Driving stick

For the past few days I have been driving my daughter's boyfriend's Honda Civic 5 speed. Why? Well, because Jen can't drive stick. Her boyfriend is getting another car in a few days - one with an automatic transmission -  so we've swapped cars until then.

Learning to drive a car with a manual transmission is one of those things, (along with power tool usage, basic plumbing and electrical), that I think every gal should know how to do. I learned to drive stick back in the 70s on a boyfriend's old Renault. He broke my heart but he also taught me how to do donuts in parking lots. See? There's salt and sugar in everything.

My first brand new car ever was a little 4 speed Chevy Chevette. When my step-father bought me  that car I hadn't driven stick in quite some time and was very nervous about driving it home. I can't believe I'm confessing this here but I actually made the dealership deliver the car to me because I was too nervous to drive it off the lot.

When it arrived at my parent's house my kid brother Ricky kept pestering me to go for a ride. My mom said she'd like to see me drive it too and asked if I could take her up the street to the grocery store at the mall. Gee, when your mom asks you to take her to get groceries, how can you say no?

The three of us piled in and although I stalled the car a couple of times going up the hill, we arrived safely. I stayed in the car with Ricky as he bounced around rolling down windows, turning knobs and pushing buttons while Mom went shopping.

About a half an hour later with the groceries stashed in the hatchback, I tried to leave the parking lot. I stalled that car 23 times in a row. How do I know it was 23 times? Ricky. 

Yes, my baby brother, with all the perverse glee of a nine-year-old boy, counted every single time - "That's 15, oh, 16, ha, ha, 17..." Finally a man walked up to the car and asked if everything was alright. I wanted to tell him that everything was fine but before I could say anything my mom piped up, "She just got this car today and doesn't know how to drive it." I could have died.

"I too do know how to drive it, I'm just not used to it yet," I defensively said. The man poked his head in the car and looked at my feet. "Well young lady, the first thing you need to do is take those cowboy boots off," he advised.

I balked, "What and drive in my sock feet?" "Yes," he said, "you need to feel the clutch."

I took my boots off and chucked them in the back seat at my kid brother. It took about five minutes of coaching but the stranger talked me through feeling the clutch and changing the gears. It was all coming back to me. Finally with a toot of the horn we were off and I never stalled that car ever again.

Now that's not to say I've never stalled any other manual shift vehicle. About nine years ago my brother-in-law taught me how to drive a semi. I stalled that rig many times while I was learning but he was so patient. I eventually got my semi license and was so proud.

Yep, knowing how to drive stick is a skill that comes in handy. The thing to remember is that the clutch on every vehicle feels different and that until you can feel the difference, you're best not to wear cowboy boots.

Chillin' with my peeps....

Ok, don't laugh but this has been a childhood dream of mine - I want chickens.

Somewhere deep inside this city-born gal lurks a farmer. Maybe it was all those summers I spent on my uncle's farm mucking out horse stalls or sitting on my grandma's porch shelling peas that caused me to harbour this desire. I can't say where the desire comes from but I do know that I've been the happiest I've ever been since moving out to the Lair.

This spring Lise and I decided to take a part of our yard and make it into a vegetable garden. Out of those plans, and with much research, we decided to raise composting worms (eisenia foetida) to use their castings as fertilizer in our garden.

We started with a couple of plastic totes and a few pounds of worms and now we have a 55 gallon barrel in our shed brimming with beautiful worms. We're using the totes as incubators for the worm cocoons and baby worms and will be starting another 55 gallon barrel very soon. Our neighbours tease us and call us the worm farmers and ask when they can expect to see us taking the worms out for exercise.

We were a bit hesitant to tell the neighbours that we had worms (yuk, yuk) but when we told them about our little worm ranch, they smiled and said, "We're zoned agricultural so you could have a cow in your yard if you wanted to." At first I thought they were joking but when I dug up the tax bill and deciphered all the abbreviations on the page, sure enough, we ARE zoned agricultural. While a cow would provide all the manure we'd ever need to feed our worms, I think our neighbours would have something to say especially as soon as the wind blew a certain way. Anyway I started thinking - gee, maybe I could have those chickens I've always wanted.


