I haven't made a single psot to this bolg yet this year and it's almost half over already! So here's a short one...
The year was 1974. We were preparing to move from St Margarets to Duluth and it was our last night in New Brunswick. For the first time in my life I had someone I really didn't want to leave behind... my first beau. He was much older than I, and a "biker"! He rode a 1972 Honda CB500, and I loved it. It was a variety of different colours, starting with olive green and black, then black and gold, then blue and white. That last night we decided to take advantage of the warm evening and go for a spin on Highway 11 to Chatham (now Mirimichi). We were humming along a few miles from St Maggies when a bumblebee flew into the neck of my sweater and down into my bra where it became trapped. There it proceeded to sting my left breast. And sting it did!! The second I felt the initial pain, I hit Rick on the shoulder and he nearly dumped the bike. But we were able to liberate the bee and it flew off. It kind of spoiled the evening.
The next morning bright and early the four of us kids piled into the back seat of our Mercury Meteor sedan for the drive to Duluth via Brockville. It was crowded and hot back there. My bee sting was still very painful and I couldn't tell anybody about it because I wasn't supposed to be seeing Rick. So I suffered in hot, sweaty silence. For two days. Then it started to itch. How does one discreetly scratch the underside of one's breast when confined to the back seat of a car with an adolescent brother? I was never so glad to arrive at Grandma's in all my life!
It wasn't my first bee sting or my last, but it's the one I remember most clearly...
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Remembrance
As I stood in the crowd under a warmer-than-usual November sun this morning I was struck by the thought that I'm completely unable to recall a single Remembrance Day service from my childhood. I know I attended many of them as a child... how can one avoid it when one is immersed in all things military by the accident of birth? But not a one stands out in my mind. I grapple with the why of it.
As I pondered this mystery all afternoon, the only conclusion that came to me is that I don't remember them now because they didn't really mean anything to me then. Sure, I knew that my grandfather died while in the service of his country, but his death was not in battle and therefore didn't "count". I knew that my great-grandfather had served in the Great War, but he came back. Our country wasn't involved in any dangerous missions while I was growing up and so the real meaning of all of it didn't penetrate.
Today my emotions were easily aroused. As I pulled a Kleenex from my pocket, I tried to understand. Part of me was so grateful for the sacrifices made by all who have served in the defence not only of our country but of fairness, security and humanity for all. The Last Post always raises the hair on my neck; when I hear it I think of my grandfather, Thomas Montgomery. He left his young wife and five daughters to heed the call to duty, only to find himself severely depressed by the separation and by chronic pain after a motorcycle crash. He took his own life in a guard tower in Prince Rupert on May 26, 1942; he was 38. It makes me think too of my Grand-uncle Maxie, Grandma Curry's little brother, who was killed in action near Ravenna, Italy on December 14, 1944 at the age of 32. I found myself wondering how hearing that bugle made my ancestors feel as they served. Did it give them goosebumps, or did it elicit tears they struggled to conceal? Or was it simply a marker that was forgotten as soon as it ended?
Another part of me was proud of the role my family members have played in the history of this country, whether at war or at home. Five generations. (Six if you count Amanda's time in the Cadet Instructor Cadre.) All have been volunteers. My great-grandfather William Jabez Cubitt was a married man with three children when he followed his two younger brothers into service in the Great War. He was 30 years and 7 months old on the day of his enlistment, September 5th, 1916. Young Herbert John, known as Jack, had enlisted on October 26, 1914, only weeks after Canada entered the war. He was 24 years, 6 months old. George Thomas, 2 years and 2 months older, followed him a week later on November 3. All three survived the war and went on to live long and productive lives. WJ even served in World War II as a recruiting officer. No military service is ever trivial. "They also serve who only stand and wait." John Milton was right about that.
Yet another part was awed by the number of young men and women I saw in uniform, standing at attention as the Cadet band played our national anthem. As always, the youth of the day gets a bad rap but there were many there today who were there voluntarily, wearing the uniform with pride. They are the leaders of our future and it made my heart full to be in their company.
And finally, part of me grieved for the lost... not only those who gave their lives but also those who have returned injured. I'm exceedingly proud of Connor, whose life is entwined with our daughter's, for enduring two tours of duty in Afghanistan. I only hope he is able to overcome the psychological and emotional effects of those tours.
There were hundreds of people there at St Albert Place today. It pleased me enormously to see the families with children... that didn't include a dad or mom in uniform. That gives me hope for the future that remembrance will not just fade away.
They shall grow not old,
As we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will remember them.
-- Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)
As I pondered this mystery all afternoon, the only conclusion that came to me is that I don't remember them now because they didn't really mean anything to me then. Sure, I knew that my grandfather died while in the service of his country, but his death was not in battle and therefore didn't "count". I knew that my great-grandfather had served in the Great War, but he came back. Our country wasn't involved in any dangerous missions while I was growing up and so the real meaning of all of it didn't penetrate.
