America, my childhood sweetheart, part one

The other night, Chunks posted an intriguing entry on 9/11 and America, a sort of diatribe about what is wrong with America (and Canada too), and I know she's been stressed ever since, because I know she doesn't want to offend her American friends. However, I am glad she spoke from her drunken heart. And, she aroused in me many things. A lot I agreed with, some I didn't, and the role of personal perspective in everything really came to the forefront. Thus, I've been anxious to respond. Of course, I have so much to say that I might make this 2 or 3 entries - we'll see how it goes. As Chunks wrote her entry under the influence of Baileys, I felt it only right to join her, but since I have no Baileys, I just poured a large glass of wine that will leave me sleepy and heachachy soon enough - the things we do for our friends!

I am not going to talk about 9/11 right now. That can come later, perhaps in post 3. Nor am I going to talk about what I see as wrong with America, yet. Rather, I want to address what it was like for me, growing up as a Canadian who always felt the influence of America.

So, let's cut to the chase. At the age of two, I moved from the cold Saskatchewan prairie to the wondrously warm and beautiful and mountain-surrounded lower mainland of British Columbia. This is the place where I have my first memories. I spent these formative years in a lush, green, heartbreakingly beautiful environment. Hot, humid summers, rainy, windy cool winters, where I never owned a pair of boots in the 10 years I was there. We lived approximately 20 minutes from the border. On Sundays, back in the days when stores and bars were closed on this Holy day, my parents would drive across the border (in a really non-chalant fashion, so non-chalant that I was always annoyed that my Dad would turn the radio off as we crossed) and we'd go to the border town of Sumas, WA, which, in those days, consisted of a small grocery store, a bar, and a gas station. We'd go buy groceries - cheese and milk were always cheap, and other odd little things that we couldn't get in Canada. I'd be uber excited because America had better candy. It was here that we could buy grape Bubble Yum (we only had original in Canada) and I still remember the excitement I felt bringing Spearmint bubble Yum home to Canada to show off to my friends. Hell, I'd kill for some right now. Anyway, a good time would be had by all, let's say. So once I had my gum and my big chocolate bars (I used to buy these long chocolate bars that were chewy and looked like lattice) and my comic book, I'd sit in the backseat of the car while my parents went into the bar and had a beer, just because they could. Lord knows, you couldn't do that in Canada in those days. Then we'd drive home.

I guess you could say my love affair with America began back then, as a little kid, when I'd buy candy or cereal (they still have 200 more types of cereal than we have, and as a kid, I'd go to the states and stock up on Boo Boo Berry and Frankenberry and that gross chocolate chip cookie cereal). But it of course goes deeper than that. There was just something MORE intricately cool about America than Canada, even though I was living in a place that I now see could arguably be the coolest area of Canada.

You see, even though I was in Canada, I was at first hard-pressed to realize how different we were in terms of country. I mean, even though we had cable tv, we could still, in a pinch, take a tv antenna and pick up a few American stations from Bellingham and, if the wind or clouds were right, Tacoma (never Seattle - that's why we had to pay for cable), and we'd listen to Bellingham radio (104.9 on the FM dial). As a small child of the 70s, I think my generation (I guess we'd be the Gen X crowd, if you want to use an old term), was really shaped by pop culture, more than other generations. You know that Goo Goo Dolls song that has the line "grew up way too fast/and now there's nothing to believe/and reruns all become our history"? Well, truer words have been spoken. And we were all entrenched in the American experience. You see, there did exist two Canadian networks, but half the shows they broadcast were American, and the other half? Complete crap. There was no way we could identify with that. As a child growing up, we could identify with The Facts of Life or Hello Larry or Different Strokes or The Brady Bunch, but what options did we have at that time in Canada? Oh - we had King of Kensington, a stupid show with Al Waxman, about this dude and his wife and his mother who ran a store in Kensington, which was in TORONTO, which is where everything was set in terms of Canadian TV. You see, the CBC, and Canadian "pop culture", if you could even call it that, was centered on Toronto and area. As someone from the west, well, we couldn't relate. It was just pathetic, cheesy Canadian nonsense. I could relate more with Willis, in the 'hood, than I could with anyone from Toronto. So yeah, Canadian tv was a joke in the 70s.

And so right there I was embarrassed by Canada. I really was. I WANTED to be American. I wanted to grow up and move to Seattle in an apartment by the ocean and the Space Needle. Canada seemed hokey. It was full of all of this shit about the queen, which I never understood, and the national anthem was embarrassing to me. Why? I don't know, really, when I think of it, but instead of bringing a sense of pride to my heart, I felt chagrin. I thought it cheesy and uncool, and stodgy. I wanted to be all about today: Brittania Jeans, discos with glass floors like Studio 54, California, good times, laid back atmospheres, progressiveness, etc. I didn't think that shit flew in Canada. So, when we'd have to stand straight and sing O' Canada in school, I'd defiantly slump down like Deenie with scoliosis, and would really half-heartedly mumble the words. I felt zero pride for my country, and I say that because I don't believe I was ever taught to. Indeed, I remember doing this play acting thing with some friends in the late 70s, and we made up these "official government documents" and we signed them "Jimmy Carter", as we had NO fucking idea who our prime minister was. Sad but true.

