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During the 1998 Christmas school break, Martha and I decided to get away from the seasonal hype by driving the short distance from Langley to Hope. After depositing some recycling materials at the depot in Hope, we went to the Dairy Queen, our favourite watering spot in that town.
Martha excused herself while I placed our usual order: two kids' cones and two coffees. There was a short line-up and the order showed up in a while.
"Could I have a tray, please?" I asked the counter hostess.
"Certainly sir," she said. She produced a small tray and placed the four items on it. I looked at the cones. The ice cream made them top-heavy and I wondered if they would survive the trek from the counter to our table. Surely I could manage the few metres.
As I picked up the tray, it tipped and a cone fell onto the counter, top side down; the other followed suit but chose the floor, making a flat-top from the head of ice cream.
"Oh darn!" I exclaimed, embarrassed.
As she reached for a mop the hostess said, "Don't worry, sir. I'll give you two others."
"That's very kind of you. Please let me assure you," I said, denying my ineptness, "that this has never happened to me before." She looked at me and smiled sweetly.
She put two new cones on the tray and asked, "Would you like me to take this to your table?"
"No, no," I said. "I can manage it, thanks. Besides, you're busy." I held the new cones with the first three fingers of my left hand and gingerly picked up the tray with the two coffees in my right. It was a precarious balancing act. Slowly, I walked to the non-smoking section. There, I stopped and scanned the area for a free table. As I did so, my right hand tilted a little. The next thing I knew both cups had fallen to the floor. The suddenness of it caused my left hand to jerk, and the new ice cream departed from the cones and spread itself over the floor at my feet.
"Not again!" I cried. Other patrons shot glances at me, then resumed their munching. In an instant the sweet-smiling hostess appeared, mopped up the mess and took the cups and tray.
"I'll get you fresh cones and coffees," she said. "Please don't worry about this. It happens all the time."
That was nice but I said, "Not to me it doesn't. Why aren't there cone trays here? Oh darn--" I stopped myself. This was so embarrassing and frustrating and I didn't want to complain.
Martha came to our table. "There was such a line-up in the ladies'! Where's our coffees?"
"Martha," I began as we sat down, "you won't believe this..."
The hostess returned with the third tray of cones and coffees. She hesitated, looking at me. I thought she was going to pick up a cone, open my fingers, put the cone in my hand and close my fingers around it, but it was only my imagination.
"What was that about?" Martha wanted to know. As I told her the story she couldn't stop laughing. She snickered from time-to-time as we drove home. She does that when, even a year later, something triggers her memory of the incident.
- Approx. 555 words
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"Out of the water, everybody!" Mom shouted from the lakeside door of our rented cottage on the shore of Lake Muskoka. "Supper's ready." She retreated inside and the screen door slammed shut.
A hubbub ensued as, one by one, family and guests filed into the cottage, passing the battery-operated radio. They dried themselves but left wet footprints on their way to the bedrooms or to the loft to change. It was a hot day and I was sorry to leave the water.
Since it was the middle of the week, Dad was at work in Toronto. There were Mom, my brothers Wilf and David and other relatives and friends. About thirteen people shared the cottage, and many of us had to double-up. We were part of the annual summer exodus from the hot city to the relatively cool countryside and were fortunate to have found this cottage on the water's edge.
Mom and her sister, my Aunt Ray, put a cold supper on the table, stacking bowls, plates, cutlery and napkins at one end. In spite of August's warmth, I knew that after supper, the adults would have hot coffee or tea, followed by the usual after-dinner liqueur. Of course, none of the children were allowed any of that.
Supper started at five o'clock and by 5:30 the kids were finished. We all wanted to go back into the water, but the rule was to wait for an hour for the food to digest; then we could swim without fear of developing cramps. To pass the time, we children washed the dishes.
There was no electricity in the cottage; we used kerosene lamps and flashlights to see at night and the radio to keep up with world news. Mom made sure there were spare batteries.
Not enough time had passed since supper, so after helping with the dishes, I talked with a family friend, my piano teacher, Mildred Spergel, while the other children played board games. "Mildred," I said, "I can make up tunes in my head all the time, like this." I hummed in four-four time. "Ever heard that before?"
"No I haven't, Manuel. I think it's just yours, alone."
"I can make melodies in waltz time, too," and I hummed in three-four time. Mildred listened and smiled. "One day, I want to learn how to write them."
"I believe you will," she said.
At 6:30 on the dot, all of us kids ran to the water and jumped in. We shouted, squealed and splashed, and the time flew by. Mom ordered everyone out at 7:30. The water was quite warm and, like the others, I didn't want to climb out, but Mom's tone meant we had better, right now. I didn't want my swimming privileges cut off.
