Here’s Looking At You, Sergeant Saul

My first three weeks as a police cadet were spent for the most part, not wiping out crime as I had expected, but cleaning out police cars washing them and  gassing them up.  I swabbed out the drunk tank each morning and generally ran errands for the real policemen. Although my new tailor-made uniform had arrived and I was wearing it to and from work each day, mostly it hung in my locker while I sported a pair of blue coveralls more suited to my assignments. Finally I received orders to report to the Police College and I looked forward to the end of my drudgery and to some leisure time in the classroom.

In those days Metropolitan Toronto had its own training centre in a converted two story elementary school located in Willowdale, in the north end of the city. The schoolyard had been paved to use as a parade ground.  I hadn’t thought much about drilling and marching. I knew that there was probably going to be a certain amount of it but after all, this was not the army only the police force. My marching skills were sadly lacking. In the 1960’s all high schools still had mandatory cadet 

programs.  The only exemptions were for band members.  I had quickly signed up to play the trumpet and had spent my time sitting in the shade playing Colonel Bogie while my classmates, sweating in their woollen uniforms, marched up and down the schoolyard.  I wondered if I might do the same now. We all gathered in a large classroom that first morning and were told by a clean-cut young policeman to have a seat anywhere. 

“Ah, this the life,” I thought as I settled myself down in a seat at the back of the room and busied myself opening my notebook and selecting pens and pencils. I had just removed my tie and was leaning back in my chair when the room reverberated with a throaty bellow, “Attention!”  The word seemed to hang in the air. When I looked up, a tall, straight, stern looking policeman in an impeccable uniform was shouting at us. He was about fifty and his presence oozed authority. We all jumped to our feet and gave our individual interpretations of what “Attention” should look like. Addressing us as stupid bastards,  he described the proper way to stand to attention. Then he introduced himself as Sergeant Saul and informed us that he was to be our Drill Instructor and general disciplinarian. He went on further to say that he had observed us arriving that morning and without a doubt we were the sorriest bunch of dirty buggers he had ever laid eyes on. 

“All that is going to change”, he shouted. “Now get your lazy asses down to that parade ground!” And so  the marching began, day after day of “By the left, quick march, I said LEFT, you stupid bastards”, or, “Into line, left turn. Does that look like a line, you nitwits?” 

After what felt like an eternity of abuse all but one class seemed to be getting the hang of it. Poor Cadet Eagan was still stumbling, turning the wrong way and constantly  trying to get back in  step. No amount of swearing or cajoling from Sergeant made his performance improve. Eagan was a big healthy farm boy from northern Ontario. A t first glance, he looked like perfect policeman material, but there was definitely something missing in the brains’ department. As some of the less sensitive cadets put it, “He was a few bricks shy of a load, you know. A few pickles short of a jar.”  We knew it was all over for Eagan one morning at inspection . He had forgotten his memo book and Sergeant Saul was busy ‘cutting him a new arse hole’, as he liked to put it. When he finished his tirade, he lowered his voice and, almost pleadingly, said. “Listen, Eagan, if you’re going to make it, you  really have to pull up your socks.” To our amazement,  Eagan actually bent down and pulled up his  socks!  The next day he was transferred to the city’s Parking Meter Control Unit. I would often see him in later years.  He seemed very happy sporting his brown uniform and tooling around on his Pie Wagon, as  the three-wheeled motorcycles were called. 

The marching and drilling wasn’t easy for me but my real problem was passing muster when Sergeant Saul did his inspections each morning. Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to please him. I spent hours every night working on my kit, ironing, polishing and  brushing.  Still, he would always find something wrong and bring it to my attention in his not so subtle  manner. If he found a single hair on my blue serge uniform he would exclaim for all to hear, “Did you  have much trouble getting the dog off your uniform this morning, Leeson?” If my tie was not hanging  perfectly perpendicular, he would straighten it, saying, “Mummy dressed us a little funny this morning,  didn’t she?” If he couldn’t find anything else to complain about, he would say, “Get a haircut!” which I frequently did but it never seemed to be enough. I was starting to look like Yul Bryner.  The night before  our final day on the cadet course, I made up my mind that my turnout was going to be impeccable.  I vowed that I would be the cleanest, shiniest son of a bitch on that parade ground. I pulled out all the  stops. I spent hours using cotton swabs dipped in ice water, putting a high shine on my boots and Sam Browne belt. My uniform was cleaned and pressed to perfection. There wasn’t a crease, smudge or hair to be found anywhere. I also vacuumed my car seats so that my uniform wouldn’t pick up any debris as I drove to the college in the morning.  I went to bed with what hair I had left perfectly coifed and held in place by a nylon stocking. I was ready. There was nothing, nothing that Saul would be able to find fault with. 

I stayed up working so late that night that I overslept slightly  but if I knew that if I  hurried, I would still be in good time for the inspection parade. I dressed carefully, avoiding contact with anything that might tarnish my perfect appearance. I skipped breakfast. I didn’t want to sit too long anyway. It might spoil the crease in my pants.

