Outport Life

So today. I go and work my volunteer library shift. We have a volunteer library in the town. A good one. Well used. Business was slow as the rain was pounding down. I sorted out some donations. Posted some info on the library FB site, chatted to some volunteers who were setting up the card game for tonight.

The usual.

I head home eventually after picking up my mail and come in to find our local lawyer, toasting himself by my fire.

"Oh hello," sez he, "Where's Ansa? Are you still my accountant? I've been away for six months on the mainland."

"Right," sez I, "Well......"

I'd been going to break it to him that no, find someone else, I've given up the business, writing now, health, blah, blah. And Ansa.

"See?" sez he, "Here's a $100 cash. All you have to do is sign off these papers for the Law Society that I was gone for six months and transacted no business in Newfoundland."

"Oh," sez I, "Leave the papers with me for review. No problem. I'll call you tomorrow."

30 Days - Day 8

More on Outport Living.

To detox from a major city is a big thing. Where everything is on a subway line or right around the corner now becomes a long jaunt into the city of St. John's.

Of course "everything" is subjective, isn't it?

My "everything" has changed drastically, refined you might say. What was important then isn't important now.

One thing I appreciate is the truck that comes around every Wednesday, loaded with organic meats and vegetables.

The same farm has been sending out its truck for over 50 years. Today the young trucker is the grandson of the original owner/driver.

They have beef and lamb and chicken and wonderful veggies.

The truck is equipped with a digital scales and Wi-Fi so you can pay on line.

The local store provides the staples and neighbours and hunters and fishers supply further bounty to me, free.

We have 10 free berry seasons here also to provide lashings of Vitamin C in the winter. And truly, you haven't lived till you've eaten bottled moose. I know it sounds revolting but did I change my mind in 5 seconds after tasting it?

All my daily needs are met quite adequately.

Adequate is a good word.

The "wants" work hard at destroying it.

A Reluctant Farewell

I wouldn't call him a friend, exactly. But he was more than an acquaintance or a ship passing in the night. I wonder why there isn't a word for those in between relationships.

He helped me a few times with research in the library. I was looking into the Blue Puttees - a Newfoundland regiment that fought in Beaumont Hamel in France in WW1 to an enormous loss of life and devastating effect on this island - a whole generation of young men wiped out and sacrificed for nothing. We'd meet frequently at cards and engage with each other relentlessly. A sort of semi-flirtatious repartee. Tall and quite handsome with a full head of silver hair, he was a life long bachelor with an obsequiousness for all things Catholic.

He reminded me greatly of the old Catholics I was surrounded by in Ireland. The sanctimonious ones who would lodge in one ear while renting out the other one.

The most peculiar thing he'd do would be staggering around on Good Friday up the road outside the church with a cross on his back, atoning for his sins.

He struck me as always being terrified. I'd heard he'd had a nervous breakdown way back in the day and was forced to retire early from teaching. He filled his long retirement years manning a volunteer library which he kept stocked and sorted and indexed. He opened it up two afternoons a week but you had to call first to make sure his opening the library was worth his while.

We bonded over books, though he was easily scandalized by any "unmoral" writings which forced me to tease him mercilessly. I did try desperately to be kind but the sight of him blushing and sweating would encourage me in the other direction. Though a small part of me still insists he enjoyed being scandalized.

He drove around to my side of the bay and brought me green peppers from his garden one year which I made into green pepper soup and froze. But he would never come into my house as he was terrified of dogs and didn't know why anyone would have one in the house where people ate and slept.

According to local lore, he was a savage gossip and just about ran the local church, the right hand man of the priest who was on the right hand of God himself. Inwardly, I referred to him as "priesty man".

I am saddened at his passing yesterday. Suddenly. He never travelled off the island and admitted to me the thought of leaving it made him "sick." He would laugh long and hard and inappropriately at something that confused him which could irritate those in his company.

I feel I could have done more for him. Been kinder and more welcoming when he'd stop his car when I was out road- training. He'd ask me if I was coming to the library soon or could I drop by for a cup of tea at his brown house across the bay.

I never did.

Outport Stories

I knew he wanted to speak with me. I'd been taking pictures of the area, it was a stunning day yesterday. I loved the brooding boats both tied up and skating the ocean. I was saddened by this outport, its fishplant falling into the ocean, a once picture-perfect village in a tragedy of disrepair. A house dominating the small harbour showed signs of a bad fire, a nasty change since the last time I was there in the fall.

