My Stuff and Welcome to It

By Kenneth Andrew Creamore

My Stuff And Welcome To It is my attempt at telling a true story of growing up in a big family that lived in a tiny house and some of the universal truths that we all share as members of the human race. I suppose more than anything else it is just time to tell these little stories before they are gone. Forgotten like so many other things in our fast-paced lives. Stories about a time that was much different from today. A time before technology took over every aspect of our lives. It never occurred to me at the time that the way we were raised and the way we lived our lives would start to fade way. I would never have guessed that being a part of a neighbourhood would be replaced by belonging to a network. That we would plug into some cold and lifeless computerized device to communicate with one another, instead of simply saying hello in the street. That as a boy, running to a neighbours house to borrow a cup of sugar would become one of the greatest lessons of my life. Our society becomes just a little more jaded and a little more cynical with each passing day. It is my hope that somehow the words I have written on these pages help to take you back to a time of innocence. A time when as kids we played in the streets without a care in the world. To a time when teenagers believed "All You Need Is Love" for no other reason than The Beatles told us so.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350933055

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Copyright © 2019 Kenneth Creamore.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

ISBN: 979-8-35093-305-5

Canadian Intellectual Property Office: Registration No. 1152934

Ken Creamore

[e-mail]

Front cover image by Ken Creamore.

First printing edition August 2019.

Second printing edition August 2023.

DEDICATIONS

I dedicate this book to the memory of Alexander Middleton Creamore and Irene Elizabeth Creamore. For it was Dad’s pride in all things Creamore and Mom’s steadfast commitment to her children that has taught me what it means to be a family. I hope the words that I have written and the stories that I tell within these pages honor the memory of these two courageous people.

FOREWORD

My Stuff

And Welcome To It

There are a few things you should probably know about me before you read this book. I would have to say that I am the last person on earth that anyone thought would ever write a book.

I have always struggled with spelling and I have never been much of a reader. My command of the written word or lack thereof has always been the one thing that I felt held me back. In the last few years I have taken several tests and scored moderate to high for Dyslexia and boy does that explain a lot. So why would anyone want to read a book written by some illiterate sixty-eight-year-old? That is probably a very good question. I would never call myself a writer.

I am a diehard romantic and have always worn my heart on my sleeve. Sure, maybe those of us that wear our hearts on our sleeves get them bumped and bruised more often than most, but I have always found the bumps and bruises are the very things that make me feel the most alive. As a self-proclaimed disciple of The Beatles and the Hippie Generation, I truly believe All You Need Is Love and love is something that I have had in spades in my life. I have also had the wisdom to not take love for granted. I believe love is like fine wine and only gets better as it ages. After years of tending to our very special vintage writing this book is like uncorking that bottle and sharing it with family and friends.

As a broken hearted fifteen-year-old I went into the Graphic Arts Department’s darkroom at David Thompson Secondary School Vancouver B.C. and came out with the picture you see on the cover of this book. That picture hung on the wall by my bedside for years. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and this picture captured how I was feeling at the time perfectly and went on to become the symbol of my love for Helen. A love that has only deepened over all these years. I cherish my relationship with her above all else.

We all have a place in our mind that is so familiar and feels just right. It is there when we look back. It’s there when someone asked so where are you from? It’s that place that calls to your heart so many years after it is all but gone. That place where it all just made sense. Where you and your friends played with nothing more than a stick or tree branch but somehow you could play for hours on end or at least until the streetlights came on and it was time to go inside. We really didn't need anything more to be happy in life. As for me that place has always played an important role in my life. It's as much a part of me as the DNA that runs through my veins. It has called to me my whole life. Calling me back to a different place and simpler time. For me that place is a little suburb of Vancouver Canada known as Fraserview.

I am not sure that the little tales I tell here are really that very different from anyone else’s stories. Maybe the fact that I found my soul mate at a very young age and somehow knew that she was the one I was meant to be with even before I had actually met her was a little unusual.

