The River: A Memoir of Life in the Border Cities
Autor Paul Vaseyen Limba Engleză Paperback – 11 noi 2013
"Ask anyone what they love most about Winzer, and they seem always to tell you it's the people, the family and friends webbed around each of us. True. But for me the town is also, and perhaps mainly, the larger-than-life characters who ghost around in my imagination and my memory: rumrunners and prize fighters and elegant old ladies and one-eyed thugs and earnest well-meaning politicians and hucksters and hookers and crusty old editors.
Many of them I remember meeting.
Some of them I actually met."
—from The River
The River is Paul Vasey’s tribute to a place he discovered by accident and loved over a lifetime. Chatty, anecdotal, personal and passionate, by one of Windsor’s most celebrated reporters and radio hosts, this meandering memoir winds its way around a river town whose sights and characters may never be fully charted: a Windsor that fired a reporter’s imagination, stole his heart, and eventually became the place he calls home.
Many of them I remember meeting.
Some of them I actually met."
—from The River
The River is Paul Vasey’s tribute to a place he discovered by accident and loved over a lifetime. Chatty, anecdotal, personal and passionate, by one of Windsor’s most celebrated reporters and radio hosts, this meandering memoir winds its way around a river town whose sights and characters may never be fully charted: a Windsor that fired a reporter’s imagination, stole his heart, and eventually became the place he calls home.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781927428313
ISBN-10: 1927428319
Pagini: 195
Dimensiuni: 135 x 211 x 10 mm
Greutate: 0.18 kg
Editura: BIBLIOASIS
Colecția Biblioasis
Locul publicării:Canada
ISBN-10: 1927428319
Pagini: 195
Dimensiuni: 135 x 211 x 10 mm
Greutate: 0.18 kg
Editura: BIBLIOASIS
Colecția Biblioasis
Locul publicării:Canada
Recenzii
"Wonderful #windsor memoir!"—Margaret Atwood
"The book is a memoir, but with a few fictional characters ... we Windsorites are fortunate to be chronicled by a master storyteller who can find the truth in documenting both."—The Windsor Star
"The book is a memoir, but with a few fictional characters ... we Windsorites are fortunate to be chronicled by a master storyteller who can find the truth in documenting both."—The Windsor Star
Notă biografică
Paul Vasey is the author of ten published books – novels, short stories and non-fiction. For 18 years he hosted the CBC morning program in Windsor, Ontario and Victoria, British Columbia before retiring in August 2007. Prior to joining the CBC, Vasey was an award-winning journalist with The Windsor Star, The Hamilton Spectator, The Canadian Press and The Owen Sound Sun-Times.
Paul is president of the board of directors for a mental-health treatment centre for children and adolescents in Windsor, Ontario, and is a member of the board of the Pelee Island Bird Observatory. He has led many creative-writing workshops in elementary and high schools and at the University of Windsor and has taught journalism at St.Clair College.
Paul is president of the board of directors for a mental-health treatment centre for children and adolescents in Windsor, Ontario, and is a member of the board of the Pelee Island Bird Observatory. He has led many creative-writing workshops in elementary and high schools and at the University of Windsor and has taught journalism at St.Clair College.
Extras
This story begins in the summer of 1966 - the summer I turned 21 – in place I thought was called Winzer. Never heard of the place until Art Davidson, my first editor, told me he’d arranged a job for me at The Winzer Star.
‘Where’s Winzer?’
‘Get a road map.’
The map directed me to head south on Highway 21, hook up with Highway 401 and head west until the city came into view. Pretty amazing city when I got my first glimpse of it, cresting the Jackson Park overpass: a skyline that looked like New York, or what I thought a New York skyline might look like, never having been there either. But appearances can be deceiving. Once I drove all the way down Ouellette Avenue I discovered, as all newcomers do, that the skyline belonged to someone else. There was a river between us and them. Us being Windsor Ontario Canada. Them being Detroit Michigan U.S. of A.
It’s not much of a river, really. It’s about 30 miles long miles long from Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie and only half a mile wide at its narrowest point, two and a half at its broadest. Some people would argue it’s not a river at all, but a strait.
