Where the Walls are Soft…

He would have looked a lot like this, then…

They were
about
to swarm
- he knew
they were.
This picture was taken, obviously, just before my Dad went overseas during World War II. He was the youngest of the six boys, and the only kid younger than he was, was my Aunt Lynne - the only girl in the family - and probably pretty much spoiled for it.

Since my Dad was the youngest of the boys, he was the one left on the farm to help out at the start of the War. As a sideline, my grandfather kept a small stand of trees that he sold timber off of. My father’s “sideline” was bees.

My Dad’s been pretty concerned about the “Colony Collapse Disorder” news that’s been all over of late. He kept bees for years, from the time he was a pre-teen, still living at home, and off and on into the 1980’s. His concerns for Beedom in general are what prompted him to tell this story ; a new one, I’d never heard before. He outed himself on nearly killing his little sister. At least, that seems to be his take on things. I think he still feels guilty, even after all these years.

While his brothers went off to War, Dad stayed home and helped my grandfather run the farm, kept his bees, and helped when the time came to “water the timber”.

“Watering the timber” was the term used for saving time and money on transporting any wood you had to sell. If you were close enough to a main waterway, you dumped it in the water, and floated it to a point closer to where you were selling it - saved hauling it by horse and wagon, which was the only other way to do it if you were a poor farmer on the Manitoulin in the 40’s.

That year, about a week before my grandfather was set to water his timber, my Dad’s bees started acting up. He decided he’d better get another hive on the stack. He was pretty sure his colony was about to swarm. How he knew this, he never quite made clear to me. What he did make pretty clear, was the trouble he would have if those bees swarmed on him before he could get an empty hive up for them.

They would split up the colony, a new queen would be “crowned”, and would lead her people away to build a new hive, most likely ending up in a tree somewhere, several fields away. My Dad would have to find the new hive and get it into one of his boxes somehow, I guess, or lose half his bees. I imagine that would cause havoc between queens once the new colony was reintroduced to the old one again, too.

Anyway, he could tell something was up, and was pretty sure they were going to swarm. He wanted to take care of things before that happened, but somehow managed to put it off until the timing right sucked. The morning he and my grandfather drove off to water the timber, my Dad looked out at his hives and saw that it was the 11th hour. They were about to swarm - he knew they were.

So my Dad tells my grandfather that he’ll catch up with him - he’s going to take care of these bees first. Well, Grandpa wasn’t impressed (thought the bees were a stupid hobby to begin with), and told my Dad he could just put that idea out of his head until they’d come back from watering the timber. He needed his help.

My Dad argued, but couldn’t get Grandpa to bend, and then Lynnie piped up. She would have been a young teen then, maybe around 14 or 15, and she told my Dad that she’d take care of
it. She knew how to set the hive, she knew how to use the smoker… She could do it.

My Dad reluctantly agreed, and left with my grandfather, reminding Lynnie to light the smoker before she started, but not to use it unless she had to. So, Lynnie got the equipment, and hauled it down to take care of setting up the new hive. She was near-done, my Dad figures, when the bees swarmed - and she’d lit the smoker… but she panicked, and didn’t use it. It might not have mattered by then, anyway.

When my Dad and Grandpa got home that evening, Lynnie was in bed, bandaged to within an inch of skin showing. She was stung hundreds of times, nearly died. She was in that bed for weeks.

I don’t think my Dad has got over that yet.

***

I applied for two jobs today - one will use everything I’ve learned in school these last eleven months… and the other (((shudder)))… I don’t want to talk about that one.

Random Song for the Day: “Give a Little Bit” - Supertramp

David McMahon wants to know:

“What would you like to say to the girlfriend or boyfriend who first dumped you?”

After much soul-searching and heart-delving back into the summer of 1976, I believe I would say:

“You owe me half a strawberry soda.”

Random Song for the Day: “What the World Needs Now is Love” - Al Hirt

“Sometimes, I
just
cut out
the middle step
and stole
beer instead.”I have been forcibly “de-funkified”. I really should thank Carol for doing it with her nasty comments (and even nastier private emails), but I’m not quite ready to do that, because, truthfully, I don’t think I’m quite ready to be “de-funkified” at all.

But she’s right. Wallowing in it, publicly or privately, only makes things worse.

I still don’t have A Dream. So, I’m going to force one. And I’m going to be purposefully vague about it (sorry), because it’s an old dream, and only a couple of people know about it.

One of those people is the one that killed it. Granted, I let it be killed. I let it be killed because Way Back When, I didn’t have any guts. I don’t have any guts, now, either, but I intend to grow some.

Anyway…! On with it.

