Year: 2020

alan skeoch

Dec.  2020

EARTHY is the best word I can you to describe those visits to the Skeoch farm on

the southwest corner of Fergus.  Earthy for sure.  “Would you fancy a beer, Alan?”

And Uncle Norman would lead the way to the barn stable where he kept a case

of Molson’s Golden tucked  under the hay of the first manger.  Why there?

Because Norman’s sisters had ‘taken the pledge’ so to speak.   Temperance

people.   Nice people…warm, hearty, educated, informed, leaders.  All of  this

including  the deep belief that beer and  other alcohols were a blight on the

country.   

That was a good thing.  Kept visitors out in the barn where stories always

seemed richer than  around the kitchen table.

Left to Right:   The  Skeoch Manure spreader, long retired but still admired,  then  Uncle Norman Skeoch (my Dad’s youngest brother),

the Jake Raison (first husband of cousin Jean Skeoch…Jake played box Lacrosse), Bruce Skeoch, Hubert Jim Skeoch (brothers from

the Skeoch farm on the North east side of Fergus), and finally Long John Skeoch … possible  to play dominoes  on his pants.

HOTTER THAN A PEPPER SPROUT

Jake and cousin Jean got married in Mimico.  One of the best weddings I ever attended.  All the Skeoch men were there in the back rows

of the church while the Skeoch women were attentively listening to the minister at the front.   My brother, Eric, sat  beside me for

a  while then he just disappeared.  Uncle Archie or Uncle Norman had reached under the pew, grabbed him by the ankle and

hauled  him in a game of  ‘pass the kid’  to other uncles and hangers on until Eric  got close to the women when he was released.

What a wedding.  Uncle Art and Aunt Mary and the Rawsons had rented a hall not far from the church.  It had a  kitchen 

walled  off from the main hall using thick paper board.  I know it was paper  board because Uncle Ernest (who  was really a cousin)

came smashing through the wall … pushed  hard by Dad (Arnold  Skeoch)  as they argued  about politics, or sports, or anything

worth arguing about.  In my mind I still see  his body as a kind of ‘cut out in paper board’ which made  a new door to the kitchen.

Aunt Elizabeth, Aunt Greta,  Aunt Lena and  mom  acted  like mother ducks protecting ducklings.  They were determined that

the children  should  not enter the kitchen while the discussion was happening.  Someone had got beer into the hall.

Uncle Ernest’s wife, Aunt Ayleen, had the warmest laugh  of anyone I had ever met.  She was an Arawak

from the Caribbean…loved us…she was a  hugger.   I don’t know how she

reacted when her husband smashed through the wall.  I do remember, however, that Ernest and Ayleen drove

mom, dad and us home that night.  Laughing. No hard  feelings.  No.  I do  not know who paid  for the wall.

What a  great wedding…”Hotter than a pepper sprout” but eventually ‘the fire went out.”

See Hubert Skeoch next to long John.  he was in the air force in  World War II.  Somehow he

got his teeth knocked out and they were replaced with some kind of plate.  He would swirl 

the plate around  in his mouth for the Amusement of Eric  and me when he lived with

us at 18 Sylvan  Avenue.  He hated the name Hubert…wanted us to call him Jim…which

we never did.

Long  John Skeoch and I  got the unpleasant job of being the executors of the Norman  Skeoch estate.  

We presided over the selling of the Skeoch farm and  all the equipment.  Norman  left the farm to all

his brothers and sisters  which was the death knell of the farm.  Had to be sold.  Sad  ending.  Wish I had the sense

to buy that manure spreader.  

Bruce Skeoch  was the historian of the bunch.  Father to Lloyd and Vernon.  He Kept the records as best he could.   The Skeoch women kept

a lot of the records as well.  When i showed an interest Aunt Elizabeth loaned  me the letters sent back

and forth to Scotland  in the 1840’s .  I laboured  long and hard transcribing them.  Maybe I got a little to 

close to the truth behind the Skeoch  migration.  Aunt Elizabeth got them them back.

alan skeoch

Dec. 2020

EPISODE 204    TTC LOST ARTICLES  AUCTION SALE

alan skeoch

Dec. 2020

Dad did  not buy presents.  Well, not quite true, one year he bought Eric  and me

a Red Rider BB gun and a long-playing portable record player.  We got them 

unwrapped and later discovered he was  able to persuade some store to sell

them if he put a dollar downpayment.  The rest of the costs was up to us…actually

up to mom as usual.  