He was sitting on a little porch of a trim green house watching me. As people with a lot of time on their hands and no inner resources can do - falling into the habit of monitoring the ins and outs of cars and boats and people from their small patch of turf.

I nodded at him and said lovely day and moved on. Away from the harbour, up to the breakwaters. This place can be rough in winter with the full Atlantic's power heaving and devouring all in its path.

I snapped pictures. I take a lot. I always do. There can be a gem among a hundred shots. Or not. And I threaded my way back across the barrens and down into the village again. He had moved. He was now sitting across the road from his deck in the shade of the collapsing fish plant on an old picnic table. He looked ready for action.

I stopped. He was practically frothing with curiosity.

"Haven't seen you around before?" was his opening gambit.

I filled him in on where I came from, when I moved to Canada, when I took the giant leap to live in Newfoundland. Who built the house I inhabited now, a name he approved of. Our tenuous connection. He was happy, he took a while to mull it over. He had something to share over his tea today.

"And you?" I asked,"And where do you live?"

He pointed up to the burnt house. I could sense the story bursting inside him, waiting to be told. I sat down at the picnic table, a silent command putting the dog underneath it in the shade, placing the camera beside me. All ears.

It was December, just before Christmas. He smelled it before he saw it, sitting as he was at his kitchen table reading the Telegram. He thought it was somewhere else as he had electric everything, got rid of the old Enterprise with its constant need for wood and attention. He carried on reading until the smoke drifted in, he thought he'd left a window open so got up off the chair and went out to the hall and found himself engulfed in flames and couldn't reach the door to open it.

"You never know where a doorknob is when you're choking from smoke and blinded from fire."

It felt like an eternity for him to find the melted doorknob and push back the bolt and open the door. By then he was engulfed in flames and had to roll on the ground, screaming in agony.

And then he passed out and woke up in the burn unit of the hospital.

"Six months," he said, "I only just got out of the hospital. Now I'm going to show you my body, well, you know, only the parts I can show a lady."

And he took off his shirt and it was horrifying. I couldn't count the skin grafts on his arms and back and chest. I was shaken. And astonished he was alive to tell the tale.

"Do you know what caused the fire?" I asked.

"Well, the forenzas were out here and investigimated it all and couldn't find the reasons for it in spite of all their fancy 'quipment and best brains in the land. Electrical. It had to be. I don't smoke - though, lard, if you'd seen me on fire I did enough smokin' for a lifetime that evenin'."


In the last week or so, people have been telling me stories like never before. As I was writing this, a retired handsome (seriously good-looking - hurray! I'm not dead yet!) villager pulled up in my driveway, ostensibly to talk about high-speed and radio stations but it only took about five minutes before he'd told me four fascinating stories, including some from his own life.

Post Office Piss Off

 

Our post office was closed today. With no warning. A letter was in my mailbox telling me it was closing effective today. Another letter from the post office enclosed a key to the new mail box, which, they told me, would be installed up next to the community hall. If there were problems or delays, service would be provided at another outport 25km away. A 50km round trip.

I was driving Emma home as it was raining and blustery and we rolled by the community hall on the way and there wasn't a mailbox in sight.

Typical, she said, outports have always been treated like they are third class passengers.

Many of our villagers, like Emma, don't have cars and there's no public transit. 50km is an unimaginable trip to collect a piece of mail or drop off a letter.

I asked our now ex-post master when the new mailboxes would arrive. No one had given him any information, he shrugged.

Thank you, Canada Post.

It's no wonder you are held in such contempt by those you profess to serve.

Old Non-Stories and the Lady Writer

(Old village school that my subject attended}

I'm in one of those moods. You know, the kind where there's very little you, I or the fairy godmother can do for me. Not that I need anything done. Just leave me be.

Grandgirl has gone back to Toronto, but that's not it. I'm a gregarious loner by nature. Others are visiting in the next wee while. Long term friends at different times. I'll have to fire up for them. I don't feel like firing up. Daughter understands this, we had a chat today. She's built of the same flying-solo-is-best gene pool. We understand each other. Don't do dumbos on each other like: "Ah, snap out of it," "Look at all you've got to be grateful for" and other depressing phrases of that ilk. Just leave us alone with our books.