Our property is more wide than it is deep so we don't have much of a backyard. Having chickens would mean trying to figure out a way to keep them in a small space. Since we have more room to the front and side of the house, I thought I'd like to put them there. When Lise and I talked about that we discussed how chickens, if left in one place, can quickly turn a nice lawn into a not-so-nice lawn. So that meant we'd have to find some way to move the chickens around regularly.

The other thing we needed to consider was all of the feral cats in the area. Sure, we could nail a little coop together and let the chickens free-range in the fenced in portion of the yard but that idea seemed too much like tying a goat to a stake in the T-Rex paddock.

We've spent the last three weeks looking for solutions and finally decided we are going to build an ark. In North America this type of coop/run design is known as a "tractor" but in Britain, they call them "arks".

We bought a set of plans from Catawba Convertible Coops upon which to base our design and then I saw The Henley and fell in love. So with graph paper and mechanical pencil in hand, Lise and I are going to design something that incorporates the features of both. We're already arguing about the colour - she wants to paint it blue and I want to paint it barn-red with white trim so we may have some arm-wrestling to do.

The Harrow Fair is being held at the end of August and that's where I'd like to find some hens, so I'd like to have our ark built before then. I'm not sure which breeds are available in our area but there are two breeds I'm particularly interested in: Ameraucanas and Barred Plymouth Rocks. I've already warned Lise that when we go to the fair I'll be spending most of my time in the poultry barn chatting people up.

Meanwhile, I'll be cutting up wood scraps trying to figure out if I can cut these angles with a protractor and circular saw or if I really need to rent a miter saw. If all goes well and we still have all ten digits in place, we could have next year's spider problem solved and be eating our own eggs to boot.

The ghost of Tom

In my life I've loved three men. The last man fathered my two children. The second man broke my heart. I woke up this morning thinking of the first man I ever loved.

I met Tom when I joined the youth group at our parish church. He was seventeen and I was twelve. To him I was just another skinny little girl in the choir and while he was always polite, he never really gave me the time of day. Still though, I knew I loved him.

At twelve I knew a lot about love. I had already had two real-live boy-girl dates with Jerry, an older man of fourteen - one where we took his kid sister to see Bedknobs and Broomsticks and he paid and even held my hand when we lined up for tickets and the second when we met at the rink across the street from my old grade school to go ice skating. He bought me a hot chocolate, made me laugh and kissed me on the teeth. He even brought me home to meet his mom and we spent an afternoon listening to and talking about his Black Sabbath Paranoid album. I really liked Jerry and he was the first boy to ask me to dance at the school dance and the first boy to peddle his bike half way across the west end just to go bike riding along the river with me.

I remember reading somewhere that the ancient Greeks had three words for love. Philia, indicating a brotherly/friendship love; eros, for a romantic/sexual love and agape for an unconditional/spiritual love. I suppose in my twelve year old brain I entertained the notion of a romantic love with Jerry, I mean he did kiss me, even if it was only on the teeth, but in hindsight what I felt for him was the love of friendship.

With Tom however, it was different. I had a big crush on him. He played the guitar and was the leader of the guitar masses we had at church. He looked like a cross between John Denver and Cat Stevens and while I watched him hang out with the older girls I secretly hoped that one day he'd notice me. My fantasy of some day being Tom's girl was shattered the Sunday morning our parish priest proudly announced that Tom had decided to enter the priesthood. Now those romantic fancies seemed wrong - sinful even - and had to be purged. I left the youth group and didn't see Tom again until one summer day when I was sixteen.

I was walking down Bank Street in The Glebe in Ottawa when I heard someone call my name. I turned around and there was Tom smiling at me and just as handsome as he ever was. I stood there, astounded as he threw his arms around me and gave me a big hug. I didn't think he would even remember me and here he was, warm wide grin under a bushy moustache telling me how great it was to see me. Cars, buses rushed by, pedestrians jostled me, for all I know a dog could have been pissing on my shoe but all I heard, all I was aware of was Tom asking me if I'd go have coffee with him. Over coffee he told me of his experiences at seminary while I nodded and smiled. After about an hour he said he had a bus to catch, got up and was gone. I didn't see him again until the fall when walking down Elgin Street I again heard someone call my name.

For the next three years that's how it was with us. Tom would pop into my life from out of the blue. We'd spend an afternoon, a few days, a week together then, poof, he'd be gone. In those interludes he'd sing to me the songs he'd written, read to me from his journals, we'd talk about art, music, poetry and all things spiritual. He found himself dissatisfied with the Church, left the seminary and for a time wondered what he would do with is life. He felt he was called to some type of service but wasn't sure what that would look like for him.

