I got on the bus recently
I got on the bus recently and I saw an old Philippino enter with his wife. His bus pass showed 09, which meant he was born in 1909. He showed me his wife’s pass which was 13. They are the age of my parents.
Last year I met an Italian on the bus who was 101. He never married he said. He came from Padova, which is where a girl friend Elanora Scaparo, whom I met when I was about twenty three came from also. She wanted me to work hard and make something of myself. She was very beautiful, but I could get no further than kissing her. She was a law student and worked in a government dept and became a lawyer. About that time I used to eat regularly in an Italian restaurant, the Florentino down near St James opposite Hyde Park. There was a special of the day for students. It was soup, pasta asicutta and a main course, I usually ordered spezzatino . You got a small coffee and a glass of red wine. There was always salad which had olive oil sprinkled on it and probably vinegar. There was always a crisp white tablecloth that I tried to be careful not to spill anything on, not always successfully. There was a glass beaker of water and a bowl of Italian bread of which you could eat as much as you wanted. The cost was three shillings.
Even now I can almost taste that food when I visualize it.
It must be taken into consideration that since both my parents seem to have developed debilitating diseases affecting the brain, it might happen to me, too. Maybe it is already happening and I am not aware of it.
Yesterday I was in the supermarket and was paying with a debit card and the little scanner told me I was wrong three times. I had to go to the bank machine close by for money to pay, while the cashier and a line of customers waited. After the second try on the bank machine I realized that I had switched around the four numbers and I finally got it right.. Returning in embarrassment I blamed the teller’s machine, when it had really been a loss of memory. I use that card almost daily and have done so for several years.
Even now I am not sure of my own phone number and must rely on cards, supposedly to give to people but it is really so I can remember my phone number and particularly my post code. A few months ago, a neighbour pounded on my hall doorway. She had her baby and screamed there was a fire. There really was… It was in the kitchen. I called 911 on her cell phone, because I had forgotten where ours was.
The operator said “What is your address and in my panic I could not remember. “It is near the corner of 37th and Main.” That is all I could say. “Is it 135, 37th Ave, apartment no 1?” “Yes “ I answered amazed in my panic. It was afterwards explained to me that the operator knew from the computer every address of a telephone call. I entered the apartment and when I opened the kitchen door black smoke and flame exploded. I could not breathe and ran out of the apartment taking the lady and her baby and boy to the basement.
The firemen were on the job in minutes and quickly put it out though it took several weeks of renovation.
It seems the mother was feeding her baby in another room, went to sleep and forgot about her cooking.
Because I don’t want to lose my reason, I do several crosswords a day, though the New York one is harder and I have no idea how to solve the cryptics. Also I play scrabble on the computer by Hasbro. In 18 months and daily playing I am still only on intermediate level and get beaten more than I win. I’ve learned a lot of words, though that I will never use and have never seen in my life before. Brian plays complicated games with people all over the world. These stupid games must do something beneficial to his brain because he is a whiz with 3D Max, Poser, and animation. Two days ago he got an email offering a job with an animation firm. I told him to go on to grade 11 and 12. He is in 10 now. They then offered him part-time, but I refused, as I believe he needs all his time for homework and basketball. He is only 15.
He designed a web page for the Y.M.C.A. and they also offered him part-time work, but I refused. Anyway they were only paying 6 dollars an hour, though he saved thirteen hundred in the bank for the month he worked there. They offered to pay 12.50 an hour. I still refused. Brian has almost 40000 forty thousand in term deposit, though I have partial control of it. My other two seem to dislike me so much. If they only treated me with a bit of respect they would get some .too. They know that but don’t seem to care. Richard knocked me over the table last month.
I actually travelled back and forth between Montreal Vancouver Tokyo and Manila about fifteen times during the six years I was married to her in the Philippines. I needed the money I got in Japan. I lost quite a few thousand, my cottage in Quebec and my house in Dagupan and my 22footer cabin cruiser because of their mother, who waited until she got to Canada to pay me back for my indiscretions in the Philippines. Well, I asked for it. I didn’t think she was so smart. She was very pretty and young. I married her when I was fifty-four and she eighteen, working on the beauty counter at Baguio market getting only 350 pesos a month, about thirty US. Dollars at that time 1986. She asked me “Where is Canada? Is it near the United States? Is it near California?” I replied “Yes.” She became very interested in me then.
During the times I was absent, she took a course in aircraft maintenance in a small technical college in Dagupan. I paid for the course, thinking it would keep her out of mischief. I was certain she would never get a job in that field. Anyway, I did not want her working. I wanted my little Asian beauty to look after me, to massage me as she did so expertly in the Philippines and cater to my every whim, which she also did. . When we got to Canada she ran off taking the twins with a young french canadian (no caps) and soon got a job in a large aircraft factory. She has been there now for nine years. “ She Stoops to Conquer”, Oliver Goldsmith.
Look at your case: four generations from illiterate labourer to farmer to carpenter to biographer -genealogist then on to School Principal. The march of the human race.
I remember Miss Cropp my first teacher and her playing the piano. She looked like Olive Oyl in Popeye. I remember Miss O’Reilly, IB and her outbuilding near the incinerator. The principal of Sutherland Infants Miss Bevan. The others are hazy. I remember Splinter Woods, the assistant principal of Suth Primary. He taught in the building backing onto Eton Street with the police station on the other side and the picture theatre on the other corner. Along a few feet was Unwins 2nd hand and it used to be the cinema one time. I can see all those places clearly as if I am walking along there. Next to the Suth Prim was the Intermediate high School and I can see the bubblers, rusty and discoloured and Mr Hunt the principal leaning out of his window. I can see the rose garden we students planted and my rose was a white one with a pink flush.
I recall the stations of the Illawarra line Suth Jan Como Oatley Mortdale Penshurst Hurstville Allawah Carlton Kog Rockdale etc. all inscribed in my memory. The rhythm and noise of the train comes back to me and the different sound as it passes over Como bridge and the final pace through the cutting coming into Kirawee station when I wake up with a start from my doze.
So is it likely that after all these years I am having false memories of the stories I heard from different sources about the origin of Granma Lucy? Am I demented? Not yet, cousin.
Anyway I am going to lay the whole question of Granma to rest. I see there is no way for me to prove my case. No relatives emerging from the rocks and shadows of the billabong can claim kinship. The records of these people are lost, obscured or perverted. Too, the records of the little ones taken from their frantic mothers and placed in whiter families as a policy of genocide have mostly been neglected or destroyed.
The system has been successful in cutting ties forever.
I with my limited ability cannot unravel the truth, which earlier generations suppressed and present generations deny.
Ultimately it does not matter. Life will go on, in one form or another, until the planet cools and then the total hydrocarbon D.N.A. family from single cell, virus, cockroach and the chimps’ interesting first cousin, will be gone without memory. For what purpose is this process? None.
Cedric (Ric( Siddie.
WORONORA
By the cemetery side I started my life
And wandered far and wide
To the end of the earth from the land of my birth,
While still my soul was tied
To the cemetery side..