theMediaman.com

Not entirely sure what I want to say here, I figured it was important to at least document that my parents have sold the house.

One of my very earliest memories was driving down Belcourt Ave. for the first time in 1979 and seeing the Mayflower moving truck outside the house. Well, it was a green truck, anyway. At three-and-a-half years old, I couldn’t read that well, I had to be told later in life that it was a Reimer truck.

I’ve grown up in that house, and had all of my “Wonder Years” moments while living there. I could walk through it in a black-out without feeling for the walls. I’ve seen the Family Room move from the basement, to the upstairs, to the new addition. We’ve had one dog, four hamsters, and several cats over the last 26 years. We’ve had a Ford Fairmont station wagon, a Ford Pinto, a Honda Civic, two Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera’s and a Cutlass Supreme, a Plymouth Reliant, Dodge Shadow, Chevy Lumina, Ford Taurus… and I think one or two more that I’m forgetting. I’ve hidden secret stashes of Jos Louis, chocolate cookies and other goodies everywhere from under my bed to the “Old Clothes” boxes in the basement storage.

I learned that I play hockey left-handed, and I’m a “goofy-footed” skateboarder on Belcourt, even though I’m right-handed.

I probably still haven’t seen more movies in any one theatre as I’ve seen at Stinson theatres in downtown Barrie, where the floors are eternally sticky, audio technology was late to arrive (like Dolby Digital, or even stereo), and if you’re over 5′5″, it’s more comfortable to dangle your legs over the seat in front of you than try to cram your legs in behind the row of chairs.

We had Ultra-Pong, a 2600 and 8-bit NES. We had a Vic20, Commodore 64, 386/16 MHz and a Pentium 133.

Barrie had a population of 43,000, and is now in excess of 125,000 (on paper but more likely closer to 150,000).

All of this in only one house.

Even though I’ve lived away from Barrie for just about ten years now, and my “permanent address” is in Richmond Hill, I still feel “at home” when I go back to Barrie, and especially, back to Belcourt.

I rip on Barrie all the time, for being a small town that has no idea how to grow, how the residents are mostly rednecks, and the civil engineers who designed everything from the pink, “Lego” buildings to the parking lots without enough entrances to the general city layout. Hell, the last post in my Blog was how Barrie is not big enough to be considered an “International City”, even though it’s listed alongside London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Philidelphia, Tokyo and Johannesberg on the Live 8 web site. But it’s also the town where I grew up and is the backdrop for many of my fondest memories.

The announcement that my parents were planning to sell the house was a long time in coming. My mom, in particular, was quite sick and tired of all the snow that Barrie gets (I, on the other hand, often miss it!). So, I’ve had some time to adjust to the news before the ultimate sale. That still doesn’t mean that it’s sunk in yet.

There’s a lot of things that I want to do one more time before saying good-bye to Barrie, like walking down to Johnston Beach, having dinner at “The Original Mom’s” where both of my brothers and I have worked, riding my bike on trails that have long been paved over, and play street hockey.

I’m sure it won’t be as difficult to leave Barrie behind as I’m predicting. The fact remains that I’ve never ‘lived’ anywhere else, even if I haven’t been living in Barrie since 1995. So, I don’t really know how easy or difficult it will be.