Waging Heavy Peace (24 page)

My brother, Bob, holding a rifle, and me with a bow, Omemee, Ontario, 1955.

Chapter Forty-Three

B
ack in Omemee, there is a grade school called the Scott Young Public School, named after my dad. The original town school, the one I went to for grades one and two, was down by the swamp or bog, as it was called back in the day. That school is gone now. My first teacher, Miss Lamb, used to pick me up by my chin whenever I was misbehaving or not heading in the right direction. My partner in crime back then was Henry Mason. He and I laughed a lot at the funny faces we all would make behind Miss Lamb’s back. He was hysterical, as I remember. This was way before my dad became a famous Canadian writer.

I did take the family up to Ontario from California for the opening ceremonies of the Scott Young School in 1993, and that was quite an event. The ceremonies were held on the stage in the gym, doubling as an auditorium, as was the tradition with most schools in Canada. I think the choir sang “Helpless.” There were a lot of talks about the past and the history of the old school by various speakers and local luminaries. Most notably to me, Miss Lamb was there.

My dad spoke. He was always comfortable in front of people and was relaxed and happy about the whole thing. He recognized a lot of people who were in the audience, and mentioned those who had passed away, and then made a joke about not talking too long and forgetting what he was saying. I am very proud of my dad. I remember having a good feeling that day. He was very eloquent, and everybody liked him.

The new school was right where the old baseball field and hockey rink used to be. That used to be right behind the Omemee train station, and ball games were regularly played there, which I attended. An old steam engine used to haul a passenger train through town twice a day when I was a kid, and we used to go back to the tracks about a half mile behind my house and put pennies on the rails to watch them get flattened by the train as it rumbled by. I would put my ear down on the rail so I could hear the train coming before I could see it. Once we heard the train, we would carefully place the coins on the rail and then wait for the big moment to arrive.

Recently my brother, Bob, and I took a walk along the track bed. It’s a walking trail now, really beautiful. The rails are all gone. We crossed the old bridge where we used to play when we were kids, down by our boathouse where my dad kept his boat and outboard. The tracks, station, and train are all gone now. So are the boathouse and boat. But they live on in my mind, along with my mom and dad. Bob and I had a nice long walk that day and thoroughly enjoyed it, talking over memories of the old days when we were kids in Omemee and life was in front of us.

—

W
hen I was about ten, my dad and I used to get up at six every Sunday morning and drive about five miles down Brock Road to the intersection with Highway 2, where the newspapers for my paper route were dropped. This was a weekly event that we shared. I really liked it. On the way back to the house, we would stop at about four houses on the way and I would deliver
The Globe and Mail
, which was the paper my dad wrote for, being careful not to wake the residents. Daddy had a daily column on the first page of the second section where he wrote human-interest stories. Every day he would write about a different subject, and I think he was very happy doing this job. He also was the host of
The Hot Stove League
, a TV program that ran between periods on
Hockey Night in Canada
, which was on every Saturday night across the country. Now that was a really big deal because, as you may have heard, hockey is the national game of Canada.

When we got back to our house, I would take the remaining papers and jump on my bike, riding through the rest of the route that took me about an hour and a half to complete. It was a rural area, and that meant not many customers over a large piece of ground. First I would ride away along the road and drop off papers at about ten houses. Every one had a long driveway, and a dog was usually present. I would carefully survey the situation and move in for the delivery, trying not to wake the dogs or the customers. I was pretty darn good at it.

At the end of the first part of the bike ride, I would arrive at the schoolhouse. This was an old rock building of two rooms with a creek running behind it. A potbellied stove heated each of the rooms. Grades one through four were in one room, with five through eight in the other room. Two teachers taught all the kids. Right in front of the school was the playground. We used to play baseball there, and home plate was right in front of the main door of the old schoolhouse. That schoolhouse was like something out of a history book, and it was about a hundred years old when I was there as a kid in the mid-1950s.

I went back there about thirty years ago and it was still there. When I checked again more recently, it was gone, removed to make room for the new wide road, I suppose. That was a depressing event, the day I saw it gone. The big trees that were on either side of home plate were gone, too. So was the little store and gas station that used to be on the corner next to the school.

