That time I got stuck in the ceiling of the Shriner's Hall in Toledo

When I was sixteen my dear father took the whole family back to the old country for what was, I guess, a victory tour of sorts. As far as I recall, it was his first trip back to the land he'd left fifteen years before, with nothing in his pockets except an IOU to the Government of Canada obliging him to repay the ship fare for him and me and my pregnant mother.

I had just hit the age when I really noticed girls, and I fell for one on that trip. Hanging out with her and her friends, I hooked up with a bunch of Christian hippie types from Indiana and Ohio who were free-loading their way around Europe... in fact, you could almost say I briefly joined their cult.

Once I got back to Guelph I would send them money from my gas-pumping job where I happily worked eighty hours a week to support the work of the Lord...

Ya, I know. A lot of shit looks different in the rear-view.

Anyway, the thing with the girl didn't work out. But a few years later, those people I was sending money to had saved enough to mount a "Christian Musical" and tour it through the USA. They were even coming to Toledo, which I can get to in about four hours of driving. They sent me tickets for the show at the Toledo Shriner's Hall.

So I get to Toledo and have a few hours to kill before the show. Unfortunately, by that stage in my life, I'd developed some rather counter-productive time-killing strategies that mostly revolved around liquor and drugs.

Longish story short, I had climbed into the rafters in the roof of the hall. Liquor and drugs will do that. Some folks, it makes violent.

Me? I just wanted to climb stuff. I climbed all the way up to the eighth floor of an apartment building in Ancaster once to rejoin the party I'd been kicked out of. It's amazing what people keep on their balconies... summer tires, BBQ's, bicycles.... I tidied all their balconies on my way up...

But that's another story. I'm stuck in the ceiling of the Shriner's Hall and it's pitch dark and I can't find my way out. I'm not quite ready to panic, but when I hear voices down below, where I guess they were starting a sound check or something, I shout out that I'd like some lights turned.

The lights came on, I found my way out a service entrance at the back, and walked around the building just as three police cruisers were screeching to a halt in front.


Apparently there'd been a report of someone stuck in the ceiling.