BEFORE THE ROAD CAME
By
Florida Ann Town
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2004 Florida Ann Town
ISBN 0-97357050-0-X
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CHAPTER ONE
The sun streams through the multiple panes in our big bay window, scribing shadowy squares across the front room rug. An archway divides the front room from the dining room and a dark, wooden door separates the dining room from the kitchen.
The pantry window, on the shady side of the house, holds a cooler - a box with mesh walls to let in cool breezes. We store milk, butter and eggs there. On very hot days, Mom drapes cheesecloth over the cooler and sprinkles it with water.
Our house is divided in half by a hallway. The kitchen, dining room and living room are on one side, three bedrooms and a bathroom are on the other. My bedroom, at the front of the hall, looks out over a deep front porch. The next bedroom is my brother's and the third, at the back of the house, belongs to my parents.
The basement is also divided. Part of it is a giant bin that holds sawdust for the wedge=-shaped hopper on the kitchen stove. Sawdust is delivered by a man with a loose leather cape on his back, who carries sack after sack into the basement and dumps them into the bin. On delivery days, my parents watch to make sure he shakes all the sawdust into the bin, and they count the sacks before he folds them and takes them back to his truck.
Dad's workshop takes up one corner of the basement and another corner is the laundry area, with a big tin washtub, a scrub board and a hand operated wringer clamped on the edge of a white porcelain sink. The last corner of the basement is dark and dusty, but the dark is crowded with shelves of preserves that Mom makes each year. They stand like soldiers, in glassy rows along the wall, their interiors filled with floating globs of various kinds of fruit: deep red globs for the plums, smaller purple globs for the cherries, plump-bottomed ovals for the pears. Beside them sit other jars holding jams, jellies, rhubarb conserve, tomato relish and chutneys of different kinds, and the murky tan bottles of dandelion tonic she makes each spring.
We've lived in this house on Ward Street in Vancouver for as long as I can remember. Every corner is familiar and comfortable. This is my home, and I'm not prepared when Mom makes an announcement.
"We're moving," she says.
We'll take our furniture from these familiar rooms and put it somewhere else. Take the chesterfield from the front room where it sits, flanked by an overstuffed chair. Both are protected from wear by a patchwork cover Mom pieced together from a tailor's fabric samples, which is removed only when we have company. We'll move the spindly legged end tables, and the magazine rack. The curtains will cone down from the windows and frame a new view somewhere else. Pictures on the walls, so familiar I no longer even see them, will be placed on new, alien walls in some other place.
"Are we going to take everything?" my brother asks.
"No," mother replies. "Not everything. Just the good things."
This puts a while different face on it. What are the good things? Things we love the most? Things that cost the most? Things that are in the best condition? Can I take my rocking chair? I've almost outgrown it, but I sit in it anyway. How about my dolls? Gloriana, the doll I love more than any other, is a faded copy of her original self. My sweat, as I hug her to me at night to help banish the demons of the dark, has taken most of the paint form her face. One eye doesn't close properly any more and the other moves with a clearly heard 'thunk' deep within her china head. Her once firm body is limp. I have other dolls, prettier dolls, newer dolls, that I never play with. Will I have to leave Gloriana behind and take one of the other dolls instead?
"You can take Gloriana," mother says, "but maybe we should give away some of the toys you don't use any more."
Like any seven-year old, I'm loathe to relinquish my toys. They've been with me too long. My books are definitely shabby, with loose pages and battered covers, but they are, after all, my books and giving them away is like giving away a piece of myself.
"Where are we going?" I ask. Some neighbors moved out a little while ago and their house is still empty. Maybe we'll move there, so I can keep my friends and go to the same school.
"To Britannia," my mother tells me.
Britannia?
I've never heard of it. Is it a street? Is it a place? I open my mouth to ask, but she stops me.
"We'll talk about it later," she says. "Right now I've got a lot of things to do and I'll need your help. You, too," she adds, smiling at my brother.
"Are there any kids there?" I ask, ignoring her cross look.
"I'm sure there are," She's wrapping our dishes in sheets of newspaper and nesting them carefully inside a large wooden box. I separate the newspaper into single sheets, tearing each in half and handing the pieces to her. The black ink leaves smudges on my hands.
