You banga da hell outa dis (another story from Demeter)

When I was little, Demeter worked at a clinic for kids with cerebral palsy in South Edmonton, on the opposite side of the North Saskatchewan River. One day, she was on her lunch break, trying to get some errands done, but held up by an endless stream of midday traffic and a light that refused to change.

Out of nowhere, a little man appeared at her side.
"You wanta cross the street, lady?  You banga da hell outa dis," he declared, demonstrating energetically on the crosswalk button to my startled mother.  "Just banga da hell!"

Blonds have more stun (a final Google Map stroll through my Edmontonian childhood)

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The last time I did NaBloPoMo, it was August and I took the suggestion from John Reid's family-history-themed blog Anglo-Celtic Connections to do a "Google walk" through a childhood neighbourhood. I was pleased to get five posts out of this: my house, the route to the downtown bus, the way to church, the trip to the candy store and ice rink, and the journey to the playground. I didn't get around to the most important pilgrimage of all: the daily trek to school. However, it was August and I was pushing school from my mind. Deep in November, so deep it's almost December, it's time to brace myself and remember my first years of formal education.

When I wait with younger daughter for the first of the three buses that will eventually get us home, children scuff by in their snow-gear, en route from the local neighbourhood school. There's a pair of little girls who stroll by us every day, one with dark hair, the other with white-blond hair spilling perfectly brushed over her shoulders, even at the end of a school day. I shudder inwardly. This little blond girl might be a perfectly pleasant person, but she's a dead ringer for Bianca Richardson.

Every class had a Bianca Richardson. I'm sure yours did too. She was the little girl whom substitute teachers and class visitors always called on, because she was very pretty and very blond. (The regular class teachers seemed a wee bit less enchanted, but in my experience, seasoned teachers are not as easy to con.) Bianca was also, as I recall, unusually articulate for an eight-year-old, with a withering command of the situation if lesser mortals dared express an opinion. Not unusually bright, at least not in the academic sense, but alas, that has never been high on the list for social success.

In those days, I still hadn't quite learned that I had none of the attributes of a popular kid, and was blissfully unaware of just how far down the food chain I was. I only knew that I rather disliked Bianca Richardson. I think most of the girls felt the same way. She was not a very kind person, although she had a very high sense of moral indignation when crossed. The boys, of course, adored her.

Westglen School, the beginning of my downward social spiral, was a bit of an anomaly. It was called Westglen Junior High, yet went from Grades One to Nine. (Ages 6 to 15.) The Grade Nines looked down upon us pipsqueaks with great contempt -- when they bothered to look down at all. I have a brief but dazzling memory fragment of catching a tantalizing glimpse of an after-school dance from a side hall before being shooed away.

We weren't allowed to cross the busy street at the corner closest to my house even though it was cater-corner to the school and would have saved about five minutes' walking time. Instead, we made our way down the sidewalk across the street from the school, usually playing "Step on the crack and break the devil's back". If someone changed the back in question from the devil's to your mother's mid-step, you had to catch your foot in time. We crossed the street at the far corner, where older students were the crossing guards.

If there was time, we'd play in the field at the end where the high metal goal net, which wasn't rusty when I was a girl, doubled as my spider's web. I was the spider at every recess, capturing screaming playmates and hauling them back to my lair. (My mum made me a remarkable spider costume for Hallowe'en in Grade Two, but I was sick and had to be content showing it --at a safe distance -- to the trick-or-treaters who came to our door.)

However, if I arrived later, it was a heady rush for the locker room when the bell rang. For some reason, I had a terror of "The Bell", which was in fact a buzzer, even when I arrived in plenty of time. It seemed paramount to get inside once it rang.
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School ended with those of us in Grade One being escorted in two assigned groups across 127 Street, supervised by monitors. We lived in dread of getting Miranda, an officious Grade Six with pierced ears, who insisted on her charges walking in pairs. We always got stuck with her, of course, while the other lucky group cheered and dashed across the field in an unruly mass around the other more lenient monitor.

My humiliation was shortlived, though. Miranda's route took her west up 109 Avenue and being a resident of 109A Avenue,I was free from her jurisdiction once we were safely across. If it was winter, I'd pick my way home up 127 Street along the top of the block-long wall of snow left by the snowploughs which grew steadily during the long Edmontonian winter. By January, there would be a brown worn path left by many small boots. It seemed very high up above the sidewalk on one side and the busy street on the other. But I was a lot smaller then.