Way Back When, when the world was still new (1982, I think it was), I saved up $250 to help make my dream come true. A friend of mine, The Dream-Killer, boosted me along. I worked in a restaurant as a dishwasher for really crappy pay back then, and it was only part-time, since I was in school. Still, when I got that paycheck every week, all I wanted to do was buy jeans and party. The Dream-Killer would remind me about saving for my dream, and I would gratefully set aside some cash, and then steal beer money from my parents. Sometimes, I just cut out the middle step and stole beer instead. Even so, it took a long time to save up $250, let me tell you, but I did it.

I lived in a teeny-tiny town 50-odd miles East of here. I had to come up here to the Sault to plunk down my money and make Step One happen. The Dream-Killer came with me for support. We skipped school and hitch-hiked, of course. I wasn’t about to spend Dream Money on bus fare, was I? I wasn’t stupid.

Hitchhiking 50-odd miles sometimes takes hours. By the time we got here, The Dream-Killer had almost convinced me that The Dream was too big for me…

“You’re too young. No one’s going to take you seriously.”

“That guy is just looking for money. It’s going to turn out like shit.”

Almost convinced me. Almost.

And then, killing time until Step One would be underway, we wandered through the mall… and saw…

The Chair.

“Look at that chair! Don’t you love that chair?”

(It really was a cool chair. Yes, I loved that chair…)

“That chair would look sooooo gnarly in your room!”

(It really would…)

“It’s only $200! You should buy the chair!”

(I really wanted to buy the chair. But The Dream…!)

And then…

“You know… I don’t know how to tell you this… but… your stuff’s really not…. that… good.”

I bought the chair.

My father worked up here at the time, piloting one of the Lock Tour boats, and reluctantly agreed to truck it home for me. Wicker chair… Open truck bed… My chair blew out of the back of the truck at about Echo Bay.

We got turned around to go recover it just in time to see another truck wing by us with my chair in the back! Pissed my dad right off.

He took off after this guy at breakneck speed, berating me the whole time for being so stupid as to spend $200 on a chair for Chrissakes, and now he had to chase it down the damned highway, and so help him God, if he got pinched for speeding, I was paying the God-damned fine.

He caught up to the guy and pulled up beside him. Waved.

The guy waved back.

My dad yelled at him to stop, God-damn it.

The guy wouldn’t stop.

My dad darn near ran him off the road before he gave up and pulled over, telling us he was “trying to catch up with us”… ?! The chair survived with nary a scratch or break, surprisingly, and the story is incredibly funny now, but only because I survived. I was certain through the whole “chase” that my dad was going to roll the truck and kill us.

We pulled into Thessalon an hour or so later; my dad with a snarl on, and me with a crushed Dream, an un-crushed chair, and $50 burning a hole in my pocket. I’m pretty sure I spent the $50 on beer. And probably grass, too.

Every time we had company over after that, my dad would tell The Chair Story, bring people into my room to show them The Chair, and beam as if me spending $200 on a chair fer Chrissakes was the most brilliant thing I could have done. Maybe a highspeed chase down Highway 17 East was one of his dreams, I don’t know…

A year and a half later, my first apartment went up in flames. Wicker burns really fast.

I’ve always regretted buying that chair and forfeiting what I thought at the time was a pretty good chance at a really big dream. I’m not really sure if my heart is in this yet, but I’m going to give it another go.

Step One is now actually Step Three - as the world has changed a little since it was new. I have changed a lot since the world was new, but I’ve already begun Step One. I’ve talked to some people, and got some advice. Step Two is coming in short order.

It’s going to cost a lot more than $250.

I know it’s a bit of a cheat to not actually detail this further, but I haven’t exactly grown those guts yet. And I hope some of you will wish me well anyway. Comments are welcome. No Dream-Killers will be taken seriously. I hope.

Random Song for the Day: “9 Crimes” - Damien Rice

“Knowing it’s
gone
makes the
memories more bitter
than sweet.”Kyla came home from school yesterday with her book order: her very own copy of A Bridge to Terabithia. She’s read school copies several times already, and seen the movie in the theater three times now. She rushed in at 3:30, dropped the book in my hands, and rushed back out to her babysitting job.

I’d only seen the movie once, and never read the book at all. So, of course, I changed all my Friday night plans immediately (homework, video rendering, writing and new computers being set up are not really Friday night occupations anyway…), and drew a bath. And I did something I believe I haven’t done since 2002: I read an entire book in the bathtub in one sitting. Errr… soaking.

And, yes, the book was much better than the movie, as has always been my experience, although I really loved this movie (note to self: find a copy of the first movie version for comparison sometime). The book has only 128 pages, so it isn’t that long of a read. I was just contemplating refilling the tub with hotter water for a second run-through, when the phone rang.

