Sublime Smile.. cane head

The 1973 Honda....back in the mid 70's the four Gregory brothers borrowed my wife Julia's year old almost new Honda Civic, I think she signed up for a four thousand dollar loan on the car, or thereabouts, her friends owned the successful Dalt's Honda dealership up on Rogers Road, Gibb Oderkirk was the guys name who sold her the car, he was a friend of Julia's brother Nip, as in Nippy or Nipper, Dave actually, but everyone called him Nip, they probably went to George Harvey together, that was one of the local high schools, besides George Harvey which was a technical school, there was York Memorial the Arts and Science High School, funny how they separated things back then, why, I am still trying to figure out why they never sent me to Harvey, I would have made a great electrician or plumber, I guess maybe cause my dad was a paper handler a white collar worker, a tax assessor for the city of Toronto and also head of the union, local 79, that got the Toronto nurses their first contract, so that union stuff runs deep in my blood...

 

The Gregory Brothers consisted of Alex, me Charlie, Kevin and Shane, I don't know if we had all been on a fishing trip together in our lives, I can't remember....we got this fishing bug from our dad Alex and his friend Nelson Bowman and other adults in our circle, Uncle Jim and Uncle George, Frank Taylor, Mickey Dowd, males that were also fond of fishing...as far back as being a young boy, I recall the importance of the bonding of men that took place through the fish that one caught, it was a very real testament to ones position in the heirarchy, this fishing ability, the ability to land a fish, which when I think of it today is more like tricking a creature, a hungry creature into attacking your bait or lure or whatever it is you are presenting, boy oh boy, I sure know that if I was hungry and someone through a hot dog on a stick in front of me, I would grab and try to eat it, or even a marshmallow or a piece of corn, or bread or even a cheesie, I have seen fish caught on cheesies! For some reason a man became a man or at least in our circle, being able to fish was a way to become a man, of acceptance and well, geez, I still don't get it, and I caught thousands of fish in my days of fishing, and I am no more a man than someone from the desert!

 

At the time, I was working as a waiter at the Seaway Beverly Hills Hotel on Wilson Avenue in Toronto's north west end, it was run by the Jewish Mob, Jack something or the other owned it, I first went there when it opened in 1966, I got dressed up like a street thug and because I was pretty fit and punchy I got served in the six hundred seat draft room, six hundred seats, now that's a big room, I remember sitting in there with Georgie Holmes and other hoods before The Band played Crang Plaza, that was way before The Band was called that or maybe it was the beginning of them being called that cause when we saw them play there was no Rompin Ronnie, it was like being at an old time lynching as the hoods from one part of town were always looking to rumble with the hoods from some other part of town, especially the coloureds, it was weird, is it still weird and punchy like that out there growing up? The Hills, as it was called used to bring in the big bands, Fats Domino, Roy Orbison, The Platters, I mean, really big bands to the Hook and Ladder Club the fancy nightclub at the front of the building...Fishcer was the owners last name, Jack Fishcer and I knew from Italian guys that he was connected and owned the rounder hangout on Bloor Street called The Concorde Tavern...anyways me and my friend Vern we worked at the back of the hotel in the Trophy Lounge, a couple of hundred seat room where there was nightly B grade entertainment...Vern and I had been drafted from the lowly Queensbury Arms which was in our neighbourhood, south of the highway 401 on Weston Road, a place called Mt.Dennis, Mt.Dinky for short, it was a working class area, with numerous plants and factories, so many in fact that if you were to quit school, you could go knock on one of the factories doors and find employment, somewhere that same day, maybe at the CCC, Continental Can Company, or Raybestos or Johnson Matthey and Mallory, or Kodak, or Feranti Packard, or Square D, or Moores Buisness Forms, they were all within walking distance of our home on Victoria Blvd #26..., a rented home, which we paid Mr.Gowland about $50 a month for, that eventually went up to $75 a month, like now, I had no concept of how much money that was in the scope of things, somewhere along the line, my idea on a fair price to pay for rent was set at $300 dollars those would be 1970 dollars...I recall working in that tough bar making at times a thousand dollars a week or probably more like five hundred a week, money was everywhere, people would tip you like crazy, and being from my family and working in the neighbourhood, that helped a lot, we got respect!