Strait? River? River? Strait?
Let’s see.
Oxford: River: Copious stream of water flowing in a channel to sea or lake or marsh or another. (see rive).
Okay. Rive: Rend, cleave … whence river.
Sounds like a river.
But maybe not.
Oxford: Strait: narrow passage of water connecting two seas or bodies of water.
The French, who happened by on their way to somewhere else in the 1600s couldn’t make up their mind. So they called it Rivière du Détroit, which translates literally as "River of the Strait". Which explains the name of our neighbour to the north. Yes. Detroit is North of us, which makes Windsor, Ontario the only city in Canada to be located south of its American neighbour.
Drives tourists crazy: ‘Just head north on Ouellette.’ ‘You mean that way?’ ‘No, that way.’ ‘But that’s Detroit over there.’ ‘Uh huh.’
Just one of many neat and puzzling things about our town.
For instance, did you know that Windsor is on the same latitude as Northern California. Well, almost. Windsor is at 42°18' N latitude and the California-Oregon border is at exactly 42°00' N. Close enough for the tourist bureau, which loves to brag about it.
But back to the river, or strait or river of the strait. Whatever you call it, The River (rarely do you hear anyone call it by its real name) is so deeply engrained in our consciousness that we refer to it all the time, even when we don’t notice that we’re talking about it.
For instance: When we’re going to Detroit, we go across the river, or we go over the river. If you’re giving someone directions to downtown, ‘head down toward the river’. We go away from the river when we’re heading home to South Windsor. We go along the river when we take a drive downriver to Amherstburg and upriver when we head out to Riverside on our way to Belle River (which also has a river, the Belle River, which is a real river and a lovely one but only half as long as ours).
The River is just part of the fabric of our lives. It’s part of our vocabulary. And it’s very much a part of who we are and what we do. And we just can’t stay away.
We ‘go down to the river’ and we do so for all sorts of reasons. We go in the winter to see the ice floes, we go in the summer hoping for a little breeze on those 90-degree 100%-humidity summer scorchers. We go in the daytime and we go in the nighttime. We go early in the morning to fish or to jog or to walk and we go late at night which, on a windless night, is my favourite time to stand by the rail admiring the skyline of Detroit right-side up in the inky sky and upside down on the river’s mirrored surface. All the better if the spell is broken by a freighter winking past heading upriver or down.
We fish in the river, we sail along the river, we marvel at the river in all its moods (I especially love those wild west-wind days when our river, like Margaret Laurence’s river in The Diviners, decides to flow both ways – the winds pushing whitecaps up the river against that formidable 1.5 mile-per-hour current).
And as the old song would have us do:
Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
?The beautiful, the beautiful river;
?Gather with the saints at the river.
[...]
Wasn’t always this way. There was a time, not all that long ago, when our riverfront looked like the riverfront directly across the way: one giant railyard, the riverbank a mess of weeds and out-of-control shrubs. Not very inviting and not a spot you would go for a stroll. Certainly not at night. Unless you were looking for trouble. Who knew what was lurking down there? Actually, the cops knew what was lurking down there: trouble. Back then the riverfront was a favourite haunt of winos (dry sleeping in the railway underpasses) and hookers (male and female) and shady characters hoping to make a quick score on an unsuspecting someone wandering down looking for a little action. Let’s just say that when I first came to Windsor back in the 1960s the riverfront was not a place you would take out-of-town guests to impress them. And it wasn’t in the tourist brochures.
[...]
I was about to kick off my shoes. ‘No, no, dear. Leave them on. Let’s have a little look around, shall we?’
‘Sure, that would be fine.’
‘How about a drink, first?’
‘Sure, that would be fine,’ I said.
She led me into the kitchen. ‘Whiskey?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘Help yourself.’ She pointed to a silver tray on the sideboard, crystal whiskey glasses circling a decanter whose facets glistened in the sun slanting in through the river-face windows. ‘The ice is in here.’ She lifted the lid of a silver ice bucket beside the tray, pincered a couple of cubes into her own glass, held it out to be refilled, then dropped a couple of cubes into my glass.
I poured a little whiskey from the decanter into her glass and then a little into my own.