Currently mine is: Broken Harbour, Tana French's latest. I'm nearly at the end of it. A massive 536 pages. But gripping. Tana can do it. Writing of the devastated building boom with its detritus of a half-finished and abandoned housing estate in Ireland and making it the bleak setting for the gripping drama.

Then, in the afternoon, I toddled over to a pre-arranged interview with one of the last of a dying breed of old timer inhabitants of my outport. One, I was assured, who would fill me in with the history of the place.

He was from the "life was wonderful in the old days" school of thought. We bonded over the Clancy Brothers and nights of song and dance in the houses of our childhood. But not much else. My inquiries about his school life and original work career were met with fairly monosyllabic responses. Ditto for arrival of radio and electricity and roads to his neck of the woods. And his lifelong bachelor status (he and a bachelor brother, the mayor here for over twenty years, lived together in happy siblingdom) caused no ripple of a sweet dead love to emerge. He was an extraordinarily good looking man, well into his eighties. I had the thought he would have been beating off the ladies with a stick in his time. I dug gently and persistently but no story to be found.

He wanted to talk about my hometown of Cork and asked when I was coming back. He may be of the mind to entertain himself with the lady writer for as many sessions as he can squeeze out of me as he gets far too few visitors.

And who's to blame him?

A Death in the Outport.

You asked about Carrie's husband Jack? Well, it was awful. The kids came home from school and there he was in the bedroom, bloody bits stuck to everything, walls, ceiling, floor, bed. He blew his brains out. Thirty-seven years old. A gambler and a drunkard.

Carrie's husband Jack? You saw the grave? We had a card party and raised nearly $6,000 dollars, paid for all that black marble and the photos. Expensive. But it helped the widow. Only thirty five and three children to raise. But all the money went on the grave.

Jack, Carrie's husband? Yes, eight years ago now. Not much of a loss. He kept getting fired even from jobs that never fire you. Know what I mean? Drunk by breakfast every day.

Poor Carrie, trying to hold it all together working at the fish-plant when the kids were small while Jack spent every bit of it on booze and VLTs. Awful life.

Jack was tortured, poor fellow. What with Carrie carrying on with his brother Vinnie for the six months before Jack finally took his own life.

We still can't get over it. There was Jack, a ball of blood in the bedroom and all the neighbours had come into the house when they heard and there they were sitting in the kitchen as if it was some kind of party with all the bottles laid out like soldiers on the table. So the ambulance comes and they have to wait for the cops, can't touch anything as he is so dead that his face was gone off him. And the party got louder and louder. No respect. And then the cops when they got there sent everyone home.

The hard thing was, is that Carrie's story kept changing. From one day to the next. First she was with him in the kitchen when he went off to the bedroom with the gun. Next day that was changed to she was next door and heard the gunshot. And the following week she said she's been off over to her mother's at the other side of the bay when he did it. The cops said it was shock, but, who knows?

What I meant was, I think she put him up to it. No, no I can't see her shooting him in the face and they have tests for that kind of thing, right? But she made him. As God is my judge.

I remember seeing Carrie at the grave, her red hair flowing down her back, and looking like a movie star with her aunt's black hat on top of it. And I saw a bit of a smile on her. A small one, you'd hardly notice. And I thought to myself, she's enjoying this. She's enjoying the attention.

After all, how much attention does anyone get out here unless you create it for yourself?

Post Office Conversation

We have an odd arrangement for postal services in my wee outport. Some families receive delivery to their homes, other, 'newer' (from fifty years ago and sooner) families have to go to their designated PO Box inside the post office and use a key to retrieve theirs.

All well and good, one might say. Except the sole post office master also runs the hardware, grocery and gas divisions of the store and has to go across the street to his house for housekeeping reasons and shut up shop many times during the day, without notice.

His hours are mysterious and unposted on his door. He is often spotted behind the counter cutting up vegetables for his dinner on top of outgoing post. And slicing cheese for sale in the shop with no protective gloves, hairnet or sanitized surface.

I could write a comedy about the post office. But I have to live here after all. But to gutsplitting laughter I have performed a skit for a few close friends on how it all operates. I won't even start in on telling you now how the post office became computerized. That is an entire post by itself.