 

So this night in the summer, after work at the Hills, I get home and the brothers are packed, the four of us, the Honda is packed to the rafters, there are eight fishing rods and reels, a cooler with beer, three extra cases of beer, a cooler with food for the weekend, a tent, four sleeping bags, a cookstove, imagine the stuff and I get home, tear off my white work shirt and put a flannel shirt on and kiss Julia and say goodbye because we are heading to the holiest of holy fishing holes, The French River...up Weston Road to Jane, a right turn, past Trethewey, just past Lawrence Avenue there is a tackle shop where we stop in front, the car running, the four of us run into the shop, we are at the back of the shop buying minnows, a big box of minnows, some lures, what have you and we go to get in the car, and the car is gone, not there, stolen, it's two in the morning, there isn't a person to be seen, we call the police, all our stuff is gone, everything! Can you imagine how I felt when I told Julia her car was gone, her uninsured car, you didn't have to buy insurance back then!

 

Forlorn, is to weak a word to describe how we felt, Shane went home to his love Margie, Kevin who had hardly been free from the hoosekow a week or so went home to moms, Alex, Big Al was staying with us on Mahoney Avenue, top it off, we had no beers to drink, it was the most somber of moments, the most somber of nights...As a second car we owned this 64 dark blue Rambler, a four door sedan that used more oil than gas, at least we could get around..Julia was particularly upset, she was making car payments, The Honda was new at the time, made in Japan, Dalt's was a small car lot and the owner himself, Dalt let her have the little car once he heard the new 75s were on there way...the police came to the house and took a statement at four in the morning, our last name didn't help, there were two officers, you could here them scoff at the news of the stolen vehicle, we did not expect them to be much help.

 

The next day I grabbed the carved stick purchased in Maynooth on a vacation to Lake Baptiste and declared, "I am going to find the Honda and I let out a chant that is simple, Honda Honda, Honda, Honda, the while holding the cane in my right arm as a warrior might his weapon, and I repeated the mantra loudly to those present, Honda, Honda, Honda, Honda....and off I went in the old Rambler that Verma the dining room manager of the Queensbury Arms had sold me for $400. I went everywhere, gas was just about free back then, about a dollar a gallon...I drove up to Dundas and Keele, looking in all the parking lots as I went, over to Etobicoke and Rexdale, up to Weston and to Wilson near Albion Road, driving through all the apartment building lots, the plaza lots, even Yorkdale shopping centre on Dufferin Street, I spent the entire day out there on my own, looking very intently as a bird would hunt its prey, by days end I was tired and dejected, my report to Julia was not good. No car.

 

The next day, I went out again, this time I took the back roads down Blackcreek through the Smythe Park area where I had played hardball on the Softley Cartage team and won the batting championship and up the hill toward Annette Avenue and Runnymede where my grandfolks used to live on Webb Avenue and around that area, near the Stockyards that smelled like a ten day old dead rat, and around McCormick Avenue where there were some auto wreckers that you could go browsing in if you had proper foot ware cause those auto wrecker yards they always have mucky oily surfaces, and after that back down the sneaky way, past the apartments on Humber Blvd to Blackcreek again and I stopped at the big apartments on Woolner Avenue, they weren't called ghettos then, they were pretty snazzy, and there, in the middle of one of the big outdoor parking lots was the shit brown Honda! I was all over myself, I had a key I got in, everything was there, the fishing gear, the beer, our camping equipment, I drove the car to the gas station on Weston Road across from the Queensbury Arms, the old Esso station that used to just like an NHL commercial back in the fifties, where you could get a tony the tiger flag for your car, the attendants wore them bus driver type hats and they cleaned your windshield, well it was now a precusor to self serve and the foreign man who owned it was always grumpy anyways as he was putting some gas in the little car, a police man drove by and I flagged him down and he came over and I told him I had found the car! He didn't believe me, not for one second did he believe me, and you know, that was a very dark moment for me, the moment I realized the stain my name Gregory carried, and I don't really know if I have trusted a police man since, cause, right then when I did something good, found a difficult thing to find I could not get a thank you or some recognition of this small deed...the fact the car was not insured did not go unmentioned in my words, even still, I was scoffed at, and it tarnished the moment....beside me, in the car, on the front seat was the cane from Africa which we still have and we call it The Honda Finder...if you lose something and need to borrow it, let me know...

Done