ALL OUR OLD NEIGHBORHOODS -

WHAT TO DO WITH THE MEMORIES?

I’M LEAVING THAT UP TO MY SONS AND GRANDKIDS!

In a notebook I keep by my livingroom chair, I occasionally jot down story ideas. Not invented stories but ones that I believe my biography should contain. Reminiscences I want my grandkids to know about. I’m pretty sure my grown sons, know how important my childhood recollections are......because I’ve been droning on and on for years, about stuff I’m sure they couldn’t care less about. It has relevance in the grand scheme but on the short haul, it doesn’t make much difference if I tossed green apples at roof tops, or played “nicky-nicky nine doors” till the cows came home. It is what it is. Important to me. Annoying chatter to them, when they’ve got more important things to do,....... than reminisce about something and someplace they never visited.

I don’t know how you feel about your own childhood neighborhood. Some were better than others, admittedly, and some may wish to forget about certain unfortunate, unhappy events and circumstances. Maybe you’d rather forget about childhood generally because of bad memories. I’ve always had a mid-zone approach. There’s lots of periods I’d rather forget but I know I can’t. Like when my parents argued and argued and argued. My dad had a free-flowing Irish arrogance, often drank too much, was jealous to a fault, and could be a social problem if given all the right conditions. My mother was determined and feisty, and soldiered-on despite the grief my father could raise from the most innocent of perceived offences.

Ed didn’t have the best childhood either, and spent a lot of time, with his brothers, wards of the province. Having come from the tough Cabbagetown neighborhood, in Toronto, he was raised to be tough, and relentlessly hardened by reality. Fatherless, responsible for the family welfare most of the time, he’d learned that being gentle meant being vulnerable. He never gave the appearance of being a push-over that’s for sure. It made my mother’s life tough, and I often stepped between them, willing to risk my own neck to keep the cruiser away from the door. My peace of course, is that they patched their marriage up, Ed changed into a much kinder human being, and my mother was pleased to have calmer waters in the final decades of their life together. While I still prefer to dwell on happier times, I’m still abundantly aware, after many years, that it’s necessary to confront the adversity of personal history. It’s also true that there were many more good times than bad, in our family, and my love for the old neighborhood, in Bracebridge, Ontario will never dwindle.

The note I made last evening, was really for my lads, Andrew and Robert, who will inherit this journal and all my years of story-inscribing in these blogs......and in the stacks of publications I’ve, at one time or another, contributed columns. The note was about a game of road hockey I want them to play, some snowy Christmas Eve (after I’ve departed this mortal coil), up on that block of Alice Street where I played a thousands games during my years on the hill......Hunt’s Hill, that is! I want them to link the tradition of those years with their present, in celebration of good times in old places dear to our hearts. I want them to just show up, with sticks, ball and toques, chip off four big chunks of snow for goal-posts (as we did because we couldn’t afford nets), and with their buddies and family members, set up for a three period memorial game in my honor. How vain is this? Well, it doesn’t have to be a memorial. Just a “for fun” gathering that rekindles an activity us Hunt’s Hill / Alice Street kids enjoyed every day of the cold winter in Muskoka. We continued games on asphalt when the snow cover melted away but we played, and played. It didn’t matter that we were short changed a neighborhood park or even a big parking lot we could set up a makeshift arena. The road, as bumpy as it was, served our interests just fine.

It might seem a tad morbid to be planning your own tribute hockey game, but my boys will know just how passionate I have been in life, about preserving family legacies.....and keeping important traditions alive. I want them, in their lives, to know that good and memorable times have very little to do with money, and the privilege that can buy. We were a modest neighborhood and very few of us had money to spare. We lived from pay cheque to pay cheque like everyone else, and those on fixed incomes had gardens in their backyards, and they canned fruit and vegetables every fall, after the modest harvest. We had to be frugal. We didn’t care, or even think about hardship......we were too busy being thankful for our own blessings, our own daily rewards. We were too busy living to worry about what we didn’t have, or what others did. When we commenced the ball hockey game of the day, or under the lamplight for evening games, all differences were forgotten and we listened instead, to the lucky bloke selected to be Foster Hewitt, who would joyfully provide the game’s play by play. If you’d asked any one of us at that moment, what it was like to be poor, we wouldn’t have known how to respond. I knew my family couldn’t afford new boots because my feet were always wet, and most of us were playing with broken sticks we found at the arena, with short shafts and half blades, because we couldn’t buy new ones. Poor? We were resourceful more than we were poor. Rich kids called us that when they saw the soles of our shoes flapping and slapping noisely at recess, or when we had to wear the same clothes day after day....but it wasn’t the kind of slur we found hard to live with.

I’m fond of my old neighborhood for what it didn’t have. The was no need to offer an apology when a shared dinner was meatloaf, and “everything-in-it stew,” or cheese-dusted macaroni. Many of my mates enjoyed peanut butter and jam sandwiches my mother made for intermissions....washed down with cold glasses of water to tide us over for another period of rigorous play.

The pay-off of all this modesty, was finishing dinner, and getting the chance to have yet another game of road hockey.....or in the spring, a pick-up game of baseball....the fall, a game of football on the modest grid-iron of our small front lawn. It was a safe and caring neighborhood, and for all that it didn’t have, it was blessed with an unpretentious honor, we upheld, wherever and whenever a show of prowess was required. We had many sporting encounters with other neighborhoods, and I would say Hunt’s Hill was always a top contender.

I want my boys to take their kids up to that sort stretch of old asphalt, to play just one more game, and to think, not just about their old dad, but about all the aspiring athletes, who had such great fun making the best out of every day in a worthy hometown. Maybe they’ll hear the echo of cheers and voices from legend, and the faint play by play of Randy Carswell, an import to the neighborhood, who always volunteered to be Foster Hewitt......and simply wouldn’t take no for an answer. I don’t want the boys, or family, to get misty eyed about my request, or get caught up in a perpetual mood of sympathy and mourning. I’ve had a damn fine life, with no regrets about choices I’ve made. I’d like to think they would find a connection with me, they’ve never really had in our time together,..... as team-mates (in spirit) not just the tedium of the father / sons relationship. Because I’d be there, on that snowy Christmas Eve, in my ghost-wear, just as I played every Christmas Eve for my entire tenure at the Alice Street apartments. During a truly enjoyable time of my life.....when kids spent most of their days outdoors, and even more time wondering what it would be like if this stretch of frozen roadway, was actually Maple Leaf Gardens, the lamplight, the beam over centre ice, the limelight of the official face-off.

I suppose you and I do have some warm memories of the places we used to live.......afterall!

I TRADED STRESS FOR THE OPEN ROAD - I FOUND ANTIQUES ALONG THE WAY

Even as a kid I was hopelessly nostalgic. I kept everything I was ever given, and I would have kept the packaging as well, if my mother Merle, hadn’t made a habit of morning forays into my room to “tidy up.” She was happy doing this, and I didn’t half mind. It wasn’t until she gave my classic toys away one day, including my table-top hockey game that I got a tad mad. Until she told me about the poor grandmother around the corner, who had taken-in her two grandchildren, and had nary a toy for them. I knew those two kids. They needed those toys more than I did. As long as I still had my ball glove, hockey net and stick, and my bike, well, I was good.

As I’ve mentioned previously, in this blog collection, working in the newspaper industry was far too stressful for a guy like me. I’ve always worked long and hard to bypass stress. It didn’t matter how long, or how much copy I’d written in advance, the aura of a newspaper office was contaminated with unnecessary stresses. I was always organized and prepared for eventualities. I anticipated poop hitting the fan, and always had plan “B” and “C” ready to roll, to make things right. It wasn’t enough. We had too many bosses, too many folks to please, beyond the readers, and it was necessary, in order to remain on the payroll, to channel job tension into newfound energy. The gathered motivation to pursue other interests. Long before I walked out that newsroom door for the last time, I was already into my third year in the antique business, building it to a level of profitability, so that when I finally quit the old day job, the turn around would be immediate.

I can’t tell you how exciting it was, for this worn-out editor, to hit the road on Saturday mornings, without a camera and notepad, to enjoy a day of antique picking around our beautiful region. What a joy to witness a spring / summer / autumn morning in one of the most alluring hinterlands on earth. No matter how many times I passed a lakeland scene, or through a cathedral of overhanging maples, I would notice something I’d never seen before. It was on those early career antique-hunts, that I developed my greatest, most insightful appreciation of Muskoka. Suzanne and I, and frequently our two boys, would take along some breakfast fixings, and enjoy the sights and sounds of Muskoka in season. We saw every kind of wildlife known to this region of Canada. We took notice of all the life around us. It was as important as hunting for treasure. It would have most certainly been much less fulfilling, if we had only been concerned about racing from yard sale, flea market and antique shop to auction. These were, to borrow a famous line, the days of our lives. With the boys grown up, and running their own collectible music shop today, here in Gravenhurst, I do miss our countryside trips in quest of neat stuff. Suzanne and I move a little slower now, and stop frequently between venues, to admire the view, have a wee picnic, maybe a stroll, and even get a little nostalgic about the way it all began......these adventures, to calm the nerves of young parents, reduce the workday stress of writer and teacher,...... and experience life and culture thriving in our midst.

