Byng Avenue Willowdale.

*This memory is a continuation of the 'My Early Years' memory.'

Every week my grandmother did our grocery shopping at the Dominion store in the Northtown Plaza on Yonge Street. Back then it was the only supermarket around and I remember every week pulling the heavy groceries all packed in our bundle buggy the mile back home. My grandmother had a pretty large pantry in the basement and it was always fully stocked with canned goods. It seemed like most of our groceries were canned goods and she would always buy extra whenever the items went on sale.

The only freezer in the house was above the fridge and it was always crammed full. The little freezer would always ice up so hardly any food could be put inside. At least once a month everything had to be taken out and pots of boiling water were used to defrost the ice. My mother also used a small hammer to bang off chunks of ice to make the job a bit quicker and many of the chunks would fall onto the floor. Art would always bite them into smaller pieces leaving behind many small puddles of the melted ice all over the kitchen floor.

Once defrosted there was much more room to store our frozen food. We always had a brick of ice cream in the freezer, yet I never remember the ice cream being very hard. It was always soft and easy to spoon out from the container.

In the backyard my grandmother had a rhubarb patch and she also grew black currant berries. We ate a lot of stewed rhubarb and I actually loved it. It had just the right balance of a sweet and sour taste. Rhubarb was the one thing Art would not touch, he had eaten it when he was a puppy and got the runs for days after. My grandmother’s black currant jam (she always called it preserve) was the best jam I have ever eaten. In the basement there were always a dozen or so small mason jars filled with her homemade jam stored in a dark room.

Also in the basement was an old washing machine tub with a wringer. I was terrified of the wringer when I was a little kid and would only watch it from a distance. The laundry tub would be filled with water from a hose connected to a tap. Once filled, powdered detergent was put in the water and after it dissolved our dirty clothes were added. There was a big noisy agitator that chugged back and forth while the machine was running.

Once the clothes were cleaned, the water became grey and very dirty looking. Each item from the tub was put through the wringer and then put into a laundry basket since we had no clothes dryer. The clothes would then be hung outside with wooden clothes pegs on a very long clothesline with a pulley behind the garage.

Needless to say our laundry days were always on sunny days and our neighbors could see all our clean underwear out blowing in the breeze.

The basement cellar was a damp musty place. The house was heated with oil and the large smelly storage tank was also in the cellar. Art spent most of the day in the cellar while my grandmother was a work. There were always old Telegram newspapers strewn about all over the floor and Art would shit at least once a day on the papers. My poor grandmother would always clean up after Art after she got home from working all day. Richard never cleaned up after his dog and come to think of it, I can’t recall my mother cleaning up after Art either.

Every night my Uncle Richard would drink a quart of skim milk with his dinner. My grandmother would rinse out all of the empty milk cartons and stack them beside the fridge. She would use the empty cartons to put Art’s dog shit inside after scooping it up. As I got a bit older, I would go outside and scoop up the fly covered shit with a little trowel and put it into an empty milk carton. Once the carton was full I would close it and throw it into the garbage can.

Every empty milk carton eventually went into the garbage can filled with dog shit. The cartons hardly stuck around very long in the garbage can since we had multiple garbage pick-ups weekly. We also had twice a day mail delivery and one mail delivery every Saturday.

Once the three of us got settled into our new home, my mother started attending the nearby Kingdom Hall. She had been studying the bible in Montreal with a Witness woman named Gail. Gail along with her sister Marg had made all the arrangements so my mother’s transition to a Kingdom Hall in Toronto would be a smooth one. She became a 'sister' and started attending the Newtonbrook congregation less than a ten minute drive from our house on Byng.

She always got picked up by another Witness couple. In the beginning my mother went a couple times a week while my grandmother watched me and my brother. My grandmother did not approve of my mother wanting to become a Jehovah’s Witness especially while living under her roof. Just like my father, she wanted her to keep me and my brother out of the Kingdom Hall.