My Stuff is my attempt at telling a true story of growing up in a big family that lived in a tiny house and some of the universal truths that we all share as members of the human race. I suppose more than anything else it is just time to tell these little stories before they are gone. Forgotten like so many other things in our fast-paced lives. Stories about a time that was much different from today. A time when children played in the streets with not a care in the world. A time before technology took over every aspect of our lives.

I dedicate this book to my parents, but I wrote this book specifically for my two wonderful daughters, Christina Lynette and Kimberly Ann. I wanted them to know their Mom and Dad just a little more and some of the wonderful stories that made up our lives together. I want them to know just how much and how deeply their parents love one another and how that love began … as crazy as it might sound today.

It is my hope that one day in the future one of my Great, Great, Great Grandchildren will read the pages of this book. My voice calling out to them like a ghost from their ancestral past. I hope that some of My Stuff will make them laugh and some of My Stuff might even make them cry. The highs, the lows, the loves and the tragedies that makes us all human. This is My Stuff and Welcome To It ...

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1 Introductory Stuff

CHAPTER 2 The Earliest Stuff And If Turds Could Fly

CHAPTER 3 Aliens, Demons And Other Wondrous Stuff

CHAPTER 4 Guitars, Floaters And Other Fab Stuff

CHAPTER 5 Upsetting The Creamore Cart And New Friends Stuff

CHAPTER 6 My Own Funeral & Teeny Bopper Rocker Stuff

CHAPTER 7 Ice Skating Stuff And The Beauty Of She

CHAPTER 8Buckskin Summer and Other Romantic Stuff

CHAPTER 9 Special Kids And Only The Lonely Stuff

CHAPTER 10 Charting New Ground And Other Scary Stuff

CHAPTER 11 Smoking Good Stuff And The Beatrice Street Shuffle

CHAPTER 12 Making Love And All That Other Mature Stuff

CHAPTER 13 Natures Revenge - Harry Houdini And The Fairy Princess Stuff

CHAPTER 14 The Battle Of Pink & Blue Wedding Stuff And The Incredible Exploding Cat

CHAPTER 15 Pretty Fishy Stuff And The Tale Of Dis Tiny Button

CHAPTER 16 A Pigglin Wigglin And Tragic Stuff

CHAPTER 17 Poking A Hole In A Guinea Pig & Redemption Day Stuff

CHAPTER 18 A Working-Class Hero And Little Boy Blue Stuff

CHAPTER 19 Bumpity-Bumpity Crunch & Other Tuesdays Child Stuff

CHAPTER 20 All The Kings Men Stuff

CHAPTER 21 Teenaged Snow Stuff and Kirby The Wonder-Boy

CHAPTER 22 Rusty Old Dreams And Brian’s Stuff

CHAPTER 23 The Golden Age Of Addiction Some Of My Favorite Stuff

CHAPTER 24 Promises and The Stuff That Matters

CHAPTER 25 Pilgrimage To Macca And Retirement Stuff

CHAPTER 26 Looking Back Stuff And The Beauty Of She Reprise

Thank You!

CHAPTER 1

Introductory Stuff

Wednesday, May 25, 1955. Nothing really special about that day, other than a huge storm crossed the central USA with as many as 42 tornadoes touching down and all but destroying Kansas City and Oklahoma. You know, your ordinary biblical end of days kind of thing. I was hoping that something cool happened on that day, but the closest I can come is, 24 hours earlier Bob Dylan was celebrating his 14th birthday several years before writing his masterpiece Maggie's Farm. You probably thought I was going to say, Blowing in the Wind, but I have always been an I Ain’t Going To Work On Maggie's Farm No More kind of guy. What can I say, there are classics and then there are classics? Anyway, so much for the day I entered the world being something significant. It was just another day in Fraserview, a subdivision that sat on the southern slope of East Vancouver, Canada.