Some of my contemporaries in the business, have very little use for our antique hunting philosophy. I’ve never tried to convert them. They take their enterprise more seriously, and will race from venue to venue as if their lives depended on it. I know, with our more relaxed approach, we do miss big finds and great buys, and it undoubtedly does cost us making a larger profit. And yet, no matter how many times I acknowledge our less-stressful approach, and how nice it would be to make a bit more money at our trade, I could no sooner change to their break-neck regimen.....than find reason to accelerate through a mist-laden pasture of a Muskoka farmstead. I dawdle as a rule. I’d sooner quit antiquing altogether, than impose stress upon what has long been so darn much fun.

I still believe, although my competitors argue I’m delusional, that a more patient, determined hunt, is often more productive and profitable, than hustling from sale to sale......and adhering to a rigid schedule. We will stay and chat with vendors, and family, who are hosting estate sales, often being invited into storage areas others have not been exposed. It shouldn’t surprise any one that kindly conversation makes friends, and can build a significant, immediate trust between buyer and seller. While my competitors can show a list of 20 sales visited, they’d laugh at the fact we’d only visited a third of the venues in the same amount of time. Well, we don’t brag and never hold “show and tells,” to prove our trip was just as fruitful.

Years ago we got recruited to open a storefront antique business. I joined with a fellow staff member in the news business, to open a small collectible shop, in a unfinished basement of a mainstreet building in Bracebridge. In about a year the partnership was a disaster.....because we had teamed up with rookies in the business......who believed the money would be flying through the front door from opening to closing each day. Having had an earlier business, further down the street, in the late 1970's, I’d already recognized business would be slow in the winter, more vigorous in the summer......as is Muskoka’s long tradition in the tourist industry. The departure of one partner welcomed another, and then another after that, until I’d simply had enough. Our family was still young, and the stress of business was paralleling the newspaper years. We moved the business home in the mid 1990's, and we began selling our wares online. I work as a writer when I want, and we travel for the antique trade every weekend. In the summer, with Suzanne on a break from teaching, we are on the road every day. And it’s glorious. But it’s at our speed. We stop to smell the flowers and make no apology.

The antique business was opened in the late 1980's as a future retirement business. We knew it would take us ages to master a very complex and demanding trade. We have had no choice but to remain patient. So far so good. We have blips like every business but the annual sales figures are looking better, and we’re definitely feeling contented we started retirement planning so early in life.

As we both very much like old stuff, from nostalgia to the primitive, we are always interested in the road from here to there, and the great potential that exists each day we take off for another countryside adventure. It is always interesting, at the end of each trip, to sit on the back bumper of the family truckster, looking at the day’s finds. Talk about eclectic. We wrote the book. But it is the togetherness we felt with the young lads, and the companionship we feel these days, with just the two of us, that is most fulfilling of this antique hunt. We get to experience and celebrate this magnificent lakeland region, the nice folks we meet along the way, and enjoy each other’s company in a wide variety of circumstances. To us, it’s our own “Zen and the art of Antique Hunting,” and we wouldn’t change a thing. Certainly not for profit alone.

PATIENCE FOR COLLECTING I NEVER HAD AS A WRITER

It has long driven my good wife nuts, how I can dawdle in a flea market or antique mall, and seemingly forgetting our wedding vows.....or something like my blind obedience. Suzanne is very good at ignoring what she’s not interested in, whereas I am always looking for the “sleeper” piece, no matter what that might represent. She has never offered an apology for having a narrow gaze, when it comes to antiques and collectibles that interest her. I’ve tried over many years to prove that being a generalist dealer, means we have to make our money from flipping whatever items we can acquire which are under-valued. Admittedly in the antique profession, we all have our quirks and methodology. I like making money just as much as securing big finds to add, instead, to our permanent collection. But I’m not adverse to trying anything once or twice, if it affords our business a little profit. I know from experience that if you stay in your lane, and refuse a good buy when you meet it at the crossroads, you’ll miss out on making a regular profit......but you’ll have museum collection to show your friends.

I started out in the profession broke and it’s fair to say we’ve operated frugally ever since. While I stood with associates at auction sales, who’d think nothing of dropping several grand per sale.....just for run of the mill collectibles, if we spent a couple of hundred dollars, we were living the high life. I might have felt disadvantaged at times, being amongst those who had fat wallets but I didn’t let it stop me from making good buys on higher profit antiques. I did a lot of refinishing myself, and by and large, my colleagues preferred store-ready inventory. I’d get a car load of “in the rough” pieces, eager to put in the work myself, and get a wage for doing the finishing. Sometimes it worked and frequently it didn’t, and I’d lose a few bucks. I’m slow at the restoration side of the business.

I developed a discipline about expenditures. I adopted the “frugal antique hunter,” as my business theme, and since the mid 1970's, it’s worked pretty well. There have been a lot of set-backs. I’ve often had to change my buying habits because the “fat wallet gang” would start moving in on my territory. There’s nothing worse at a small town auction, than “bidder shadowing.” I wasn’t a great strategist but I knew there was no choice but to play along. I continually misled my competitors and stuck them on many occasions, with boxes of books I knew were “dogs” (no-chance-of-profit books), or gatherings of quilts in poor, stained and rotting condition. I’d let them follow me on bids, and appear anxious to win at all costs. I’ve put in many theatrical performances on the auction stage. Then, at a peak, I’d simply disappear for a coffee, leaving their’s as the highest bid. Oh boy was there a lot of grumbling then. Over time, they got the message, that to follow me takes the will of Indiana Jones. Every bid against me was a gamble. Those items I really wanted, I usually got because my shadows got spooked early in the bidding. I’d jump a bid by twenty to fifty dollars, from a normal five dollar increment, and like a missed heartbeat, they’d go back to drinking their coffee, leaving me to my treasure. They preferred bragging about their antique investments, to their cronies anyway. I had to do what it took, to make a few dollars stretch a little further. I’ve never been to an auction yet that mind-games weren’t in full production.....and theatrics a means to an end.

Over the decades I’ve learned how to be patient, frugal and profitable out of necessity. I loved the industry so much, and admired (like a racoon with a shiny object) all kinds of wonderful antiques, from art and old glass, historic lighting, vintage fabric, crocks, to old bottles and the list has no end. To get in, and stay in, I had to learn how to scrounge. It was that simple. And I had to watch a lot of great pieces walk away with someone else, because we were on a tight budget. Yet to any young antique enthusiast, I would always say the same thing,....... as I’ve had as my own mantra......a good antique hunter doesn’t need a fat wallet.....but does require a massive interest in self-education about old stuff in general. You will perish in the business if you are under-informed. I’ve watched the destruction of many antique hopefuls because they thought they knew it all......but obviously didn’t.

The antique profession is still a ruthless, no holds barred, cut-throat enterprise, even at the modest shop level. It’s like Charles Dickens himself penned our respective characters. Even the most modest, unassuming ma and pa operations, can fool the unsuspecting shopper or seller. While this is not to suggest anything about being unsavory or dishonest.......it is very much to affirm that there are many sharks in the antique dealer / collector’s pool.......and just because a shop and shopkeeps look unassuming, don’t think you’re going to beat them for a Group of Seven sketch for a hundred bucks. If you’re on the selling side, looking to make a quick profit, off a Group of Seven knock-off, think again before you commit yourself to their scrutiny. Some of the smartest and most cunning antique dealers I’ve met, over thirty years, are ones holed-up in these small, unassuming, collectible nooks and modest crannies. They’re good business people. They buy antiques like the late, great, Will Rogers. They know how to horse trade and get the better deal. There’s nothing wrong with this. They’ve earned their stripes in the business by daily dealings with thousands of other cut-throat, no-holds barred antiquers, to get where they are.

On my own travels these days, I’m looking for interesting art pieces more than anything else. I will buy primitives, especially Canadiana, and old interesting wooden trunks I can restore for re-sale. Son Andrew took his mother aside, one day, while I had my head stuck in a musty old steamer trunk, and said, “You know, I’ve never seen dad happier, than when he’s got something to refinish.” He wasn’t speculating on this. They’ve all witnessed me knotted up and frustrated at the typewriter, working on some manuscript or column, and recognize the differences between hand crafting and mind bending. I might get frustrated when an insect lands on my freshly varnished pine harvest table but it’s nothing compared to the cussing and foot stomping at the computer, when a proof-read through a feature story, turns into a war between a split personality......the writer and the other guy who taps at the keys for hours on end......both the same person but you’d never know it. One is always accusing the other of being an arse.