‘That won’t last long,’ she said, looking at my glass, then her own. I topped hers up, then mine.
‘Cigarette?’ She offered me one of hers. I lit hers, then mine.
‘Now, let’s have a little tour shall we?’ She led me out of the kitchen into the room next door – floor to ceiling double doors in the centre of huge windows overlooking the lawn which sloped down to the river. There were gardens bordering the lot on either side and, by the river, a patio with tables and chairs. ‘My favorite place,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing quite like it, having a cocktail by the river watching the boats go by.’ And, as though on cue, freighter loomed into view. ‘This, obviously, is the dining room.’ The side and back walls were wainscoted in what looked like oak. There was a huge table, four chairs on either side, big armchairs at the head and foot. ‘I keep the liquor in here,’ she said, tapping the door of an ornate hutch with the pointed toe of one of her high-heeled shoes. ‘Help yourself. Every now and then when you think you’ve had about a bottle you can buy another. Same goes for the fridge. Have anything you like and replace what you eat.’
The living room was behind the dining room. Twice the size, extending three quarters the length of the house on the side facing the road. In the centre of the outer wall there was a marble-faced fireplace above which were a pair of little paintings - maybe eight by ten inches – illuminated by tiny lights hovering above each of them.
‘Beautiful,’ I said.
‘They were a gift,’ she said. ‘Of the artists.’
‘That one,’ she said, indicating the one on the left, ‘is by Tom Thomson. The other is by A.Y. Jackson. They were painted the same day – the summer of 1914 – in Algonquin Park. Tom was on a little canvas-seated folding stool facing one way. Alex was seated on a stool behind him, facing the other way. They often did that, took sketching trips together. That’s where we met them.
‘In fact we met them the day they’d done these sketches. We were on our honeymoon, staying at a camp owned by a friend of theirs. We all had dinner together. A wonderful time. Anyway, my husband ended up playing cards with them. Drinks and cards. They got on famously. He asked them about their work. They talked for hours. Next morning when we were getting ready to leave they gave us these sketches they’d done the day before. As a wedding gift.
She reached up and removed the Thomson from its mooring, turned it over and showed it to me. ‘To my new friends Ruth and William.’ It was signed, simply, Tom. She replaced the painting. ‘Alex signed his as well.’
She laughed. ‘We really had no idea who they were – we thought they were just a couple of young painters – until we got home. Bill had a friend who owned an art gallery. He asked him if he’d ever heard of these young artists we’d just met.’ She laughed again.
‘Let’s go upstairs, shall we? I’ll show you to your room.
My ‘room’ was over the garage. It was twice as large as most hotel rooms I’d ever seen. Must’ve been thirty feet by twenty. Pine paneled, broadloomed floor. Just inside the door, on the left, there was a desk and chair; to the right a love seat and coffee table; against the far wall a double bed. There were bookshelves along all the walls.
‘Feel free to browse,’ she said.
‘The bathroom is through there,’ she said, indicating a door beside the desk. Sink, toilet tub and separate shower. No notices taped to the walls.
‘What do you pay presently?’
‘Twenty a month,’ I said.
‘Would that do?’
Do?
‘That’ll do just fine,’ I said.
She extended her hand. ‘Deal,’ she said. ‘How’s your drink?’
Both our drinks needed refreshing. We headed back down to the kitchen. I did the honours, she added the ice. We sat at the counter facing out over the back lawn.
‘There’s something I should mention,’ she said.
I looked at her. She smiled.
‘I travel,’ she said. ‘Quite a lot.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘So I hope you won’t mind being alone in the house.’
‘Won’t bother me,’ I said.
‘For months,’ she said. ‘It’s one of the reasons I was interested in having someone live here. So the place won’t be empty. ‘Please be forthright.’
Forthright? How terrible would this be? Living in a sprawling old house on the river all by myself? I smiled. ‘Honestly,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t mind a bit.’
‘You may have friends over, of course.’
Of course.
‘As a matter of fact, I have a trip coming up next month.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Africa,’ she said. ‘I’m going on a safari.’
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. ‘A safari? Elephants and camels?’
