Trailer Park Boys

Typically on Friday afternoons we would skip out on our regular Nintendo playing so we could get Dennis' car packed up with all our gear for our weekend excursion to their Uncle's trailer. Mainly clothes, sleeping bags, food and beer, that way when Dennis came to pick us up after work we were ready to roll.

The trailer was up in a small northern town named Midland, about an hour or two north of Toronto. Smith's Trailer Park was the name of our destination. Jerry's uncle actually had two trailers side by side so us boys actually got our own trailer to stay in for the weekend. All we really did up there was drink, smoke, swim, and try to meet girls, which was almost effortless seeing as we were the "fresh meat" of the park. Plus being city boys with some swagger and attitude and unique looks only helped us out in our quest for the ladies. We would usually take a drive on Saturday or Sunday afternoon out to Penatanguishine, to visit Jerry and Dennis' cousin "Kevin" who was a patient in the mental health facility. That was always interesting to say the least.

Jerry and I were only 15 but it wasn't uncommon for each of us to put back 12-24 beers a day every weekend we were there. The park also had a small arcade with vending machines so we hung out there quite a bit during the days. Plus it was always a good place to meet girls. Eventually I became romantically involved with Jerry's cousin, who's father owned the very trailer I was using to seduce her in every weekend. Looking back on this it seems like I was up to some risky business, but back then I was blind to that fact.

One day we were bored so we decided to venture into town and see if we could find anything interesting. We had heard murmurings of a shopping mall in town so we opted to see if we could locate it, which we did with ease since the town wasn't much of a town at all, it was more so just a small strip if road with a few businesses occupying it. This was the smallest mall I had ever been inside of in my life. It literally took 5 minutes to walk from one end of it to the other. There were really no stores of interest there whatsoever, until we came across a small booth in the far end of the mall.

This booth actually had some cool pins and patches of bands, including some thrash and hardcore bands much to my surprise. They also had the old typical iron on transfers for t-shirts like most t-shirt booths in malls did. As I flipped through the pages of cheesy designs and bad quotes my eyes were caught by a very familiar image....Anthrax's "Spreading The Disease" album cover. Needless to say within minutes I was the proud owner of a new kick ass shirt!

We had a lot of good times up there that summer and it was really our only escape from the working life each weekend for 3 months straight. By the end of the summer I had broken up with Jerry's cousin so things became a bit awkward when we were up there, but regardless it was an important place for me and another factor in defining the man I was growing up to be...

Penatang Mental Health Hospital