Landing On My Feet

By Dan Propp

At five years of age, Dan Propp became mesmerized by the world outside the windows of his parents’ rented waterfront suite in Gibsons Landing, British Columbia. Born at 9,000 feet elevation in Sucre, Bolivia he landed in Gibsons in 1950. In the calm, protected Pacific waters down by Armours Float, young Dan set out to explore his new surroundings. Landing on my Feet takes the reader on a leisurely stroll back in time where memories have been netted like ling cod, with tales of a coastal boyhood as captivating as fishing for shiners on the Pacific coast where Union Steamships landed at Government Pier after coming all the way from Vancouver. From the liquor store, only steps from the pier, to Mrs. Fisher’s Cafe that served the best apple pie in the world, the memories tumble from the pages. Smitty’s Marina, down by the dock, rented wooden rowboats for twenty-five cents an hour, and a “put-put” cost only a dollar. It was a great place to start off from with rented fishing gear and perfectly cut herring strip to try one’s luck for Coho or Spring salmon off Gospel Rock, Salmon Rock and Gower Point.
Born in Bolivia to German Jewish parents, Dan Propp has been a postcard photographer since high school and worked for the Richmond Review and the Surrey Leader before becoming a school teacher. An accordion player, singer and performer, he lives in historic Steveston, British Columbia, with his wife.

Other books by Dan Propp:
The Postcard Photographer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Propp
• Release date: Jul 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781927626160

Dan Propp

Born in Bolivia to German Jewish parents, Dan Propp has been a postcard photographer since high school and worked for the Richmond Review and the Surrey Leader before becoming a school teacher. An accordion player, singer and performer, he lives in historic Steveston, British Columbia, with his wife.

Book preview

Landing on my Feet

TALES OF A BOYHOOD FROM BOLIVIA TO BRITISH COLUMBIA

DAN PROPP

ACCORDION TO DAN PUBLISHING

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 © Dan Propp

This is a work of non-fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either have been changed or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

Published by Dan Propp,

Accordion to Dan Publishing

10430 Hollybank Dr.

Richmond, BC

V7E 4S5

www.accordiontodan.com

www.danpropp.com

www.jewishreflections.com

ISBN: 978-1-927626-15-3

Digital ISBN: 978-1-927626-16-0

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my parents,

Elsa and Arthur Propp.

Somewhere in time, between Horseshoe Bay, Gibsons and memories.

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Landing On My Feet

TALES OF A BOYHOOD FROM BOLIVIA TO BRITISH COLUMBIA

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENY-THREE

POETRY

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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CHAPTER ONE

Well, here it is again, Gibsons, and retired. There’s the old government wharf. I used to catch lingcod off of it. Those planks came from Dad’s little sawmill, Sucre Lumber Company. The little sawmill up on North Road did the cutting

Later when his skin cancer advanced, the graft on the nose at the Mayo Clinic didn’t take even after twenty-three operations, Dad would walk proudly in retirement up and down that wharf wearing a false plastic nose that had to be glued on with strong-smelling alcoholic spirits. They smelled up the bathroom in our house up on Brook Road.

It was an enormous house – two suites rented out in the basement, one of those huge octopus looking oil fired furnaces that kept breaking down all the time, our living quarters in the middle above the basement and an attic suite above. Dad had purchased the huge black and white monstrosity with plum, apple, cherry trees and even a grape vine with restitution money from Germany. Thank God for Uncle Adenaur, Dad would often exclaim! He was the German Chancellor in the early 1950s that had some empathy for the German Jews who had fled and survived. Fled? Yes. Survived? Perhaps, depends upon what you mean by survived! The kids at Gibsons Jr. Sr. High used to connect the German Chancellor to a daylight saving time joke. What was the difference between standard time and daylight? You add an hour!

It was both awesome, tough, gut wrenching and yet somehow soothing looking at that wharf after so many years! It appeared basically the same, looking at the scene myself and now also retired. Nothing seemed to have changed and yet, in another sense, everything had changed.

It seemed like yesterday, we were living down by the water, the Union Jack was flying, King George had passed away, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth had been filmed and carried by the Royal Canadian Air Force across the Atlantic so it could be broadcast in living black and white over the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, coast to coast! In Gibsons there were perhaps a dozen lucky kids who could watch at home.

One of those lucky tykes was Johnny who lived past the swings and the teeter-totter next to a float where we used to fish for shiners, perch and tommy cod. That glowing white Sylvania 17" TV set pulled in a lot more instant friends than it did channels. The roof spotted a huge aerial with channel 2, 4, 5, and 12 heads. On a good day when there weren’t any tug boats or power saws operating close by, Channel 2 in Vancouver and 12 in Bellingham, Washington came in with hardly any snow on the screen at all! Sometimes when conditions were perfect Pinky Lee and the Mickey Mouse Club from Seattle’s Channel 4 and 5 appeared with a picture that was almost acceptable. This invention called television was amazing!

Look at the view! Unbelievable! Over there, that’s where the old bluff used to be, covered with red-barked Arbutus trees, now with monster houses, dozens of them, overlooking the islands, and a with huge Canadian flag flying. I still re-member the day Jimmy Sinclair came to our house to say hello during an election year. Mom and Dad both said he was a great Liberal and represented our area well. In fact he saved my Dad’s bacon – no Dad didn’t keep kosher. I didn’t even know what kosher was. I only knew what The Holocaust was. There wasn’t a day that my parents didn’t bring up in some form or another about what had happened! Sinclair was also Minister of Fisheries. His daughter would someday marry a man by the name of Pierre Elliot Trudeau! Today their son, Justin Trudeau is a Liberal Member of Parliament.

How politically correct we have become since! Like the report cards at schools, computer- generated, and wonderful concepts called projected learning outcomes.

Comments that should never offend only encourage. Included is a Social Studies curriculum that in its new elements in elementary school no longer stressed teaching the basic history of the land (unless of course, one did so unofficially in a clandestine way). Now an arithmetic additive suddenly stresses fractions with unlike denominators shouldn’t be tackled until at least grade seven because the concepts might be confusing for some.

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CHAPTER TWO

Dad couldn’t bring in a scow to the government wharf for pickup for transport to Vancouver. The wharfinger had apparently stated, No Jew is going to be able to tie up here. Jimmy Sinclair sent a telegram to the wharfinger and from that point on there were no further difficulties. My parents became Liberals for life.

Being liberal with a small l is something we learned or absorbed like osmosis. Different lifestyles, particular points of view, are what made Gibsons interesting. I suppose that could be the case for any small town particularly in the 1950s before the Sputnik, the satellite dish and the Internet. Yet television provided a visual link