This is long messed up bit of a rambling walk and a little all over the place.. My mind is not always the easiest of things to piece together & writing out what is on it, is not always the easiest for me to do.. so here it is.. a short biography of what School taught me, what I learned in the school of the street aka the school of hard Knox & what I learned from my time being reeducated via the schooling programs via the church... Some of the things life has taught me ever since I was a young know it all 13 year old punk when I entered Jr high to the adult nearly 40 that I am today.
Well one thing I learned at school that was not classroom taught was, How to make a hole in a glass bottle for Bottle Toking. Bottle toking is where you use a cigarette's hot ember end on which you place a tiny ball of hash . When that starts to burn you insert it in the hole you made in the bottom of the bottle & you wait till it fills with the smoke from your ball of hash.
You can discuss whatever you want with the others in the smoke pit as you wait until the hash ball has burnt it's self out. When the bottles full of smoke & the ball has burnt its self out. You will then proceed to inhale the bottle of smoke in small hoots. If you tried to inhale it like a cigarette you would cough your lungs out & have wasted your hash
Repeat until you are stoned to the desired amount, bottle toking in Carson's smoke pit was a bit better than hot knifing in home economics, you had less chance of getting caught. There was many things I learned in school that where not on the schools curriculum. such as home economics & hot knifing. How to wash ink from a us bill for re-inking with higher denominations
Auto mechanics class with other students teaching hot wiring. 3 various methods of committing car theft. 1 was the wire gauge and battery with the starter ground.. I never got the hang of it.. You actually had to crawl under the car to do this.. The classic pushing of the car & doing bump starts, which was where you popped the clutch & put it into first gear.. Then the tried & true method of brute force using a screwdriver 1 method was to crack the steering wheel & key lock. then use the wires to start the car.. the other method was to use the Screw Driver like a car key & turning the ignition lock over.
Sheesh I learned so many Break & enter techniques for houses & cars. Then things like Lock-picking & such as how to break open a Combination lock using a metal shim and a pair of pliers. I went to a Upper/Middle Class school full of some very Privileged kids.. Many of them had no need to shoplift or to steal, they had more in allowance money per week than I could earn in a month of shifts at super save gas. And that lot of of privileged kids was the largest bunch of larcenous delinquents you never did want to meet.
How to make a 3 types of shiv's in shop class. (that's a kind of knife) How to make a silencer though we never tested it, we were to afraid to try having heard of another kid, that heard from another kid, of a mate of his friend who's cousins, cousin had made one and it blew up in his hand killing him. but the guy showing us how to make it ensured it would work.. We were crazy kids but not so crazy as to try something we had heard of just recently killing some one else..
The worst thing we made was a shotgun which we tested and fired, the damned thing worked like a freaking charm.. It is f*cking frightening when I think about all that could of gone wrong. We used a couple of blocks of two by fours some galvanized steel pipes some elastic bands, some more wood, some nails & a pipe cutter metal file & very fine grit sand paper to remove burs.
We made 22's they worked aka saturday night specials these were dangerous as bloody hell but they were accurate & had enough force to kill some one or something up to 10 feet. beyond that they were inaccurate & you where more likly to wound or miss a target completely. I will not explain any further on how we made these things because they were way to easy to make back then & probably even easier to make today.
I think any one of us that undertook these ahem extra curricular classes could easily make another zip gun or shotgun today & it would still work just as good as the one's as we made in class back then. One of our class mate's was way more daring than some of the rest of us he made purple iodide via a recipe from a copy of the anarchists cookbook & what purple iodide is that it is a home made explosive..
According to reports all over the school yard the next day was that he blew a freaking crater in his backyard one that was nearly 4 feet deep.. He was suspended for his actions for quite a lengthy bit of time. But he was the school hero for a time when he did return. I think all of us guys held him in high esteem for his crazy yet ballsy actions, something none of the rest of us had at that time.
Then there was the spy tactics we studied such as How to use a mirror with some wood & pipe to make a periscope this worked great of peeking around corners & stuff plus it would let the boys see into the girls showers.. But the damned thing fogged up and was useless for spying on the girls when they were in the showers.. All it did was make a lot of boys hot under the collar.. Now if we just could of fixed that damned fogging problem what glorious sites we could of seen. Today's teens would probably just use a all weather proof webcam on a flexible snake to spy on the girls
The hot water pipes had a 3-3&1/2 inch hole with just enough room to spy in to the girls locker room. But it worked both ways we could spy on them & they could of just as easily spied on us.. The only problem is it did not have a down ward view. The periscope fixed that giving us a downward view but the damned steam would fog the mirrors so badly it made it useless. All we got was a lot of headaches.Plus the standard sore muscles from hanging with one hand and using the periscope to peer through with the other then the other problems that arose such as blue balls and a bunch of dirty thoughts running through our minds...
I do not think a single one of us ever got a clear views of the girls in the all together. We did manage to get to see some of the girls in there panty's & bra's but that was not often and it was only for a brief length of time usually about 45 seconds for that was about as long as we could manage to hold on to the pipe dangling & spying. Hell in Porky's they at least got to see the girls naked.. all we got was fogged up mirrors and brief glimpses... All in all now that I think on it it was not really worth the effort we went through.
Shesh I learned many things in school not classroom taught.. how to kiss.. all about second base and getting a home run & we are not talking baseball here.. how to find a trust worthy runner to boot leg for you.. where to score the best doubage our word for weed and sid (LSD) in Vancouver.