Today my emotions were easily aroused. As I pulled a Kleenex from my pocket, I tried to understand. Part of me was so grateful for the sacrifices made by all who have served in the defence not only of our country but of fairness, security and humanity for all. The Last Post always raises the hair on my neck; when I hear it I think of my grandfather, Thomas Montgomery. He left his young wife and five daughters to heed the call to duty, only to find himself severely depressed by the separation and by chronic pain after a motorcycle crash. He took his own life in a guard tower in Prince Rupert on May 26, 1942; he was 38. It makes me think too of my Grand-uncle Maxie, Grandma Curry's little brother, who was killed in action near Ravenna, Italy on December 14, 1944 at the age of 32. I found myself wondering how hearing that bugle made my ancestors feel as they served. Did it give them goosebumps, or did it elicit tears they struggled to conceal? Or was it simply a marker that was forgotten as soon as it ended?
Another part of me was proud of the role my family members have played in the history of this country, whether at war or at home. Five generations. (Six if you count Amanda's time in the Cadet Instructor Cadre.) All have been volunteers. My great-grandfather William Jabez Cubitt was a married man with three children when he followed his two younger brothers into service in the Great War. He was 30 years and 7 months old on the day of his enlistment, September 5th, 1916. Young Herbert John, known as Jack, had enlisted on October 26, 1914, only weeks after Canada entered the war. He was 24 years, 6 months old. George Thomas, 2 years and 2 months older, followed him a week later on November 3. All three survived the war and went on to live long and productive lives. WJ even served in World War II as a recruiting officer. No military service is ever trivial. "They also serve who only stand and wait." John Milton was right about that.
Yet another part was awed by the number of young men and women I saw in uniform, standing at attention as the Cadet band played our national anthem. As always, the youth of the day gets a bad rap but there were many there today who were there voluntarily, wearing the uniform with pride. They are the leaders of our future and it made my heart full to be in their company.
And finally, part of me grieved for the lost... not only those who gave their lives but also those who have returned injured. I'm exceedingly proud of Connor, whose life is entwined with our daughter's, for enduring two tours of duty in Afghanistan. I only hope he is able to overcome the psychological and emotional effects of those tours.
There were hundreds of people there at St Albert Place today. It pleased me enormously to see the families with children... that didn't include a dad or mom in uniform. That gives me hope for the future that remembrance will not just fade away.
They shall grow not old,
As we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will remember them.
-- Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)
Friday, July 23, 2010
Cyberweird
Is it just me or has technology blurred the lines between the past, the present and the future? I had occasion to venture into the cyberweird the other night and my experience inspired this blog post... and believe me, it's truly random!
I think I've mentioned before that I'm an amateur family historian. I've been formally and actively following the tendrils of my family tree since 1998. This exercise has been by turns frustrating, funny or fruitful, but always fascinating. Having access to digitised records from around the world has opened so many doors... Census records can be the most intriguing and informative of those records. (I promise not to go off on a tangent about the Canadian government's idiotic and short-sighted decision to make the long form voluntary. I promise.) So what does this have to do with anything, you wonder? The 1911 British census forms were filled out by the head of the household in their own hand, not by the enumerator, they give information about how long a couple has been married, how many children they've borne and how many are still alive. (Another tangent... not important right now because it's created a brick wall I never expected to have to scale...) There is also information about the family's home: the actual street address and the number of rooms in the home. (Bored yet?) This is where the cyberweird aspect comes in.
Someone sent me a link to a website called vPike. It's a companion site to Google's street view and gives one a peek into communities around the world. I've looked up our house and figured out when the photo was taken, looked at my parents' home and some old friends' homes (addresses from my Christmas card list). Then the other night, I had one of those freak jolts of brilliance - I might be able to see the actual homes where my great-great-grandparents lived!! Why did it take me so long?? There were a few problems with the search - some of the street names have been changed, or the census addresses were what the locals called the area, not the actual civic registration. But I did have some success, finding some of the addresses on my list and seeing homes that could well be more than 100 years old. It was COOL!!!! So from there I looked at the address given for Rick's great-great-grandparents in Fall River, Massachusetts (home of the infamous Lizzy Borden!) in 1880. The building I found at that address was a very old one, so it probably is the same one. These glimpses into the past were so gratifying, almost as good as chocolate.
Of course, there is nothing in this post that is a reminiscence... yet.
After a while I began to wonder whether my Grandma Curry's old duplex on Daniel St in Brockville was still standing. Grandma died in 1989 and hadn't lived there for several years by then. Sharon and I used to go there for lunch on school days because it was only a block and a bit from the old St Francis Xavier School on Church St. Mom worked the early shift at the New Wave Chinese Restaurant on King St and Dad delivered milk for Smith's Dairy so Grandma fed us every day, along with Clovis, her slightly-slow boarder. Her house was a bit different from what I was used to. There was a veranda with three steps up to the front door; a lilac hedge divided the sidewalk from that of the other half of the duplex. (I have always loved that scent!) The main floor was compactly arranged with the stairs to the second floor just inside the front door along the common wall. To the left of the entrance was her living room where she'd sit with tiny pin curls in her ever-thinning hair, on her black leather couch with the earphone of her transistor radio in one ear, tuned to a baseball game, while she watched boxing on TV, vigourously chewing Chiclets. The dining room extended across the middle of the house with stairs to the dirt-floored cellar underneath the staircase to the second floor and the door to the kitchen opposite. The kitchen was small with a counter, sink and cabinets along the left wall, her stove on the back wall and the fridge across from the sink. Her budgie Petey lived in a tall cage just inside the kitchen door. The kitchen opened out into what she called the back kitchen, where her washing machine lived, along with a treasure trove of bottles she'd collect for us to return for the deposit - ah, penny candy! The back door was on the same wall as the cabinets and led to a postage-stamp sized backyard with a clothesline, a back lane and little else. It smelled back there.