Joining the others in the main room, I heard a man's voice drone from the radio. None of the adults was speaking. Some of them sat, unmoving; others just stood in place. Everyone was so still that they could have been a display in a museum. "This is Matthew Halton of the CBC," someone said from the radio. I thought it might have something to do with the end of the war.
It was a few minutes before eight o'clock. The voice said, "The Japanese have just surrendered unconditionally. The war is over!" The adults raised their cups and glasses and shouted, "Hurray!"
I looked at Wilf. He smiled, then laughed. At fifteen and in high school, he knew what the war was about. I was aware, too: I was ten and could read the maps in the Toronto Star and follow the progress of the conflict. I knew that Hitler's suicide on April 30, Mom's birthday, and Germany's defeat on May 8 meant we Jews were safe, once again. The war that had just ended was the one against Japan.
Matthew Halton interrupted our celebration. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said. "I have just been informed that the previous announcement was in error. The war against Japan is not yet officially over." The adults groaned, lowered their arms and looked at one another, but no one said anything. The radio played music while everyone seemed suspended in time.
Again Matthew Halton reported that the war with Japan was over and everyone hooted. Time advanced a few seconds. Then he said this announcement, too, was false, and moans filled the cottage. The clock slowed once more. It felt elastic, as if time were being stretched again and again.
The mood of expectation was palpable. Silence pervaded the room; hands held cups but no one drank, as if they were afraid the sound of liquid coursing into their bodies might result in missing the news from the radio.
I walked over to Mom and sat by her. She put her arms around David and me. Wilf stood behind her. No one else moved. The other children had already joined their parents, sitting on their laps, on the floor or on the arms of chairs. We were serious and quiet; even I could not be my usual boisterous self. The radio played music; no one spoke or moved.
In a few moments, Matthew spoke again. I felt I was getting to know him through his voice alone. There was a certain tone in it, an expectancy, perhaps, that his audience shared.
He said, "Ladies and gentlemen," and stopped. I felt he spoke directly to us, in that room in the cottage. If he had materialized from the air, I would not have been surprised. Tension rose, if that were possible. The silence felt like a heavy, immoveable object surrounding my head, pressing, pressing.
"This is not a false alarm. I repeat; this is not a false alarm. The war in the Pacific is over. I repeat; the war in the Pacific is over." For the first time, the radio played "God Save the King."
The cottage remained quiet. The anthem finished. The only sound was the hissing of the kerosene lamps. I didn't turn my head, but stole side-long glances at the adults. They sat like tree stumps. An announcer said we would be returned to the program in progress.
Someone reached out and turned off the radio. The click signaled the start of a new era and the room erupted in shouts of joy and uncontrolled laughter. I think it was Uncle Barney who picked up David and me and pranced around with us under his arms, then put us down. He bent and said to us in a conspiratorial voice but with his eyes shining and his face beaming wide, "Never forget this moment. Never forget!"
- Approx. 1,100 words
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"I'm glad you'll make the cover, Dad," I said into the phone. "The old one's so torn it can't protect the cockpit anymore."
"Just bring it over. I have to make the new one from it."
My eighty-year-old father, born in 1902, was a retired upholsterer. It was most likely with a good deal of reluctant joy that he agreed to make a new cover for the cockpit of my aeroplane.
"Is there anything I can do to help?" I asked when I arrived. "I'd like to learn, you know."
His eyes narrowed and his face registered skepticism. "Nope. I'll call you when it's done."
"Okay, Dad." With that, I turned and started to leave his "shop": the basement of the house where I grew up. I hesitated for an instant, taking in the sight and the smell of the place: his Singer sewing machine hugging the brick partition, festooned with needles of various sizes sticking out like porcupine quills from a piece of coloured, patterned fabric wrapped around one end; the broken-down band saw in a corner; the dusty tools hanging from nails Dad had pounded into the brick partition; the tanning smell of the leather--all of it so fondly familiar to me.
"Did you forget something?" he asked.
"No. Yes. I wanted to remind myself of the smell of your shop again. And I always liked to see you at work, even as a child."
"Well, you had your chances to learn the business. I'll call you." I was dismissed.
Stubborn independence; stubborn Isaacson will. My parent's original name was Isaacson but, because of anti-Semitism, Mom and Dad changed it to Erickson, a name which was Mom's idea. (Legally, they moved from being sons of Isaac to sons of Eric: a small step in terms of sound but a substantial one, culturally.) They did it sometime between 1930, when Wilf, my older brother, was born, and 1934, the year of my birth. Since Dad was not forthcoming with the information, I had asked Mom, who cheerfully disclosed this tidbit of family history.
