My Hometown
***PARENTAL ADVISEMENT***
(Just for MY parents don't worry. Mom & dad you are going to be mentioned in the following blog & also stories you may or may not already know will be told. Can't say I didn't warn you.
Love Your favourite daughter xo)
I'm a huge Eric Church fan! Love his songs, his music & the energy he can bring to the stage at his concerts. His new cd was finally released yesterday. In its tracks it includes a song called
Give me Back My Hometown. Maybe I was singing it in the back of my mind this morning when I went to go visit mine but here it is my Hometown. It will probably take you longer to read this blog than it would to drive through the town of Cottam but here it is through my eyes.
I grew up in Cottam from the age of three until I was almost twenty and moved to London with my girlfriend Tricia for a couple years. My parents have been in Cottam now for 37 years,
put your calculators away no need for math.
Yep, THIRTY-SEVEN years!!
Despite them torturing us every weekend by bringing us through multiple open houses
& telling us we're moving at least once every six months. They still live in Cottam.
It should also be noted that even in my adult life my parents still peruse through the new housing developments going up in the towns around them just to verify
that they may or may not move somewhere else one day.
My parents would wake up in the morning & load us into the car 'just for a drive' they would say & we would go scope out the houses that were 'open'.
Our family car was a CHEVETTE at one point in time. This was in no way an
enjoyable experience for my sisters & I. It's comical for me now to drive by some of these places & think to myself that I've been through that one & that one & that one etc.
Cottam thirty years ago was a little community between Essex & Leamington. Cottam today is still just a little community in the same spot but they've tacked on the Kingsville name to a few things now that the municipalities have amalgamated. There used to be a lot more traffic that would pass thru our little town before they built the bypass. We were the town along our own kind of
route 66 known today as Old #3 or county rd 34.
You could stop in the summertime for some hot buttered corn at Cornland Corner, a soda at the mini mart or maybe some chinese food on the outside of town.
We had a water station in town on the four corners that you'd see the county people coming in to fill up their trucks, a fire station at the bottom of the hill & the best damn kielbasa at Cottam Coldstorage.
You could walk a block on a Saturday morning & pick it up to bring home
hot out of the smokehouse.
The centre of my Cottam universe though was the ball diamonds in the summer & the Cottam Pond in the winter. Life was good! My parents house backed out onto the ball park & even though they never stopped looking for somewhere else to live there really was no better place!
It was a time when you walked out the door & played baseball or street hockey or rode
your bike over to a friends. In the winter time you made your sister carry a shovel & you went up to the pond & skated.
You skated till your toes were so cold and your hands so frozen that it was better just to walk all the way home with your skates still on then to sob infront of everyone while trying to take them off.
Thankfully there was usually a fire on when we would get back home
& we'd lay on our backs with our feet up on the hearth practically in the fire
to try & get the feeling back in them.
I can remember that frozen foot pain like it was just yesterday.
My dad was pretty good at rubbing them.
With all his years of hockey I think he was able to sympathize.
For a little town with no population attached to the sign it has to hold some sort of record for most churches per area. At my last count there were five.
There was the Cottam Baptist, St.Paul's Anglican,
another baptist church on the Belle River Rd. almost across from the school, one that I think might be Jehovah Witness on old #3 and of course the practically
famous for it's turkey supper ~ Cottam United.
It was the Cottam United Church that we would walk up to for Sunday School as kids.
Joyce & Ray Allen took care of us after school & it was their church which is how it became our church. My parents both grew up 'very' Catholic and had logged quite a few hours of religion to a sort of maxed out level. They were both very thankful to the Allens for taking us.
We were baptized Catholic but it was the United Church that we learned about God, starred in Christmas concerts, attended vacation bible school, ate wafer cookies in all three colours & drank that refreshing orange punch that you can only get in a church basement after Sunday school.
After our Sunday school years we would just hop into church with our friends after a Saturday night sleepover. I can say the same thing about most of the Churches in the area as I can about the houses. I've been in that one & that one etc.
It's hard to tell from this picture but another bonus to our big city is the Alley's.
I could time it perfectly that when I left the house to get the bus at the end of Laird I could hide out in the alley & then lap back through. By that time my mom would have left for work so I could have the house to myself. This only happened 'once or twice' & got a lot harder to pull off
once my sister started high school.
There are four alley's in town and made for some great short cuts, secret routes & as previously mentioned hideouts. There were times though when you didn't and shouldn't need to be behind your neighbours house in the alley. One example of this was a horrifying afternoon witnessing Mr. Winger killing chickens and hanging them on the line with a bucket underneath.
Where did he get those chickens? I mean who knew??
I was forever both scarred and baffled by this.
Looking back now I wish I would've had an odometer on my bike. My Norco & I were inseparable. The boundaries were not being allowed over the Belle River rd or Old #3. You could go to the pond with permission and you came home when the street lights came on or risk the embarrassment of your parents yelling out the front door for you. Some kids were called by whistle, for real!
I'm not sure exactly if there was an 'official age' that I was allowed to go further on my bike because I always had a bit of a grey area when it came to following rules. So while I wish I'd had something to keep track of the miles I put on that bike it was good there was nothing on there keeping track of the travels.
I logged a lot of miles going back & forth to the Freeze.
While it is in the town of North Ridge most people associate it with Cottam. Most of the time that would be what you would say after someone didn't know where Cottam was. You'd respond with 'Do you know where the Dairy Freeze is?
It's the next town just past there towards Leamington.
This time of year is the only time you will see the Freeze without a lineup & a jammed parking lot.
It means a lot to all who grew up loving it that it is still around!
There is still not too much to report on in Cottam today. There have been some changes but not quite what I'd hoped would happen.
My vision for Cottam was that it would one day
develop and grow into a beautiful town similar to Bayfield.
Businesses have come & gone. The Cottam Cafe and Calabria Pizza have been around on the main street for a handful of years now. Cottam Coldstorage is still up & running but there have been numerous business come & go throughout the years
down that main street.
We most definitely can boast that we have some wonderful family run farm stands like McLeod's & Hyslop's that are worth
the seasonal journey out to Cottam all on their own.
The post office, the firehall and the telephone office have all changed buildings and
we now even have an OPP outpost.
It's still the town that will host a horse show, a Santa Claus parade,
a yard sale day and various soccer & baseball tournaments.
Even though there have been some changes made and a few traditions kept what I'm proud to say most is that it's MY Hometown! And yes, that my parents are still at the house on Hill Street.
It was a great day to take a little winter drive out to the village and down memory lane.
Here's hoping it helps put Cottam on your map now :)
If the Great Pumpkin were to appear anywhere on Halloween Night it would definitely be HERE!! 