The new modern school that I went to for grade five, four hundred yards up the 4th Concession Road, was gone. I went there when it was still brand-new, ran right into the glass door leaving class one day and got a concussion. Now it’s all gone.

On that 4th Concession Road, past the new school, there were four more
Globe and Mail
customers, and the last one was the LaBrie family. That’s where Marilyn LaBrie lived. There was a bridge crossing the creek at the bottom of the canyon near her house, and I crossed it on my bike every Sunday morning delivering the route. Sometimes I would walk Marilyn home after school, and one weekday afternoon, carrying her books home for her, I kissed Marilyn on the bridge. I think that was the first time I ever kissed a girl. What a thrill! Thank you, Miss Marilyn.

I didn’t make much money on my route, but then again, I didn’t need much money. Besides selling golf balls I had found to golfers on the course across the street, I had about fifty chickens in the henhouse that my neighbor Don Scott helped build. Like my son Ben Young’s own organic egg business, my egg business was my largest source of income. Those were some lucky chickens, because Don had a glass business in Toronto, and my chicken house had a huge picture window looking out over the endless field behind it! Those lucky chickens had a great view.

Foxes were a big problem, though, and kept killing my chickens, so I slept on a cot out by the hen house in a pup tent, listening for the first sign of any problem (although I don’t remember ever hearing anything or getting up to save the chickens. Probably just my presence out there was a great inhibitor). Anyway, every morning my dad would come to the back door of the house and whistle. He had a most shrill whistle! It was very loud, and it was quite impressive the way he could put two fingers in his mouth on his lips a certain way and make this amazingly cutting sound that carried for a very long way. Hearing that whistle, I would stick my skinny arm out of the tent, signaling that I was up and ready to feed the chickens. On the weekends, though, I would feed the chickens only after the paper route was delivered.

Anyway, when my route was delivered and I had ridden my bike up the driveway, parked it, and entered the house, I would go into the kitchen, where Daddy would be creating a batch of pancakes for breakfast. Every week he tried something new: banana, blueberry, strawberry, combinations, you name it. (Once he even tried orange, and we both agreed that didn’t work.) Every week it was a surprise to get home and find out what he was creating. We would sit at the table and enjoy the pancakes together, just my dad and me—nobody else was up yet.

I hope I have given my kids something like that to remember. Those Sunday mornings with my dad were a real gift. I did that route for a few years, and then something happened. I think I was growing up and didn’t notice it, but time passed. A lot of time.

Chapter Forty-Four

I
n 2005, Pegi and I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in New York, where I was inducting Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, who we love. She is one rockin’ woman. We had a great time there. I had been to the Hall of Fame ceremony a few times before. Once in 1995, when I was being inducted myself, Pegi and I had flown out with David Briggs and Bettina, his wife. On the flight out to NYC from San Francisco, we were smoking weed on the Warner Brothers plane, living it up and celebrating the occasion, when the captain came back and busted us. He was very upset. I guess they thought they might get high or something because they were breathing the same air.

Anyway, in 2005 when I got up at the hotel the morning after inducting Chrissie and the Pretenders, Pegi was down in the gym working out and I was talking with Amber, Topher White (her boyfriend at the time), and Ben Young in our suite, looking at the great view of Central Park. I noticed suddenly that I couldn’t see very well. What appeared to be a shard of glass was in my vision, kind of like looking through a broken mirror. When I described it, everyone was alarmed. When I called the doctor, he told me to lie down and call him when it stopped. I went into the bedroom and lay down. Eventually it grew and blocked my eye before it went away. I had noticed that it was in both my eyes and did not go away when I closed one or the other. So it was in my brain. That was very disconcerting. I had a headache. I called Dr. Rock Positano, who was my New York doctor. He was referred by Marsha Vlasic, who had been my agent and a very close friend to Pegi and me for many years. Marsha booked all of my own shows and the Bridge School concerts, and her husband, Peter, often accompanied her to the performances.