As a writer, I show as much patience as any one else in the profession. That’s not saying much of course. I drank heavily because I was a writer. I’d go to the local watering hole after work, and get into a fisticuff with another writer I may have called an arse or something mildly worse. I never drank once in my life, as a frustrated antique dealer. I’m so much more an antique hunter / dealer today than a writer. I love writing but there’s nothing I’d rather do, any day of the week, than find myself hopping from estate sale to flea market, antique mall to auction sale. As my writing career was a damnation to Suzanne, well, suffice to say antiquing isn’t much better, poor soul. She loves her Fenton glass collection, so I bait her before each trip......that somewhere before we hit the noon hour, we’ll have found a bit of cranberry or milk glass from the revered Ohio company. Suzanne will find a nice quilt or sewing antiquity, and eventually forget all about the Fenton, until I bring it up again......the very next time we head out on the open road.

I’m not cheap and if I had a million bucks to blow, I most surely would. Probably within a week. The difference with me however, is I would definitely get my money’s worth in antiques. If I was really proficient in acquisition, I might even be able to make a fifty percent profit or more. Many antique dealers aren’t satisfied unless their profit hits at least a hundred percent......upwards. But it’s nobody’s business what you pay for a find. Most of us are pretty good at getting quality pieces for rock bottom prices. So our mark-up is not based on fair play, it’s based on what we would like to achieve as a profit. Yes, we do win, and then again, we also lose occasionally. Some of us are greedier than others, and a few are too generous for their own good. I’ve met them all. I fall into the mid-zone. I’m not ruthless but I’m a hanger-on, and persistent where and when it counts. I’m patient because it suits my capital position. If you don’t have a big budget to flail about, then you have to be patient.....as the fisher in the meadow brook. Sooner or later it will pay off.

I’ve known some grand characters in the antique profession, who have taught me a lot about survival and improving my acquisition skills. I wasn’t a quick learner either. I guess those early teachers of mine were right all along, when they said “Teddy is interested in some things (girls) but mostly distracted.” It was the skirts, I’m telling you. I had a crush every fifteen minutes. As an antique hunter I had the same problem. I was always easily distracted. So after a few dozen bad buys, like bidding on glass and pottery that turned out to be either chipped or replicas, I learned how to focus, no matter how many auction chicks happened to be in close proximity.

When you’re bidding at auctions you must never be distracted.....by conversation or a pretty face. I’ve pulled right away from crowds and friends, when I’m particularly interested in winning an auction bid. I want to hear clearly and know who I’m bidding against. How bad do they want the piece. I have to judge their faces. It’s my business to know this and know it well. Suzanne swears I develop horns when I’m bidding. I can’t feel them but I’m sure she’s right. It’s real important to develop that immediate relationship with the auctioneer, such that he or she doesn’t miss a critical bid, before hitting the gavel down. I win about fifty percent of what I’m going after. Keep in mind, the folks I’m bidding against are sharp as tacks, and are using the same strategy as I am, to scare the back bidders off. It’s like chess but meaner. From what I’ve read about auctions from the old days, in Europe, the local sales’ tactics and competition are mere child’s play. But seeing as I don’t go to many auctions in England these days, I stick to honing my skills with what the region offers-up during the sale season.

I hate losing at auctions, even the silent ones run by local thrift and charity shops. Knowing when to stop bidding, just as playing the slots at the casino, is of critical importance. Many antique dealers and collectors have exceeded their budgets on one piece, because they got caught-up in the personality of the bid......meaning the bidding became a grudge match between patrons, and the “I’ve got more money than you,” sort of showdown. When the winning bidder, having spent 50 percent more than he should have,finally gets the prize.....geez, it’s always so entertaining to watch for the confident look we call, “Of course I knew what I was doing.” They also throw back their shoulders and exist the sale, looking pinched and about to wet themselves.

I used to write a column years ago, called the “Auction Block,” and it was great fun let me tell you. The auctioneers despised me for giving away business secrets. While it’s true I had a much more difficult time getting any bargains, especially having pissed them off, in oh so many ways by what I wrote, it was still worth every drop of ink expended. The biggest fight I had was with an auctioneer from Huntsville, who wanted me fired, for writing a column about the dangers of buying used mattresses, and upholstered furniture from auctions. I didn’t write that folks shouldn’t buy them, but rather, be awfully careful that what you think is a good buy, and a nice piece of furniture, isn’t also a residence for bed bugs. I was right but he figured that because he advertised in our paper, he had a God given right to a retraction.....refuting the bed bug claim. He said I was costing him business because folks weren’t buying the mattresses any more. Even my boss asked, “Do you mean all of these people are reading Currie’s column? Heck we should give him a raise for increasing our readership.” Well, I survived the advertiser’s challenge, continued to write cautionary columns from time to time, and expected I wouldn’t be welcome at his sales from that point onward.

I want to reminisce a bit more about the antique and auction circuit, in the near future, some gems of information, taken from those early columns......a period where I spent half my life standing at these sales waiting, for my items of choice, to arrive on the auction block. There were many humourous moments, believe me. I had no problem whatsoever, coming up with new column material weekly that’s for sure.

More antique stuff to come.

Just one more point. The reason I’m authoring these blogs about antiques and collectibles, and dredging up my glory days as a published columnist......is that, in a fit of impatience and frustration, I threw out all my old newspaper files from the 1970's to about 2005. It was the writer winning out.....temporarily, over the antique hunter. Having my new material on blog-sites, is archival, as much as it is for present consumption. I’m not likely to throw any of this stuff away because I’m not computer savvy enough to know how. Son Robert looks after all my computer needs. I just type at this keyboard and grumble. He gets the editorials on-line. In return, I’ve appointed him the keeper of all this intellectual property, should the old man vaporize one day, while having one of his tantrums. I’ve always felt spontaneous combustion would be a fitting way for me to go.....you know?

Robert just shakes his head at my mockumentry demise, and agrees to profit from my writing.

He’s a nice kid.

ANTIQUES AND COLLECTIBLES NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED

I don’t socialize with other writers, for fear our inflated egos will cause some sort of nasty character implosion. Except for a select few columnists in the daily press, and some former writers I would have taken a bullet for, I don’t wish to know them beyond their daily offerings. I’m sure if they knew me, it would be mutual. My experience with writers in general, when sober, has always seemed to me like a test of willpower and endurance.....like how many beers it takes to loosen lips. We used to do this constantly, in the old news gathering days, to free up information from competing reporters. We got more scoops from the competition than out on the hustings. It cost us. Lots of big bar bills. There was a lot of poop hitting the fan when both our papers hit the newstands, showing we replicated and expanded on all their front-page scoops.

I don’t make friends of those who might wish to take the bacon off my plate, when I’m not looking. I don’t join literary societies and I refuse to be rescued by those who believe there is safety in numbers. Most writers I know around here, wouldn’t want a big mouth like me in their mutual admiration sessions anyway. I don’t believe there’s any strength in numbers, when it comes to hungry writers, looking for new gigs. Just more creative intrusions to leap-frog ahead.

My experience with associate writers, like my contemporaries in the antique profession, is that it is perfectly acceptable practice to climb on one another’s back to gain the advantage. The very idea of helping one another is laughable, because it’s a real game of Survivor out on the hustings....... with very few paying jobs. Lots of writer-kind and too few job opportunities. Everybody is looking for a “rare” opportunity to work in the industry. Those who have jobs won’t be giving them up voluntarily. For every working writer there are probably a dozen waiting in the wings, or hovering somewhere close by.......and it’s a publisher’s bonanza......there is no shortage of “willing to work for less” writers.

I don’t wait in the wings, and I couldn’t hover for more than a couple of minutes but I’m always interested in a writing gig......especially the rare kind that exchanges work for folding money. As with thousands of other writers, also wishing liberation from the publisher’s political protocol, and the regimen of writing to sell papers, I opted out of the paid ranks back in the spring of 1990. I’d had my last fight with a publisher about money. When I was asked what was most important.......being an employee of the firm, or being an antique dealer (which I had commenced three years earlier), I replied with a determined snarl, “That would be an antique dealer.” We parted company soon after. I never looked back.