I was cautiously making my way to my car when I heard a terrible scream.  It sounded almost like a human baby in extreme pain. I made my way to the opposite side of the car and there on the ground was a stray cat with a half-eaten baby rabbit in his mouth. The cat dropped the little creature and disappeared into the tall grass. The tiny rabbit lay whimpering , unable to  move. He was so badly mangled that I knew he was beyond help. The only humane thing to do was to put him out of his misery as soon as possible. Gritting my teeth and wincing, I stepped forward and  brought my heavy boot down as hard as could on the poor bunny’s head.  Death was instantaneous and its suffering was over. With a heavy heart but comforted by the notion that I had done the right thing, I  jumped into my car and headed for the Police College.  By the time I arrived, the rest of the cadets had already begun to assemble on the parade ground. I hurried over and joined them. We formed up in  three lines of open order and stood rigidly at attention as Sergeant Saul quick marched over to us with  his swagger stick tucked under his arm. 

He proceeded to weave his way up and down the ranks making  rude comments to certain of my classmates. I held my breath as he made his way along the front of the  row I was standing in. He paused for a moment in front of me and, looking me over carefully, gave me a  reluctant nod of approval.  I was feeling pretty smug and self-satisfied as he swung around to inspect our backs. All my hard work had paid off.  I was already beginning to work on my acceptance speech for the best turned out cadet when I heard the rhythmic click of the Sergeant’s heel clips stop directly behind me.  He was gasping and seemed short of breath but finally blurted out, “What the hell is that?” He prodded me in the ass with his swagger stick and I looked over my shoulder and down to the back of my  trouser leg. There, looking directly at Sergeant Saul was a tiny eyeball suspended on a long trailing ribbon of red tissue.

The Raccoon

The sun was already setting as I hurried my horse down the steep road

to the Central Don Park in North Toronto. In the short time it took to go

down the hill, I was transported from the busy city streets to a tranquil

country setting where there was no trace of the city.

Reaching the valley floor, the road led over a small bridge that

crossed the Don River and then on to the Metropolitan Toronto Police

Mounted Unit Headquarters. It consisted of barns and stables and two

houses that once made up the farm of a private estate. Two men stood at the

entrance of the police stable. One was my Sergeant and the other was the

Superintendent of the Park. They were having a heated conversation and

only looked up when my horse’s metal shoes left the soft turf and hit the

cobblestone in front of the building. The Sergeant pulled his pipe out and

grunted, “Good, you’re here. Put your horse away. We’ve got a job for you.”

By the time I had unsaddled my horse, fed and watered him and made my

way back to the waiting men, the sun had sunk further behind the rim of the

valley, leaving that glorious red that only city pollution can produce.

Visibility was minimal.

Between puffs on his pipe, the Sergeant laid out my assignment.

Apparently the Park’s Superintendent, who lived in a cottage just out of

sight of where we stood, had noticed a raccoon high in one of the stately

elms that shaded his house. It seemed that the raccoon was acting strangely

aggressive and vicious, unusual for these semi-tame park animals. There

had been a rabies scare recently and there was no sense taking any chances.

“Take your pistol over there and humanely destroy that animal,” came the

directive. “And here’s a feed bag to bring him back in. Be quick about it

because it’s getting dark.” The streetlights had just come on as the two men

turned their backs on me and continued their conversation.

I felt the weight of my holster to make sure that my trusty, if rusty, 32

calibre Colt was at my side, and then proceeded toward the crime scene. I

had had to check my gun because I hadn’t had much occasion to use it and

frankly, wasn’t very good with it. As my fingers ran through my

ammunition pouch, I was relieved to find several extra bullets in there.

Thank God I had replaced them after wasting so many shots while trying to

bag a pheasant during a particularly boring afternoon patrol in Mount

Pleasant Cemetery a month or so earlier. I don’t know what had possessed

me. I don’t like hunting or killing creatures and was relieved when I had

come to my senses before I did hit the pheasant. Now here I was again, this

time being sent as executioner of a poor distressed animal. I hoped that the

raccoon had moved on to another part of the park, but as I approached the

base of the tree, I could hear him hissing and snarling with that particular

rattle that is peculiar to raccoons. He was still there. There was enough

light from the nearby yard lamp to make out his furry shape and bright eyes.

His white gnashing teeth were also visible, but worst of all, I could detect a

cascade of white foam drooling down over his lower jaw, a sure sign of

distemper or rabies. “Well, there’s nothing for it, he’s just going to have to

go,” I said to myself. I drew my pistol and assumed the two handed stance I

had been taught at the Police College. One quick, accurate, humane shot

should do it. With my arms stretched full length, I sighted along the barrel

and decided to put a round between his eyes and end the thing quickly. Who

was I kidding? When we took firearms training, I was the worst in the class.

I am convinced that the only way that I passed target practice was because

some of the shots from the other cadets training with me strayed onto

respectable spots on my target. I had the bad habit of wincing and closing

my eyes in anticipation of the bang—sort of a ‘now you see it, now you

don’t’ technique that was hard to overcome. Hopefully this little bugger was

close enough that I might be able to do the deed swiftly and successfully.

I resumed my firing stance, cocked my revolver and let fly in his

general direction. My first shot was well planned because it trimmed off a

large leafy branch about three feet above his head. This, of course, allowed

more light onto the scene and made my target more visible. “Now you’re

for it,” I thought as I fired my second shot and was pleased to see that it

struck the huge tree about two feet to his right. It startled the now really

pissed off raccoon into turning and facing me full on, presenting a much

better target area. I emptied all six chambers of my gun in this fashion

without really approaching his immediate vicinity. I was also making quite a

lot of noise, but I reloaded sheepishly, thankful again for the extra bullets in

my pouch.