In 1995 Dad was still the proud owner of Harry Erickson Ltd. (inactive). In the late 1930s, he founded and operated Service Truck Cushion Co Ltd. (still active). After he sold the company in 1956 he worked for a furniture-upholstery firm for a decade, then formed Harry Erickson Limited which he ran alone.
Now he was rather frail. He was probably no more than five feet six, mainly bald and wore metal-rimmed glasses on his round face. Despite the frailty, he still had a muscular, lightweight figure. His doggedness, his eighty years, his stiff fingers--knuckles knobby from decades of pushing felt, piping, foam rubber and springs into tight places--and his now shuffling gait: none of this would prevent him from making the cover. He was, in fact, determined to see it through; Dad was persistent, a trait that probably emanates from stubbornness.
I had asked him out of courtesy to make the cover, but I thought I'd be taking my business elsewhere. Little did I realize he would accept the challenge and, furthermore, take not a penny's payment. I wished I hadn't asked because he deserved more than my thanks: he deserved a fair payment. Somewhere deep inside, however, I knew our mutual love allowed us to do this for each other. Another opportunity never arose.
*
Dad was right that I should have learned the business, but when I was young, I spurned his several requests that I do so. I hated the dust, the thirty-minute lunch breaks, long hours and standing on a concrete floor all day.
Instead, as a high school kid I worked summers, Christmas and Easter holidays at the shop, even driving his panel delivery truck.
I was alone and all of sixteen on the first day I proudly drove the truck, emblazoned with Dad's business name, into a service station to ask directions. My driving test was still a few weeks away. As I backed out of a tight spot, trying to see where I was going by looking through the two small windows in the rear door, the vehicle banged against something. Dad had to pay a small sum to fix the front of the station owner's car. I had locked bumpers and tried to pull free, dislodging part of the car's bumper.
"Where's your driver's licence?" asked the owner.
"R-right here, in my p-pocket."
He extended his hand, unsmiling. I was scared and the man seemed to be enjoying himself. "This is a learner's permit!" He looked at me. "You're not licensed to drive, yet." He scanned the side of the truck for the phone number, turned and went to his office.
When I returned Dad showed his unhappiness. He was glad the truck was undamaged, but he had to pay $11.65 to fix the car, not a small amount of money in 1951. Going home, grumbling accented periods of silence, and I felt bad.
When I got my pay envelope that week, I expected to be docked for the cost of the repair, but the full amount was there. It was obvious that Dad and the service station owner had agreed I had learned a valuable lesson.
Dad was with me that July when I was granted my driver's licence, four months before my seventeenth birthday. He smiled broadly, shook my hand several times and said, "Let's get back. There're deliveries to make."
Dad's tenacious determination to succeed had given us a comfortable home. He ran his business as effectively and as cheaply as possible. This meant he not only worked twelve- and fourteen-hour days (only eight hours on Saturdays), but also occasionally used cheap labour: his sons. I've often wondered, though, if Wilf, David and I gave him credit for that tenacity--even a little.
*
A week had passed since I'd taken the cover to him. "How's it going, Dad?" I asked into the phone.
"Oh, all right, I guess. You can come over."
"Be right over!"
There was my new cover, spread out in pieces on the concrete floor of the basement--the fresh, grey canvas cut into irregular, curved patterns. The old one lay flat on a four-by-eight piece of three-quarter inch plywood that Dad used as a workbench in the middle of the basement floor. It rested on two wooden sawhorses he had made years before. He had made them shorter than standard to accommodate his height.
The bench was the right height for him. Originally, it was the headboard of Mom and Dad's double bed. When they decided to "re-model" the bed, he sawed off the headboard.
"Um, looks okay... When will you put it together? I asked."
"These pieces," he said, pointing to them on the floor and ignoring my question, "are too small, but the piping will make them a little bigger." In a momentary thinking mode, he scratched the top of his head, edged with fluffy grey from ear to ear. "I don't want to go to Anderson's for more material. This stuff's expensive, you know."
"Why's it too small?"
"I made a mistake." He stopped. I waited. He took a breath. "It's the curve of your--what's it called?"
"Cockpit."
"Yeah. I've never done anything like this before." He became quiet for a moment, then said, "Here, hold this."
Dad gave me the end of a large piece of canvas, and together we approached the Singer sewing machine. He sat on the round, upholstered metal stool and turned on the machine, its friendly, gentle chuga-chuga filling the room. The black painted legs of the stool were still shiny, its blue-flowered print seat still looking new. He took a narrow strip of canvas and some piping twine, folded the strip over the twine and sent it scurrying under the needle. Then he sewed the new piping to an edge of the large piece.