I suppose it was kind of a special day for my parents, having yet another son born. They had already experienced this three times before. Marc, my eldest brother was born in Prince Rupert six years earlier and moved to Vancouver with my parents a year or so after his birth. Don arrived two years after Marc and was the first of many Creamore children to be born at Burnaby General Hospital. Chris was just two years older than me and was probably the brother I interacted (fought) with the most in our childhood. 

Something of a rarity is the fact that I am a third generation Vancouverite. My Mom, Irene Elizabeth Evans was born to James Evans and Elizabeth Harper at their home at 1225 East 18th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. On October 12, 1926. My father Alexander Middleton Creamore was born to James Joseph Creamore and Ina Masson in Vancouver on August 4, 1927. Mom and Dad were married at the IOF Hall, 30th Avenue and Main St. Vancouver on October 6, 1945. Shortly after their marriage the newlyweds moved to Prince Rupert, B.C. where Dad was stationed in the Royal Canadian Armed Forces. After a brief few years, Mom and Dad, with their firstborn in tow, were again back in Vancouver living on Borden St. near 62 Avenue.

With my arrival the Creamore clan had to find a bigger place to call home. Not that the little house on East 63 Avenue, Vancouver B.C. was exactly big. Just large enough for the six members of the Creamore family to move in and become part of a neighbourhood that can only be described as a very special place for four young kids to grow up. Two years later my younger brother Robin was born. Make that a special place for five young kids to go up. Followed by my two sisters Kathy and Teresa and as if that was not enough, my youngest brother Jim was born October 1962. In case you have lost track, our new neighbourhood can only be described as a very special place for eight young kids to grow up. Mom, Dad and eight children all tucked into a thousand square foot, one bathroom, three-bedroom bungalow with no basement and no upstairs. Very cozy! Yeah, that's the word, cozy. Mom and Dad had one bedroom which left two bedrooms for eight kids. Nothing that four sets of bunkbeds couldn't solve. I was assigned to the righthand side, lower-bunk, boy’s back bedroom. This would be my place to go not just for sleep but for damn near anything. It was the one place in the house that I knew was mine. 

That bunk bed was made of metal and covered in white paint that was all chipped up. Not much to look at as beds go. Probably not very good in the support department either. As a matter of fact, it was more like a hammock than a bed. Big dip in the middle that damn near swallowed you whole. It was my bed and the only thing in the whole house that I did not have to share with someone else. My oldest brother Marc was in the bunk right above me. Chris was across from me and Don was in the top bunk above Chris. We had just one chest of drawers and each one of us had just one drawer for our clothes. At the time I didn’t know any different, so it was perfectly normal to me. Besides a few pairs of socks and some underwear really don’t take up much room. 

Fraserview was largely made up of very small houses. These houses were mostly built in the forties & early fifties long before the so-called Vancouver Special came along. They were all around 1000 square feet, some had a basement, and some did not. Much of the development in the neighbourhood came in the 1940s, when land was needed for returning veterans of World War II. Eleven hundred new homes were built in the area for these veterans, on land owned by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

When World War II broke my father volunteered and joined the Royal Canadian Army. Dad was only seventeen when he joined and was much too young to be sent overseas. Fortunately for Dad the war ended before he saw any action. Since Dad was in the Army during the war, he met all the qualifications that allowed our growing family to rent our little house on East 63rd Ave. Mom and Dad rented that house for many years before they were given the option to buy it in the late sixties. While we were renting the house every few years a painting crew would show up in the neighbourhood to do basic maintenance and repaint all the houses. We could have any colour we wanted as long as it was gray with white trim. Mom and Dad tried to have the house colour changed many times, to no avail. They would always get the same answer this is 1722 East 63rd and according to our documentation 1722 East 63rd is a gray house with white trim.

As kids we loved watching all the work going on in our little neighbourhood and would follow the painting crews as they went from house to house. It usually took no more than a couple of days per house to replace any damaged areas and give the entire house a fresh coat of paint. This work would go on for several weeks during the summer months and keep all of us kids entertained for days at a time. There was always something going on out on the streets of Fraserview. You could join in on a game of Kick The Can that covered several different properties and went on until the streetlights came on, indicating it was time to go home. If sports were more to your liking, there was always a street hockey or a football game going on. As far as picking teams went. That was a job easily completed by putting your foot in the circle for an eeny-meeny-miney-moe selection. 