Again I assumed the position, ready to restart the barrage. As I

squeezed the trigger, the gun sounded a dull ‘pop’ and I could actually see

the bullet leave the end of the barrel and arch to the ground about six feet in

front of me. It was a dud, and as I looked up into the tree I could tell that the

raccoon was losing all respect for me. In fact, he was climbing down the

trunk with his whole body shaking in a maddened tremor. He was much

closer now, so I fired off three shots in rapid succession. He was suddenly

very still as he clung to the tree and I breathed a sigh of relief. I blew the

smoke off the end of my pistol and put it in my holster. I grabbed the bag in

anticipation of his fall from the tree, but as I was straightening up I heard his

mad snarling resume. I had totally missed yet again and he had only been

playing possum, or raccoon as the case may be, and now he was coming for

me. My second to last shot went wild, but as he was about to bite the barrel

of my gun, I got off the headshot that I had originally intended. He departed

the world in a quick, almost painless fashion, and as I stuffed him in the bag

and looked at my watch, I realized that I had been at least half an hour

bagging my little friend.

It was dark as I walked the short distance back to the stable where

my Sergeant and the Superintendent waited. The Sergeant looked from the

Super to me and, slowly removing his pipe from his mouth, asked, “Did that

raccoon have a gun too?”

Sunnybrook Park

Prisoner Sandwiches

They’re just fried egg sandwiches; buttered white bread, egg hard over, the yolk broken and lots of salt and pepper, simple fare but much appreciated in my house.  I first encountered this delicacy over fifty years ago when I was working as a police cadet serving at 57 Division in downtown Toronto.

That location had the distinction of being the city’s sole repository for female felons. The building had the standard floor plan for lockups of the period. A large dank high ceilinged gymnasium-like area with a sizeable central portion encased in bars surrounded by individual small cells. At all the other stations in the city the bigger area was referred to as the “bull pen”; we called it the “cow pen“ or when there was a particularly large consignment of younger hookers the “heifer pen”.

When I first arrived at the division and heard these references I felt that those who were serving there were being vulgar and insensitive, particularly since they were dealing with the weaker sex. I wasn’t long learning that working with male prisoners was a walk in the park compared to looking after their female counterparts.  Never then and never since have I encountered a baser debauched violent segment of society, particularly those women destined for the “drunk tank”.  

I got my first clue of what was in store for me while parading for duty on my first evening shift. There was a long narrow room adjacent to the garage where all of us, constables and cadets alike, were lined up for inspection before hitting the streets. The regulations required that we all stand at attention in a long row, forearms raised with gun in one hand and memo book in the other. We had to hold that stance until the attending Sergeant finished his inspection and dismissed us. It was while we were suspended in this position that a paddy wagon backed into the garage and offloaded a cargo of some mature ladies of the night. The sergeant, distracted, failed to “say as you were “and so we were left hanging, no pun intended, as the women filed in. Encouraged by a boisterous grey haired veteran floozy, they each, in turn, groped our crotches and offered disparaging criticisms as they passed by. While I was being subjected to this indignity I turned my attention to a large framed print hanging on the wall in front of the line of smirking cops. It was a colourful cartoon print titled the “Ascent of Venus.”   It depicted several Keystone type cops carrying an aging stereotypical old time prostitute up jailhouse stairs. It sort of set the tone of the place.  Apparently, to survive and maintain my sanity in this environment I was going to have to develop a perverse sense of humour.

That initiation was a harbinger of things to come. The first time I was detailed to remain inside and monitor the cells I entered the area hoping to initiate a firm but fair and friendly rapport; this approach was short lived. As I got to the first individual cell and looked in, a woman who had been lying on the hard metal shelf that served as a bed threw the army blanket that had been covering her off revealing that she was totally naked. She then rushed towards the bars that separated us, grabbed hold and proceeded to perform a lurid dance. Astonished and embarrassed I beat a retreat and, red faced, went to the desk sergeant to report the incident. “Sergeant there’s a naked lady in there,” I stammered. Peering over his glasses with feigned concern on his face he replied,”You don’t say. Well, we can’t have any behaviour of that sort in an establishment like this. You better take me in there at once.” I escorted him in and after staring at the woman for some time he simply said “Yup she’s naked alright and she also seems to be double jointed.” Then he went away. Several more constables ventured in to watch her perform and establish the fact that she was indeed naked then one of them took me aside and whispered in my ear, “Grow up, sonny!”

I guess, after a time, I did. I got used to the dishevelled bruised bodies lying sprawled on the floor of the drunk tank. I became adept at ducking the spit and sometimes feces that were flung at me through the bars. I listened to what seemed like a whole new vocabulary of profanity, familiar words that somehow seemed different and dirtier when hurled from a woman’s mouth. Mercifully female minors were not exposed to that environment. There were facilities for juveniles across town and a room upstairs in the station for the more sensitive customers.

One my jobs was to maintain a constant flow of the thick bitter tasting coffee that was offered to the prisoners in the hopes that they would be sober enough to face the magistrate the following day. Since it was a bed and breakfast of sorts we also offered a limited menu to see them on their way to court in the morning. One fried egg sandwich and nothing else.

There was a Greek restaurant across the road from the station that catered the daily event. In truth the cuisine at the establishment was not totally unpalatable. When the orders were placed in the morning sometimes the number of sandwiches accidentally exceed the number of prisoners present and the cops would have to take up the slack. And that was where I acquired a fondness for Prisoner Sandwiches, as they were called, particularly if I could select ones that were not liberally sprinkled with ash from the cigarette that was ever present and hanging from the old chef’s mouth.