I moved from Edmonton, Alberta to Nanaimo, BC, during the last quarter of Grade Three. I never saw Bianca Richardson again and didn't particularly mourn over this fact. In a sense, I meet her daily, one of those ambitious mums from Oak Bay in Victoria, or Sandy Hill in Ottawa, working for the government, fund-raising for the school, and ferrying her pretty blond insufferable children to music lessons and soccer practice in the minivan.

I've now NaBloPoMo-ed five different months. Seven to go. December? Not two months in a row! January? I'm taking another online course and I've learned the hard way that genealogy assignments and NaBloPoMo don't mix. I've done February and March, so, barring some unforeseen circumstance, I'll plan to NaBloPoMo April. In the meantime, I hope I'll have the discipline to blog more than once a month. On the other hand, is that Christmas coming at me like a freight train?

The little blue man (Part Five of a Google Map walk through an Edmonton childhood)

View Larger MapI am old enough to remember a time when kids wandered free throughout their neighbourhoods. I don't think we were at any greater or lesser risk for being snatched by strangers. I mean, the reason a kidnapped child is big news is because it's a relatively rare occurrence; then, as now, children were more likely to be snatched by members of their own families, abused by people they trusted, and die in car accidents.

So I ranged pretty well where I wanted, provided I returned home at the appointed times. I was required, of course, to say where I was going. My destination was usually the local playground which featured wooden swings you could stand up on, wooden teeter-totters (see-saws) where you could strand or drop your partner if you had the weight advantage, and a rather marvelous summer programme with teen-aged counselors, organized games, crafts and races, and regular visits from a group of acting students from the University of Alberta who called themselves "The Playground Players". A sign posted on the playground shelter would advise us of their arrival and they would trundle across the field drawing a cart of make-shift props and wearing colourful strolling-player-type costumes. I thought they were wonderful. I still remember an exchange between the giant and his wife in their fractured version of Jack and the Beanstalk:
"What's behind your apron?"
"My dress! It's new! Do you like it?"
"What's behind your dress?"
"....ME!"

We roared. Very risqué stuff for little kids.

On more ordinary days, the counselor, a charismatic girl who couldn't have been much more than eighteen but who was as old as the hills as far as I was concerned, led us through summer-camp sorts of activities. My favourite was a game called "I Come From Edmonton" where the leader (usually the counselor) would parade around the inside of the circle singing:

I come from Edmonton,
Jolly, jolly Edmonton!
I come from Edmonton.
Here she would stop in front of someone and both would swipe their hands and scissor their feet to the words:
Can you feel the heat?
The heat?
I smell your dirty feet!
Pew!

On the last word she'd jump 180 degrees, holding her nose, the child would grab her waist and they'd march off to collect another kid in the circle until all were in the train. Marvelous stuff. I must have been pretty easy to entertain.

Our counselor also regularly serenaded us with a goofy surreal ballad about a persistent little blue man who stalks the hapless young women he "wuvs". I was far too young to know that this had been a novelty hit in the fifties for Betty Johnson and had been written by Fred Ebb and Paul Klein, the men behind Cabaret, and later, Chicago. Here's Petulia Clark's version:

(This is my continuation of the exercise suggested by John Reid at his blog Anglo-Celtic Connections.)

Other pilgrimages on the western border (Part Four of a Google Map walk through a childhood neighbourhood)

Aside from the trek to church, my Westmount childhood featured another weekly pilgrimage up the west side of my block, heading north along 127 Street to Eccleston's for the purpose of squandering my weekly allowance.
View Larger Map Geez, was it really that small? I remember it being crammed with candy. I'm sure there were other necessaries to buy there, but I only remember the shelves where I had to choose between, um... a Jersey Milk chocolate bar...no, wait... maybe an Aero bar or.... If I was feeling exotic, I might get some MacIntosh toffee or Turkish Delight.

We even hit Eccleston's for Hallowe'en, when prairie kids such as we would sing out "Haahl-low-weeeen Ap-PUULLS!" rather than the more pedestrian "Trick or Treat". Mrs Eccleston, a petite plain lady with short, permed dark hair would stare at us in horror and scoop sweets into our pillowcases. I, being dressed as a not-at-all scary princess, complete with gold crown and heavy chain painstakingly crafted out of cardboard by my mum, was bemused.

Across the street, but only in wintertime (November to April in Edmonton), was the outdoor skating rink where I never quite learned to skate. My mother always told me this was because I was too afraid of falling, that I should go limp and plop down painlessly like a rag-doll as my sister did. (My sister, an expert in cuts and scrapes, was covered in scabs up until her teens.) I would cling to the wooden boards, watching long whip-lashing lines of skaters hold hands and swing out from the centre ice I dared not breach. As the late afternoon twilight descended and the bright lights came on, a beautiful but tinny nameless song played over the PA system. I have never been able to identify it, though it stills plays in my head and I strain to hear the chorus.