So, this American in Canadian clothing was rocked to the core (and not in the good way) when I moved to the central part of Saskatchewan from my lower mainland oasis, at the age of 11. I have to say that prior to this, I was having the best summer and fall of my life. Things were finally coming together. I had a solid group of friends, I had a girlfriend, and, most important, I was HAPPY. I still remember one moment from late August 1981 - I had known for a few weeks that I was going to move to Saskatchewan in November, but I chose to believe that it wouldn't happen. You see, I was caught in a double bind of influences that are still on the forefront of that area: torn between the evangelical right, and the pothead left. I had been attending a crazy, born again evangelical church with my sister for a few years, and I was consumed with getting my family "saved", and yet I still ran with a wild, crazy crowd (we started smoking at 10, and, long story short, I ended up smoking dope for the first time that summer I was 11 - horrible to admit, I know, but still seems innocent in some ways to me, which I can't explain). Anyway, that August, before school started, I had a girlfriend, and I will always remember this one Sunday afternoon. It was hot out, and not a cloud in the sky. Me and this girl, lets call her Lila, and my neighbour and best friend, let's call her Marsha, and my other best friend, let's call him Scotty, we were hanging out at this green space by the slough. Suddenly, they all went to go pack a picnic lunch for us, and I stayed there, and I will always remember this moment. I was laying on my back, hands behind my head, looking at the blue sky through the trees, and thinking "I have never been happier than at this moment. There is no way God will let this move happen, now that my life is starting to happen."

Guess what? the joke was on me.

So what does all of that summer have to do with America? Well, nothing and everything.

About 6 weeks after that day of laying in the grass with my friends, I ended up driving across 2 provinces and landed in central/northern Saskatchewan. In a city supposedly the same size as the one I left, but with no American tv, no FM radio, and no overriding American influence.

So, as an 11 1/2 year old, I ended up living in a city littered with 100 year old houses (the one we moved into was built in 1929), and the "cable" tv consisted of TWO CBC stations, one CTV station, and the French channel. As one who grew up, to this point, raised completely on American TV and reruns, it was shocking. Instead of the comfort of waking up and puking your guts out when one had the stomach flu and being able to catch something on TV at any hour, these stations left the air right after midnight - and after airing a video of the flag coming down, and "Oh Canada" and "God Save the Queen" being aired. I still remember that first week here. I was so elated that there was "cable" hook up in all the bedrooms, and that the previous tenants had left this big old tv there, IN MY ROOM! However, after sitting through the CBC news, I'd get to see either Tony Randall/Swoosie Kurtz in reruns of a horrid sitcom called "Love Sidney", or this other stupid show starring the dearly departed Dana Hill called something like "The Two of Us". Anyway, it was here I REALLY became immersed in Canadian bullshit.

Half the stuff I watched was Canadian. America seemed so removed from me. And I couldn't relate at all. I didn't know how to relate to these kids I went to school with, who were happy to watch the horrid Canadian shows like "The Littlest Hobo", about this German Shepard who wandered around and solved crimes, o the Canadian current events show for kids "W5" or "Live It Up". It was all so hokey. I dreamed of buying a satellite dish so I could catch up with Arnold and Willis.

And the music - I don't know the origins, but I am assuming that around this time, CanCon became law. CanCon is Canadian Content. I think that radio stations then were legally obliged to play something like 33 or 44% or something like that, of Canadian content. So, this meant, that while "Union of the Snake" might have been the #1 song, DJs were required by law to make sure that 33% (0r 44 - I don't know the stats) of the songs they played had to have Canadian content. And what a shit show that was. Oh sure, there are some genuinely awesome, borderless tracks that exist - you Americans need to youtube ANYTHING by Rough Trade, or "Echo Beach" by Martha and the Muffins or anything off the first Platinum Blonde album "Standing in the Dark" to see we were obviously cool in our own way - but much of it was hideous. Bryan Adams always protested against "Can-Con": because he said that we should be free to hear what we want to hear, but let me tell you this, Scarface - on one level, I agree with you, but for fuck's sake, after the fact, when your shitty adolescent Mutt Lange teenage horndog bullshit music matters to nobody in the fickle States, CanCon assures that you still get some sort of royalty cheque, you dig?

So yeah, I resented the whole "Big Brother" aspect of CanCon. But shortly after that, I became a big supporter. Is that enough of a tagline to leave you intrigued? Because my next post will tie in my teenage years, America, and all that jazz.

Wait for part two - this is where I will deconstruct Canada, comment on America, and we'll all have a merry Xmas.

Peace out.