Month: March 2017

Finality…4

…We probably should have had a male teacher in Grade Eight. The hormones were just beginning to manifest, to kick in, to be vibrant and rebellious. Not quite full blown mind you but just beginning to flower. We were beginning to need discipline. Our innocent, angelicalness ways were beginning to transform into awkward stupidity, as evidenced by the peach fuzz on our chins and our winter Friday night skating get togethers at the park and at George Blodger’s proposed Christmas house party that was undermined by Sister Mary Bernice.  Riding shotgun on this matter, the good sister called all of the parents of our Grade Eight class and in typical Catholic vernacular promised brimstone and hell fire, damnation, or worse, if any one of us dared attend this party, with the real threat of excommunication for our parents and the Sanctimonious Tool for Restraint And Providence for us, the party was cancelled.  I for one was really disappointed for I really wanted to see Sister Mary Bernice dish that punishment out. For thirty of us!  My God! Her perseverance and endurance would have been ecclesiastical in its inspiration and miraculous in its execution.  

I always wondered why Catholic Elementary schools were co-educational yet Catholic High Schools separated the girls from the boys.  It never really dawned on me until this moment in time, as I am reflecting and writing on this. Of course! The nuns couldn’t fathom the physical attractiveness between the sexes.  If they could, they, and the Catholic School Board, error-ed by one maybe two years. We should have been separated after Grade Six, Grade Seven at the latest. The Protestant School Board understood this fact of life all too well. That is why they instituted middle school or junior high as they called it. The transition phase! The Catholics, not so much.  Some of us lads, like Jim Reynolds, McDink and a few others, repeated grades in Elementary School a plethora of times. By Grade Eight some of them were driving their own cars to school for Chr…heaven’s sake and some of the lasses disappeared suddenly never to be seen or heard from again except after spending some time in Home Economics School. After all this was 1963!

Pope John the Twenty Third died in April.

President Kennedy was assassinated in November.

Finality…3

…Grade one: the beautiful Sister Theresa, our angelic, beatific, saintly Sister.  Grade two: can’t remember except for my crush on Linda Naigle and of course McDink’s celebratory cheer when he found out, surprisingly, that he passed Grade Two and in doing so exclaimed to all of the world: “Yabba Dabba Do, I’m out-a  Portable Two!” I should ask my friend Jimmymum, when I talk to him again, as to who our teacher was in Grade Two for he will know because his brain and memory are as tight as a locked jaw. To this day some 55 years later, he remembers everything about that period in our lives. And cars too!  Sure enough, Jim knew. Miss Green was her name.  Young, blond and good looking, at least according to Jim. 

Grade three: Mr Upper, downer; Grade Five: Ms Kellar, old yellar; Grade Six: Mr Bowner, or Boner for short; Grade Seven, Ms McFayden, or Mrs Macdonald, the chain smoker. Man, did she reek of tobacco. She would always give us some assignment then disappeared somewhere only to come back a few minutes later with that customary giveaway smell and that distasteful gross smile of hers that revealed a mouthful of yellow stained teeth.  At the time I really had no understanding of why those breaks of hers ran to a specific schedule, about every hour so, lasting about ten minutes, then back to class. It was more than the customary toilet break and it wasn’t until a few years later that I understood the machination, the almost ceremonial-like rite, of having a smoke during school, and later, during working hours.

Grade Eight was Ms Raydigan, Ms Radiator, in our vernacular.  Kids will always do that. Assign some verbal handle on someone for their name, their appearance, how they talked, how they walked or how they chalked up in the overall scheme of things.  She had a short fuse and could explode almost on cue given the right circumstances. And we could provide plenty of that. Hence Ms Radiator, as in those days cars were not quite as sophisticated as they are now. Simple really, with radiators that would, with enough heat and pressure, top off and explode into a wail of steam: screeching and whistling and wailing until the pressure was relieved.  With us that relief normally equated to a dismissal from the class room with the obligatory meeting with our beloved and illustrious principal, Sister Mary Bernice, along with her scholarly and spiritual Sanctimonious Tool for Restraint And Providence…

Finality…2

…Mr Bowner decided to put together a school play.  It was a musical, or more precisely, a musical revue. It was based somewhat loosely on Porgy and Bess. There we were, the entire Grade Six class in black face, singing and dancing, carousing and carrying on. Can you imagine that happening in today’s politically correct charged atmosphere? Nope, yet in those days it was all just innocent fun. People focused more on the entertainment value than the shock value. They didn’t think otherwise, or read between the lines, or over expostulate as they seem to do today on just about everything.

