…Like a Woman Scorned.

jealous
Guess Who’s Jealous, Now…?!

I was telling Ruby tonight about posting my Dad’s harrowing experience on the ice in 1938. I had been about to add that I thought he was jealous of all the attention she was getting from my readers.

I didn’t get the chance, because once I told her the story she jumped right in with, “That’s nothing. I know people that drove trucks over the ice to Cockburn Island.”

Umm, well, actually… so do I. My dad is one of them (no, Mushy, not the kind of “ice truck driver” you were telling me about… just stupid Canuckians trying to save a buck). He did it when the crappy truck he had over there already finally died, and he didn’t want to pay The Bargeman a bzillion dollars to get another one over there in the summer. He tossed his snow machine in the bed of the slightly less crappy truck and away he went. Ijit. He drove the snow machine back the next day.

And Ruby continued telling about when one of the Bruce Mines Robinsons (Sandtrampers, originally, they were) “drove over there with his skidoo in the bed of the truck. Smart, he was – that was how he got himself back again, wasn’t it?”

I didn’t dare say another word about my Dad. I have another story from him to post, as well, but I think I’m going to post another from Ruby first. I see her more often, so I guess she should get precedence. Not to mention, she has the fan-base. And I don’t want her to raise the rent…

I did ask her if she’d ever been to Cockburn herself.

“Nope,” said she.

“Why not?” I asked. “Just never had the opportunity?”

“Nope,” she laughed. “I just never had a boat.”

* * *

So I have a favour to ask of you all…. does anybody out there (anywhere on the planet…?) have a Velvet Elvis painting they’re willing to send to Canuckia? I’ll pay for it (I’m poor, though, remember, so go easy on me…), and the shipping, too.

No, my taste in art is not “off” (no offense to Velvet Elvis fans, or Elvis fans in general) – but I need it as set dressing for a soon-to-be-starting web production of “Magnificent” proportion. I would have thought I could find a Velvet Elvis painting at some second-hand emporium here in town, but so far, no such luck.

PS – Day 12 Smoke Free!!! The “Patch” is spectacular. Last night I dreamed that Stuart Little moved in… and for some reason, so did Ky’s dad, and we got into a heated argument over whether Stuart should have his own little cup to drink from (my argument), or whether he should drink from the cats’ dish (The Dad argument), since he was eating cat food anyway. Stuart – not Ky’s Dad. Poor little mouse should have his own cup, dammit…

And Craig Ferguson is still stalking me. In my dreams, that is. Last night, he made his producers hire me for some unknown but extremely well-paid job, and had them commemorate it with a really ugly porcelain plaque that said “Welcome On Board!” That’s right – “ON Board” – not “Aboard”. I KNOW!!!! How weird is that?!

Obviously, Craig Ferguson does not have a boat.

Random Song for the Day: “The Middle” – Jimmy Eat World

Ruby’s Right – You Can’t Trust That Internet.

Old black and white photo of a horse team in the winter, most likely taken sometime in the 1930s. Source Unknown.

Photo caption: Team in Winter – Source Unknown

I found this info while looking for links for this waaaaaay back story of my dad’s that he told me on Saturday. I’m still shaking my head.

Ruby says you can’t trust that Internet – and I guess she’s right, this time, at least. This is not a “Ghost Island” I’m about to talk about, although there aren’t many that can say they live there year ’round. And apparently the Canuckian Government Census-Takers ought to make the odd phone call now and again.

Cockburn Island (Island Week)



Cockburn Island is a ‘ghost’ island in Ontario, which despite the apparent signs of life (there’s a small town and marina) has an official population of zero. The 1996 census listed a population of just two, but both people had left by 2001, making this the least populated incorporated municipality in Canada.

Some of these abandoned houses are supposedly still used as holiday homes, but what interests me if the makeshift airport to be found deep in the forest. It’s evidently still in use but I’ve found no mention of the airport around the internet. Most websites say that the marina is the “only way of getting on the island”, but it’s clearly not. If you asked me, an abandoned island would be the perfect place for an evil empire to keep its headquarters…

Thanks: Matt Blum & Taylor

  blog it

Clearly, one can’t believe everything found on the internet. Wikipedia has this to say, slightly (slightly, I say) closer to the truth:

“Cockburn Island is an island in the Canadian province of Ontario, located in the Manitoulin District. It is separated from the westernmost point of Manitoulin Island by the Mississagi Strait, and from Michigan’s Drummond Island by the False Detour Channel.

