Charlie Sohmer
I was born in Shawinigan Falls, Quebec, grew up in Montreal,and have lived in and around Ottawa
for the last forty years. When I was around ten years old, I had lunch with a famous person, Hector "Toe" Blake - he was then the coach of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. Actually I had lunch with Toe’s son Bruce who was a school buddy, but when we sat down to eat, in walks his father. I don’t remember him saying much to me, and I don’t even remember what we ate, but he was the coach of the greatest hockey team in history ... and now, wondering where he ever got his nickname "Toe," I see this in Wikipedia: 'His nickname came out of his childhood for his younger sister was unable to pronounce his name. When she said it, it often sounded like Hec-toe, hence Toe as his nickname which later replaced the nickname he had been given as a scorer, the Old Lamplighter, because he often activated the light behind the goal.'
Oh, I remember another famous person I sort of met – my mom and I were shopping (one of the perks of being the youngest child) for shoes at Eaton’s and I saw this big guy, I mean really big
guy, standing there flexing a leather loafer, and I knew it was Killer Kowalski, the meanest and dirtiest professional wrestler in the world. I yell-whispered, Mom – It’s Killer! Killer Kowalski! She was all for calling Help Police! But I explained who Killer was, and she gave me one of her ‘funny’
looks. Still I whined and begged long enough to get her to walk up to him to get me his autograph. She was a tall woman, but standing there next to him, she looked really tiny. I remember her saying, Excuse me, Mr. Killer … she pointed back at me, he may have smiled knowingly, but I’m pretty sure it was more like a sinister glare. Anyway when I proudly showed my friends the autograph, they said it looked like some weird squiggle that I had probably forged. I guess that ‘knowing,’ (sort of), a celebrity, is ok; but knowing yourself – now that’s
very cool.
These days I mostly play my banjo. I used to write lots of songs to save the world, and that was patriotic and all, but somewhere along the road I stopped being so pissed off at everything, and, as I should have known, the world prefers its saviours pissed-off, so I just stopped writing a lot of
‘those’ songs.