My wife Andrea was an early convert to this comfort food and one by one my kids have followed suit. You can’t order prisoner sandwiches by name at any restaurant and if you could explain and get a specially prepared substitute it wouldn’t taste quite like the ones I make at home. The watery pale yolked commercial eggs of those establishments don’t hold a candle to the ones produced by our free range chickens and to be fully appreciated the sandwiches need to be consumed in a kitchen warmed by a cook stove with just a hint of wood smoke wafting around and the air buzzing with family chatter.

The Bravest Man I Ever Met

David

Memories sometimes pop up in the strangest places. I haven’t thought of David for years but inexplicably, while reading Ernst Junger’s memoir “Storm of Steel’, visions of the man and something he did came back to me.

The line that sparked it all followed the author’s brief description of two small unremarkable soldiers who served with him in his German regiment in WW1. He said of them, “Even so, brave puny men are always to be preferred to strong cowards.”

David’s act of heroism wasn’t performed on a battlefield or in a life and death situation and there were very few witnesses besides myself. It all happened over forty years ago, in peacetime, in a horse paddock in a park near the center of Toronto.

In those days I had a riding school in that park and a large clientele. My students were , for the most part, young women and girls and they often had boyfriends hanging around watching them taking their lessons and working around the stable. These couples were the typical mix of pretty, bright eyed babes and handsome high school jocks but there was one exception. One girl, let’s call her Mary, had a most unusual suitor.  She was in her late teens; a buxom redhead with green eyes and a crop of freckles; not the sort to make the high school cheerleading team but attractive all the same.  Like fifty or so other girls she spent all of her spare time around the horses; helping with the grooming and mucking out. We lovingly called them “stable bums”.

On the surface Mary and David appeared to be a very unlikely couple. She was robust and athletic but he was just the opposite. He was only a couple of years her senior but looked much older.  He was overweight, wore thick horn-rimmed glasses, was soft and jowly and waddled around with a peculiar toed-out gate. He seemed to be sweating all the time and his lower lip was continually moist and drooping. Because of a severe asthmatic condition he had to watch Mary from a distance. Close proximity to the horses or the hay or straw would have him gasping and reaching for his inhaler. He was always dressed in a business suit, white shirt, formal tie and black highly polished shoes. Mary explained that he had been sequestered into his father’s insurance business at an early age and was required to keep up his appearance at all times.  His office hours must have been quite flexible because he would appear at the stables at odd hours during the day and evening. He was obviously in love with her but I couldn’t imagine her feeling the same about him. I assumed Mary saw him merely as a friend. I couldn’t picture anything more intimate than a handshake between the pair.

Despite his appearance David was a very intelligent jovial guy .He had become a fixture around the place but in truth I didn’t know him all that well. We only had the odd brief conversation while he watched moony eyed as his lady love bounced around the paddock during her lessons.  The term had yet to be coined but in all respects he was a nerd. A hell of a nice guy but a nerd all the same.

I always turned the school mounts out for a roll and a romp in the big paddock beside my barn in the evenings; they deserved it after a hard day’s work lugging people around in the riding rings and on the trails. One day after finishing a late supper I wandered down to the enclosure to make sure the horses were all right. They were not alright. A gang of motorcycle thugs had swept into the park parked their bikes and was staging an impromptu rodeo. Some of the leather clad goons were mounted on my horses bareback while others had the terrified animals stampeding around bucking and kicking. The bikers must have been very drunk or stoned to be doing what they were right beside the mounted police stable that shared the facility with me. As usual none of the cops seemed to be around- you can’t find one when you need one.  I shouted and shook my fist at them for a time but my feeble gestures just seemed to egg them on.

When one of the older horses tripped and fell down a large hairy guy in a Nazi helmet started kicking it to get it up.

That’s when I lost it.  I clambered over the fence and pounced on him. We rolled around in the sand with fists flailing and, for a while, I was giving a decent account of myself but then the rest of the gang noticed what was happening and stopped torturing the horses to join in the fray. Two or three of them held me down while the others took turns punching and kicking me. I got a few more licks in but I was toast and I knew it. Shortly, I would either be dead or a candidate for traction. That’s when it happened.  Something very heavy landed in a splatting heap on our tangle of arms and legs knocking the bikers off me.  The impact was such that at first I thought that one of the horses had spooked and stumbled over us.

When I was finally able to break free, give my head a shake and look around me, I saw the bikers high tailing it for their machines.  Only one person remained protectively draped over me.  

David, huffing and puffing, lifted himself to knees. His hair was tousled; his glasses were askew with one lens shattered. His tie hung loosely over a ripped collar and his jacket and trousers were covered with sand and horse manure. He leaned over and helped me to a sitting position and while we sat staring at each other two mounted policemen appeared over the rise behind the stable and gave chase to the bikers. The cavalry arrived but they were too late to be of any help.

The real hero of the day was David. When I asked him what had possessed him to take on the Hells’ Angels he said he didn’t really think about it. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

There are many brave men and women in organizations like the military, police forces and fire departments, but that’s what we expect them to be- that’s what we pay them for.

The true heroes are ordinary people like David who selflessly confront the odds when they feel they’re needed. For a moment I thought that he had done what he had to impress his Mary but as I looked around she was nowhere to be seen. Hopefully she already knew what I had just discovered about her boyfriend. I’ve often wondered if they stayed together. I like to think that they did.

The Old Man and The Pony

In 1953, for all intents and purposes, the old city of Toronto only stretched from the shores of Lake Ontario to the southern slopes of the Don Valley at a place called Hog’s Hollow. That was the last stop for the Young Street trolley and from that point northwards patches of urban squalor were just beginning to encroach onto the surrounding farmland.