With Tom I saw the movie Midnight Express and pondered Warhol's soup cans at the National Gallery. These were things I couldn't do with the fellow I was dating at the time - the second man I loved; man who eventually broke my heart. If I were an ancient Greek I would say that what I felt for Tom was a combination of philia and agape. The girlish romantic infatuation of a twelve-year-old was transformed into the love one has for a kindred spirit, a pal, a buddy, someone who understands your quirks and loves you for them. He knew I was dating (and later became engaged to) the other fellow and I knew he dated other girls and that was fine because I didn't see Tom as someone to be romantic with. He was, as Anne of Green Gables says, a bosom friend.

Tom never kissed me. Not until the very last time I ever saw him. We had spent the day together and in the afternoon ended up at his parents' place where he shared a couple songs he was working on. I had a date that night with my fiancee and it was getting late so he walked me to the bus stop so I could get home in time to get ready. We made small talk as we waited for the bus and just as it arrived, Tom took me in his arms, gave me the most passionate kiss I had ever experienced in my then, nineteen years and said, "I don't want you to marry him, I want you to marry me." The doors to the bus opened and I hopped on, deposited my bus ticket, plopped down on a seat and as the bus pulled away watched Tom stand at the curb until I couldn't see him anymore. Heaven forgive me but the one thought that went through my head was, "Oh no, now he's ruined everything." Somewhere in those years that we were chumming around together, without me knowing it, Tom fell in love with me and I didn't know how to respond. So I didn't. He must have called the house every day for the next two weeks and I kept dodging his calls until he stopped calling.

About two years later, when I had broken up with the fiancee and was dating the man who I would later marry and have children with, my mother phoned me at work to tell me that Tom had been killed. The account of his death was not clear but he either fell or was pushed off a twelve-storey building. I couldn't bring myself to attend his funeral but did, months later, visit his grave.

I often think of Tom, his music, his prose, his humour, his smile and the love I felt for him. When I think of him I can't help but wonder what would have happened had I had the maturity and courage to not get on that bus, to answer his phone calls, to see him one more time.

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I coulda been killed...

That's me. I wasn't even a year old in this picture and here I was zooming around a parking lot under the el, somewhere in the Bronx in, (oh my god) a walker! What were my parents thinking! Sheesh, by today's standards they might as well let me run with scissors!
Considering that cars didn't have seat belts or collapsible steering columns and babies were often placed to sleep in the back window next to the bobbing head Yankees player doll on the way to Bear Mountain, it's a miracle any of us baby boomers survived at all.

Happy Birthday Mom

Today, October 26th is my mom's birthday and she sits in an Ottawa hospital awaiting placement in a nursing home. She's recovered well from her stroke but remains disoriented and confused. As time goes on, she will become more confused and remember even less. She has already forgotten much of her past and I know that one day she will even forget who I am.

So while I still can, I believe it's important that I remember for her. I know that everyone says this about their moms but my mom was an incredible woman. No, she didn't discover a cure for cancer or solve world hunger or peace but she was incredible because she swam against the current of her time and tried to live her life differently. Her life may not have turned out as she would have liked and she did suffer greatly but along the way she had some pretty cool adventures.

I'd like to share one period of her life with you that had a tremendous influence on me throughout the years.

My mom was a from a Francophone community in Northern Ontario. Her father didn't believe in educating girls beyond grade six - why does a girl need an education when all she's going to do is change diapers? My mom argued with my grandfather and managed to stay in school until grade eight. After that, she would sneak out of the house to attend high school. I'm not sure if she managed to finish high school but when she was nineteen she started taking courses in typing and shorthand. By then World War Two had ended and she left home to find work.

One of her sisters had found a job in Ottawa working as a chambermaid at the historic Chateau Laurier hotel and mom left home to join her. Soon, her typing and shorthand skills landed her a job with Blue Cross in Toronto so she moved to Hogtown and lived there for four years until she accepted a transfer to a Blue Cross office in New York City.

I'm not exactly sure how long she worked for Blue Cross but her next job was to work for a man named Archie Bleyer. Mr. Bleyer had once been the band leader for Arthur Godfrey and in 1952 had started his own recording company he called Cadence Records.

