Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Fagan's lake
Oh bliss! I have survived another holiday season. The cottage is closed and I am back in the city.
I am just not a woodsy gal. I’m the indoors type.
The trouble with our remote hideaway is that there’s nobody there. I like company, and there’s no company to be had in the bush. I have thought about importing Montreal friends, but then I might be expected to be nice to them - amuse them, cook for them, accompany them on hikes and rambles. Forget it. I go only with my children who have no such hopes of me.
I like to read; in fact, that’s one of the few things I do like and while there’s lots of light by day, it’s black as your hat at night. When the light goes, we sit around making lists - that’s another thing I like to do. We plan teeny decorating projects. This year we painted the rocking chair red, a modest achievement by city standards where homeowners go crazy and/or broke redoing their kitchens, but an artistic breakthrough in a context of beaverboard and shabby lino. We reeled around for days, overwhelmed by the beauty we had wrought.
I have a limited tolerance for trees. I haven’t anything against them, but they rarely move me to rhapsodic utterance. I do look out of the window now and again but, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan (with whom I have nothing else in common), when you’ve seen one cedar, you’ve seen them all. I refer, of course, to our cedars - skinny survivors of the Darwinian struggle.
I like the animals that strive to share our cabin with us. A family of chipmunks lived in our kettle this summer. We had to rescue the last baby with a can opener; he had eaten himself beyond all hope of escaping through the spout from which his slimmer siblings had exited upon our arrival. When we opened the kettle up, he waddled away from his bed of Uncle Ben’s provided out of our stores by his exhausted mother who must have been very relieved to be able to suspend her maternal duties and begin provisioning herself against the winter - or am I (mother of many, not all of whom have moved out) projecting?
The outside beasties I rather like too. We are, to the raccoons and chipmunks, objects of veneration, I believe. If animals can be said to have religion, our critters belong to a cargo cult, and, after a season of prayer and meditation and, certainly, fasting, there is a rumbling on the hill and the Great Furless Deities arrive in their noisy machine, laden with ketchup, corn on the cob, Oreo cookies and all manner of marvellous treats.
Last month I saw a grouse tiptoe cautiously across the road. I stopped the car, of course, to let her go. We spotted another one, lurking in the weeds by the verge and he too ventured forth and proceeded across with careful steps. And then another. They seemed to have a rule about moving slowly. They reminded me of a formal wedding party pacing up the aisle - dignified and self-conscious, somehow amateurish, looking neither to left or right. The fourth set off for the other side, hesitantly and diffidently; halfway across he started to run, but some maternal signal or belated memory of Discipline brought him up short and then he stood there, lost in thought, maybe, or perhaps trying vaguely to remember which foot goes next. His sibling was dancing with impatience waiting for his turn. Unable to stand it, he started out and passed his bemused brother still mooning there. In all, there were eight of them, and if that is how they take their constitutionals, how in the world do they survive in fox country?
I worry about the loons - symbol of the Canadian wilderness. I used to feel sort of sentimental about them. Every summer we have a pair on the lake, with a brace of loonlets in tow. I am told that they are not birds who like to share, and I wonder where the leftover loons go when the lakes are occupied. Why isn’t the air filled with homeless loons, looking for a safe place to light? I spent years worrying and wondering about the poor creatures until this summer, when I learned another loon fact - one that I suspect the wildlife people are keeping to themselves. Let me tell you this bit of loon lore, so that you can be upset too.
Our symbol of the Northland, being as I have said before, unwilling to share his patch of fish) has a very nasty habit. Our little lake is devoid of ducks, though it is just the sort of water that one might expect ducks to find attractive. Well, guess what! Any luckless duck that lands in loon territory is in for a big surprise. The loon dives under him and impales him on his pointed beak. I am given to understand that he doesn’t just goose the duck in friendly warning - he stabs it, quite lethally. That is a piece of information that I wish I didn’t have.
My kids love The Land, as we call it. (We call it that because it took us 15 years to decide to put a house on it.) They constantly urge me to do Land Things - they wish I would have some fun, they say.
My idea of fun is going into town. I love shopping in Perth. I understand that Montreal boasts all kinds of Dollar Stores. the equivalent of Stedman’s and Giant Tiger, and I am sure that if I searched diligently I could find them. What little towns have that Montreal lacks is a place to park. So Perth is where I buy my underwear: decent, serviceable knickers - what my mother used to call Doctor pants.
And then there is the plumbing: bathing in an ice-cold, pitch-black lake, teeming with unknown but possibly dangerous creatures fills me with dread. I have found that my standards of hygiene suffer a serious setback in the country; indeed, I become quite Elizabethan in my ways.
