The CTR Anthology Page 21

  Quiet man: She was a lovely woman, and an excellent cook, and she was sorry to see me go.

  Quiet woman: He had blond hair in those days, with big blue eyes and a face as shiny as the polished buttons on a Dutchman’s vest and a gift of the gab which would melt the heart of a woman or a man of stone before they were 18 bars into the melody.

  Quiet woman & quiet man: “Down With All The Rascals.”

  Balladeer: In every story the teller was the hero or the big shot. The joke or the trick was never on him. Never.

  Quiet man: I did very well, but things were simpler then. I do well today too. I could be living in a fine apartment. I have good clothes stored with friends in Calgary, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto. I can stay with any of them, any time. But I prefer this life of the road. I bum and hobo and tramp, but I am not a bum, a hobo nor a tramp. I am a man highly tuned to his five senses.

  SCENE TWENTY-ONE: ONE MAN KILLS ANOTHER

  Hobo: I saw one man kill another man one night in a jungle at Kamloops in British Columbia. It wasn’t about food or money either, let me tell you. One fellow said Roosevelt was president of the United States and another said no, it was Mr Coolidge. One thing led to another, they always do. The Roosevelt man grabbed the other fellow and threw him.

  Girls: Go to sleep you weary hobo…

  Hobo: He fell and his head hit the iron arrangement we had to keep our pots over the fire.

  Girls: Let the towns drift slowly by …

  Hobo: It appeared to me the iron point end went into his ear –

  Girls: Can’t you hear the steel rails humming …

  Hobo: Anyway it killed him or we thought so –

  Girls: That’s a hobo’s lullaby …

  Hobo: Certainly appeared dead to me –

  (Sound effects: train in the distance.)

  Girls: Do not think about tomorrow …

  Hobo: The Roosevelt man took him up to the tracks –

  Girls: Let tomorrow come and go …

  Hobo: and soon a freight came along and squished his head to nothing.

  Girls: Tonight you’re in a nice warm boxcar …

  Hobo: So where was your evidence?

  Girls: Safe from all the wind and snow … so go to sleep you weary hobo…

  Hobo: I reckon 50 men saw that killing, if one saw it –

  Girls: Let the towns drift slowly by …

  Hobo: To this day that was a drunk asleep laying his head on the rail.

  (Sound effects: the train arrives and passes.)

  Girls: Don’t you hear the steel rails humming, that’s a hobo’s lullaby …

  Young girl: I remember going to the Moncton Station one night to meet Daddy as he was coming back from somewhere, and there was this freight train coming in, from Montreal, I guess. And these young boys, young men, were jumping off the box cars and running. There was this friend of ours, a neighbour, a very good friend of ours and I always thought the world of him, and there he was chasing these kids, you know, with a great big club and he was a great big brute of a man, but I had only seen the gentle side, and I saw him chasing these kids and really hitting them with this stick, and I just couldn’t believe my eyes. You see, he worked for the railway. This was his job. Such a kind and gentle man, with his family, with his neighbourhood, the kids, I can still see this man striking out with that club of his. Like that and that and that. Horrible. I could never understand it, never.

  Balladeer: I know the police cause you trouble –

  They cause trouble everywhere –

  But when you die and go to heaven,

  There’ll be no policemen there.

  Salesman: I wasn’t there, but I heard about it plenty. There was this railroad cop missing at Regina, and they got some of the crews out searching the empty cars in the yards. They found him, nailed up just like Christ was, and his own billy club had been rammed up his ass. We often wondered if they did that to him while he was still alive or after he had died. The whole think was hushed up. Let me tell you, there were railroad cops and railroad cops, but some of those guys who worked for the CPR were the meanest bastards on the face of the earth.

  All (singing):

  Go to sleep you weary hobo,

  Let the towns drift slowly by,

  Can’t you hear the steel rails humming –

  That’s a hobo’s lullaby.

  SCENE TWENTY-TWO: THE MISSUS SAID

  Farmer: It was after the third bad year

  But somehow, we got through that winter and lit out for

  The Okanagan Valley in the spring.