I loved newspaper work and adored most of my colleagues, and at the end, my production of editorial copy was most often double what they demanded “by list” each week. I was a copy producing machine. I worked from home, frequently got up at 3 a.m. to write-up council news stories, and had them into the office for a final edit by 9 a.m. Included in this bulk of copy were other news stories I’d been assigned, and numerous other features I offered basically free of charge. Working at home, where I look after our two lads as a Mr. Mom, allowed me tremendous flexibility to work when I could; after they had begun a nap, or at bedtime. For two publishers, over about three years of working from my home office, they were making money off my productivity. I was working way more than if I’d been stuck in an uninspiring office all day. I was able to conduct as many phone interviews, and in person meetings, as I would have in a formal office. The “away from the office” format was new, just as it was having a feature writer who admitted he wasn’t going to put all the proverbial eggs in one basket. I was saving them money by not using office resources, and with the copy being produced, likely eliminated the need for at least another part time employee. But the fact they couldn’t actually see me working was bothersome. They must have imagined all kinds of stuff going on......but never actually took the time to weigh the benefits of a highly productive writer, happy to work alone.

So when we parted, it was generally assumed “I would never work in this town again!” That’s pretty much true. I’ve been writing copy for free ever since. The trade-off is usually a print advertisement in the publication I’m contributing. Since 1990 I have had two disagreements with publishers about editorial content. In both cases, without feeling any inclination to debate the issue, I simply pulled out, satisfied I’d enjoyed a good run, and that there would be two more publishers out there somewhere, looking for editorial generosity. I’m far more interested in writing for an appreciative publisher, and audience, these days, than making strides within the newspaper profession as a staffer. After many years at the grind, I know my writing suffered. I wasn’t happy and it showed in my work. I was far more of a writing purist than I knew back then. It was only when I started to work from home that I realized what I had been sacrificing, stuffed into a too-small office with too many hung-over and self-absorbed reporters. I loved them though!

Funny thing, I took creative writing and history at York University, back in the mid 1970's. I started out as a poet / historian who would later become a writer / historian / antique dealer. I wrote my first book of poems by the spring of 1975, had thrown it in the garbage by the winter of 1976, launched plans for an antique shop in the spring of 1977, graduated university, opened Old Mill Antiques in the fall of that year, in uptown Bracebridge, and got a chance to write a column about collecting for the local press. Working on the business with my parents was a disaster, my girlfriend dumped me for a guy who fixed her car once, I started in the news business, gave up on antiques, set about to write forever as a profession, found out that wouldn’t work, got married, had kids, opened Birch Hollow Antiques, kept writing, opened an antique shop also on upper Manitoba Street in Bracebridge, fought with publisher, quit, re-hired by another publication, ran shop, quit writing, and lived happily as a Mr. Mom / Antique Dealer / Freelance Writer from the 1990's to the present. A “mish-mash” you say? I always had something to fall back on when one or the other professions fell through. The difference today is that we will never surrender our antique enterprise, as it is the profession Suzanne and I have geared up, over all these crazy years, for retirement income. I expect to be a “free” lance writer until I can write no longer.

When I had a bad week at the newspaper, the weekends were for antiquing. Auction-going. What I began in 1974 was my safety-net through the tumultuous love-hate years as an editor. Even on weekends now, Suzanne and I free-wheel as collectors, hitting all kinds of interesting venues, estate sales, antique shops and malls, church sales, thrift shops, flea markets, and any yard or lawn sales within an easy commute. I have never found any pre-occupation as stress-relieving as the antique profession. Now, of course, if you are going to auction sales, or scrumming at estate sales with competitors, it can admittedly get a tad heated. Not as bad as a newsroom at deadline but close. Generally speaking, I’ve never had an antique hunting moment, or competition for a piece(s), that was greater than the frustration of dealing with a publisher at deadline, whining about something or other, I didn’t give a rat’s arse about. There’s a lot to be said for the freedom of being your own boss, that’s for sure. Out on the hustings, well, we’re the bosses and if we choose to snooze while our competitors pick all the good stuff......that’s our misfortune and failure as dealers. As I felt working from home, without the boss looking over my shoulder, I have always been hard on myself when it comes to output and outcome. So when I might have slacked off because opportunity prevailed, such as working from home, I felt too inspired to just sit around watching television. It’s the same when we’re hunting treasure. It’s too much fun to be considered work. So you might say, we play even harder.

When I started in the news business, I realized my patience was limited to about a decade. Bang on! Every year it became more difficult to refrain from storming out of the office, and tossing my typewriter down the road. I had always been a reliable employee and only took off a few days in ten years, as a result of illness. There were too many people to please in the industry but the only ones I cared about were the readers. My bosses didn’t like my indifference to them. My argument was always the same. If the circulation is going up, we’re getting new ads all the time, and the consensus of the readership is that we are publishing a good, and responsible newspaper, what the hell does it matter that we don’t see eye to eye on every issue. I always stepped aside, if the publisher at the time, wanted to write an editorial. I always refused to be told what to write, as an editorial, or from what perspective I should adopt. I simply stood up from my typewriter, or keyboard, and welcomed them to sit and knock themselves out. This befuddled them into a stupor, because they were used to getting their way. Most did what they were asked because they couldn’t afford to be fired. I understood this, and felt sorry they were in this position.

It bugged management that I wouldn’t conform just to get a wee cheque......and it was most definitely a small cheque......so I just decided to quit while the going was good, as my antique business was humming along. It was the right decision. I began to hate writing. That wasn’t right.

There are times when I’ll notice an opening at one of the local papers, or regional magazines, for a reporter / writer, and occasionally I’ll respond just to see if old barriers are still in place......and they are. I never get the chance to meet a publisher or editor in person........suffice to say they all know about the belligerent former editor who said, when asked, “so, do you want to be a writer or an antique dealer.” My response has never been different, and I have no intention of changing my stalwart attitude for another wee cheque. I’d like to be respected as both a writer and a profitable antique dealer. My wife says I’m a good writer and, as she keeps the books for the business, also applauds our financial prowess. I know, I know. Where’s her objectivity?

It must drive that old management of yore nuts, that I didn’t wither-up and blow away after parting company. Outside of a short hiatus of well less than a year, while I was working on business upgrades, I have never been without published work in one form, one venue or another up to the present......and I’m comfortably booked well into the future. And I’ve never been more contented with either discipline.

A writer associate of mine had lost a paying gig a while back, just before the recession but had turned his focus to writing a second book. When I asked why he hadn’t re-introduced his column in barter, for something like an advertisement, he looked at me and said with his eyes; “I don’t work without pay.” I suggested that a byline is always payment. It keeps you in the game. In his case, I pointed out, that a column in exchange for an advertisement for his new book, would make perfect sense to future sales and income. Everyone gets a taste of the action. They get a column from a respected writer, and the author gets the bragging right about being “published.”

There are thousands of bloggers of highly read and regarded sites, considered some of the best writers in the world, contributing their work without a dime of remuneration. That’s freedom. I wonder how many of them are antique dealers as well.

What’s so special about the antique business? Where and how shall I begin? More blogs coming soon.

SERENITY NOW - OUT TO THE SUGAR BUSH

I can place myself in this painting quite easily. (A bald, portly guy, likely coming out of the sugar shack licking his fingers). One of my favorite March feature news assignments, was to visit a number of Muskoka’s sugar bushes, to watch the gathering and the boiling of the sap. This painting, an oil on masonite, by Dan Titman, we believe, holds a special place for me, because I have never found a more serene place anywhere on earth......than a grove of maples bathed in spring sunlight. The sugar bush has always been my writer’s sanctuary. A woodland paradise that is as invigorating as it is relaxing. This is “serenity now,” as far as I’m concerned.

I purchased this little gem of Canadian art, on Friday, at a wonderful antique and collectable shop, which has only recently opened, on Mississauga Street E., in Orillia, known as Carousel Collectables. I’m an impulse buyer and this one was an impulse purchase. I have always been interested in historic themes, which shouldn’t surprise any one, and most recently I have acquired a wonderful watercolor depiction of a steamship (paddle-wheeler) from the early 1800's known as the Royal William. This is still being researched with the assistance of a Maritime Museum on the East Coast. Another attractive watercolor, purchased recently, is a waterscape of “Fairy Point,” and numerous boat houses, but we’re not sure whether this location is on one of Muskoka’s lakes or not. We’re thinking it might be Lake Joseph where there is a Fairy Island. Or a point of land on Huntsville’s Fairy Lake. We think it has too many structures to be Fairy Point in Algoma. Research is ongoing, as with many of my paintings collected for over thirty years. I’ll be running a picture of this in the near future.