But I made it, folks. I am back in my flat where the flick of a switch or a twist of the tap will light my way or fill my bath again. I am safe for another year.
I am just not a woodsy gal. I’m the indoors type.
The trouble with our remote hideaway is that there’s nobody there. I like company, and there’s no company to be had in the bush. I have thought about importing Montreal friends, but then I might be expected to be nice to them - amuse them, cook for them, accompany them on hikes and rambles. Forget it. I go only with my children who have no such hopes of me.
I like to read; in fact, that’s one of the few things I do like and while there’s lots of light by day, it’s black as your hat at night. When the light goes, we sit around making lists - that’s another thing I like to do. We plan teeny decorating projects. This year we painted the rocking chair red, a modest achievement by city standards where homeowners go crazy and/or broke redoing their kitchens, but an artistic breakthrough in a context of beaverboard and shabby lino. We reeled around for days, overwhelmed by the beauty we had wrought.
I have a limited tolerance for trees. I haven’t anything against them, but they rarely move me to rhapsodic utterance. I do look out of the window now and again but, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan (with whom I have nothing else in common), when you’ve seen one cedar, you’ve seen them all. I refer, of course, to our cedars - skinny survivors of the Darwinian struggle.
I like the animals that strive to share our cabin with us. A family of chipmunks lived in our kettle this summer. We had to rescue the last baby with a can opener; he had eaten himself beyond all hope of escaping through the spout from which his slimmer siblings had exited upon our arrival. When we opened the kettle up, he waddled away from his bed of Uncle Ben’s provided out of our stores by his exhausted mother who must have been very relieved to be able to suspend her maternal duties and begin provisioning herself against the winter - or am I (mother of many, not all of whom have moved out) projecting?
The outside beasties I rather like too. We are, to the raccoons and chipmunks, objects of veneration, I believe. If animals can be said to have religion, our critters belong to a cargo cult, and, after a season of prayer and meditation and, certainly, fasting, there is a rumbling on the hill and the Great Furless Deities arrive in their noisy machine, laden with ketchup, corn on the cob, Oreo cookies and all manner of marvellous treats.
Last month I saw a grouse tiptoe cautiously across the road. I stopped the car, of course, to let her go. We spotted another one, lurking in the weeds by the verge and he too ventured forth and proceeded across with careful steps. And then another. They seemed to have a rule about moving slowly. They reminded me of a formal wedding party pacing up the aisle - dignified and self-conscious, somehow amateurish, looking neither to left or right. The fourth set off for the other side, hesitantly and diffidently; halfway across he started to run, but some maternal signal or belated memory of Discipline brought him up short and then he stood there, lost in thought, maybe, or perhaps trying vaguely to remember which foot goes next. His sibling was dancing with impatience waiting for his turn. Unable to stand it, he started out and passed his bemused brother still mooning there. In all, there were eight of them, and if that is how they take their constitutionals, how in the world do they survive in fox country?
I worry about the loons - symbol of the Canadian wilderness. I used to feel sort of sentimental about them. Every summer we have a pair on the lake, with a brace of loonlets in tow. I am told that they are not birds who like to share, and I wonder where the leftover loons go when the lakes are occupied. Why isn’t the air filled with homeless loons, looking for a safe place to light? I spent years worrying and wondering about the poor creatures until this summer, when I learned another loon fact - one that I suspect the wildlife people are keeping to themselves. Let me tell you this bit of loon lore, so that you can be upset too.
Our symbol of the Northland, being as I have said before, unwilling to share his patch of fish) has a very nasty habit. Our little lake is devoid of ducks, though it is just the sort of water that one might expect ducks to find attractive. Well, guess what! Any luckless duck that lands in loon territory is in for a big surprise. The loon dives under him and impales him on his pointed beak. I am given to understand that he doesn’t just goose the duck in friendly warning - he stabs it, quite lethally. That is a piece of information that I wish I didn’t have.
My kids love The Land, as we call it. (We call it that because it took us 15 years to decide to put a house on it.) They constantly urge me to do Land Things - they wish I would have some fun, they say.
My idea of fun is going into town. I love shopping in Perth. I understand that Montreal boasts all kinds of Dollar Stores. the equivalent of Stedman’s and Giant Tiger, and I am sure that if I searched diligently I could find them. What little towns have that Montreal lacks is a place to park. So Perth is where I buy my underwear: decent, serviceable knickers - what my mother used to call Doctor pants.