That probably sounds terrible to readers who had a more normal family if such

ever really existed.   We took it in our stride.  You already know that the BB gun

only existed  for 1 day and  was then smashed against the Manitoba  Maple tree

in our backyard to the relief of us  all.  We sat the records player on the cedar

chest in the only bedroom in our house.  We had a nice stack  of old 78 rpm records

to feed the machine.  These also only lasted  a short time.  Eric sat on them…smashed

them all to hell.  Or maybe I sat on them.  Forget who but remember the shards

of broken records.

No one ever bought mom a  Christmas  present.  Never occurred to us.  She wrapped

presents  for us though which  was expected.  One year she got upset at this

one way  gift giving. “Does  no one ever buy a gift for me?”  That made Eric and

I suddenly think about reciprocal  giving and  we tore up to the furniture store

and bought her an electric table lamp with a base full of curves.  She was touched.

Put the lamp on the little  table beside her bed couch in the living room.  Rather garish

but she treasured it.  We felt justified in taking her gifts after that.  I think it cost

Eric  and I about $7….all our spare cash from the Toronto Star paper route which

paid us  half a cent per 3 cent paper.

No one really felt bad about this one way gift giving.  Even mom was  not disturbed except that one time.  Our big Christmas presents

for a couple of years was  the TTC lost goods auction sale at a run down store on Queen Street West.  All year long

the TTC  conductors  turned in lost articles to the transport officials.  Piles of them.  Then, sometime around

mid  December, the unclaimed  articles were dumped into huge cardboard boxes and auctioned off to whoever

attended the auction.  

Dad, Eric and  I were enthusiastic bidders.  Limited funds though.  But eventually we were able to get a big box

of things nobody wanted.   We kept the box closed until Christmas Eve or near that day.   Then dad  sat on the

couch that mom slept on…adjusted  his glasses…and opened  the box.  The box was so big that it would fit

a kitchen sink.  This was no tiny box holding a pair of socks.   This  was an immense box  of lost articles.

A Treasure trove.

What do you suppose people forget on the streetcar?   Take a guess.  You are right.  There were usually a

few umbrellas…some working, others bent so badly they would  not unfurl.  The umbrellas were the first

thing pulled from the box.   Dad looked up…amused with each treasure.  Then there were gloves…lots

of gloves.  Most of them female.  Some in pairs…others singles. “These are for you Methusalum.” And mom

began to collect a pile of gloves.   Next were the scarves.  Again most of them were women’s apparel but

a few were suitable for Dad.  He wrapped them around his  neck.

In this  picture, however, Dad  had reached the near bottom of the box and he pulled  out a pair of

pants.   How could anyone lose their pants in the street car?  “Someone got off the street with his

bare ass to the wind,” said Dad  with his amused expression.  Deadpan expression. Not laughing out loud but an  expression

that made the rest of us howl.

There were other things…empty purses,  wallets,  hats…but that pair of pants took the cake that

one year.

A lot of  Christmases  have gone by now.  Lots of  presents have been exchanged.  Sometimes

the pile of presents make the Christmas tree seem  small.   Some great presents.

But to my mind this Christmas  of  the year 2020 could never compare with the Christmas

of 1953 or 1954 when Dad, Eric and I hauled that huge five or ten dollar box of umbrellas

and mismatched socks home to 455 Annette Street on the TTC streetcar and trolley bus.

Mom got most of the stuff…gloves, scarves, purses.   But dad got the pants which he never 

wore but held  up for us to see.   We could imagine some poor sucker getting  off the

streetcar with his “bare ass to the wind” as dad said in his usual colourful language.

alan skeoch

Dec. 24, 2020

EPISODE 203     ELSIE AND RED  SKEOCH…PARENTS

alan skeoch

DEc. 2020

If you are easily offended stop reading now…wait for another episode…avoid this episode

“NOW,  Kevin, let me tell you how to smoke a good cigar.

First you nibble the round end…bite off a small chunk and spit it out…anywhere.

Next  you remove the label…White Owl  Invincible…expensive cigars.

Next  you lick the cigar like  it is a popsicle…get the taste of the cigar leaves…moisten  the cigar.

Next  you get a good wood match, strike it on your Jeans and  put the flame to the open end.

Next  you take a puff..couple of  puffs…not so much that you choke.

Next  you breathe out the cigar smoke before it gets too deep in your lungs.

Next  you now know how to smoke a fine cigar.”

A fine  cigar is a showpiece.”

(*Avoid getting judgmental.  Both boys do not smoke  ,..except for a cigar in memory of  Dad on rare occasions…very rare)

And neither do they  drink very much.  Now men with their own families.)

Life can be very strange.  We thought everyone had a mother snd father

similar to ours when we  were small.  The older we  got the more we

realized the Skeoch – Freeman  sets of grandparents were very different.