My grandmother was a staunch Anglican and she attended St. George’s on Yonge Street every single Sunday rain or shine. My mother had also been raised Anglican as were her two sisters and Richard. Her sister Mary still went to church although sporadically and Richard had stopped going when he was a teenager. Since Marg’s life had become so much better after becoming a Witness, my mother now wanted the same for herself, my brother and me.

It was not too long after my mother started attending her twice weekly meetings when she started taking me and my brother with her. Much to the dismay of my grandmother and I remember there were many heated arguments over my mother’s decision. There was always an ongoing friction between my mother and her mother and it always revolved around each other’s completely opposite religious beliefs.

Not that it was any of my business, but my memory is very vague when it comes to my mother’s finances while living in Willowdale. I went to grade school, my mother did not work because she stayed home looking after Patrick. Both Richard and my grandmother worked every day. My father never paid any support so I have no idea where my mother got money from. I can only assume that when my grandmother had taken the three of us in, not only did she put a roof over our heads, but she was most likely supporting us financially also.

We literally had nothing after my parents split up. I remember having no toys or games. There was no sports equipment, no bicycles, wagons or toboggans. I do remember a lot of coloring books, crayons and doing the odd paint by number that my grandmother bought for me. I also tried my hand at some puzzles and a few times I attempted to do a scale model of a racing car or an airplane. I always had pieces left over after I had glued it all together. Even at an early age, I wasn’t much for following the instructions.

The very small bedroom that we all shared barely fit my mother’s small bed and our bunk beds. There was one small dresser that the three of us had to share along with a very small closet. All three of our clothes were in that one dresser and closet. Neither I nor my brother owned a suit or a pair of nice dress shoes and we mostly wore jeans, tee shirts and running shoes everywhere every day.

With the exception of my classmates who I only saw at school, I literally had no close friends. I never recall having that one best childhood friend that most kids grow up having. I was never allowed to have a friend over to play and I never went over to any other kid’s house to play either. There was one kid who I always wished he was my best friend, he had everything I wished I had.

His name was Ronnie and he lived across the street. He played ice hockey on a real team every week in a real arena. He had a bicycle and played baseball in the summer. He had a mom and a dad who were still together and they had a family car. Ronnie had invited me over to his house many times to play with his racing car set. His mother had even talked to my mother about me going to one of his hockey games, but my mother would have no part of it. I was now being raised a Jehovah’s Witness.

Jehovah’s Witnesses only associate with other Jehovah’s Witnesses and everyone else is considered 'worldly' or bad association.

Although there were a few Witness kids at the Kingdom Hall, there were none who were my age. So naturally they weren’t too interested in playing with a little six or seven year old punk like me. My mother became very close friends with another Witness 'sister' who also attended the same congregation. Olive was around the same age as my mother. She lived on Olive Avenue, about a ten minute walk from where we lived. Even at my young age I knew that knowing someone named Olive who lived on a street named Olive would be a once in a lifetime rarity.

Olive was divorced; she had a house and a car. She also had a son named Kevin who was the same age as my brother. My mother and Olive became very close friends as well Patrick and Kevin also became playmates and friends.

I for the most part would just tag along.

I have many memories of the Willow Theater on Yonge Street just south of the Northtown Plaza where we did our weekly shopping. It was just a short walk from the Dominion store and through a little cemetery. I saw many movies at the Willow; sometimes my grandmother would take all of us. Other times she would give my mother the money for her to take me and my brother. There were a few times when Olive and Kevin would join us.

I will never forget seeing 'The Swiss Family Robinson' at the Willow. It inspired me to attempt to build my first treehouse on one of the huge apple trees in my grandmother’s backyard. I failed miserably and the rotted planks of wood I had used from inside the garage all broke the first time I stood on them. I tumbled about twenty feet to the ground bouncing of a couple branches that had broken my fall. I was very lucky I was not seriously hurt and I never attempted to build a treehouse ever again.

