Post #46



This dashing young fellow's name is Cammy Lirette, an old friend that goes way back to the single-digit years of age.  He and his family - his mom Peggy and father Guy, and brothers Dennis and Bobby - lived at a house on Lockhart Avenue back in the day.  Cammy was a little younger than me, by about two years, I think.  Dennis a little younger, and Bobby the youngest.  I remember his dad used to work at Lanes' Bakery, which is now tragically called Bimbo (not even kidding).  I don't believe his folks are alive anymore.  In fact, I haven't heard from those boys in decades, perhaps since when I was living at 136.  They were all very likeable guys from a blue-collar family.  I thought I might have heard that Cammy's a marine biologist or something, but that could be wrong.  Dennis, I'm not sure of; but I did see Bobby working at a call center where the old CN buildings were once when I was delivering catering for BJ's Subs.  We exchanged a few pleasantries and I told him to give my best to his family.

It's interesting looking back at the lineage of the friendship I had with Cammy and Dennis - Bobby in those days kind of ran with a bit of a younger crowd.  We'd all play baseball in the Dud James Arena parking lot on a regular basis, even spray painting a home plate and bases on the pavement.  I can look at that parking lot from the windows where I am right now and see it.  I remember us cranking that hardball and hearing that BONK off of the Dud James building, and if you hit the wooden part of it, it was declared a home run.  I got a lot of those!  Of course when it came to real baseball later, after my getting drilled between the eyes by a line drive baseball at a men's senior league baseball game, my PTSD kicked in and all I did was strike out after that.  That effectively ended my hopes of enjoying baseball again, something I absolutely loved doing.

Cammy in the earlier days was a bit of a pudgy, stocky fellow.  Not fat, but husky, kind of.  He and I spent many days hanging around in the neighborhood playing all sorts of games with other kids, be it tag, hide and seek, baseball, soccer, foot races, or what-have-you.  This was, of course, in the pre-internet age.  We'd ride our bikes up and down the small hill in the Kiwanis Park parking lot that had Kiwanis Pool attached to it, where kids all around would go to swim.  Except me, because I couldn't swim and damn near drowned when I tried to once.  But I watched kids swim in there a lot, sitting on my bike with my fingers poking through the chain link fence to keep my balance.  There was this girl named Lise that lived a few houses down on the street where I'm living right now that might've been my 'first love', I was so enamored with her.  And she was mostly quite mean to me.  I'd do what I could to impress her, but got taunts in return and kicked in the balls or whatnot.  Didn't matter ultimately, because Cammy was a guy who was always a friend and supportive of whatever was going on, including my dad doing his drunken things.  I think I wronged him more than a few times, but I don't remember him doing wrong by me much.  Kids will be kids!

These pictures were taken right around the time when Cammy was starting to see girls a lot, and that's kind of where I got left behind by a lot of friends because I clearly wasn't good at attracting them.  One time I did score a date with Lise, strangely enough, and I remember Mom being all proud that her youngest little boy was going on his first date.  I remember it clear as day.  I went out to get Lise to go to a movie at the old Highfield Square mall twin theatres, and she wound up canceling on me at the last second.  Pretty typical for me in those days.  I'm not sure what Mom thought when she saw me walking back in the house after that rejection, all dressed up with nowhere to go, but she must've pitied me.  I wouldn't get a date with a girl for years after that.

But I had my friends to fall back on most of the time.  There were others in the neighborhood gang like Keith, Darren, Chris, Trevor, Darcy (I think Rick and Cindy will recall when those last three guys' father would call out in a bellowing voice from across the street when it would get dark to come home... "CHRIS!  TREVOR!  DARCYYYYY!"  In fact everyone from blocks away could hear him!) and several others. 

I'm glad we all had the opportunity to grow up in those times pre-social media, before the zombie-fication of cell phones came along.

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