And then there is the plumbing: bathing in an ice-cold, pitch-black lake, teeming with unknown but possibly dangerous creatures fills me with dread. I have found that my standards of hygiene suffer a serious setback in the country; indeed, I become quite Elizabethan in my ways.
But I made it, folks. I am back in my flat where the flick of a switch or a twist of the tap will light my way or fill my bath again. I am safe for another year.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Parties 1980-1990
So many parties. Where to start?
I suppose the really big ones only started after the divorce, in about 1980.
We had a list, a phone list, a dirty little rag-sheet used to sit by the phone, or sometimes taped to the kitchen counter, above the sock drawer.
When a party beckoned (parents out of town, say), we would work the list. Big black rotary phone, crooked into the neck. Dialing, dialing. A short, machine-gun message. Sometimes followed by a short list of others to tell. Sometimes not. These parties could quickly get out of hand.
Consider the math: 6 kids (Isolde was out of it by then): Rebecca and Sue had 60 friends. Johnny and Cand had 40 friends. Cass and I had 30 friends. Their friends had friends.
We tried to keep the parties from spreading upstairs. Not always successfully.
Sometimes, it was invitation only. We had a bouncer at the door. Marc Perron did that, sometimes.
Marc made the mixed tapes. I remember the master-mix: he worked for weeks on that. But there was always an open DJ request session. We didn't have a mixer, so we had to flip the vinyl pretty quick. Seems to me we used to cut in with a tape, while changing the record.
There were the rare fights. Josh broke something in the basement, once. Something Marc made. He was forcefully expelled.
We eventually moved the stereo onto the back porch, to make more room for the dancefloor.
Sometimes, mum acted as the bartender. Those were more "official" parties. Somehow sanctioned, but no less raucaus.
We evolved a ticket system: your beer went into the fridge in return for tickets, so you could be sure to have them when you needed them. Those that didn't bring beer could buy tickets at near cost. We always had an initial investor to supply the start-up.
Stubbies: was it that American beer that finally broke the stubby monopoly? Thor always drank it. The frugal drank the gold foil beer, with 6.5% alcohol and a dark smooth flavour.
Invariably, it seems, Suzanne Mills and David Desken were the last to leave. The two of them, standing in the living room at dawn, chuckling and telling jokes, while I collected the bottles from the street and mantlepieces.
We always made a little bundle bringing the empty beer bottles back to Haines.
I suppose the really big ones only started after the divorce, in about 1980.
We had a list, a phone list, a dirty little rag-sheet used to sit by the phone, or sometimes taped to the kitchen counter, above the sock drawer.
When a party beckoned (parents out of town, say), we would work the list. Big black rotary phone, crooked into the neck. Dialing, dialing. A short, machine-gun message. Sometimes followed by a short list of others to tell. Sometimes not. These parties could quickly get out of hand.
Consider the math: 6 kids (Isolde was out of it by then): Rebecca and Sue had 60 friends. Johnny and Cand had 40 friends. Cass and I had 30 friends. Their friends had friends.
We tried to keep the parties from spreading upstairs. Not always successfully.
Sometimes, it was invitation only. We had a bouncer at the door. Marc Perron did that, sometimes.
Marc made the mixed tapes. I remember the master-mix: he worked for weeks on that. But there was always an open DJ request session. We didn't have a mixer, so we had to flip the vinyl pretty quick. Seems to me we used to cut in with a tape, while changing the record.
There were the rare fights. Josh broke something in the basement, once. Something Marc made. He was forcefully expelled.
We eventually moved the stereo onto the back porch, to make more room for the dancefloor.
Sometimes, mum acted as the bartender. Those were more "official" parties. Somehow sanctioned, but no less raucaus.
We evolved a ticket system: your beer went into the fridge in return for tickets, so you could be sure to have them when you needed them. Those that didn't bring beer could buy tickets at near cost. We always had an initial investor to supply the start-up.
Stubbies: was it that American beer that finally broke the stubby monopoly? Thor always drank it. The frugal drank the gold foil beer, with 6.5% alcohol and a dark smooth flavour.
Invariably, it seems, Suzanne Mills and David Desken were the last to leave. The two of them, standing in the living room at dawn, chuckling and telling jokes, while I collected the bottles from the street and mantlepieces.
We always made a little bundle bringing the empty beer bottles back to Haines.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Games of chance
When Jonny and I were at MIND and closest of friends -- oh, about '78-'82, or somewhere in there -- I spent hours just about every day at 4453. Massive amounts of tea were consumed. And games were played.