When I was ten years old, our family moved onto a recently constructed cluster of suburbia a few miles beyond the city limits just north of Steels Avenue. Our subdivision was the first of its kind north of the city. All the houses were brand new white clapboard bungalows, “they were all made out of ticky tacky and they all looked just the same.”

The small country schools in the area needed to be expanded to accommodate all the city kids moving in and although the student population was a strange mixture of city slickers and local yokels we all seemed to get along, although my circle of were almost exclusively comprised of the farm kids. I spent most of my free time playing and helping with chores on the many functioning farms still holding on in the area.

At the time, there was a small convenience/general store located on the southeast corner of Steels Avenue and Young Street, not far from where we lived. It had been serving the farm community for years and shortly after we moved into the area the owner died and it became available for rent. My parents decided to try their hand at shop keeping and because I also spent a lot of time around the store I became even more involved with the farming community.

I recently went to the site of the old store and as I stood in the shadow of the high-rise buildings that now dominate the intersection, it was hard to visualize what it had looked like back when I was a kid. In those days there were a few businesses and houses on the east side of Young Street south of our store, but on the west side Holstein cattle still grazed in a huge pasture. Everything north of Steels, with the exception of our subdivision, was still farm country.

We only lived in the area and operated the store for a short time but I still have many vivid memories of the things I saw as my pals and and I would sit on the steps of the store sucking our purple popsicles and watching the traffic buzz by on the main artery out of the city.

One day something happened that has haunted me for years and I only recently have begun to understand what it was all about.

It was around noon on a warm summer day when two trucks pulled up on the wide shoulder beside the store. My friends and I watched as two men from the first enclosed van got out and opened the trucks back door. They disappeared inside then backed out dragging a shiny red governess cart by its shafts. It was after they had eased it on to the ground and went to the second truck that they really got our attention.

They dropped the tailgate down and revealed the prettiest piebald Shetland pony we had ever seen. The little horse stood impatiently snorting and pawing the truck bed while one of the men slipped in beside him and then backed him down the ramp. While one man held his lead shank the other retrieved a harness from the front of the truck then the two of them busied themselves debating strap lengths and hanging a brass studded leather harness on the little gelding. Shortly, a yellow cab pulled up and the taxi driver helped an ancient looking man out of the back seat. I say ancient because in those days almost all adults looked old to us but this man was definitely in the category of grandfather, if not great-grandfather.

While we watched, the truck drivers put the pony into the shafts and attached the traces. One of them stood at the pony’s head while the other loaded a series of small boxes from the trunk of the taxi, then helped the stiff old man up and through the back door of the cart.

The old man shifted the boxes around a bit then took a seat at the side of the cart and took up the reins, “Thanks, you can let him go now.” we heard him say, and then the truck drivers stood back.  The old man clucked the pony up and they trotted through the intersection and headed west on Steels Avenue.

They hadn’t traveled the length of a football field when for some reason the pony bolted. As the animal took the bit in his mouth and sprung into top gear we could see the old man attempting to stand and rein him in but there was no stopping him and before they got much further we saw the pony leap into the ditch overturning the cart and launching the old man into the bushes beside the road.

The truck drivers leaped into their vehicles and headed up the road toward the scene and we hoofed it after them. When we got close we could see the old man lying on his back and he wasn’t moving.  One of the truck drivers was attending to him while the other was attempting to cut an upside down and wildly thrashing pony out of his harness and get him out of the ditch.

My memory is not clear on what happened immediately afterwards but I do remember police cars and ambulances arriving and seeing the old man taken away on a stretcher. It was what I learned about the old man afterwards that has stayed with me all these years and has become so meaningful as I approach the age he must have been at the time.

The old man and the pony both survived the accident and after a brief stay in the hospital he took up lodgings at a farm very close to where the accident occurred. The Sheppards, a family I knew well because their youngest son was a friend of mine, took pity on the old man and offered him room and board while he convalesced. It was an especially good arrangement because they also had room in their barn for his pony.

My friends and I took it upon ourselves to make sure that the old man’s pony was well looked after while he was confined to a bed in his upstairs bedroom. We fed, watered and exercised the little animal- with the emphasis on his exercise. We took turns cantering the little pinto around the field behind the barn till we had the little fellow run ragged. If it happened that he was put back into harness it would have been very unlikely that he could have mustered up enough energy to run away again. As it turned out that wasn’t to be an issue because one day we arrived at the barn to discover that our pretty pony was gone and a dull looking skinny old bay mare about the same size was in his place. Les Ehrlick, a Toronto horse dealer who had sold him the first pony, had taken pity on the old man and found him the quietest pony in the province as a replacement. The mare wasn’t as much fun as the sparky little gelding but we kids continued to feed and water her.

After a couple of weeks when the old man was able to get around a little better, he started spending his mornings in the stable sitting on a pile of straw bales watching his new pony. We would meet him when we came to do our chores and although we tried to be friendly with him, he didn’t respond to us the way we had hoped. He seemed lost in his thoughts most of the time and almost unaware of our presence.

Although he never spoke more than a few words to us I often heard him talking to Mr. Sheppard when they were together in the barn and that’s when I heard his story. I absorbed all I heard and stored it away in the recesses of my ten-year-old brain not really understanding the significance of what he was revealing.

