The West Island created a few writers with wit or wisdom to share. The idea here is to compile a collection of story references that has the "Mapes" as a setting in every story. Fact or fiction.
For most this building had some place in the formative years of our lives.
All family names will be edited out for legal to ethical reasons. First names only if needed.
TO READ OR ADD COMMENTS CLICK ON COMMENT AT BOTTOM OF PAGE.
We will also add the following category links for focal points:
(Please include your summer(s) when making comments)
Before Expo ‘67
Summer of ’68
Summer of ’69
Summer of ’70
Summer of ’71
Summer of ’72
Summer of ’73
Summer of ’74
Summer of ’75
Summer of ’76
Summer of ’77
Summer of ’78
Summer of ’79
Summer of ’80
Summer of ’81
Summer of ’82
Summer of ’83
Summer of ’84
Summer of ’85
We will also add the following category links for focal points:
1) News: We’ll follow Montreal media as well as links and input for West Island stuff.
2) Classifieds: E.g.: "G.D., Calgary: Girls stop the PhotoShop stuff from my BHS yearbook with Chippendale Calendars on dating sites", D.M., Ottawa: Dorval A&W mug for sale (large) $30.00. Firm."
3) Obituaries: This will be a growing list. Time to say something nice?
4) Where Is? Ian Turnbull? Dave Boxer? The Rabble? Excelsior? The Haunted? The twins from the West Island Flyers? The CFOX girl? The West Island guys with John Lennon in Queen E? The West Island guys guarding and hosting The Rolling Stones? The Pin-ups? MIC?
5) Other Links: Some have sites that have photographs and historical facts and links like Schools, Bars, Parks etc.
6) Scandals?:
7) Any other ideas?:
8) Sponsors:
6 comments:
Before cell phones the phone booth at Mapes was used to help broken hearts or dealers set up drops. Everybody smoked. And everybody smoked everything.
God damn! I'm in. But how do I get into the what-do-ya call the place where you write and edit posts?
Hang on a minute, I'll be right back...
Yeah, it's called your "dashboard". How do I sign in to write a post?
The girls in their summer clothes.
The floor holding the beat of "Brown Sugar" by The Rolling Stones" pounded all summer into the cool days of August and a thousand years into my life. The beer quarts cold to the touch as the mind numbed watching the hockey games in the TV up in the corner of the caboose. Easier to piss outside than try and negotiate the moat that protected the washroom from more excess.
Jukebox
Between the kitchen entrance and the men's washroom it sat.
The Caboose
For hockey, football and baseball - and a few with the guys to start the night.
DRUNK AND DISORDERLY
I was an ex pat Montrealer in the summer of '72. And I'll tell you, right now, in the interest of disclosure and absolute honesty, it might have been the summer of '73. Or '74. It was not the summer of '71...
For all the folks (I've loved before) who never left the West Island, an evening at the Maples Inn was a yeah-maybe-if-there's-nothing else doing. But for me the Maples was a beacon of sexual possibilities. Very erotic. Very exotic.
It was the promise of getting some that really motivated my desire to go and squeeze my way sideways through the long line up at the front door, put up with the noise and stale beer sweat stink mix. You know what? I really liked that smell. Alot.
I'd been in Vancouver for a few years. But I came back to Montreal, every year, clinging desperately to the notion my pals really wanted endless LSD summer. They were working now, school was out. First jobs were happening, some even paid good money. Charlie was up for a night out, though. And Scott was even easier to coax out.
Then there were familiar faces that came up from the background on the dance floor inside the Mapes. Sinc was there. Hipper was there. Billy, Kelly, Bonnie...
We drank cold cold quarts of beer. Oh they were good. We talked, or tried to be heard above the din. Beads of moisture ran down the outside of the brown glass large.
Cigarette smoke was thick in the air, and some sweet pungent waft available too. The was some air to be breathed, I am telling you, mixed in with the nic and leb and mex.
Some things were understood. The sweet smell was happening, but it was not an anything goes kind of deal. There were protocols. The doormen were given a healthy unofficial and quite plausibly deniable bonus when you entered. It was the no-hassle-me payment.
I will tell you, again (did I already say this?) that memory is less reliable with every passing minute now. Did we smoke our sweet cigs openly? In the bathroom?
It was heavy medicine, whatever was happening. Almost revolutionary. And corrupt. There was a seduction, a corrupt seduction. Let me say it this way: something was happening here, what it was was not exactly clear.
My agenda was simple. Drink my troubles down into a place where my brain would have difficulty retrieving thoughts about them. I was a recent dumpee. Rose was her name. My high school sweetheart. The taker of my virginity. The popper of my cherry. Rose met a young fellow who was very interested in her large breasts. I have paid loads of attention to those breasts for three years but then I bought a guitar and a piano. I began to pay attention to a C chord.
Or an E chord. If it was rock 'n roll. So Rose left me. High but not dry. She went off with this man, who became a cop. He became a harbour cop who clubbed a hobo to death with an illegal sap. He went on to become a city cop who crippled another man with an Arwin bullet to the skull during the infamous Stanley Cup riots of 1994.
I'm being bitchy. But those are the facts as they apply to Rose's new man. Rose was gone and I retreated to the West Island, to stay with my brother Mark and lick my wounds. Part of that wound licking process involved drinking lots of beer and seeing if there were and other wounds around that wanted licking too...
The Maples Inn was my bar of choice. There was live music there. There were friends there and some various ways to alter mood, bend mood until it only vaguely resembled the mood you woke up with. The night's were young. Until they got older. Many of those nights did not die until dawn.
(I will come back, real soon, to write part two of DRUNK AND DISORDERLY...)
DRUNK AND DISORDERLY (Part Two)
I might have shown more respect for the physical building that was the Maples Inn. My claim to infamy was that I targeted the neon sign out front, hurling several quart bottles of beer at it, until it read like a stutter, APL S NN.
Memory plays tricks. Maybe I missed with every shot. The manager or owner seemed to be tolerating my violence, he called me "Vancouver..." because I told him I lived there now. I recall him speaking to me in soothing tones, questioning my need to be so destructive.
Now I'm sure it was unspent sexual energy. Unspent sexual energy is the cause of all great art and all horrible violence in this world. War and opera are both brought to you by bonerheads.
The evening I am bringing to mind I was there with Charlie and Scott and we were non violent, singing Beatle's songs in the parking lot, maybe loudly, and suddenly many police cars appeared, lights flashing, from out of the dark summer night.
I was pleased. A long way from home I was craving something unusual for my unspent sexual energy. I heard myself screaming; "F--king pigs!!!" It was 1970, we still said that, mindlessly. I did anyway. Scott was to my right, I believe, under the control of another cop or two, and he bellowed; "Do you see this, people? This hurts!" Scott admired Abby Hoffman alot. Wore his hair in an afro.
They say no pain, no gain...
STAY TUNED FOR PART THREE OF DRUNK AND DISORDERLY!
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