As I wait to give her the next page, I look at some of the stories. Most are about the war in Europe, about the thousands of men fighting in places with strange names I can't pronounce, with maps showing parts of the world I've never heard of. Every day the paper has black bordered boxes listing the names of Canadians who died in those far-away battles. There are pictures too - black and white grainy pictures, mostly of men wearing uniforms, of ships, or airplanes. Some show huge guns, or lumbering tanks. I try to imagine how loud those guns must be, and how it would feel to ride in a tank.
"Is Daddy going to the war?" I ask.
"No, he isn't."
She answers crossly, because my Dad wants to join up. He wants to be a pilot but when he tries to enlist the recruiter won't take him because he's married and has two young children.
By trade, my father is a bookbinder. In the late 1920s, just before North America plunged in the Depression, his brother, Bill, a butcher in Langley, got blood poisoning in his hand and needed someone to help out in the shop. He taught Dad the rudiments of butchering and between the two of them, they kept things going in the long months it took for Bill to recover. By then, the effects of the Depression were felt across the land. In those dark and difficult times, books were luxuries few people could afford, but people still had to eat. Grocery stores and butcher shops stayed open while book stores and binderies closed.
Once Uncle Bill recovered, he didn't need my father's help any longer, but Dad can't find a steady job anywhere. He fills in for butchers going on holiday. He helps out during seasonal rushes. He works in packing houses on the slaughter line and cleans poultry when he has to. He hates butchering, but is proud that he never has to ask for Welfare or Relief.
Ironically, the war creates thousands of new jobs, but none of them are open to him. He sees military service as a way to escape the butcher's block, but his married status means he isn't eligible for active service. The Air Force will take him as a butcher, but not as a pilot. Shipyards are booming and hiring thousands of people - even women - but for some reason, work in the shipyards isn't one of his options. He can't weld or do carpentry. He keeps looking for something else, hopping from one temporary job to another.
Finally, he finds a steady job working in the butcher shop in Britannia, a copper mining community on Howe Sound, about fifty miles out of Vancouver. Mining is an essential industry and butchering is an essential service. He'll be there for the duration of the war, officially frozen in his job.
He and Mom have endless discussions when they think I'm not listening.
"At least it's steady work," he says.
"But it's so far away."
"We can't complain. Service men leave their wives behind, and lots of them won't be coming back."
"I know. But it's going to be hard to look after things without you."
"As soon as a house comes empty, I'll send for you and the kids," he promises.
She isn't happy, but she doesn't have a choice. He leaves, and soon the trickle of letters begins, telling us about the place. He describes life in the mining camp, and the special hard hats the miners wear underground, with carbide lamps on the front of the hat so they can see in the darkness of the tunnels. He tells us about the bunkhouse, where he lives.
"It's called a bunkhouse," he writes, "but there aren't any bunks in it and the bedrooms are just about the right size for Buster."
Buster is our dog. I try to imagine Dad sleeping in a doghouse, but I can't. In any case, it's much too small for all of us and we have to stay in Vancouver for a while longer.
Another letter tells us about the cookhouse, where he eats his meals. The men can eat as much as they want and have anything they want. For breakfast they choose from mounds of friend eggs and bacon and potatoes, with stacks of toast and several kinds of jam. They can have bowl after bowl of oatmeal, or as many pancakes as they can eat. For dinner they usually have steaks. Dad says they are huge.
"The cook's helpers bring them to the table on big platters, like the one Mom uses at Christmas for the turkey, and we take as many steaks as we want," he writes.
Dad says some of the steaks hang over the edges of the plates. Vegetables come by the tub-full and there are mountains of cookies, cakes and pies for dessert, and a table at the back of the room with piles of fruit for anyone who's still hungry. After dinner the men go to the rec hall, where they play pool, watch movies, play cards or just sit around and talk.
At home, Mom continues her regular routine, which includes making cottage cheese. We buy skim milk from a small dairy on Kingsway and she 'clabbers' it by setting it out overnight in a shallow pan, then removing the curds and placing them in cheesecloth bags, which are pegged on the clothesline to drip. When the cottage cheese is ready, we eat it with nasturtium leaf sandwiches, or plain bread and butter.
We have a radio in the front room, taller than my brother, with amber lights behind the dial and big black knobs to tune it and control the volume. Dad made an aerial for it, rigging a high pole on either end of the roof and stringing a wire between them to pull radio waves out of the air. I'm disappointed because I expect to see the radio waves sliding down the wire and slithering into the house. At the very least, it should sparkle or flash or do something to show it's working, but it doesn't. It just sags between the poles and only moves when birds perch on it. Upside-down milk bottles, on top of each pole, act as insulators. Between the milk bottles on the roof and the cottage cheese on the clothes lines, our house has a somewhat raffish air.
