Fab Foundations # 29: “A Second Wind for the Young Dude in Me”

(Personal reflections inspired by Beatles songs)

Song: “Magneto and Titanium Man”

Album: Venus and Mars

Release Date: May 1975

In grade school, I was one of the youngest in my class, so upon setting off for continuing education at North Adams State College (now the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts) in western Massachusetts on a late-summer morning in 1980, I was just several days past my 18^th birthday. Add 2 years, and I was still (barely) a teenager when I started my junior year a few weeks earlier than normal, having accepted an invitation to attend school at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, on an exchange program. I start this entry with this age-frame factoid, because it gives the remainder of the writeup the proper mindset for me to build on.

My time in Canada can best be described as rejuvenating. The two prior years in North Adams had exhilarating moments for sure, but in general those years tended to pull me away from….me. Freshman year, I was living off campus with four not-so-likeable roommates, who would end up being footnotes in my life (each of them difficult to connect with for a myriad of unique reasons, and now, as I think about it, they didn’t like each other either, which made it all the harder to make inroads). Sophomore year was a little better because I was on campus in a funky then-modern townhouse. My roommates were somewhat better too (one was a holdover from the year before).  But again, the comradery (or lack thereof) was nothing to write home about. I spent most of my free time that year hanging out with a group of seven guys I’d met the year before in another townhouse (address: TH #1). This was one tough crowd; we kept each other on our toes with wit and sarcasm. Yet, despite the bunker-mentality friendship among us, “TH1” gave me what I needed at the time, which was a distraction from a prolonged hometown-relation breakup (the only guy in the TH1 crew who could commiserate with me about this, Kurt, appropriately turned out to be a lifelong friend, which qualifies as my # 1 take-home from those two years – with #2 being my deep-dive into the music of the Who and # 3 being the education).

That North Adams environment worked for me for a spell, but it was not sustainable. Slowly I found myself drifting, losing touch with the Real Me; that young dude who exuded confidence only several years earlier. Much of that confidence was built on youthful innocence. Yes, it’s inevitable that we all lose this – at least to some degree - but for me it was happening too fast. Subconsciously, I knew that I needed to find the kid in me again before it was too late. This sixth sense gave me the courage that I needed to try something new, and so I researched foreign exchange programs (which was a relatively uncommon phenomenon in the early 80s) and landed myself in Canada’s Capital (I was also accepted to 3 other Canadian schools as part of a ‘package offering’ as well as one school in Australia…the latter – though very enticing - proving a bit too costly to travel to, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise).

Now, just because I was trying something new did not mean it was going to work. Sure, I knew Canada better than your ‘Average USA Joe’. Heck, I even knew Ottawa, having been blown away when I visited the city while on a family trip several years earlier (which gave Ottawa an upper hand over other Canadian locales when I had to choose the exchange-program school I wanted to attend). But living there was another matter.

If I thought more about it though I would have realized I was on to something, because one big reason I thoroughly enjoyed Ottawa upon my first visit - aside from the Rideau Canal, Parliament Hill, Embassy Row and the museums - was the warmth by which my family and I were greeted by my Mom’s (and in turn, my) second cousins, who managed the Lord Elgin Hotel downtown and gave us an insider tour of the city like no other. Turns out my relative’s demeanor was not the exception in Ottawa – or Canada for that matter – it was the rule. And so, what I did not realize as I packed my luggage for that Great White North journey was that I’d hit the jackpot with my underlying objectives; rediscovering the 1970s homeboy in me, including that wonderful young-dude innocence I was searching for.

Canada is a relatively young country by world standards…. it’s only been independent from Great Britain since 1867. One thing I learned that school-year in Ottawa was that the newness of the country is reflected in the youthful spirit of the people. I typically get a slight pull in the opposite direction when meeting people from long-established countries like France, Spain, Egypt, or Greece. At the risk of over-generalizing, people from those countries often come across as more aged and wiser to the ways of the world than I, which has its benefits, but also its drawbacks. Relative to this, I frequently find that, like most of us, folks from these older countries feel it necessary to go to bat for their nation’s past, in a patriotic sort of way. Every longstanding country has a storied past, some of it good, some of it not so much. Canada is on the low end of the storied spectrum, which works well for its people. In other words, there’s not a lot of baggage.

I showed up on the Carleton University campus at the beginning of a week-long orientation, which included a tug-of-war over the Rideau Canal (which months later I would be skating on) and a super-sized pub-crawl competition across the city. It was all a blast. The early arrival worked well in another way too: I would end up meeting my suite-mates and other fellow floor-mates at a casual clip, as they came trickling in steadily throughout the week. This gave me a chance to connect with most of them on a case-by-case basis.

The first person I met in any substantive way was my suite-mate Steve Vance, who gave me the immediate impression that my Ottawa relatives were not alone in their warm ways.  Steve was a lovable giant of a guy (still is) and loyal (almost to a fault). We hit it off right away, he, taking me under his wing as his “American” buddy, and me willing to listen before being heard (Canadians appreciate this from their neighbors to the South, particularly when we are on their home turf). As the week went on, I would connect with a handful of other guys who would prove to be longstanding friends, including Luc, Pat, Tom, and Ed. I’d have to write a dissertation to explain the chemistry that formulated between us in the subsequent weeks and months and years. For the sake of the standard length of these blog entries however, I’ll leave it at that.

