some props for sticking it out by myself. I came from a family that we had a huge double driveway, a single driveway and no snowblower, we all had to shovel. Likewise we had a massive yard, we did have a ride on lawnmower until Gordie near drove it into the swimming pool one Summer, so Mom told Dad to get rid of it and since then we had to use the push mower, then the Fall, the fucking Fall and all those leaves! We were (my Brother's and I), no strangers to hard work. Plus we all one time or another delivered the morning and evening newspapers. So, we knew hard work and some responsibility.
So that was my first night. I went through a couple of mall cleaning partners, one guy, and get this, Modern Building Cleaning was allegedly a "bonded company". They did almost every single government office in the downtown core and then some. In fact, I think at the time MBC had the most contracts in the city. I had, at 17 and to this day, never been arrested, never been charged, had NO criminal record.... So it was kinda baffling to me when they told me that my new 'partner' cleaning the mall was a recent release out of prison... For killing his wife! 'Adrian Parsons' I believe his name was!
The murderer didn't last much longer. I admit it, cleaning that mall was hard labor, it was a lot to do, but at 17, I was rarin' to go. I loved working, cleaning the bathrooms wasn't all that fun of a chore, but it had to be done and I did my job as best that I could. I think I did pretty good because Randy began to give me other work when I was done at KP. Sometime's I'd work 12 or more hours and when yer making $4.50 an hour, you want all you can take. I ended up doing jobs in King's Place, Carelton place, Centennial building, the experimental farm (I got some stories from that place!), the old SEAR's building on Queen st. and more. I was an MBC monster.
(Side story: Not to brag, haha, who brags about being a great janitor lol, I do! So, can't remember what year it was, but ALL the contracts MBC had came up and this time, MBC lost out on nearly all of them. At the time, I was in the old Sears building which had recently been renovated and was now a satellite to NB Power. So when MBC lost the contract, I think it was Peter Lint's Father who got the contract. For the life of me, I can't remember his companies name, but he kept me on with a decent raise... So, I was mopping the hall one night and I look up, way down the hall to the front and there's Randy Arbeau sitting in his van... So, I really liked Randy, he's a great guy, funny as fuck and I got stories lol, man I got stories, but anyhow, I put down my mop and went up to see him. I gotta admit, being asked to come back to MBC was kinda cool, especially since they offered me even more money than Mr. Lint was paying, I was a hard worker).
I really enjoyed cleaning. Especially when I was cleaning places alone. I was in Dreamkick at the time, so locked away by myself in huge buildings was the perfect time to practice our 30+ song set lists. I had a good walkman and had our sets on cassette. so I'd just work and sing, sing and work.
Back to King's Place again, so, yeah, walking today, I was looking at the floors, the exact same tiles as when I cleaned it, trust me, I cleaned that floor by hand, by machine, stripped and waxed those floors, if anyone knows those tiles, it's me. I walked up and down that mall so many times, I had wondered later if all the walking I did was part and parcel to the pain I have today.
I remember night's being so tired, I was walking with my eyes shut and still knew exactly where I was.
I ended up working so many hours for MBC that one night while cleaning KP, I decided I'd take a 'Wake Up' pill to keep me going.... First time and last. I remember mopping in the entry way that leads out to York street. then I moved up to the next entry way, the one for York and King, I had just put my head down, began to mop and when I looked up, I was in the NEXT entry way (the one that leads out to King street proper).... So either I'd teleported or I'd blanked out and had NO recollection of moving between the two... No more 'Wake Ups' for Chris.
End of Flashback....
Just got done with Backyard clean up II. Cleaned off the patio furniture set, the table and all the chairs. Moved the bird feeder.... then moved it pretty much back to where it was.
Sat down with a Pepsi and the remains of my Cuban cigar.... It's kinda neat, there's a couple small local birds, I dunno, finch's? Who knows, but they don't mind me being around. I was out there working and they are on the fence, hoppin' around on the lawn... Even the chipmunks warming up to me, mind you, I didn't see him/her today.
ˌreməˈnis
verb
gerund or present participle: reminiscing
indulge in enjoyable recollection of past events.
synonyms: remember, remember with pleasure, cast one's
Beautiful walk today downtown to grab a few things at King's Place... Usually on the weekends I come in KP via Carelton/King St. but today I had walked down Westmorland, so I had entered KP via York and King. I notice, 'what the?? Shoppers Drug Mart is open Sunday's?' I asked the cashier how long that had been going on and she said since like "last November"... 'Oh'.... So they are open from Noon to 3, just for a plug haha.