Mom and Dad painted our house themselves with paint they made from skim milk and powdered coloring. It never quite dries. Clothing picks up reddish brown smears if you lean against an outside wall. The house trim is chocolate brown enamel that has a shiny finish, but chips off easily into little sharp-edged flakes, leaving a series of white ridges, like sand when the tide goes out.
My Grandmother's house, in North Vancouver, is smaller than ours. We don't visit very often because the trip takes at least two hours each way. First there's the streetcar ride downtown, then walking to the docks and boarding a big, flat ferry that crosses the harbor, then catching another streetcar that goes up Grand Boulevard. The Boulevard is actually two streets, with an empty block between them, planted in grass and trees. It looks like a long, narrow park running up the spine of North Vancouver.
We didn't have a telephone, nor did she, so Mom had to write a letter to let her know we were coming and wait until she wrote back to make sure she'd be home when we got there.
My grandmother wore long, black dresses, with little white collars, and black shoes that fastened with buttons. She was slightly plump and, in my memory, always smiling. She was the only grandparent I had. Mom's father died when she was a very little girl. She didn't remember him well enough to tell us anything about him. Dad's parents are also dead. His mother died when he was in his teens and his father, a few years later.
Soon after my father left for Britannia, my grandmother moved back to Winnipeg, where several of Mom's brothers and sisters still lived. Sometimes I wonder about all the relatives I've never met.
Once Grandma was gone, and my Dad was working at Britannia, Mom was very lonesome. Our family used to do lots of things together. Sometimes we'd take the street car to Stanley Park and walk around to Second Beach or Lumberman's Arch, to play in the sand. Other times we'd go exploring: take the street car all the way out to Lulu Island, or the interurban to New Westminster. Once in a while, on a dreary, rainy day, Mom would put a cast iron pot of soup on the very back of the woodstove, load it up with bark, and we'd go for a long walk in he rain, then rush home to change into warm, dry clothing and enjoy a bowl of hot soup with slices of thick, crusty home-made bread.
Mom didn't have much in common with our neighbors. They weren't a husband and wife, but an elderly brother and sister who lived in the same house their whole lives. Their parents lived there, they were born there, they grew up there and after their parents died, they just stayed there. They have a huge organ in their front room, with rows of stops and buttons that change the sound. We can year it outside in our yard and sometimes in the house as well. Dad says it's like living next door to a church, because they mostly play hymns and classical music.
Mom's favorite thing is going to the movies. We don't have much money so she waits for special nights when they give away free dishes, or have talent shows. My brother and I sing, or dance, on talent nights and sometimes win prize money of fifty cents or even a dollar. Admission to the theatre is ten cents, so a fifty cent or one dollar prize is a respectable amount. Mostly, though, Mom likes to read movie magazines and play the piano. We visit used book stores to buy magazines, and music stores or second hand stores for old sheet music. The music stores have big barrels of rolled up sheet music - grab bags that you buy for five cents - but you don't know what's inside until you open it up.
Sometimes it's funny old music, from long ago. Other times it's sheet music we already heave. There is a lot of music from the 20's - jazzy, vampy music, that Mom loves to play. She sings along with the piano and plays far into the night.
Now that my father has a steady job, we have money for extras. Mom enrolls me in ballet classes, tap classes, gymnastics, violin lessons, singing and elocution lessons. It seems like I'm always going to classes in something, but for some reason, my brother doesn't have to take any lessons at all.
Once a month we go downtown to shop at Woodwards department store, and if we've been good, Mom gives us five cents to buy a double scoop ice cream cone. No one has cones like Woodward's. The scoops aren't piled on top of each other but sit in two little cups, one beside the other, on a single cone, and you can get different flavors in each cup.