It was Louie, my Dream Job bossish/partnerish-type person with assignments and schedules and bath-time advice: namely that one does not bathe in the late afternoon/early evening. Apparently, that is an early morning activity only. And should be done standing up, under a shower-head. Luckily, Louie is only a bossish person now, with no real power, so when I hung up the phone, I refilled the tub and read the book again, remembering the “Real” King of Terabithia with growing clarity…

“At first they avoided each other during school hours, but by October they grew careless about their friendship. Gary Fulcher, like Brenda, took great pleasure in teasing Jess about his ‘girl friend’.”

Back in the Olden Days (some time in the mid-70’s)…

One of the worst insults to a young man of a certain age is to refer to his best friend as his girlfriend. It’s an even worse insult if the girl is your cousin, which may give said young man a quick retort to fall back on (”She’s not my girlfriend!! She’s my cousin!!“), but not the sort of satisfaction he would get from, say, pounding the crap out of whomever lobbed the insult. On Main Street. At the top of his lungs. In front of the entire third grade.

Of course, the presence of the entire third grade preempts any attempt at crap-pounding, simply because there’s no way of knowing if someone is going to “back’em up”. Pounding the crap out of one guy is possible, but two to four? Better to be embarassed than to be bloody and embarassed.

Mike at nine years old, though, can’t just leave things be. If he can’t pound crap, he will do the absolute worst thing he can think of. He will give them The Sign.

The Sign has no religious or satanic connotations to us. Sinful connotations, certainly, but we’re not concerned so much with burning in hell as we are with being strapped and/or grounded if a teacher and/or parent should see The Sign being performed, even if the other kid does deserve it (which he does, the nasty little bastard). Worse, my mother is a teacher, which makes utilizing The Sign, even in extreme circumstances, that much more dangerous. On Main Street. In broad daylight.

Use of The Sign is, in fact, so heinous, that it makes the target absolutely boil over with rage, so Mike has learned to be careful - hurling other, less volatile epithets over his shoulder while gradually inching further up the sidewalk, further from the crowd, looking for all the world as if he’s creeping away shamefully, his pride in tatters. When he judges the distance from the crowd compared to the distance to safety (my house, smack at the end of Main Street) to be favourable, he suddenly whirls like a dervish, whipping his fingers into The Sign violently with both hands. My God, he is brave.

And my God, he can run.

Which is a lucky thing, because The Sign evokes a preternatural vehemence in 9 year old boys. Lucky for Mike, I can run as well, because it is my job to beat them both to the driveway and call the dog, who will bark ferociously, viciously whenever I say “Sic’em!”, but will simply raise her eyebrows whenever Mike says it. And once the thugs are driven back, Mike and I will retreat to our own version of Terabithia, which, in 20-odd years will be buried under 60 short tons of fill and covered with 3 to 5 houses worth of lawn (not to mention 3 to 5 houses).

Knowing it’s gone makes the memories more bitter than sweet. Life’s like that.

I imagine Mike would be terribly disappointed now, that in the 21st century, The Sign is bandied about openly by drug-addled metal heads and 9 year old boys alike, a token signal used as some sort of not-so-secret handshake, stripped of its terrible symbolism. Of course he’s disappointed. It was bigger than The F-Word, after all.

Incidentally, when searching for “devil’s horn hand signal” pics, I came across this whack-job interesting site…

Random Song for the Day: “Soma” - Smashing Pumpkins

His name is Mike Valley. His favourite song is a toss-up between “Beth” by Kiss, and “My Ding-a-Ling”, by Chuck Berry. “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” runs a close second. He sang Karaoke before it was invented. He owns a rock polisher and eats Caramel Spread® sandwiches, and he’s the best sword-fighter in the world.

34 years later, I have the exact same haircut…

About 10 minutes after this picture was taken, Mike swallowed the quarter hidden in his piece of cake, and spent the rest of the day pissed off about it. I had to ’shop me over from the other side of the table (along with the window - you know, for the view), and poor Girl with the Plaid Pants got “smeared” out because I just didn’t want to share the limelight. Happy Almost Birthday to me.

I wish he was here - I’d give him his quarter with interest…

This post is for you, Mushy. Something to laugh about while you recuperate… did your mom put money in your birthday cakes? I wanna know…!

Random Song for the Day: “Calcutta” - Hopewell

Ky and I went to see the movie tonight. I don’t know why I never read that book - until Kyla mentioned a school assignment about it (she’s already read it twice), I had never even heard of it. I’m so ashamed of myself.

The movie was wonderful. I have never been quite that enthralled, I don’t think; it was just so perfectly “me and Mike Valley” (Well, except for that really nasty bit, but something nearly as bad did happen in 1975, and I don’t think I’m over it even yet). If I had read Bridge to Terabithia when it came out in ‘77, I would be a very different person today, I’m sure.

Mike, are you out there somewhere? Did you see the movie?

Did you think of me?