LOOKIT MAH GIFT ART, Y’ALL
So, not to jinx it, but the past two nights I’ve managed to sleep 6 hours in a row. This is exceptional news.
However. While I was doing that, the lovely and multi-talented shea was doing THIS.
Behold my gift icon. Behold it, dammit! Ain’t it purty? It was generous and unexpected, just like she is, and I’m in all kinds of awe and love with it.
So, in thanks, shea gets the story she requested.
I hope the rest of you enjoy it too.
'Snick
Goin’ Down, the Old Man, River, Transistor Radio
A lot of families have come and gone on the street my dad grew up on, but he’s still there. Part of me thinks he stays just for the excuse to point out all the houses to me when I visit and reminisce about each of his crazy neighbors.
The little row of post-war bungalows hosted what was considered a pretty diverse neighbourhood back in the day. There was an Irish family - which was interesting to my dad because they were Catholic and didn’t go to the same church he did - one Greek household, and one Polish.
There were even a brother and sister duo who were the token ‘poor kids’ on the street. My father remembers, not a little bitterly, the time the boy climbed into his house through the milk box when nobody was home and stole $12 off my grandmother’s bureau and made off with dad’s stamp collection.
He remembers the time the little French-Canadian girl across the street took her clothes off in the lilac bushes, and that night after dinner my grandfather did something completely unheard of and announced that the men of the house were going to wash the dishes together. My grandpa had landed at Juno Beach on D-Day before he was sent home with several bullet wounds, one of which had grazed his cheek. A quarter inch to the left and neither my dad nor myself would ever have been born. But grandpa would go to his grave without ever speaking a word about his experiences at Juno, and was currently a gruff and stoic Commanding Officer in the King's army.
What followed was the most frightening account of a birds and bees talk I have heard to date. My father remembers being mortally afraid that one day he would be seized without warning by an uncontrollable urge to pee inside of a woman. He didn’t know how he would accomplish such a thing, he only knew that he must not do it or tragedy would strike him. Although to be fair, the Colonel warned, he probably wouldn’t be able to stop himself.
Years later, after a trip to New York City to celebrate New Years Eve at Times Square, dad would ask his father why he’d never educated him about homosexuality. The Colonel looked taken aback, and then amused.
“I thought they were a joke.” Grandpa replied.
Most of the kids in my dad’s neighborhood had similar learning experiences. They were all deeply jealous of George, the Greek boy on the street, whose progressive Mediterranean parents’ idea of sex ed was to show him.
So my dad was surrounded by playmates on his street, but his closest friend had always been Don. Don and my father were the same age, and had a lot in common. They were both runners and excelled at Track & Field. They both liked folk music. I’m pretty sure that for most of my dad’s youth, they even liked the same girl.
Don’s father wasn’t in the military though, so he never joined the cadets along with my dad. Don was also a vegetarian - something of a novelty in those days, and probably viewed by the Colonel as A Bad Influence. It was Don who had taken my father to New York City. And it was Don who noticed first that there weren’t any girls at that party. My father was intrigued by Don’s diet and always noted that this fascinating alternative lifestyle choice made his sweat smell sweet.
Dad remembered that fact being relevant, on the night in question. He and Don were both pretty sweaty. It was a hot August night and he and Don had decided to run home from their summer jobs at the Canadian National Exhibition, which today, closes at midnight and might have been the same back then. They did things like this a lot. They had hormones raging through their blood telling them to do all sorts of strange things - although neither of them had ever had to pee inside of anybody yet.
They ran all the way up town from the waterfront, my father carrying the transistor radio they took to work with them every day. They were teenagers, and couldn’t be expected to be without their folk music for any length of time, after all. As they rounded the corner of their street they agreed it was probably a good idea to keep running right to the end of it, where they could cool off with a swim in the ravine.
My dad tossed his radio on the lawn outside his house on the way by. They shucked their clothes and cooled off in the river, and made their way back up the street, dripping and happy. Which was when the cops stopped them.
“It’s my radio, and it’s my house.” My father assured them.
The cops didn’t seem to like this story. They were teenagers and they had been running from something. In the middle of the night. And for some reason they were wet and muddy. The policemen wanted to speak to Don’s parents.
“You can speak to mine.” My father suggested. “But my father is asleep and he’s a Colonel in the army, and he’s going to be really ticked.”
It seems in those days even the Ontario Provincial Police didn’t mess with the King's Army.
My dad ended up dropping out of the cadets on the day he realized - while learning to take apart and re-assemble guns was sort of fun - that when they started teaching him to point them at things, what it really meant was that one day they were going to ask him to point them at people. My grandfather was disappointed but accepted his son’s choice, and my father left home to start a commune with Don and a few other friends.
They grew their own vegetables, and starved when they ran out. They probably smoked a lot of weed, until that ran out too, and they started to fight amongst themselves and found out all the reasons why communism never really took off as a model for sustainability.
So, dad moved back home and had to admit maybe the old man was right about a few things, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret his decisions.
My grandfather’s only son retired this year, and he’s never had to shoot anyone.
I don’t plan on joining a commune any time soon but I hope we can all say the same thing for a long time to come.