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Eavesdroppings
Eavesdroppings
Stories from Small Towns When Sin Was Fun
BOB GREEN
Copyright © Bob Green, 2006
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Copy-editor: Michael Carroll
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: University of Toronto Press
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Green, Bob, 1930-
Eavesdroppings : stories from small towns when sin was fun / Bob Green.
Stories previously published in the Cambridge reporter.
ISBN-13: 978-1-55002-629-0
ISBN-10: 1-55002-629-1
1. City and town life--Ontario--History--Humour. I. Title. II. Title: Cambridge reporter.
PS8613.R42E29 2006 971.3'040207 C2006-902684-X
1 2 3 4 5 10 09 08 07 06
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on recycled paper.
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To Rufus and Morris, who couldn’t care less
Contents
2 The Fascination of Main Street
4 Fun and Fear Before Television
9 What Winters We Had — Heroics on the Hills
10 A Child’s Christmas on Havill Street
20 No Steroids for the Terriers
21 George Recalls Scott’s Opera House
23 Isabella Wilson
24 More About Hespeler
25 A Scare for Hitler
26 All Aboard to See Their Majesties
27 Pop, What’s a Gentile?
28 The Palace and Jane Russell
29 The Great School Concerts
30 My Flying Father
31 Largo for Little Theatre
32 Father’s Obsession
33 The Air Raid Patrol
34 Victory
35 How Roger Ruined the War
36 More About Roger