The Vegetable Plot Mystery

Tamara and I tried our hand at community gardening about ten years ago, when the city established a group of 24 plots in the adjacent park.  It was at the end of our street and we could see the garden being made from our 3rd floor balcony.  Upon learning a plot would only be $40, we bought in.  Without a car, however, or much money to spare, we didn't go the extra step of buying mulch and fertiliser.  It was a lark, anyway — our goal was to get our fingers dirty and join for the feel of the experience.

Wasn't much of a feel.  Though all the lots were taken, we hardly saw a soul there; when we did, they weren't particularly friendly.  We were living essentially on the edge of the city core, in a neighbourhood called Bankview.  I'd once lived in the next neighbourhood over, in the core, where the flat streets were pestered by drunks wandering home from the middle of Spring to nearly Halloween.  I used to remark that Bankview was quieter because the drunks couldn't climb the hill, which was true.  Apart from the drunks, though, the neighbourhood still had that grumbling white caucasian habit of wanting to be all grumpy together.

The city hadn't provided running water, so to water the plants we had to carry milk jugs of water, four litres each, over to the park.  Our apartment was a walk-up, so that meant five half-flights of stairs and then a journey of about 120 yards, for not much effect from one trip.  We hoped for rain which in Alberta never comes often enough, and lots of times we'd come to water the plot and find it bone dry.

Still, the onions, cabbages, carrots and especially the peas we planted were doing well by the end of August.  The peas were going crazy, having climbed all over the little metal trellises I'd bought for them, and we looked forward to a good fresh crop from the lot.

Unfortunately, coming home from work just before September began, and passing by the plot, I found that every carrot had been pulled up and every pea plucked.  I'd gotten some benefit from the onions, as I'd go over and cut off some of the greens that flourished above ground — but unfortunately, the bulbs weren't very big and we didn't get much from those.  The cabbages never did get enough water to make much headway, and we'd long given up on those.  It was really the peas we wanted, though.  Pity about that.

We didn't buy into the plot again.  There was no way of telling who in the neighbourhood robbed us; I console myself by thinking they were probably very hungry, and maybe the peas helped them get through the winter.  Though they wouldn't have lasted past the end of September.  They could have left a few for us, but nary a one.

I just don't find this kind of charity all that rewarding.

Leaving Home

My first roommate after leaving home was my best friend, a fellow seven years older than me that I'd met ... well, as it happens, I don't remember how we met.  It must have been some casual labour job that I did one summer during high school.

Mike and I would meet for dinner at places like My Marvin's or Sam's Delicafe downtown, which specialised in smoked salmon, blintzes, felafel and cabbage rolls ... but I'll talk about that later.  After three hours of talk and tea, we'd retire to his apartment and go on talking until one or two in the morning.  By the time I was 17 years old and in my last year of school, on Fridays and Saturdays I had no official curfew.  Mike would drive me home in his light blue 1977 Trans Am, and we'd sit for another hour in front of my parent's house ("home" at that time, but not now).  Then I'd get out, pat the back fin of his car twice as I walked around and he'd drive off.

We talked about the usual things, politics and art and such, especially literature and writing.  I'll go into all that another time; here I just want to note that like any 18 y.o. living at home, I'd complain about my parents and Mike would be sympathetic.  He lived in a two-bedroom basement apartment that was rented to him by his mother, who lived on the main floor of the house upstairs.  So Mike had reason to empathise.

Quite often he'd say that any time I needed to leave on a moment's notice, I could come and stay with him.  I never told my parents about this; they barely knew that Mike existed, as I never spoke about him to them ... but I found his offer comforting.  I used to tell him that it couldn't be that hard to move away from home, since just about everyone does it.  Still, I wasn't in a hurry to move out.  When high school ended, I'd gotten a good job and I was enjoying the money; my parents were well-fixed and didn't charge me rent; I had a basement room and I could live in solitude most of the time.

Still, the inevitable fight happened (I'll tell that another time) and I packed two suitcases and marched out without notice.  I showed up at Mike's and like a good guy, he kept his word.

I lasted six weeks.  We remained friends; in fact, he would later be my Best Man.  But he was next to impossible to live with.

His apartment was furnished, so everything was of course his, from the dishes to the bed I slept in.  The television was his, the sofa was his, the chairs were his, the books on the shelves were his.  My "room" was a closet, which was fine as my mindset was firmly Bohemian at the time; I could live anywhere that Larry Darrell of the Razor's Edge could live.  Mike freely shared his things; he wasn't bossy or selfish or resistant to my presence.  But he was "thrifty" on an order I'd never experienced.