There was a period of months when we played incessant backgammon, tucked into a front corner of the living room. Such a lovely, mindless game, which becomes meditative after a while, a softly tumbling backdrop to meandering conversations.
And there was a much longer period when Grace endeavoured to teach us bridge -- usually three-handed, but there was often a fourth to be dragged in from some part of the house. Jonny and I never had quite the focus to become good at it, or to remember even the main bidding conventions. But it was cozy and convivial (sometimes we even lit wood in that coal-burning fireplace, with absurdly smokey results). And in Grace I found perhaps the first adult with whom I could just hang out.
(I don't think I've ever fully reckoned with the role that Grace played in that part of my life: genuinely kind and well-wishing, in some ambiguous zone that was neither parental figure nor friend, a standing invitation to think of myself as more of an adult, less of a kid. In that part of my life, I did much more growing up at 4453 than at home.)
Thursday, December 3, 2009
The Kool Aid stand...
I remember endless days manning (childing?) the kool-aid stand. We waited, like hawks, during the lean periods. Staring up the street, in each direction, hoping that someone would come along. Perhaps stealing a little cup of ice-cold kool-aid.
Then we'd see someone. Someone approaching.
Up to the stand: proper now, straight.
"Glass of kool-aid for Oxfam?"
Ernest children. Tireless children.
We raised thousands of dollars over the years. Some people left 20s or even 50s. It was a donation system, and you could even have a glass for a penny if you'd wished.
Mum would wash the styrofoam cups in the washing machine.
We had a large red cooler with a little plug drain and would drain the cooler into glasses, with our thumbs.
Susie got her picture in the local paper one year, wearing a tube top. I was too young to understand the significance of this, for marketing, but we did a bumper year that year.
We must have started up the kool aid stand in the early seventies (Bangladesh). The last campaign was around the boat people from Vietnam, at the end of the 70s and perhaps into the 80s. I guess we must have given it up when the youngest ones (Cass and I) finally became punks, around '80 or '81.
That was around the time we started with the racoons...
Then we'd see someone. Someone approaching.
Up to the stand: proper now, straight.
"Glass of kool-aid for Oxfam?"
Ernest children. Tireless children.
We raised thousands of dollars over the years. Some people left 20s or even 50s. It was a donation system, and you could even have a glass for a penny if you'd wished.
Mum would wash the styrofoam cups in the washing machine.
We had a large red cooler with a little plug drain and would drain the cooler into glasses, with our thumbs.
Susie got her picture in the local paper one year, wearing a tube top. I was too young to understand the significance of this, for marketing, but we did a bumper year that year.
We must have started up the kool aid stand in the early seventies (Bangladesh). The last campaign was around the boat people from Vietnam, at the end of the 70s and perhaps into the 80s. I guess we must have given it up when the youngest ones (Cass and I) finally became punks, around '80 or '81.
That was around the time we started with the racoons...
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Explosive metals
One day, Johnny and David Kehane came home from M.I.N.D. with a jarful of soft metal, in a bath of kerosene. I watched as they set up a jar of hot water on the front steps of the house. (The front steps of 4453 were the stage for many an event, as these pages will no doubt bear witness.) We all stood back as David carefully cut a slice of the metal and pulled it out of the bath. "This metal burns on contact with air," he said. "And the reaction with water is supposed to be quite violent." We all stood back as he dropped the metal into the water. The reaction was immediate and spectacular: a plume of smoke trailed high up over the house and disappeared onto the roof.
Wow.
Later, we burned a strip of magnesium.
Fun with metals.
Approximate date: 1978? 1979?
Wow.
Later, we burned a strip of magnesium.
Fun with metals.
Approximate date: 1978? 1979?
Monday, September 29, 2008
Visitors
When I try to think of 5 pages of reminiscences about the house on de Maisonneuve, I think of animals, houseguests, parties - which should I do? What will other people do?
For me, the amusing times came after the divorce. Prior to that, our lives ran along well-trodden paths. There were rules. Afterwards, it seemed to get a bit disorganized - not exactly chaotic, but somehow freer. Well - maybe chaotic. How about houseguests? Why not?
I am recalling these inhabitants in not very reliable order. My own children moved in and out, as they could afford to, or felt like it. I always had a houseful - toward the end, I noticed that there weren't any of my kids living in, much. I noticed, too, that the house was starting to cost too much, and I began to want to get rid of the taxes, furnace, roof and pipes - things that seem to go wrong every so often.
The basement dwellers came in December – our much loved Soomphongs. They dwelt with us, paying formal little after-dinner calls with the children every evening. Gosh those kids were cute! Poon was about 4, and Tookta was 18 months.
