A Buried Sin, a Hometown Reckoning

The Nearly New thrift store is located on Ninth Street in Brandon, Manitoba, beside the Real Canadian Superstore and just a big parking lot away from the Velvet Dip ice cream parlour. I always visit the store when I go back to Brandon. In recent years my Manitoba visits have been more or less annual. As I age, the call of my Prairie hometown seems to become more insistent. There are familiar pleasures to be found at home. Particular hazards, too.

This week Nearly New had menswear on at half price, so I popped in, searching for shirts. Three volunteer women were at the front counter, taking payment (cash only), folding purchases into a colourful and unpredictable assortment of bags. One asked if I was the owner of the shiny, vintage Z28 convertible parked at the curb, shaking her head in disappointment when I pointed out my ride, chained to a signpost with a bike lock. There followed a lengthy exchange of banter, an integral part of thrift store charm that rarely occurs when minimum-wage staff are being watched by dictatorial floor managers. A chorus of “Hey Big Spender” broke out as a three-dollar shirt was folded and bagged up for me.

Chatter turned to the weather and the random spells of wildfire smoke. I mentioned that I had just returned from Clear Lake and the town of Wasagaming, an hour north in Riding Mountain National Park. It is where our family once spent summers, and has now become for me a nostalgic destination worthy of three days’ drive in a rented vehicle. I mentioned that we had once had a cottage at 212 Ta-Wa-Pit Dr. One of the volunteers, a woman named Val, replied that her family had owned the place at 200 Ta-Wa-Pit, only a block away from ours.

“Did you ever get in trouble up at the Lake?” Val asked.

Oh, did we ever, I laughed.

Val looked at me with a pleasant smile and eyebrows slightly raised. “Break and enter?” she asked.

I stared back at Val. 200 Ta-Wa-Pit Dr., she'd said — on the corner of Ta-Wa-Pit and Lily. I don't know exactly how I looked at that moment but can only assume that my eyes must have popped open like a pair of handcuffs while my jaw dropped like a judge's gavel. Satisfaction over my three-dollar shirt find vanished. Standing on either side of the counter, regarding each other, were the victim and the perpetrator of a crime committed 52 summers earlier. It is not unusual for a thrift store to offer up relics from the past. But in your old hometown there is always the chance, however slight, that you will encounter your own long-neglected skeletons.

It was early summer of 1973. I was weeks away from my 15th birthday and already embarked on an unfortunate path. An eagerness to latch on to the waning days of the counterculture had led me to experiment with drugs and, mostly, alcohol. As a kid who was never capable of beating anybody up, I had determined that one way to avoid being on the receiving end was to be a badass in various other ways. Thus, I had become part of a little group of delinquents, launched an incipient drinking problem and caused enough trouble to get the boot from one school and make at least one juvenile court appearance.

Somehow my parents still had sufficient trust in me that week to allow me to come up to Clear Lake a day earlier than other family members, delayed for reasons of work or school. I had opened up the cottage and was enjoying the relative solitude when I was surprised to see a few of my ruffian pals strolling into the yard. Had I mentioned I would be up here alone? Probably. One of them had a bottle, and with some trepidation I invited them into the family retreat.

The bottle was passed and gradually emptied. My friends had neglected to bring food for their camping weekend, and there wasn't much at our place. Conversation turned to where supplies might be acquired. A friend's family had a cottage down the road, I mentioned. We could go ask for some groceries. Alas, no one was home. But a window was open. We'll just go in, we thought — we can always replace anything we find later.

Back at our place with some eggs and sundries, we noted that none of the neighbours seemed to notice, or at least object to, our window caper. And if one window was open, might not others be?

Thus the little crime spree began. We broke into the cabin beside ours and the one beside that. We didn't specifically leave a trail of bread crumbs leading to 212 Ta-Wa-Pit. But master criminals we were not. Little of value was found but pointless vandalism was committed. I was told that after I left one of the cottages, one of my companions found the family lawnmower and ran it over their shag carpet. We all thought this was pretty hilarious.

Ultimately it would be Val's cottage, our fourth and last target, that proved our undoing. In her family's garage, we pried open a locked freezer to find many choice cuts of frozen meat. My pals carried off numerous packages to their campground site. I went back to our family cottage.

The denouement happened in my absence. Val's family had returned shortly after the break-in and reported the thefts. An APB was issued for the frozen steaks. Soon after, an off-duty cop saw my friends at their campsite, reportedly attempting to cut a frozen roast with an axe. One of them jumped on a bike to make a getaway and promptly ran into a tree. Arrests were made.

The next day, after my parents had arrived at our cottage, I returned from a bike ride to find them sitting, stunned and grim. The police had just left. My confederates had ratted me out. Mom and Dad were faced with the fact that, at the tender age of 14, their youngest son had graduated from the likes of shoplifting and trespassing to breaking and entering.

We were ultimately charged with three counts each. The maximum juvenile court fine was a whopping 25 bucks per count. Added to that was restitution for damages — as I recall, it came to $100 each.

Money can only do so much. Fifty-two years later, Val tells me without evident malice that the incident was a deeply unsettling violation of her family's private sphere. It helped a little to see justice done, she says — the money did go some way toward that.

For my parents this was the latest and largest blow to their conception of our family values, not to mention their children's potential trajectory. They were, by any measure, kind, loving, wonderful caregivers. Regardless, here I was, off the rails and plunging into God knows what. My mother in particular carried to her last days a sense that my delinquency represented a failure on her part. Later I often strove to reassure her that my actions were purely my own and that her influence undoubtedly led me back to a sober, law-abiding adulthood, more or less (I have received speeding tickets and library fines). But I know that deep wound never completely healed.

My career as a wayward juvenile would continue for some years. But my later crimes were mostly of the vice squad variety, i.e., alcohol and drug possession. I never again committed any act that made me, and those close to me, so ashamed as did those break-ins.

Who was that 14-year-old kid, so cavalier about misbehaviour and petty violence? There has been significant research done on the teenage brain and how it differs from the adult. I don't want to let myself off the hook. But my world view, such as it was, was indeed different then. It wasn't just the thrill-seeking and eager transgression — I recall as well my fascination with the books of Carlos Castaneda and the magical version of reality they purported to document. Since I would eventually become a complete killjoy about any kind of magical woo-woo stuff, it suggests I was in some ways a very different person as a teenager. In other ways, though, I seem to have changed little.

They say becoming a parent awakens one to the pain you caused your own parents. I never had that experience but can confirm that awareness dawns upon the adult mind even without the aid of offspring. When I quit drinking at the age of 24, the sweetest part was telling my parents the news and hearing the joy and relief in their voices. In the years that followed I tried my best to make up for the pain I caused them.

Standing here at Nearly New, Val is not demanding from me any similar emotional restitution. She appears to recognize that the senior citizen standing before her is not exactly the kid who smashed the wall of her family's precious security so long ago. She is only too happy to sell me a lovely three-dollar shirt and let the past sit quietly on the racks and shelves of this second-hand emporium.

As for me, I can only think of Thomas Wolfe's famous admonition: You can't go home again. In fact, you can. But be prepared to meet yourself, or selves — the long-abandoned personas you'd hoped to leave behind. In your old haunts, your ghosts await.

[Editor’s note: Do you have a story to share about returning to your childhood home? Please do in the comments below.]