Remembering Lorne 1 - The Early Years

My cousin Lorne would have been 61 today, Dec 1st but he died of cancer three years ago, and went to be with his Lord and Savior, one week after his 58th birthday. I want to remember him by telling you about his life. Lorne’s life pretty much divides into three almost-even parts. I’d call them “Growing Up”; “The Lost Years” and “Happiness at Last”. I will publish them in three parts on my blog. This is the first

Lorne and I were the same age and grew up as close friends and co-conspirators. Lorne loved to come out to the farm, mostly because we had horses and also because he could get out of sight of his mother who tended want to "spoil his fun" (his words). We were usually in some kind of trouble, whether pushing the elevator agent’s car down a hill and hiding it in some bushes, or sticking firecrackers in a jam-filled donut and persuading another cousin to hold it in his mouth to see what would happen.

Lorne took piano lessons from the Sisters at the convent and learned trumpet with the Community Band but he was self-taught on the guitar. When he and I were just learning the guitar (We played the “Carter Lick” before we knew what it was called and I never progressed past it), we’d sing hymns we knew like What a Friend We have in Jesus and Just a Closer Walk with Thee over and over. Of course, we also sang about The Little White Washed Shanty by the Barn – “where you sit all day at ease with your elbows on your knees” and several Homer and Jethro numbers. However when we got to sit together in church, (which wasn’t often for some reason), we would sometimes rework the words of the old hymns, singing of “Royal duodenums” and “Angels’ fallen prostates”.