One of the last suite-mates to arrive that week was Bob Mainguy, fancy cowboy boots and all. Within four years, the two of us would be travelling across Europe together for an entire summer, but in those first few days we were gauging each other out. One thing I homed in on while gauging was Bob’s meagre record collection; 5 or 6 albums at best. This was not because Bob could not afford records, it was because, well …. he had a lot to learn about music. I came to this conclusion pretty quickly after posing a few basic questions to Bob about his Rock & Roll interests, which got some very naïve feedback (to this day, we laugh about this gulf in our musical interests).

One album Bob had in his collection (the only one I remember) was Paul McCartney & Wings Venus and Mars. This piqued my curiosity, seeing as it was an album that I did not know much about by an extremely popular musician who I admired. I asked if I could pop it on the turntable. The music played in the background as we talked over it, but then a song got my attention. It was the 5^th cut on the disk; “Magneto and Titanium Man” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHz_7e7yluM ).  I remembered the song from somewhere in my past, and I liked it. I grabbed the album cover and proceeded to look at the inner sleeve, as I was always wont to do when listening to music I liked back in the day.

Frequently over the ensuing weeks, when visiting Bob in his room, I would pop that album back on the turntable, if only to listen to “Magneto and Titanium Man”. Something was stirring inside me. It was that something I’d left behind when I set off for North Adams two years earlier. What first came to light in this reconnect was the most obvious, relating directly to the song and its title: Comic books. Along with several of my closest friends back home, I was an avid comic-book collector for about 5 years, which ended abruptly (both physically and mentally) when I left home. One comic book I collected was the X-Men, and anyone who knows about this mutant group knows that Magneto is their most arch of arch-villains. I told Bob about my comic collection. He then told me about his.

That rekindling of my comic-book memories was just the tip of the iceberg because Bob, Steve, Luc and many other of my fellow dorm-mates turned out to be interested in most anything I had to tell them, and I willingly reciprocated the interest. There was no posturing. No grandstanding. No mind games. They got me into “poker dice” (one of the coolest competitive games I’ve ever played). I got them into the Who. They got me into a brand new Canadian game called “Trivial Pursuit” (man, I should have put stock in that one). I got them into wearing bandanas. They got me into Hull, Quebec City (Winter Carnival) and Arnprior. I got them into Boston, Vermont, and Cape Cod. They showed me how to crack open a bottle of beer on a fire hydrant. I showed them how to crack open a beer with my teeth (not recommended for you kiddies at home).

There was NHL Hockey to immerse into (which was part of the scene in North Adams too, but not quite as intense). Wayne Gretzky was king of Canada’s world at the time (looking back, it’s fascinating that he was often excluded as a player-choice in gambling pools because he was so prolific). The Bruins ended up with the President’s Trophy that year - which gave me bragging rights the whole season - but they would end up losing to the eventual Stanley Cup Champion New York Islanders in the playoffs. My conversations with my hockey-loving brethren - which included a mutually-rich understanding of NHL history - was extremely rewarding (several Montreal Canadien and Toronto Maple Leaf fans in the dorms were surprised that I knew so much about their teams). 

The young dude in me was back. The fact of the matter was, I still had quite a bit of it in me. Thankfully, I had been reinvigorated by my new-found friends. These Canadian buddies let me be myself.  Counter-intuitively, this helped me grow in many ways. I was released from the shackles of conformity and self-doubt. I could see clearly now. There would be no turning back.

Upon returning to Ottawa after winter break, I brought along my X-Men comic-book collection (~ 50 comics in all). First Bob, and then Steve, ate the entire series up in short order (I envied the fact that they could read the comics back to back, where I would have to wait a month for each release). Many years later it would be oh so cool to see this super-hero group explode on the big screen (side note: Stan Lee came up with the concept of an ostracized mutant group to subliminally point out the immorality of discrimination to the youth of the world. It worked for me).

Living on the Carleton University campus that year was somewhat like being in a comic book. I was the one guy in the entire complex from the States and I took this situation seriously, knowing I was representing an entire country with my presence. There was a lot interest in me. One guy called my “Yank”, another half-jokingly referred to me as the “F**cking American”.  For the most part I kept my “American” opinion to myself. Heck, I didn’t even like the term “American”. Some of my Canadian brethren felt that way too. “Aren’t we all Americans” a friend stated one time. She had a point. I found out Canadians got frustrated that people from the States knew little or nothing about Canada, where Canadians knew quite a bit about us (even the Canadian news had significant coverage of things happening in the States). And so, I listened. I believe I served my country well in the process.

Why do I discuss this all in my blog series? Well, it all ties into my 70’s upbringing, which is core to this blog site’s mission. Without that reawakening year in Canada, I would never have gained the proper perspective to roll something like this out.

Venus and Mars was an enjoyable revisit this week. Other songs I reconnected with on it were “Rock Show”- which has vocals in the bridge that may very well have inspired the cult-classic Rocky Horror Picture Show - and “Listen to What the Man Says” which may be the most overt (or even the only) song that Paul McCartney ever sang about God.

But as was the case all those years ago in Bob’s dorm room, it was mostly about “Magneto and the Titanium Man” this week. It’s a joy of a song to listen to. I recommend it, especially for you fellow comic-book lovers out there. Clearly, Paul McCartney was a comic-book fan too: Magneto was well known in comic circles, but not so the more obscure Titanium Man or Crimson Dynamo (another villain sung about in the lyrics of the song). 

What I got most out of listening this week, however, was the reassurance that the young dude in me is still alive and thriving. My Canadian experience is a big reason why.

- Pete

This entry is dedicated to all my Canadian Brethren.