As I'm walking through King's Place I'm reminded of my past with the place.
George Street Jr. High School was probably the only 'school' in town that didn't have a playground, I mean the place has property and today they actually have some playground equipment, but back in the day, they had nuttin'.
So our 'playground' was downtown. Not like kids from Albert st. didn't take the hike downtown, but it was really ours. For some of us it opened up access to some great places; Tony's Music Box, Strange Adventures (which originally was in a building on York st. upstairs) and of course Backstreet Records.
But back to King's Place, and this was ages before they had a food court. On our lunch hours, much like the kids at FHS, we did the 'Mall Crawl', endlessly walking up and down Kings Place (especially in the Winter). There was of course 'Bill the security guard', a near permanent fixture of King's Place for probably 30 years... If you stopped walking to 'congregate', Bill was on ya, "You kids move along, keep moving" he'd say... No one really ever argued with Bill and so we just kept moving, from grades 7 to 9.
After my first bomb of an attempt to break out on my own as a kid of 17 and living on the streets in Victoria BC (ok, I lived in my best friend's car, but it was ON the street) and returning to Fredericton.
I didn't really finish grade 10 the year before and I had no desire to go back to that place. It wasn't that I was a bad kid or that I was dumb, I just didn't like school and my Father knew it quite well. Our discussion on NB's educational system back then was that my Father, then teaching Economics at the University of New Brunswick, was getting in students that he'd have to teach math to. So he saw first hand that the NB education system was failing it's kids.
Just because it's a great glaring example, my grade 10 math teacher was a 'shop teacher', who would leave the class and go to the math department to ask teachers there how to teach US math.... Yeah, what the hell eh?
Anyhow, so upon my return from the West coast, I didn't go back to school and of course to live at home, I had to have a job.
My good friend Mike Field's got me my first 'job' (in New Brunswick) at CFB Gagetown in Oromocto doing janitorial for Modern Building Cleaning. It wasn't a bad job, but the commute was brutal.
I had to get downtown from the upper Golf Club road for like 6 or 630am and then catch a bus to the base. The bus didn't leave Oromocto for Fredericton until I think 4:30 or 5PM, so by the time I got to Fredericton it was pushing 6/6:30 and by the time I got home it was around 7/7:30 and by the time I got showered, eaten and to bed it was around 10ish... That sucked.
So I got the foreman on the base for Modern Building Cleaning (MBC) to put in for a transfer to ANYWHERE in Fredericton. it wasn't long before I got the call.
The phone rang at home and it was my soon to be boss Randy Arbeau and he told me that he had work for me at King's Place. So back to my old stompin' grounds it was.
The first night at King's Place was a killer. I was hired with this older guy Doug Kennedy and our job, was to clean the mall of King's Place... This included, the bathrooms, the garbage cans and garbage the stores put out, the doors and entry ways, light bulbs, glass and the mall's floor.
So, we divided up the tasks and of course, I got stuck with cleaning the entryways while Doug got to run the floor machine (because he was older)... So, off we went, cleaning King's Place mall...
It was after midnight and I was on I believe the entryway at King and York, when I noticed Doug had stopped working. He was messing around with the floor scrubber down by where Shopper's is now. I stopped what I was doing and went down to see what was up. The floor machine had broke down. Neither Doug or I knew what was wrong nor how to fix it (obviously) and I don't remember, don't think Randy had left us his pager number (this was 1989, so no cell phone's for anyone that wasn't uber rich)... We began to question, 'What do we do now?'
The best I could come up with was that we were there to clean the mall by hand, Doug helped me finish the rest of my work and then we broke out the mops and buckets, we'd have to clean the floor by hand. Doug was grumbling the whole time.... You'd think a young insolent jackass like me would have been the whining... But no, twas not I.
So, since the machine had broken down by where Shopper's is, that's where we started. We had got just about to the corner in King's Place where it turns (by the York and King entrance), when Doug gave up.
"Fuck this!" he exclaimed, "This is fucking ridiculous" and with that, Doug walked away, went and got his stuff and left.