We took Poon out on Hallowe’en, and it didn’t take him long to figure out something for nothing. We had dressed him, as he requested, as Batman, and he strenuously objected to black tights. Batman wears grey, he kept insisting, and at every single house he apologized for our inadequacies as providers of the authentic costume.
They, refugees from Laos, lived in the basement for about a year, and returned for another 6 months while their St Henri flat was being wonderfully re-organized for them. Mrs S looked bedraggled and afraid when she arrived, but she brightened up after a while, cut her hair and turned into a glamorous little lady.
One thing I remember very vividly is all the bad advice I gave Soomphongh. As in – help with Income Tax; do not enter into the cooperative that is offered in your new digs. What did I know about all those things? Nothing – and he quietly did what he thought best.
When they finally left, we became a sort of haven for all kinds of other people. Isolde’s beau, Phil, seemed to live with us, sort of, because he didn’t like his flat. He was an art student at Concordia, and spent the term making a very elaborate leg for a chair. He also spent the ensuing summer scraping the paint off of the house next door, with a 2” scraper. We put him on a sofa. Or was that while Isolde was at Westmount High? I guess so.
Rebecca’s beau, Marc, lived on the sofa, too, off and on for about a year. For the life of me, I can’t remember why. Maybe because he lived on the South Shore.
In my sorties along the 401, much later, I used to bring hitchhikers home, now and then. Like a mother fox returning to the den with prey for the cubs. One nice young Englishman wanted to go to Ottawa, but I persuaded him to come to Montreal, it being more fun.
We adopted a Vietnamese boat boy, Thanh, who attended Westmount High with my children. He introduced us to a friend, who was about to lose his Canadian home for undisclosed reasons. (His Terre des Hommes sponsors wrote me a letter, containing the reasons, but I destroyed it without reading it.) Unable to find a home for Thongh, we took him in too. They didn’t last long – they stopped going to class, and I delivered an ultimatum, so they decided to move out, rather than comply. Thanh sort of disappeared – but Thongh fell in love with a pretty and determined Vietnamese girl who sent him back to finish school, and now they are prosperous, happily married and very strict with their own children, which makes me laugh!
Gordie Pederson lived with us for a winter. He was a friend of Susie. Gordie was an agreeable chap, and a useful one. He built me a new staircase out in front, and he tiled the basement when I was about to sell and move. I didn’t know he was a drug addict. Well – I can’t know everything.
His brother John came and rented a basement room, as my kids were starting to move out. I had another little clutch of renters in the basement – some better than others.
Oh Gee. I almost forgot eccentric genius Andrew Schwartz – he stayed one summer in the basement, and his dreary girlfriend stayed there with him, till I laid down the law about live-ins.
I rented out the basement to 2 sets of chicks – all were unmemorable, and unregretted when they left. One pair of students wanted to be family – but we didn’t like them, and wouldn’t have them as anything but rather remote acquaintances.
Another fellow rented the basement for a few weeks and skipped out leaving behind a hideous suit. He was very good looking, but unreliable.
Jason provided me with a Hungarian he met up with on his world travels. “Stay with Mum” he cried cheerily to a young man who turned out to be a complete waste of space. Zoltan phoned me from London, en route to Montreal, and said his money had been stolen there. I thought for a minute, and said –“ Well, come along anyway, and we’ll see what can be done. There’s a lot in Montreal that’s free – and you can rescue something out of this.” He told me that he was accompanied by a cousin. That was a surprise, but I arranged for bus fare from Mirabel, and sure enough, Zoltan and his cousin came to my house. He brought me presents – a hideous embroidered table cover, wine and paprika. I borrowed a couple of bikes for them, and Zoltan considered them to be inadequate. “Not 10 speed?” he said dismissively. The first night they were at my house, a big car came and picked them up and took them out on the town. They brought in take-out, and ate it in front of my kids. They also drank all the wine. After a few days (Zoltan slept in all the time) I noticed that he had taken the sheets off the bed, and slept on the bare mattress. By then I had really started to hate him and I realized more or less right away that he had lied about the money, and was in general a shifty, ungrateful, miserable pig. I ordered them to replace the sheets, and when I checked they had not done this pretty basic sort of thing. So I kicked them out. They could go and live with their friends. Zoltan took the embroidered cloth with him.