‘No.’ She laughed as well. ‘No camels or elephants. Or tents. We’ll be in an air-conditioned motor coach. We’ll be touring from one hotel to another playing bridge.’
‘Bridge? You’re going to Africa to play bridge?’
‘It’s called a bridge circus. And actually that’s quite appropriate. The last one turned out to be exactly that. There were a few quite unfortunate players and the bridge master wasn’t quite what he’d held himself out to be. This one should be better. Mister Sharif is organizing it.’
‘Mister Sharif?’
‘Omar. The actor. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have.’
‘He’s charming,’ she said. ‘And a deadly player.’
‘How long is your trip?’
‘Two months.’
‘You’ll be playing bridge for two months?’
‘Only in the evenings. During the day I expect we’ll be looking at elephants and giraffes and lions.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’ll be grand fun.’ She lifted her glass, empty except for the remainders of a couple of ice cubes. ‘Another?’
‘Sure.’ I did the honours, again.
‘There’s something I’d like to ask you,’ she said.
‘Ask away,’ I said.
‘I wonder if, while I’m away, you wouldn’t mind driving my car from time to time. I don’t like my cars to sit idle too long. I don’t think it’s good for them.’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘I’ll have you put on my policy,’ she said. ‘Just in case.’
‘And another thing,’ she said. ‘I wonder, if I opened an account in your name, whether you’d be good enough to attend to my bills while I’m away.’
‘Certainly,’ I said.
‘Wonderful,’ she said, and raised her glass. ‘And, of course, since you’ll technically be working for me, taking care of the house, the bills, the car and so forth, I shan’t charge you rent while I’m gone.’
‘That’s not necessary,’ I said.
‘It’s entirely necessary,’ she said. ‘And as my late husband learned quite early on, I do not like to be argued with.’ She smiled.
‘Put the top down,’ said Ruth. She had become ‘Ruth’ the afternoon I moved my stuff in and became her ‘house boy’. ‘That button there.’ She pointed with her cigarette in its tortoise-shell holder. Down went the top. ‘I just love convertibles,’ she said. ‘I’ve always had one. There’s something liberating about driving with the top down don’t you think.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
We were heading out to the airport. She was flying to Toronto then on to New York and from there to Cairo to begin her ‘safari’. I still conjured up an image of her, cigarette, pith helmet and high heels atop a camel. I smiled.
‘What are you smiling about?’
I told her.
She laughed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘believe it or not I have been on a camel. An elephant was well. Our first trip to Africa, William and I both went on camels and, later, on elephants. I have the photographs to prove it. I must show them to you some time. Remind me.
We were driving down Jefferson.
‘We used to have all sorts of fun, the two of us. Did I tell you about our race to Georgia?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’d have remembered that.’
‘It was the summer of 1937. William had just bought us a pair of Ford convertibles, black for me, maroon for him. We headed south for a month’s vacation. He could never stand being in the car while I drove – too fast for his liking –so we took our own cars. We had booked in to a beautiful old hotel, The Grove Park Inn. A charming place right in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We’d stayed there before and had vowed to go back. So off we went. I bet him a hundred dollars I’d beat him to the hotel. He may as well have given me the hundred before we pulled out of the drive.’ She laughed, pulled the cigarette from its holder and tossed it overboard. ‘I’d already checked in, had a bath and was on my second whiskey when he arrived. He just shook his head, gave me a kiss and handed over the hundred-dollar bill. That was the trip we met Mister Fitzgerald, the writer.’
‘F. Scott Fitzgerald?’
‘Yes.’
We pulled in to the airport parking lot. I got out, opened the trunk, hauled out her suitcases, four of them, huge and heavy. Twenty minutes later, her luggage was checked in and Ruth had her boarding passes and there we were in the waiting area, waiting for her flight to be called.
‘Tell me more. About meeting Fitzgerald.’
‘The Grove Park had a lovely verandah across the front. Big wicker chairs. A lovely view of the mountains. William and I were having a drink before going in to get dressed for dinner. Everyone dressed for dinners in those times. There was only one other person on the verandah, a young man sitting and drinking at a table at the far end. When the waiter came by William told him to ask the young man if he wished to join us for a cocktail. We watched as the waiter conveyed the message. Then the young man looked at us and smiled, got up and came to join us.
