1967: A Coming of Age Story

1967: A Coming of Age Story is the story of one year in Richard Doornink’s life, from September, 1966, through until August, 1967, as “Ricky” tries to settle into life in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. It’s both a memoir of a bygone era as well as an attempt to capture and understand elusive memories from earlier years of Ricky’s childhood. Yorkton is on “pause” during the Wednesday afternoon when the family arrives from Clear Lake, Manitoba (a favourite summer vacation spot for Manitobans). A travelling salesman, Ricky’s father has big plans, although Yorkton hardly seems like the place where a salesman can make much of a career impact. Ricky’s moving to Yorkton means leaving behind grandparents, family, and friends, as well as a three-bedroom house, complete with a backyard and garage in suburban Winnipeg, to live in a three-bedroom apartment in a place where they know no one.

Although Ricky freely admits that he’s not the kind of kid who can easily go up to another and say “Hi, do you want to play?” (p. 8), on the first Sunday of his arrival in Yorkton, he meets his new best friend, Mark Watson, and he’s thrilled that, finally, there’s someone he can talk to, besides his sisters. In one of life’s bizarre coincidences, Mark Watson is also from Winnipeg, and his dad is also a salesman for a well-known confectionery company. Ricky is used to having a fair bit of freedom outside the house, but Mark’s mother is fiercely protective of her boy and is full of warnings, always certain that trouble of some sort will befall him. Despite their friendship, Ricky comments that Mark “was like having a little brother, always making sure he was ahead so you could pull him out of the danger he couldn’t see coming.” (p. 59)

School is the centre of Ricky’s life in this new place. Being “the new kid” is not really new for him as he had changed schools twice in Winnipeg. When one of his classmates hears Ricky pronounce his last name, he is promptly nicknamed “Donkey” and has to live with that indignity. Saskatchewan is a province where “Rider Pride” is strong, and Ricky learns quickly that his allegiance to Winnipeg Blue Bombers football team is not tolerated by fellow classmates. But the school days pass quickly, and, as the story proceeds, the author evokes the social and academic highlights of elementary classrooms during the 1960’s: the Halloween party (the classroom being decorated with paper chains), Remembrance Day observances (complete with the terror of having to memorize lines from “In Flanders Fields”), the Valentine’s Day classroom card exchange and dance (boys on one side of the gym, girls on the other, although Ricky does manage a dance with his crush, Debra), and, as the date of Canada’s Centennial approached, the Centennial projects that were the focus of classroom activity during 1967.

Life outside of school for a pre-teen boy in small-town Saskatchewan also involves sports: he is thrilled when his father drives him all the way to Regina to see a Roughriders game at the team’s 1960’s home, Taylor Field. Like his schoolmates, Ricky plays hockey after teaching himself to skate, and, in spring, baseball is the only game in town. Unlike most of his teammates, Ricky’s gear is purchased at the annual hockey equipment swap event, and, in order to get a baseball glove, he knows that “he had to ask Dad at exactly the right time; when work was going well, when I wasn’t in trouble, when he was in a good mood.” (p. 138)

The Doornink family says grace before every meal, regularly attends Sunday services at the local Presbyterian church (sitting in the front pew), and the children are enrolled at the Bible Study classes provided by the minister’s wife. But despite the appearance of middle-class respectability, we see that this is a family with serious problems. To start, there are financial difficulties. When Ricky and Mark go to the local school yard to play catch, Mark changes into his “getting-dirty clothes”. Ricky wonders: “Getting-dirty clothes?” (p. 11) He doesn’t have enough clothing to change twice in one day. In order to register for the local curling league, Ricky’s mom has to wrangle the money from her husband. He won’t let her go out to work, and, for her, there’s nothing “to do except take care of the kids.” (p. 44) Social isolation weighs heavily on her; for all intents, she is a single mom much of the time while her husband is out on the road, hoping to “rebuild the territory and then get promoted to Toronto, where the ‘big money’ was.” (p. 8)

When Dad is home, the parents are fighting constantly. Everyone is constantly on edge, anxious not to aggravate his hair-trigger temper. The parents’ anger at each other finds another outlet: routinely punishing their children’s misdemeanours by hitting them, Mom using a hairbrush and Dad using his bare hands on their naked butts. On that car ride to Taylor Field in Regina, Ricky drops his dad’s cigarette lighter on the car floor. Both Dad and Ricky try to retrieve the lighter (while the car is still driving down the highway), and, when Ricky sees the lighter on the car floor, Dad presses his foot against the boy’s hand “against the lighter, the red tip still hot enough to do its job”. (p. 29) Cruel and abusive behavior, but to Ricky and his sister, Red, this is normal.

