From the Archives
My dear machineplay shared the thought today that "...some things that don't get recycled enough are favourite stories, anecdotes and memories and the like...," and then proceeded to ask her friends to please feel free to share their recycleable stories with her. So I did, but it's been on my mind that these two essays/memories are something I want to republish myself. Mostly so that I can access them more easily at some future point.
Some of you have read them already. Some of you havn't. Feel free...
Mimeograph
Saturday mornings I spent with my Dad. I can no longer say with certainty that we’d be at the Church, or that we’d be home in his study, but I do remember that on Saturday mornings Dad would print out the week’s bulletins.
On Friday nights, Dad would type up the text of the bulletins; announcements, prayers, bible readings and hymn choices, and the title of that week’s sermon. In those days Prairie ministers served more than one parish, and Dad had to make sure he got the announcements straight for three different congregations. If he mixed up the announcements, there would be words at the next Presbytery meeting.
I can remember him typing carefully, scanning for any errors. His English still wasn’t that good, so my Mother would often edit his work, and then paint out the mistakes in that brilliant magenta-pink correction fluid. I have nail polish that shade - it makes me think of my Dad.
Saturday mornings he ran the mimeograph machine. The machine took up most of a small room behind the office. This room had high diamond-leaded windowpanes, and the light would fall criss-crossed in sun patches on the worn wooden floor. Deeply gouged where the machine had been dragged into place, the oak planks were splotchy with stains. Black smears of machine oil, the fresh ones sticky, the old ones matted with paper dust, mingled with drips of shiny black printer’s ink. Little flecks of magenta-pink sparkled in the sunlight. I remember lying on that floor, looking up at the undercarriage of the mimeograph with fascination, watching the paper flying through the gears. I remember my father’s soft admonitions to be careful to keep my fingers out of the machine.
My Dad would wear a white lab coat as spattered and spotted as the floor. He’d lift the first page of a new run, and examine it carefully, blowing the ink dry. Sometimes machine oil would drip onto the pages, or the ink would be spread on the rollers too thickly and the printing would be smeared. Then I would be gifted with the ruined bulletins, which were a treasure beyond measure with their bright pictures for cut and paste, and the white section for drawing. Those papers were my reward for patience, and the drawings I gave to my Daddy were my offerings of love for the time we’d spent together.
My Mother kept my Saturday drawings for a long time. I drew what I saw, as all children do; the gas man in his plaid shirt and suspenders, farmers driving combines and threshing machines, children swimming in the reservoir, sandpipers at the edge of the slough, and the boundless prairie sky. And oil derricks rising and falling, singly and in flocks, like those tipsy birds that used to sit on the counter of the local ice-cream parlour; endlessly sucking up black liquid out of the hidden places beneath the earth.
*****
Grandpa Gene
I don’t remember my Grandfather. My Grandpere. I don’t know which he would have preferred I call him, although I suspect the latter. Grandpa Gene was the family’s French connection, but displaced wherever he lived - in Quebec as a Protestant heretic, in the rest of Canada as a dirty Frenchman.
I suppose he was dirty enough. He was a well driller, a magician for being able to find water in dry places, working with heavy machinery and their accompanying grease and grime. My mother recalls that the only time her Father’s fingernails were not rimed with black grime from working was in the months he lay bedridden, dying of cancer. For the grime and grease and grinding labour of his days eventually corroded his body, although it could never touch his spirit.
Grandpa Gene was a gentleman. A kind spirit who never spoke ill of any man or woman, despite having been betrayed by his partner and driven into the northern logging camps after losing everything to bankruptcy. Gramma never quite forgave him for his gullibility, but Grandpa forgave her for her dissatisfaction. My mother recalls one time when she had been grousing about Gramma, and Grandpa Gene gently interjected “Don’t be so hard on your Mother. She’s doing the best she can.”
That’s all Grandpa ever asked from anyone - that they do the best they can. When I am angry with a friend, or feel drawn by the temptation to speak ill of someone, I remember Grandpa Gene. I remember that he did not go out at night, did not invite company to visit, but that when he died the Church was packed with friends. He always had a kind word. Always offered what help he could. Drilled wells for the poor and did not charge, even though he knew his wife would harp upon him over that - for him, a week’s groceries was nothing when a farm would fold if there was no water.
I don’t remember my Grandfather’s eyes, although I’ve seen them in pictures. I don’t recall his workman’s appetite, although I’ve heard stories of his plate heaped high again, and again. I don’t remember the man who built tree forts and rope gymnasiums and rafts and stables, who broke mountain ponies for his girls’ entertainment, and then sold machinery to buy a proper horse for his cowgirl daughter only to sit vigil by her bed when tuberculosis and brain tumour took her childhood away from her.
Grandpa Gene reminds me that I am not so far from the land as I tend to think; there are grease smudges on the white collars of my upbringing. He reminds me that there is dirt in the blood, and fresh air in the lungs; that Autumn is a time for harvesting, and Spring is a time for maple syrup, and that you should strip off your clothes if you get the boiling sap on you, and snow banks will save your life. Grandpa Gene reminds me that a kind deed is remembered as easily as a cruel word, and it is my choice what kind of memories I leave behind me, even with those whom I will not live long enough to hold.