‘That’s very thoughtful of you,’ he said. ‘A pleasure.’
He shook my hand, and then William’s. ‘Scott,’ he said. We introduced ourselves and he sat down.
‘A charming man. Very well turned out. And handsome. Elegant you’d have to say, suit and tie, polished shoes. Though he seemed rather sad. Or preoccupied.
He asked us where we’d come from.
‘Canada,’ he said. ‘I have a friend, Ernest, who worked in Canada. Toronto. Back in the 20s.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘What did he do?’
‘Worked for a newspaper,’ he said. ‘And what about you, William. What do you do?’
My husband told him about his factory, the work he did for the automobile companies. ‘And you?’
‘I write,’ he said.
‘For newspapers?’ said my husband.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Books. And, just now, scripts for the movies.’
‘I don’t believe I caught your last name,’ I said.
‘Fitzgerald.’
‘The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Oh, my,’ I said. ‘I believe I’m going to faint.’
He laughed. ‘In that case, may I prescribe another of those?’ He pointed at my glass.
We ordered more drinks and my husband asked Scott what had brought him to North Carolina. ‘My wife,’ he said. ‘She’s in a hospital here. I’ve come to visit her.’
‘It seemed indelicate to ask for details – it wasn’t until we got home that William learned Zelda was in a mental institution in Asheville – and so we just settled in with our drinks and …’
And just then, a disembodied voice called her flight.
‘Well, off I go,’ she said
‘Have a wonderful time,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I will.’
And off she went, into the bright blue afternoon sky.
‘Where’s Winzer?’
‘Get a road map.’
The map directed me to head south on Highway 21, hook up with Highway 401 and head west until the city came into view. Pretty amazing city when I got my first glimpse of it, cresting the Jackson Park overpass: a skyline that looked like New York, or what I thought a New York skyline might look like, never having been there either. But appearances can be deceiving. Once I drove all the way down Ouellette Avenue I discovered, as all newcomers do, that the skyline belonged to someone else. There was a river between us and them. Us being Windsor Ontario Canada. Them being Detroit Michigan U.S. of A.
It’s not much of a river, really. It’s about 30 miles long miles long from Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie and only half a mile wide at its narrowest point, two and a half at its broadest. Some people would argue it’s not a river at all, but a strait.
Strait? River? River? Strait?
Let’s see.
Oxford: River: Copious stream of water flowing in a channel to sea or lake or marsh or another. (see rive).
Okay. Rive: Rend, cleave … whence river.
Sounds like a river.
But maybe not.
Oxford: Strait: narrow passage of water connecting two seas or bodies of water.
The French, who happened by on their way to somewhere else in the 1600s couldn’t make up their mind. So they called it Rivière du Détroit, which translates literally as "River of the Strait". Which explains the name of our neighbour to the north. Yes. Detroit is North of us, which makes Windsor, Ontario the only city in Canada to be located south of its American neighbour.
Drives tourists crazy: ‘Just head north on Ouellette.’ ‘You mean that way?’ ‘No, that way.’ ‘But that’s Detroit over there.’ ‘Uh huh.’
Just one of many neat and puzzling things about our town.
For instance, did you know that Windsor is on the same latitude as Northern California. Well, almost. Windsor is at 42°18' N latitude and the California-Oregon border is at exactly 42°00' N. Close enough for the tourist bureau, which loves to brag about it.
But back to the river, or strait or river of the strait. Whatever you call it, The River (rarely do you hear anyone call it by its real name) is so deeply engrained in our consciousness that we refer to it all the time, even when we don’t notice that we’re talking about it.
For instance: When we’re going to Detroit, we go across the river, or we go over the river. If you’re giving someone directions to downtown, ‘head down toward the river’. We go away from the river when we’re heading home to South Windsor. We go along the river when we take a drive downriver to Amherstburg and upriver when we head out to Riverside on our way to Belle River (which also has a river, the Belle River, which is a real river and a lovely one but only half as long as ours).
The River is just part of the fabric of our lives. It’s part of our vocabulary. And it’s very much a part of who we are and what we do. And we just can’t stay away.