Mr. Marsden was born on a farm in Yorkshire, England, but as a very young man he was forced to leave his home and take a job in a factory in one of Britain’s industrial centres. He did a stint in the army during WW1 and then immigrated to Canada where he once again took up the lunch box and started working on the production line of an appliance manufacturer in Toronto. He spent thirty years at the same job day after day living alone and, for the most part, keeping to himself. During all those years of loneliness and drudgery he harbored a secret ambition. When he was a boy in Yorkshire, peddlers in pony carts used to travel around from farm to farm selling small dry goods and he was always in awe of the wonderful free way of life they led. Although he realized how impractical the idea was in this new day and age, the boy in him refused to let it go.  

After he retired he spent most of his time in his room on the third floor of a boarding house or feeding pigeons in the park. Several years of this drab existence passed until one morning he woke, shaking off the mist of a rapidly developing dementia and determined to fulfill his dream. He purchased his pony and cart and acquired a selection of small goods and arranged to have them delivered to the city limits.

I heard his story but when I was a boy, it was just a story, with no moral and no lesson to be learned.

His story ended one morning when the two of us showed up to do chores and found him sitting in his usual spot.  It was a while before we realized he was dead. We ran for Mr. Sheppard and then hung around for the rest of the morning while the police and then the undertaker’s van came.

It was a day that an old man’s impossible dream was put to rest, and two boys had their first unforgettable experience with death.

   

The Augean and Other Disasters (Part 1)

Where there are horses there is bound to be horse manure, there’s no avoiding it. One of the first problems I encountered when I started my riding school was disposing of the stuff. My stable was located in a park in the heart of Toronto, and for a time, the mushroom growers on the outskirts of the city were willing to haul the dung away at no charge. That arrangement didn’t last very long, however. The Health Department intervened, demanding that all of the refuse from my barn, and others in the city, be contained in sanitary bins that would be required to be removed and replaced several times a week. It was an expensive proposition and I immediately began to try and figure out a way around it.

I was stumped for quite a while until one day when I was eating my lunch in the kitchen and listening to the TV blaring away in the living room. Johnny Mathis was singing the theme song to the cartoon series “Hercules.” I didn’t mind the song, or the show, but when that annoying little centaur named Newton started screeching “Herc! Herc!’ I couldn’t stand it any more and started down the hall to turn the set off. That’s when it hit me!

I remembered the stories of the trials of Hercules - and in particular the one about his task of cleaning out the massive Augean Stables. As I recalled, it was the fifth task that King Eurystheus had set for him; he was given only one day to muck out an enormous barn. At first the job had seemed impossible, but true to form, Hercules came up with a solution. He bashed holes through opposing walls of the stable, diverted a river to flow through the opening and, Voilà! the poop was gone.

The wheels began to turn immediately. My first thought (immediately dismissed) was that I might make use of the Don River; it flowed by only a few yards from my barn. But, no, I had to be practical, and it wasn’t until I was seated in a location where some of my most inspired thoughts come to me that I came up with the perfect solution. Actually it happened immediately after I flushed and was listening to all that water gurgling down the drain.

My barn had recently been hooked up to the city’s sewer system, so why not create a toilet for the horses too? Yes that was it. It wouldn’t really be a toilet as such, the intense training I would have to put the horses through would make that prohibitive. No, what I had in mind was an immense flushing system that would carry the manure away from behind the horses' stalls and flush it down the city’s drain.

The barn had originally been designed to house dairy cattle and as a consequence had gutters running along behind the stalls. When we converted the space for horses we simply planked them over. As my plan began to develop I realized that these cement flumes could be an important component of the flushing system I was proposing.

My final plan (and I use the term loosely because I never really plan anything I just start doing it and allow it to happen) was to cut access holes into the gutter behind the horses and install a series of high pressure water nozzles to drive the manure out of the barn and into the sewer. The actual feces would not pose a problem, but I knew that the straw I used to bed the horses would probably clog up the system so I didn’t even try to use it. The ideal bedding would have been fine sawdust, but none of that was available, so I decided to try wood chips. I located what I needed in Quebec and had a boxcar load shipped in.

It took me a couple of weeks of tinkering to get ready but finally I had the horses standing in the sweet smelling shavings and all systems were go. I opened the main water valve and the stable men started shovelling the manure into the gutter. Wood chips and dung began flowing toward the entrance to the sewer, where I had placed a battery of super high-pressured nozzles to whisk the slurry on its way. It was working like a charm and in half the time it normally took to muck out the stables we were finished and congratulating ourselves.

We settled in to using the system twice a day and I was so proud and pleased with myself that I went next door to the police stable to try to talk Inspector Johnson into using my invention.

About a week later I was sitting in my kitchen pondering the possibility of patenting my idea when a man in city uniform appeared at my door. He was very polite about it but he informed me that he and his crew were busy trying to unclog a section of sanitary sewer line approximately two miles in length. He said that the offending matter appeared to be horse manure and wood chips and wondered if I knew anything about it. While I remained silent trying to formulate a suitable lie he went on to say that if his crew had not found and relieved the blockage in time, it might have bunged up half the toilets in North York. The evidence was pretty compelling so I decided to ‘fess up and throw myself on his mercy. After a long conversation and a commitment to give free riding lessons to each of his four grandchildren, we were back to shovelling shit... but I heard no more about it.