But of all the art pieces overflowing the realm of sensible proportion, here at Birch Hollow, I adore this sugar bush painting the most. It profiles a parallel woodland setting, to what I have experienced many times before, here in the hinterland of beautiful Muskoka. My wife’s relative is Bill Veitch, who has been a legend in maple syrup making in the Ufford, Three Mile Lake, Windermere area for decades. I love venturing out to his sugar bush for the annual two day Pancake festival in April. A walk in the woods there, and like a sweeping time warp, you’re back in pioneer times. And it’s great if you’re a history junkie like me.

I greatly enjoyed accompanying my son Robert on a trip to the V.K. Greer Public School, in Port Sydney, a few years back, where they have a small but scenic operation. The tour was given at that time by John Duncan, a former outdoor education co-ordinator, and George Anderson, well known and respected amongst outdoor education students in our region.

My most fascinating sugar bush adventure, with son Andrew, was courtesy Jim Hillman and his son-in-law Brian Milne, who took us back to the maple grove off Golden Beach Road, not far from the former Bangor Lodge on Lake Muskoka. It was just a few miles from Bracebridge. I could have spent the rest of my life in and around that magnificent sugar bush, so hauntingly beautiful in the March sunlight. I sat on a stump and wrote an entire feature article for the Muskoka Sun, and the Muskoka Advance, two publications I penned features for, back in the 1990's. Jim was a grand old chap who adored any opportunity to get outdoors, and this was an absolute haven for anyone needing inspiration....... and who quite enjoys the spirit of co-operation. Operating the sugar bush, as they did, without the plastic lines running from tree to tree, was the way Jim and crew liked it......hard work but rewarding in so many ways. Watching the gathering of the sap, and then the sugaring-off, was right out of the pages of Canadian history.....right before my eyes. I was witnessing a cultural folk-art and it tasted pretty good as well. There’s something powerful about the smell of woodsmoke, the scent of thickening maple syrup, and the spring melt, that brought out the Thoreau in me......and what a Walden Pond it was. I sat there watching the steam billowing out of the shack and looking up into the dark web of overhead boughs, watching the sunlight blotching down onto the old decaying snow, melting away into the forest soil. If heaven could be half as nice!

Jim was happy to show me all the old tools and artifacts he had collected, and conserved over the decades, from when he first began tapping the maple grove. He had numerous wooden spiles and treenware, molds all over the place, for shaping the syrup into sugar candies. He had a marvellous little museum out there in the Muskoka woodlands, and I’m so glad I had this opportunity to visit. Jim passed away shortly after my visit, and I have often wondered whether his buddies still venture out to the property, and fire-up the pit below the large tin trays. I think it has probably ceased operation but I’m very much honored that Jim would have thought to invite me out to his paradise. I had an up-close and personal opportunity to record history, and capture this folk art at its purist, while Jim was still in his heyday. He loved that place. It was a precious sanctuary that’s for sure. His generosity made us Currie lads pretty happy that day. Andrew still talks about it. He got to ride an ATV while I walked to the sugar shack.

This little painting reminds me of my numerous outings to regional sugar bushes. It incorporates a little from each that I’ve visited. I have it illuminated on a stand now, and in the recent blustery evenings here at Birch Hollow, it has been so wonderfully relaxing, just to sit back, with a buffalo robe (we have two) over my legs, and admire the history of maple syrup making in Canada.

We haven’t been able to situate the painting or the artist, as of yet, but we believe it is the work of a regional artist from Quebec. If you know anything more about the painting or know the work of the artist, please let me know.

I wander from antique shop to antique mall, thrift shop to yard sale, auction to estate sale, looking for art pieces that inspire. I got lucky this past week. I visited the right antique shop at the right time. I had a few dollars tucked away, just in case I found something for the permanent collection. What perfect timing for a sugar bush celebration.

TRAINS, TRAIN STATIONS AND FREIGHT CARTS - THE DREAM ESCAPE FROM ORDINARY

I don’t know what it was about Bracebridge that made the train so much more intrusive in our daily lives. It must have been the Muskoka River valley and those wickedly cold winter nights, that made the train horn stab through the night air like a knife-blade. I lived up on what was, and is still called, Hunt’s Hill. The train station was located just to the north of the Hunts Hill bridge, and a stone’s throw from the old Albion Hotel......real old even by 1966. We used to get a kick out of sitting on an elevated parking border, adjacent to the tracks, and watching the drunks get tossed out the front door by the bouncer. It’s true what they say. The bouncer didn’t need to open the door with one arm, while tossing the patron out with the other. He wouldn’t use any arm to open the door because the unlucky boozer’s head would suffice. It was a two arm toss onto the cement at the doorway. I loved the view from there. One night I watched the same guy get tossed out three times. Each time, crashing head first into the door, with the warning, “And don’t come back ya bum!” That had to hurt. The head and the downtrodden’s feelings.

It was the 1960's. We had just arrived in town during the winter of 1966, in time to watch local lad, Roger Crozier, playing net for the Detroit Red Wings against Montreal, in that year’s Stanley Cup final. The Wings didn’t win but Roger was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff’s most valuable player. I liked the fact I was now from the same hometown as Roger Crozier. What a blessing it was then to one day actually work for Roger, as public relations director of the Muskoka Branch of the Crozier Foundation. I digress.

The hollow between two hillsides, along the river valley toward the Bracebridge Falls, did something to the sound of the train, such that for us, it seemed to be coming through the wall of our apartment. True enough there wasn’t much insulation in those walls. Outside, it was just crazy clear. Playing road hockey, on Alice Street, you’d half expect to see the locomotive light rising over the hill at the end of the street. The sound echoed and resonated all over the place and somehow joined back together as a stream of sound.....after all the respective vibrations must have bounced back off the architecture of Manitoba Street buildings. Even in the humid air of July nights, the arrival and departure of trains across three crossings, where the horn had to be sounded well in advance, became part of my life and times. I didn’t hate it. I was unsettled by it on occasion. Rather, it was kind of a respite for an over-active kid anyway, because I’d always pause to hear it cross the Toronto Street intersection with River Road. I always thought about where it was coming from, and where it might be was headed. It became an adventure in thought because in actuality we didn’t have much need for rail travel. We didn’t have any money for train trips either. Dreaming of a trip was cheap and I could still amble home in time for dinner. That kept my mother off my back. I was to be home from all my daydreams by five o’clock. No exceptions. A minute late and she suspected I’d been up to .....as she used to say....”NO GOOD!” I tried not to give her any excuse for an intervention. I was up to no good most of the time back then but we all were as mates. Fortunately the town clock tower was within my sight-line from the train station platform.

I have watched a number of television documentaries, and read many books, on the romance of trains and travel by rail.....one that particularly fascinated me was about an American photographer, who had opted to capture images of every remaining steam locomotive crossing the state. It was at the time when steam was being replaced by diesel engines.....and he felt it was critical to national heritage, to capture these remaining images of the old iron workhorses on their final runs. His originals are worth thousands of dollars each......but don’t expect to find many. They are fine art and nostalgia rolled up in one.

I missed the era of the steam engines by quite a margin. None the less I held a fascination about trains, partly because I believed they offered “the dreamer”......”.me,” the free right and privilege to board via imagination, and ride from one side of the country to the other...... having neither ticket nor timetable to return. Except being very aware when my mother Merle was bellowing about “Teddy it’s time to come home!” Or something like that but not so kindly. From so many different positions up on that Hunt’s Hill plateau, did I hear that train horn, and stop in my tracks to hear it pass. It seemed important, at the time, to do this. If you were a kid who daydreamed a lot, you will understand this. Even if I was on my bike, I’d stop for a moment, and judge whether it was possible or not, to make it to the edge of the hill in time, just to watch it cross the intersection. It was an picturesque scene as it passed by the multi-story backs of the Manitoba Street business community, and of course the old clock tower of the former federal building.

On lay-about Saturdays, the local Hunt’s Hill gang, of Rick Hillman, his brother Al, Don Clement and Jim Niven, would wind up at the train station, where we might......just possibly, engage the huge iron-wheeled freight cart that used to sit up on the elevated portion of the station. There was a wooden ramp with strips of wood across, which was supposed to slow the cart down when being pulled to track level by station staff. When we hung out there, I don’t think there was a full-time staff or station manager. We used to get into the lobby and just sit there, pretending we were passengers. I never remember seeing anybody tending the ticket counter. It was a sad and lonely place in those years. As for the freight cart, well, the cleats on the ramp only served to make the ride that much more exciting. We’d often jump aboard and the last one to park his behind on the top, had to get off and push us down the ramp. You want to talk about watching your life pass before you. I know it’s true. I didn’t hear that anecdote for years to come but when I did, (about an unrelated event), I thought about that freight cart. Jesus it almost killed us.