Both sets marvellous.

But the one thing we never appreciated was the way Mom held everything

together.  We took her for granted.  Being taken for granted is a rather backhanded

compliment.  She  seemed to like it that way.  No hugging  and  kissing.   Just the

warm  feeling that no matter what went wrong in our lives our home was

the safest, most forgiving, place.   

Mom, as I have mentioned, was a seamstress.   She could make  a sewing machine

do wondrous things. Her income came  from the sweatshops of Toronto.  For Eaton’s

she  made dresses as advertised in the Eaton’s catalogue and was  told “make the  front

look nice…do not worry about the back.”  

So mom worked with other women.  Lots of them.  Eric and I felt we had dozens of mothers

because mom made sure we met all her friends who seemed to love  us…like Joyce Bannon

and Annie Smith in the picture with Mom and  Dad.  Her friends all gave  us boxes of chocolates

each Christmas.   So we  lived in a circle of women.  Not men.   Dad was the only man.

Which leads me to one  of the most endearing stories about him.  I may have told this

story before but it is worth hearing again and  again.

Mom and dad lived in a rooming  house at the time…house full of women machine operators.  Dad was

the only man.  Which he did not particularly like.  “Too many goddamn women.”   Goddamn

was one  of  his favourite words as was ‘son of a bitch’ and ‘bastard”.   Manly, right?

Well  dad arrived home one night and found Joyce in the apartment with mom…I was

a baby in the crib.   Dad did not like this.  He had to do something to assert his

manly nature.  Ahah!   The radio…a big floor model.  Dad went over to the radio

and said loudly.  “Look at this Mathooz, I can write my name in the dust.”

Then Joyce piped up with one of the best Zingers I have every heard.  “Oh, Red,

isn’t it wonderful to have an education?”   

We have told that story over and over in our family.  So many times that 

even Dad gets a grin on his face.

A weird thing happened a few years ago when  I was asked to be the

guest speaker at the University of Toronto Women’s club.  I thought the women

would enjoy stories about Dad.  I was wrong.  There was a dead silence

most of the time.  A silence that got deeper and deeper with each

story.  At the end, my high school French teacher whispered to me.

“You poor boy!”

She missed the point completely.  Mom and dad were terrific people who

kept Eric and i feeling lucky to have such interesting  parents.

Here is the opening of that speech.

“Ladies, my father, Red Skeoch, loved nicknames.  He  never called us Alan

or Eric.  Most often  he referred to us this way.  “I have two sons, one is

a gutsy bugger and the other is as stupid Joe’s dog.”   This was flattery.

Dad spoke in opposites a lot of the time.  He called me a ‘goddamn fool’

most of the time which meant he like me.  I knew that.  Was I the gutsy

bugger or the son that was stupid as Joe’s dog?   My brother when

he became a teen ager called Dad up on that term.

“Dad, that expression ‘stupid as Joe’s dog’ makes no sense.  Just how

stupid was Joe’s dog?”

Dad got a gun on his face that was a mile wide. He  had been waiting years

for that question.

“Eric,  Joe’s dog was so stupid  he jumped over nine bitches to screw his own shadow.”

That was the introduction to my speech.  No one laughed.   And I still had 40 or 60

minutes to speak.  So I kept the stories flowing.  And the silenced deepened.

Hence the term “You poor boy”.  

Marjorie commented that it was unlikely  I would be asked back to speak again.

And I have not.

Some of you have heard these stories before.  They are worth repeating.

Mom and dad were so goddamn human.  Makes me cry.

So many more stories.  Outlandish  But, oh, so human.

I only ever brought one of my girlfriends home.  That was Marjorie.  She and dad got along perfectly.  His

extremes of behaviour were accepted.  Once he knew that there was nothing Marjorie  could do wrong.

She had  to give up trying to breast feed our boys because dad showed up at our house every day… it seemed.

I think Dad  liked  Marjorie more than he liked the horses where he blew all his money.  And when

Marjorie showed an interest in the racetracks  of southern Ontario, dad thought she was a perfect

person.   

alan skeoch

Dec 2020

P.S/  “Should I send this or not, Marjorie?”

“The only part I do not like is that definition of Joe’s dog…crude”

“Dad would never have said that in your presence.”

“I guess Joe’s dog cannot be avoided…certainly removes

you from the Speakers Club.”

“I am not sure about that…look at what Trump has said.”

alan skeoch

Dec. 2020

Photo, cooking, arrangement, by Marjorie Skeoch who wishes you all a Merry Christmas!