LITMIR.BIZ

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      was super embarrassing to me, especially when he talked

      about religion. It embarrassed me that my parents were

      religious. I didn’t want to be religious. I wanted to fit in.

      And people who were religious were weird, right?

      Our house was a non-stop train station, always full of

      teenagers and prayer meetings. And music! Dad played

      piano, and music was a big deal in our house. He’d make

      us sit around the piano at night and sing in three-part

      harmony. My two sisters were both good at the piano,

      too. I never learned how to play it. I was in choir, though.

      In fact, I was the leader of the junior choir. Crazy, huh?

      Even though I wasn’t very good in school, I did like

      band class, and my teacher took a shine to me. I played

      trumpet. I wasn’t good at reading notes because of my

      dyslexia, but I was good at playing. I played my trumpet

      at events, weddings and church services. I’d wail away on

      it and people loved it. Who’d a thunk? I always say it’s a

      good thing I wasn’t good at playing the guitar because I

      would have been in a rock ’n’ roll band and it would have

      all been downhill from there.

      There was lots of music around the Luxury Freeze, too.

      Buddy Holly. The Everly Brothers. Little Richard. I remem-

      ber hearing Elvis Presley sing “Don’t step on my blue

      suede shoes” in 1956 and being really blown away by that.

      Maybe that’s what drew me to shoes in the first place.

      Then, in 1958, there was a fire at the Luxury Freeze.

      Even though my dad got plenty of insurance money to

      rebuild, the energy just went out of him. Two years later,

      he sold it, and my family moved out to the suburbs,

      to South Burnaby. At the same time, he went through

      something of a religious awakening. It was good, and

      not all that good.

      Around 1961, my dad went to Bible school. And then

      things kind of went sideways for him. He got sick with

      rheumatoid arthritis and ended up on a disability pension

      for the rest of his life, which made him bitter, especially

      having railed his whole life against low-lifers on the

      government dole. Meanwhile, he was determined to

      become a minister and thought I should be one, too. It

      was the 1960s, though, and that wasn’t going to happen.

      Instead, right around then, in my teens, I decided I was

      going to be bad. I wasn’t super bad. Mostly, I had this

      dual life of being Mr. Cool and Mr. Christian Kid. I wasn’t

      good in school—I couldn’t add two and two and get four.

      My grades weren’t good. I raised a ruckus in class. I was

      the class clown. Disruptive. A tough kid. Sometimes I’d

      even pick on kids on the way home from school, but I

      wondered even then why I did it. Like I said before, a lot

      of my life was me not thinking I was good at things, then

      finding out later that I actually was. I didn’t do sports.

      Sigurd sells the Luxury Freeze

      and the family moves to South

      Burnaby.

      In high school, John discovers

      that he’s a terrible student, but

      a snappy dresser who was into

      cars and good at band. Later he

      realizes that he has a sort of

      dyslexia that makes classroom

      learning a challenge.

      Fire devastates the Luxury

      Freeze; his father rebuilds, but

      loses his passion for it.

      1958 19621960

      Sigurd goes to Bible school;

      John decides to become a

      troublemaker.

      1961

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