(This is my continuation of the exercise suggested by John Reid at his blog Anglo-Celtic Connections.)

Worlds apart and a block away (Part Three of a Google Map walk through a childhood neighbourhood)

The Resident Fan Boy and I had been an item for a matter of days when we made the astonishing discovery while waiting for a movie to begin at the students' cinema at UVic. It started when we realized we had been born in the same hospital (The Royal Alexandra, Edmonton, Alberta) eight months apart, then we stumbled upon the fact we'd had the same Grade One teacher, although not, obviously, at the same time.

Working out addresses, landmarks and neighbours, we figured out we'd been living about a block and a half from each other, from the time my family moved into 12618 109A Avenue when I was four (the RFB was five) to the time when the RFB and his family moved to Victoria when he was six going on seven. (I would have just turned six and been about to enter school --- where I would have the RFB's former Grade One teacher.) For two years there, we surely must have passed each other on the streets, a freckle-nosed girl with long flyaway braids and a dark-haired boy in conservative clothes with a lazy eye.
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The Resident Fan Boy was astounded to learn that there had been a Unitarian Church in the neighbourhood. Being the son of a very High Anglican rector, he would have been blissfully unaware of the community of heathens worshipping a mere two blocks from his front door. (His mother would have been horrified; that was certainly her reaction when she discovered her precious boy had fallen for a Unitarian years later in Victoria: "But....they deny Our Lord....")

So every Sunday, my sister and I made the trek up 126 Street to 110 Avenue where we went to Sunday School, learning Bible stories as folk tales. It's still there today, but the church sold it about five years ago to an architect who no doubt was intrigued by its Bauhauss style.

On our way, we passed the firehouse which had saved our own house from destruction, and some neighbours who were particular friends of my father's.

One evening, I was playing just outside our gate as the sun set. My father's car drove up and he invited me to hop in to pop around to see the neighbours on 126 Street. We were less than a block away, and I don't think he intended to stay long, but it was dark when we returned to the house.

As we entered the front door, I could see my mother from the back. She was sitting on the couch with her jacket on, being comforted by our housekeeper, a brisk grandmother from Saskatchewan named Mrs Leigh. My mother's hair, usually neatly swept back into a tidy chignon for work, was disheveled and she was weeping. Mrs Leigh darted to us and had a few quick words with my father. I didn't hear what she said, but I'd never heard her be angry with my father before. I didn't have much time to process this as I was swept into my mother's arms.

Later, I sat in the bath with eyes like saucers as my mother sat by the tub and told me what had happened. It was very uncharacteristic for me to wander off, so she had searched the street, asked the neighbours, then pelted off on a frantic run across the field to search the playground. "It got darker and darker, and I called and called," she said. "And then I thought my little girl was gone...."

Even though this incident was clearly my father's misjudgment and not my own, I never forgot it. During my sister's and my turbulent teens, I was the one who never failed to phone to say where I was. I had seen my mother's grief and terror. Once was enough.

(This is my continuation of the exercise suggested by John Reid at his blog Anglo-Celtic Connections.)

The tricycle thief (Google-map-walking through a childhood neighbourhood, Part Two)

Our journeys to downtown Edmonton always started with a three-block walk to 124 Street where the buses ran. (According to the current map, there is now a bus stop directly in front of where our house used to stand, probably put there for the seniors in the residence that has taken its place.) It seemed a very long trek to an under-eight-year-old, rife with all sorts of hazards. For example, there was a cantankerous get-off-my-lawn guy who permanently traumatized me by yelling at me when I accidentally stumbled on his carpet-like green.

The walk was usually taken with my mum (although I was on my own when the lawn ogre roared). I remember walking with my dad on one occasion, desperately trying to match his stride which took up three of mine.
View Larger MapMore often though, I ventured to the end of my block and sat on the curb facing east. Warm in the afternoon sun (I certainly didn't do this in the winter), I would thoughtlessly toss ants to their watery grave in the gutter while I waited for the familiar figure to appear in the distance. When the figure returned my frantic wave, it was my cue to run to meet my mother returning from work.

One day a group of young kids on tricycles appeared in silhouette, peddling from the next lane in the next block. Just as suddenly, they vanished, along with the approaching figure of my mum. Baffled, I ran the half-block to where my mother had disappeared, halting to gaze down the deserted back lane. A few minutes later, there was my mother, purse over her shoulder, grimly towing two tricycles.