We ‘go down to the river’ and we do so for all sorts of reasons. We go in the winter to see the ice floes, we go in the summer hoping for a little breeze on those 90-degree 100%-humidity summer scorchers. We go in the daytime and we go in the nighttime. We go early in the morning to fish or to jog or to walk and we go late at night which, on a windless night, is my favourite time to stand by the rail admiring the skyline of Detroit right-side up in the inky sky and upside down on the river’s mirrored surface. All the better if the spell is broken by a freighter winking past heading upriver or down.
We fish in the river, we sail along the river, we marvel at the river in all its moods (I especially love those wild west-wind days when our river, like Margaret Laurence’s river in The Diviners, decides to flow both ways – the winds pushing whitecaps up the river against that formidable 1.5 mile-per-hour current).
And as the old song would have us do:
Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
?The beautiful, the beautiful river;
?Gather with the saints at the river.
[...]
Wasn’t always this way. There was a time, not all that long ago, when our riverfront looked like the riverfront directly across the way: one giant railyard, the riverbank a mess of weeds and out-of-control shrubs. Not very inviting and not a spot you would go for a stroll. Certainly not at night. Unless you were looking for trouble. Who knew what was lurking down there? Actually, the cops knew what was lurking down there: trouble. Back then the riverfront was a favourite haunt of winos (dry sleeping in the railway underpasses) and hookers (male and female) and shady characters hoping to make a quick score on an unsuspecting someone wandering down looking for a little action. Let’s just say that when I first came to Windsor back in the 1960s the riverfront was not a place you would take out-of-town guests to impress them. And it wasn’t in the tourist brochures.
[...]
I was about to kick off my shoes. ‘No, no, dear. Leave them on. Let’s have a little look around, shall we?’
‘Sure, that would be fine.’
‘How about a drink, first?’
‘Sure, that would be fine,’ I said.
She led me into the kitchen. ‘Whiskey?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘Help yourself.’ She pointed to a silver tray on the sideboard, crystal whiskey glasses circling a decanter whose facets glistened in the sun slanting in through the river-face windows. ‘The ice is in here.’ She lifted the lid of a silver ice bucket beside the tray, pincered a couple of cubes into her own glass, held it out to be refilled, then dropped a couple of cubes into my glass.
I poured a little whiskey from the decanter into her glass and then a little into my own.
‘That won’t last long,’ she said, looking at my glass, then her own. I topped hers up, then mine.
‘Cigarette?’ She offered me one of hers. I lit hers, then mine.
‘Now, let’s have a little tour shall we?’ She led me out of the kitchen into the room next door – floor to ceiling double doors in the centre of huge windows overlooking the lawn which sloped down to the river. There were gardens bordering the lot on either side and, by the river, a patio with tables and chairs. ‘My favorite place,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing quite like it, having a cocktail by the river watching the boats go by.’ And, as though on cue, freighter loomed into view. ‘This, obviously, is the dining room.’ The side and back walls were wainscoted in what looked like oak. There was a huge table, four chairs on either side, big armchairs at the head and foot. ‘I keep the liquor in here,’ she said, tapping the door of an ornate hutch with the pointed toe of one of her high-heeled shoes. ‘Help yourself. Every now and then when you think you’ve had about a bottle you can buy another. Same goes for the fridge. Have anything you like and replace what you eat.’
The living room was behind the dining room. Twice the size, extending three quarters the length of the house on the side facing the road. In the centre of the outer wall there was a marble-faced fireplace above which were a pair of little paintings - maybe eight by ten inches – illuminated by tiny lights hovering above each of them.
‘Beautiful,’ I said.
‘They were a gift,’ she said. ‘Of the artists.’
‘That one,’ she said, indicating the one on the left, ‘is by Tom Thomson. The other is by A.Y. Jackson. They were painted the same day – the summer of 1914 – in Algonquin Park. Tom was on a little canvas-seated folding stool facing one way. Alex was seated on a stool behind him, facing the other way. They often did that, took sketching trips together. That’s where we met them.