Mom always fondly remembered Andy Williams, Phil and Don Everly (she said they were always polite, sweet boys), and Dorothy, Carol, Janet and Jinny of The Chordettes. Mom had friends in the secretarial pools of other record labels like RCA and Capitol and the gals used to swap disc jockey pressings of the 45s and albums of the day.

When my mom was pregnant with me, the gang at Cadence had a baby shower for her and all the label's stars were there to congratulate her. She left Cadence Records to stay home and be wife and mother but I always got the feeling that she missed the music business. But she hung on to all the records she collected while working for Cadence and these were the records I listened to growing up.

In our house we listened to all kinds of music from rock 'n roll to country, to pop, to big band, to classical. I grew up appreciating all kinds of music and it's small wonder that today I find myself married to a musician.

So to celebrate my mom's birthday here's a little video of a song she used to sing to me. Happy Birthday Mom!

The Ghost of Birthdays Past

Since birthdays are a time of reflection, I thought I'd share some photos of my past birthdays.


Here I am with my mom. This was taken not long after we came home to our apartment on Coster Street from St Francis Hospital in the Bronx.
Mom was 33 when she had me and I was her first.














These are my parents. This was taken when I was 2-1/2 months old. I'm not exactly sure where this picture was taken but from what I remember of the furnishings, I think it was taken at my godmother's house in Brooklyn.









This was my first birthday party! We had moved from Coster St. to a house on 222nd Street not far from White Plains Rd in the Bronx. I was five years old.








My next birthday party was held after we moved to Canada in our home in Ottawa. I was twelve and the dress I'm wearing here is my mom's second wedding dress.
It was the 70s - dig those bell bottomed sleeves!




This was my 33rd birthday. I think everyone should climb a tree when they turn 33 don't you?





This was my 35th birthday. This was my androgynous neo-feminist period. Thank heavens I grew out of that!

Favourite cartoons

Whirl, whirl twist and twirl. Jump around like a flying squirrel. It's Saturday morning and time for a cartoon. This cross-dressing rabbit was one of my favourites growing up. Bugs is my hero! (grin) Enjoy.

Hillbilly Hare

Saturday Morning Cartoons

Feeling rather nostalgic these days. It's a beautiful Saturday morning here and I'm sitting on the patio enjoying the sound of the doves and drinking my coffee. This is a weekend morning ritual for me but many years ago my Saturday morning ritual was a bowl of Sugar Pops and cartoons.

We only got three or four TV stations then and we couldn't afford a color TV until 1969 but as soon as our chores were done, we'd plop ourselves in front of the box until noon. We'd skedaddle out of the house as soon as the cartoons were done because we knew that if we stuck around, mom would find more chores for us to do. So if the weather was nice, for the rest of the day we ran like terrors throughout the neighbourhood with my brother's Daisy air rifle. If it rained we'd spend the day in the garage playing school or Mass. Yeah, we took turns being the priest and used soda crackers for the host.

Anyway, here's a few cartoons I watched as a child:

Magilla Gorilla


Roger Ramjet


Yogi Bear

Easter 1966

Forty years ago this Easter I was convinced my mom had won the Irish Sweepstakes. I didn't know it at the time but the only way you could get Irish Sweepstakes tickets was on the black market. Mom had been buying them from “a friend of a friend” for years and she'd hide them in the big gilded Bible kept on the dining room sideboard. All of my friend's parents bought Irish Sweepstakes tickets and they were as common as Mickey Mantle trading cards
so I couldn't understand the need for such secrecy. It never occurred to me that my own mother would be doing something illegal. (Imagine that) Mom's rationale was she bought the tickets because she believed that she was helping the cause in Ireland – freedom from those damned Protestants.

We heard a lot about “those damned Protestants” from the nuns at school. Just the month before, for St Patrick's Day the nuns took up a collection to send to the IRA. As good Catholic children we dutifully lined up to drop our pennies into the collection tin and felt very pious that the money was going to help other Catholics rather than for a bag of jujubes at the corner candy store. It was a big sacrifice for a seven year old.