Cockburn Island had a permanent population of ten in the 2006 Canadian census. The island does, however, have a recreational summer population of anywhere from 50-200 people. In the 2001 census, the island’s population had been reported as zero, due to Statistics Canada’s counting method of rounding off population figures for communities of smaller than 15 people.

It is the least populated incorporated municipality in Canada, and township offices are located on the mainland in Thessalon, actually in the district of Algoma. The island is not connected to either Manitoulin or Drummond Islands by bridge or ferry service. The only available transportation is by private boat or float plane from Manitoulin or Thessalon.

A small portion of the island is taken up by the Cockburn Island 19 Indian reserve, which also has no permanent population; this is a heritage land belonging to a First Nation whose primary community is located on Manitoulin Island. The remainder constitutes the township of Cockburn Island.”

First of all, the “airport” is an airstrip, upon which small planes can land and take off, and sometimes, they even do! In really stormy weather, when you can’t get out by boat, and you have a heart attack, or appendicitis, or you fall out of your tree, making a radio-call for a plane is the only way off the island to a doctor… assuming the weather isn’t so bad that a plane can’t fly, in which case, you’d be SOL. Luckily, this doesn’t happen often.

Secondively (Suzism), “both people had left by 2001″…?! Nope. One died, and her husband most likely spent that winter on the Manitoulin. He went back to Cockburn, though, and eventually remarried. Ummm. Not sure where he found her, but it probably wasn’t anywhere on the Island itself, which is only 15 miles across – hard to miss a woman, even if she’s trying to hide. I haven’t met the new wife, but my kid has, and she says the new wife is pretty groovy. They raise peacocks. Or something.

Thirdly, Cockburn Island proper is now privately owned, by some rich guy from somewhere in the U.S. I haven’t met the new owner, but my parents have, and they say he’s pretty groovy, too…. He’s let everybody that owns land and buildings keep what’s theirs… I think they have to sell to him when they’re sick of the place or something. Fair enough, I guess.

AND….. no. It’s not pronounced the way you’re laughing at, either… It’s pronounced “CO-burn.” Stop laughing, now.

So how do I know all this? Well, my parents are “Haweaters,” having been born and raised on Manitoulin Island, as opposed to “Sandtrampers”, which is what they’d be if they’d been born and raised on Cockburn Island. There’s always been a fairly friendly rivalry between the Haweaters and the Sandtrampers. Having been raised by Haweaters, but having spent much of my childhood on Cockburn Island, I wonder if I might be able to call myself a Hawtramper…? Sandeater…? Hmmmmm….

Thessalon is where *I* was born and raised. I generally refer to it here, Where the Walls are Soft, as “Teeny-Tiny Town”. My dad opened up a farm machinery sales business in “Teeny-Tiny Town” in 1947, married my mom in ’48 and moved her there from the Manitoulin. His business turned into a Ford dealership (please, no “Found On Road Dead” jokes…) and eventually, he sold it – 1977, that was, and got himself a job rebuilding, and then captaining a big ol’ steel tugboat called “The Debbie-Cin”, with which he hauled a barge back and forth from Cockburn Island to Thessalon for The Midway Lumber Company.

Dad had a cottage on Cockburn Island by then, although we’d spent many summers docked at the so-called “marina” (cement pier) there, before the camp, as we Northerners call a “cottage”, was built. The town on Cockburn, by the way, is called “Tolsmaville”. So there, Internet. I taught you something.

Anyway, back to the job my dad had, hauling timber on a barge… it’s interesting, mainly because my mom and I got to go back and forth with him. What would have been an hour’s boat ride in my dad’s 31 ft cabin cruiser took about four hours in The Debbie-Cin. That’s when we were towing an empty barge from Thessalon to Cockburn. The return trip, with a full barge, was more like 7 or 8 hours. I did a lot of reading that summer.

But it’s even more interesting, now that I learn that my dad came full circle when he got that job. He had another job hauling stuff from Thessalon to Cockburn during The Dirty Thirties. 1938, to be exact. He was 18 years old.

That was my first job off the Manitoulin. I guess it was my first job for anybody other than my own dad, now I think it through a little. My brother Marvin got it for me. He’d been hired to haul hay to Cockburn from Thessalon, because he had a team of horses. Not everybody did, you know, and most of them worked in the bush hauling out timber, although you didn’t see much of that in the winter, I guess.