Some of you have read them already. Some of you havn't. Feel free...
Mimeograph
Saturday mornings I spent with my Dad. I can no longer say with certainty that we’d be at the Church, or that we’d be home in his study, but I do remember that on Saturday mornings Dad would print out the week’s bulletins.
On Friday nights, Dad would type up the text of the bulletins; announcements, prayers, bible readings and hymn choices, and the title of that week’s sermon. In those days Prairie ministers served more than one parish, and Dad had to make sure he got the announcements straight for three different congregations. If he mixed up the announcements, there would be words at the next Presbytery meeting.
I can remember him typing carefully, scanning for any errors. His English still wasn’t that good, so my Mother would often edit his work, and then paint out the mistakes in that brilliant magenta-pink correction fluid. I have nail polish that shade - it makes me think of my Dad.
Saturday mornings he ran the mimeograph machine. The machine took up most of a small room behind the office. This room had high diamond-leaded windowpanes, and the light would fall criss-crossed in sun patches on the worn wooden floor. Deeply gouged where the machine had been dragged into place, the oak planks were splotchy with stains. Black smears of machine oil, the fresh ones sticky, the old ones matted with paper dust, mingled with drips of shiny black printer’s ink. Little flecks of magenta-pink sparkled in the sunlight. I remember lying on that floor, looking up at the undercarriage of the mimeograph with fascination, watching the paper flying through the gears. I remember my father’s soft admonitions to be careful to keep my fingers out of the machine.
My Dad would wear a white lab coat as spattered and spotted as the floor. He’d lift the first page of a new run, and examine it carefully, blowing the ink dry. Sometimes machine oil would drip onto the pages, or the ink would be spread on the rollers too thickly and the printing would be smeared. Then I would be gifted with the ruined bulletins, which were a treasure beyond measure with their bright pictures for cut and paste, and the white section for drawing. Those papers were my reward for patience, and the drawings I gave to my Daddy were my offerings of love for the time we’d spent together.
My Mother kept my Saturday drawings for a long time. I drew what I saw, as all children do; the gas man in his plaid shirt and suspenders, farmers driving combines and threshing machines, children swimming in the reservoir, sandpipers at the edge of the slough, and the boundless prairie sky. And oil derricks rising and falling, singly and in flocks, like those tipsy birds that used to sit on the counter of the local ice-cream parlour; endlessly sucking up black liquid out of the hidden places beneath the earth.
*****
Grandpa Gene
I don’t remember my Grandfather. My Grandpere. I don’t know which he would have preferred I call him, although I suspect the latter. Grandpa Gene was the family’s French connection, but displaced wherever he lived - in Quebec as a Protestant heretic, in the rest of Canada as a dirty Frenchman.
I suppose he was dirty enough. He was a well driller, a magician for being able to find water in dry places, working with heavy machinery and their accompanying grease and grime. My mother recalls that the only time her Father’s fingernails were not rimed with black grime from working was in the months he lay bedridden, dying of cancer. For the grime and grease and grinding labour of his days eventually corroded his body, although it could never touch his spirit.
Grandpa Gene was a gentleman. A kind spirit who never spoke ill of any man or woman, despite having been betrayed by his partner and driven into the northern logging camps after losing everything to bankruptcy. Gramma never quite forgave him for his gullibility, but Grandpa forgave her for her dissatisfaction. My mother recalls one time when she had been grousing about Gramma, and Grandpa Gene gently interjected “Don’t be so hard on your Mother. She’s doing the best she can.”
That’s all Grandpa ever asked from anyone - that they do the best they can. When I am angry with a friend, or feel drawn by the temptation to speak ill of someone, I remember Grandpa Gene. I remember that he did not go out at night, did not invite company to visit, but that when he died the Church was packed with friends. He always had a kind word. Always offered what help he could. Drilled wells for the poor and did not charge, even though he knew his wife would harp upon him over that - for him, a week’s groceries was nothing when a farm would fold if there was no water.
I don’t remember my Grandfather’s eyes, although I’ve seen them in pictures. I don’t recall his workman’s appetite, although I’ve heard stories of his plate heaped high again, and again. I don’t remember the man who built tree forts and rope gymnasiums and rafts and stables, who broke mountain ponies for his girls’ entertainment, and then sold machinery to buy a proper horse for his cowgirl daughter only to sit vigil by her bed when tuberculosis and brain tumour took her childhood away from her.
Grandpa Gene reminds me that I am not so far from the land as I tend to think; there are grease smudges on the white collars of my upbringing. He reminds me that there is dirt in the blood, and fresh air in the lungs; that Autumn is a time for harvesting, and Spring is a time for maple syrup, and that you should strip off your clothes if you get the boiling sap on you, and snow banks will save your life. Grandpa Gene reminds me that a kind deed is remembered as easily as a cruel word, and it is my choice what kind of memories I leave behind me, even with those whom I will not live long enough to hold.