From My Autobiography : 1959 : Age 12

13 APRIL
Monday
I perform in the King's County Council of Home and School Association Music Festival, and I receive a very favourable review:  “Small voice - of pleasing quality - will develop considerably with use - High notes good - has confidence pleasing rendering".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At that time, I had a boy soprano voice, and this year I seemed to have gained my confidence for performing. I also entered the piano competition for which [I think] I played a tune called 'The Grasshopper'.

Shortly after this, my voice broke, and I became a baritone. I was devastated because I enjoyed singing the higher notes, and people seemed to be impressed by it. Later, as a teenager, once I started to write songs and learned to play the guitar, I would wish even more that I had retained my higher voice range.


JUNE
I pass Grade 6 at Kingston Bible College Academy.

I remember thinking during the last months of Grade 6 that I wished there was some sort of trade school where I could go to learn how to draw and paint instead of moving into Grade 7. Becoming an artist was something I really wanted to do at the time.


SUMMER
While climbing a tree, I accidentally lose my grip [or miss my footing] and fall backwards. Tree branches snap as I hit them, and then I slam against the ground so hard on my back it forces every bit of air from my lungs. I try to get up. Can't. I try to breathe. Can’t. My lungs have stopped! I struggle harder, and I force myself to draw in fresh air. Suddenly, I begin breathing again. Gasping for air, at first, I gradually return to normal. Or, at least, a trembling normal. I’m terrified and feel as if I’ve had a close brush with Death.

This may also account for my continued fear of heights which oftentimes even manifests itself in my dreams.


SEPTEMBER
I enter Grade 7 at Kingston Bible College Academy.


DECEMBER
Dad tells us we’re going to move once more, this time to an R.C.A.F. base in France. I'm both dismayed and nervously excited at the same time for two reasons: -
    ■  I'll be going to another new school, and I’ll have to meet new kids again, and probably endure more taunts about my last name.
    ■  I've heard some of the other kids from the neighbourhood sing a small ditty—

"In the north of France
Where the naked women dance..."

 

—and I shiver with anticipation because I wonder if I'll get to see any of those ‘naked women’.

By this time, although still relatively naïve, I was beginning to understand more about sexuality or, at least, the differences between boys and girls, men and women. However, I’d not yet seen any females naked, nor had I experienced my first orgasm. I’d had erections, of course, but I don’t recall associating those with anything sexual.


WINTER
My scout troop makes a visit to the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children.

I have my picture taken while I’m there, and later, it’s put on the cover of the Boy Scouts’ Annual Report for 1959.

He's a God of Miracles

 

HE'S A GOD OF MIRACLES
Written & Composed by Michael Woodhead (1983)
(Creative Commons License : Attribution-NoDerivs 4.0 International)

From My Autobiography : 1958 : Age 11

APRIL
I'm scheduled to compete in the King's County Music Festival [playing the piano and singing, two separate programs]. However, on the morning of the competitions, I'm so nervous about performing that I get a migraine headache and start throwing up. I don't go.

I also recall it was raining that day, which probably didn’t help with staving off the migraine.

After taking medication for the headache, I sit by the window and stare at the falling rain, watching the drops bounce off the ground and the windowsill.

I think, in some ways, I was glad I didn’t have to go to the competition. My shyness and insecurity about being in front of a crowd of people also kept me from going. There were many times as a child that I hoped it would rain so that we didn’t have to go somewhere that I didn’t want to go because the event would be ‘rained out’.
    

6 JUNE
Friday
At dad's insistence, I join the Boy Scouts.

Since he was now the Scoutmaster, I guess he figured he could keep a close eye on his ‘wayward’ son.

In a house down the street, my friend, Gwendolyn, offers to pull down her panties so I can see what she looks like without a penis—if I pull down my shorts and show her what I look like with one. I’m sorely tempted to do so. But, this time, I'm scared dad will found out again and give me another beating, so I run away. For a long time afterwards, my imagination fills itself with fantasies about what I might have seen.

And many years later, before he died, dad told me he had heard about this incident but, for some reason, my name never came up. Apparently, Gwendolyn wanted to show other boys, too.

JUNE
I pass Grade 5 at Kingston Bible College Academy.

SUMMER
With a small group of my friends from the neighbourhood, I string up a couple of blankets as a makeshift curtain between two trees. We charge five cents admission. Once we have a small audience, I appear and read a scripture from the Bible. Then we perform a skit I’ve put together called Ghost Story.

The scripture was probably John 3:16 which I’d heard so many times at K.B.C.A. I don’t remember what the skit was about.