  Sold what stock we could,

  Gave the rest away,

  Put two trunks on the car –

  You couldn’t give the stuff away –

  We left everything behind, and yet

  The missus she never looked back, just straight ahead

  Down the road. …

  Farm wife: Allan, I just want to walk into an orchard and reach up and pick a nice, ripe peach off a branch. And that’s all I want.

  Farmer (Allan): It was she who gave the orders we’re leaving it all,

  Didn’t even sign the papers at the Bank of Montreal.

  We crossed the B.C. border, she up and sang;

  She was strong and swore she’d never go back.

  This has got to be the promised land.

  But after some time gone by

  She got thinkin’ and lonesome for our old prairie home

  And her friends; I said we’re here to stay

  If you go back it’s alone. She stayed, we lived a

  Goodly life at home …

  Strong woman: I remember my garden. Every year I tried a garden, radishes, lettuce, beets, peas, the few things a woman puts in. One year it blew, all the time, and when it was not blowing too strongly I’d go out and do some hoeing. I’d put a dish towel soaked in water around my mouth, like I was a bank robber, and then I’d rub vaseline into my nostrils. It was supposed to stop dust pneumonia, stopping the dust from getting into your lungs. That killed people, you know. So there I was, with my Jesse James mask and my nostrils half plugged with vaseline, hoeing away, but it never was any use. Everything just grew a little and then died.

  Farmer: But the wife she up and died on me three years ago; You could say that I miss her.

  SCENE TWENTY-THREE: THE POKER GAME

  Balladeer: There was sort of an informal group, a bunch of us, management at a lower level than plant superintendent, and we used to meet and drink a bit and play poker, and it was a good bunch to belong to and I enjoyed it.

  Salesman: Well, Bert, I’m going to trim off some more fat this week.

  Balladeer: That might have been a foundry or a sawmill.

  Young man: How many?

  Salesman: Ten sawyers and half a dozen sizers.

  Young man: Okay, Harry, let me know if there’s a ruckus and, if not, I’ll wait a week and match you.

  Balladeer: I saw maybe 15 or 20 of my good friends dealing in men’s lives, and doing it just like they were raising each other at stud poker.

  Farmer: I’m asking my shippers to take an eight per cent cut.

  Balladeer: He meant he was telling them there would be an eight per cent cut. No ifs, ands, or buts. No union, so bugger you. If it worked out, then the next guy would do it, and in a month the whole industry in southern New Brunswick would have shippers making eight per cent less a shift, and in another month that rate would be standard throughout the Maritimes. See how easy it worked?

  Girl: I knew one man, a wholesaler in fruit and vegetables, and he did very well, one of those fellows who’d do well in a roaring blizzard in the Arctic. He just had the knack for it. He threw big parties. This fellow would make his office staff girls come to these parties and act as maids in black dresses with frilly white aprons; and the men, yes, men with families, they had to come and serve as bartenders and waiters. Free. Not a drink for them, only what they could steal, or sneak off. If that party went on until two a.m. then they still had to
be at work at eight the next morning, and as I recall the last streetcar stopped running at 1:45 so we had to walk home.

  Young man: You got any pacers?

  Farmer: I got a beaut, a Swede, no more brains than a keg of nails, but fast! You stay with him or you die.

  Young man: Can I borrow him a week? I need a speed-up on the line.

  Farmer: Borrow?

  Salesman: Sack a foreman so Jack can get him at 10 per cent off.

  Farmer: Done?

  Young man: Done.

  Farmer: Done.

  Quiet woman: We moved to Montreal in 1933 and found what we were looking for the first day, a perfectly lovely house in Westmount. There were houses you could buy everywhere. I phoned an employment agency and told them I wanted some staff and told them I knew nothing about running a house, simply nothing. I wanted the best servants they could find. When our furniture moved in, this agency had people for us: The chef got $40 a month and his board and room. My maid got $30 and board and room. The first domestic maid got $25 and the second maid got $15. The gardener, and he was the chauffeur too, got $25. The laundress got $2 a day and she scrubbed by hand and ironed by hand and she lived at home. I paid her carfare too – 10 cents a day. Perfectly ridiculous isn’t it? Buying a human being. Nobody thought anything of it.