I do find it interesting that as one progresses through academia and the scholastic ranks, and the bolder, cockier and less enthusiastic one becomes with respect to scholarly pursuits, rebellious perhaps, that the male student requires the firm hand of discipline that only a male, Sister Mary Bernice excepted, can seem to provide. Worse yet if that male class of teacher is comprised primarily from the various religious orders of the day. Some were the worst, some a close second, but tied with all the others. The worst may have been highly intellectual but they were as firm and as dangerous in their physical and psychological prowess as their international reputation would suggest that they excelled at in the intellectual sense.  No, ours were the others: an order born out of the French Revolution.  When it came to discipline they could give it out as bad or as good as any one religious law and order could. The only difference being was that they generally had a smile on their face as they were dishing it out.  Jokingly they would say: “This, my young (insert name here), is going to hurt you a lot more than it is going to hurt me.” Then the customary whack, whack, whack and more whack.  At least they were honest. The worst ones, on the other hand, in some form of intellectual mind game or bait and switch logic, would try to convince us that the physical punishment about to be unleashed was going to hurt them a great deal more then it was going to hurt us. Intellectual existentialism perhaps, pedagogically speaking, but pure unadulterated nonsense nonetheless…

Finality

Finally graduated from Catholic elementary school. Did seven years. Seems like a jail term in some sort of perverse way.  It would have been eight but I skipped a year, grade three to grade five: Ms Upper to Ms Keller.  Come to think of it now, in all of those years, I only had one male elementary school teacher. Mr Bowner. He was great: very theatrical and entertaining.  Why was that? So many female teachers and so few male?  Is it because youngsters in those early years still require the nurturing attention that can only be provided by the female sex? Feminists today would kill me for even suggesting such a thing. I don’t really know.  Even in todays so called enlightenment school boards are trying to deal with the matrification of our Elementary School system, that boys are getting a raw deal.  So they say! That they are becoming whusses, feminized, losing their religion. So they say!  I don’t really think this is the case as this was the norm when I was in Elementary School some 55 years ago. If one were to check I do believe that one would find that women dominated the profession at this level for over a hundred years, two hundred maybe. I even remember reading about the explorer David Thompson and his schooling by the Grey Nuns of London back in the 1770s.  Why are we so concerned about it today? Don’t know, don’t care, I don’t have an opinion on this.  It seems to have worked…

 

Our Park Thou Art in Heaven…Final

…He saw me, looked down at me, smiled I think, or perhaps smirked. The cigarette burning red hot ashes from the corner of his mouth as both hands were needed to control the pressure of the water hose.

“What can I do for ya, young lad” he offered in a lyrical brogue. 

Somewhat embarrassed and off guard I returned:

“Just watching Sir, that’s all.” and then “Tomorrow this will be an awesome piece of ice”

“Aye, with any luck, if the weather holds.”

Silence

“So, this must be some neat job you have here, looking after things at the park?”

“Yes, but this is only part of it. I have three other rinks to look after besides this one”

“Wow” is about all I could muster. Then, continuing on:

“When I grow up I want to have a job like this. So cool.”

He chuckled “No you don’t, and no it ain’t” he said rather emphatically, then adding

“I have to do this. You don’t. I have no other choice. You do. So stay in school.”

“But school sucks. I hate it. The nuns, the priests, the rules and the strap.

He chuckled somewhat.

“It’s not funny.”

“Oh, I know. I know it’s not funny. But thinking back, I got it good too from those nuns and priests.  Real good. But not here. Over in Ireland, where I come’d from, where I grew’d up, – some of those priests and nuns were the devil’s own, the devil’s fire brigade. 

“Really,” I thought aloud, “Just like here?”

“Sure, sure” he said. “They’re everywhere. With fire and brimstone they spoke with the brimstone and fire they breathed.  And they sure set the standard for all of the physical pain and grief that a Catholic young lad or lass could harbour, without being dead, the world over. Some were good I would think. Just not mine”

“What school do you go to.” he asked

“Our Lady of Peace” I answered.

He looked right down at me and into my eyes, into my very soul it seemed.

“Is that so” he said.  “Well I think they had a school for it over there as well. Our Lady’s School of Perpetual Abuse, I would think. For they knew how to give it and we got it good, day and night.  Black and blue we was, then black again.  The thing is though we fought back, but in such a way that the bastards never knew they was being conned. We had a lot of laughs outsmarting them, doing that. That was the key for us to survive in these schools.”

He chuckled but in remonstrance, remembering perhaps that it would seem to be a memory hidden or repressed.

“Listen to me young lad. Adapt, and don’t let them get you down, or get to you emotionally, in your brain like thoughts, and if you do it right you will have fond memories of you and your mates’ experiences and a lot of laughs.  But I’m sure it isn’t as bad as when I went to school. That was day and night back then. No rest for the wicked boys and girls, as they said. We was all orphans.”

He paused, as if to let that last comment sink in. Then he turned, slightly, to blanket another part of the rink with water. Silent! I followed him around.

“Orphans? in Ireland?, Wow.” It seemed so far away, and too much to sink in.

“Orphans, yes. I don’t remember my mother or my father. Just the school, the orphanage, the nuns and priests.  But I got out of it.  Ran away and joined the Navy”

And as if sensing my next question. “I was 14.” 

“Yup, Royal Navy, the Senior Service, as they say.”  He volunteered “It was also harsh discipline thar, in the Navy, but I thrived on it cause I was already used to the abuse…Aaaargh” he laughed out loud.