The boats couldn’t run in the winter, obviously, and sometimes Marvin would get a job carrying the mail, or hauling farm parts over the ice. There was a lot of people living there then – they didn’t start moving off the Island until after the War started. World War II, I mean.

Me: That’s when the ferry stopped, wasn’t it?

What ferry?

Me: The ferry from Meldrum Bay to Cockburn.

(snorts) I don’t know where you hear this stuff. There wasn’t no ferry from the Manitoulin to Cockburn! You’re all mixed up. They tried running a ferry from Blind River to Cockburn for awhile, but they couldn’t make a go of it, and it shut down after a year.

Me: I thought I heard it from you..!

Well, like I say, you’re all mixed up. Now, where was I?

Right, Marvin had a team of horses… So, he could usually get a job hauling something in the winter. He didn’t have a boat, so people like Bill Jones made runs in the summer, carrying the mail, and goods, and people back and forth between Cockburn and Meldrum and Thessalon, but Bill would usually hire Marvin to help out in the winter, and that year Marvin asked me to give him a hand. They had hay to haul from Thessalon to Cockburn, and Bill Jones only had Marvin’s team, and his own and one other to do it. Gord Nichols, I think it was.

Remember how we’d go on the snow machines and follow the tree-line? That made the trip easier, when they set out everybody’s Christmas trees in a line all the way from the breakwater in Thessalon to the breakwater on Cockburn. Any old idjit could follow that. They didn’t do that in 1938, though, and a lot of idjits got lost and froze to death. (laughs)

Bill Jones knew what he was doing, though. He’d been doing it awhile. It was my first real job, and I was nervous. We had to haul a great big sleigh full of hay, and I was driving. I didn’t have to worry much about getting lost, because I was following Bill, and Gord Nichols was behind me. I was kind of leery of the ice, mind you, because the Great Lakes don’t really freeze. We were on the North Channel, and you could usually count on decent ice, but you had to be careful because there’d be air pockets, and sometimes you’d hit open water real sudden. Lots of people went in, and lots of people lost their teams.

Anyway, we got about half-way to Cockburn and decided to stop for lunch. It was cold as hell, and we stomped around a lot, clapping our hands to ward off frost bite. Remember how I used to make you do that at the half-way mark? You gotta make sure to do that now and again – if you sit still too long your toes’ll fall right off, when you take your boots off.

So we stomped around and unhitched the teams and led them up to the back of Bill’s sleigh to feed. We were just about to eat lunch ourselves, when Bill noticed the water coming up around his feet. He started to yell at us all to get the hell away RIGHT NOW!!! I never run so fast in my life!

Marvin had the double-trees and he’d just managed to hook the goose-neck into them (Les Says: I have no idea what that means, but I didn’t want to interrupt him at this point…) when the back end of the bob went down through the ice and dumped all of Bill’s hay into the channel.

I don’t remember who hitched up Marvin’s team, might even have been me, but all of a sudden we were flying over the ice, with Bill yelling to spread out so we didn’t all go down at once for the weight. I was scared to death and I didn’t have anybody to follow anymore. I was sure I’d somehow do something wrong, so I kept trying to hand the lines over to Marvin, but he wouldn’t take them.

I found out later, that Marvin had already lost two teams that winter, delivering mail, and that’s why he had me driving in the first place! I was mad over that for a long time.

We did finally get to Cockburn. We’d lost a sleighful of hay, but the horses all got there, and so did we, so I guess it could have been worse.

But I never hired on with Marvin for a run like that again.

Random Song for the Day: “Oh No” – Gogol Bordello

Ruby Relents… Sort Of.

Pic Removed by Request - All Apologies*
Ruby’s Mom & Dad – March 23, 1909

Meet Ruby’s Mom and Dad. This photo was taken on their wedding day. It took a lot of begging, but Ruby finally let me take the picture home, frame and all, to scan it.

It kind of looks as though Ruby’s Mom has her hands in her pockets but Ruby says, no, her mother always held her arms a certain way, in photos, or when talking to people, to make it less noticeable that she had

No.

Forearms.

She would fold her hands at the knuckles, just behind her hips. Her grandchildren used to walk around doing that, pretending to be Gramma, Ruby said with a laugh, as I was packing up the picture to take home. I was trying to get the hell out of her house with it before she changed her mind, but then she started talking about her mother during the Great Depression, and I sat right back down again.

We used to call them the ”Dirty Thirties”, you know. All those people out of work – it was just awful.