A few weeks before, my sister and I had received our very first tricycles. Mine was an electric blue, hers a bright green. Both had bright plastic ribbons flowing from the handlebars. They had promptly vanished from our front yard. Not long afterward, I was engaged in my favourite activity of climbing on our wooden white-washed front gate and riding it until it slammed shut with a satisfying click. A posse of about five or six kids trundled by, either riding or clinging to a largish tricycle and a smaller one. The ringleader of this mob was a rather loathsome little girl called Gigi. (With a name like that, I suppose she didn't have a chance.) She jeered: "You can't ride on my bike!"

Being five, I was too distracted by this out-of-left-field insult to notice the details of the trikes. Mama, returning home that summer evening, had recognized the tricycles immediately, despite the miscreants having partially ripped the decorative ribbons from the handlebars to disguise them. She had, after all, spent precious time and money acquiring them. I can only imagine the terror of Gigi and her gang when pursued by my mother who, although by nature a gentle person, could be formidable. She later told me that they abandoned their ill-gotten vehicles in the backyard and ran for the safety of the house. She, of course, pounded on the door and confronted the startled mother.

Once home, Mother covered the white mudguards on the wheels with our address in large letters, and we were strictly required to keep our trikes in the backyard shed. I don't remember seeing much of Gigi after that. No great loss.

(This is my continuation of the exercise suggested by John Reid at his blog Anglo-Celtic Connections.)

Memories are like smoke

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John Reid, an august past-president of the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa (BIFHSGO -- we members call it "Buh-FISS-Go") recently made an intriguing suggestion at his resourceful and informative blog Anglo-Celtic Connections. I have found it invariably worthwhile to follow his suggestions whether on his blog (a great resource if your family history lies in Great Britain, or even Canada), or from one of his fascinating presentations, so I'll taking a Google map walk around the tiny neighbourhood where I spent a fraction of my childhood (although the neighbourhood seemed huge at the time, and when I was six, a year seemed forever). In doing so, a host of memories have resurfaced, so, seeing as I'm doing this NaBloPoMo thing, I shall return to the stroll from time to time, whenever my ideas for posts run out (which is liable to be often).

I spent four years of my life at 12618 109A Avenue in Edmonton, Alberta, from the time I was four to the time I was eight. It was my last home in Edmonton before my mother took my sister and me to make a fresh start in British Columbia. The house is no longer there. Along with our neighbours' house on the west side and at least two houses behind us that fronted on 127 Street (including my future husband's grandparents' home and thereby hangs a strange and wonderful tale), it made way for the Alliance Villa which I think is a seniors' residence.
View Larger Map Across the lane to the east, the Hatley's house still stands, a similar vintage to our house, although our house was darker and narrower, I think; the Hatleys, after all, were a much larger family. The crab-apple tree in their front yard is gone, and were the bushes that low? They towered above me and completely obscured the building.

The tree in our front was a cottonwood which I remember as being enormous. It may not have been. I spent ages pulling down the green pods in the spring so I could split them to see the white fluff inside. It's gone, along with the narrow yard that ran alongside the west of the house where a long lilac bush became my secret "Wendy House". At the back, was the rickety swing-set, a sandbox full of cat poo (although I did not realize this until years later), and a toolshed where I hid from the noise of the firetruck.

I was playing in the front yard when an ineffectual seventeen-year-old live-in housekeeper my desperate parents had hired, fired (for having a boyfriend in her room and leaving us unattended), and rehired (when her sister pleaded for her) came running out onto the porch.

"My bedroom is on fire!" she sobbed and seeing the newspaper boy cycle up, screamed at him: "Go and tell the fire department!" The startled boy pedaled off. Fortunately for us, the fire department was around the block on 126 Street. Especially fortunate, as the young girl didn't have the presence of mind to get my sister, about four or five at the time, out of the house. All I could think of, at age seven, was how loud the sirens would be, so I ran to the back of the house and shut myself in the shed. The Hatleys eventually corralled us and took us into their kitchen. My mother received the news at work and never forgot Mrs Hatley's grim opening words: "The girls are all right."

Little Miss Not-sharpest-knife-in-the-drawer had been smoking in her room and thrown the butt in the waste basket. My father's only words to her were a quiet but deadly "Get out." I remember watching her lonely silhouette on the back balcony from my vantage point in the Hatleys' kitchen, as she gingerly picked belongings out of the burnt dresser with no mirror in the charred frame. Naturally, we never saw her again. The fire and water damage to the front bedroom and the ceiling below were considerable, and took many weeks to repair.