I was twenty one when I returned from a vacation in the Caribbean. At a sports club where my family had membership, The Winnipeg Winter Club, I would go for a game of badminton or tennis.

Mostly we figure skated, that's what my Mom had us doing. Skating around, making figure eights. For ten years we had been members. I took my first dive off the high diving board in the swimming pool when I was eleven years old.

Now ten years later, my Life had changed directions so many times I hardly had a sense of presence. I never really saw myself as an individual identity. No question about it, I was a character, but I still never saw myself as an individual.

I had this girl friend Valerie Frampton. She was so absolutely sexy. She eventually became Winnipeg's first Go-Go Girl. At the Town and Country she would Dance on the side of the stage. She wore a tasseled halter top, and matching bottom. Women couldn't go into beer parlors back then. Valerie was the smash of the town.

The boys would hoot and holler and Valerie danced to a flashing array of bright lights.

I was her first Lover and we continued to be Lovers for another two years. Then along came the flashing lights.

The bright lights of show business reflected in Valerie's flashing eyes. I lost her to the glit and glamour. She just disappeared from my Life.

Twenty years later she would find me, and lose her fight with cancer two months later, and disappear again.

She had been the Mistress of some 80 year old Ambassador from Lebanon or somewhere. His name was Joe, and I couldn't look at Vallerie without seeing her under those dancing lights.

And here she was dying, attached to some old goat named Joe.

Then she died.

Twenty years earlier, when Vallerie first left me, I met the cutest little girl at the Winnipeg Winter Club.

She was a dark-eyed, tall, slim, little Lady with a dimpled flashing smile. She was the Waitress in the dining room. I had mentioned that my birthday was in three days, September the twenty-first. She said she was celebrating her eighteenth birthday on the exact same day.

"I am Paul," I said, "we should get together and celebrate both our birthdays."

"I am Sharon," she blushed, and said sure she would like to.

That little girl had no idea what a ride she would be going on when she jumped on my bandwagon. I not only dance to a different drummer, I dance to a whole different band. And so we started off with a bang.

Here was this sweet little girl from the small country town about sixty miles south of Winnipeg, and he she was, having an argument with her room mate. The resulting decision was that Sharon had to find another place to stay. The room-mate's boyfriend was a mouthy guy. He was the one forcing the play.

So I got Richard and a friend to help move Sharon out. It took about half an hour or so and all the time this mouthy guy is saying bad things about Sharon and throwing me in there too. He even went so far as to say he knew I had a yellow streak down my back.

After the last stick of furniture was loaded on the truck I went back inside.

This guy Irving, starts at me again, telling me to get out. I just walked up to him, feinted a left jab and wacked him with a right cross. He flew backward over the dresser knocking everything over and came back just about to utter something when I punched him again. This time he stayed down, in the corner of the room. Then I walked out.

Sharon moved into a real nice rooming house with a nosy Landlady. Back then you couldn't have a guy in your room, let alone have him stay overnight. But I would be there, in the middle of the night, locked in an embrace, with my sweet Sharon.

She was a German girl, the oldest in a family of twelve. The small town she came from boasted a sign that said they had running water. Her father Ed, was a hard working nice guy, trying to keep up with a new baby every second year or so, and a dozen mouths to feed. Her mother Eve was an unusually slim nice Lady who kept washing diapers for the first twenty years or so. She was an excellent cook and we would drive down there every third weekend or so, and have an afternoon snack which was more like a meal.

I am surprised no one is fat in that family because they make the best food you can eat. The best jam, the best bread, and always fresh. With a family of twelve, you always have fresh bread. And the best gravy, and the best chicken, and the best potatoes and you name it... the best.

For a few years Sharon was my main squeeze. A most delightful Lady.

Now 'other' things are happening in my Life at this particular time as well.

I was working for the railway on the Dining Car, and I took up a part time job as a vacuum salesman for a company called 'Compact'. We would sell the vacuum cleaner to someone and if they gave us the name of another person and that person bought a vacuum cleaner, the first person would get twenty dollars. And if they sent us to see ten other people, and they all bought a vacuum cleaner, then their vacuum cleaner would be paid for. And they could keep getting those twenty dollar bills to spend as they wished just as long as they gave us the name of a person we could make the exact same deal with, and that person bought a vacuum cleaner.

Richard and I both sold vacuum cleaners like crazy. Everyone in the company drove around in a new convertible. Richard had a black Chrysler convertible, and I had a white Parisienne.

Richard had a friend John Berry who was a hot shot salesman selling Queen Anne Cookware. He had a white Ford convertible. We all had money, nice clothes and fancy cars.

And we were on a role. Life had changed so drastically in the last few years so success was kind of foreign to us.

Rick and John knew this guy Ken Lieshman, who was a relatively successful guy in his own right. He had a sexy red-headed big bosomed Wife, and some very nice children. About six of them.

Ken had knowledge about gold being shipped from the gold mines in Ontario, to the Mint in Ottawa. First the gold came to Winnipeg International Airport, then it was transferred to a big plane and moved to the Mint.