‘In fact we met them the day they’d done these sketches. We were on our honeymoon, staying at a camp owned by a friend of theirs. We all had dinner together. A wonderful time. Anyway, my husband ended up playing cards with them. Drinks and cards. They got on famously. He asked them about their work. They talked for hours. Next morning when we were getting ready to leave they gave us these sketches they’d done the day before. As a wedding gift.
She reached up and removed the Thomson from its mooring, turned it over and showed it to me. ‘To my new friends Ruth and William.’ It was signed, simply, Tom. She replaced the painting. ‘Alex signed his as well.’
She laughed. ‘We really had no idea who they were – we thought they were just a couple of young painters – until we got home. Bill had a friend who owned an art gallery. He asked him if he’d ever heard of these young artists we’d just met.’ She laughed again.
‘Let’s go upstairs, shall we? I’ll show you to your room.
My ‘room’ was over the garage. It was twice as large as most hotel rooms I’d ever seen. Must’ve been thirty feet by twenty. Pine paneled, broadloomed floor. Just inside the door, on the left, there was a desk and chair; to the right a love seat and coffee table; against the far wall a double bed. There were bookshelves along all the walls.
‘Feel free to browse,’ she said.
‘The bathroom is through there,’ she said, indicating a door beside the desk. Sink, toilet tub and separate shower. No notices taped to the walls.
‘What do you pay presently?’
‘Twenty a month,’ I said.
‘Would that do?’
Do?
‘That’ll do just fine,’ I said.
She extended her hand. ‘Deal,’ she said. ‘How’s your drink?’
Both our drinks needed refreshing. We headed back down to the kitchen. I did the honours, she added the ice. We sat at the counter facing out over the back lawn.
‘There’s something I should mention,’ she said.
I looked at her. She smiled.
‘I travel,’ she said. ‘Quite a lot.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘So I hope you won’t mind being alone in the house.’
‘Won’t bother me,’ I said.
‘For months,’ she said. ‘It’s one of the reasons I was interested in having someone live here. So the place won’t be empty. ‘Please be forthright.’
Forthright? How terrible would this be? Living in a sprawling old house on the river all by myself? I smiled. ‘Honestly,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t mind a bit.’
‘You may have friends over, of course.’
Of course.
‘As a matter of fact, I have a trip coming up next month.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Africa,’ she said. ‘I’m going on a safari.’
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. ‘A safari? Elephants and camels?’
‘No.’ She laughed as well. ‘No camels or elephants. Or tents. We’ll be in an air-conditioned motor coach. We’ll be touring from one hotel to another playing bridge.’
‘Bridge? You’re going to Africa to play bridge?’
‘It’s called a bridge circus. And actually that’s quite appropriate. The last one turned out to be exactly that. There were a few quite unfortunate players and the bridge master wasn’t quite what he’d held himself out to be. This one should be better. Mister Sharif is organizing it.’
‘Mister Sharif?’
‘Omar. The actor. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have.’
‘He’s charming,’ she said. ‘And a deadly player.’
‘How long is your trip?’
‘Two months.’
‘You’ll be playing bridge for two months?’
‘Only in the evenings. During the day I expect we’ll be looking at elephants and giraffes and lions.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’ll be grand fun.’ She lifted her glass, empty except for the remainders of a couple of ice cubes. ‘Another?’
‘Sure.’ I did the honours, again.
‘There’s something I’d like to ask you,’ she said.
‘Ask away,’ I said.
‘I wonder if, while I’m away, you wouldn’t mind driving my car from time to time. I don’t like my cars to sit idle too long. I don’t think it’s good for them.’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘I’ll have you put on my policy,’ she said. ‘Just in case.’
‘And another thing,’ she said. ‘I wonder, if I opened an account in your name, whether you’d be good enough to attend to my bills while I’m away.’
‘Certainly,’ I said.
‘Wonderful,’ she said, and raised her glass. ‘And, of course, since you’ll technically be working for me, taking care of the house, the bills, the car and so forth, I shan’t charge you rent while I’m gone.’
‘That’s not necessary,’ I said.
‘It’s entirely necessary,’ she said. ‘And as my late husband learned quite early on, I do not like to be argued with.’ She smiled.