When we returned to our seats, one of the nuns told us the story of the Irish potato famine. She told it with such vigor I looked in the newspaper for weeks hoping to find the story to clip to bring to school for Current Events. With our money collected, the anti-Protestant propaganda was more firmly entrenched by engaging us with rousing music. Imagine this: thirty little Black kids, Italian kids and Puerto Rican kids marching around a classroom, banging on drums and sticks singing Off to Dublin in the Green while the nuns stomped their black oxfords in time. Straight out of a Dali dream sequence eh?

Anyway, we looked forward to the coming of Easter as it meant the end of Lent. Mom always made us give up something for Lent. That year it was chocolate ice cream for us kids and swearing for her. Now I can't say that my mom had a potty mouth but she was sure fond of her French expletives. I couldn't see what the big deal was about her swearing. We lived in the Bronx and no one could understand what she was saying anyhow. That's how I got away with swearing at the nuns at school. I once called one of them a “maudit cochon” (damned pig) and since I was the "cute little French girl", she just smiled, patted me on the head and reminded me to speak English. (Bless me Father for I have sinned.)

So here I am Easter morning 1966. I'd already been to morning Mass and had found all the Easter eggs hidden around the house. Shortly after we took this picture, we walked over to White Plains Road to catch the train downtown. I loved the el and the subway and I especially loved when we'd go downtown because that always meant mom would treat us to an egg cream at the Woolworth's counter. Mom usually bought herself a coffee from Chock Full O' Nuts and we'd split a large soft pretzel bought from a push cart vendor.

There were no egg creams or pretzels that day. Instead we stood in the longest line up I'd ever seen – it went way around the block – outside Radio City Music Hall.
I had never been to a theater before though once, Daddy took us to the drive-in to see The Ten Commandments. Radio City was the biggest place I had ever been in. It was bigger than our church! It was a palace and I figured the only way Mom could afford to take us to such a place was if she'd won the Sweepstakes.

I sat solemnly in the red velvet seat, staring in awe at the great arched stage as the houselights were dimmed and the movie began. It was The Singing Nun staring Debbie Reynolds.

After the movie and a short intermission the Easter Show continued with the spectacle of the Rockettes.
Long synchronized legs and tall head dresses - I was entranced. To me, that was the best part of the show and from that day to now I've had a secret desire to dance in a chorus line.

A few weeks ago while channel surfing I came across The Singing Nun on Turner Classic Movies. I dropped the laundry basket and sat down to watch it. As many Catholic families, we had the record of the movie soundtrack and because we were French, we also had the “real” Singing Nun album in French. While I liked the movie soundtrack, the record we played the most was the French one. My favourite song on the album was Entre les Étoiles and at that part of the movie I found myself singing this French version along with Debbie's English one.

After the movie I had to call my mom. I wanted to share with her the memory I had of that day. The whole outing had made such an indelible impression that I still felt thrilled forty years later. I wanted to thank her for making that Easter so special.

My mom is experiencing the early stages of Alzheimer's and when I talked to her about that day, she had no recollection of it. I have to remind myself that she might not always remember things or even know it's me she's talking to. I find myself wondering if you have no one to share a memory with, does that mean it really didn't happen?

Papa was a rolling stone

This is a picture of me and my dad. It was taken on May 13, 1967. It was the day of my first Communion and the last day I ever saw him. I remember that my mom was upset that he arrived late (I think he may have missed the entire ceremony) and they argued on the steps of the church. I vaguely recall her saying something to him about drinking but I don't recall smelling liquor on his breath. I didn't care that he was late. I was just glad that he showed up to take this picture with me.




I don't have a lot of photos of my dad. The few I do have are grainey and faded. This wedding photo is the best photo of him that I have.

As a child I would look at this picture and think my dad was as handsome as a band leader and my mom looked like the queen's image on those Irish Sweepstakes tickets she always bought.



A year later, I was born.

Daddy was never around very much so when I'd ask mom where he was, she'd tell me that dad worked three jobs. I accepted this explaination because in the early 60s lots of kids' dads worked more than one job to make ends meet.

As a child I worshipped my father and whenever he was home, I'd follow him everywhere. He didn't seem to mind and allowed me to tag along while he mowed the lawn and fixed things around the house. He was handy and I liked this about him.

