Chapter 16: If I get home before daylight, just might get some sleep

This is the story of my lost day. It began last night when I received word that, whilst attending a hockey game in Hamilton, mom and Tim had found that his car had been stolen.

Today I was meant to go get comics, because it was gorgeous, I didn't go yesterday and tomorrow I'll be otherwise engaged, so today was the ideal opportunity. I meant to set my alarm, get up at 9 or 9:30, head down there in the morning and take my time getting back (as I was notably horribly stressed last week when I went.)

Of course, last week at some point there was a blackout and I never re-set my alarm, so it gets to be about 10 or 10:30 and I'm suddenly aware of this. I didn't exactly bolt up, either it was more of a "Aw... crud." So I took a laze mid-morning lunch, re-charged my iPod, and eventually headed out. I had to re-charge my iPod because I've been letting it go on random this week; I wanted to see how many songs I would be getting out of it before the battery just conked out. I would estimate I could do 340-360 of the 415-song playlist (it's only a 2gig.)

So I headed down, and indeed ran into Tim at the unlikely corner of Trafalgar and Cross where he was having crosswalk troubles. He'd walked down to get a rental but the push-button at the crosswalk was busted. I wished him luck and got on my way. I did my usual stop by the lake and relaxed, meditated a while before getting on my way (although I did stop off to tip my hat to some lovely young lasses.)

I was crossing the bridge... and sorry, I must disrupt the narrative to complain that as I've been writing I've been beset upon by an unusual number of distractions. Augh! Nothing ever works when you feel you have something to say. Let me get centred again. Errrgh.

So I was crossing the bridge at Trafalgar, mostly oblivious to the world at large when I hear this whistle. You know, you can tell somehow when someone is calling for you. I looked around. Nobody I knew, but some crazy old guy across the road (which I had just crossed!) was waving me over. I was about to move on, because I don't normally like indulging strangers - especially when I have to jaywalk Trafalgar to do it - but this dude was insistent. Co I crossed, kept my front to him and kept a distance.

I never got his name, but he identified himself as a Newfoundlander, so I'll call him as such. The Newfoundlander had been on his bike, apparently, but stopped for a moment for a cigarette and a can of Labatt's blue. He told me he'd come to Oakville in 1964 and was working on a house up in Mississauga. I listened patiently. He must have gone on for a half hour, and I suspect he would have gone on even longer. He told me Canadians had forgotten how to share, to be good to each other. He sees immigrants in restaurants ordering one meal and sharing, and how people pass homeless folk on the street and yell crassly at them, "GET A JOB YOU LAZY BUM!" He repeated this point a number of times, always feigning to yell it.

I wish I could quote him directly, but so much time has passed since hearing his pearls of wisdom, in my getting home, my settling down, and my constant distraction, that I can't accurately quote him much. However, he did tell me at least three stories, and made any number of tangents. Being a writer, I listened eagerly.

He was a weird guy, I didn't see him stand but I imagine he was about my height. He had a day or two's stubble, a trucker cap and sunglasses resting on the rim, and old running shoes. The outline of his brow on one eye was slanted, the way aged people do, and his teeth were... occasional. He spoke in a wheezy, hissed, but otherwise throaty Newfoundland accent. A little bombastic, as you can imagine. He called me, repeatedly, "Young fella," and would occasionaly interject, "Shit, boy." (said, as newfies do, as "baye.")

In 1964, he came to Toronto from Newfoundland in search of his Uncle Willie, who had apparently disappeared or gotten otherwise disconnected from the family. So he came down and was wandering the park one day, about a year after he arrived, when he saw a man, disheavelled and roaming the streets, with a familiar look. The way you can see your mother in an aunt or cousin, you see, this man had that look. The man asks what the Newfoundlander was looking at, and he replies, "Uncle Willie? Is that you?" It was indeed, but he wasn't homeless (as the Newfoundlander had previously thought.) Uncle Willie had a place, but all it had was a few floors, a radio that didn't work, and a lot of cockroaches. The Newfoundlander offered to fix Uncle Willie's radio, and when he opened up the back, out came aobut a thousand cockroaches.

The Newfoundlander told me, what he told Uncle Willie, that he should try to get himself together and find work for himself, not to bed. "You should do something different tomorrow from what you did today." He complained of homeless people who wasked for hand-uts and testified that most homeless people - except those who are "touched in the head, retarded," - were good for working. He told me of a man he helped unload dryload off his truck, the man was unsuspecting that the Newfoundlander was, himself, a drywall man. He asked the man what he was going to do with what was obviously ceiling drywall, and the man said he was going to rent a jack and install it that way, but the Newfoundlander told him not to waste his time and helped him install it. He also explained that he hires homeless people to do yardwork.

He showed me his hands, well-knotted muscle, calloused fingers, grime laced into the very flesh. Gnarly and stiff. "You don't get hands like these from working at Tim Hortons."

The second story was of sometime in winter around the area I'm very familiar with, the corner of Kerr and Rebecca Sts, where there is an IODE shop. Inside, he found a wallet with about $30, and $10 in Tim Hortons gift certificates, as well as IDs and cards. He brought it into the IODE and asked where the address on the ID was. He explained that he couldn't just leave it with the lady at the IODE, because "I don't know you from Adam," and wanted to be sure the wallet found its owner. so they arranged the police to pick it up. Sometime later, he returned to the IODE shop, and found an envelope for him, with all the money from the wallet and a card from the owner, a "very lovely card" saying that if he ever needed a reference for a job, to call him.

"I'm not a Christian man, but I am a believer," he told me, "that Jesus comes first, then mother and father, then yourself." His last story was that he was in a McDonald's somewhere out there when a young girl came in asking people for change. "When people come asking for something," he told me, "Don't tell them 'no,' just tell them you haven't got it or you can't do it right now. That word, 'No,' it turns people off." He explained, it puts a bad mood out there, or something. So when the girl was rejected by one couple of people, she came to him, and she told him her story. "I was kicked out of my home and I'm hungry." So he gave her a toonie, and told her, "I know why you're out of your house. It's because you told your mom, she never listens to you, isn't that right?" I don't recall how that exchange was supposed to have gone, but ultimately, she was unable to get anything (McD's is damn expensive) so he took the toonie back, and gave her a $5. And I suspect what he told her was similar to what he told me. "Never cut down people who are older than you. They've been around longer and they can see more." That sort of thing.

Eventually, I shook his stiff, calloused, grimy hand and told him I must be going, but thank you very much for the conversation. I mostly nodded along and listened, but not only did it provide food for thought it provided me with my most extraordinarily noteworthy experience in months if not years (owing to how tedious my life usually is.) To have such a random encounter really alters how you tohught your day was going to be. That's the fun of life, I say.

Eventually, I caught a bus home... I was delayed in the extreme, but the beauty of buses, I suppose, is that they always come back around eventually. I was out far longer than I'd imagined I would be, but at least I got something out of it.

I don't know how much I'll take his words to heart, although there are some things in there that, every so often, must be said aloud, whether you know them or not.

Keep on rockin'
-Scott