I guess my various refugees fit into the category of live-ins. The first was a Somalian, who never emerged from the basement at all, till we got him legalized. Isolde discovered him praying to the corner, when she burst in upon him, all unknowing. He was a Muslim. Another woman, a Sri Lankan about 3 feet tall, Seguntala, kissed Rebecca’s feet when she moved out. Rebecca was alarmed.
Lilti lived with me for a year: She was a stunning Ethiopian refugee about 16 years old. She attended High School, and Boy did she work hard! She graduated that year, and had a little party one afternoon. 7 or 8 students (mostly boys) arrived about 4, and Lilti gravely offered them chips and cokes and they danced decorously around the living room for a couple of hours and then she said the party was over, and they went, uncomplaining, home.
She attended the grad dance alone, attired in a truly amazing and sophisticated sapphire blue dress – and came home at midnight in a taxi. I don’t know where she got all those rules.
Lilti was out on the front steps with my kids, one summer afternoon. She took her books, and just sat there studying, while passing male motorists drove through stop lights, into trees and over passing pedestrians. When they trooped in to supper, a young man accompanied them. We thought somebody knew him – but he just wanted a closer look at Lilti. So we gave him supper, and he looked wistfully at Lilti.
Susie’s grade school friend Wanda K stayed with us for two years. She was studying at Concordia – and I remember her sitting at the kitchen table making props for her theatre school - perfect replicas of silly things, like condensed soup tins. I can’t really remember why she moved in or how. I guess she couldn’t afford an apartment.
Sheila Emmanuel, a friend of Rebecca, moved in with us for a while. She was a foster child from up the street who tired of her very square parents and sort of ran away from home. I remember the night the police brought the two girls home about 11 – Ray answered the door, and was just livid! They hadn’t been doing any harm, but the Security boys didn’t like the young man who had been with them in the park.
She and Rebecca decided to completely run away from home after that, and (tipped off by a neighbour who saw them) Isolde and I combed the Alexis Nihon Plaza and brought Rebecca home. The others (there was a little clutch of kids) left town in a stolen VW, and were caught near Kingston and returned to (I think) Weredale House
Gerry Free was hitchhiking from Dorval, when I picked him up and brought him home. He said he had applied for a summer job as ‘a maid’ – and his employers lived a block north of us on Metcalfe. Gerry was really a character! He must have been a great surprise to his new employers who expected a girl. He used to drift by every so often, and tell us how he was doing as a domestic servant. He said he was asked to prepare lunch for his mistress – a bridge party, I think – and he had amazed the guests with a portrait bust of the lady of the house carved in cheddar cheese.
Gerry gave me a number of poems that he had written. I have lost them all, to my great regret, but one, The Hitchhiker” started
Out on the highway,
Thumb up…
When he got the sack – that was pretty soon – he came over and made a huge sandwich sign, which he planned to wear outside the boss’s downtown office tower. He believed he had been fired without cause.
Jason and Jonnie saw something of him after that. He used to bring me rather wilted baskets of flowers, which the boys told me later, he ordered (along with negotiable valuables) from credit card numbers taken out of the garbage behind downtown restaurants. The story he gave me was somewhat different – unbelievable, but different.
The boys got him a job in the kitchen at Ruby Foo’s, and Suzanne Mills said later that he couldn’t do anything! He told me that he had learned to carve vegetables in cunning shapes.
I heard from Gerry a few years later. He rang at 2 in the morning to tell me that his wife (a registered nurse – and black) had been killed in an automobile accident in Snowden. A month later, he came to visit with another wife (white and French Canadian). I gave them dinner, and we all politely avoided awkward questions.
Gerry rang me at odd intervals. He assured me that he looked upon me as a second mother! Once he said he needed money because he was in jail in Alabama, or somewhere. I asked for the name of the police station and the sheriff, so that I could check this out. It never came clear…
He also asked Jason to pose as a psychiatrist (on the phone) to support one of his fanciful alibis – we never really figured out what that was all about.
A recent Google check turned up a Gerry Free, a southerner, who was tried and convicted of fraud a few years ago. It sure sounds like Gerry, but 66 seems a bit too old. Another possibility is a man who ran a talent e-mail scam in the South a few years ago. Whatever our colourful friend is or was up to, I’m sure it was illegal.
I was sort of lucky, I think. The wonder is that we weren’t all murdered in our beds.
For me, the amusing times came after the divorce. Prior to that, our lives ran along well-trodden paths. There were rules. Afterwards, it seemed to get a bit disorganized - not exactly chaotic, but somehow freer. Well - maybe chaotic. How about houseguests? Why not?
