DAD HITS THE DITCH…BLAMES THE ROAD
“Fix your goddamn road…hear me….FIX YOUR ROAD!!”
‘Red! Red! Be careful, you’re weaving all over the road.”
“have to miss the pot holes…could break a spring. If that son of a bitch would fix his road, I wouldn’t have play Dodge ‘Em all the way to the farm. FIX YOUR ROAD!!”
“Red! You Fathead!* You’re off the road…Yiiiiii…we’re going to turn over in the swamp.”
“Get out .. everybody out.”
“Elsie…get out my door….not yours”
“I can’t…I cannot move.”
“Why not?”
“High heels have gone through the floorboards….pinned me here.”
“Take off your shoes…crawl out…not that way…boys can see top of your nylons…girdle clips…be more graceful can’t you?”
{*Calling Dad a Fathead was the closest Mom every got to swearing. Dad made up for this lack of obscenities however.}
“Slip up the road and get Frank or Ted to come down to haul us out.”
That little adventure was just taken for granted when driving with Dad on the Fifth Line. For some perverse reasons he held farmers accountable for the roads in front of their farms. As if we were still living in pioneer times. And he loved to yell obscenities at them. Most of them knew him and probably let the words slides of them like water off a duck’s back. In this case we had to get cousin Ted Freeman to bring the tractor down with a chain to get us out of the ditch.
turned out to be a good chance to laugh at Dad’s expense.
Dad was never easy to control. Impossible really.
We bought the 1953 Meteor for $400 in 1958. None of us could drive…neither Dad, mom, Eric nor myself. By 1958 every one we knew seemed
to have a car so Eric and I sleuthed out the Meteor from a used car dealer on Bloor. We believed his sales pitch.
“Great car…the owner developed gangrene in his right leg and cold no loner drive. This car just came on the lot today but won’t be here long.” Eric and I believed his sales pitch.
“Mom, we should buy this car. Can you find $400?”
Mom was the stable part of our family. She made her money as a seamstress in various garment factories and sweatshops in west Toronto. And she saved what she could. Dad had a good job…high paying tire builder at Dunlop Tire Corpoation…skilled..but he never saved a cent. Plowed his money and any he could beg, borrow or steal down the throats of race horses across Ontario and even into New York State’s Batavia Downs. I thought the word Garnishee was just a normal deduction from wages. Later we came to understand that Finance Companies had long arms that could reach right into the accountants office at Dunlop’s. Dad treated debt just like he treated the farmers on gravel roads. People that had money should be willing to lend a bit to him. Non refundable loans. To Eric and I, this was normal. Adventures with finance companies need a whole chapter. “Bastards have more money than they know what to do with…” Should make you laugh or cry. We never could understand why people would say “those poor boys” because we never felt poor. Dad loved us although he never said so. Love was a word used by sissies. But we knew…as did Mom. We felt we were part of a great adventure…new surprise every day.
The car gave Dad more freedom. Which unleashed even more weird behaviour.
Ten few years later when Marjorie and I were married we were at the farm and entrusted Dad with the kids while we went shopping . When we returned a couple of hours later. There they were…all three of them chomping and puffing on White Owl Invincible cigars.
Not a bad thing really for neither Kevin nor Andy became smokers….except of course for the odd cigar now and then.
alan skeoch
Jan. 2018