Elroy Lives Here
Upon the occasion of my seventeenth birthday, my parents decided a day trip to the ‘big smoke’ was in order. Oh, we had made that sojourn a few times from the wilds of Northern Ontario, even spending a weekend once, so as my sister and I could revel in the joys of the Canadian National Exhibition…colloquially known as “The Ex”. You know though, sometimes, when one resides up in a rural vastness, the evening silence becomes so deafening that you can barely hear yourself think. Well apparently, this phenomenon happened to my father one night and he blurted out amongst all the thrashing and bashing of mosquitos in the night, bombastic barrages of the gentle breeze slashing and ripping its way among the leaves in the forest and the earthshattering, seismic rumbling of a hoot owl landing upon a fallen leaf, “I think we ought to bring Dad along…he will love it.”
I have no idea, as I was sent to bed shortly after, just how the results of World War III turned in the favour of my father but, when the dust had settled and the bodycount had reached into the millions, we were motoring down the 400 (Provincial highway), my sister and I cowered in on either side of a man who nary spoke a discernible word the whole way and kept repeating under his breath, so as it was just barely audible to his two fellow backseat passengers, “Their time will come…their time will come.” At one point, I think dad heard it and luckily we were in close enough range that he could turn up CHUM-AM a little louder.
I gasped in wonderment at all the tall buildings, scraping the sky with pointed tentacles, or flourished crowns…the majestic grandeur of cosmopolitan life always astounded me on our visits. We toured between one mammoth example of modern architecture after another, Grandpa trudging behind, mumbling, cursing and begging for an answer from some unseen divinity why he was being subjected to such torture. At one point, down in the Railway Lands, I went back to him and clasped him around the shoulder, pointing up to brilliant and imposing structure, jutting up into the city skyline and a stark, yellow pedestrian bridge leading our view towards it…”Grandpa, is that not the most amazing sight you have ever seen?”
He shrugged my arm off him and took one step away from me. For a moment, his keen eyes stared at me from underneath his heavy gray eyebrows, then he smirked and looked back towards the buildings…pointing, he said, “Is that where the Jetsons live?”
Elroy Lives Here
Upon the occasion of my seventeenth birthday, my parents decided a day trip to the ‘big smoke’ was in order. Oh, we had made that sojourn a few times from the wilds of Northern Ontario, even spending a weekend once, so as my sister and I could revel in the joys of the Canadian National Exhibition…colloquially known as “The Ex”. You know though, sometimes, when one resides up in a rural vastness, the evening silence becomes so deafening that you can barely hear yourself think. Well apparently, this phenomenon happened to my father one night and he blurted out amongst all the thrashing and bashing of mosquitos in the night, bombastic barrages of the gentle breeze slashing and ripping its way among the leaves in the forest and the earthshattering, seismic rumbling of a hoot owl landing upon a fallen leaf, “I think we ought to bring Dad along…he will love it.”
I have no idea, as I was sent to bed shortly after, just how the results of World War III turned in the favour of my father but, when the dust had settled and the bodycount had reached into the millions, we were motoring down the 400 (Provincial highway), my sister and I cowered in on either side of a man who nary spoke a discernible word the whole way and kept repeating under his breath, so as it was just barely audible to his two fellow backseat passengers, “Their time will come…their time will come.” At one point, I think dad heard it and luckily we were in close enough range that he could turn up CHUM-AM a little louder.
I gasped in wonderment at all the tall buildings, scraping the sky with pointed tentacles, or flourished crowns…the majestic grandeur of cosmopolitan life always astounded me on our visits. We toured between one mammoth example of modern architecture after another, Grandpa trudging behind, mumbling, cursing and begging for an answer from some unseen divinity why he was being subjected to such torture. At one point, down in the Railway Lands, I went back to him and clasped him around the shoulder, pointing up to brilliant and imposing structure, jutting up into the city skyline and a stark, yellow pedestrian bridge leading our view towards it…”Grandpa, is that not the most amazing sight you have ever seen?”
He shrugged my arm off him and took one step away from me. For a moment, his keen eyes stared at me from underneath his heavy gray eyebrows, then he smirked and looked back towards the buildings…pointing, he said, “Is that where the Jetsons live?”