Every morning we would run out to join our friends in a new adventure. We never meant to get into trouble, but sometimes it just happened. Like the big red truck that rumbled into the sub-division to pour thick black oil on all of the laneways to keep the dust down. Us kids would all come home just covered head to toe in this sticky black oil. Mom would have a fit and forbid us to go back. The next day we would all show up at the laneway to watch the oil truck just like clockwork knowing full well we were going to get it when we got home. You see when you were a kid in the early sixties there were some basic truths in life. One of them was that oil trucks had to put oil on dusty laneways, and another was dozens of small boys had to chase the oil truck up and down that laneway. One final truth was even-though young boys promise to stay clean ... oil is still oil. 

The whole subdivision was built on a fairly steep slope so each street that ran perpendicular to the slope was cut like steps into the hill. This meant that on one side of the street the houses were sitting about eight feet up off the road with a rock wall and a set of stairs that went up to the front of the house. The other side of the street was the exact opposite. The houses sat about eight feet below the road and had a retaining wall made from rocks and a set of stairs that led down to the house. I know this sounds very weird by today's standards but was very normal back then. Jumping off these walls and learning to climb up them was like the first rite of passage for all the kids in the neighbourhood. We knew every rock in those walls. Every hole to place your foot, every stone to cling to and most importantly every crevice that the snakes lived in. I don’t believe the city planners realized just how much fun they built into that subdivision. Then again, a rock wall looks much different through the eyes of a six-year-old then those of a city engineer.

There was nothing better than taking toys outside to play. Back in the early sixties kid’s toys were very different from today. A boy only needed to see the commercials on the television to see the next object of his desire. Johnny Seven O.M.A. Now there was a toy every boy wanted. You were a One-Man Army with that multi-functioning toy gun in your hands. That thing was amazing. It even had a grenade launcher! I don’t know if it was knowing that I would never own one that made me want one even more. That and every other combat toy I saw on the television. Secret Sam and Mighty Mo were two other destroy everything in sight toys that I wanted back then. It was almost like a status thing. Showing up at the next combat with something more than a stick in my hand would have turned more than a few heads.    That was the thing back then. It only took a stick in your hand and a whole lot of imagination to have hours of fun. Just think what I could have done with a plastic cannon the size of a house! Mighty Mo! The biggest bad ass gun in town. I could have been Sgt. Sam Troy with that thing in my hands. It just couldn’t get any better than playing Rat Patrol up and down the streets of Fraserview! Yes! Sgt. Sam Troy and I would have kicked some serious butt with Mighty Mo on our side!

There were many games played and many wars fought on the rock walls of Fraserview. Tie your pillow to your back and you were playing Ripcord. I loved watching Ripcord on the television back then. I jumped off that rock wall with a pillow strapped to my back at least a thousand times. If it was an old towel your mother let you have, you tied it around your neck and jumped off as Superman of course. The only real danger that surrounded these rock walls was if you lost control of your Little Red Flyer Wagon. As you screamed down the hill on the sidewalk you found out in a big hurry why they called them Little Red Flyers. The flying part wasn’t so bad. It was the landing part that usually ended up hurting. If one of us kids did manage to scrape a knee or bang our head, there would be mothers pouring out of houses in every direction. It really did not matter whose child got hurt, there was always a mother there to take care of it. You need to understand that back then mothering was serious business. Mothering was a full-time job and there was no higher calling in life then being a Mom. All the wonderful memories of growing up in Fraserview could not have happened if not for the loving and watchful eyes of all the Baby Boom Mothers.

