The Wrong Side of Everything

A teenage rebel's crash course in manhood

Christ, where do I even start? My name's Tony Daner, and in 1966 I was sixteen years old and dumber than a bag of hammers. Living in Port Alberni, BC, which might as well have been the asshole of the universe as far as I was concerned. The whole damn town smelled like sulphur from the pulp mill, and that stench seemed to follow me around like my reputation, which was about as popular as a fart in church.

See, in Port Alberni, you were either mill trash like me, or you weren't. And if you weren't, well, you made damn sure everyone knew it. My old man, Buck Daner, who worked the green chain at APD Lumber Mill, came home every night looking like he'd been wrestling with a grizzly bear and losing. His hands were permanently stained with nicotine from a lifetime of smoking and disappointment, and he had this way of looking at me like I was just another defective piece of lumber that somehow made it past quality control.

"Tony," he'd say, cracking open a Lucky Lager after his shift, "you gotta learn to be a man in this world. Nobody's gonna hand you nothing on a silver platter." Then he'd take a long pull from his beer and stare out our kitchen window toward the mill smokestacks, like they held all the answers to life's mysteries. "You gotta take what's yours, fight for it if you have to. That's what separates the men from the boys."

Yeah, well, apparently what separated me from everyone else was my talent for screwing things up. I was like a one-man wrecking crew, except instead of demolishing buildings, I specialized in demolishing my own chances at anything resembling a normal life.

Take Holly Uancer, for instance. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that girl was something else. She was like a shiny new Cadillac parked next to a bunch of rusty old cars, which, coincidentally, was exactly what I was driving. Her dad was Dr. Uancer, had an office on 8^th Avenue, and their house up on Knob Hill might as well have been Buckingham Palace compared to our little shack near the railroad tracks on Roger Street.

Holly had this blonde hair that caught the light like spun gold, and when she walked down the hallways at Alberni District Secondary, it was like watching a movie star grace us peasants with her presence. Every guy in school wanted to ask her out, but most of us knew better. She was untouchable, like trying to catch moonbeams with your bare hands.

But did that stop me? Hell no. I was too stupid to know when I was beating a dead horse.

The thing about being from the wrong side of the tracks is that you spend most of your time trying to prove you belong somewhere else. So I'd skip classes, sometimes for whole weeks, and cruise around town in my '56 Ford, a two-door beauty with a 292 cubic-inch V8, four-barrel carb, Hurst shifter, and Walker dual mufflers that announced my arrival like Gabriel's trumpet. That car was my pride and joy, the one thing in my life that made me feel like maybe I wasn't a complete waste of space.

Frankly, I felt at home most when I was with the guys in the automotive shop out behind the main school. The standard dress for most of us was a black T-shirt and blue jeans. Breaks between periods found us in the parking lot, stealing drags on cigarettes and swapping BS.

But even our little kingdom of grease and chrome was getting invaded. There was this new breed showing up at school. The hippies, they called themselves. Jesus, what a sight they were. Instead of our respectable black T-shirts and Levi's, these freaks wore tie-dyed shirts that looked like someone had puked a rainbow all over them. The girls had flowers in their hair and skirts that went down to their ankles, while the guys grew their hair longer than most girls and talked about "peace and love" like it was some kind of religion.

The worst part? They were making us rebels look like choir boys. While we were sneaking smokes behind the shop class, these longhairs were puffing on joints in Mr. Henderson's Volkswagen van during lunch hour. Henderson, our English teacher, had gone completely around the bend, traded in his sports coat for peasant shirts and started talking about "expanding consciousness" and "questioning authority." His little microbus was parked behind the school like some kind of mobile den of iniquity, painted with peace signs and covered in bumper stickers that said things like "Make Love Not War" and "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out."

The whole world was going to hell in a handbasket, if you asked me. These hippies weren't just changing how kids dressed or what music they listened to; they were questioning everything. Authority, tradition, the whole damn system that guys like my old man had built their lives around. While we gearheads were still trying to prove we were tough enough to earn our place in the world, these flower children were saying the world itself was screwed up and needed changing. Made a guy feel like he was fighting yesterday's war with yesterday's weapons.