‘Put the top down,’ said Ruth. She had become ‘Ruth’ the afternoon I moved my stuff in and became her ‘house boy’. ‘That button there.’ She pointed with her cigarette in its tortoise-shell holder. Down went the top. ‘I just love convertibles,’ she said. ‘I’ve always had one. There’s something liberating about driving with the top down don’t you think.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
We were heading out to the airport. She was flying to Toronto then on to New York and from there to Cairo to begin her ‘safari’. I still conjured up an image of her, cigarette, pith helmet and high heels atop a camel. I smiled.
‘What are you smiling about?’
I told her.
She laughed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘believe it or not I have been on a camel. An elephant was well. Our first trip to Africa, William and I both went on camels and, later, on elephants. I have the photographs to prove it. I must show them to you some time. Remind me.
We were driving down Jefferson.
‘We used to have all sorts of fun, the two of us. Did I tell you about our race to Georgia?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’d have remembered that.’
‘It was the summer of 1937. William had just bought us a pair of Ford convertibles, black for me, maroon for him. We headed south for a month’s vacation. He could never stand being in the car while I drove – too fast for his liking –so we took our own cars. We had booked in to a beautiful old hotel, The Grove Park Inn. A charming place right in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We’d stayed there before and had vowed to go back. So off we went. I bet him a hundred dollars I’d beat him to the hotel. He may as well have given me the hundred before we pulled out of the drive.’ She laughed, pulled the cigarette from its holder and tossed it overboard. ‘I’d already checked in, had a bath and was on my second whiskey when he arrived. He just shook his head, gave me a kiss and handed over the hundred-dollar bill. That was the trip we met Mister Fitzgerald, the writer.’
‘F. Scott Fitzgerald?’
‘Yes.’
We pulled in to the airport parking lot. I got out, opened the trunk, hauled out her suitcases, four of them, huge and heavy. Twenty minutes later, her luggage was checked in and Ruth had her boarding passes and there we were in the waiting area, waiting for her flight to be called.
‘Tell me more. About meeting Fitzgerald.’
‘The Grove Park had a lovely verandah across the front. Big wicker chairs. A lovely view of the mountains. William and I were having a drink before going in to get dressed for dinner. Everyone dressed for dinners in those times. There was only one other person on the verandah, a young man sitting and drinking at a table at the far end. When the waiter came by William told him to ask the young man if he wished to join us for a cocktail. We watched as the waiter conveyed the message. Then the young man looked at us and smiled, got up and came to join us.
‘That’s very thoughtful of you,’ he said. ‘A pleasure.’
He shook my hand, and then William’s. ‘Scott,’ he said. We introduced ourselves and he sat down.
‘A charming man. Very well turned out. And handsome. Elegant you’d have to say, suit and tie, polished shoes. Though he seemed rather sad. Or preoccupied.
He asked us where we’d come from.
‘Canada,’ he said. ‘I have a friend, Ernest, who worked in Canada. Toronto. Back in the 20s.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘What did he do?’
‘Worked for a newspaper,’ he said. ‘And what about you, William. What do you do?’
My husband told him about his factory, the work he did for the automobile companies. ‘And you?’
‘I write,’ he said.
‘For newspapers?’ said my husband.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Books. And, just now, scripts for the movies.’
‘I don’t believe I caught your last name,’ I said.
‘Fitzgerald.’
‘The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Oh, my,’ I said. ‘I believe I’m going to faint.’
He laughed. ‘In that case, may I prescribe another of those?’ He pointed at my glass.
We ordered more drinks and my husband asked Scott what had brought him to North Carolina. ‘My wife,’ he said. ‘She’s in a hospital here. I’ve come to visit her.’
‘It seemed indelicate to ask for details – it wasn’t until we got home that William learned Zelda was in a mental institution in Asheville – and so we just settled in with our drinks and …’
And just then, a disembodied voice called her flight.
‘Well, off I go,’ she said
‘Have a wonderful time,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I will.’
And off she went, into the bright blue afternoon sky.
Descriere
A vivacious memoir of life along the Detroit River, from the prize-winning reporter, novelist, and CBC broadcaster Paul Vasey.