From time to time, Ricky has brief memories of another time in the family’s life, a time when Dad wasn’t part of the family portrait. Over time, the weight of those memories accumulates, and, finally, Ricky realizes that the man he knows as Dad is not his biological father. After his parents have yet another epic fight, his sister, Red, fills Ricky in on the backstory to their lives: their mother had been married before, and, against his parents’ wishes, Dad married their mother rather than his girlfriend in Holland. Mom had little luck with men; Ricky and Red’s father cheated on her and a divorce resulted. His butt still stinging from his most recent round of punishment, Ricky decides that he will take the bus to Winnipeg and find the man named Richard, his bio-dad.

Borrowing a $20 bill from his dad’s roll of cash, packing a few items of clothing, Ricky heads for the bus depot, and, once there, gets on the bus. Arriving in Winnipeg, he walks from the bus station to Jeanne’s Bakery, the source of birthday cakes for thousands of Winnipeggers, past and present, and asks for the woman known to be his bio-dad’s new wife. She knows who he is, instantly: “You’re little Ricky, aren’t you? You’re the spitting image of Richard. Polish through and through.” (p. 242) Not Dutch, as the surname, “Doornink” suggests. June makes a phone call, closes the bakery, and drives to the small house in which they live. As Richard tells his story, Ricky learns more than a few uncomfortable truths about Mom and Dad, and when Ricky is taken to stay overnight at the home of his Uncle Marc and Aunt Erna, he learns even more. His parents’ marriage had a rocky start, and his mom, who had Ricky when she was very young, was just too young to handle the responsibility of motherhood.

The next day, there’s another family reunion. This time, Dad is there, and, at the breakfast table, he tells Ricky the story of his childhood, of enduring seven years of wartime deprivation, the emotional pain of not knowing where his father and siblings might be, whether or not they were even alive. Recounting that story completely overwhelms him, and now, Ricky sees “a hunched-over man unable to control his feelings, crying like a baby. There isn’t much to be afraid of anymore. (p. 251) The next day, Ricky and Dad drive back to Yorkton, and, before they enter the apartment building, Dad admits to his failings as a father but reminds Ricky that what he did, he did for what he thought were the right reasons. That night, as Ricky falls asleep, he realizes that he is no longer afraid of Dad. The year has come full circle, and the final page of the story takes place on the first day of the new school year, in September of 1967.

As someone who was also an elementary school student during the years 1966-1967, the book’s descriptions of the time and place resonated with me. The author powerfully evoked reminders of life at that time through details such as having to wear a homemade Halloween costume over layers of clothing while carrying a pillowcase as a treat bag, the novelty of colour television, the thrill of making a Christmas list from the Eaton’s Christmas catalogue, and the excitement of Expo’67, the World’s Fair which celebrated Canada’s Centennial. As a Winnipegger, I enjoyed the many references to our home town: Old Dutch potato chips, the lunch counter at the old Woolworth’s store on Portage Avenue, and most importantly, Jeanne’s Bakery, whose birthday cakes are iconic. The popping sound of a Kodak Instamatic flash cube, the licorice taste of Black Cat gum, and television shows, such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E., firmly situate the story in the late 1960’s. While these references spoke to me, a post-war Baby Boomer, and gave the setting incredible authenticity, they might be downright puzzling to readers of subsequent generations.

Ricky Doornink is a “typical” pre-teen boy with a penchant for finding trouble if it doesn’t find him, but he’s a not bad kid at heart. He can be remarkably incisive, too, and, via italicized text, interpolated throughout the story, demonstrates real emotional intelligence. He learns to survive an emotionally volatile home situation and shows remarkable courage when he decides to run away from Yorkton and find his biological father. No one is idealized in this story; the adults all have issues of their own, and Ricky’s schoolmates are the typical range of abilities and personalities found in any elementary classroom.

At 256 pages, the book’s length is within range for a young adult novel, but it seemed much longer, probably due to the smallish font size in which it is printed. While 1967 is easy to read and might be intended for the young adult market, I don’t think that it would have great appeal to a reader much below the age of 16. But for someone with a taste for 60’s nostalgia or who came of age in 1967, it would be a pleasant trip back down memory lane and a good read.