  Balladeer: What about the legal minimum?

  Farmer: That’s per week. Look, how many hours in a piece of string?

  Salesman: 48.

  Young man: 60.

  Salesman: 80.

  Farmer: So what’s a week?

  Balladeer: What if they take it to the wage board?

  Farmer: The board’ll make up the difference. It’s got to make up the difference otherwise there’ll be 30 more of my piece-workers on the dole.

  Balladeer: The government subsidizing the shop owner and him still selling his product at the same price, and the customer still buying it at that price and paying taxes to subsidize that shop owner. The whole game was rigged.

  Farmer: If you’re not screwing the government and the employee and the customer with the same screw, then you’re a schmuck.

  Balladeer: What’s a schmuck?

  Young man: A guy who ain’t smart.

  Salesman: Like us.

  Balladeer: Just a bunch of good lads so eager to get ahead that they never thought of the mass misery they were causing. And if I had once said: “You rotten sons of bitches!” then I would have been out, blackballed, out. There was nothing I could do. Tens.

  Salesman: Jacks.

  Young man: Aces.

  Farmer: Full house.

  Salesman/Young man: Shit!

  SCENE TWENTY-FOUR: THE WAITRESS

  Strong woman: There I was, a better cook than most 19-year-olds, fairly pleasant looking and a very, very good Scots name which made me respectable: Mclntyre. The owner, he could have been Greek or Syrian, smooth, olive and oily skin, a most objectionable little creep, he lived with his wife and kids in an apartment up above, he hired me on the spot. A dollar a day, my supper, and all the tips I could make. Tips? You gotta be kidding. This was 1934. Anyway, he showed me how to work the till and waved up to where the menu was printed on the wall. The second night he came down at 11:30, checked me out; he even counted the meat patties in the fridge to make sure the day man wouldn’t be pulling a fast one. Then he called me into the little storeroom in the back, pushed me up against the wall, lifted my dress, pulled down my panties, and there it was. There, just as calmly as I’m telling you, he shoved it into me. I admit it wasn’t my first time but I’ve never been more surprised in all my life. In fact, since that day I can’t say that anything has surprised me all that much. There it was, rape, whichever way you look at it, and I just stood there and took it. That gives you some idea how badly I needed that job. My poor mother – she would’ve died. Anyway, he was out in a few seconds, over with. He said to get myself decent and walked out, and I followed, and he said, well, that was part of the job. That’s what he said, getting screwed was part of the job. Then he took out his wallet, handed me a dollar. Now, I couldn’t figure out, was he paying me this dollar for screwing me and I was working for nothing and that made me a whore, or was he paying me this dollar for my seven hours and I was opening up for him for nothing because I thought he was kind and generous, and that made me an idiot. Something to think about.

  SCENE TWENTY-FIVE: DOTTIE MCLAREN AND THE BANKS

  Young girl: I was a junior teller in a bank in Kingston and my name was Dottie McLaren then. Banks were terrible places to work then. If you know a man today who was a manager or an accountant in a bank in the Hungry 30s, you take a good look at him because he will not be what he seems to be. Underneath whatever he appears to be you will find a cruel man dedicated to a cruel system.

  Song:

  Cold cold money runs this town and turns everybody around,

  Working for their ticket in the sweepstakes.

  Every time a man turns round another payment must be found.

  And you know he’s sworn and bound to be a law-abiding man.

  What do you think it is keeps him going?

  What do you think it is keeps him going?

  Quiet woman: Any one of us would have said we had socialist leanings, if not outright communist sympathies. We were young and élite … the chosen few who could go to university … and believe me there were bloody few of us in those days. Far into the night, until dawn we’d talk, talk, talk … tea and cinnamon toast … taking the world apart and putting it together. God, but we were sweet, young people, so naïve, beautiful in our simplicity. Even our stupidity was something very clean and appealing. We were that fortunate part of the generation between 18 and 25. And there was, for us, no Depression in Canada, no Indian problem, no French problem. We would graduate with honours and go into the best universities and take our rightful place in Canada. I realize that only people around 40 or 50 – say 50 – and only those of that class (that upper middle class we belonged to) will understand what it is I’m saying. Probably, my own little group from those late, pre-war years at the University of Toronto will not even recognize themselves now. Occasionally, I see one … a couple of women keep popping up in the society pages … on committees. Do you see what I mean?