All the Moms back then had their own network that ran throughout the whole neighbourhood and not very much got passed it. It may not have been very hi tech, but it was so very effective. A simple call of your name out on the front porch and that would be relayed repeatedly until someone’s mother was telling you to get your ass home for dinner. And just because you were blocks from your house, it did not mean your mother wouldn’t find out you were being a little jerk. That kind of information was also magically transmitted over the mommy-network faster than you could possibly get home to explain. That very same network worked for borrowing something from a neighbour. I can remember countless time being asked to run across the street to borrow a cup of sugar or up the street for a couple of eggs until Mom could go shopping. It happened all the time back then and seemed perfectly normal. Today something like that would never happen. At least not without getting a lawyer involved.

Looking out our front windows you could see the rock wall and concrete stairs that led up to the street. Looking at our house from the street you could see three sets of windows. To the left of the front porch were the living-room windows. To the right, the first set of windows was Mom & Dad's bedroom and the second set was the front bedroom were the youngest of the Creamore clan slept. The front yard had some small gardens and shrubs here and there. There was a minimal amount of time afforded to maintaining gardens, although Mom tried her best to keep it up. Our little house on 63rd Avenue was among the smaller houses. With no basement it was really quite tiny. It sat on the South side of the street and therefore sat below street level. If you stood in the laneway looking at the back of the house, the first thing you would notice would be a fairly big backyard.

There were many family barbecues, football games, soccer games, and in the summer, water fights! Can't forget the water fights that spilled over to include the whole neighbourhood. That was what was so different back then. A neighbourhood was not just a group of houses all placed together on a street. It was a group of families that supported and befriended one another. As a child I knew the majority of the families that lived on my block. I knew the kids of course, but I knew the Mom & the Dads as well. My Mom had tea with the other moms almost daily. Back then being neighbours meant something more than how close your house was to someone else's. It was a community and we all were members of our community. That was the thing that made growing up back then so special. There was an inclusiveness that everyone felt and were proud to be a part of.

Anyway, back to our house. On the far left of the back of the house was my three older brothers and my bedroom. Right in the middle was a small bathroom window, followed by a much bigger kitchen window. The other obvious feature that stood out was the elevated oil drum that fed the furnace which sat in the crawl space under the house. The heating system sat right in the middle of the house and was nothing more than a three by four-foot grate in the floor that allowed the heat from the oil fed furnace to rise into the house. Not very high tech, but it worked well enough to keep us warm on a cold winter’s night. 

I can remember many a winter morning getting up and all of us kids standing by the furnace grate trying to stay warm as Mom was getting breakfast ready. I also remember having to go under the house with a flashlight and a pair of pliers to plunge the furnace so Mom could get it lit. On freezing mornings, the oil in the lines to the furnace would get so cold and thick that it would need a good plunging to get it to flow again. It usually took a few minutes of pumping back and forth to get it to flow, but once you got it going it was really quite warm.

Mom had a wooden collapsible clothes rack that she would put right on top of the furnace grate so she could get our clothes dry in the winter months. The outdoor clothes line was useless in the rain and there were no such convenience as an electric clothes drier for several more years to come. Generally, it was really quite simple and primitive by today’s standards but at the time it was perfectly normal. Most houses had these oil furnaces in them. There were many houses in our neighbourhood that still had sawdust burners or even worse, coal burning furnaces. So, our oil furnace was very modern at the time. 

About the only other thing I could say about this little house was it was all wood construction, with single pane windows and a tar shingle roof. Yes, the tiny gray house on East 63rd Avenue was really not much to look at. From the outside most folks would say it was really nothing special, but I can guarantee you that on the inside, it was a very special house indeed. There were many challenges to growing up in such a large family. Especially a large family that lived in such a small house. Somehow, we made it work. It was in the somehow that the magic lived. We didn’t have very much, but I can assure you we had it all.

Maybe not much to look at, but 1722 East 63 Ave will always be home to me.

There was always something going on in the Creamore’s backyard. Barbecues, football or just family time. Over the years we went from just us kids and a few friends. To us and a few friends, wives, children. And so it went.