When I wasn’t at school, I'd stolen enough hub caps and loose change to pay for the engine work myself, which probably should have been a red flag about my character, but hey, a guy's got to make do with what he's got, right? Between my questionable activities, I'd found a weekend job at a boat engineering company at the dockyard at the bottom of Argyle Street. It was hard and dirty work. Cleaning up after machinists and welders, scraping barnacles, and hauling gear that weighed more than I did. But one thing about being from the wrong side of the tracks is that we knew about hard work.

My buddies, and I use that term loosely, were Brian Kowalski and Leo Brennan, two other rejects from the mill side of town. Brian's dad worked the same shift as my old man, and Leo's old man had been laid off so many times he'd started calling unemployment insurance his "pension plan." We'd hang out at the A&W Drive-in on 3rd Ave, nursing root beer floats and watching the rich kids cruise by in their parents' cars, feeling like wolves staring at sheep through a fence.

"Man, look at that," Brian would say, nodding toward some preppy kid in a brand-new Mustang. "Must be nice having daddy's money to burn."

"Yeah," I'd agree, but really I was looking for Holly's '64 Impala, hoping to catch a glimpse of her perfect profile through the windshield.

The Stones were big that year, "Paint It Black" was playing on every radio, and somehow that song became my anthem. Everything I touched seemed to turn to shit, so why not paint it black and call it art? The older folks in town hated rock 'n' roll, said it was corrupting the youth. Well, mission accomplished, I guess.

My chance came in November when the school announced the annual sock hop in the gymnasium. Now, I'd rather have eaten glass than show up to some school dance, but Holly was going to be there, and my sixteen-year-old brain figured this was my shot. Like David going up against Goliath, except David was an idiot and Goliath was everything I'd never be.

I spent what little money I had on a new shirt from Woodward's department store, white cotton with thin black stripes that I thought made me look like one of the Beatles. My hair was slicked back with enough Brylcreem to lubricate a Buick, and I'd borrowed my dad's bottle of Old Spice cologne, which I applied with the subtlety of a fire hose.

The gym was decorated with crepe paper streamers and balloons, trying to transform our sweat-soaked sports facility into something resembling romance. The DJ was playing Del Shannon and the Supremes, and kids were dancing like they'd seen on American Bandstand, all awkward moves and nervous energy.

And there she was. Holly Uancer, wearing a blue dress that made her look like an angel who'd decided to slum it with us mortals for the evening. She was with Brad Hutchinson, whose dad owned the Ford dealership and half the real estate in town. Brad looked like he'd stepped out of a magazine: tall, blonde, wearing a sweater that probably cost more than my dad made in a week.

I watched them dance to "The Way You Look Tonight," and it was like watching a fairy tale unfold. They moved together like they'd been born to dance, while I stood by the punch bowl feeling like a turd in a punchbowl, which, come to think of it, was probably an accurate metaphor for what was about to happen.

But I'd come this far, right? No backing down now.

I waited until the DJ put on a slower song, "Unchained Melody", and made my move. Walking across that gym floor felt like crossing no man's land, every step taking me deeper into enemy territory.

"Excuse me," I said, tapping Brad on the shoulder. "Mind if I cut in?"

The look Brad gave me could have frozen the Strait of Georgia. "Yeah, actually, I do mind."

But I was already looking at Holly, those blue eyes of hers wide with something that might have been surprise or horror. "Holly, would you like to dance?"

She glanced at Brad, then back at me, and I could see the wheels turning. Social calculation, like a computer figuring out the least embarrassing way to handle this situation.

"That's really sweet, Tony," she said, her voice as gentle as a nurse delivering bad news, "but I'm here with Brad."

"Come on," I pressed, because apparently, I enjoyed humiliation, "just one dance."

That's when Brad stepped between us, his chest puffed out like a rooster defending his henhouse. "She said no, mill boy. Why don't you go find someone more your speed?"

Mill boy. Like it was a disease you could catch.

"Why don't you go find someone who gives a damn about your daddy's money?" I shot back, feeling the familiar heat rising in my chest.

The next thing I knew, Brad's fist was introducing itself to my jaw, and I was returning the favour with a right cross that sent him stumbling backward into the refreshment table. The Punch went flying, cookies scattered across the floor, and suddenly every eye in the gymnasium was on us.

