Got'em Need'em.

Flemington Road Public School was where I attended grades four, five and six and I can vividly remember our school librarian. She was an older narrow faced woman, although I do not remember her name. Her nephew was Don Awrey who played defence for the 1970 & 72 Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins while I was a student at the school.

Back then I would spend much of my free time just sitting in our library looking through all the hockey books while always dreaming of someday playing in the NHL. I thought that our librarian was so lucky because she had a nephew who played in the league that I could only dream of someday playing in. The librarian never made a big deal that her nephew played for the Bruins, but as you can imagine it was always a pretty big deal to me.

I loved playing all the hockey card schoolyard games before school, at lunchtime and during recess. The games were what most kids in Canada played back in the late 60's and early 70's and I only played them with hockey cards. Got’em, need’em, got’em, got’em, need’em. I must collect every card and I must collect the complete set. I used to check off all the cards I had on the cardboard checklist. I would also trade for or try to win the cards that I desperately needed to complete my checklist. 

I just needed to have every single box on the checklist checked off.

To win those much needed cards it meant flinging cards towards a brick wall. A few of us would be trying to knock down the eight or ten cards that were leaning on an angle against the school wall about six to eight feet away. The game was called 'knocksies' and whoever knocked the last card down would win all the cards strewn over the ground. It was by far the easiest way to increase your stack of cards, but it was also the quickest way to make your stack much smaller when you lost.

Another popular game I played was called 'topsies' which was kind of like heads or tails played with cards. We also played a game called 'farthies'. Each player would fling a card or cards against the wall and whosever cards corner was closest to the wall would win all the cards on the ground. Arguments would ensue and would always lead to play overs when the naked eye could not determine whose card corner was closer. Needless to say I only used only my traders for all those schoolyard games.

I loved the flavour of the pink stick of stale bubble gum that came inside each pack of cards for a dime. After five minutes of schoolyard chewing the flavour was completely gone. Sometimes I would stick the gum under my desk or chair in my classroom. By the end of the season my cards became all worn and creased and into the garbage they would go. I always kept a few aside to put on my bike spokes every summer. By the end of the school year there would also be dozens of hardened pink globs of bubble gum under my desk and chair.

Hockey card collecting was by far my favorite childhood hobby and I would always take a stack of cards in my suit pocket to the Kingdom Hall. I would place the cards within the pages of my bible and I would secretly study every card while my mother assumed I was reading scriptures. I would memorize everything about the players and their stats from all the info on my cards. 

When I was a kid I worshiped hockey players and not Jehovah at the Kingdom Hall. 

How great I thought it would be to have my name stamped right on the shaft of my hockey stick like the players on my cards. For me a true sign that you had made it to the big league was when your name and number was stamped on the shaft of your custom made pro-pattern stick.

The smell of bubble gum always dominated my newer cards, but after a week the smell was gone because of my daily handling. Hockey cards and chewing gum were always forbidden in the classroom. On a few occasions my teacher confiscated my stack and she stored them in her desk until she felt like returning them.

Some years the packs of cards featured inserts like team logo stickers. This would be my opportunity to study those logos and then try to recreate them by drawing them on larger pieces of paper. I never was much of an artist, but I used to love drawing the team insignias. My favourite was the blue maple leaf, but it always turned out the same, off centered. It never mattered how hard I tried to be perfect, it just never looked right and it always seemed to look lopsided.

I drew dozens of blue maple leafs when I was a kid. I would draw them everywhere and I always drew them inside my bible. I would scribble a Dave Keon signature under my lopsided Leaf logo. It was not a true autograph, but it would have to do until the day I could get Dave's real autograph. 

Oh, how I used to daydream about getting autographs from not just Keon, but all the Leaf players. Hell, the whole team could sign inside my bible. Someday I knew I would, but in grade school my only connection to the NHL was that Don Awrey's aunt was our school librarian.

She was my librarian.