We hatched a plan to relieve them of their gold. And we did too. Got eight bars of pure gold. Got away with it and all.... but only for a week or so. I will tell you about that later.

While we were still in the planning stage, Ken, his Wife Alva, myself and Sharon went out for dinner and cocktails. We had a great time, and in the course of the evening, Ken made some direct comments about our plan. I had not told Sharon anything, and I would not have.

But well, you know, it was a grand scale plan, and it was neatly structured so we discussed it openly in front of the girls.

That was the one big mistake I made. Not that I knew it at the time, but that mistake would come back to haunt me terribly.

About a month later, with everyone in place, the gold bullion at the airport mysteriously disappeared.

No one there knew quite what had happened to it, and they thought they had simply misplaced eight hundred pounds of gold.

I didn't stick around, and I packed everything and headed off to Vancouver. I checked in at The Blue Boy Motel, a fancy new place, that was still under construction. I had my dog Dusty with me.

Throughout all my Life I would have a dog or two. Dusty slept in the car and I stayed in the Motel.

About a week later, Rick and John arrived. We were in great spirits. We still had the gold, not that we knew exactly what to do with it, but we would figure out something.

John didn't have any luggage, so I gave him mine. That was my second big mistake. The luggage had my name and address in Winnipeg on the tags.

When the Police kicked down his door and arrested him, the tags on the luggage led them straight to my place, where my little Miss Sharon was living.

Actually it was her place. And we had sort of split up. Well she was in Winnipeg, and I was in Vancouver.

The big Policemen terrified Sharon, and told her that they had picked me up for shoplifting in Vancouver, and that I had implicated her in the gold robbery. They also said that if she didn't come clean, she would be going to jail just like me.

Poor Sharon.

In the movies you see the Police slapping a guy to get him to start talking.

With Sharon, they had to slap her to get her to stop.

She told them everything, and even filled in the blanks.

I was washing my car outside my office in Vancouver on a gorgeous sunny Spring morning when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police pulled up beside me. They were extremely polite, and asked me if I could come and identify some luggage that they had.

I said I would just step inside to tell my secretary that I was going to be away for a bit, but they wouldn't let me go anywhere.

Soon I was on a big jet plane heading back to Winnipeg with Rick and John... in hand cuffs along with some of our finest Mounties.

Their star witness against me was my Sweetheart Sharon. We all got out on one hundred thousand dollars bail and waited for the coming trial.

There is an interesting legal technicality in Canadian Law that says a wife can not testify against her husband.

One day before the trial, Sharon and I got married. I would try every legal maneuver but in the end, it was Crow Bar Hotel.

The trial took a few weeks, and there were some surprises for everyone. We will talk about that later.

In the end, Richard and John got three years apiece, and I was held over on a hairline technicality. For two years I would argue my case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

But at the time, my new Wife and I decided to go to Niagara Falls for our honeymoon. It wasn't like normal honeymoons. For starters, we hitch hiked all the way there and back. It was probably the best of times we ever had. At night we slept in our sleeping bag right beside the falls in an area that was blocked off so no one would tumble over the edge. In the morning I climbed a tree with all our gear and hide it in the tree top. One night we returned to find Police cars, flashing red lights and a rescue team about to go over the edge. They thought we had either jumped or fallen to the rocks below. I wanted to leave right there and then, because my bail was on the condition that I didn't leave the city of Winnipeg.

But I edged up to the crowd and asked what was going on. They had our gear spread out and I made a judgement call and told them it was mine. They had this guy there who rescued people out of the water and he was rather famous for doing that. Evidently some people get it into their head that it must be a neat trip to go over the falls in a barrel. I guarantee you that if you ever see Niagara Falls up close, you don't even want to fly over in a plane.

Anyway they were really nice to us, and told us about the dangers of going past the barricades. We were two kids on our honeymoon, so they gave us back our things and left us alone.

Our whole marriage was kind of like that, one adventure after another. We hitch hiked back to Winnipeg and I enrolled in the Manitoba Institute of Technology, taking Basic Electronics.

The Lawyers argued the legal points of my case for another year.

In the month of November, the following year, a decision from the Supreme Court of Manitoba handed down its decision. I was guilty of conspiracy and theft of the eight hundred pounds of gold bullion.

It was lock up time. So I kissed my Wife, and headed off to jail. My Lawyer, the famous Harry Walsh took the case on to the Supreme Court of Canada.

I lost there as well, and three months later, I was transferred to Stony Mountain Penitentiary. Sharon wrote me a letter every single day.

She was there for me, every single day.

I would visit that institution twice.

She wrote me a letter every single day.

Each perfumed letter was sealed with a round lipstick kiss.

You have no idea what it is like to be buried in thousands of tons of concrete and steel, and receiving this reassuring message of a waiting promise.
A lot of those guys had no one. Sometimes you could hear someone crying. Agonizing pitiful sobs, drifting down the open ranges. It was a horrible place.

A violent terrifying, extremely tensefull, horrible place.

My silly ways made me a resident twice. We used to call it the Crowbar Hotel. That's next..