Teachers were running over, kids were screaming, and Holly was looking at me like I'd just strangled her pet poodle. In that moment, I realized I'd just confirmed everything everyone already thought about guys like me, that we were nothing but trouble, good for fighting and not much else.

"Tony Daner!" Vice-Principal Morrison's voice boomed across the chaos. "Out! Now!"

So I left. What else was I going to do? Stick around and watch Holly comfort her precious Brad while I got suspended? I walked out of that gym with whatever dignity I had left, which wasn't much, and climbed into my Ford.

The engine roared to life like a caged animal being set free, and I dropped the clutch hard enough to leave rubber on Burde St for half a block. The dual mufflers barked their fury as I shifted through the gears, pushing that 292 V8 harder than I should have, but not caring. Speed was the only thing that made sense anymore.

I drove through town like the devil himself was chasing me, on 10th Avenue. Fully aware that Kobb Hill, where Holly lived, was off to my right somewhere. I drove past everything that reminded me I didn't belong anywhere.

Eventually, I found myself at the boat launch, Sproat Lake, the place where kids went to park and make out, activities I had about as much experience with as brain surgery. The lake stretched out below me like black glass, reflecting the stars that seemed about as far away as my chances with Holly Uancer.

I'd bought a mickey of rye whiskey from old Pete Kowalski (Leo's uncle) earlier that week, and it was burning a hole in my glove compartment. Bootleggers were easy to find if you knew where to look, and being from the wrong side of the tracks meant you always knew where to look.

The whiskey burned going down, but it was a good burn, like it was cauterizing something inside me that had been bleeding for too long. I sat there in my car, windows down, listening to the night sounds and trying to figure out where the hell my life had gone sideways.

The radio was playing quietly, CKLG from Vancouver’s rock station, and they were spinning "Wild Thing" by the Troggs. Seemed fitting, considering I felt about as wild and untamed as a rabid raccoon.

My old man's voice echoed in my head: "You gotta be a man, Tony. Take what's yours."

But what was mine, exactly? A dead-end job at the mill? A reputation as the town troublemaker? A future that looked about as bright as the bottom of Sproat Lake?

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe my dad's idea of being a man, fighting for everything, taking what you want, never backing down, was just another trap. Maybe being a man wasn't about proving you were tough enough to take whatever life threw at you. Maybe it was about being smart enough to know when you were being an asshole.

I thought about Holly's face when Brad called me "mill boy," how she didn't say anything, didn't defend me, but also didn't laugh. There was something in her eyes that might have been pity, which was almost worse than hatred.

The truth was, I hadn't been trying to ask her to dance. I'd been trying to prove something. To her, to Brad, to the whole damn school. I'd been trying to prove I was worthy of something I'd never bothered to understand.

And when that didn't work, I'd done what Daner men always did. I'd thrown a punch and made everything worse.

The whiskey was making me philosophical, which was dangerous territory for a guy like me. But sitting there in the dark, looking out over that lake, I started thinking maybe there was a different way to be a man. Maybe it wasn't about taking what you wanted, but about becoming someone worth wanting.

Maybe it wasn't about fighting the world, but about fighting the parts of yourself that kept you trapped in the same old patterns.

I'd grown up thinking that being tough meant never backing down, never admitting you were wrong, never showing weakness. But what if real strength was admitting when you'd screwed up? What if being a man meant treating people with respect, even when they didn't respect you back?

The Stones came on the radio, "Under My Thumb", and I almost laughed at the irony. Here I was, completely under the thumb of my own stupidity, finally starting to see it.

I wasn't going to become a different person overnight. Hell, I'd probably screw up a dozen more times before I figured anything out. But maybe that was okay. Maybe growing up wasn't about having all the answers; maybe it was about learning to ask better questions.

As I sat there finishing my whiskey and watching the stars reflect in Sproat Lake, I made myself a promise. I was going to stop trying to be the man my father thought I should be and start figuring out what kind of man I wanted to become.

It was a start, anyway. And for a guy from the wrong side of everything, sometimes a start is all you've got.

The radio played on, mixing rock 'n' roll with the sound of the wind through the trees, and for the first time in a long time, I didn't feel like I was drowning in the smell of sulphur and disappointment.

Maybe Port Alberni wasn't the asshole of the universe after all. Maybe it was just home, and maybe that was enough.