Parties 1980-1990

So many parties. Where to start?

I suppose the really big ones only started after the divorce, in about 1980.

We had a list, a phone list, a dirty little rag-sheet used to sit by the phone, or sometimes taped to the kitchen counter, above the sock drawer.

When a party beckoned (parents out of town, say), we would work the list. Big black rotary phone, crooked into the neck. Dialing, dialing. A short, machine-gun message. Sometimes followed by a short list of others to tell. Sometimes not. These parties could quickly get out of hand.

Consider the math: 6 kids (Isolde was out of it by then): Rebecca and Sue had 60 friends. Johnny and Cand had 40 friends. Cass and I had 30 friends. Their friends had friends.

We tried to keep the parties from spreading upstairs. Not always successfully.

Sometimes, it was invitation only. We had a bouncer at the door. Marc Perron did that, sometimes.

Marc made the mixed tapes. I remember the master-mix: he worked for weeks on that. But there was always an open DJ request session. We didn't have a mixer, so we had to flip the vinyl pretty quick. Seems to me we used to cut in with a tape, while changing the record.

There were the rare fights. Josh broke something in the basement, once. Something Marc made. He was forcefully expelled.

We eventually moved the stereo onto the back porch, to make more room for the dancefloor.

Sometimes, mum acted as the bartender. Those were more "official" parties. Somehow sanctioned, but no less raucaus.

We evolved a ticket system: your beer went into the fridge in return for tickets, so you could be sure to have them when you needed them. Those that didn't bring beer could buy tickets at near cost. We always had an initial investor to supply the start-up.

Stubbies: was it that American beer that finally broke the stubby monopoly? Thor always drank it. The frugal drank the gold foil beer, with 6.5% alcohol and a dark smooth flavour.

Invariably, it seems, Suzanne Mills and David Desken were the last to leave. The two of them, standing in the living room at dawn, chuckling and telling jokes, while I collected the bottles from the street and mantlepieces.

We always made a little bundle bringing the empty beer bottles back to Haines.

Games of chance

When Jonny and I were at MIND and closest of friends -- oh, about '78-'82, or somewhere in there -- I spent hours just about every day at 4453. Massive amounts of tea were consumed. And games were played.

There was a period of months when we played incessant backgammon, tucked into a front corner of the living room. Such a lovely, mindless game, which becomes meditative after a while, a softly tumbling backdrop to meandering conversations.

And there was a much longer period when Grace endeavoured to teach us bridge -- usually three-handed, but there was often a fourth to be dragged in from some part of the house. Jonny and I never had quite the focus to become good at it, or to remember even the main bidding conventions. But it was cozy and convivial (sometimes we even lit wood in that coal-burning fireplace, with absurdly smokey results). And in Grace I found perhaps the first adult with whom I could just hang out.

(I don't think I've ever fully reckoned with the role that Grace played in that part of my life: genuinely kind and well-wishing, in some ambiguous zone that was neither parental figure nor friend, a standing invitation to think of myself as more of an adult, less of a kid. In that part of my life, I did much more growing up at 4453 than at home.)

The Kool Aid stand...

I remember endless days manning (childing?) the kool-aid stand. We waited, like hawks, during the lean periods. Staring up the street, in each direction, hoping that someone would come along. Perhaps stealing a little cup of ice-cold kool-aid.

Then we'd see someone. Someone approaching.

Up to the stand: proper now, straight.

"Glass of kool-aid for Oxfam?"

Ernest children. Tireless children.

We raised thousands of dollars over the years. Some people left 20s or even 50s. It was a donation system, and you could even have a glass for a penny if you'd wished.

Mum would wash the styrofoam cups in the washing machine.

We had a large red cooler with a little plug drain and would drain the cooler into glasses, with our thumbs.

Susie got her picture in the local paper one year, wearing a tube top. I was too young to understand the significance of this, for marketing, but we did a bumper year that year.

We must have started up the kool aid stand in the early seventies (Bangladesh). The last campaign was around the boat people from Vietnam, at the end of the 70s and perhaps into the 80s. I guess we must have given it up when the youngest ones (Cass and I) finally became punks, around '80 or '81.

That was around the time we started with the racoons...