Another Brick in the Wall
(Waters, Rogers) Performed by Pink Floyd
We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! teachers! Leave the kids alone!
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! teacher! Leave us kids alone!
All in all you're just a another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just a another brick in the wall.
-smooth guitar solo-
"Wrong, do it again!"
"Wrong, do it again!"
"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you
Have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?"
"You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!"
It must have been soon after the release of Pink Floyd's The Wall (because I see that that was in 1979 and we couldn't have been much older than that) that Ken came up with one of his brilliant ideas: If he and I pooled our leftover allowance, he could ride his bike up to the Stouffville Flea Market on a Saturday morning and buy us a 45 of (what he was trying to convince me) was the coolest song ever -- Another Brick in the Wall. I was definitely not an alt rock fan, and Pink Floyd always struck me as dangerously subversive, but Ken was persuasive -- this would be the first piece of music that either he or I had bought -- and I gave him my few quarters and he was off.
I waited forever for Ken to return, and when he did, it was with bloody knees and a plastic bag containing shards of the 45: He had wiped out his bike on the way home. I remember Ken being devastated but I was just ticked off -- if he broke the record, why did I still need to pay for half of it? Of course, that got me nowhere: As with the theme of the song, might makes right and Ken was nothing if not a bully to me and Kyler when we were kids.
I remember Ken had a job one summer at the Flea Market, and when he was away somewhere for a weekend, he convinced his boss to let me cover for him. The guy had a display of kids running shoes and adult cowboy boots, and for two long, hot days, my job was to run in and out of his trailer, grabbing shoes and boots in the sizes he would bark at me. I remember that this booth was crazy busy and the time flew by and I mentally listed all of the things that I was going to buy with the twenty or so dollars he was going to pay me at the end of the weekend. When the time did come for him to pay me, though, the guy proposed a deal: I could have the cash or I could have anything out of his trailer. That was a tough choice for me -- I had never had twenty bucks at once, but I could have cowboy boots. In the end, I chose a pair of grey leather (maybe) boots with a little wooden heel, and even if his cost on those boots was less than twenty dollars, I wasn't unhappy.
Another time, Ken was hired by a carnie when a fair came to Stouffville, and he spent hours and plenty of effort to help this guy set up his stall. Ken was there all week, running around and doing this guy's bidding, expecting something like a hundred dollars in the end. After tearing down the stall for the guy, Ken went to get paid and the carnie says, "Listen, man, I'm sorry but the numbers just didn't work out this time. After paying out the fair's split and my costs, I don't have any cash left for you. But, I'll tell you what, I'll let you pick any of the extra large prizes to take home."
Ken could not believe this, but with all the trucks packed up and the fair starting to move on to the next town (and being a kid dealing with a seasoned huckster), he had no choice but to pick out a huge pink pig and head home, exhausted, in the dark, balancing the pig on the handlebars of his bike. A piggy he immediately gave to me. Once again, Ken learned that might makes right, and in the end, my big brother was nothing if not kind of wonderful to me when we were kids.