Tuffy

What the hell was that? It feels like a wad of paper under my bare foot but as I tilt my rocker forward again and look down, the wad of paper has turned into a pile of fluffy green feathers. My God, it looks like Tuffy, our parakeet, only a lot flatter. I reach down and cup him in my hand and his little head droops to one side and one eye stares blankly back at me. Oh Tuffy, what have I done? I feel your little heart beating under my thumb and for a moment I think you might be all right but the faint throbbing has stopped now and I guess you are a goner. I know I should be feeling sad and guilty, old pal, but I’m not. I’m just mad as hell at you. It’s your own damned fault. If you hadn’t been such a sick little pervert, this never would have happened. Your disgusting foot fetish has finally caught up with you. How many years have I put up with you incessantly humping my big toe when you thought I wasn’t looking?  How many times have I been tickled to consciousness while trying to nap in front of the TV only to wake to find you puffing bravely away on one of my lower digits and leaving heaps of regurgitated bird seed as a form of payment? I know you were lonely and were desperately looking for something that approximated a mate, but for God’s sake, Tuffy, my big toe? C’mon! Anyway that’s all over now, pal, your time has come, you are no more, you have passed, you have kicked the bucket, you are deceased, you are no longer with us. All well and good for you, old buddy, you are at peace now but I’m the one who has to break the news to Andrea. She’s out in the kitchen visiting with her friend, Frances. I don’t dare tell her now. They’re both saps for animals and Frances is worse than she is. No, I’ll have to wait ‘till she’s alone. You never know how she is going to react. I don’t even like riding in the car with Andrea, she’s always making life threatening swerves to avoid hitting small animals and if I leave her on her own, every other trip will see her bringing home a stray of some kind.

All of our animals are foundlings or give-aways, even you are - I mean, were - Tuffy. I suppose your original owner will have to be informed, too.  I’ll leave that up to Andrea.  Maybe she’ll put it off for a while, like she did when that obese cat, Tommy, suddenly died of heart attack after just a week or two with us. We knew how much he meant to the sad girl who had to give him up and didn’t have the heart to tell her so, over the next several years, whenever she phoned to see how her pet was getting on; we simply pretended he was still alive. I was always on the lookout for a lookalike cat in case we got a surprise visit.  It was an act of kindness and we fooled the unsuspecting girl, Tuffy, but there’s no way I’m going to fool Andrea about you.  

She still bugs me about the time I let her African Grey Parrot escape. That was easier to handle than this will be because she was up in Montreal at the time and I was holding the fort down here in the Valley. I know I shouldn’t be comparing you to that parrot from hell--you were just a trifle weird and confused but he was a holy terror.  I don’t know how we put up with him. Everybody except Andrea had to wear hard hats around while he was granted freedom of the air on his daily exercise flights. It was that or risk being dive bombed, getting raked by his talons and the hell pecked out of our heads. It wasn’t even safe at the breakfast table.   Sometimes we would forget he was lurking out there somewhere until someone screamed, “in-coming!” and we would have to dive for cover.  Andrea cried like a baby when I called her and told her that Toby had absconded.  I swore that I’d tried everything I could to catch him but she insisted that I have another go at it even though we both knew he would only come to her. I went along with it when she insisted that I record her over the phone doing her famous birdcall. Then she ordered me to parade around the neighbourhood gawking up into trees, cage in hand with my ghetto blaster screeching, "Here, Toby, here, Toby! Come to Momma, Toby!”  It wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t also insisted on me wearing one of her old blonde wigs during the search. Some of my neighbors are still looking funny at me. I finally captured that old parrot; actually he turned himself in when the weather got colder. I can still see the old bugger sitting on that icy window sill with a bent beak, his feathers ruffled and looking like an owl or some other large bird of prey had recently had his way with him. He was a beaten bird and when I went out to grab him, he surrendered without a fight.  As it turned out, maybe he should have extended his hiatus a little more because shortly afterwards he was fatally dispatched after rudely waking up our beagle, Dukie, with a peck on the dog’s nose.  “Let sleeping dogs lie.” 

No, Tuffy, old boy, you weren’t like him; there was nothing dangerous about you. Granted you were a bit of an embarrassment to the family and we always tried to make sure that nobody was going around barefooted when we had guests visiting. On the few occasions that you made advances on unsuspecting strangers, we always interceded, made excuses and covered up for you. “Don’t ask and don’t tell.” But now you’re dead, my sick little friend, and I have no beagle to blame. It’s all my fault.  I suppose I could stuff your little body in the toe of Andrea’s rubber boot and when she pulled it on she’d think she did the deed. No, it could be days before it rains again. Hey, you’re starting to stiffen up a bit. Maybe I could wire your little feet to the roost in your cage. It could be a day or two before anyone notices and I’ll be away in Halifax by the time the shit hits the fan. No, that wouldn’t work either;  you’re much too wide in profile and too narrow head-on to be convincing. 

Maybe I should nip off to town and give Andrea a call from there? No! That’s ridiculous. I’ve got to be a man and face the music. How bad can it be? Who am I kidding. I know how bad it can be. There’s going to be hell to pay, Tuffy. Anyway that’s the kitchen door closing. Frances must be leaving. Andrea will be alone now. I guess I better go in and ‘fess up.

The Nicest Little Whore House on Pembroke Street

     Kids will be kids no matter where they live or who their parents are. As a ten-year-old boy living in the slums of Toronto some of my best friends came from families whose occupations were not always on the right side of the law- but in our little world that didn’t seem to matter. 

     Of my three closest friends, there was Marvin whose father was a receiver of stolen goods and kept a still in his basement, Nick, whose father was a bootlegger with mafia connections, and last but not least, there was Terry whose mother owned a 'special' kind of rooming house across the road from where I lived.  