Most of the time we just found time to sit on the ramp, and wait for the arrival of the next train.....passenger or freight. While we thought about how neat it would be to jump on a boxcar for a trip north or south, each time we had the opportunity, we found a convenient excuse. “I’ll do it another day.....it’s almost dinner time.” If my mother even thought I’d been contemplating such a ridiculous adventure, she would have forbidden me to come anywhere near this old station. I couldn’t risk that. I had too much fun hanging out here to gamble on parental intervention.

I was a budding poet, even then, because while most of the kids my age, were looking at the mechanics of the belching, booming beast pulling the train, I was imagining adventures and thinking about all the places these incoming and outgoing trains had visited......and how much joy it would bring, to look out from those passenger car windows, and see the world as a blur.....yet feel as a traveller would, anticipating the final destination. It was a dreamer’s portal, that rickety station, and the day I found it had been torn down......was the day I lost faith in elected officials, to be the stewards of our heritage resources. The Bracebridge Train Station should have, and could have been saved, if there had been the slightest will, to allow the public the right to an opinion on the matter.

Even today, here at Birch Hollow, in Gravenhurst, I will stop on a walk down the lane on a bitter winter’s eve, to hear the crisp horn of a passing train. Curiously, only a short distance further away from our house, than it was up on Hunt’s Hill, during those halcyon days of adventure-seeking childhood. These days I’m not thinking about escape, or signing onto some great cross-country adventure. I’ve had my tours on the rails, and enjoyed each trip. Still, I feel a pang of sentiment and nostalgia when I think back to us lads, sitting on the rail platform, pondering how our lives would turn out in the future. The rail and train became symbolic for us, even though we wouldn’t have thought about it in those terms. I realize it now. It’s why I will still stop in my tracks, while walking the dog or raking the leaves, and sigh.....I suppose, about the good old days, when the train station was our second home, and the rails were the romance of adventure, and the freight cart......very nearly our undoing.

The day my mother died, I remember having to stop at that same rail crossing, adjacent to the Hunt’s Hill bridge, with a box of Merle’s belongings brought from The Pines nursing home, further up on Hunt’s Hill. How strangely poetic it was, as I thought back to all the times her voice resonated, like a train horn, to bring me home for supper. She had about a two block range. No kidding. For additional irony, on the last trip moving my father’s few remaining possessions, (after Ed’s death last year), from his apartment at Bass Rock (just below the tracks on River Road), I had to stop again for a passing freight train. When the train had passed, and waiting for the warning lights to stop, I could have sworn I saw him standing on the other side......winking at his kid one last time. He and I had stood at that intersection so many times, while walking home from grocery shopping at Lorne’s Marketeria. And we watched a lot of trains pass over the years.

Yup, the train and its rails have run through my life......and I’m good with that!

NOT ALL SERIOUS HERE AT BIRCH HOLLOW; WE HAVE A FEW LAUGHS

The first series of irreverent columns, about everyday stuff, appeared in The Herald-Gazette, in Bracebridge, back in the early 1980's. For a staunchly conservative publication my column was a tremendous change of pace. While I didn’t fancy myself a comedian, I greatly admired Paul Rimstead of the Toronto Sun. Most of the writers who worked in the Muskoka media with me, looked up to the former Bracebridge kid, who made it big in the print industry. He was a rogue, a champion of the underdog, the common schmoo who empowered those of us who drove crappy cars, like his Rusty Rita, and regular folks who lived pay cheque to pay cheque without complaining. He made being broke and hungover seem an accomplishment as it related to being a newspaper columnist. When he wrote about his Mexican “Liar’s Club,” (where he had retreated to write a book), we wanted to take the trip to join up. His foibles became ours. We were delighted to share his misfortunes because they made our screw-ups seem so much less significant.

My first Rimstead tribute column was entitled “Cold Coffee,” and amongst my peers it was known as “Tepid Tea,” “Sugarless Instant,” and “Bold Barfee.” I was thrilled they were interested enough in my work to find name parallels. I wasn’t offended. Until one day my writing colleague introduced me as the “Wall of Meat,” who writes “Bold Barfee.” Barney used to love attracting attention to my girth back then. It drove the publisher and the advertising manager nuts because they couldn’t avoid the fact our paper was winning on the newstands. Even if they hated the stuff, it was selling papers. It seems Muskoka, in that particular era, had endured quite enough conservative ink.

I went on to write an anecdotal golf column and another community piece called “Hometown Advantage,” for smaller publication. Without shame, I modeled them after Rimmer’s “Cocktales and Jockstraps,” book, and of course his regular Toronto Sun column. Of all the attributes I adored, number one was his lack of reverence for the old norms......like his bosses and politicians. I guess Rimmer did imprint on me more than I knew then, as I’ve had a life-long mistrust of politicians, and I don’t like bosses period. I’ve used humour to win arguments for decades, and I’ve found a lot of value in anecdote and the comedic jab, when having to deal with folks I detest. I sure didn’t like the ones who told me how I should write, and all the reasons I couldn’t use the word “fart” to describe how old they were.

A wise old bugger once told me I was too serious as a writer, and should try some basic comedy for a change of pace. That’s sort of what turned me on to Rimstead in the first place. I never finished one of his columns that I wasn’t happier than when I began.....usually laughing about it for the next hour or so. I realized that Rimmer was finding the light, anecdotal side of what I could only find as troubling or annoying. I didn’t want to read a paper just so that I could get mad at the world. I was already mad about stuff. I was a mid-20's history grad who was working outside his field, hacking out space-filler for the community press, and drinking way too much for my own good. What could be fun about this. First of all, I was looking at things as a reporter on the hunt for a front-pager. Thinking that a great piece of writing could catch the attention of the daily press. I might be able to “string” for the big boys. So for those first years I was bloody serious, all the time. I couldn’t see any way to break free from the cycle of poverty many of us were hopelessly mired. And yes indeed, a cycle of our own concoction. Getting a pay cheque and then drinking it. We were in a high stress business with overseers who wanted Pulitzer material from hacks who slept about four hours a night, ate grilled cheese sandwiches for breakfast, and opened the bar at noon. We were good and honest writers who were asked to work long hours for low pay. Thank God I found my sense of humor before they demoted me to occasional feature writer. It was one of those little publisher turn-ons. Make the senior writer with the bigger pay cheque quit, to free up money to hire two dumb asses instead, who couldn’t write classified ads without phoning their university professors for help.

The columns connected me to the lighter side of life. After the first year of embracing the comedic, anecdotal side of journalism, without ever touching the sides of fiction, north or south, I had actually developed quite a following. Which was quite an accomplishment because the subscribers were an intermingling of church-going folks, members of the Lions and Rotary Clubs, and Conservative Party faithful. Getting a laugh out of these goomers was tough, and I had to work up a blood-sweat every week to keep them onboard. There had never been an attempt by newspaper management to entertain readers before. Everything our paper did was to inform, promote and grandstand. During my period of editorship we had at least three columnists injecting personal follies, really neat, human interest events, as comedy, into the mainstreet print-offering. It’s not like we didn’t get criticism but the publishers liked the idea of weird stuff, and frankly anything with the exception of full frontal nudity to boost subscriptions. We did that by infusing light-heartedness into a rather humorless enterprise. Sure, we ran the big stories and did more investigative reporting than in the newspaper’s long history. But when it came to our columns, we demanded freedom of the press to indulge. And we did. It was bitter sweet. Over time we caught crap every week. There was a line and we crossed it a hundred times.

Since those days of breaking the crust off normal community newspaper-copy, I’ve always had a chuckle about the way it’s all snapped back like a too-tight rectum, reducing humor to the occasional typo that makes “rum” into “bum,” and “kiss” into “piss.” Even typos in my day were better. Consider the headline typos like “Prime Minister Trudeau to attend,” into “Prime Minister Turdeau to attend,”........and a caption under a front page photo that read “This young lady awaits the boat,” which when published read “This young lay awaits the boat.” We did it with a granny once too. “This grand old lay,” which I can tell you didn’t impress family, seeing as she was about to have her 100th birthday and apparently still interested, according to our paper, in getting some action.

I’m sort of glad I had this immersion into workplace comedy, and subscribed to Rimstead at such an impressionable time in my life. Thirty years later I’m still benefitting. I don’t get nearly as mad any more about much of anything. Things that might have driven me nuts around Birch Hollow, actually make me laugh today. If I’m going to die of a heart attack, by geez I want to go by laughing, not shaking a fist at a neighbor. This has helped me greatly defer anger and get on with solution finding. Solutions to what, you ask! I’ll tell you.