After Dr. Rock arranged with experts in neurology, we went to the doctor’s office, and he set me up with a neurosurgeon and scheduled some tests. They were magnetic imaging tests to look at the inside of my brain. Then I met the neurosurgeon, whose name was Dr. Dexter Sun; I liked him immediately because he was very focused and friendly.

A few days later, Pegi and I went to see him in his office to review the tests. We were waiting in a little room to view the images when the nurse came in and said the doctor would be right out. That was odd, because we were planning on going into the room to see him. He walked out to us with a handful of films. He put them up on a light board to look at. This was not normal, was my first thought. Pegi and I held hands. He explained the different parts of the brain and settled on an irregular-looking part of the image that resembled the state of Florida, hanging off the southeastern United States.

He said to us, “This is what I found. It is not an emergency right this instant, but we have to take this out of your brain as soon as we can. This is a very bad thing to have staying in there.” He then showed me how it was like a balloon or tube that had expanded in one area but not burst, and that it had blown out again and again and again. Several times to be sure. He said the surgeon who could remove it for me was Dr. Yves Pierre Gobin, who would be back in New York in ten days.

Pegi and I left the office and went back to the hotel. We were scheduled to go to Canada, and I was supposed to do something at the Juno Awards in a couple of weeks. It was a huge thing in my home country, recognizing Canadian musical talent. I did not want to perform on TV or be under pressure and was feeling a little shocky. I was not told that I couldn’t travel, just to take it easy.

I decided that waiting around a week in New York would be impossible for me. We booked studio time in Nashville when I decided that the best thing to do was make some music. I began writing an album of new music called
Prairie Wind
. I felt it would keep me occupied until I had to go into the hospital. I called Ben Keith, and he began rounding up all my friends to do a recording session; Ben always was the kingpin for my Tennessee recordings. Pegi and I flew to Nashville together.

In Nashville we set up at Masterlink recording studios, formerly Monument Records’ recording studio, where Roy Orbison had recorded years before, and began recording with Chad Hailey and Rob Clarke. We stayed at the Hermitage, and I wrote whenever I wasn’t in the studio recording. Pegi stayed with me the whole time. At one point, in the middle of the sessions, Pegi and I flew back to New York to meet the surgeon, Dr. Gobin, and he scheduled the operation for a week later. We returned to Nashville to complete the recording. I did a lot of eating and gained about ten pounds in the week we were there. We did the whole album except for one or two songs, and then Pegi and I flew back to New York for the operation.

News was getting out among my friends. Quincy Jones called at the hotel and comforted Pegi, having gone through the same thing himself. Bob Dylan sent me a thoughtful collection of gospel music I think I mentioned earlier; he really is quite a musicologist with a deep knowledge of the roots of popular song, and his gift, which was beautifully presented in a wooden box, struck me as very thoughtful—I really appreciated it. Willie Nelson called me the night before the operation and wished me well. It was reassuring to hear from these musical friends. I really appreciated that. Pegi was right by my side.

Anyway, the time was upon us. The day before the operation, the surgeon, Dr. Gobin, assured me that the procedure was something that had been done with no complications many times at this very hospital by himself and his team. Of course there always is risk. I signed the normal paperwork so Pegi would have all the authority she needed if it was called for, then we went to bed. When we woke up we went right to Admitting in the hospital at some very early hour of the morning. They came to get me and I said, “See you soon,” to Pegi. We exchanged a deep look. I was then taken to a small room and sedated.

When I woke up it was all over. I was in recovery. My leg was secured so that I didn’t move it and disturb the wound where they had gone in through my femoral artery and up to my brain, where several platinum coils (like tiny little Slinkies)
were carefully placed in the aneurysm. They would attract scar tissue, which would fill the entire problem area and redirect the blood flow correctly from that moment on. I had to stay absolutely still for about forty-eight hours, but was then allowed to go back to the hotel and begin slowly resuming my normal life. I returned to the hotel, happy to be out of the hospital. Following doctor’s orders, I took it easy. A lot had happened. I did not want to do much or be booked for anything where I had to be there. I was scared to think about going to Canada. We moved slowly. Pegi was with me all the time, and Marsha and Peter were in close contact with us. Marsha was a good friend to Pegi throughout this whole situation.

