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.