At the top of the stairs a hairpin left down a narrow hall took one to the bathroom. She had no sink in there, just a toilet and a huge, really old clawfooted tub. Next to the bathroom was Clovis' room; he lived there for as long as I could remember. Right across from the top of the landing was Grandma's room. There was a closet on the left side of the landing and a couple of steps down led into the third bedroom at the back of the house. I never thought much about it before but it must have been built over the back kitchen. That room was my favourite place in the house next to the veranda. It was a narrowish room with a sloped ceiling on both sides. The most beautiful (at least to me!) antique dressing table stood against the side where the common wall would have been. I would have given almost anything to be the owner of that!! A solitary window looked out over the back lane. I spent a lot of time in that house in 1965 and '66.
A really quick search on vPike showed me Grandma's old home... not as I remembered it but obviously unloved and heading toward dilapidation. Oddly, it's flanked by a spanking new oversized single garage where the ancient and always-locked old one once stood. The lilac hedge is gone and an unpainted picket fence is there in its place.
My curiosity fully aroused, I had to then take a look at the places where we had lived while we were in Brockville. Our first home there was a 3 bedroom apartment over a Thom McAn shoe store at 79 King St W. The building still stands, not looking a whole lot different than I remember. The shoe store has been replaced by a sales office for a luxury housing development called the Mooring (the St Lawrence River being only steps away). My memories of living there are not very detailed; we didn't live there for too long and I was only 8 when we left. I remember it being on the third floor, a long hallway, playing train with a bunch of old pasteboard luggage, the kitchen with its fire escape at the back. I remember starting a fire (a pyro from a very young age) on the stove because we'd always had a gas stove before and I couldn't figure out how the electric one worked. I remember going swimming at the boat launch near Hardy Park and pulling Bruce out of the water by his hair as he went floating by, clearly well over his head. And the time we went to swim off the dock without a grownup, scaring Mom half to death when a thunderstorm blew in and her not knowing where we were. I remember the day I came down with chicken pox; it was a warm summer Sunday and Dad had borrowed Uncle Mickey's Volkswagen to take us to the laundromat. I had the worst headache and was sent to take a nap in the Beetle. Then the rash erupted... But I don't remember much about the apartment itself.
That led to an exploration for our duplex at 61 George St. It seems to be gone, but there's another building a block further up the street that looks exactly as I remember our house, right down to the baby-turd yellow stucco. We had a huge back yard at that house that had hollyhocks growing all along the fence. The neighbours had three kids, the oldest a boy about 12 who built an incredible system of tunnels and stalags for his army men in their yard with which he recreated World War II. His name was Frank but we all called him Chubby. (He wasn't, don't know where the name came from...) I can't remember his sisters' names, but I remember a girl named Terry Mitton. I don't remember much about the interior of that house either, I suspect because I've suppressed those memories. (I will NOT remiminisce about why here.) I do remember a huge grate in the dining room floor that fed fresh air to the furnace but that's about it.
Imagine my shock and awe to discover that the New Wave not only is still right where it always was at 202 King St W, but it's still open and unchanged after more than 40 years. I had to share that discovery with Mom, who professed not to be surprised at all. Naturally, that led to me looking for the source of many beloved Friday night dinners, Manoll's Fish and Chips... still doing land-office business at 11 Buell St. I can almost smell the newsprint and vinegar!
After visiting the favourite and familiar, I had a quick jaunt over to my Aunt Betty's and Uncle Duke's house on Ferguson Dr... a place I'd only visited perhaps twice but much as my mind recalled it. Aunt Betty passed in 2000 from early-onset Alzheimers. Then I traipsed over to my Aunt Marian's former house at 34 Centre St... also only visited twice or three times, but it too is not really changed. Aunt Marian and Uncle Roy live in Killaloe now, not far from the old Golka family farm.
My trip down memory lane was cut short by the late hour and my need for sleep. So many memories were fired by looking at these places from the distant past, leaving me a little unsettled, but happy to have been there.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Fads, Trends and In-things...
No one could ever accuse me of being a fashion-forward kinda girl. More like a fashion-backwards one... I always seemed to be just behind the wave, if not inundated by it. Recently I was shuffling through about a million old photos looking for something for one of my girls, permanent evidence of my lack of style if ever I saw it. I've certainly never had the right... umm... frame for fashionable dressing, and I'm never gonna change that now. But there is hope. Stacy and Clinton, where were you thirty years ago? No wait, make that forty!
