Finn, and were free souls. I found them irresistibleâbut then all my life I have had a special affinity for social outcasts. They swore with casual abandon; drank homebrew bootlegged by their parents; trapped, shot, and fished with complete disregard for the law, and were, in fact, a law unto themselves. I suspect that my enduring affection for anarchy owes much to the time I spent in their company.
My friends did not all come from beyond the pale. After Geordie Sobie was finally forbidden to play with me because of the perceived threat to his morals, Alan Evans became my best friend. Alan and his widowed mother, Alice, a slim and faery lady much admired by Angus, lived with her father on a decrepit estate on the edge of town. It included a huge and rambling old house fast going to wrack and ruin, acres of overgrown lawns and gardens, and, best of all, an uninhabited gate-house.
Alanâs grandfather was a mining engineer who had a dark and gloomy laboratory filled with equipment for metal assaying. This was a place apartâfull of inscrutable machines, retorts, furnaces, piles of ore samples and drill cores, all in a state of mysterious confusion. To Alan and me it was the sorcererâs workshop. Although it was forbidden territory, we used to sneak in and root around. Once we came upon a small slug of gold, gleaming dully in the bottom of a retort. Captain Kiddâs treasure could hardly have thrilled us more.
In the early summer of 1929 the adult world was awash in hectic talk of fortunes being made on the stock markets. The get-rich-easy mood must have infected Alan and me for we too decided to make a lot of money, with which to finance exploring expeditions to the far corners of the earth. Our first enterprise was manufacturing raspberry cordial from a gone-to-wild raspberry plantation on the grounds. This was not a commercial success. We made gallons of the stuff but drank more of it than we sold.
Our headquarters was the abandoned gate-house, full of wrecked furniture, dust, bats, spiders, and mice. One day inspiration came to me. We would trap the mice, skin them, and make a fortune selling mouse fur. The idea originated from my having read about moleskin smoking jackets. If molesâwhy not mice? We borrowed several mousetraps from the big house and eventually caught a mouse. But our attempts to skin it, using bits of broken glass for knives, resulted only in a small, bloody mess of fur and flesh, and two cut fingers.
Next we decided to start a rabbit ranch. Pooling our scanty funds we managed to buy a pregnant doe, whom we named Buffy. This project involved Alanâs mother since we planned to keep our stock in a more-or-less abandoned greenhouse on the Evansesâ estate. Alice Evans appealed to Angus to head us off. He was then attending a library course in Toronto, from whence he sent me the following:
Â
Since youâve formed the habit
Of keeping a rabbit,
Please follow these orders,
For rabbits as boarders
Are no joke in the least for Sweet Alice.
Â
See Arthur and worry
Him til he does hurry
To build up a hutch
For fair Buffy, as such
Will be better by far for Sweet Alice.
Â
Take it out by the barn
On the Ketcheson farm,
Where youâll have to buy it
Some food for its diet,
And relieve of her worry Sweet Alice.
Â
Now do not forget it,
Or else youâll regret it,
Because it will die,
And your mother and I
Will be weeping, and so will Sweet Alice.
Â
In the end Buffy was eaten by a cat, so this scheme too came to a dead end.
Alan then suggested we turn the gate-house into a hotel. We passed the word around that we would be happy to receive guests at two cents a head, with raspberry cordial thrown in. For a while there were no takers, but the word spread and one afternoon guests arrived. They were two teenage couples from the wrong side of town and they were not interested in our raspberry cordial. They were interested in the beds in the
My friends did not all come from beyond the pale. After Geordie Sobie was finally forbidden to play with me because of the perceived threat to his morals, Alan Evans became my best friend. Alan and his widowed mother, Alice, a slim and faery lady much admired by Angus, lived with her father on a decrepit estate on the edge of town. It included a huge and rambling old house fast going to wrack and ruin, acres of overgrown lawns and gardens, and, best of all, an uninhabited gate-house.
Alanâs grandfather was a mining engineer who had a dark and gloomy laboratory filled with equipment for metal assaying. This was a place apartâfull of inscrutable machines, retorts, furnaces, piles of ore samples and drill cores, all in a state of mysterious confusion. To Alan and me it was the sorcererâs workshop. Although it was forbidden territory, we used to sneak in and root around. Once we came upon a small slug of gold, gleaming dully in the bottom of a retort. Captain Kiddâs treasure could hardly have thrilled us more.
In the early summer of 1929 the adult world was awash in hectic talk of fortunes being made on the stock markets. The get-rich-easy mood must have infected Alan and me for we too decided to make a lot of money, with which to finance exploring expeditions to the far corners of the earth. Our first enterprise was manufacturing raspberry cordial from a gone-to-wild raspberry plantation on the grounds. This was not a commercial success. We made gallons of the stuff but drank more of it than we sold.
Our headquarters was the abandoned gate-house, full of wrecked furniture, dust, bats, spiders, and mice. One day inspiration came to me. We would trap the mice, skin them, and make a fortune selling mouse fur. The idea originated from my having read about moleskin smoking jackets. If molesâwhy not mice? We borrowed several mousetraps from the big house and eventually caught a mouse. But our attempts to skin it, using bits of broken glass for knives, resulted only in a small, bloody mess of fur and flesh, and two cut fingers.
Next we decided to start a rabbit ranch. Pooling our scanty funds we managed to buy a pregnant doe, whom we named Buffy. This project involved Alanâs mother since we planned to keep our stock in a more-or-less abandoned greenhouse on the Evansesâ estate. Alice Evans appealed to Angus to head us off. He was then attending a library course in Toronto, from whence he sent me the following:
Â
Since youâve formed the habit
Of keeping a rabbit,
Please follow these orders,
For rabbits as boarders
Are no joke in the least for Sweet Alice.
Â
See Arthur and worry
Him til he does hurry
To build up a hutch
For fair Buffy, as such
Will be better by far for Sweet Alice.
Â
Take it out by the barn
On the Ketcheson farm,
Where youâll have to buy it
Some food for its diet,
And relieve of her worry Sweet Alice.
Â
Now do not forget it,
Or else youâll regret it,
Because it will die,
And your mother and I
Will be weeping, and so will Sweet Alice.
Â
In the end Buffy was eaten by a cat, so this scheme too came to a dead end.
Alan then suggested we turn the gate-house into a hotel. We passed the word around that we would be happy to receive guests at two cents a head, with raspberry cordial thrown in. For a while there were no takers, but the word spread and one afternoon guests arrived. They were two teenage couples from the wrong side of town and they were not interested in our raspberry cordial. They were interested in the beds in the
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