Walkers Road part one

My Last (Only) Real Job

“Mr. Heffernan, a word.”
“Does it have to be now? It’s time to go home.”
“Please step into the office.”
It was 8:00 am, and I had just finished my shift.
“I hear you’re leaving us.”
“Yes, I gave my notice at the beginning of last week. I only have a few days left here.”
”Why? Haven’t we been good to you at Inland Publishing? Don’t you enjoy being an important part of our well-oiled machine?”
“Important? I work in the mail room! A chicken could do what I do. That’s beside the point, though. I’m simply following through on my plan. I auditioned a few weeks ago for a band that is backing up a well-known celebrity. I was offered the gig. Rehearsals start Monday of next week.”
“Hmm, okay, the best of luck to you.”
That last line is office slang for “Don’t let the screen door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

And So It Began

The name of the “celebrity” I spoke of was, and is, Dini Petty. I first became aware of her a few years previously as the CKEY traffic girl who flew a pink helicopter wearing a matching pink flight suit. 
Now, in 1974, she was into her second season as host of Sweet City Woman, a five-day-a-week afternoon interview show on CITY-TV. It was wildly popular in the Greater Toronto Area.
As a teenager, she could strum a guitar and sing folk songs. Now, at 28, she decided she’d give the music business a shot. 
Through a friend who had dabbled in band management, she was put into contact with drummer Jim Warnor and guitarist Art Hine. They agreed to form a band and set about finding two more musicians. A bass player named Rick Rabideau and I were hired. 
About Dini: She was cool to the max and absolutely hilarious. She and I became friends and went bar-hopping a few times to hear other bands. She drove a brand new twelve-cylinder E-type Jaguar, which we took out to the freeway a couple of times…… IT HAULED ASS. 
To prevent the newspaper gossip columnists from speculating about her new “romance”, she would introduce me to people as her mentally challenged brother. Each time, she would apologize to me afterwards if she could stop laughing long enough to do it. 
That was fine, it was just a joke, but I evened the score (all in good-natured fun) in an incident that I’ll describe later. 
It’s nobody’s business, but for the record, we were just hanging out. Nothing was going on. Not that I would have objected….

Changes

Jim lived with his parents in a house near Royal York Road and Eglinton Ave in the west part of Toronto. He had a large renovated basement that was perfect for rehearsing. It took me two buses and a subway to get there. We worked from 2 pm to 6 pm each afternoon, 5 days a week.
After four weeks, Dini decided she couldn’t cut it as a singer (I thought she was doing fine) and, by mutual agreement, left the band. But we weren’t going to let the whole thing go. Not after all that work. We hired a guy and a girl who had been in an earlier version of Walkers Road. Singer Helen Lewis and guitarist-singer Jon Casselman. They were talented and easy to work with. 

First Time Away From Home Longer Than Two Weeks

Finally, we got some bookings. Two weeks at a new hotel in Halifax, NS, and four weeks in one of Canada’s first Discos, the Altitheque 727, high above Montreal at the top of Place Ville Marie. 
After three or four weeks, I was eager to get home. With one week left, our agent asked us to go back out to Atlantic Canada for another six weeks. At first, I didn’t like the idea, but the money wasn’t bad, and I had fallen into the habit of sending more than half my pay home each week. Some easy math showed that when I did get back, I’d have enough money to buy a Mini-Moog synthesizer.
This was the first practical on-stage synthesizer, and it had just come on the market. I spent an afternoon mucking around with one at a Montreal music store.
This humble machine, with the dimensions of a medium-sized suitcase, was the beginning of a keyboard revolution. For a long while after that,  there seemed to be something new every month that blew everything else out of the water. Being a well-equipped keyboardist was going to be very expensive.
So this discipline that I didn’t know I had, this habit of watching every nickel and dime, would serve me well. It also made me an anomaly among my peers. I knew more than a few musicians over the years whose pay on Saturday night was just enough to reset their bar tab.

Score Tied One-One

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you about the day we left Toronto to drive to Halifax. 
Our two-week booking began on a Monday, but in order to deal with any contingencies, an arrival on Saturday seemed prudent. The drive time from Toronto to Halifax in those days was about twenty hours. With an hour for the time change and two hours for food, fuel, and pee stops, leaving around 1 pm Friday should have us arriving in Halifax by noon Saturday. 
We began gathering at Jim’s around noon. For some reason, we had to wait until 3 pm to leave. While we were waiting, we decided to watch Dini Petty’s show on TV.
Some context: Dini had a comedic alter ego, a Roller-Derby queen she called Zoom-Zoom Horowitz. Also, because Sweet City Woman was a phone-in show, Dini and I had an ongoing gag about an obscene caller.
That Friday, the show’s theme was unwed mothers. I got a wicked idea.
When people would phone in, they were screened as to what point they wanted to make. Then they were placed into a priority order for Dini to take the call.
I got through to the switchboard and said I was an unwed father. To the folks making the decisions, this was an interesting angle. With all of us, including me, watching the TV (there was no six-second delay), the phone on Dini’s desk rang. 
“Apparently, we have an unwed father on the line,” she said as she pressed a button on her desk.
“Hello?”
“Hi, I’d really like to have a go with you, zoom, zoom!” I said before I was cut off.
Okay, let me describe the TV room from which all of us were watching.
Screaming laughter, tears, two people literally rolling on the floor, I was wondering if my CPR training would be needed. It was so loud and chaotic that we missed Dini’s reaction.
Later, I was told that she said something like “That unwed father seems a little disgruntled.”
We arrived in Halifax fairly close to the time we predicted and were warmly welcomed by management and staff. This was a brand new hotel. It wasn’t even finished yet. 

Royal Treatment

Check this out: We got half price on anything in the restaurant. Also, we were treated with respect. The management even made a point to address us by name! There were mistakes; I was Jim or Art a couple of times, but the effort was appreciated. 
It was obvious to the experienced members of Walkers Road that this civility would end soon after a few bands had rolled through. In retrospect, sad to say, I can see the reason for that cynicism. After being part of at least a dozen groups in the 1970’s, I witnessed some irresponsibility. It wasn’t what you would call pervasive, but it doesn’t take much delinquency to stereotype an entire group. 
Even at the tender age of twenty, I knew already that there were jackasses in all walks of life. I resolved not to be one, but it’s not my place to judge whether or not I kept that resolution.
End of Part 1