Winnipeg, spring 1981(?)

During the spring of 1980 my friend from my only year at Sansome Jr. High, Victor P., taught me how to squeeze the rear brake on my CCM 5-speed bicycle and come to a circular stop in the loose gravel at each corner, while singing, "East Bound & Down" or the theme to The Dukes of Hazzard. 

In the spring of 1981 I turned my back to all that and willingly followed my Mennonite guitar-playin' buddy on a walking tour of the Music Shops of Main Street of Winnipeg.  

These were mostly Mel Bay affairs that smelled of mothballs. One had large "white" linoleum tiles and a sunken floor. It was lit with long, buzzing fluorescent bulbs. 

Needless to say I purchased my bass guitar elsewhere — Academy Road I think. I remember a guy in a trench coat pulling a short electric guitar from the hooks in the wall, plugging it into an amp and playing the bejeezus out of it. "Some day I'll play bass guitar like that,"

Or get a photo taken by our father, posing in my stinkiest baseball jersey in front

of the workbench using a 110 camera "won" in the Junior Sales Club of Canada.