Beach(es) Beat

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I got to thinking about the days of my youth recently and it is all Steward Brown's fault.

Years ago, we were both reporters at The Hamilton Spectator newspaper and now he has written a book about a long gone but still fondly recalled nightspot located on the shores of Lake Ontario in Burlington called the Brant Inn.

His book is called Brant Inn Memories and reading it certainly took me back to my youth.

Over the years the cream of the entertainment world played, sang and danced on its stages. Luminaries such as Fats Waller, Ted Lewis, Mart Kenney and his Western Gentlemen performed, and if you were a young man out to make a serious impression that is where you took the girl of your dreams.

The Brant Inn was officially dry so we smuggled in our own setups. Setups were glasses of ginger ale and ice and once they were in place, the party was on and oh what parties we had.

One night a pal named Ernie stood up and declared our gathering was surely the most trustworthy circle of friends in the history of the world, and with that he pulled a five dollar bill out of his wallet and urged us all to take a chew on it then pass it along as a show of our solidarity.

This we all faithfully did, chomp, chomp, chomp, all the way around the table until finally it was returned to Ernie who unwrinkled the sodden mass only to discover that in the course of its journey his fiver had somehow changed to a two.

Suspicion was first directed at a man we called Duke because he always wore a three-piece suit and was the first guy in our crowd to drink beer out of a glass, but eventually the scandal was forgotten as we all struggled with other matters that are part of growing up such as broken hearts, missed job opportunities and being chronically broke.

All those memories came back when I read the book and that is why I said it was Stewart's fault. In truth there were plenty of wonderful memories too, but painful or pleasant I don't care, I would go through them all again given half a chance.