It was about this time of year that I got my very first ever pair of bellbottoms. Were they white duck, or navy blue button-front? Were they tie-dyed and oh-so-cool? No. They were navy blue cotton with tiny flowers all over them. I picked 'em out myself at the dry goods store in Kindersley, spending my hard-earned babysitting money, and I was twelve. If I recall, it was the first time I'd ever shopped for clothing that didn't involve a catalogue of some sort. Which brings me to some of those really tragic choices. The very first outfit I bought with my own money was a slippery polyester three-piece disaster - a pink, long sleeved blouse, a pink "gingham" belted vest and matching skirt. I wore it for my Grade V school picture along with my granny glasses and ringlets. (Eeewww!) The photo was such a disaster that Mom agreed I could have retakes, and for those I wore a shades-of-red lightweight denim sleeveless top and shorts that my mom had made for me. Better!!
If that wasn't bad enough, when I went into Grade VI, I wanted to be "in style" so I parted my hair in the middle, grew out my bangs and fought daily to keep it straight. It came down to about the bottom of my chin, or maybe a little longer. I had a mostly-avocado-green psychedelic print dress with a white collar that I wore for photos that year. Did I mention that I'd broken my black plastic cats-eye glasses on the ski hill and they were held together on the left temple with white adhesive tape? When the photos came home that year my Nan was visiting us; she wanted to know why I was so upset by them so I showed her, looking for sympathy and a big hug. What I got instead was, "Well, it looks like you, dear". WAAAAAAAAAAHH! (No retakes that year... I missed them because I was sick.) I think there may still be one or two of them living in the basement at Mom and Dad's. Then there was the parish directory photo... OMG did I look awful. The centre part was gone, but the red cardigan I wore didn't do much to disguise the pudge, and the unfortunate "leather" choker I'd made for myself using an old crown-shaped button as a centrepiece made my neck look like a bulldog's. Sigh.
By Grade VII I really didn't want any more nasty class photos so I chose something very plain and boring. Or at least that's how I saw it. My hair was much longer by then and I let it curl like it wanted to; I just couldn't wear it loose all the time because it got in my way. So I tied the front part back and left the rest loose. It looked okay. My outfit was a red vest and pants over a turquoise turtleneck. I was a bit slimmer, having started to spend a lot of time in the pool and on the ski hill and my freckles had started to fade. Looking at it now, I think overall I looked pretty good! Serious, a little somber, but good. My confirmation photo is one I like a lot; I wore a navy blue dress with white sleeves and light panty hose. I looked like everybody else and that was a good thing.
My class photo from Grade VIII is a real horror show. By then I had started "filling out", which is just a really PC way of saying I started getting heavy. There I am, third from the left, next to Sue Ward, who is next to that evil little John T Cook. My hair is in a side ponytail with my bangs scraped off to the left and plastered to my forehead. I'm wearing a plum-coloured bonded knit sweater with a tiny geometric pattern knitted into it and a zippered neck, plus matching solid colour bonded knit plum coloured pants. The photo is black-and-white but in my head it's in living colour! Lynda Fox's expression says it all - That Jan REALLY needs a stylist!!
I don't recall a class photo from Grade IX; however that was the year I bought the oh-so-amazing white "leather" jacket that I used to clean with Fantastik. I wore my dad's shirts a lot then, trying to disguise my chest. That was the one time I was a little ahead of the parade - Madonna didn't start wearing torpedo bras for about ten years.
By Grade X I'd cut some layers into my hair, which made it extraordinarily unruly. The Ms. B. Smart English 102 class photo from that year is okay because I'm in the second row and only recogniseable because I know it's me, and I'm not the largest person in the room. Talk about big hair though, before it became fashionable in the 80's. My top was red knit with a red-and-white checked collar and cuffs, again only a vivid memory. That was the year of plaid baggies, platform shoes and contradictions. My dad took me shopping for my birthday and I, still clamouring to be a fashion icon, bought a pair of orange-and-brown-plaid-on-a-cream-background baggy pants and a matching orange shirt. (Have you ever seen me in orange? NO!! and you won't ever!!) It was a really attractive outfit, but not for me. As for contradictions, girls wore baby-doll tops over turtlenecks (I was lucky, I just appropriated my mom's maternity tops) or very fitted tops that emphasized the bustline, tied at the back. It was also the year of Beth Farrell's white halter top and cut-offs. (Cathy Pineau wore a white halter too but she didn't fill it out quite the same.)
In the summer of 1974, we moved to Duluth. I locked myself in the bathroom with a pair of scissors and cut off all my hair. I gave myself a very mod cut, actually rather like a bowl cut with heavy bangs curled under with a curling iron, and the sides also curled under in fat sausage curls. (I still have tiny scars over both cheekbones and above one eyebrow from that curling iron.) For Grade XI I looked... almost cute... in my light blue scoop-necked, puffed-sleeved sweater and octagonal granny glasses. I really just wanted to blend in.