I am recalling these inhabitants in not very reliable order. My own children moved in and out, as they could afford to, or felt like it. I always had a houseful - toward the end, I noticed that there weren't any of my kids living in, much. I noticed, too, that the house was starting to cost too much, and I began to want to get rid of the taxes, furnace, roof and pipes - things that seem to go wrong every so often.
The basement dwellers came in December – our much loved Soomphongs. They dwelt with us, paying formal little after-dinner calls with the children every evening. Gosh those kids were cute! Poon was about 4, and Tookta was 18 months.
We took Poon out on Hallowe’en, and it didn’t take him long to figure out something for nothing. We had dressed him, as he requested, as Batman, and he strenuously objected to black tights. Batman wears grey, he kept insisting, and at every single house he apologized for our inadequacies as providers of the authentic costume.
They, refugees from Laos, lived in the basement for about a year, and returned for another 6 months while their St Henri flat was being wonderfully re-organized for them. Mrs S looked bedraggled and afraid when she arrived, but she brightened up after a while, cut her hair and turned into a glamorous little lady.
One thing I remember very vividly is all the bad advice I gave Soomphongh. As in – help with Income Tax; do not enter into the cooperative that is offered in your new digs. What did I know about all those things? Nothing – and he quietly did what he thought best.
When they finally left, we became a sort of haven for all kinds of other people. Isolde’s beau, Phil, seemed to live with us, sort of, because he didn’t like his flat. He was an art student at Concordia, and spent the term making a very elaborate leg for a chair. He also spent the ensuing summer scraping the paint off of the house next door, with a 2” scraper. We put him on a sofa. Or was that while Isolde was at Westmount High? I guess so.
Rebecca’s beau, Marc, lived on the sofa, too, off and on for about a year. For the life of me, I can’t remember why. Maybe because he lived on the South Shore.
In my sorties along the 401, much later, I used to bring hitchhikers home, now and then. Like a mother fox returning to the den with prey for the cubs. One nice young Englishman wanted to go to Ottawa, but I persuaded him to come to Montreal, it being more fun.
We adopted a Vietnamese boat boy, Thanh, who attended Westmount High with my children. He introduced us to a friend, who was about to lose his Canadian home for undisclosed reasons. (His Terre des Hommes sponsors wrote me a letter, containing the reasons, but I destroyed it without reading it.) Unable to find a home for Thongh, we took him in too. They didn’t last long – they stopped going to class, and I delivered an ultimatum, so they decided to move out, rather than comply. Thanh sort of disappeared – but Thongh fell in love with a pretty and determined Vietnamese girl who sent him back to finish school, and now they are prosperous, happily married and very strict with their own children, which makes me laugh!
Gordie Pederson lived with us for a winter. He was a friend of Susie. Gordie was an agreeable chap, and a useful one. He built me a new staircase out in front, and he tiled the basement when I was about to sell and move. I didn’t know he was a drug addict. Well – I can’t know everything.
His brother John came and rented a basement room, as my kids were starting to move out. I had another little clutch of renters in the basement – some better than others.
Oh Gee. I almost forgot eccentric genius Andrew Schwartz – he stayed one summer in the basement, and his dreary girlfriend stayed there with him, till I laid down the law about live-ins.
I rented out the basement to 2 sets of chicks – all were unmemorable, and unregretted when they left. One pair of students wanted to be family – but we didn’t like them, and wouldn’t have them as anything but rather remote acquaintances.
Another fellow rented the basement for a few weeks and skipped out leaving behind a hideous suit. He was very good looking, but unreliable.
Jason provided me with a Hungarian he met up with on his world travels. “Stay with Mum” he cried cheerily to a young man who turned out to be a complete waste of space. Zoltan phoned me from London, en route to Montreal, and said his money had been stolen there. I thought for a minute, and said –“ Well, come along anyway, and we’ll see what can be done. There’s a lot in Montreal that’s free – and you can rescue something out of this.” He told me that he was accompanied by a cousin. That was a surprise, but I arranged for bus fare from Mirabel, and sure enough, Zoltan and his cousin came to my house. He brought me presents – a hideous embroidered table cover, wine and paprika. I borrowed a couple of bikes for them, and Zoltan considered them to be inadequate. “Not 10 speed?” he said dismissively. The first night they were at my house, a big car came and picked them up and took them out on the town. They brought in take-out, and ate it in front of my kids. They also drank all the wine. After a few days (Zoltan slept in all the time) I noticed that he had taken the sheets off the bed, and slept on the bare mattress. By then I had really started to hate him and I realized more or less right away that he had lied about the money, and was in general a shifty, ungrateful, miserable pig. I ordered them to replace the sheets, and when I checked they had not done this pretty basic sort of thing. So I kicked them out. They could go and live with their friends. Zoltan took the embroidered cloth with him.