In all three homes we have lived, we have enjoyed the company of colorful neighbors who, bless their hearts, just wanted to live the good life at our expense. And they wanted to share their perception of good life with us. On Ontario street we had a neighbor who loved to urinate off his back deck, and if you happened to catch him in the act, he had no compunction about waving with a free hand. “Hi Suz,” he’d yell at my wife Suzanne. “Nice day eh?” He’s the same neighbor who set up a huge satellite dish on the property line, that kept hitting the top rail of our fence when he used his remote. He didn’t want to ask me to remove the plank so he just kept thwacking it with the dish until it broke. I remember standing there one day trying to fix the rail and having the dish nearly decapitate me, when the same media-obsessed neighbor was tuning in to a game show. “Sorry Ted, didn’t see you standing there.”

One day we were in our breakfast nook enjoying a cup of coffee, when all of a sudden the end of an eighteen wheeler came rolling by the end of the house. With chins against chests, we watched as a huge tractor trailer went into our neighbor’s backyard. There was our neighbor directing it back, nudging our fence on the way by. We ran out to see what the hell was going on, only to be met by a large group of local restaurant employees coming to decorate a Christmas float. I said to our neighbor, at the time, it might not have been a good idea bringing such a heavy vehicle and attachment over the unprotected (except by some earth) waterline. He was so decked out in Christmas cheer, nothing could penetrate his festive spirit. The very next morning, there was a swamp in our side yard as a result of a broken waterline. I told him about it, and because he was still getting some water pressure said “I’ll get to it in the spring.” In fact the only way it was fixed is when I talked to a friend on district public works, and told them about the leak, and that it was about twenty feet from the meter. In other words our neighbor, outside of getting a wet section of lawn, wasn’t paying for the lost water. Well, let’s just say it got fixed. Only to be broken several more times when Christmas floats arrived seasonally.

Another neighbor, when we lived on a rural property, also in Bracebridge, didn’t have a clue what a “pie shaped”lot looked like. He wasn’t big on surveys or the information about property lines they contain. He said he was too busy. Suzanne asked me who was cutting down trees, one morning, while she was feeding our young lads. Seeing as we’ve had problems with neighborly interventions before, I pulled on my boots and went out the front door. Our new neighbor on the right had strung a rope line, apparently to indicate the trees that were going to be cut that morning. Out of the twenty or so trees he was planning to execute, cause he admitted he liked the view more than the foliage, twenty or so were ours. I got his attention by jumping up and down, and when he turned the chainsaw off, thought there was a fire in our house. There was fire, by Jesus, and it was in my breast. I asked him, by what authority, he was cutting down our trees. “Your trees,” he said. “These are my trees, and I don’t want them here any more.” I stammered and stuttered in a blind rage, but managed to ask him the simple question, whether or not he had first consulted the survey to find the limits of his property line. “No,” was the answer. “We paid cash for the property and we didn’t have to provide a survey.” “Well you should still have a survey,” I said. “Do you know what it means to own a pie shaped lot?” He shook his head. “Well, you have one, and it means the back of your property retreats on both sides to a sharp point. In other words you don’t have a rectangle to work with. These trees are not within your property.” I avoided using the word “clown” to close the statement. “Of course they are,” he answered, trying to re-start his chainsaw. I said, “I will show you the survey sir, so that you can see what a pie shape is all about.” Well, he got mad because he had his heart set on some quality chainsawing that day, but told me how stupid I was for keeping such a miserable stand of birches and evergreen. Go figure.

One day I came home and the guy’s handyman was cutting our lawn. It was more than just a little ridiculous because it should have been obvious by our survey stakes, if nothing else, that he was mowing on the wrong side. Moving our lawnchairs, aimed at our house, should have tweaked something in the man’s head. When I asked him to stop, he nodded, “Right after I finish cutting the lawn.” I threw a couple of lawn chair’s in his way. When he turned the mower off and got all red-faced with rage, I asked him the same question as the other bloke. “Do you know what pie shape means?” Never had to explain that one again.

A neighbor in our third house, decided to re-direct a sump-pump drain from where it had been, onto a treed section of property, to shoot out instead into the thin backyard. He did this just prior to the start of the winter. By the March melt there was quite a lot of water building up at the fence line that we didn’t know about. One of our boys had dropped a toy on the way into the house, and when I stepped off the deck into the snow to grab it, the water rose up to my knee. It was up to the last concrete block before the woodwork of our house. We could hear the flow of water from the hose adding to the melt water from the snow. We phoned him to help re-direct the water, and talk about engaging a grumpy old fart. He blamed us for everything wrong in his life. Including the misery we were inflicting, getting him away from his recreation, to help save our homestead from floating down to the lake. When we finally let that water go down the driveway, well, it took a good chunk of our driveway with it. I told him to re-direct the sump-pump water away from our house. Several years and floods later, he did move it, and we haven’t had water rising at our back ever since.

Now it builds from the side. Several years ago another neighbor decided to get rid of excess water from the basement, and shoot it down a buried tube to the border between our properties. As soon as we hear the heavy equipment and chainsaws, by habit, we react. I watched with interest as the hose was aimed right at us. The idea, I suppose, was that the small basin in which it was centered, would be enough of a depression in the landscape to keep it running toward a drainage pipe that runs along the roadway. Not wishing to get into a scrap, at least immediately, we opted to take a “wait and see” approach. This fall, while walking the dog, I stepped into a quagmire of soggy grass and soil up to my anklebone. When I studied the source, well, there it was. An underground river was exiting through the water table, down toward the lake, instead of flowing to the roadside drain. Suzanne’s late-season garden was floating. The unstable ground extended for about thirty feet. I don’t know where all this new water was coming from, because for months there hadn’t been much of an issue. I was forced to dig a drainage ditch immediately for fear I was going to watch my lawn slip down the storm drain. From the moment I dug it out to the road, it remained full to overflowing through the winter.

One day we came home from work, and our entire upper driveway....where we used to park, was entirely covered with the remnants of a neighbor’s pine tree. It was a towering son of a gun and I wasn’t unhappy to see it gone. I just would have thought it prudent, our neighbor might have asked first before using our property as a temporary lumber yard.

I was sitting on my deck one day reading, and heard a group of people coming down our sideyard path. I dropped the book, looked out over the railing, and watched the sightseers enjoying the stroll. They were telling their children that this was a neighborhood path they could use instead of walking all the way around the block. They were at least very complimentary about Suzanne’s gardens, as they pointed out the various plants and shrubs we had planted along the winding path. I asked them what I could do for them, and they seemed annoyed by the intrusion on their nature walk. I love when trespassers argue with you. I asked them if they’d like to see our survey. One night a week later, while I was sleeping on a cot on the deck, during a hot spell, I awoke suddenly, staring at a lady who was walking through our garden, apparently looking for the same neighborhood path. We both shrieked, and she went running (which was a mistake) through the precarious pricklies of Suzanne’s garden. There was a lot of crying-out and crashing noises before she navigated that dark forest path.

When a neighbor asked Suzanne, one afternoon, where he should put the new Greek-themed water-fountain he’d just ordered, it was the first time I’d ever heard my wife suggest to an acquaintance, “Up your arse, cause it’s not going in the front yard.....understand?”

I went out this morning and found that someone had driven a rather large truck onto my lawn. This isn’t all that peculiar. We live just past a sharp bend in the road, and if conditions are right, a vehicle travelling too fast will skid on the ice, and spin like a curling stone, out onto our front lawn. Funny thing though, we’re getting desensitized to all the weird stuff directed away. The driver must have had to engage four wheel drive or a tow truck to get out, and we were sitting in the living room listening to Mozart. We’re built on a cement pad so we can hear the kids thwacking a tennis ball on the road but apparently, not a large truck sitting in our front yard.

In the words of that kid in the movie “The Burbs,” I love this neighborhood! And all the hoods in between. Thanks Rimmer for infusing good humor into what my mother used to call, little Teddy’s “worry worts.” Getting mad just shortens your life. With what I drank and smoked, life’s probably short enough as it is! No sense losing any more time being flustered.

THE STORM HAS GONE - THE SNOW SHOVELLED - THE COLD HAS ARRIVED

NOW I’M WITH CATS-

I have once again returned to the hearthside with frozen whiskers, fingers and toes. The most recent snow storm certainly infilled our lane here at Birch Hollow. It has taken several hours to clear it out, to my wife’s specifications I should note. She has long accused me of being less than ambitious about snow removal. Suzanne likes her paths as wide as I am tall. Even though I’m not very tall, I think it’s excessive. I start off the season meeting this obligation but as the snow volume increases, she’s lucky if the path is a metre wide when all is said and done. I just can’t push it back any further from the walk without having a gas snowblower. Seeing as I’m rather inept with anything but pioneer tools, I know she’ll relent when I tell her I can’t widen the paths any more, unless we get a snowblower. She’ll look out, look at me, look back onto the yard, and reluctantly agree. The path is wide enough. Spring isn’t so far off anyway, I tell her. I know that what she’s thinking, has something to do with the unpleasant potential of me losing an arm or foot in a snow blower. As soon as I bring it up, she must immediately imagine severed limb(s) on the walkway. Next year I’m going to start pitching the idea of a snowblower earlier in the season, before she starts complaining about the width of the lane.

