Sunday, August 16, 2009

Foghorn on Halifax Common

March 8, 2007 Fog Horn on Halifax Common 1174 words

I can still hear its melancholy honking ...sort of the way I imagine a hurt moose might sound ... rhythmic ... repetitive ... not at all tiresome. That November evening it seemed to be the only thing alive in the damp greyness ... except for my breath mingling with the fog ... my heart beating under my clothing. I was returning home after riding, past Queen Elizabeth High School, moving along Quinpool Road towards Oxford Street. The Commons was the only part of the route that was scary. It was such an empty space. Anything could happen there, and no one would know. I always walked faster as I moved past the darkened high school on my left, the wind-haunted Common on my right. My steps slowed when I reached Quinpool Road. The shops were closing. It was supper time. But all the streets that ran perpendicular to Quinpool were residential, and their lights were visible ... and friendly.

In November, the days had shortened so the paddock was lit allowing us to ride till six. By the time I stripped off Happy's tack, toweled him off, blanketed, fed and watered him, it was six thirty. The walk home usually took about half an hour.

I was a small unobtrusive figure, moving purposefully along the sidewalk, occasionally glancing into store windows. I wore jodphurs with long underwear beneath them, a warm sweater and a brown leather bomber jacket. My hair was untidy, and I smelled like a stable. Once, in a movie theatre, as I was getting seated, I heard a boy's voice saying, "Jeez! A horse just walked in." I liked the smell, but I knew that my grandmother would expect me to wash and change before supper. I was always starving when I get home. It had been hours since lunch time and I had done a lot of walking and riding in between.

Oma had arrived from Germany only a few months before. She spoke no English so I was learning German quickly. We didn't discuss weighty ideas requiring long words or complex grammar. Our conversations revolved around such things as food and clothing, the dog, Mitzi, or when to expect my father back. I was learning the language the way all small children do at their mother's knees ... little by little. Oma needed help understanding Canadian ways and I needed help communicating in her language. It was a symbiotic relationship, and I was still enjoying the novelty of having someone home when I returned after my day. Before Oma came I would go directly to one of the two restaurants in the neighbourhood where my father had a tab running for me. I ate alone every night then ... and no one cared if I smelled like manure ... or if they did, they didn't say anything to me about it. Later I would let myself into the darkened apartment and start my homework.

On this particular night, I was thinking about school, mentally going over what I had to do before bedtime. I had about half an hour's work. I liked school so doing homework was not as onerous as it might have been. I glanced at my watch. I'd be home by 7 and finished eating by 7:30. Lots of time for homework and phone conversations with friends.

When I passed the Jubilee Restaurant on the other side of the road the lights were on, and the windows all steamed up. The place looked crowded. Someone was just leaving and the smell of french fries wafted out onto the street. I had eaten many hot chicken sandwiches with chips there over the past two years, and also a good many Devil's Delight sundaes. It seemed a friendlier place tonight than it had before Oma arrived. I still went there occasionally, but after a movie, with friends for chips and a coke ... never for dinner.

I was almost home. I just had to make it past the blackness of the Quinpool Road school yard. The school itself was being demolished. It has been declared unsafe the year I was in grade six. In June that year I graduated to Cornwallis Junior High School, Mrs. Shackleton retired, and uniformed city workers nailed condemned signs onto the wooden fire escapes.

I ran the last fifty yards and then I was home. Home was an apartment above The Blossom Shoppe, Bligh Radio and the Royal Bank, right at the corner of Quinpool and Oxford, tucked in between the school and the Oxford Theatre. The trolley ran right past my front door on Quinpool.Road. I thought I was the luckiest person around to be living here in the midst of everything that mattered.

I pushed open the door, and made my way up the steep stairs. Two more doors and I was in our apartment. The apartment smelled as though people really lived there. My stomach rumbled as I breathed in the aromas of cooking food. My grandmother called out "Barbel" from the kitchen and I responded. The kitchen was brightly lit with a Chinese red sloped ceiling. The red arborite table was already set and the stove was crowded with pots and pans. "What's for dinner?" I asked as I went past Oma to the bathroom. I heard the word, "Bifsteak" through the door.

By the time I came back to the kitchen wearing jeans, a flannel shirt and fleecy slippers, my hair damp and clean, Oma was beginning to whip the potatoes. She mounded them on my plate, made a dent in them with a spoon, carefully ladled on the tiny crispy, golden brown onions cooked in butter, added a spoonful of buttered carrots on the side, and a mound of spinach.

Yes, spinach. Oma cooked spinach in a way that no child could resist. It was steamed, then chopped fine and then dressed with butter and with tiny onion pieces fried crisp in butter on top, (always butter ... Oma used to say that she put the butter on the rye bread to hold the quark to hold the sugar ... but I know now that the butter was the most important ingredient, not the sugar).

I think about Oma's spinach often as I toss a handful of Costco's spinach leaves on top of rice to cook down and stir in ... a glass of red wine in my hand. I am a carefree cook ... a handful of this, a dollop of that ... care-less my Oma would say ...


She placed the perfectly cooked steak on the plate and sprinkled a few more onions over it. I ate quickly, enjoying every morsel. When I finished Oma asked if I were still hungry. I was. She fried a second steak in butter and created an entire second dinner for me.

No one before or since has ever fed me the way my grandmother did. It's probably just as well in view of the fact that I am no longer a growing adolescent spending hours every day exercising in the fresh air.

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