The big fads in my senior year were plaid work shirts and "star" jeans that you could only get in Canada. Everybody who wanted to be "in", both guys and girls, went to Thunder Bay to shop for the heavy denim, snug-at-the-waist-and-hip but gargantuan-from-the-knee-down jeans with the embroidered stars on the back pockets made by GWG. ("Woohoo, over here! Canadian girl over here!") I had a navy blue plaid work shirt that I wore as a jacket, and my own pair of star jeans... I had arrived. I also got new glasses, huge aviator frames with Photogray lenses that seemed to ALWAYS be gray. My yearbook photo was taken only a few days after I'd gotten the new glasses and the optician offered to lend me a pair of frames without lenses so that there'd be no glare. I don't think I was squinting. I wore a pale blue blouse and a gray sweater. My hair had evolved again and now was blown back from my face on the sides, but still with the heavy bangs.
I'd like to say that when I left my teen years behind I left the fashion faux-pas there too, but alas. I did the big hair and bigger glasses, I did the shoulder pads, I did the humungous sweaters over stirrup pants... the mom jeans, cargo pants, tunics. But I've never worn my underwear as outerwear, nor even tried on "Hammer" pants, avoided slip dresses and skinny jeans, and I'll never go out in public in yoga wear, except to walk the dog. I'm never going to turn heads a la Carrie Underwood... or Bjork... and I'm okay with that. With suggestions from What NOT to Wear, I've begun to select clothing that flatter me, fit me and make me feel good... notwithstanding the Moosehead t-shirt and old jeans I'm wearing right now. Some days you've gotta go for comfort over style!
It was about this time of year that I got my very first ever pair of bellbottoms. Were they white duck, or navy blue button-front? Were they tie-dyed and oh-so-cool? No. They were navy blue cotton with tiny flowers all over them. I picked 'em out myself at the dry goods store in Kindersley, spending my hard-earned babysitting money, and I was twelve. If I recall, it was the first time I'd ever shopped for clothing that didn't involve a catalogue of some sort. Which brings me to some of those really tragic choices. The very first outfit I bought with my own money was a slippery polyester three-piece disaster - a pink, long sleeved blouse, a pink "gingham" belted vest and matching skirt. I wore it for my Grade V school picture along with my granny glasses and ringlets. (Eeewww!) The photo was such a disaster that Mom agreed I could have retakes, and for those I wore a shades-of-red lightweight denim sleeveless top and shorts that my mom had made for me. Better!!
If that wasn't bad enough, when I went into Grade VI, I wanted to be "in style" so I parted my hair in the middle, grew out my bangs and fought daily to keep it straight. It came down to about the bottom of my chin, or maybe a little longer. I had a mostly-avocado-green psychedelic print dress with a white collar that I wore for photos that year. Did I mention that I'd broken my black plastic cats-eye glasses on the ski hill and they were held together on the left temple with white adhesive tape? When the photos came home that year my Nan was visiting us; she wanted to know why I was so upset by them so I showed her, looking for sympathy and a big hug. What I got instead was, "Well, it looks like you, dear". WAAAAAAAAAAHH! (No retakes that year... I missed them because I was sick.) I think there may still be one or two of them living in the basement at Mom and Dad's. Then there was the parish directory photo... OMG did I look awful. The centre part was gone, but the red cardigan I wore didn't do much to disguise the pudge, and the unfortunate "leather" choker I'd made for myself using an old crown-shaped button as a centrepiece made my neck look like a bulldog's. Sigh.
By Grade VII I really didn't want any more nasty class photos so I chose something very plain and boring. Or at least that's how I saw it. My hair was much longer by then and I let it curl like it wanted to; I just couldn't wear it loose all the time because it got in my way. So I tied the front part back and left the rest loose. It looked okay. My outfit was a red vest and pants over a turquoise turtleneck. I was a bit slimmer, having started to spend a lot of time in the pool and on the ski hill and my freckles had started to fade. Looking at it now, I think overall I looked pretty good! Serious, a little somber, but good. My confirmation photo is one I like a lot; I wore a navy blue dress with white sleeves and light panty hose. I looked like everybody else and that was a good thing.
My class photo from Grade VIII is a real horror show. By then I had started "filling out", which is just a really PC way of saying I started getting heavy. There I am, third from the left, next to Sue Ward, who is next to that evil little John T Cook. My hair is in a side ponytail with my bangs scraped off to the left and plastered to my forehead. I'm wearing a plum-coloured bonded knit sweater with a tiny geometric pattern knitted into it and a zippered neck, plus matching solid colour bonded knit plum coloured pants. The photo is black-and-white but in my head it's in living colour! Lynda Fox's expression says it all - That Jan REALLY needs a stylist!!
I don't recall a class photo from Grade IX; however that was the year I bought the oh-so-amazing white "leather" jacket that I used to clean with Fantastik. I wore my dad's shirts a lot then, trying to disguise my chest. That was the one time I was a little ahead of the parade - Madonna didn't start wearing torpedo bras for about ten years.
