ARCASHA

H E G



1966

February 25, 2002 - 21:09

I was 13 years old in 1966. I was just going through a growth spurt so I was much bigger and taller than other kids my age. Little did I know that it would pretty much stop there. I don�t remember being any more confident or self-assured than at any other time in my life, but at least the other kids weren�t messing with me.

I was always a bit of a loner anyway. The only thing I was interested in was playing my guitar. Everything else in my life just seemed to be a big hassle or just too stressful. My biggest passions were The Beatles, my Hofner electric guitar and that was just about it�.oh, and girls, of course, but more on that later.

I was paying for that guitar in monthly installments with a paper route. I really grew to hate that gig, especially in winter. In March of �66, my father came home with a brand new Fender Princeton amplifier for my birthday. Turned out he�d simply added it to my account. I had to work that paper route for an extra year and a half to pay for it. I really resented him for that�but, I guess it taught me a lesson in value and how to EARN money to get the things I wanted.

I was already in a band bye 1966. We played a lot of Stones tunes; �Time is on My Side�, �As Tears go Bye��Beatles tunes; �Day Tripper�, �Eight Days a Week� and that all-time standard �House of the Rising Sun� the way the Animals did it. That year I think we played a couple of parties and a few school dances. We probably made a total of ten bucks a piece.

However, make no mistake about it, I WAS besotted by girls even at that age. I was so enamoured with them that I could not even speak around them. I had no girlfriends and my only insight into womanhood was from the members of my own family. They didn�t count. I mean, they were mum and sis, for God�s sake.

My father had built a houseboat and we�d spend our summers on it the way people go to the cottage nowadays. In the summer of that year, we were cruising from beach to beach all along the Ottawa River.

Sound�s enchanting but my father always got severely drunk on the weekends and he was always picking fights with us - especially my mother. He�d fight over the stupidest things, like forgetting to take along some cans of mushroom soup. They�d spend the entire weekend fighting in front of us kids. When it came to blows, and it did, we�d run off to the beach to get as far away from the noise as possible.

I don�t have very good memories of that boat. Some day I�ll write down my issues with my father but this is as far as I can go without going into a rage.

In August of �66, I went to spend the month with my cousins, Francine, Claudette, and Mimi in Quebec. I�d do that every couple of years to keep up my French. I was extremely happy there because those girls were so friendly, utterly beautiful and they spoiled me rotten.

I loved Mimi and she was even more beautiful than when I�d first fallen in love with her. However, one of my aunts decided that I should be made aware of the laws governing love between cousins. I was crushed. The only girl that I could speak to without turning to stone and I wasn�t allowed to date her. I hadn�t even GOTTEN to the sex part yet.

Funny, for most of my adolescence, I never even thought of the girls I liked in a sexual way. Probably why I never got laid �til I was TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD.

It was the year before Canada�s Centennial, the year before the �summer of love�, the calm before the storm.

And in June of 1966, far away from me, a beautiful little girl was born who would become one of the sweetest women alive. I don�t know what I was doing on that day, but I�ll bet I was smiling about something.

Arc

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