New2view's Blog   Life on The Blue Marble

It was about 1956 when I landed in Windsor Ontario after hitch hiking or  bus riding several  thousand miles as a runaway from home with a school friend.  First staying with a kind brother of my friend, then residing in the YMCA, it was not a great experience.

Seeking employment, as a temporary worker I stood in a pit below cars as they moved through a car wash, engines running, to wash their wheels etc.  I became violently ill no doubt from carbon monoxide poisoning though I had no idea of the cause at the time.

Next, I hitch-hiked out of town in the dead of winter to Aylmer, Ont.,  having heard about jobs in agriculture there.  Somehow I never got there, ending up on a lonely highway trying to return to town on a freezing night.  I found a closed gas station with an outdoor lou that had one little  infra-red bulb.  So I was able to gain a little warmth while  listening for very rare traffic.  Finally I ran out and thumbed a ride with a young Canadian Navy officer who took me all the way back to the outskirts of Windsor.  He advised me the navy was a good life.  Perhaps that’s what influenced me to join the navy just a few years later.

Although he offered to take me back to town, I chose to walk several miles from the outskirts of Windsor in freezing temperatures back to the YMCA that night.  Another experience I’ll never forget.