By Grade X I'd cut some layers into my hair, which made it extraordinarily unruly. The Ms. B. Smart English 102 class photo from that year is okay because I'm in the second row and only recogniseable because I know it's me, and I'm not the largest person in the room. Talk about big hair though, before it became fashionable in the 80's. My top was red knit with a red-and-white checked collar and cuffs, again only a vivid memory. That was the year of plaid baggies, platform shoes and contradictions. My dad took me shopping for my birthday and I, still clamouring to be a fashion icon, bought a pair of orange-and-brown-plaid-on-a-cream-background baggy pants and a matching orange shirt. (Have you ever seen me in orange? NO!! and you won't ever!!) It was a really attractive outfit, but not for me. As for contradictions, girls wore baby-doll tops over turtlenecks (I was lucky, I just appropriated my mom's maternity tops) or very fitted tops that emphasized the bustline, tied at the back. It was also the year of Beth Farrell's white halter top and cut-offs. (Cathy Pineau wore a white halter too but she didn't fill it out quite the same.)
In the summer of 1974, we moved to Duluth. I locked myself in the bathroom with a pair of scissors and cut off all my hair. I gave myself a very mod cut, actually rather like a bowl cut with heavy bangs curled under with a curling iron, and the sides also curled under in fat sausage curls. (I still have tiny scars over both cheekbones and above one eyebrow from that curling iron.) For Grade XI I looked... almost cute... in my light blue scoop-necked, puffed-sleeved sweater and octagonal granny glasses. I really just wanted to blend in.
The big fads in my senior year were plaid work shirts and "star" jeans that you could only get in Canada. Everybody who wanted to be "in", both guys and girls, went to Thunder Bay to shop for the heavy denim, snug-at-the-waist-and-hip but gargantuan-from-the-knee-down jeans with the embroidered stars on the back pockets made by GWG. ("Woohoo, over here! Canadian girl over here!") I had a navy blue plaid work shirt that I wore as a jacket, and my own pair of star jeans... I had arrived. I also got new glasses, huge aviator frames with Photogray lenses that seemed to ALWAYS be gray. My yearbook photo was taken only a few days after I'd gotten the new glasses and the optician offered to lend me a pair of frames without lenses so that there'd be no glare. I don't think I was squinting. I wore a pale blue blouse and a gray sweater. My hair had evolved again and now was blown back from my face on the sides, but still with the heavy bangs.
I'd like to say that when I left my teen years behind I left the fashion faux-pas there too, but alas. I did the big hair and bigger glasses, I did the shoulder pads, I did the humungous sweaters over stirrup pants... the mom jeans, cargo pants, tunics. But I've never worn my underwear as outerwear, nor even tried on "Hammer" pants, avoided slip dresses and skinny jeans, and I'll never go out in public in yoga wear, except to walk the dog. I'm never going to turn heads a la Carrie Underwood... or Bjork... and I'm okay with that. With suggestions from What NOT to Wear, I've begun to select clothing that flatter me, fit me and make me feel good... notwithstanding the Moosehead t-shirt and old jeans I'm wearing right now. Some days you've gotta go for comfort over style!
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Really Random!
A post on a message board from a nurse in the Philippines asking which city was more cosmopolitan, Saskatoon or Regina, got me thinking. After I stopped laughing, that is. I and two other members of the board attempted to describe Saskatchewan to someone with no obvious frame of reference. Finally I posted a photo of an abandoned farm house and an antique but functioning thresher. And therein lie the roots of this post...
Abandoned farm houses and barns have always intrigued me in a way I can't explain. They inflame my imagination and curiosity to such an extent that I find myself "seeing" the people who may have lived or worked there, wondering what they thought about their lives and their futures. What did they do on long winter nights when the snow-filled wind howled around the eaves and the supply of lamp oil was low? What did they do for fun? Were they happy? Why did they leave, and where did they go?
My first memory of this intense thirst for insight was of a summer day in Grimshaw when I was about six. We were living with Nan then in her little two bedroom house a couple of blocks from 'downtown'. I had five cousins there who were older than I, two who lived on a farm outside of town and three who lived in town, as well as one my age. There was a family gathering at one of the farms and I was excited and happy to be included. I was wearing my only dress that day because it was special occasion for me; it was brown print cotton with a full skirt and a buttoned-up bodice. The collar was white, if I recall correctly. In the afternoon while the grown-ups visited, we kids explored the farm; we climbed the baled hay stacked many feet high (only Ronnie made it to the top and collected a bunch of eggs he found up there), sat on the tractor and pretended we were farmers, chased the cats and the chickens and then ended up in the barn. We climbed the ladder into the loft, swung from the block and tackle used for hoisting bales of hay up there and raised a ton of dust. Some of my cousins decided we should slide down a plank leaning against one of the beams that created the loft. I was six, remember, and didn't think of the consequences of such an activity... the ignominy of having my mother pluck dozens of splinters out of my tender rear end. Such an ending to a wonderful day!
Another time my older cousins and I explored an abandoned building near the main street of our little town. It had to have been a business because I remember playing with a typewriter, an old Olivetti with round black keys. There were papers and books strewn all about, several inches deep on the floor. Some of the windows were broken, but I'm pretty sure we didn't get in there through a window. I stepped on a nail that pierced right through the sole of my red canvas sneaker; the shank of the nail broke off and protruded out of the rubber. That meant a trip to the doctor's office and, of course, a tetanus shot. When would I learn?