A close up of a map Description automatically generated

A Google Map of the south slope of Fraserview

CHAPTER 2

The Earliest Stuff

And If Turds Could Fly

She was born about as far away from western civilization as a person could possibly get. Khaltshpur East Pakistan wasn’t exactly the place that a Caucasian girl with parents from New Zealand would be from. Then again, her family moved a lot and it was as good a place as any to be born. She was just four years old when she moved to Nacimiento Chile with her family. She was quiet and shy, loved her family and did her best to do as she was told. She didn’t have many friends but had a pet chicken, a duck and a turkey she named Putt. She would raise more than a few eyebrows when she tied a string around Putt’s neck and took him for a walk around the block on more than one occasion. Putt was fast becoming her favorite pet and friend to a little girl who so desperately needed one. You could only imagine her horror to find out that her newfound friend was served up for dinner and was never intended to be a family pet. Even from her youngest days she found herself at odds with what should have been relatively normal situations and got her feelings hurt very easily.

The very earliest memories I have are centered around the birth of my sister Kathy. April 1959, I was not quite four years old and was being sent to my Auntie Glady's and Uncle Vic's home while my Mother was in the hospital. I remember being quite afraid of leaving my parents behind, as I had never been away from home before. I was told that I would just love it there, but I was not buying it for a second. The only thing that I knew was I would not be with my brothers and I wanted to go where they were going. Why couldn't I go where they were going? What I was too young to realize at the time was my parents knew I was exactly at the wrong age to be separated from them. Too young to not need close attention, but not so young that I would be unaware I was not with my family.

Glady and Vic were actually very nice folks who had two sons of their own, my cousins Victor Jr. and Bob. Vic Jr. was already a young man who left the house every morning in his jet-black coupe roadster. That whole American Graffiti thing, so very cool! Bob was several years younger and was off to high school every morning leaving just my Auntie Glady and myself at home for the day. I remember waking up in the morning and walking down a hallway past cousin Bob's bedroom, down a dark set of stairs and eating breakfast in the kitchen. By the time I had been with my Aunt and Uncle for a couple of days I was feeling a little less afraid. My Aunt told me children's stories every morning and was quite successful in making me feel that all would be fine. I began exploring what seemed to be a huge house and found myself unable to resist entering my cousin Bob's room. It's funny how one single moment in time can start you on a path that will become a very significant part of your life. Entering Bob's room was like that for me. It seemed almost magical and full of wonder through my three-year-old eyes. I had never seen things like this before, but I knew I was not supposed to be here, so I quickly left before anyone found me.

The next morning started just like all the mornings before. Down the hall past Bob's room and down the stairs to the kitchen for breakfast. My Aunt made me hot cream of wheat. Poured a little milk on it and sprinkled this gooey goodness with brown sugar. It was hot, sweet and was fast becoming one of my favorite things for breakfast. Glady seemed to be extra happy on this particular morning. Singing to herself as she cleaned up after me. I knew it would not be long before it was story time. Sure, enough she got me down from the kitchen table and onto her lap. But something was missing. Where was the storybook? My Aunty Glady started to tell me about my brand-new baby sister, Kathleen Diane, who was born just a few hours earlier. She told me how she would be special among all of us boys and how my Mom and Dad were so happy to finally have a baby daughter. I thought this was all fine but the part she told me about how I would be returning home in just a few more days is what really stuck out for me.

That afternoon Bob got home from school. I could hear music coming from his room. My parents played music on the record player at home, but it didn't sound anything like this! This sounded like happy music that made me want to jump and spin. I liked it! I was very excited running up and down the hall outside of Bob's room for several minutes before my aunt came to collect me. She said Bob was doing his homework and I was not to disturb him. I remembered sneaking into that room the day before and all the wonderful things I had seen. I wanted to go back for a closer look. Glady took me back downstairs and told me I could play in the kitchen or living room where she could keep an eye on me. I watched as she put her apron on and started to prepare dinner. I played quietly on my own for a while but could still hear the music coming from upstairs. The more I listened the more I wanted to go back upstairs.

Suddenly the music got a little louder and I could resist no more. I headed