     As kids growing up in a notorious area on the verges of Cabbage Town we saw a lot - but at our age, understood very little. 

     Terry and I, like the other kids in the neighbourhood, spent a lot of time participating in all the normal local after-school pursuits like snaring pigeons in Allan Gardens or dragging big magnets up and down the back lanes seeing what rusty treasures we could snag. 

     As kids will, we had sleepovers. Terry spent nights at my house but I liked it best when we stayed at his place. It was more fun.  His house was a real hive of activity. He had several aunts who lived in the rooms upstairs and there were all kinds of interesting men coming to visit them. It was as if there were a party going on all the time and, best of all, his aunts were always subsidizing our banana splits at the Chinese restaurant on the corner if we promised to stay there for an hour or so.

     After Terry, Nick and I joined the boy scouts we got into the habit of going to Terry’s house after our Wednesday night meetings to have some hot chocolate and finish off the evening with a game of monopoly. 

     We always played at a table located in a kitchen at the rear of the house. It must have been disconcerting for the visiting men to see us huddled around the table in our green shirts and blue shorts with our Stetsons tilted back on our heads. They would come strutting down the stairs from the second floor with cocky satisfied looks on their faces but when they spied our little scout troop they’d quickly hustle off looking confused and guilty. 

     Terry’s aunts sure had a lot of friends coming and going and strangely many of them were Chinese. I felt that that was a little unusual but I had become accustomed to seeing unusual things around Terry’s house. One day when I was about to start up the stairs to the second floor bathroom I was confronted by a legless man swinging down the stairs towards me using his arms to propel himself in a sort of hopping motion.  I say legless but actually his body seemed to end at the base of his rib cage and the way he moved put me in mind of some sort of giant insect.  I returned to the kitchen and told Terry about what I had seen but he just shrugged and explained that the man’s name was John and that whenever the circus was in town he came and visited his aunts. Then Terry pulled a fist full of free carnival tickets out of his pocket and waved them in my face saying, “ Look what he gave me.”

     Terry and I, and two younger boys who also lived in the house, took the streetcar to the CNE the following day and had a great time on the midway. We ended our day touring the freak show spending most of our time in front of 'Kandar The Human Torso' with whom we exchanged knowing winks. 

     There was always something exciting happening at Terry’s house. One evening the three of us were sitting quietly in the kitchen after our scout meeting when we heard a loud bang and a crash as the front door caved in. Then a man came running down from the second floor taking the stairs two at a time. He was given chase by several uniformed policemen who were pouring through the gap where the front door had been. They all made their way down the hall past where we were sitting - first the man from upstairs and then the cops in hot pursuit.  The fugitive brushed passed and made it out the back door, then leapt over the porch rail and ran through the back yard. We leaned over the table to protect the game board as the police men, looking like a version of the Keystone Cops elbowed their way passed us, crowded through the back door then bunched up on the narrow porch. Two of the officers drew their guns and fired several warning shots then the whole group clambered down the back stairs and continued the chase. Nick and I got up from our chairs and watched the group disappear in the distance but Terry remained at the table calm and unimpressed. I think he used the opportunity to move his marker to a better location on the game board. 

     In truth it wasn’t always fun and games around the place.  One day as we sat on the front porch we saw a cop chasing a man down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. The policeman was losing ground so he stopped and threw his nightstick at the guy who was getting away. He missed but a garbage man who was perched levelling trash on the top of a dump truck parked by the curb saw what was going on and decided to intervene.  As the man passed him he swung his heavy shovel down and struck the fleeing man on the head stopping him literally dead in his tracks. We watched as the policeman and the truck driver leaned over the motionless man while a puddle of blood gradually formed around his head. Shortly a little Italian lady from a nearby house came over, shoved them aside then made a little tent with a newspaper and placed it over the man’s his lifeless face. 

The saddest thing that ever occurred at the house and the main reason I stopped spending time there occurred during the summer of 1955. 

     Terry and the other kids at the house had been away for about two weeks when one afternoon he showed up at my place with tears in his eyes telling me that David, an eight-year-old son of one of his aunts had drowned while swimming. They had been vacationing at Wasaga Beach where his mother kept a summer cottage. Terry often invited me to join them there -I never went and hearing about what happened to poor little David I was glad I hadn’t been there to witness it. 

     I attended the funeral for a short time but after seeing the little fellow dressed in a tux lying in a small coffin looking more like a puppet than a person I couldn’t take it. I can still see Terry’s aunts dressed in unaccustomed black, clustered around the tiny coffin weeping.

       I didn’t know what to say or how to act so I just walked away vowing never to attend another funeral- and with a couple of exceptions I never have. I didn’t blame anybody at the house for the boy’s death- the kids there were watched over more closely than I was. Terry’s mother and aunts, when not engaged in their nocturnal pursuits, were normal caring people but somehow I couldn’t face being in the house anymore. Shortly after the boy's death we moved from the neighbourhood. 

     As I grew older, I of course realized what had been going on in Terry’s house- you can’t have lived on Pembroke Street and passed the Spot One Grill on Dundas Street every morning on the way to school, and not have known. During the late 1950’s, that corner was the epicentre of Toronto’s flesh trade, surpassing even the infamous Jarvis district. 

     Terry’s mothers' place was not the only residence on our block that sported a red light in the window, but I can testify from personal experience that it was the nicest little whorehouse on the street.