Mom & Dad bought me for a fistfull of Drachmas from a Greek restauranteur, Zeno, who told them that he'd found me under one of his tables of his cafe on the outskirts of Athens when he was closing-up shop one evening. I don't have much of a recollection from those days, apart from the ever present smell of the fish, and the legions of feral cats that would come skulking around for scraps.
We arrived in Edmonton, Canada in 1981, and it wasn't a month after enrolling in school that my parents put me to work with one of the local chimney sweeps. My boss would pick me up from the school bus stop, and we'd work well into the night every weekday - I was lucky to get leftovers from dinner before heading-off to bed, but Mr. Orlioni would usually save half of his tuna sandwich for me. It was always tuna.
I remember him saying, "Blake... you shoulda be saving it until-a-break-time or you gonna get too slow on da job, eh?" as I was stuffing my face with the ever-so-welcome mayonaisse and tuna smeared on Wonderbread.
For three years I worked every day after school - from four 'till seven or eight o'clock at night. The pay was a buck and a quarter an hour, and I was allowed to keep two dollars a day for myself.
$10 / week allowance was considered better than average among the other kids of my neighbourhood, and I have fond memories from the summer before grade two - smoking cigarettes and comparing comic books with my chums by the river. I had a smokers cough even before taking-up smoking from breathing-in all the chimney soot at work each day!
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