Yesterday I go to pick up my mail and as usual the flyers are jammed into my box and the legitimate mail has barely enough room to fit. On top of this there is the baffling card ("parcel behind the counter for you!") which I hand to Peter (not his real name). His tongue finds his cheek as he puzzles the card and he looks under the counter, over the counter, into a box full of how many unfortunates', and possibly long dead addressees', mail.

"Don't see it", he says to me.

"Well I did receive one parcel in the mailbox" I say to him helpfully.

"Let me see that," he says.

I hand it over.

"Ah that's it!" he says, fussing with his computer.

"How do you know there aren't two parcels?" I say. I have long since developed an enormous tolerance for the weird happenings in my post office. I no longer wear my Big City Girl Pants. And notice how I haven't even gotten into outgoing mail challenges have I?

"A good guess." he says, leaving me wondering when I will get the call that he found the carded parcel.

"Look Peter," I say as I leave, "You must be forgetting. I don't want the flyers, they cram my mailbox, I don't read them and the paper is too shiny to burn in the woodstove so they end up in the trash. I just hate the waste and...."

"You keep asking about that," he says, "For years now."

"And you keep saying you will take care of it. I know you're busy...is there anyone else I can call about this, like head office?"

"Ah, no, no, don't do that. I'll take care of it."

"If you don't mind me asking, what do you have to do to stop it going into my mailbox?"

"It's simple really," Peter leans over the counter confidentially.

"I'm all ears!" I smile.

"I put a red sticker on the backside of your mailbox for the postal guy to see and he knows not to deliver the flyers."

"Could I help you then? Could I go into the room and put the red sticker on for you?"

"I wish it were that simple, girl. I really do."

"You mean I can't go back there, like rules are rules?"

"No, I ran out of red stickers a while back."

My Summer's Still With Me

It is extraordinary to me that I can plant all these pots of flowers in spring of each year and NEVER have to water them. The weather takes care of that. Rarely too hot and enough rain to keep these babies happy. Still in bloom today. We expect our first snow, usually, in February, which always startles people who view Newfoundland as a land still in the Ice Age. Well, no.

We have a micro-climate where I live and since I've been living here, we always have a green Christmas. Our trees are still more green than russet or rust as our spring is always later than others (May-June). Late June is when my lilac blooms for instance. So our fall is later too.

My driveway which is long and winding, was ploughed 4 times last winter. Yeah, 4 times. Not much of a winter and it was always worse in Ontario. It can get biting cold when the Nor'easter blows and being An Outport Woman I can be caught huddled around my woodstove when that happens, reading a good book and tossing bon-bons while my woodstove soup simmers away.

Ah poor me - life lived in the rough by the Outport Woman.

A First!

As some of my readers know, I do not lay me down and stay quiet. I write. I protest. I rant and roar sometimes. And I did that recently to my local MHA about the abysmal treatment of us outporters when it comes to Da Interwebz. I did not hear back from him.

Well guess what? This morning who arrives at my door with hugs and kisses but said MHA outlining the latest news in this game of "soon" and "soon" for reliable internet access. $8million has been allocated for full high speed service for us outporters and bids are being tendered by providers as we spoke. Well pol-promises I view with more than a jaundiced eye, let me tell you.

But the fact that he drove out here and talked to me, hell, I don't know a single soul on planet earth that this has happened to. Involved government? Well, I never.

And I don't gobsmack too easily.

Gross National Product

Photo from the deck today: Spring, she be happenin'.

I don't know where I read this and I'm too tired to go web search but the gist of the essay was that we are measuring all the wrong stuff when we give out GNP numbers. What we should be measuring is the happiness of our citizens.

Oh boy. Right on, I say. There is a pall of unhappiness in the world that is tangible. Disasters, nuclear (or truly as I prefer the linguist Dubya's pronunciation: Nukular)power failures and non-containment: a personal worry as two of my family members were in Tokyo at the time of the tsunami - I can never quite get used to that word, we would call it 'Tidal Wave' in the old days. They are shaken and stirred but fine, praise be Gaia. One is hoping to get out today. As to the tragedies of so many uncountable deaths continuing to unfold there - it must be unbearable.