We used to play in a car graveyard too in those days. There was what seems, in my child's memory, dozens of rusted-out hulks with flat tires in a yard in town that no one seemed to supervise. We'd go there and play in the old cars, pretending we were taking trips to exotic places like Peace River and Grande Prairie. We could drive you know, even though we were all just little kids. There were a couple of cars that were our favourites, ones that still had intact upholstery and no mice. It was great fun.
When I was a few years older (maybe eleven or twelve) and living in Saskatchewan, I again had the chance to explore an abandoned building, this time a farm house several miles from Alsask on a dirt road. I don't remember who I went there with, but I think it might have been my sister's friend Kim Longmuir and her family. The house was a two-story four-square similar to the one in the photo above. There was faded wallpaper on the walls and a carpeted runner on the stairs. Most of the windows were still intact but there was a thick layer of dust everywhere. Some of the furnishings were left behind... a chrome-legged table and several cracked-vinyl chairs, an armchair and a small table, an old metal bedstead with a holey mattress, a lamp. It was like the inhabitants had packed up what mattered and moved on. Houses were built to last in the early part of the 20th century and this house was still quite sturdy; the stairs were safe to climb and climb them we did. The view from the windows was that of unending golden fields dotted with the occasional stunted tree and a dome of blue sky. I remember feeling deeply disappointed when it was time to leave. (Is that how the woman whose home we were invading had felt? I like to think so.)
Thursday, December 31, 2009
A New Year's Eve I'd completely forgotten
When I was on my way home from work after my night shift the call-in topic of the morning show I was listening to on the radio was about most memorable New Year's Eves... for all the wrong reasons. As I headed my car down the hill by the university I started thinking about that, and this memory surfaced...
It began on the day before New Year's Eve, 1970 when we were living in Alsask. Around lunchtime the phone rang; it was a woman who worked as a waitress in the hotel bar where Mom was a waitress in the dining room. She wanted to know if I would babysit her little boy while she and her husband drove a transportation-less couple (our next door neighbours the Nowans) into Kindersley to have their baby. I'd never worked for them before although I had a large clientele for my babysitting services. I already had a job lined up for New Year's Eve but that was more than a day away, so I was only too happy to make a little more money. How long could it take to drive someone into Kindersley anyway?
Little did I know they'd planned to stay with the other couple until the baby arrived, first babies usually took their sweet time doing that and it would be many hours before I returned home.
I walked the short distance to the Gauthiers' house with a book and a roll of Lifesavers in my pocket. The couple was in a hurry to leave so they gave me some brief instructions about their toddler and his routine. Oh, and the dog had been spayed the day before and was still a little sedated, but she'd be fine... And away they went.
The dog was a huge Newf with a white blaze on her chest that made her look like a Himalayan black bear; she was solidly sleeping it off in the front hallway. I'd never seen a dog that large and was more than a little scared of her. The little boy was at the age where he made strange so when he woke from his nap he took one look at me and began to scream. Between trying to calm the child and my dreading the moment when the gi-normous dog regained consciousness, my stomach was in knots. When the Gauthiers hadn't returned by suppertime I scrounged around and fed the baby. A couple of hours later I broke down and helped myself to some of their groceries. A while later I put the baby to bed and settled in to watch TV. I had a choice between CFQC (CTV) from Saskatoon, French CBC and CFCN (CTV) Calgary. With rabbit ears. And LOTS of snow. I struggled to stay awake; it was a point of honour for me that I never fell asleep when I babysat. I was not being paid to sleep, after all. I was completely fine with both the baby and the dog remaining asleep, however!
Somewhere in the middle of the night the baby woke me up. He settled back down to sleep and I curled up in the by-now-chilly living room with a blanket and my book. The dog slumbered on. I don't think she had moved at all in all the hours I'd been there, although she was definitely breathing - I could hear her from across the room. I dozed off several more times, shaking myself awake each time, mortified in case the Gauthiers would come home and find me sawing logs. I needn't have worried. They returned around noon with the news that Sue Nowan had given birth to a boy that morning and both mom and baby were fine. I grabbed the $10 they gave me and sprinted for home and bed.
That night I walked over to the Wiazeks at the appointed time. I was torn between pretending that I'd had a good night's sleep and would be my usual highly responsible self and telling them the whole story about the night before. In the end I told them, and Mrs Wiazek was so nice, she told me it would be just fine if I was asleep when they came home. If I wanted to I could just sleep over. (I was SO relieved!!) In the end I chose to go home to my own bed at 2 am when they came home; Mr Wiazek drove me home, something that NEVER happened on that tiny radar station but totally welcomed that night.
Oh, yeah... what about the dog? She woke up not long after the sun came up, stretched mightily, groaned a bit, ambled to the back door and gave me a look that said, "Lemme out NOW!" When she came back in she went back to her rug in the front hall and promptly went back to sleep. She had no intention of eating me, which was absolutely fine with me.