At this moment, I’ve inherited three of our seven cats, on my leg, stomach and shoulder. That would be Wee Angus, Zappa (after Frank Zappa) and Chutney, as related to the preserves Suzanne was making when we needed another name. The other inmates of the feline kind, include Fester, our bathroom cat, Beasley, Buddy and Old Smoky, who is about the same size as the gopher “Phil” of Gobbler’s Knob......and as well, yesterday, didn’t see his shadow when he literally rolled outside. His stomach hits the ground when he walks. We’ve put him on all kinds of fad diets but he cheats like mad each time. One day he felt cheated by the meagre offering in the dish, and actually opened the cupboard door and ripped apart a bag of dry food for sustenance. I swear he smiled at us that day, sitting on a kitchen chair, the fat cat that he is!

According to recent reports on the television, about cat hoarders, I’m starting to worry we have fallen into this here at the Currie homestead. Here’s how they all arrived.

I have been a cat fancier most of my life. My first cat was a cast-off beast that I called “Animal.” When I was editor of The Herald-Gazette, in Bracebridge, a lot of folks used to drop off strays because they believed, as a newspaper, we could place free adoption ads in the paper.....thus a good group of people to handle someone else’s dilemma. Animal was thrown from a moving car in front of our office, just as I was standing in front at the time. The poor little bugger did five or six flips, and a few quick, jerky rolls, before coming to rest against the curb. The kitten sustained only minor injuries and was fixed up, and pampered back to its kittenish lifestyle. I adopted Animal because no one else had the room or disposition for a rambunctious kitten that clawed everything in my apartment including me.

The second cat, Fester I, was found one bitter January night, trying to stay warm on a sewer grate on busy Quebec Street, on the same block as our newspaper office. Well, it was late, and I couldn’t let it freeze. There was no Humane Society shelter at this point in Bracebridge. No one wanted Fester and no one reported it missing. The third cat we called Tommy. When I’d come home from hockey, Suzanne insisted the equipment bag had to stay on the back steps. I agree, it did smell. Tommy didn’t mind the odor, and this is where he spent the cold winter nights. Until we realized he had made our deck a permanent stop. After considerable coaxing, and food, we were eventually able to give Tom a warm place to live that winter. We took them all to the vet, for medical care, and other stuff to avoid more kitten catastrophes. We spent a fortune on cats then, and we’re doubling that now.

Well, Tommy thanked us, one night,.....letting us have a good long pat and cuddle, then asked to go out, and never returned. I saw him one night in an ally up town, and he came to me right away when I called. We had a nice visit but he let me know his home was all-outdoors. He rubbed against me for several minutes, looked up with his beautiful eyes, and turned and ran off again. Contented to be an alley cat. It was the last time I saw that dear little creature. Even though we hadn’t been together all that long, I missed him a lot. For the next year, I’d get up from my chair or even from bed, thinking I’d heard scratching at the door. Which he was famous for during our time together.

Animal was the proverbial fat cat. It had a nasty disposition and an insatiable appetite for the outdoors. It was hit by a car one night, and she too was history. Fester was an outdoor cat plain and simple. She loved to sit on a sunny rock on the embankment overlooking The Bog, and with the back door open, spring to autumn, she’d check in at dinner time, and then go out until about 10 p.m. She’d curl up by the hearth until first light. Fester died at about ten years of age. I held her in my arms for those final few moments. We were all devastated here. No matter how many times I’d say to Suzanne, “it’s just a cat,” we couldn’t stop crying for that old stray cat we’d invited into our home just after we married.

Fester II was an abused cat we adopted quite a number of years ago now, and it had endured an unhappy relationship, as a kitten, with a nasty dog locked in a small work shed. The imprint of those days created many emotional issues for Fester, especially its need for high places to escape its pursuer. Not that anything pursues it but that’s the way it coped originally, and does today. We adopted Old Smoky from a family that had to get rid of him, and we thought it would be good for Fester to have a mate. It worked for awhile but Fester just doesn’t, (as I was told by my teachers) play well with others. By her choice, she dwells in one of our bathrooms, which she has long considered a safe have from her adversaries. We’re all a little eccentric here at Birch Hollow so we accept her differences in stride.

Sitting on the deck one evening, looking out onto our gardens.....and watching the hummingbird feeding there, we heard the familiar cry of a kitten. It’s not something we want to hear necessarily because it usually means some clown has abandoned something unwanted. We had noticed a hawk flitting from tree-top to tree-top, and we suspected it had an evil intent for whatever was calling out. We found Buddy, a tiny, under nourished kitten, on the side of the road. It had only a few minutes of life remaining, as we could see the hawk, just then, watching us from the top of a nearby hydro pole. The cars on our dead-end road travel way to fast, and it wouldn’t have been long before a car would have taken-out what the Hawk hadn’t eaten yet. We put a note up on the community mail box, just in case someone had lost this little orange beastie. Well, that was seven years ago and no one’s called yet. As Buddy’s tail had been compromised while living in the Bog, it developed a nerve disorder that causes violent spasms.....and I’ve been holding her for two of the seizure-like events. We have to keep Buddy isolated in case he was to accidentally injure the other felines. A wonderfully friendly cat that loves to be in your company.

Most recently, Suzanne had been trying to feed a seriously underweight stray we called “Beasley,” that was getting into the recycling bins for food. For months we tried to keep her weight up with milk and both dry and wet foods. As she had been so thin, it took a long time for Beasley to show the pregnancy. So having seen pregnant cats before, we naturally assumed we had some preparation time. To that point, Beasley was scared of us, and would run-off if we came too close. One night, we came home just before midnight, as we all heard the sounds......the fain meows of new life. Beasley had taken sanctuary in our crammed garden shed, and given birth to three kittens in the shelter of an old tipped-on-its-side electric lawnmower. It took a bank of studio lights and an hour of pulling items out, to be in a position to remove the kittens to a safer environs. It was the first time Beasley let us help. She must have known she didn’t have enough body weight or health to provide the kittens with what they needed. She growled once, when Suzanne put her hand close to the nest, but then got up and started rubbing against her legs. Funny thing. It was the first time she had ever come to us voluntarily, and it was as if she was asking for help, to save her babies.

All the Curries here took turns trying to save the bandy legged wee beasties. It was touch and go for several months. They all survived and all are crazy. They’ve made our house their playground that’s for sure. But they’re homegrown here at Birch Hollow, and with overflowing numbers of cats at the local shelter, and not enough adoptions to clear the cages, we decided to take what happened here as a sign.......these little darling had come to us under precarious circumstances, and would have died that same night, if we hadn’t heard that familiar plaintive cry. Odd though. It was the runt of the litter, “Chutney” that got our attention in the first place. It was Chutney we expected would die because it was so small. Well, three years later, Chutney is still the runt of the three but a healthy, over-active little beggar, who shreds my old books, quilts and chair backs. Here she is now purring away on my lap, while her brother Angus sits on the back of the chair, and Zappa has begun swiping at a loose piece of yarn Suzanne left hanging out of her knitting basket.

As a writer, these cats we have been associated, have very much impacted my work over the past 30 years. I couldn’t even imagine a house without these furry critters adding so much life and entertainment to the mix of human inmates, who also make Birch Hollow home. They are family. The old dog, Bosko, also a rescue dog, hated cats before we adopted her. Now they huddle together by this hearth and I’m pretty sure she thinks of herself as one of them.

There is a CD we play regularly here, that sums up our life and times living with cats. It was done by well known American story-teller, Garrison Keillor, and singer Frederica Von Stade, entitled “Songs Of The Cat,”........well known music turned into cat-themed songs. We couldn’t live without it either. It’s about the influences cats have on their owners and how they are truly the masters of the domain when it comes right down to it! When the cats go nuts in unison, we put that CD on at full blast, and watch them come to the door of the livingroom, in a panic, wondering if their humans have lost their marbles. It’s usually enough of a pause, to stop the running back and forth.....at least for awhile. Serenity now!

There’s something so wonderfully literary about sitting here, cats on lap, a mutt laying on my feet, and the sighs of contentment from them and me, that makes a writer want to write! There’s always one inspiration or another, here at Birch Hollow.

Bless these cats and dogs for their ongoing contribution, all these years, at making a house, truly a home.