We did alright – my Dad worked for the railroad, and we had a little farm, so we didn’t have to worry about starving to death, even with all us kids. I think my mother always felt a little guilty about all those people with next to nothing, because she was always giving food to perfect strangers, whenever they’d ask for it.

There were always hobos on the train in them days. There’d be men leaving their families behind to hop a train out West, hoping there’d be work out there. Us kids used to run down to the tracks whenever we heard a train coming, just so we could count the hobos and wave at them. We wasn’t making fun of them, mind you, but we used to wonder at the things those men saw. Some days there’d be up to a dozen hobos waving back at us. They always waved back.

Sometimes, when we’d get back home there’d be a hobo in our house! The odd one would get off the train, or maybe he’d get caught and thrown off, I’m not sure, and our house was right there, wasn’t it? So, sure enough, he’d be bound to knock on the door, and ask my mother if she’d give him something to eat.

One day, a hobo knocked, and my mother was alone in the house. She didn’t like the idea of letting a strange man in, but she didn’t have the heart to run him off, either, so she said, “You go round back and chop me some firewood, and I’ll make you a lunch.”

So, off this man went behind the house to the wood pile, and he chopped wood for an hour, while my mother cooked him up something to eat, and packed it all up for him to take away with him. He sure earned his lunch that day, I guess!

For some reason, my mother followed behind him when he left with his lunch – maybe she was going to haul water, I’m not sure, but she happened to see him meet up with four other hobos off the last train. She felt awful, too, when she saw he was splitting up that lunch between the bunch of them, after she’d made him chop all that wood… She wasn’t mean with a meal, but she’d only packed enough up for one man.

There were times, too, that a man would need a place to settle in for the night, and my mother never turned anybody away. She’d bed him down on the living room floor and give him supper. In the morning, he’d have a hot breakfast, and she’d send him off with a lunch for later, too.

Then she’d spend the whole day washing all those bedclothes twice over, just in case the fella was lousy, or had fleas.

One day, she got a great big box off the train, addressed to the “Section Foreman’s Mrs.” Inside that box was a whole set of “Knowledge Books” – encyclopedias, they were. And the note said “Thank you for taking me in, and for the nice meals on such-and-such-a-date….” It was from some hobo off a train, who’d maybe got himself a job selling Knowledge Books in Toronto or some such. Imagine that! My mother had those Knowledge Books ‘til she died. I wish I knew who had them now….

Before I left, Ruby showed me this little thing in her china cabinet. She’d bought it for her mother to hold her glasses on, and it sat on her mom’s night-stand, doing just, that for years.

And, yes, those are Ruby’s Mom’s specs still sitting on it.

A Ruby Memento
”Tell that Mushy-Fella
that this is me…”
(Laugh, laugh, laugh….)

So, there, Mushy-Fella… I think we might be wearing her down. Maybe. 😉

* * *

*After a back-and-forth email conversation with a relative who found my blog, and was concerned I might be “taking advantage” of an old woman, Ruby has requested that I remove her parents’ wedding photo, just in case it might bother her son (he’s NOT the relative) that it’s posted online. I still win, though – she says I can leave everything else up, and continue to blog her stories. “I may be old, but I’m hardly incompetent.” So sayeth Ruby.

Random Song for the Day: ”Scar Tissue” – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Be One with the Shovel…

shovels
Now in Assorted Colours!
Cardiogirl said that in her comments yesterday, and I’ve adopted it as my new “creed” of sorts. It just works for pretty much everything, wouldn’t you say?

Crap piling up? “Be One with the Shovel.” Live in Canuckia? “Be One with the Shovel.” Gotta get rid of that pesky bill collector? Yeah, it works for that, too.

It also reminds me of yet another Ruby story. This one came from this particular little one liner from Ruby, awhile back…. Yeah, the one at the top, there. Or just under these words you’re reading right now, to save you a little bother…

“She’s still mad at me for that time I hit her over the head with a shovel.”

 

“She” is Ruby’s little sister, Joycie. Joycie had a hard life with Ruby, as a kid, apparently. They laugh now about it (rather hysterically, at times), and Joycie forgives all. In fact, she’s can’t remember for the life of her why Ruby hit her in the head with the shovel in the first place.

“She musta been mad at something I said, I guess,” is what Joycie says. “She was always mad at me for something.”

And Joycie was always getting hurt as a kid, anyway…. What difference is a knock on the head with a shovel gonna make? Joycie remembers worse “accidents”.