“But in the Navy they had free rein to kill ya if they so choosed.  For being out of line, AWOL, or desertion as they called it.  But again, my mates kept me sane and my wingers safe. And justice? For the smallest infraction, there was shipboard justice…before the mast, before the Captain… the Coxswain would cry out in his loud and booming voice: “MARCH THE GUILTY BASTARD IN!” As I said. I loved it. Rum was dirt cheap and the cigs even dirtier cheapier. Clean sheets and three squared – if you liked kippers and hard tack that is. But compared to the boarding school, and the Army, I thought I had died and gone to heaven” 

“I came through the war unscathed though.  Only once did providence come to my side.”

“What’s providence?” I interrupted

“Providence is a sort of destiny’s luck.” he continued.  Like something that happens to you in the present that makes no sense at all except that it has an enormous impact on something in the future.”

He looked at me whimsically, quizzically, probably knowing full well that I didn’t have a clue of what he was getting at.

“Let me explain it this way.  I was transferred to an oiler – that’s a ship that refuels other ships at sea, like a floating, moving gas station on water – and just before boarding that ship to leave port and to go out to our war station at sea, I was called back.  Some sort of emergency at home.  How could that be I thought? I had no home! So the ship sailed without me and when I arrived back in the town where I had lived at the boarding school it turned out that I did indeed have a younger sister who was quite sick, had been given last rights, and had asked for me. Turns out she, like me, had also been given up and had been sent to another boarding school, but in the next village.  Damnation I thought. I had a sister.  As it turned out her school was a front for what they called laundry houses – or asylums. You wouldn’t know about those places but there was nothing asylum about them I can tell you that. They was an affront for sure, those sweathouses. An affront to humanity, human kindness, compassion, empathy, everything civil and just. The laundry school from hell. And that’s all I’ll say about that.”

He paused briefly, then continued

“But, as unluckily as it was for her that this was, it was also luckily for me because that oiler took a hit and being so full of oil went up like a some heavenly torch, burnt the sky crimson, in spectacular fashion it was with shades of reds and oranges and yellows, before being doused to eternity’s sleep as she slipped, stern first, into the sea breaking up below the waves to the bottom below but with one last glorious belch of sea salt from old Neptune himself, or so they told me after.  No one survived.”

He let that sink in for the moment. Then continued

“I survived the war though death really hit home. I cried and I cried and I cried. I don’t know why I cried so hard because I didn’t really know anyone on that ship thank God for that.” And I didn’t know my own sister either yet I cried so hard for her.  He made the sign of the cross with a free hand.

“What happened to your sister?” I asked, politely

“Died… a lung disease. But she really died from one of life’s broken hearts, and broken promises. I never knew her but I think I loved her. Funny that. Not knowing somebody but still loving them, potentially I guess, unconditionally perhaps, for I never knew, I never knew her. The ties that bind I think. You understand me boy?”

“I think so.” I said. I didn’t

“Good, cause I’m not sure if I do… understand me or my life that is”

Silence again. Much longer this time as the time was needed to take in this account of his.

“You should be getting home” he said as he turned again to strike out at another area of the rink.

“Stay in school, and don’t let them penguins get to you. By the by, what’s your name?”

“John” I answered, awkwardly.

“Well John. I am Desmond O’Brian. Des for short, but not for long”……he guffawed. You can call me Sir” he guffawed and guffawed again.  Then suddenly snorting, snorting then coughing, coughing hard, a bronchial, nicotine laced cough that went deep into his own form, shook his entire physical being relentlessly before dying down and out through his throat.

“Glad to make your acquaintance John.” he choked again, waved me off with one arm, coughing again.

I left, turned away toward my street and off I went, carefully as the ground was extremely icy.

It always seemed weird, but nice to me, when an adult of whom I had no association with at all called me by my first and given Christian name. John…John, yeah John. A simple name yet the sound of it from someone else’s voice directed at me and at me alone gave me a sense of well being and a confidence in myself that the adult had the respect, and acknowledgement of my own existence in this world, however small my own worldly horizon or vision may be.  It was as if we shared some of life’s experiences, good or bad, in some sort of way, synchronicity perhaps.  It was always a nice, heartfelt gesture to hear one’s own name in that manner by a relative stranger.  Instead of the usual  …MORRISON PAY ATTENTION OR I’LL PAY IT FOR YOU! 

Before I was out of sight I stopped, turned and looked back at the rink. I could see Mr O’Brian ever so faintly, or should I say his silhouette, which really resembled a dark lifeless shadow in the stillness of this winter’s night. The stream of water continuing to rise, then arc, then cascade out and down and out again in a frost-like icy fog over the surface of the rink. Tomorrow that ice surface will be an awesome shade of greyish blue, a smooth virginal sheen of ice, as fragile as frozen glass, bordered by the brilliance of clean white snow, until the inevitable cut and crunch of the first set of cold steel blades hit its surface.

I never saw Mr O’Brian again. 

In today’s world, that park is bereft of young boys and girls playing. Sadly, it is deserted all year long.  Its lifeblood is a distant memory.