One summer day, I burn the back of my legs so badly from being out in the sun too long that dad puts salve on them and bandages them up. It’s hard for me to walk properly for several days afterwards.

Even as a teen and adult, I found my skin either burned quite easily, or I succumbed to heatstroke. That happened on many occasions.


SEPTEMBER
I enter Grade 6 at Kingston Bible College Academy.

I join the Greenwood Protestant youth choir

 

 

Heal Me

 

HEAL ME
Written, Composed, and Arranged  by Michael Woodhead (1978)
(Creative Commons License : Attribution-NoDerivs 4.0 International)

[Music only; vocals to be added later]

 

From My Autobiography : 1957

JUNE
I pass Grade 4 at A/V/M Morfee Elementary School.

SUMMER
Chuck Horsfeld and I lie in a sleeping bag made from blankets in the back yard. Under cover, we begin to touch and compare our penises when we suddenly hear his mother call out to him in an angry voice.
    Chuck shuffles his pants up, gets out, and runs quickly to his house.
    Feeling guilty and frightened, I leave the sleeping bag and hurry to the playground where I wander around in a daze and wonder if mum and dad will hear about what Chuck and I were doing.
    When I realize I can't stay at the playground for the rest of the day, I eventually trudge home. My parents aren't there.
    I go to my bedroom.
    An hour later, the door suddenly bangs open. An enraged look on his face, dad rushes in. As I try to leap from my bed, he grabs me, yanks down my pants and underpants, and then lays into me repeatedly with his belt. He makes me promise not to do anything like that again. Tears cascading down my cheeks, I scream, “I promise! I promise!" as I tenderly cover my rosy, burning bum with my hands.
    A week later, in his bedroom, my friend, Travis, and I pull down our pants to touch and compare our penises...

As I think back, now, that really seems to have been a rather harsh punishment Dad gave me, and I can’t help wondering if there was some other psychological motive behind it on his part.

Dad and I join Greenwood’s Cub Pack ‘D’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dad and I go to a cub camp at Lake Sixty.

I'

I'm sitting on the leg at left

 

SEPTEMBER
I enter Grade 5 at Kingston Bible College Academy. My home room teacher is E E Morris.

I daresay—and I can think of no other reason why—my parents probably put me in K.B.C.A. in hopes that the strict religious Baptist atmosphere would help curb my sexual inquisitiveness. It didn't. However, I did enjoy the daily morning services in the chapel when we all sang those ‘old time gospel hymns’ and that certainly had an influence on my later musical interests and composing.

 

 

From Day to Day

 

FROM DAY TO DAY
Written, Composed, and Arranged by Michael Woodhead
Copyright ©1981, 2021 by Michael Woodhead

[Music-only version; vocals coming later]

 

From My Autobiography : 1956

Sometime this year, I watch a CBC ‘music video’ of Jim Lowe’s Green Door on the ‘Cross-Canada Hit Parade’ TV program.

I must have found something really fascinating about it to remember it all these years later.


JUNE
I pass Grade 3 at Wellesley Public School.

SUMMER
Dad tells us we are soon going to live on another air force base, this one somewhere in Nova Scotia.


4 SEPTEMBER
Tuesday
Once we move to Nova Scotia, we live at a Kingston trailer court for a short while until a place becomes available for us.

I still remember the smell of propane gas that lingered in the air around this place which, although I’m not certain, might have been renamed as Yogi Bear’s Camp Resort.


Eventually, we get a house in the PMQ’s at R.C.A.F. Station, Greenwood.

There has always been some disagreement about what the ‘P’ in P.M.Q.’s  stands for: ‘Personal’, ‘Permanent’, or ‘Private’ Married Quarters. However, to my knowledge, they are currently known as R.H.U.s—Residential Housing Units.

Residence:
Second Crescent
Greenwood, Nova Scotia

SEPTEMBER
I enter Grade 4 at A/V/M Morfee Elementary School.
Florence Quinn is my homeroom teacher.


One day, after I hear that my class is going to present a western play, I show up for the first rehearsal dressed in a cowboy outfit. Amused, the teacher tells me that it’s a little early to dress up for it. But she admires my enthusiasm for the project.


Dad obtains a record player and I begin to listen to his collection of 33⅓- and 78-rpm record albums —gospel, classical, opera, and musical theatre. In addition, he buys my sister and me some Walt Disney records that we play repeatedly such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy in Aladdin’s Lamp; and the story of The Princess and the Pea.


Once they notice my keen interest in music, my parents register me for singing and piano lessons.

Many years later, as a young adult, I went to sign up for some piano lessons. After listening to me play something, the instructor said, “You don’t need lessons; you just need practice.”