I vividly remember having my first ever hockey stick in my hands when I lived on Byng Ave. It had been one of Richard's old sticks when he played hockey as a kid at Mitchell Field. Richard had not played hockey for years when I found his old stick in the cellar. I might have banged around a sponge ball in the basement a few times, but that would have been the extent of my hockey life. I neither watched hockey nor did I know anything about hockey.

For the most part, the hockey stick would now become my make believe horse. I recall many times playing cowboys and Indians with my brother in our backyard. I would be wearing a cowboy hat with my toy gun in its holster while chasing him around riding my horse. My horse was the old hockey stick. I drew eyes, teeth and ears on the blade after taking all the tape off. I even had a rope that I tied around the shaft pretending it was my reign. My brother had a little toy suction cup bow and arrow set that he would try to defend himself with but to no avail. Cowboys always beat Indians when I was a kid and I was always the cowboy.

Little did I know while playing those silly backyard games just how much a hockey stick was soon to become a huge part of my life.

My grandmother’s living room I would assume was like most grandmothers living rooms. Her furniture was a dark, solid, wine colored velvety material and it was very heavy to move. There were lots of little figurine ornaments sitting on both of the little round end tables and also along all of the window sills. There were eight large crochet lace doilies always covering the armrests and headrests on the sofa and my grandmother’s corner chair. Those doilies were such a nuisance as they were always falling from where she had placed them. My grandmother was pretty fussy about her doilies all being in the right spots and I was always picking them up off the floor and smoothing them out where they belonged. I hated all those stupid lace doilies when I was a kid.

The morning sun would shine brightest into the living room. A large evergreen in front of the house would block the afternoon sun as it moved westward. There was a large framed coloured painting of a horse’s head on the wall above a small desk. On the desk was where our heavy black rotary telephone sat. Our phone number was 221-4375. As well a framed picture of my grandfather in his Army uniform was prominently and proudly displayed on the center of the desk.

My grandmother had a large hassock in front of her chair and she always had to put her feet up while watching the large console black and white Viking television. For the most part I watched television after school. I always watched The Flintstones and The Commander Tom Show. There was always old reruns from the 50’s classic the Adventures of Superman. Batman was another popular show that I remember watching weekly. I loved watching both Batman and Superman when I was a little kid.

Every Sunday after getting home from the Kingdom Hall, my brother and I watched the Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Hour which was followed at 6 pm by the hour long Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Colour. Although, for us it would simply be the Walt Disney Show because we didn’t have a colour television. On most evenings my grandmother and mother would watch shows like the Lawrence Welk, Jackie Gleason and Carol Burnett shows. On Thursday nights I wouldn’t be watching any television because that was the night I had to attend the Kingdom Hall meeting with my mother.

I don’t recall ever having my own skates while living at my grandmother’s house, but I do remember the first time that I ever went skating. Mitchell Field was an outdoor hockey rink about a ten minute walk from our house. There were heated change rooms and a snack bar when my mother took me ice skating there for the first time. I don’t remember where I got the skates or even if they were my skates, but I had skates on my feet that day. My mother watched and cheered me on from behind the fence partition while I did my best to stay upright. I remember it was sunny, cold and very crowded at the rink on that afternoon. I never skated again after that day while we lived at my grandmother's house on Byng Ave.

Over the course of living at my grandmother's, my mother would always tell my brother and me that we would be getting our own apartment very soon. We were just waiting until one became available and when it did we would be moving. I never really understood at my young age what was going on regarding my parent’s marriage. Although, I knew that my father would never again be living with us. I also knew that I would no longer have a dog and I would be going to a different school once we moved into our own apartment.

My mother kept both me and my brother very sheltered from what was going on in her personal life. I never remember her ever speaking ill about our father and she never angrily divulged how much of an asshole he had been to the three of us. She never blamed him for us being where we were, just steps away from living in a housing project and being on welfare.

Over the coming years, it would be up to me to make my own assessment as to what kind of person the man who fathered me really was. I would not need any influence from my mother or anyone else in determining the type of man he had been as well as the type of man he is.

*This memory continues on with the 'Welcome To The Jungle' memory.