Roger McLeod:  

Life Some of my dad's Canadian family, spilled over the river, into the Detroit area, where I was born. I enjoyed an idyllic childhood in a small suburb, watching cloud shapes and pointing out when they looked like animals and people, with my little pals. Then, when my dad sniffed the air and thought things may go sour in that area (he was right) it was decided we'd move to Cali-for-nee. How we ended up in El Monte, is a mystery, but I was dazzled over how we could play outside in the WINTER, without looking like the Michelin Man. I went to a grade school on the southern part of town, being the poorer section. When my dad's sign business started doing well, we moved near Arroyo, so I had to start over, making friends from scratch again. On my first day of high school, I was glad to see a kid I knew from church, there...only, he told me that while we can be pals in church, he can't act like he knows me here, as I was only a FRESHMAN, and he was a JUNIOR. (Neither one sounded very impressive to me...and "senior" made you sound like some old fart.) Arroyo was quite the experience for me...I was always at odds with Frank Clayton, the vice principal. He came looking for me, once, to give me some whatfor over something, and looked up my schedule to see I'd be in PhysEd, that period. He waved me over, saying, "I wondered just how I'd be able to find you out here in this big field, with hundreds of boys all dressed alike. Then I see some idiot wearing a BLACK t-shirt, instead of the regulation white, and just KNEW it'd be you." I married my high school sweetheart, a couple years after graduating. We both assumed the world was about to end, with all the assasinations, undeclared wars, and so forth, so we chose to live out the last times of the human race, in the small, Canadian town from which my family had sprung. That lasted two weeks, and we nearly died of boredom, so moved to Toronto, which is a sort of poor man's New York City. I joined a roc...Expand for more