It began on the day before New Year's Eve, 1970 when we were living in Alsask. Around lunchtime the phone rang; it was a woman who worked as a waitress in the hotel bar where Mom was a waitress in the dining room. She wanted to know if I would babysit her little boy while she and her husband drove a transportation-less couple (our next door neighbours the Nowans) into Kindersley to have their baby. I'd never worked for them before although I had a large clientele for my babysitting services. I already had a job lined up for New Year's Eve but that was more than a day away, so I was only too happy to make a little more money. How long could it take to drive someone into Kindersley anyway?
Little did I know they'd planned to stay with the other couple until the baby arrived, first babies usually took their sweet time doing that and it would be many hours before I returned home.
I walked the short distance to the Gauthiers' house with a book and a roll of Lifesavers in my pocket. The couple was in a hurry to leave so they gave me some brief instructions about their toddler and his routine. Oh, and the dog had been spayed the day before and was still a little sedated, but she'd be fine... And away they went.
The dog was a huge Newf with a white blaze on her chest that made her look like a Himalayan black bear; she was solidly sleeping it off in the front hallway. I'd never seen a dog that large and was more than a little scared of her. The little boy was at the age where he made strange so when he woke from his nap he took one look at me and began to scream. Between trying to calm the child and my dreading the moment when the gi-normous dog regained consciousness, my stomach was in knots. When the Gauthiers hadn't returned by suppertime I scrounged around and fed the baby. A couple of hours later I broke down and helped myself to some of their groceries. A while later I put the baby to bed and settled in to watch TV. I had a choice between CFQC (CTV) from Saskatoon, French CBC and CFCN (CTV) Calgary. With rabbit ears. And LOTS of snow. I struggled to stay awake; it was a point of honour for me that I never fell asleep when I babysat. I was not being paid to sleep, after all. I was completely fine with both the baby and the dog remaining asleep, however!
Somewhere in the middle of the night the baby woke me up. He settled back down to sleep and I curled up in the by-now-chilly living room with a blanket and my book. The dog slumbered on. I don't think she had moved at all in all the hours I'd been there, although she was definitely breathing - I could hear her from across the room. I dozed off several more times, shaking myself awake each time, mortified in case the Gauthiers would come home and find me sawing logs. I needn't have worried. They returned around noon with the news that Sue Nowan had given birth to a boy that morning and both mom and baby were fine. I grabbed the $10 they gave me and sprinted for home and bed.
That night I walked over to the Wiazeks at the appointed time. I was torn between pretending that I'd had a good night's sleep and would be my usual highly responsible self and telling them the whole story about the night before. In the end I told them, and Mrs Wiazek was so nice, she told me it would be just fine if I was asleep when they came home. If I wanted to I could just sleep over. (I was SO relieved!!) In the end I chose to go home to my own bed at 2 am when they came home; Mr Wiazek drove me home, something that NEVER happened on that tiny radar station but totally welcomed that night.
Oh, yeah... what about the dog? She woke up not long after the sun came up, stretched mightily, groaned a bit, ambled to the back door and gave me a look that said, "Lemme out NOW!" When she came back in she went back to her rug in the front hall and promptly went back to sleep. She had no intention of eating me, which was absolutely fine with me.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Ah yes... the beach party at Loggieville...
That summer that I was fifteen, my cohorts at Teen Town planned and executed a beach party on the shores of the Miramichi river, down the road from Chatham and almost to the Strait of Northumberland. The water there is never warm, but that doesn't matter to a bunch of teenagers, and there was a rather nice beach there, so we had all the elements of a lot of fun.
I was much more self-conscious back then than I am now and wouldn't have been caught dead in a swim suit. (I didn't even wear shorts until I was about 30!) I was probably the only one on the beach wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, but that was okay with me. The other girls were decked out in their skimpy bikinis or halter tops and cut-offs. For a change the weather actually cooperated with our plans and the sun shone brightly.
What makes this event so memorable for me was the curiously bizarre situation that led to me becoming a drug trafficker for the day. Sort of. I was one of the kids who was not paired off at that point in time and so I spent some of the afternoon strolling along the beach with Paul Pennimpede. We came across evidence of someone riding a horse down the beach a few days earlier. This evidence was above the high-water line and was quite dried out. I jokingly suggested to Paul that we might convince someone that it was some other form of vegetative material... if it was presented correctly we might fool them into thinking it was marijuana. (Goes to show just how much I knew about marijuana! And how warped my mind was then... not that it's any less warped now.) Anyhow, Paul mooched some Vogue rolling papers from one of the other guys and then rolled a couple of "joints" from the horse manure. On our stroll back up the beach the first person we came to, Paul Farrell, took the bait. To this day I can't believe that happened because of all our crowd, Paul was the MOST familiar with horses and their effluent. His dad owned two race horses that were stabled in Chatham; Paul was responsible for their day-to-day care. But he was hornswoggled into believing that we'd given him a real joint. He fired that doobie up and took a huge toke. Then he coughed really hard before saying, in a tight and breathless voice, "That's some GOOD shit!" My partner in crime and I nearly turned blue trying not to laugh our behinds off. I don't recall if we ever came clean about the origin of the shit, but I do remember how funny it was to see Paul smoking it!
And that's the story of how I was a pusher-for-a-day.
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