I DON’T HAVE ANY copies of the Saturday Star Weekly, but for years it was the staple of homey Canadian living, with articles on everything from cooking to beaver dams.
It had an Ottawa or Toronto feel. That being said, it rested in various places in many shacks and shanties, and many houses too, across the country. I’ve seen it used to wrap salmon that my uncle brought down to us in the dark night. I’ve seen it in outhouses, and on the back shelf in garages. It was used to insulate porches, behind drywall, and it fluttered in the sleepy breezes on our car seats in July. It placed itself usually within the safe pedestrian bounds of common opinion, and rested upon its laurels as being the magazine that informed us in a never too dangerous way, about ourselves.
It showed the fashions. Had the glossy pictures. Michael was subcontracted to deliver the Star Weekly on Saturday. He
would pick the paper up from Darren in the morning and do the back road, Skytown and along the tracks.
This would earn him, maybe 50 cents, maybe a dollar. Darren would do King George Highway, down to Dunn’s barber shop. Michael had the longer route.
There was a reason for this subcontract on Saturday. Darren did not consider himself welcome anywhere near Skytown — not since the Christmas of 1960. That was when he gave one of the Griffin kids a black eye in a fight — by hitting him in the face with a rock in his hand. I think Michael did the route every Saturday for about eight weeks. Paper boys have a large turnover. Who can blame them? Everything Michael did back then to earn money was, in actual fact, child labour.
To have to share two cents on a paper, on a freezing cold Saturday in February was pretty much like delivering the mail for free. To do it with the sense of gratitude Michael had, or a sense of wonder that Tobias had, that his big brother had a job, seems almost farcical now. But other jobs were just as stingy. The money kids earned was almost always negligible back then.
Once down past the creamery lane he was in unfamiliar territory — in foreign land. The farther down the road he went, the farther he would have to go to come back.
There was also the idea implicit in all of this of the attitude of the Skytowners. Friendly could become unfriendly real quick. The neighbourhood rink you passed on your way down could turn into a cauldron of recruits on your way up. Ganging up on someone was always considered cowardly. Yet there was a certain reasoning, where the idea of ganging up on a person was not considered low or mean-spirited. If you were in someone else’s neighbourhood, if injury or insult was remembered, you were fair game.
Of course most of the time under those low winter skies this was benign, and no one bothered you. But there were fierce flare-ups into wars where twenty kids charged twenty kids with hockey sticks. Or when games on the neighbourhood rinks ended in a kind of pitched battle.
This particular incident didn’t start on a March Saturday in 1961 — it started near Christmas of 1960. Everyone was playing hockey, and we had all wandered down to Griffin’s rink to play. The Griffin boys began to tease the much-tormented Garth, and steal his rubber boot. This happened because of Garth’s belief in Santa Claus. Nor did he know what to do except to break down crying. And this made everyone on the Griffin side of the rink howl and laugh.
Lorrie Griffin grabbed the boot, put it on his stick and began to run about the rink with it. It was a great victory for the Griffins.
I think that the worst thing Lorrie did that afternoon was not to steal the boot or refuse to give the boot back while Garth was chasing him about, slipping on his brown, well-tied, immaculately groomed, neat and clean shoe, but that he stood in the centre of the rink and began to wiggle. No one can stand a victorious wiggler.
Garth was not the most popular boy in our group — but he did have the right to freedom of belief in Santa. I don’t think Darren said, “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Or express it in quite those terms. I think he said, “Okay then I’ll get a rock.”
People sometimes forget that “defending to the death” might mean putting someone else to death. Darren rushed over, hit the wiggler in the eye with his fist. All of this lasted about a minute. Garth grabbed his boot, and we all trudged over the snowbank and down the path, with chunks of ice and stones flailing about us.
They knew Michael was trudging his way into their territory each Saturday. But they needed some kind of a plan. A kind of attack from the rear. A kind of worry on Michael’s part. A kind of — Tobias. They needed a Tobias. The weak link. The Achilles heel of Michael.
But they didn’t know this is what they needed until they saw Tobiasdawdling behind Michael one Saturday. He kept getting farther behind,
as Michael rushed door to door to get the paper delivered. Finally Tobias
had fallen back and was out of sight.
Michael went back to get him. He was leaning by a pole, looking up
and down the street. “You wait here — right by this pole — and don’t
move — I’ll be back for you,” Michael said.
Michael turned, and then turning back gave Tobias a five-cent piece.
“This is for yer help.
0 comments: