Month: January 2017

That first house of ours, the house where I was born, was in the city – on the west end fringe of the city proper.  It was small: a side by side semi-detached two story house that was built during a building boom in the post World War One years.  It had a small kitchen, a tiny bathroom, an unfinished cellar – they called them cellars in those days.  A coal shute with an attached bin plus shovel and grate for the coal burning furnace.  On the main floor there was a relatively large dining room adjacent to the country style kitchen, which was attached to a very small living room.  The dining room and the kitchen were the real living rooms in those days because that was where all of the familial drama occurred.  Upstairs were three bedrooms, the largest for my parents, the masters of course. Two smaller bedrooms were in the back of the house separated by the small bathroom.  I don’t remember having a bathtub, as we were washed in an old tin tub with water heated in the kitchen.  Our ice box was just that, an ice box. I can still remember how the iceman cameth to our place from time to time clawing straw caked blocks of pure blue tinged ice from the horse drawn carriage; and the iceman himself with his large brown iron ice tongs.

My two sisters shared one bedroom and the other I shared with my brother.  It was a modest but cozy house, across the road from a small park or parkette.  We were not rich by any stretch or even well off yet we were the first house on the block to have a TV. Why? Because my dad was an avid baseball fan and he desperately wanted one, as all of the major league baseball games of the day were beginning to be televised.  He could watch a game every Saturday afternoon while my mom was outside cutting the grass with our state of the art, hand powered push mower. He got a TV and serendipitously I got a nickname that would haunt me for the rest of my life.  Gilly, as in Junior Gilliam, a baseball star of the day whom my dad had great respect for.  Given that my dad’s name was John and I was named John, I was John Junior of course; and since my dad loved Junior Gilliam and I was also a junior I got the Gilliam moniker. I could have handled Gilliam but Gilly?  And parents being parents or grownup adults think that other kids are really stupid but they’re not.  They picked up on the Junior Gilliam moniker immediately and faster than you could say “take me out to the ball game” I was called Gilly – for ever and ever, for eternity, or for as long as I lived.  A parent’s logic never fails to amaze me and the unintended consequences associated with their dumb-ass decisions in name calling. You have no idea how many black eyes can be attributed to that one lapse of judgment on my parent’s part. Sooo cute eh Gilly? Gilly, Gilly, Gilly! Yeah right. Wham, Wallop!…

…The other thing that excited me most at Grandpa’s was when Uncle Dunc visited.  On those occasions if I was good, very good, which was code for keeping my mouth shut as they reminisced, Uncle Dunc would let me stick my small hand into his war wound. It was in the small of his back and to the left of his spine. Fantastic! A huge, perfectly round indentation in the fleshy part of his back. An old World War 1 shrapnel wound he told me. It was a blighty. Fantastic, I thought for I could trace that wound with my fingers and small hand to my heart’s content.  I was sooo impressed and proud that he was my uncle.

Uncle Dunc was a proud man of Scot descent. He was a single man with no family to speak of except being close friends with my maternal Grandparents, on my mom’s side.  He was as close to them as one could get without being related.  Perhaps he was a lonely man but what do kids know about loneliness at that age, at least they shouldn’t know.  He wasn’t my real uncle but what do kids care about familial relationships.   He was my uncle, for sure.  I could feel his war wound as often as I liked when he visited and listen to him spout off about his adventures with the Hun – whoever he, they may be. And his mates, but mostly about his mates. He always bragged about his physical prowess as a young man as he was loyal to his values, his mates, his generation, the creator, his King, his country and the Empire.  He was proud of his deeds, almost to a fault, yet full of integrity.  He always said that he would die with his boots on.  He was proud of the fact. That’s how men were in those days.  Then one day, a bit later in my life, my dad was called to the phone.  It was his father-in-law. I could hear him comment in a very low voice to my mother that Duncan Macpherson had died.  Alone in his rooming house… alone yes but with his boots on.

…Speaking of parked cars, only a kid could come up with a game called “Running Out From behind a Parked Car” The aim of this game, beside suicide, was to run out from behind a parked car when another car was approaching us on the road. We wanted to see how close we could come to being hit without being hit. That wouldn’t be smart. Not too smart but what can one expect from pre-schoolers. Smarts? Not likely and I am amazed that I am still alive today. A memorable snippet of childhood that was.

Yet another fate for toddlers, preschoolers, kids, that is worse than self inflicted injuries from stupidity is the mandated visit to Grandma and Grandpa.  My maternal Grandpa, on my mother’s side, drooled. And his lips were huge. Red and chaffed they were and somewhat blistered but not from the sun but from the wad of chewing tobacco he constantly chomped on.  His spittoon was always nearby. A dirty brass coloured round finely decorated in minute detail.  It was adorned with ornamental cherubs hovering over agricultural scenes with small claw legs that were there to remind the user of the fate that awaits if one carries on with a habit like this. Perhaps, but they sure paid attention to craftsmanship in those days. It was a beautiful piece of work that spittoon. And while second hand smoke may be bad enough, second hand spittle to a kid is a fate far worse than death and a gross fate to boot.  For what was a toddler’s job anyway? A cuddle, the compulsory hug and of course that peck on the cheek.  Both cheeks! Yuck!