After a couple of days in the hotel, I was stable, and since Pegi had previously had brain surgery of her own, and since we knew we had the best team ever to look at her radiological results, we decided to get her checked out too. While she was doing that, I decided I needed to go for a little walk down to a restaurant we knew. I was going with Eric Johnson, Elliot, and his son Zack. It was my first time away from the hotel or Pegi. We left the hotel, moving slowly along near Madison Avenue, and were half a block down the sidewalk when I took one more step and felt a pop above my thigh. My leg got really hot. I noticed it was wet. My shoe was filling up with blood and my pants were soaked. I called to Eric and turned back toward the hotel. I was weak. He helped me walk. I tried to make it to the hotel, but started fading fast near the front door.

I eventually made it to the elevator with Eric’s help. We were there waiting for the elevator. I’m so glad it didn’t come! That would have been so wrong! I would have had to go up and come all the way back down to go to the hospital, wasting precious time. I collapsed right in the lobby, crumpling slowly downward until I was on my back, my blood running all over the floor.

Eric was right there. He had figured it out and was applying massive pressure to my leg where the wound was, holding back the flow of blood. The incision point in my artery had failed to hold. I do credit Eric, absolutely, with saving my life. No question about it. We stayed there for a while on the floor, waiting for the ambulance and paramedics. Eric was holding my leg in the air and pressing on the wound. The hotel was calling for help. Elliot called Pegi to say what had happened and that there was an ambulance coming to pick me up; Pegi, who was getting ready for a CT scan of her own brain, went straight to the hospital to meet me. After about ten minutes, certainly no more than that, the paramedics arrived. I was on a stretcher, moving into the ambulance, and one very bright and strong EMT guy was saying, “Neil, stay focused! Stay right here.” I tried to say something funny, but nothing came out. “Dropping! Dropping!” someone’s voice said.

Bright lights and a siren came on above my head. “Which one?” “Lenox Hill!” “Not close enough, which one?” We sped through New York City.

The one face kept saying, “Neil, talk to me. What’s your name? Where are we?” I looked at him and tried to speak. Tried to tell a joke again. I was full of them. But nothing came out. “Okay, fluid is in, fluid is in!” “We got him.” “How do you feel, Neil? What’s up? What’s your name?” “Stabilizing!” said a voice. Then one guy kept yelling, “Stay with me! Stay here. No sleeping. Stay here!”

Then I felt really cold and good. My body was vibrating wildly! I was freezing! They turned off the street and I was on the runway to Emergency. We stayed there for a few beats, then into Emergency. A nurse put warm blankets over me. One of the doctors on the original operating team was with me then. The team that did the operation! I was back there!

He said, “I got you, Neil. You will be fine, just don’t move your leg.” He was pressing right where Eric had been pressing. I was starting to get warm again, but I was still shaking uncontrollably. A nurse brought more warm blankets. I was moved to a bed in my own room overlooking the river and a huge bridge into Manhattan. I was sedated, and when I finally awoke, I was with a very nice and floaty old black lady nurse from South Carolina. She moved slowly around the room, seemingly on air. She was my angel guide.

“You are fine now,” she said. “He doesn’t want you yet, or He would have taken you.”

It was dawn. Headlights were crossing the bridge in the fog like diamond water drops dripping from a hanging leaf, continually forming and falling; commuters heading to work. She continued floating around the room, telling me how fine this day was. I will never forget her. I may even see her again. Pegi had arranged for me to have extra night care so that I was never alone, both after the original procedure and this emergency. So it was Pegi who provided my guardian angel.

The original procedure was on the Monday after Easter Sunday, and we were scheduled to fly to Winnipeg at the end of the week for the Juno event. It was a big deal because I was from Winnipeg and the Junos had never been held there. We had been trying to be quiet about the medical situation, but after the disaster happened, realizing there was no way we could make the Juno ceremonies, we alerted the family to what was happening so they wouldn’t read any sensationalized stuff and be scared. Then we put out a press release explaining why I wouldn’t be there. The folks at the Canadian Consulate in New York City were kind enough to offer us an opportunity to watch the Junos on satellite at the residence, so we did.