"Let go," he said. He found the sibling of the piece, sewed it to the other edge of the piping, then held up the newly joined sections of canvas.
Somewhere inside me, a thrill of joy seemed to say, See? You two can really cooperate when you want to. Dad rose, then carefully placed the sewn pieces over the tattered cover, which he was using as a template. He studied it and seemed satisfied. Without looking at me, he said, "Take me to your plane." We left the basement of the old, two-storey brick family house. As we did, I took another quick look around the familiar setting.
*
Mom and Dad had bought this house in September 1942. Mom once told me it had never been her intention to stay there long, perhaps two or three years--five at the most--then they'd buy again "in a more Jewish neighbourhood." She wanted a twenty thousand dollar house; this one had cost under eight thousand. She remained there over forty-five years until her death at eighty-eight; Dad lived there until he died at ninety-five.
Years ago, Dad had hired Mr. Hipkus, the hard-working, talented handyman of the neighbourhood, to partition the basement and put dryboard on the ceiling so we three boys might have a place to play in inclement weather. The decision to do it wasn't made without rancor; anything involving money involved rancor. Dad hated to spend money because it was hard to come by; I didn't understand that as a boy. He never expressed satisfaction over a job well done; instead, he pretended dislike for Mr. Hipkus as a poor worker and a cheat. Yet he didn't have the work redone. In fact, it was still the way Mr. Hipkus had finished it when we "boys" sold the property after Dad's death.
We rarely played down there. It was the cellar, after all. Before Mr. Hipkus worked his magic, Dad had used the back half of the cellar for his business until he was reported by a neighbour and forced to rent space away from home. He kept the sewing machine after he retired.
Mr. Hipkus didn't cover the cold, unyielding concrete floor, however. Dad's sewing machine, quiet now, stood against the inside brick wall which was painted an off-white. The machine was covered with the dust and grime of the decades. A spool of black thread followed a circuitous route, ending in a gentle s-curve at the needle. Little boxes of somehow related things lay scattered over the machine, except where Dad had placed the canvas for sewing. Under the machine, on the floor, rested a huge ball of twine he had used to make the piping. Straight into the brick wall over the machine he had hammered heavy nails, then hung a homemade burlap bag on them into which he put hammers, screw drivers, pliers and other tools. As if it knew its master, it never fell off the wall.
The adjacent wall had been covered these many years with an old, cream-coloured former living room curtain with an embossed pattern and a frilly edge. It protected family clothing which would never again be worn by any of us. It also concealed, on shelves, scores of ancient National Geographic Magazines going back to the fifties. We used to have them all the way back to 1910 and earlier, but one day Dad, not realizing their value, took four decades of them to the dump. Some of the few tools he had retained when he sold the business also rested behind the curtain on the shelves and on the floor.
One of these was a lightweight electric drill. He used to have a heavy, industrial drill, but he could no longer manage it. He didn't sell it, give it to a stranger, or simply toss it out, however, as he did with the National Geographics; he gave it to me.
*
In the driveway, Dad put the cover in the back of my small car. We drove the forty-five-minute distance to Markham Airport where my little two-seat Ercoupe aeroplane was parked.
"Is that your plane?" He sounded puzzled.
"Yeah," I said, hesitating, waiting for more. He usually asked penetrating, often embarrassing, questions.
He looked at me. "Oh, nothing, nothing... Just looks funny, that's all."
"You mean the tail?"
"Why are there two of them?"
"It's just the way it was designed. Distinctive."
"No--expensive."
Who could argue? Certainly, two rudders are more expensive than one, but these were smaller than usual, and lent the aircraft its unique appearance.
As we stood on the low wing, the wind tousled our hair. We had to be quick to hold down the unfinished cover as we carefully placed it over the front Perspex. He had me hold the cover in place as he smoothed it out, took measurements with a metal tape and wrote them down.
Dad finished the new cover in another week. Along the sides at the bottom I found he had placed metal grommets, making it easy to pass heavy string to tie the cover to the aircraft. Using the cover gave me a short-lived, prideful satisfaction: about a year later I found I needed money to return to university, and I put my Ercoupe on the market. When it was sold, Dad's cover went with it.
I wanted to keep that cover, just as I will always keep the living room chair he made, but the cover had become part of the Ercoupe's equipment. I never told Dad that I let it go. If I had, he would only have nodded, but I knew he would have been hurt.
He never flew with me, either, but I'm sure his cover still flies the skies in my former plane.
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