So now, it was one. I continued to mop the floor, at some point the mall night time security guard had found Randy's pager number and finally got a hold of him. I was past 'Cig's'N'Things' by the time Randy and Allen (Randy's boss) showed up. They were kinda blown away that I had stuck it out and had mopped nearly the entire mall by hand, by myself. When they asked what had happened to Doug, I told them, 'Well, he said "Fuck this" and walked out...' They both just shook their heads and gave me some props for sticking it out by myself. I came from a family that we had a huge double driveway, a single driveway and no snowblower, we all had to shovel. Likewise we had a massive yard, we did have a ride on lawnmower until Gordie near drove it into the swimming pool one Summer, so Mom told Dad to get rid of it and since then we had to use the push mower, then the Fall, the fucking Fall and all those leaves! We were (my Brother's and I), no strangers to hard work. Plus we all one time or another delivered the morning and evening newspapers. So, we knew hard work and some responsibility.
So that was my first night. I went through a couple of mall cleaning partners, one guy, and get this, Modern Building Cleaning was allegedly a "bonded company". They did almost every single government office in the downtown core and then some. In fact, I think at the time MBC had the most contracts in the city. I had, at 17 and to this day, never been arrested, never been charged, had NO criminal record.... So it was kinda baffling to me when they told me that my new 'partner' cleaning the mall was a recent release out of prison... For killing his wife! 'Adrian Parsons' I believe his name was!
The murderer didn't last much longer. I admit it, cleaning that mall was hard labor, it was a lot to do, but at 17, I was rarin' to go. I loved working, cleaning the bathrooms wasn't all that fun of a chore, but it had to be done and I did my job as best that I could. I think I did pretty good because Randy began to give me other work when I was done at KP. Sometime's I'd work 12 or more hours and when yer making $4.50 an hour, you want all you can take. I ended up doing jobs in King's Place, Carelton place, Centennial building, the experimental farm (I got some stories from that place!), the old SEAR's building on Queen st. and more. I was an MBC monster.
(Side story: Not to brag, haha, who brags about being a great janitor lol, I do! So, can't remember what year it was, but ALL the contracts MBC had came up and this time, MBC lost out on nearly all of them. At the time, I was in the old Sears building which had recently been renovated and was now a satellite to NB Power. So when MBC lost the contract, I think it was Peter Lint's Father who got the contract. For the life of me, I can't remember his companies name, but he kept me on with a decent raise... So, I was mopping the hall one night and I look up, way down the hall to the front and there's Randy Arbeau sitting in his van... So, I really liked Randy, he's a great guy, funny as fuck and I got stories lol, man I got stories, but anyhow, I put down my mop and went up to see him. I gotta admit, being asked to come back to MBC was kinda cool, especially since they offered me even more money than Mr. Lint was paying, I was a hard worker).
I really enjoyed cleaning. Especially when I was cleaning places alone. I was in Dreamkick at the time, so locked away by myself in huge buildings was the perfect time to practice our 30+ song set lists. I had a good walkman and had our sets on cassette. so I'd just work and sing, sing and work.
Back to King's Place again, so, yeah, walking today, I was looking at the floors, the exact same tiles as when I cleaned it, trust me, I cleaned that floor by hand, by machine, stripped and waxed those floors, if anyone knows those tiles, it's me. I walked up and down that mall so many times, I had wondered later if all the walking I did was part and parcel to the pain I have today.
I remember night's being so tired, I was walking with my eyes shut and still knew exactly where I was.
I ended up working so many hours for MBC that one night while cleaning KP, I decided I'd take a 'Wake Up' pill to keep me going.... First time and last. I remember mopping in the entry way that leads out to York street. then I moved up to the next entry way, the one for York and King, I had just put my head down, began to mop and when I looked up, I was in the NEXT entry way (the one that leads out to King street proper).... So either I'd teleported or I'd blanked out and had NO recollection of moving between the two... No more 'Wake Ups' for Chris.
End of Flashback....
Just got done with Backyard clean up II. Cleaned off the patio furniture set, the table and all the chairs. Moved the bird feeder.... then moved it pretty much back to where it was.
Sat down with a Pepsi and the remains of my Cuban cigar.... It's kinda neat, there's a couple small local birds, I dunno, finch's? Who knows, but they don't mind me being around. I was out there working and they are on the fence, hoppin' around on the lawn... Even the chipmunks warming up to me, mind you, I didn't see him/her today.
If ya look close ya can see the 'lil twerp
Backyards now open, drop me a line sometime and pop by!
I just need to get the sunberlla out from the garage and it's all set for Summer relaxin'
Mucho Gracias to my neighbors. Not the first BBQ of the season, but the first out door dinner. Corn, chicken and potato's! Myum Chicken of course done without gas, just charcoal! So good, so much thanks!
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