Jackie Paper came no more

RIB’S RAMBLINGS

Mark Ribble

With warming temperatures on the horizon, I often think about summers at Point Pelee when I was a kid. I lived inside the park from 1961 to 1974.

Many friends in those days, were summer-only friends. Their parents rented a parcel of land on our property just south of the boardwalk and had their summer cabins there.

The families would show up near the end of June every year, and stay until Labour Day weekend, when they’d head back to Windsor or Detroit — to their homes.

Those friends formed the basis of my social development back then, apart from the friends I made during the school year.

My only break from those Windsor and Detroit childhood chums, was when I went to my weekly baseball games and practices.

Those city slickers introduced me to the Frisbee and Jarts, two often maligned outdoor games.

Jarts — or lawn darts — were eventually banned after some kid got impaled by one in the U.S.A.

When the Olsen family — who had the cabin closest to the road — arrived one summer with this flying disc and threw it back and forth, I was mesmerized. By the time they reached Point Pelee that year, Johnny Olsen and his family had become quite adept at flinging the disc they were calling Frisbee.

My mother — being the over-protective type — said she heard people were getting hit in the head with the plastic disc, so to be careful when playing with it.

The Olsens laughed at that notion, and let me throw the Frisbee around with them. Surprisingly, I wasn’t killed catching the disc and became pretty good at throwing it, despite my left-handedness.

One of the families, whose cabin was behind our house, brought out their Jarts game one July afternoon and the young people lined up alongside the older crowd, who were outside playing ‘coits’ — a game similar to horseshoes, photograph of an unidentified family, standing outside the Cedar Beach Drug Store, where you throw a piece of round rubber hose onto a horseshoe stake.

‘Coits’ was the adult game, while Jarts became the game of the teenagers and pre-teen group, of which I was a part.

I don’t remember ever coming close to getting hit with a lawn dart, but do remember getting beaned with a coit once or twice.

My parents often played cards with the adults at night, under the light of a coal-oil or kerosene lantern.

As a 12-year-old, I remember not fully understanding when those childhood friends stopped coming to our property for the summer. As a kid, you expect that sort of thing will go on forever.

When I think of those days it reminds me of the line from Puff the Magic Dragon, where it says, “And then one day it happened. Jackie Paper came no more.”

My Jackie Papers — Steve Maillioux, Jimmy Reid, Mark Howell, and even Johnny Olsen, came no more after the summer of 1973. I often think of them. I know that Steve passed away years ago, but the other three will remain a mystery for the rest of my days.