Pigeons remind
me of my grandmother’s house. Her house was pigeon grey and shared
the same flock of pigeons with the church right next door. The white
clap board church with the black slate roof - every so often a bit of
slate would slip off and smash to pieces on the cobble stone
driveway; a friend of mine would gather these pieces and try to make
arrow heads, spear points and other projectile weapons. Slate weapons
to be used on the rats which inhabited the rubbish heap located in
the far corner of our immediate world - where we were never supposed
to go. The friend was the son of one of my grandmother's neighbours,
the Flaherty’s. His mother had the mustard yellow house closest to
the church driveway. I can not now remember his first name but he was
my friend and we were true boys together - catching grasshoppers in
coffee jars, making weapons and fighting wars, climbing in the
branches of the huge forsythia patch in the middle of the back lot,
playing with dead rats, being envious of each others toys,
discovering that old bones tasted like salt, teasing black dogs
chained to iron posts, exploring the abandoned house on the lot,
trying to steal grapes from the fruit mans wagon, making fun of the
rag man who came shouting "Rags, Rags, Rags" every Tuesday
morning.
I'm stuck
now. My memory races, there are so many things which haven't surfaced
since so many years....
There was a
woman down the back who taught dance to children out on her huge sun
porch, I absolutely refused, I wouldn't even go "just to watch".
There was Mrs. Macrey who lived next door
to my grandmother’s house; she shared a wall with my grandmother a
wall that if you sat in the kitchen and held a glass to your ear
against that wall you could hear Mrs. Macrey talking to herself or to
anyone else for that matter. She was my Grandmother's best friend and
mine too. Was it her husband or her brother - named Red who lived
with her? I used to sit outside with him, sometimes in his lap, he
was in a wheel chair and he'd tell me stories and give me candies,
hard sour candies sometimes flavours with sharp cinnamon. He was the
first person I knew who "went to heaven". He was a good
friend and loved him dearly and though I knew he was dead, I also
knew that as a child they wanted me to say he went to heaven. I
wanted to ask why did Red die? But instead I asked if I could go to
heaven and visit Mrs. Macrey's Red.
There was
another family who had the house on the corner of the main streets;
they had this strange thing called daughters. Daughters were
mysterious and odd, this I knew to be true from the way the grown-ups
spoke about the matter - always in hushed and serious tones,
whispering about the activities of these neighbours daughters as if
frightened that some one would hear what they were saying.
These houses
faced a main street and were separated from that street by a long
bank of weedy grass and many steps of concrete steps railed with
black iron pipes, steps that hardly any one ever used, even the post
man would drive up the drive way that paned out into a dirt track
which semi circled to each back door of the 5 houses. Down one end of
Thomaston Ave., still criss crossed by silver trolley tracks were
several mills and factories (Anaconda, Scoviles, The Buckle Shop
etc.) the other direction lead to a main intersection leading into
the centre of town or out to the interstate highways. My Grandmother
and I would sometimes sit on the front porch or sometimes in her
bedroom looking out the window - to watch the trucks for the mills go
by. At my age they were as if some wondrous beasts, strange huge
dinosauric animals which at times would screech and bellow as if
calling out to each other or else hiss and whine like giant cats and
some would belch out thick clouds of black smoke a mighty dragon
angry with the traffic on Thomaston Ave. My Grandmother was also of
the right age, hers being the age of horse drawn and trolley cars, so
that she too could be amazed at the antics of these fabulous beasts.
To go along with our ritual there were certain necessities: a box of
Mr. Salty pretzel sticks, a few bottles of Hires Root Beer or
Diamond Ginger Ale and of course a box of Dog Yummies for Tuffy the
copper coloured canine who shared this all with us....
My Grandmother
and Aunt taught me how to play cards and how to smoke, first corn
silk then Pall Malls, they taught me not to play with the gas stove
because if you turn it on without lighting it then the smell of the
gas would make you throw up and die. From them I also learned to love
dill pickles and ginger ale - that special kind of ginger ale -
Diamond, the kind that was so sharp and bubbly it brought tears to my
eyes and tickled my nose as I drank it. They also taught me how to
transfer the grasshopper from the little coffee jars into the large
pickle jars which they had set up for me on the back porch - and not
let them escape! All these important things for a boy to learn I
learned from them - like Superman, Rin Tin Tin, Popeye The Sailor
Man, Rice-A-Roni, wagon wheel pasta, and what happens when you put
the Silly Putty in your pants pocket rather than back into its little
plastic egg like you're supposed to. I received instructions on the
protocols for dealing with dogs, how dogs with bones from the butcher
are definitely not the same dog that wrestles with you in the back
yard - even though they look the same, each needed different handling
and no matter what the dog under no circumstances was it considered
good to pull its tail. I got my first cat from one of grandmother’s
friends and I loved it! My mother as a bit nervous about it but I was
very proud of the fact that despite my knee high years I already knew
to not make a big fuss over it if the cat should scratch you in the
activity of play. And more slate: - deep black slate basins cool
black even in the hottest summer, I would just run my hands along
them savouring the chill that seemed to
tingle all the way down to my toes on those days of wash when my
grandmother would remove the white enamelled metal covers preparing
to do the laundry. Then there was the large slate black board on
which I would "make fires" by rolling the chalk along it
creating flames and then smoke until the whole board eventually
covered by chalk dust....
The attic of
her house that I can never forget, that attic filled with strange
things. An attic of two landings and numerous rooms with things from
my father’s childhood, and from the grandfather I never knew
there were things from him up there too! Rooms, many rooms and
shadows and yellow glass windows veined with black strings of dust
some of which would break free and move under a power all its own as
if waving as if reaching wanting to wrap itself around you.... I
remember a slate back wooden chair angled by a gable window, a
chipped in the handle pitcher sitting in a matching pale green bowl
flecked with old gold paint bits, set there on the chair positioned
to catch the drop by drop of roof water long sense over flowed from
the pitcher into the bowl from the bowl a brown wormy liquid catching
the pale sunlight as if a sleeping copper eel coiled all the way to
the floor.
In the cellar was a
cask of fuel oil; I would sometimes go down with my
grandmother as she took a little can to fill with the oil, oil for
the space heater upstairs. I remember the red rail-road lantern which
she used to see her way down into a cellar of no electricity and
didn't she light that same lantern every night setting it out on the
back porch rail and why?
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