Once, before my grandmother moved back to Winnipeg, she came to spend a day with us and Mom took us downtown to ride on the observation car. It was a special red street car, with comfortable leather seats that have a special luxurious feel. Most of the interurbans and street cars have stiff wicker seats, with a back that flips from one side to the other. At the end of each trip, the conductor goes down the row, flipping the seat backs so the passengers will face forward on the return run. The seats on the observation car don't flip back and forth but are fixed in place. The back part of the car is raised higher than the front, so people can see ahead with no difficult. The sides are low, and there's no roof on the car. It's like being a Queen or a Princess, in a special coach. We can see everything and everyone can see us. Before we board, Mom and Grandma have an intense discussion about where to sit. If we sit at the back of the car, in the raised part, we might not be able to hear everything the conductor says. On the left, we won't get a clear view of things on the right side of the road. Finally, we sit in the third and fourth seats from the front, on the right side of the car. The trip probably lasts for two hours but in my memory, it goes on and on, moving from one fascinating sight to another. The conductor, Teddy Lyons, uses a big megaphone to tell us about special things at each stop - bits of history and legend, the folk-tales of Vancouver, and glimpses of the homes of the rich, famous or just plain eccentric.
At times, people come out into the street to entertain us. The car slows down or even stops when this happens. A little boy does a tap dance at one corner and a little girl dressed like Shirley Temple (all little girls dressed like Shirley Temple and wore corkscrew ringlets) sings 'Pennies From Heaven" at another corner. People throw money to the entertainers. The next day, at home, I practice singing 'Pennies From Heaven' in case the observation car comes and Kingsway, so I can perform and get money too, but I'm never lucky enough to be standing on the corner when it goes by.
Finally, a letter arrives from my father announcing that he has a house for us just outside of Britannia Beach, at Minetta Bay, right on the water. He wants us to pack up everything ad he'll come home on the weekend to help us move. Now the days are too full for observation cars or trips to Woodward's. We sort through everything in the house, trying to decide what to take and what to leave. I tell my friends we're moving from Vancouver to Britannia - but I can't answer my friends' questions. I can't even tell them where it is.
That weekend, when Dad comes home, I ask him about the new place.
"If our house is on the water is it on an island?"
"No. It's on the mainland. But we have to take a boat to get there."
""Why do we have to go by boat?" I persist.
"Because that's the only way to get there. There aren't any roads."
No roads? I mull over this strange idea. I can't imagine a place with no roads.
"Is there a streetcar?"
"No," he replies, somewhat crossly. "I told you there aren't any rods. That means no cars, no streetcars, no interurbans. So we have to go by boat."
"But once we get there..."
He interrupts. "Why don't you go see what your brother is doing?"
It's another way grownups have of saying 'go away and find something to do and stop bothering me.'
I head for the door, then think of something else.
"What about Buster? Can he come too?"
Dad smiles.
"Sure, he's coming too. We wouldn't leave Buster behind."
Buster is mostly terrier, with rough, white fur, a few patches of black and some brown shading on his face, near his eyes. He does a few tricks, but not very enthusiastically. If necessary, he will stand on his hind legs and ';dance' or sit up and beg for a treat, turning his head from one side to the other to make sure you're watching. At times he 'sings'-- usually while I'm practicing the violin. Mom and Dad laugh, but I don't think it's funny.
Our house looks strange with all our things packed away. The stove sits balefully in the kitchen, its warming oven cold, gaping open as it sulks at being left behind. We eat sandwiches for dinner sitting on packing cases. Mom pretends we're on a picnic and Dad pretends he's swatting mosquitoes. Then he morphs into a squadron of mosquitoes, buzzing and strafing my brother and me until we're in fits of giggles.
After dinner, I walk into my bedroom and look into the empty cupboard. Usually it's full of fluffy organdy dresses that Mom makes from remnants of fabric. We don't have a sewing machine, so she makes all my dresses and all her own by hand. Mom doesn't wear house dresses or aprons, but designs her own fashions. One of my favorites is a pale yellow and white crepe in cheongsam style, with a row of white buttons down the side instead of up the front like most dress. A rim of white edges the stand-up collar. She likes to wear saucy hats, too, with little veils that cover her eyes, and she always wears high heeled shoes. Sometimes I put on her has and shoes and walk around the house, peering through the veil that hangs down over my nose. Then I pose in front ot eh mirror, trying to guess what I'll look like when I grow up.
Each night, we go through the ritual of curling my hair. Mom has naturally curly hair - beautiful, rich, glowing brown with reddish highlights when the light hits it. My hair is dark brown, with no highlights of any kind. It is determinedly straight. Mother is just as determined that it is going to be curly and keeps telling me that in a couple of years, my hair will turn curly like hers. It never does. While we're waiting for it to turn curly, she helps it out by putting it in rag curlers every night.