I guess my various refugees fit into the category of live-ins. The first was a Somalian, who never emerged from the basement at all, till we got him legalized. Isolde discovered him praying to the corner, when she burst in upon him, all unknowing. He was a Muslim. Another woman, a Sri Lankan about 3 feet tall, Seguntala, kissed Rebecca’s feet when she moved out. Rebecca was alarmed.
Lilti lived with me for a year: She was a stunning Ethiopian refugee about 16 years old. She attended High School, and Boy did she work hard! She graduated that year, and had a little party one afternoon. 7 or 8 students (mostly boys) arrived about 4, and Lilti gravely offered them chips and cokes and they danced decorously around the living room for a couple of hours and then she said the party was over, and they went, uncomplaining, home.
She attended the grad dance alone, attired in a truly amazing and sophisticated sapphire blue dress – and came home at midnight in a taxi. I don’t know where she got all those rules.
Lilti was out on the front steps with my kids, one summer afternoon. She took her books, and just sat there studying, while passing male motorists drove through stop lights, into trees and over passing pedestrians. When they trooped in to supper, a young man accompanied them. We thought somebody knew him – but he just wanted a closer look at Lilti. So we gave him supper, and he looked wistfully at Lilti.
Susie’s grade school friend Wanda K stayed with us for two years. She was studying at Concordia – and I remember her sitting at the kitchen table making props for her theatre school - perfect replicas of silly things, like condensed soup tins. I can’t really remember why she moved in or how. I guess she couldn’t afford an apartment.
Sheila Emmanuel, a friend of Rebecca, moved in with us for a while. She was a foster child from up the street who tired of her very square parents and sort of ran away from home. I remember the night the police brought the two girls home about 11 – Ray answered the door, and was just livid! They hadn’t been doing any harm, but the Security boys didn’t like the young man who had been with them in the park.
She and Rebecca decided to completely run away from home after that, and (tipped off by a neighbour who saw them) Isolde and I combed the Alexis Nihon Plaza and brought Rebecca home. The others (there was a little clutch of kids) left town in a stolen VW, and were caught near Kingston and returned to (I think) Weredale House
Gerry Free was hitchhiking from Dorval, when I picked him up and brought him home. He said he had applied for a summer job as ‘a maid’ – and his employers lived a block north of us on Metcalfe. Gerry was really a character! He must have been a great surprise to his new employers who expected a girl. He used to drift by every so often, and tell us how he was doing as a domestic servant. He said he was asked to prepare lunch for his mistress – a bridge party, I think – and he had amazed the guests with a portrait bust of the lady of the house carved in cheddar cheese.
Gerry gave me a number of poems that he had written. I have lost them all, to my great regret, but one, The Hitchhiker” started
Out on the highway,
Thumb up…
When he got the sack – that was pretty soon – he came over and made a huge sandwich sign, which he planned to wear outside the boss’s downtown office tower. He believed he had been fired without cause.
Jason and Jonnie saw something of him after that. He used to bring me rather wilted baskets of flowers, which the boys told me later, he ordered (along with negotiable valuables) from credit card numbers taken out of the garbage behind downtown restaurants. The story he gave me was somewhat different – unbelievable, but different.
The boys got him a job in the kitchen at Ruby Foo’s, and Suzanne Mills said later that he couldn’t do anything! He told me that he had learned to carve vegetables in cunning shapes.
I heard from Gerry a few years later. He rang at 2 in the morning to tell me that his wife (a registered nurse – and black) had been killed in an automobile accident in Snowden. A month later, he came to visit with another wife (white and French Canadian). I gave them dinner, and we all politely avoided awkward questions.
Gerry rang me at odd intervals. He assured me that he looked upon me as a second mother! Once he said he needed money because he was in jail in Alabama, or somewhere. I asked for the name of the police station and the sheriff, so that I could check this out. It never came clear…
He also asked Jason to pose as a psychiatrist (on the phone) to support one of his fanciful alibis – we never really figured out what that was all about.
A recent Google check turned up a Gerry Free, a southerner, who was tried and convicted of fraud a few years ago. It sure sounds like Gerry, but 66 seems a bit too old. Another possibility is a man who ran a talent e-mail scam in the South a few years ago. Whatever our colourful friend is or was up to, I’m sure it was illegal.
I was sort of lucky, I think. The wonder is that we weren’t all murdered in our beds.
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