I remember being fascinated while I'd watch him shave. I'd stand quietly in a corner of the bathroom by the sink and watch him whip up a lather with his brush then apply the soap to his face with rapid, tiny little circles. With his face properly lathered he would turn the small knob at the bottom of the handle of his razor and the top would open up wide like the jaws of a hippopotomus. Dad would drop in a new blade and twist the knob again to close the jaws. By this time the mirror was fogging over from the steamy hot water running from the faucet to fill the sink. He'd swish the razor in the hot water and lift his hand to begin the first stroke. I liked this part the best because he made funny faces when he shaved and I'd try not to giggle. If I did, he'd reach for his brush and put a dollop of soap on my nose and chase me away.

Sometimes my dad would be gone for two weeks at a time and when he was gone that long we'd run out of food. Eventually he'd show up with a couple of bags of groceries and we'd be able to eat again. It was always very exciting when he'd arrive because he'd bring home candy. I don't know if any of you remember the scene in the movie "Lillies of the Field" with Sidney Poitier where he comes in with bags of groceries for the nuns and pulls out a string of lolipops, but that was just what my father would do.

My dad had been a US Navy cook. I think that was the highest ranking thing a black man could be in the Navy during the second world war. I loved it when my dad was home because he would do the cooking. Mom couldn't cook worth beans. She hated cooking but dad seemed to love it.

We always had a can of grease (bacon fat and such) at the back of the stove and I remember him scooping big tablespoons of grease out of the can and watching it sizzle in the big cast iron skillet. He'd fry bacon, then fry sausages in the bacon grease then save that grease to fry chicken. Can't you just feel your arteries hardening?

Sometimes, after dad had finished up with his chores he'd snatch me up and take me for a ride in his Impala. He'd stop at a corner store and buy me a Dr. Pepper. A few times we'd stop in at a boxing gym and watch the men spar. That was a pretty smelly place but dad would let me wander around while he visited with his friends. One wall of this gym had a calendar with a picture of a naked lady who had big balloons on her chest. I had never seen a naked lady before and I remember asking my dad what was wrong with her chest. I thought it was some kind of disease like the pictures of chicken pox and measels rashes I saw in mom's big medical book. Daddy never brought me back to the gym after that.

Most times when dad was finished his chores he'd go stretch out in front of the TV in his black, naugahyde lazy-boy with a cold Miller in one hand and a Winston in the other. As long as I changed the stations for him I was allowed to curl up on his lap. He'd watch baseball (he was a Yankee's fan) while I buried myself in his chest. I liked the way he smelled. His feet were a bit stinky and sometimes he was sweaty but I liked the smell of Old Spice and tobacco. I'd stay cuddled up on his lap even when he fell asleep and started to snore. He didn't seem to mind except when I'd pull at the little hairs on his chest.

One time, while I was nestled with him a news bulletin came on announcing that a skinny man with glasses and no last name had been shot at a ballroom in Washington Heights. My dad looked at me and said, "Remember baby girl, you ain't never gonna be far off the plantation." I didn't know what he meant but I was scared when I saw him blink back his tears.

I don't know if it was before my first communion or shortly thereafter but after nine years of marriage my mother learned that my father had two other wives. Three months later, my mom moved us to Canada.

I've since learned that my dad died February 18, 1980. He was only 10 years older than I am right now. Last year I found where he is buried. I'd sure like to see him one last time.

Soda Biscuit

From as far back as I could remember I have loved animals. On one trip to the Bronx Zoo I saw a baby elephant and just had to bring it home with us. I cried when mom told me that I couldn't have it. She told me that the baby needed its mother and if we took the baby home we'd have to take the mama too. She said she didn't think they allowed elephants on the subway so we'd just better leave the elephants at the zoo and we could visit them there. It all made so much sense the way she explained it.

Since I couldn't have an elephant of my own, my love of animals was diverted to more accessible critters. Mom was so patient and never turned away any of the strays I collected or the ones that “followed me home”.

At one time I had three cats - one named Chopped Meat, three dogs - Lady, a collie, Bullet a bulldog great dane cross and another nameless hound of the Heinz 57 variety, ten puppies, one pregnant snapping turtle I picked up from the side of the road on the way home from Bear Mountain and a fish tank with five hundred or so guppies. We always lost a few of those guppies down the toilet whenever we cleaned the tank. When I saw those little fish swirl down the toilet I wondered if they would get eaten by the baby alligators everyone knew lived in the New York sewers. Sometimes I'd catch a few and flush them down just to see if an alligator would come up the pipe looking for more.

