I’ve been writing my memories since my own declaration to “be a unabashed public writer” after my 60th birthday last year. I march on, to my own drummer.
A tree’s wood is also its memoir.
I’ve always been a writer as my memoirs will detail. Being a writer is a particular way, a unique consciousness of the world that is active at all times. It’s a way of breathing and beating and being. You don’t even need to write to be a writer - it’s more as I said, a form of consciousness. Writing is just “sometimes” the dextrous, residue that excretes from this form of active engagement with the world one finds oneself in.
This piece is one of many I’ve written about my past. The memoir is a fascinating but ill understood genre and I think anyone who deems themselves a writer, who thinks of their life as being of prime importance - must write one.
I decided to just attack what I believe are themes and segments of my own life. And write down my perceptions, half poetry, half prose. It seems like the best way for myself to trace the footsteps of ME for others to follow. So many, dozens of short vignettes - Pumphouse, Kenabeek, Mother, New Liskeard, Teachers, The Long Run, Women, Corsica, Karlovy Vary, Layton, Nicaragua, Fighting & Drinking, Steel Building, the Verjees, Bars, Antigua, Kerns School, the Kramps, Kyiv, Dogs and many others …
So here is one of them, in brief. I lived at 131 Jamestown Crescent, a Toronto Housing Project (for welfare people) for 2 years. Doomstown as it became known. My first real, not made up memories, I was 5, 6, 7. Formative years. I’ve gone back and wandered the streets, nothing has changed, still people screaming that the place is hell on earth and digging a deeper hell. Just google it. But for a kid, ‘twas a playground.
“It’s craziness,” he told CTV News Toronto. “The first time it was his son… How much more will it happen?” Less than two weeks earlier, bullets fired in the neighbourhood narrowly missed an eight-year-old boy who was walking to buy a popsicle nearby. The boy’s mother showed up at Tuesday night’s scene in shock. “It’s disgusting. I don’t know what to say anymore,” she said. “There’s always kids here playing. This yard is always full of kids… They have total disregard for anybody else’s life.” “What is this community turning into? I’m pleading with the government to do things now.” Rev. Sherman was at the scene in Jamestown to offer comfort to the community and families impacted, urging change for the communities “in crisis.” - 2018 - Toronto CTV News.
131 Jamestown Cresent
North York, Toronto
Albion and Kipling
A shelf at the back of the city’s shop
to store its working poor.
For me, 5 or 6
it was many things.
Pickled relish and bologne sandwiches
Hot wheels, baseball cars and clackers
Street hockey and dreams of being somebody.
The smell and fear in the neighborhood air,
of not making it ‘til tomorrow
tepid dreams, postponed sorrows.
Gangs, Paki beaters, fights,
Domestic disputes, suicides,
Shootings, murders, stabbings
Muggings, threats, stealing bikes,
there was never a dull moment.
Shit runs downhill and it all
seemed to land problematically
in Jamestown.
Our little house had it all
for a small tyke like me -
it was basically a zoo.
An alley cat “Snowball” living under
the $10 rowboat in our backyard
that my father we knew
would never make float.
Birds, fish, snakes, crawfish, rats, turtles
- you name it
we had it
dragged back from the Humber river
after skipping stones and living in
nature’s fine underbelly.
Everyone had a habit, a problem.
But that’s true of everywhere really.
I learned to look past those things
and see us all as the weaklings we are.
Vera, poor girl, sewing up her arms
in front of me and Bobby Ouimet,
singing as she stuck the needle in.
All the tough guys breaking after too many drinks
and roaming the neighborhood crying like babes.
There was too little love.
Men landed on the moon,
I was the President of the flat earth society.
It’s how I began my career doubting the fairytale
that we’ve been sold.
My teachers chuckling at my ridiculous audacity
but me, noticing their smirks
and vowing I’d get revenge.
Tragedies galore.
Sirens the local musical interlude.
My sister’s pants on fire.
Smack. Smack.
Sounds carried through the night.
Us young boys, hanging out,
Dino, Bobby, Franky, ME
surviving our older brothers
and their penchant for random violence.
Saturday matinees, a quarter a piece
watching Westerns and then stealing candies
from Kmart and
divvying them up
under a parked tractor trailer
at the back of the mall.
Then trying to make it home
across enemy territory, alive.
Weekends at Clearville Dam.
fishing, catching only time.
Walking through the orchards
to get there, dodging the
German shepherds chained
between the rows of trees.
Free. Free as boys can be.
CCR, down on the corner,
out in the street and
sweet Caroline always
in our thoughts -
me, dreams of being a D. J.
and spinning music
all night long.
A bunk bed, bumping my head.
The joy of school, learning “the new”,
cardboard sleds and baseball -
the Braithwaite Legal Eagles.
Banana seats and bike rodeos.
Stealing bikes and still we did
not know how to tie up our shoes.
My mom’s Kraft Dinner and
her always loving kiss,
the freedom to roam while
still so young
and not miss
anything -
for I felt just for that time,
it was all mine.
131 Jamestown Crescent.
My happy days in hell.