Like the time her brother was running down a hill ahead of her, rolling a barrel-hoop. For reasons unknown, he decided to pick up the hoop halfway down the hill and pitch it up over his head behind him. Of course, it struck Joycie right on the forehead and she’s still got the scar to prove it.

Then there was the time all the kids were sliding on the ice with their boots – they didn’t all have skates, but boots worked alright – and Joycie wiped out and cracked her head a good one on the ice. Her mother (yeah, the lady with no. forearms.) taped her up good – so good, that she managed to tape Joycie’s eyelid open. And it stayed taped open for a week. I think those people had it in for poor little Joycie. It’s a wonder she survived childhood.

I got the chance to sit and talk with Joycie’s all-grown-up daughter, “Lucy”, a while back, and tried to get a few stories out of her. She immediately looked at Joycie and Ruby and said, “Do you remember the time Donah picked all the blueberries?” They started laughing (hysterically), and they stayed laughing for about ten minutes, not a one of them able to spit out a coherent word. I felt very left out of the joke.

”Who the hell is Donah?! I finally yelled.

“Donah, is my ex-husband, the cheap bastard,” replied Lucy, and they all promptly went into hysterics again.

“Remember the wine-glasses on my anniversary?” said Lucy. Laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh….

Finally, she tells the story about the three lead crystal wine glasses she got for a wedding gift. Why three instead of four, was beyond her, but she always wanted that fourth glass, so she could offer wine in matching glasses when another couple came over.

One summer, Lucy and Donah were camping in a trailer on the week their wedding anniversary fell. Donah very mysteriously disappeared into town on the happy day, returning at night-fall with a bottle of wine and a box wrapped in pretty paper, which he handed to Lucy.

When she opened it, she was moved to tears to discover not one, but three more lead crystal wine glasses to match the ones she had in her china cabinet.

“Oh, Donah… now I have a set of six! Thank you!” Donah grinned and opened the wine.

It wasn’t until they returned home, and Lucy set about putting the new glasses into the cabinet that she noticed the first three were gone… When she confronted Donah, he admitted that the bottle of wine was the actual anniversary gift.

“I told you he’s my ex, right?” laughed Lucy.

“Okay, but what about the blueberries?” I demanded, which set them all off again for another ten minutes, but I finally got that story, too. Poor Donah. It wasn’t really his fault, but the poor bugger sure had some stupid luck…

He was out fishing one summer day, and on his way home he decided to visit Lucy’s aunt and uncle, who were “trailering” for the summer. He found the trailer, alright, but no one was there. He decided to wait for them.

He waited.

And waited.

He noticed there were blueberry bushes all over the area, laden with thousands of the biggest berries he’d ever seen, and, noticing a half-gallon plastic bucket sitting by the trailer, he decided to pick Aunt and Uncle some blueberries while he waited for them to return. It wasn’t long before the bucket was brimming with berries, but there was still no sign of Aunt and Uncle, and finally, he put the bucket next to the trailer door, where he knew they’d see it, and drove home.

He went back again a few days later, and there they were, so in he went. After a bit of conversation, he asked them if they’d found the blueberries. Uncle quickly turned the conversation to the fish he’d caught that morning.

After a bit, Donah asked again about the blueberries, and Auntie showed him the new curtains she’d made for the trailer.

Finally, when Donah asked again about the berries, Auntie said to Uncle, “We’re gonna have to tell him, I guess,” and turned to Donah.

“Donah, that was our pee pail.”

* * *

PS – Check it out! Another “new” word!! I clipped this from “My Thermos”. You should check that out, too.

clipped from mythermos.com

Blego

(Darkside-Dreamland.com’s definition)
n. a protologism combining blog and ego. Used to define the ego of a blog or blogger. Like personal ego, blego may be good or bad.
blog it

AND….. This is right cool. ElitALICE found it first.

Random Song for the Day: ”The Last Resort” – The Eagles

Work Boots ‘n Dancin’ Shoes

Work Boots n Dancin' Shoes

Elle, from Maxwell the Tattooed Boy and Other Astounding Joys, wrote about her grandmother in a post yesterday. Her Grandma was a Flapper in the Roaring Twenties, a time that fascinates me (I’m in – okay, mostly out of, lately – the midst of a novelish-type project about those days). Suzi wondered in Elle’s comments what Ruby’s take on flappers might be. I have to say, I wondered, myself, once Suzi put the bug in my ear.

I didn’t even get the chance to ask, though, before Ruby started on about her Mom again…
Continue reading “Work Boots ‘n Dancin’ Shoes”