I had a love hate relationship with those visits. I can still see Grandpa clearly, as if he was still alive today sitting here beside me.  There he was standing on the stoop looking above and beyond. All was right with his world. Hands in his pockets, his white shirt, dark black pants held up and tethered to his massive frame, magically, with bright red suspenders.  Red huge moist lips, and not in a good way, were bordered above and beyond by rosy red cheeks.  Cheeks that were divided by a huge bulbous red, pickled and veined snauze topped off by a crown of snowy white but fluffy thinning hair.  And on those very hot and humid days of summer a sweat permeated from every pore of his being staining his shirt with a sickening yellow sheen.

Kids are supposed to be excited when visiting their grandparents.  And I must admit that for all of the grossness I had to put up with I was excited but for more mercenary reasons. For with every visit and with every wet hug and with every wet gummy smooch that came with every visit was the mandatory handshake. And while he was breaking my fingers in that vice grip of a hand of his I could feel a bill fold then crumple into my small innocent pinkish hands. A dollar bill! Fantastic for in those days a dollar bill equated to over 300 black balls…

…Growing up in that small neighbourhood with the small park was memorable. I received my very first scar there on that very tiny street; on a fence between two garages that was situated at the back of a garbage strewn lot. Now boys being boys this fence had to be climbed. Why? Because it was a fence, of course.  A fence crowned with rusty barbed wire. Adventure yes, and you know what’s coming next. I don’t have to describe what happened. Needless to say, I shit my pants – again! Blood everywhere. My left index finger sliced open from just above the knuckle to its base at the palm of my left palm.  I can still see the scar clearly today some 60 years later – a mark of boyhood adventure back then. Yet I can’t quite remember the look on my mother’s face.  She must have fainted – or maybe it was me.

I can’t recall having too many friends in those early days.  But one I remember dearly. David Cairns was his name. Small lad: blond hair, blue eyes, Scandinavian breeding perhaps. I can still see his face and features as clearly today as if I had just met him yesterday.  He lived a few houses up from me in an old wooden framed house. It was huge, like some medieval castle or a western fort.  It was painted white, stucco maybe, with brown trim, a somewhat poor example of the English Tudor style.  David and I were inseparable as only toddlers could expect to be at that age.  Yet we must have grown out of toddlerhood by then as David and I would sleigh to our hearts content coming down the terraced hills and front yards of the 100 year old homes in the area. Descending, fast as the wind, head first, down the front and across the snow frozen lawns of those houses that were lucky enough in our eyes to have had a terraced front yard.  And having a paved and ploughed snow and ice covered road at the bottom of that mountain of pure white snow was somewhat discerning but we survived and not a tad bit cognizant of the potential dangers lurking about everywhere, everywhere indeed, behind every where’s tree and every where’s parked car.  No not just everywhere mind you, just where there was snow, our sleighs, our friendship, our happiness…

…Our parents were never around. They were too busy making a living. And they were happy and relieved to leave us to our own devices.  And we were happy that they did for that park bore the limits to our huge and timeless imagination and universe of fun.  My first serious crush manifested itself in that park.  No doubt a park volunteer, a summer counsellor of some sort.  Probably sixteen.  I think I was three. Funny that, but the age difference didn’t seem to bother me or anyone else at the time.  I followed her everywhere, even with a shit load in my summer shorts. I am sure that they, the grownups, thought that that was sweet but I had other canorous thoughts on my young and feeble mind.  Today that girl, if she is still alive, would be in her late 70s.  Yikes!

Funny why kids cannot and will not do what is expected of them.  I am convinced that there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.  It’s ingrained in their psyche, in their young DNA. To do the very opposite of what is expected, acceptable and piss off the parents.  It’s called exploration, finding our way, for as kids we were all Lewis and Clarks, Radishes and Gooseberries – LaSalle, “Tin Tin,” or DiCrapio. I remember when wifey and I bought a contraption for our twins called a “Jungle Jim,” or as it is affectionately known in suburbia as a suburban, backyard torture chamber for kids or for those fathers unfortunate enough to have to put the damn thing together.  And all I could hear that Saturday morning – and afternoon – were the cursed remarks floating wirelessly to my sensitive ears coming across over the various fences of our neighbourhood yards. And so, after many hours, this plumber’s nightmare finally took shape. Finished, proud and turning the keys over to my four year old twins, I watched them from a safe distance but out of sight. To my chagrin, to my horror, but not terribly surprised, they immediately began climbing all over the damn thing.  Forget the swings, forget the slide, and forget about the double see-saw with the cold bright yellow metal seats. Their goal was to check this thing out; explore their environment and see how this contraption was put together.  Inquisitive and enquiring minds these youngsters! Sure enough, one of them fell from the top cross bar onto the grass below. Getting up, brushing himself off, he looked around at nothing really then at himself then at his twin brother, in silence and in shock. After what seemed to be an interminable amount of time all hell broke loose:  screaming, wailing, crying and the gnashing of teeth.  Oh the horror of it all. Dante’s inferno! Then looking around as if lost and in a panic for where the hell was mom?

Where the hell was mom indeed?…