I’ve been reared in small towns and, as David Letterman would say, we all know how painful that can be. Dain City, Stop 19 and Wainfleet - say what you like about me, but I’m no social climber. Coming up to 65, most days I still have to clean my shoes with a stick.

A rural hamlet bordered by the Welland Canal and two busy railroads, Dain City was a great place for a kid to grow up. Unfortunately, this little place has undergone more name changes than the Great Imposter.

Initially, it may have been designated Air Line Junction after a company that made brakes for trains. In 1908, Joseph Dain arrived from Iowa with patents in hand and built Dain Manufacturing, which produced agricultural machinery for export, mainly to South America. So, naturally they named the place - Welland Junction. Within a year, houses were built for Dain employees putting people to a place and a face.

In 1911, Deere & Company bought out Dain and the place was named Dearborn, Michigan. No, actually the village remained Welland Junction until the mid-‘50s when the City of Welland annexed it and, to avoid duplication, changed the name to Dain City.

Then, now and forever after, it will be known as Dain City, even though officially it has become Welland’s Ward 6.

Located south of Welland and north of Port Colborne, Dain City lies on the same latitude as Puke, Albania. I got a detention for bringing this up in geography class once, but you can even look it up.

I went to School System No. 4, and Dain City was now in Humberstone Township not Crowland Township. Then they changed the name of the school as well: from SS No. 4 to Bridgeview School. Apparently, SS No. 4 sounded too much like a secret training base for Germany’s Luftwaffe.

I preferred SS No. 4. No pressure to succeed, every school sports team I played on was greeted with chants of: “We’re Number 4!” “We’re Number 4!”

Confusing to kids? One night, I went to bed in a house at 53 Ontario Street and woke up the next morning at 53 Forks Road East. Nothing had moved except the dog, which ran away in protest.

Dain City’s industrial base was John Deere; its’ commercial centre included Ort’s convenience store, Evan’s General Store and Frank Mihalyi’s soda shop/gas station. We hung out at Mihalyi’s store. Sid Hilton would sit at the end stool slurping Coke through a straw he crushed because it make the drink last longer. Frank sold cigarettes to kids for two cents each.

It seemed The Dain City Hotel, on the canal next to the railway bridge, had always been there. Once a stagecoach inn, where the horses were bedded in the basement, “The Dainer” over the years was a brothel, an illegal betting shop, a public house, a private residence and now an abandoned building.

I lived next door to one of the bookies that operated out of The Dainer. My mother was amazed the house was always filled with new fridges and stoves. Turns out it was the Leon’s. They gambled a lot. They lost a lot. They paid off in appliances.

Just down my street and over the tracks was the Welland Drive-In, the hub of summer activity. Walking to the concession stand in the dark, you had to be careful not to trip over a speaker chord or a brassiere. Kids today have sex education classes. Malcolm Hilton and me, we had binoculars and the Welland Drive-In.

Towering 230 feet (70 metres) over the Welland Canal, the lift bridges were our midway rides; the last kid to let go and plunge into the blue water below as the bridge rose slowly skyward, won. The last kid still holding on for dear life, but chickened out of jumping had to stay up there until the boat went under and the bridge came down. He lost.

I went fishing with Jimmy Creighton at John’s Lake, which was really just a big pond. I brought fishing tackle; he brought dynamite. He went first. Suddenly, there was an explosion and a lot of fish swimming upside down, but nothing for me to catch.

I went duck hunting with Allan Creighton at nearby Mud Lake. I shot him. I don’t know, maybe it was something he said. We were both surprised. To this day, I thank Allan - for not shooting me back. That could have gotten ugly in a hurry.

I smoked my first cigarette with Malcolm Hilton out in the bush near the construction site of Dain City’s new subdivision. I coughed and spit my way through a long, unfiltered Viceroy cigarette Malcolm had nicked from his older brother. On my way home, I vomited green bile on my desert boots. That was my last cigarette.

In 1958, we began to get our news from CHOW-Radio, which went on the air at its newly built studio on Forks Road West. Before that, we relied solely on Alex Hilton. She had a watchful eye and a party line.

Among all those little settlements that sprung up in the first half of the 1900s, Dain City has won the war of attrition. I was a bat boy on a Dain City softball team that played against Perry Station, White Pigeon and Netherby. None of those villages exist today.

Occasionally, I take a slow drive through the village. Little has changed. I see SS No. 4 on the corner, now an apartment building. I see two of three stores are still operating. And then I see Allan Creighton running for his life down the railroad tracks toward Port Colborne.

Dain City - a tough but vibrant village that survived the test and ravages of time.

JANUARY 2012 SENIOR LIVING MAGAZINE VANCOUVER & LOWER MAINLAND