He didn't like the way I did the dishes, as in his opinion, squirting soap into a sink full of water and then washing dishes in it wasted soap.  He liked to brush the tip of his finger on the top of a soap bottle and use that tiny dab for each dish.  He'd wet each dish in continually slow-running water (which he didn't pay for), rub into it the dab of soap, scrub with a wet dishrag and then rinse, putting it in the rack.  True enough, it works.  Now and then, I've done dishes that way since.  But it was weird to me.

Electricity, which he did pay for, was a problem.  I'd be watching television by myself and get up during a commercial, to make a sandwich or pee, and when I got back, the television would be off, the lights would be off and I'd be facing a black room.  If I protested, he'd argue that if I wasn't using the power in that room, no matter how long I was gone, I ought to turn it off.

When I left the apartment, a basement you'll remember, I used to sit on the steps leading up to the outside and put my shoes on.  One day Mike got mad at me for sitting on his sofa because, he said, my pants were still dirty from the stairs.  I found this one hard to understand.  Basically, he was saying, I'd sit on the steps, which were dirty from being walked on with street shoes, then I'd go out and spend my day doing things, then I'd come back to the apartment — with my pants still dirty — and sit on his sofa.  I remember him going into a sincere argument that furniture, like anything else, was a temporal waste of money.  Nevermind that the sofa was paid for.  What mattered was how long the sofa would last before it had to be thrown out, requiring the purchase of another sofa.  The longer something lasted — and this obviously applied to anything in the house — the more money was saved.

Well, that was enough for me.  I told him that I didn't care how much destruction I caused to furniture by sitting on it, as I considered that to be the purpose of furniture.  I promised I'd find another place and I did, within 36 hours.  And that is a story for another day.

The Edmonton to Regina Trip

When my grandmother passed away, my father's mother, my elder brother had already departed the house ... but my sister and I accompanied our parents from Calgary to Edmonton, where she'd lived.  As Ruth Ross, her maiden name, had chosen not to leave a will, my father found himself on the verge of a vicious backstabbing fight over a fairly valuable collection of housewares and artworks, including books, china and high-end furniture.  The memory of the ordeal would remain with my father for the rest of his life, more than forty years ... and affect his approach to his own will, as both my father and mother remained certain that their children would go at their legacy like jackals as well.

To spare my 13-y.o. sister and me, aged a year younger, my father chanced upon two cousins of his, a married couple, who happened to be on their way to Regina in Saskatchewan, when my mother's parents lived.  Sis and I were handed over to them, though they were total strangers to us; I don't even remember their names, and in years after I'd never see them again.

The net tells me now that it's an 8-hour drive between Edmonton and Regina, but my memory says it took much longer than that.  We did it in a day, with the couple driving a large four-door "land-yacht," as we used to call big cars during the 1970s.  My guess would be that it was a Ford LTD.  This trip took place in 1977; the car didn't have air conditioning, as hardly any cars did at the time, especially in Canada.

Soon after we left, as we approached the Saskatchewan border, the temperature began to climb.  It was summer; I think the first week of August.  As the temperature topped 100º F, the usual practice of leaving the car's windows open began to fail as a relief.  By the time we'd reached Battleford, the thermometer was hitting 105º F.  I vaguely remember our stopping to let the radiator cool down — but it was no relief to get out of the car.  This is also a time when gas stations equally lacked air conditioning, and when none of the little towns along the way offered much in the way of services to travellers.

How I remember sitting in the car, the windows closed, sweating without my shirt on.  The baking heat was so brutal, we couldn't open the windows; the rush of hot air was instantly suffocating, so that even the slightest cracking of a window was impractical.  The gas odour of the vehicle added to the misery.  No one want to talk or move, as we dragged ourselves over the flattest and hottest part of Saskatchewan.

We reached a little town called "Craik," just 60 miles from our destination.  It must have been late afternoon, though I don't remember for sure.  We stopped in Craik, which had about 400 people; apparently, it still does.  There was a little grocery store, the kind of dingy, freon-smelling place that every little town has.

The power had died in the 110º heat and the only drinks we could buy were very warm.  I remember trying to force down a grape soda which did nothing to alleviate my discomfort ... I suppose my sister and I were a terrible burden that day on a couple that knew us as little as we knew them.  When we finally arrived at my grandparents house, of course this couple, part of my dad's family, had no relation at all to my mother's family.  I'm probably mistaken, but it seems we were more or less pushed out, though of course our luggage had to be unloaded, and polite greetings made.

I have no memory of what happened after, except that we stayed two weeks with my grandparents before our parents came to collect us.