  Song:

  It was just the other day

  I heard an old hobo say

  Anyone who thinks it’s fun ain’t been a farmer.

  What do you think it is keeps him going?

  What do you think it is keeps him going?

  Hobo: Various agencies, church groups and the like treated Saskatchewan like a disaster area, which it was, and they used to gather together car loads of food and clothing in Ontario and ship it west. Well, one day, this carload of dried codfish came in. Ever seen the stuff? Well, this was tied together with twine in stacks, like shingles. ’Fact some folks said it looked like shingles. ’Fact there was a story around that old Jack McCormick had actually tried to shingle his outhouse with this codfish; but the nails bent. Anyway, it was a good laugh.

  Song:

  What do you think it is keeps him going?

  What do you think it is keeps him going?

  SCENE TWENTY-SIX: THE COUTEAUS

  Farm wife: I knew this one family who lived across the street from us, the Couteaus. And their children would just walk into our house, and we’d do the same. The Couteaus, they were good to me. I was like one of their own. And they were good to each other, too, always smiling privately like they enjoyed one another. Of course, my family knew the Couteaus were in trouble. But still Mrs Couteau always had plenty of cookies on hand, and she’d give us milk and cookies, and sit with us and sip her tea – how she loved her tea. And then there was always Mr Couteau teasing us and smoking his pipe and joking as if he hadn’t a care in the world. I liked going to that house. But this one day I walked in, the Couteau kids were all in the kitchen, kind of huddled there not saying anything, and out of the bedroom were coming the sounds of the most terrible fight.

>   Quiet woman (Mrs Couteau): No! I will not understand! How could you? How could you do it?

  Farmer (Mr Couteau): I did it, that’s all!

  Mrs Couteau: How dare you!

  Mr Couteau: Mind your own business!

  Mrs Couteau: It is my business! Mine and the children!

  Mr Couteau: Ten cents.

  Mrs Couteau: Milk is 10 cents! Cod liver oil is 10 cents! But, tobacco –

  Mr Couteau: It’s my goddamn tobacco!

  Mrs Couteau: Pig!

  Mr Couteau: Go to hell!

  Farm wife: Mr. Couteau had done the shopping and that day and he had bought himself a package of tobacco. Ten cents. That was the argument.

  Mrs. Couteau: Here we are taking money from the county and everyone on the street knows it and you go out and buy tobacco!

  Farm wife: That was what it was: they were on the dole, and that was the most terrible and humiliating experience of all. Trying to live on the few cents a day they were given and still keep up a front of being one of the town’s most important families.

  Mr Couteau: All right. I’ll never buy tobacco again as long as I live!

  Mrs Couteau: You’d better not!

  Mr Couteau: But I won’t buy tea, either!

  Mrs Couteau: My tea!

  Mr Couteau: My tobacco, your tea! Not one dime’s worth.

  Farm wife: That’s what I remember about the Depression: two lovely people at each other’s throats.

  Young girl: I came home from school one day and told my mother that a little Italian girl in my class couldn’t hold her pencil right because her knuckles were split and bleeding because of the cold. No mitts, you see, Connie has no mitts.

  Strong woman: Give her your mitts.

  Young girl: What about me?

  Strong woman: Give that poor child your mitts. Leave them in her desk, if you have to.

  Young girl: That’s when my mother started knitting mitts, unravelling old sweaters, anything woollen, rewinding that wool and knitting mitts: big ones, small ones, and I gave them out. Mother, I can see her yet sitting by the radiator and knitting away. She did a pair of mitts a day and eventually it got so that every poor kid in our district had some, but mother just kept on knitting. She did it till the year of her death: 15 years later! You see, it had become an obsession.