One spring day just before Easter as I was walking home from school with a friend, we stopped at her place to see the baby ducks her father had brought home. They were so soft and adorable and when her dad asked me if I wanted one, I was thrilled.

I can't say my mom was thrilled to see me bounding through the kitchen door with a duckling in hand, but, being the farm girl she was, took it in stride and let me keep it in a cardboard box in the cellar until daddy got home. Of course I had to make it feel right at home and find it something to eat. Ruminging through the kitchen cupboards I found a sleeve of soda biscuits and ran downstairs to feed my duck. He or she – never did figure that part out – gobbled them down so I called the duck Soda Biscuit.

That weekend daddy made an enclosure in the back yard for Soda Biscuit and I discovered that ducklings grow up to be ducks pretty fast – especially when fed a diet of soda biscuits.

Late that summer my aunt and uncle who lived on the farm outside Montreal came for a visit. I just couldn't wait to show my cousins my pet duck. They grew up on a farm so they weren't very impressed but I thought it was very cool that I had my own little barnyard right there in the Bronx.

After they left and I had said my goodbyes, I ran to the backyard to play and noticed that Soda Biscuit was missing. I ran screaming into the house, “Soda Biscuit's gone!” Hysterically I insisted that we form a search party to find the duck. My mom calmed me down and told me that my duck had gone to live with my uncle Gerry on his farm. She said that ducks were not meant to live in the city and that Soda Biscuit would be happier on a farm where s/he could play with the other animals. I was sad to see Soda Biscuit go but I knew mom was right and knew I could visit Soda Biscuit next summer.

Summer turned into fall and fall into winter and at Christmas my uncle Gerry and family telephoned with their seasons greetings. The phone was passed around so we all could say hello and when it was my turn I asked my cousin, “How was Soda Biscuit?” “Delicious”, she said and I was horrified. I was kin to a bunch of cannibals!

TV Westerns

When I was a little girl I wanted to be a cowboy. The most popular shows on TV those days were westerns and we watched a lot of them – Rawhide, Wagon Train and Gunsmoke. My mom liked Roy Rogers and Bonanza was almost a ritual.

Because I was just a kid, I didn't know anything about movie or TV special effects. I believed that the people really got killed in the westerns. Being an animal lover, I was particularly distressed when ever they showed horses falling down or getting shot.

Around that time I heard a lot of the grownups talk about the electric chair. A skinny man named Oswald had shot the President and everyone said that if it hadn't been for a man with rubies, he should have fried in the chair.

I couldn't imagine anyone sitting in a chair that would fry you, surely you'd jump out! So I figured the electric chair must be something like the high chair that mom strapped my baby brother in so he couldn't get out. All the talk of frying scared me because I'd think of some poor bad guy frying just like the pork fat daddy put in the greens. I couldn't believe that grownups could be that mean!

One day as I was watching a western on TV the truth hit me. They didn't really fry all those bad guys, they just brought them to Hollywood and put them in a western. At least they got a fighting chance and when they died, their families got all that money from them being movie stars.

Yeah, I really wanted to be a cowboy. Some of my mom's family lived on a farm near Montreal and we'd visit in the summer so I even knew how to ride a horse. Well, pony actually, but I knew that when I got bigger, my uncle would let me ride one of the horses. Hey, that was more than those fools back in the neighbourhood who said I couldn't be a cowboy. What did they know anyway? The only horse they ever rode was the one over at the A&P and you needed a nickle for that. So what if I was a girl? I could rope and brand too. I wasn't going to be just another Dale Evans, nah, I was gonna wear chaps!

You know, it never occurred to me that I never saw any black cowboys. Of course now I know differently but back then I never saw a black cowboy on TV.

Mom used to play her Eddie Arnold records and the occasional Charlie Pride. I don't know when I first heard of someone being called a credit to his race, but I think it was either about Charlie Pride or Sidney Poitier. Did ya ever notice that there have never been any black female country singers? I guess all we can do is sing the blues.

Growing up nappy

My daddy was a Southener, raised in the Carolinas. Folks say I get my charm from him. My mom was a French Canadian farm girl from Northern Ontario who wanted to be a nun but left home at nineteen and wound up working in New York City.

Those were the days of sit-ins and marches, speeches and rallies. The time when the world discovered a place called Topeka, Kansas and holy men of colour lifted their voices, lifted their fists, set a nation on its ear and a farm girl got swept up in the twister.

