John reads from his own book!

[Music][Text: Story Time with John]

 

[John is sitting at his kitchen table in Gibsons, holding his book “Fluevog: 50 Years of Unique Soles for Unique Souls” and speaking to the camera.]

 

Hi I’m John Fluevog I’m back at reading another little section of my book so: “My parents met skating one day back in Alberta Sigurd was seven years older than Ruth and both were ready to marry in the end they had for most 54 mostly happy years together my mother was a good cook generous host talented seamstress in a bit of a poet my dad was mechanic quite smart and so during the Second World War [John turns the page] he was sent to Bella Bella…” Bella Bella so nice they named it twice, right? “..a remote village in the rain forest along the British Columbia coast to decode secret Japanese messages. My sister Karen was born up there and after the war they moved to Vancouver where my dad opened his own garage near something called the Kootenay loop at Hastings and Boundary and he loved anything that had wheels on it and so the cute little English cars are called Hillman’s and I’ve sort of inherited that love of cars and all things mechanical from him. At 52, and I was just at the age of 4, he opened up a soft-serve ice cream place on a street called Kingsway in Burnaby, a suburb in British Columbia, and it was called the Luxury Freeze…” Ok? Don’t snag that name me because I’m I’ve got a little I’ve got a register in the Internet just saying. It’s a great name. “…Drive-in and it became a real scene. Everybody went to the Luxury Freeze. They’d go to socialize and most of all to show off their cars.

There was lots of custom cars loaded with fashion statements like fancy girls in doodads and Dingle balls… Cars were a real status symbols in the 50s. You could be unpopular but if you get a cool car you could pretty much get any pretty girl, drive around with you so my dad and I loved to share a love of cars and at the same time as a teen I knew everything about every model that pulled in the drive-in. I guess that’s how I developed a feel for the shapes and how cars made people feel and that sort of got going on in the fashion business.

I spend a lot of time hanging in the Luxury Freeze. My dad was basically my babysitter and as I watched him work I learned a lot from him both on what to do and what not to do. He did everything by himself never hired anybody. Not the Fluevog way of course. And he considered evil to spend money when he could do it himself, besides he always thought that he could do better himself and it wasn’t always true of course. But he did teach me the most important lessons of my life was that if you wanted to do something you just start and there’s nothing you can’t really do if you just start. Although Luxury Freeze was quite successful and it was not just a business it was a place where my dad could spread the gospel because of course he was still a good Christian and my parents were a good-looking couple and I guess they could have been a real power couple, maybe they were in the 50s but there wasn’t such a word. If they decided they’d wanted to.

Everybody knew my dad everyone knew he talked to everybody and by the time I became a teenager that was super embarrassing to me. Especially when he talked about religion it embarrassed me that both my parents were religious. And I didn’t want to be religious because I wanted to fit in. And people who were religious were weird, right? Our house was a non-stop train station always full of teenagers, prayer meetings and music. My dad played the piano and music was a big deal in our house. He’d make us all sit around the piano at night singing three-part harmony.” I laugh when I think about it, but that’s what we did. “My two sisters were both good at the piano, me I never really learned how to play. I was in a choir though, in fact a little-known detail I was a leader of the junior choir. Even though I wasn’t very good in school I did like band class and my teacher took a shine to me and I played the trumpet. I wasn’t good at reading notes because of my dyslexia but I was good at playing. I played the trumpet at events and weddings and church services and I wail away on it people loved it. Who would have thunk that I did that? I did. I always say it’s a good thing I wasn’t good at playing guitar because I would have been in a rock and roll band and it would have been all down hill from there. Oh yeah.

So there was lots of music around the Luxury Freeze: Buddy Holly, Everly Brothers, Little Richard. Of course my dad wouldn’t be playing those by heard it on car radios. I remember hearing Elvis Presley for the first time: ‘Don’t step on my blue suede shoes’ in 1956 and being really blown away by that and maybe that’s what drew me to shoes. I don’t know. But they, in 58 there was a fire at the Luxury Freeze and even though my dad got plenty of insurance money to rebuild the energy just ran out of him. Two years later he sold it my family moved out to the suburbs, in South Burnaby. At the time he went through a bit of a religious awakening, which was good and not all that good.” And I think I’ll stop there. Seems like a good place to stop and we’ll pick it up another day. Thanks!

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