Through the most wonderful as well as the worst years of their young lives, the curious and adventurous McLuhan boys enjoy (or endure) an up-and-down existence in the lively McLuhan household at 507 Gertrude Avenue, passing the days hiking with Herb, looking up and memorizing difficult words in the dictionary, skiing in winter and, during the languid summer hiatus, carousing on the banks of the Assiniboine at one end of Gertrude or swimming in the Red at the other; but, once Mars finishes building The Lark, the inseparable pair spends long hours sailing and rowing on both rivers.
As highly motivated as Elsie is (and Herb is not), the boys’ mother strives to improve her family’s fortunes and offers elocution lessons, a not-uncommon practice at the time. In the years following the First World War, prior to the proliferation of radio, youngsters regularly study public-speaking and dramatic recitation.
Pupils flock to the house on Gertrude, eager to learn proper breathing, enunciation, memorization, articulation, and performance techniques. Elsie doesn’t provide her sons with formal training in elocution, but both pick up plenty by osmosis and remain excellent speakers for the duration (despite Maurice’s feeling he spent much of his early life trying to keep up with his brother).
Maurice, who speaks frequently to church groups, will grow up to become a man of the cloth for several years (before committing himself to the teaching profession). His older brother will grow up to become a man on a mission with a message concerning media in the future, in some far-off time and unimaginable place all will come to call the global village.
Glimmers of McLuhan’s love of devices and machines capable of transmitting words, music, and messages surface. One of the biggest thrills of his adolescent years, in fact, is fiddling with gadgets and such, especially new-fangled gadgets that allow him to tune into the world of radio late at night, picking up stations from as far away as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, hundreds of miles southeast of the Manitoba border.
Pittsburgh’s out there, a vibrant metropolis in a huge world just waiting to be investigated, a world filled with wonders as plentiful as stars, a huge and noisy world far beyond Gertrude Avenue except when – with the cooperation of the northern lights – the reception is brilliant and Pittsburgh’s KDKA comes through clean, clear, and wholly spellbinding.
McLuhan spends his after-school hours attending classes to earn his crystal-set operator’s licence. To celebrate his success, he builds a state-of-the-art radio with double sets of earplugs so both he and Red can listen to KDKA before they drift off to sleep but, naturally, not before Mars and Red trade facts they’d studied at school that day:
“The telegraph, invented in 1844, transmits information at five bits per second.”
“Oh, yeah? Poet John Milton lost his eyesight in February 1652, most likely because of glaucoma.”
“Pfft! Because of heavy traffic congestion, Julius Caesar banned all wheeled vehicles from Rome during daylight hours.…”
Facts, figures, fictions, flights of fancy. Throughout these impressionable years, McLuhan despairs of ever learning everything he believes he really needs to know. He studies long hours and spends countless more memorizing long passages of poetry and dramatic prose.
Elsie, similarly motivated (but more concerned with method, performance, and delivery), even practises Browning poems and Shakespearean sonnets in tones both spirited and mesmerizing while doing the housework, running the carpet-sweeper over the Persian rug she’s finally acquired or replacing the slab of ice in the bottom tray of the brand-new icebox she’s recently purchased.
By the time McLuhan enters university, he’s read, heard, memorized, and consumed almost everything of value and interest written in the English language with the notable exception of Paradise Lost, John Milton’s epic poem. (He considers it beyond his comprehension at his inexperienced age.) In his zeal to “own literature,” McLuhan handily (if not unconsciously) prepares himself for the very (ivory) towers (of Babel) he’ll eventually topple. After all, he’s strangely convinced he’s on his way to becoming the man with the message for the human race poised, then, as now, on the brink of one complicated yet potentially beautiful new world.
McLuhan’s immediate world, once he comes to understand it better, begins to reveal its own set of complications. For one thing, his parents, slowly drifting apart as his mother’s on-stage ventures take off and his father’s career never does, quarrel fiercely, frequently, all too often forgetting the stress and anguish they’re rather selfishly inflicting upon their captive audience.
Elsie is extremely ambitious; Herb is not. Elsie wants to beautify the Gertrude Street dwelling; Herb is content to live within its walls exactly as it is. Elsie wants to be the first on the block to own a car; Herb never owns one in his life. The stylish Elsie is, in short, a woman; the casual Herb, as she tells the boys in mean-spirited disgust for her husband’s disinterest in all things fashionable, is not a man.
Herb, a maddeningly mild-mannered and agreeable man, is happy to sit back and shoot the breeze. He loves his sons very much and spends long hours with them, delighting in their intellectual progress and generally staying out of harm’s way. One game the trio particularly enjoys involves finding, learning, and memorizing the meanings of the most difficult words in the dictionary, a daily habit his firstborn, now a self-described “intellectual thug,” adopts for life.
Despite the fact Maurice is more his father’s top banana and strong-willed Marshall tends to be the apple of Elsie’s eye, the boys are close, probably because their mother’s “boundless egotism,” as her eldest describes it, requires they stick together for protection during her emotional storms.
Privately, McLuhan bemoans the cruel fate that has brought his parents together as both he and Red witness the frenzied events that will ultimately tear the ill-suited couple apart. Then, not suprisingly, when Elsie blows her stack for no good reason either child sees, her sons become easy targets for her fury and frustration.
Later, McLuhan observes his childhood was so very painful in some respects that he can barely stand to think about it. Yet, he loves and respects his mother, somehow intuitively grasping the psychological dynamic fuelling her ballistics derives from her own childhood, damaged by an intense, unpredictable, and volatile taskmaster of a father given to temper tantrums of legendary status among locals.
Naturally, when the often-generous (and certainly incomparable) Elsie brags about either the talented Maurice or the gifted Marshall to the many people she invites to break bread at the family’s table – lavishly praising their brilliant minds, excellent behaviour, and strapping young physiques – both boys glow with pride.
McLuhan fails grade six. His schoolteacher mother, well-acquainted with her son’s intellectual abilities, naturally sets the principal straight concerning the school’s problem. Her son, a brilliant young genius, truly destined for greatness, is simply bored, bored, BORED. When McLuhan enters grade seven on the condition he “handle it,” he handles it, thanks to a teacher who loves words, language, and literature as much as he does.
It