Jr high taught us more about sex drugs & alcohol than many parents would believe, I learned more in the Cadet core about how to be a killer making improvised weapons & a little about riffles hand guns & explosives. While in Jr & in high school I learned about smuggling drugs how to cut them with buffers packaging them delivery methods. & lessons on street level or lessons on how to be a drug dealer I learned from some other class mates about boosting on becoming or being a thief I was a regular little hoodlum.
There was the local gangs but I will not go in to details on that.. There are some subjects one does not talk of.. Shit I don't know what else to say. I can only think the group of guys I went to school with where not a decent bunch of men, I can only hope that the kids of today are not learning the same things in school that we did & talked about. For if they are it is no wonder the street gangs & city crime rates are sky rocketing in Vancouver cause in the early 90's it was just starting..
I said some time in 1990 that Vancouver would be Similar to LA by 2010... & in some ways I was right.. While we are not completly over run by street level Drug crimes or inner city ghetto Gang wars but it is has been happening for the past 10 years... & it is not really getting better.
Vancouver is known to many people the world over as destination for drugs being such a large shipping port large quantities of the worlds drugs come through our ports. Second Problem is by sex toruists.. sad to say but the Sex tourists still come to Vancouver for its 2 strolls worked by some very young boys & girls The seedier sides of the city are not talked about much.
Vancouver used to be a large destination for sex tourists. They raised the age of consent & changed some laws a few years back from 14 to 16.. & some laws about no more than 4 years age difference.. I am not sure how many have been charged since the introduction of the laws but I hope that things have changed for the better. I do know when bike around town I do not see as many young girls on the street corners like I used to.
Many of the girls are older but some are still pretty young. 16 is still way to young to be on the streets but what is a frightening truth you may be learned to know is that the home life for many of the street walkers be they boys or girls was worse than the life they live on the street.
School did not teach me that much about life, it was what I learned from the other students Or from my friends how most of us made it through it alive I will never know.. but we did survive. lets not forget the high archy that went on between the cliques or groups of those that were in the in crowd and the types we had those that where the rockers vrs the skaters we had punks vrs preppy's aka nerds. Jocks as well but not so many and you would be surprised how many jocks were preppy's & how many were rockers..
Now they where all the ones that taught me so many things,, but the street life refined the skills i learned in school.. I am not sure if it was for the good or for the worst.. I survivied but some times I wonder just how much different my life would of been had I not learned so much about drugs or the other things that I learned about in Jr high. By the time I was in High School I was a Full Time Drug Addict & a part time thief & drug dealer. I so held many jobs & did so many things.. by 17 I was on the streets & out of school..
Life did not turn out so great but luckily I survived my life on the streets I may still be poor & I may still live in the Down Town East Side.. but My heart is still made of soft gold & my love for this city & the people in it is still strong.. Where others are disgusted by what they see, I still feel shame & sadness and a desire to bring healing to help to them in some way..
I don't know what broke them or why they live where they do or what they do to survive but I learned one thing about compassion I learned a man who has nothing gives more of himself than a guy that wears thousand dollar suits.. I learned there is a real community of people down here. I may be a misfit everywhere else but I find that I am accpeted for what I am down here. & accpetance is vital to life. I have my privacy & no one ever intrudes on anyone else. There is spirit & community on the streets just like every where else but down here it is built by those that have lived hard & many that have survived hell.
My biggest teacher & School was the Streets of Vancouver, The Granville Family taught me how to live, how to fight, how to beg, how to steal. How to pop a squat (that means how to turn an abandoned building in to a home) where to find food & where to get a hot meal. where to go get a free shave & shower. The Granville Family taught me how to survive in hells kitchen. They helped me escape from a life that was slowly eating me alive. They helped me find a source of freedom from the chemicals I was using & then I desired more...
Something the Family could not give me... I needed a way out of hell, I needed a way to escape myself torture to escape from the Hell was living in. I needed complete freedom. For I was committing suicide slowly with every passing day, I didn't know it at that time but I was killing myself & I was not going to live long in early 1993 I had a drug induced heart attack that sent me from the supreme court via ambulance to Saint Paul's hospital. A doctor told me If i did not kick my crack cocaine addiction I would likely not survive the year.
My next door neighbor took me to a church in a little old rec center on Hastings street. a bunch of crazy lunatics do crazy stuff singing out loud dancing and shit.. I hung around the back wall smoking weed & cigarettes.. snacking on coffee and whatever else was available. I sat against that back wall for a few weeks till one day I went up front and prayed.
Over the years Vancouvers East Side Vineyard a church taught me much about healing & they gave me a way out of death, they led me from a slow road of destruction.. Into freedom from chemicals & alchohal. Vancouver Vineyard gave me the twelve steps & they taught me to cry & they taught me to pray. I learned how to ask for help something I am still not very good at to this day. But I am better at it than I used to be.
I learned how to go shopping, how to budget my money, how to do a job search. & I learned How to live in the day. not the past not tomorrow but to live for today. I once again learned how to be free & then I learned how to laugh again. How to be happy..
I am still learning to forgive myself & everyday it is a process. I keep going because I have a goal & I have a dream. I have desires & I have a life.. I nearly lost it all but it all worked out & I finally found freedom I found a way to live my life & am fairly happy with it. it is not perfect I may never be rich. But I am wealthier than some people will ever be. Wealth riches does not come from money it comes from freedom & life it comes from friends & family
The largest treasure you can ever have is knowledge.
The richest wealth you will ever hold is a friends trust.
The greatest gift to give is love.
I am a poor man but in many ways I am richer than other.
Family is a treasure to have & to hold.
After all is said & done I feel very blessed to still be alive today.
Just What was your School & just what did it teach you ?
