It was my birthday. I don’t recall exactly which year, but
probably nineteen seventy-six, seventy-seven. I had no plans for the night.
Just hung out in the basement on McKay until it was late at night and the urge
to move hit me.
I’d learned to trust the urge, as it had sent me down some
very interesting paths. This night, it sent me out on my bike, as it was one of
those warm nights following the kind of smoking hot late-summer day for which
Winnipeg is renowned. I love the late-night, late-summer rides the best. Little
traffic, no wind, and the scent of humidity that would be burned off by ten the
next morning, to be replaced by the flinty hardness of another scorcher. In my,
I don’t know, shoulder-bag, purse, pouch, yeah, pouch, I carried a half-mickey
of Southern Comfort for old time’s sake, and a harmonica. I wanted to see the
river.
Fraser’s Grove Park wasn’t far away, and the banks of the
river were low there, intimate. In springtime a little too cozy with the river,
which would take it over all the way up to Kildonan Drive and beyond. I walked
the bike into the park, not wishing to brave the irregular ground in the dark
at anything above a walking pace. Uncharacteristic caution on my part, I know,
but I certainly wasn’t in any rush. I wandered down the bank to where the grass
gave way to the river silt and flotsam of the last spring flood. The moon provided
plenty of light and glistened on the water in a most inviting way, but a swim
was out of the question. Ick. I slid down next to a particularly inviting elm
tree and just sat for a while, enjoying the silence and thinking about nothing.
After a while of this, I had a sip of Southern Comfort and
played some harmonica, just noodling away without any goal for awhile until I
was interrupted by the somewhat surprising arrival of a rent-a-cop. He told me
that I’d have to vacate the vicinity as no one was allowed in the park after
dark. While this struck me as rather a strange rule, I wasn’t about to give him
any grief about it and prepared to move along. We chatted for a while, brothers
in arms, as I’d done my time as a security guard the previous year and well
understood the loneliness that goes with a dead-end job that compels one to
curtail the fun of otherwise law-abiding citizens late at night. Granted, my
great claim to peacekeeping consisted entirely of rapping on the inside of the
window of a locked-up K-Mart, attempting to shoo away the kids on the other
side of glass who were sitting on the dime-a-ride pony. They treated me with
the respect I deserved, gave me the finger, and moved along. So I did, too.
I rode along the streets that follow the river, over the
Redwood Bridge, and through the northend, something I wouldn’t recommend
nowadays. Through some circuitous meanderings, I ended up in the Wellington
Crescent neighbourhood and figured I’d see if Danny was around.
Dan’s basically my oldest friend. I’ve got a few months on
him, so when we were about four and five, I was the old guy. To him, of course,
this was a great challenge, so he’d attack me at unexpected moments and attempt
out-wrassle me. Having a bit of height on him worked to my advantage, but by
sheer persistence, he’d occasionally get the better of me. We could go for
years without seeing one another as I roamed about the prairies and he around
the world, but the threat was always there, and continues to this day. I expect
that one day we’ll run into each other and he’ll try to tip me out of my
wheelchair.
In any case, he lived with his childhood sweetheart in the
Wellington neighbourhood, so I parked in the street near his second-floor
apartment in a stately old house. It had, as mentioned, been smokin’ hot that
day, and those old walk-ups tended to get equally hot, so leaving all the
windows open over night was mandatory. I pulled out the harmonica and noodled
away for a couple minutes until his head appeared at one of the casements and he
said, “Ya got any liquor?”
I waved my little bottle in the beam of a streetlamp and he
was down in the street in a few moments. Susan was probably upstairs fuming at
that moment, so it was best that I not go up. There was a history of, ummm…
conflict between us due to the chemistry between Dan and me. He toasted my
birthday and we did a little catching up before jumping on our bikes for a
leisurely cruise around the neighbourhood.
Dan’s grandparents had once lived around the corner from
where we were at that moment, so we drifted over in that direction to check it
out. Charlie and Rae had been the housekeeper and handyman for the Richardsons,
one of Manitoba’s preeminent families, and had a nice little house on the
property, a bit back off the street from the main mansion. On this night,
however, most of the old house was missing, as some sort of major demolition
was underway.
Unbeknownst to us, the matriarch of the family, who had been
the last holdout in the palace, had died a while previously and had bequeathed
the land, some of the most prime real estate in the city, to the city, to be
made into a park for the enjoyment of all. Nice lady.
What this meant to us, though, was that the properties, big
and small, were unoccupied and apparently unguarded in any way. We entered the
“servants’ quarters” through the back wall, or what was left of it. Dan’s
grandmother had died in the front room, resting comfortably in her La-Z-Boy
lounger and simply sliding away into the next world. Standing in that so-called
living room was quite poignant and we gave it a few minutes to settle in, but
we had other things on our minds.
Having more or less grown up in this house, we kind of knew
our way around and, while it was a nice house, other adventures perhaps awaited
us. We went down the basement stairs, not knowing whether the set-up was the
same as when we were kids. At the back of the basement was a passage, still
open, that lead through a tunnel to the gymnasium-sized garage. This held room
for a dozen or so cars but was thankfully vacant or we may have gotten into a
whole different kind of trouble. Something more than the straightforward
trespassing we were engaged in at that moment.
No, where we were headed was a bit further down the tunnel,
closer to the main house. It was always off-limits when we were little, but of
course we always sneaked in just because. And there it was. The pool was not
only there, but it was full. I don’t know how big an Olympic-sized pool is, but
this thing was huge. It had not been neglected for long, as the water was clean
and clear, but rendered chlorine-free by time. Well, nothing for it but to doff
our duds and dive right in. It was glorious. Right up until I did a spinning
cannonball off the middle-height diving board and got slapped in the nuts by
some extremely hard water. Damn, but that hurt. I made the standard squeaky
noises once I caught my breath and squatted on the edge of the pool until I
could trust my legs. Once I was mobile, we explored the various change-rooms
and spas that surrounded the pool area until we found our way into the main
house.
This was definitely new territory for us, but it was fairly
easy to find one’s way around as it had been pretty much gutted. All the fine
wood and marble, the fixtures and fittings had been removed down to the studs,
so you could see from one room to the next, indeed you could see the outside
world, and the sky was beginning to brighten up a bit. We went upstairs to see
what wonders the upper storeys held and, indeed, it was spectacular. The roof
had been mostly removed, most probably to obtain the substantial amount of
copper that had been used in its construction. It was quite the place.
Standing on the joists of the third-floor roof and holding
the chimney for balance, the view was astonishing. That cool, blue haze that
signals the coming dawn gave the city a magical look. From this height it
appeared to be a vast forest with only the occasional building thrusting up
through the foliage and the mist. The river could barely be made out meandering
among the trees that had survived the ravages of Dutch Elm disease.
Closer at hand, we could see down, almost straight down, to
Wellington Crescent and the long sinuous drive leading from the street to the
house. This drive was currently occupied by a slow-moving convoy of
construction-, or in this case destruction-equipment coming to finish the
demolition of the house. The house on whose third-storey roof we were standing.
We were, naturally, buck-naked because our clothes were downstairs by the pool,
and our bikes were back at the remains of the little house. Time to skedaddle.
We retraced our route and managed to reclaim our belongings
without incident, climbing on our bikes and riding calmly past the curious crew
of workers assembling in the drive. We waved jauntily and got the hell out of
there. We had harmed nothing during our explorations, but we didn’t relish the
prospect of explaining what we’d been up to all night, so best be on our way.
Within a few days the houses had been levelled and that piece
of history was behind us. Memories.