I was born in the Bronx in the late 1950s. Though I haven't been there in years, I still remember many things. For the first years of my life we lived in an apartment in the projects. I think that was on Westchester but I'm not sure. Anyway, Westchester sticks out in my mind. We had an apartment on the 17^th floor and had to ride an elevator that always smelled like pee.

Mom had one of those grocery baskets you can pull behind you and I was small enough to stand up in it and ride to the grocery store for the weekly shopping. If I behaved, mom would buy me a lolipop for being a good helper and I always asked for a second one to give to the little girl who lived down the hall. I can't remember that girl's real name but her mamma called her “Chicken” so I did too.

Chicken had lots of little braids sticking out of her head with tiny plastic barretts clipped on the ends. Some were little white ducks and others were pink bunnies. Her mamma did my hair like that once. I remember her putting this greasy stuff in my hair then pulling it really hard with a comb. This new hair-do didn't last long because the little braids bugged me as they kept whipping me in the ears.

So my mom kept my hair in pigtails. She said that was the only way to keep my hair under control. I guess I was pretty young when I became aware of the fact that I had problem hair. What the problem was, I wasn't quite sure but I remember my mom seeking the advice of her friends about it.

One day one of her friends came over to help with my problem hair. They put olive oil in it and rubbed it down to my scalp until I thought they'd rub all the hair off too. After I sat like that for awhile, they stuck my head in the kitchen sink and shampooed all of it out. That didn't make sense to me. Why put the oil in there in the first place if they were just gonna wash it all away? After I had been shampooed and cream rinsed, they worked in about half a tube of V05, then just about ripped the hair from my head trying to get all the tangles out. In the end, I still had pigtails.

I think we lived in the projects until I was about five. Around that time we moved to a big house with a veranda on East 222^nd St. I'll never forget the day my mom's friend, Mary Nell, came to help mom do my hair. I didn't particularly want to have my hair done that day. I was quite content with my pigtails, and besides, a kid has a lot more to do on a summer day than to sit around and be tormented by grownups.

I was inveigled to cooperate by being told that once they were done, I would have beautiful straight hair like the lady in the Prel commercial. I was always partial to magic tricks and couldn't resist sticking around to see Aunt Mary Nell transform my nappy head to silken tresses.

After a careful examination of my unruly mop, a cup of Chock Full O' Nuts and a slice of Sara Lee that mom bought especially for the occasion, the initial assessment had been confirmed - I'd have to get it processed. I had no idea what they were talking about but I soon learned what a process was.

With me planted on a stool in the middle of the kitchen, Mary Nell proceeded to mix up a foul smelling concoction that was a little bit thicker than the runny icing they drizzle over coffee cake. Painfully my hair was parted and the creamy mixture applied to each section of my head from roots to ends.

In about five minutes my scalp began to burn and I started to cry. But relief was another five minutes away for each section of my hair needed to be combed until straight. Well, it straightened my hair alright; it was like a corn broom and just as brittle.For several weeks after I was picking the scabs that formed along my hairline where the lye mixture had burnt my skin.

I think I was still picking those scabs when I started at my new school, Our Lady of Grace. We had nuns for teachers but the priests came in every week to teach us catechism. They said, “As the twig is bent, so leans the tree”. I took that up as a personal challenge and with my never ending questioning was constantly told that my soul was in mortal danger.

One really good thing about going to a Catholic school was that we used to get sent home early on Wednesdays so that the poor unfortunate Protestant kids in the neighbourhood could get religious instruction. As good Catholic children we didn't mind giving up a half day of school for the Protestants – after all, it was to save their mortal soul.

Occasionally our classes were interrupted by drills. We had fire drills like all schools do but we also had air raid drills. The nuns seemed to be working with something called the Civil Defense. They told us that the ungodly Communists might drop atomic bombs on us and that we had to prepare for that. I wasn't sure what a Communist was, but if they were ungodly, they were probably Protestants.

I remember crouching under my school desk until we got a signal then being marched around the corner to the church cellar. The classes that were the quickest and quietest were rewarded with scapulars or holy pictures. Is there a patron saint against radioactivity? They told us that radioactivity would make all of our hair fall out. That's what I thought they meant by fallout and although I didn't want to be bald, to me that wasn't so bad. Maybe I'd grow in the good stuff.