Economic meltdowns continue to domino, country by country and does anyone know what is happening in the world of our neighbour down south apart from multiple Charlie Sheehans? Big stuff afoot I hear. Here we are playing hopscotch with maybe an election, maybe not, as our prime minister Harper crowns himself king of all Da Canadian and Canadien and First Nations Peebles, officially like, with a replacement of Government of Canada notepaper with, I kid you not, The Harper Government headlining all official government communications from what used to be a democracy. Sort of. Laws? Schplaws. The king has spoken, long live, etc. But I think we would all take him down physically and exile him on an icepan off Labrador if he so much as touched our universal health care.

Meanwhile in my little neck of the woods I am reminded over and over and over again of what happiness is when I go out and about. One never leaves Newfoundland. People ache when they leave here, they cry (I do) when they leave, they cry when they come back (I do).

I'd say we have the highest GNP (based on happiness) in the whole world. Seriously. You'd have to get to a community dance here, or be at the theatre where I was on Friday night at Jake's Gift
and after the show the actor comes out and says she had to say, and she breaks down and cries, and says that she had toured all of Canada, more tears, and she had not been prepared for the people of Newfoundland who were a nation all to themselves with the welcome and their openheartedness and love.

And I was reminded of that at a BBQ dinner dance I was at on Saturday night where the band, ZOMG the band, played my kind of rock 'n roll and we danced and we danced.

And people talked of all the fund raising going on lately, to help out the local families with cancer issues and housefires and sick children. You get an overall community population of 1,000, max, who can raise $5,000, $8,000, $17,000 for some needy neighbour. I don't know about you, but I hide myself in the bathroom and cry sometimes. I am that overwhelmed by the generosity.

There is something about knowing the community will take care of you, should the need arise, that generates great peace of mind. You will not go hungry, your house will be rebuilt, your accommodation at the hotel will be paid near the big city hospital where your child is so sick. And hell if you need to be buried, that will be taken care of too.

It is a dying way of life, I am very well aware of that. But there is a lot to be learned here in these outport communities about a GNP that can't be measured, it is so completely off the charts.

I have never in my life been surrounded by so much happiness. It has nothing to do with material wealth or possessions but everything to do with contentment and a certainty that no finer place on earth exists.

Life

Life’s like that, isn’t it though?

A day can be a mix of good, not so good, and sometimes awful.

It is hard to be away from Toronto and have two good friends in not very good shape in hospital. Phonecalls and emails only fill you in on so much of it. Thoughts of them underline my day, every hour a stray thought. How are they? Is he out of the coma?

I’ve been having long overdue work done. A wooden floor has now been put in an empty shell of a new garage abandoned with abundant promises of return ‘in the fall’ in 2007 by my erstwhile handyman. I’ve also had a professional looking 16’ workbench and shelves for the tools installed in same. And hooks for hangy things. I’ve already started an empty tin collection for nails and screws. I’m a great one for the gear around the stuff. Though I must say I’m looking forward to fixing up some chairs and refinishing furniture in my very own workshed. And oh yes, Strawbella is looking forward to her new HQ.

I’d not found another handyman, you see, finding a new anything in this little outport is very difficult, due to village politics and people being related and that kind of thing. I couldn’t offend prior handyman even if he hadn’t shown up for 2 years. Joe, my new one, is a brother of Leo, my factotum. And the matter was handled very delicately indeed, my being privy to such ways on a small island off the coast of Ireland in the summers of my childhood and having a full drenching in village-speak. I should give lessons.

Electrifying said garage has been another story. Ditches were dug for the tubing, lines were strung, and hookups were connected to my impressive looking electrical panel in the house (completed 2 years ago with circuit breakers and ‘enough power to light up the village’ per installer). The panel box reacted most unfavourably to this assault and tripped breakers, shorting out my stereo speakers permanently it looks like. I’m fair lost without my music and my CBC, I am.

An SOS went out for an electrician to sort out the mess. Electricians are very thin on the ground in this neck of the woods. The fellow who replaced my antique system two years ago was only in town briefly on vacation and is now back at his millionaire job in the Yukon. Another local is adverse to any extra work as he likes to spend his day job earnings at night on on-line poker. Another is on the town council and doesn’t want his handiwork exhibited locally because of insurance (?!).

You see the disadvantages of living in a very small community?

But I have faith. I do. Really.

I only have to look at the wee farm out back (I’ve got potatoes, I’ve got onions, I’ve got collards, yeah collards!!!) and then over my shoulder at the ocean and thank Gaia for creating such a paradise and for plopping me in the middle of it.