Rag curlers are strips of old sheets or shirts, cut about an inch and a half wide and two feet long. Mom puts one end of the rag strip on top of my head. I hold it in place with one hand as she winds a strand of hair around it. When she gets to the end and the hair is completely corkscrewed around the rag curler, she takes the free end of the strip and winds that back up around the corkscrewed hair, then ties it to the end I've been holding. Sleeping on rag curlers is not fun. In the morning the process is reversed. Rag curlers have to be taken out slowly and gently, so the curls don't tangle or spread out like the bottom of a bell.
By noon, my hair is usually straight again, but Mom doesn't care. She is convinced that someday soon I will have curly hair. Straight hair is unthinkable for a girl. My brother, on the other hand, has wavy hair. It falls, like most little boy's hair, into his eyes. It's very fair - almost white blond. His eyebrows are that same light color. Almost invisible.
Wavy hair for him is as unthinkable as straight hair is for me. Every night, she wets his hair, rubs it with pomade and brushes it straight back off his face. Then she puts a stocking cap on his head. The cap is made from one of her old silk stockings, cut off and tied in a knot to keep it from unraveling. I wonder if my mother ever had to sleep in rag curlers, or if my father had to sleep in a stocking cap. They never talk about when they were young and I can't imagine them any way other than they are right now. It's as though they never were kids, like my brother and me.
I look around me room. The dresser has been moved out from the wall and stands in the center of the room. A pile of boxes beside it holds all the things that used to be in it. A dark patch of wallpaper outlines the space it used to occupy. Near it, another patch shows where the mirror used to hang and on another wall, two matching patches show where a pair of framed pictures hung.
My favorite doll. Gloriana, is already packed. She's bigger than a real baby and sleeps beside me every night. I have a buggy for her - I think it's the buggy my brother and I used when we were little. The navy blue rubberized canvas is faded in places and the white trim has turned yellow with inexplicable spots of orange. Like many other things, the buggy has disappeared in the past few days.
My brother's room looks strange too. His things are packed away, including his favorite teddy bear. My brother and I take very good care of this gear and every so often, we cut its hair. Mom scolds us when we do. She doesn't believe that Bear's hair grows back in, but we know it does. At least, each time we decide to give Bear a haircut was can always find another area of stubble to shear away.
Mom and Dad have been busy sorting things out. Sorting seems to mean throwing out, because it seems we're throwing away more thank than we're taking.
"We have to pay freight for everything hat goes with us," Dad keeps saying. :"We've got to keep it down as much as we can."
"But we need some things," Mom argues. "Surely we can afford to take just a few more?"
The argument rumbles on all day long as they decide what will go and what will stay. I don't know what happens to the things they discard. They disappear, somehow. /Finally Dad begins to move the boxes and barrels out to the sidewalk in front of our house and in a little while an old truck arrives and Dad helps the driver move our pile of belongings into the truck.
The truck drives away. Our possession are headed for the Union Steamship dock, where they will be loaded onto the boat bound for Britannia. Then it's our turn. Dad locks the door for the last time, picks up our suitcases and we set off. to walk the two and a half blocks to Kingsway, where we catch the streetcar that takes us downtown. This time we get off a few blocks before Woodward's store and walk to the dock.
The streetcar clangs as it pulls away and I suddenly realize this might be the last time I hear a streetcar clang. I clutch Mom's hand tightly. She seems to understand.
"It's going to be an adventure," she says. "It'll be just fine."
CHAPTER TWO
The waterfront has a smell all its own = a mixture of salt water, bilge, nearby fish packing plants and the thick diesel fuel that fires the ship engines, all swirled together in a sea mist that coats the dock. The shrieking seagulls, winches whining as they strain against their loads, waves splashing against the pier and shunting trains nearby make a piece of waterfront music. An overhead passageway crosses the train tracks, then takes us down a zig-zagging ramp to the Union Steamship dock.
Dad stops at intervals to rest. The suitcases are heavy.
We look for the Lady Cynthia. The Union has several 'Ladies" - Cynthia, Rose, Alexandra and Cecilia, will become familiar friends over the newt few years. Union Steamship boats are white, with wide red and black bands on huge funnels that slant backwards. They look impatient, like race horses waiting to leave the starting gate.
The gangplank bounces under our feet as we march on board and follow Dad to the salon area, which is a disappointment. I thought salon was the same as saloon, with music and dancing, like saloons in cowboy movies, but this salon is nothing like that. It's paneled in dark mahogany wood, with gloomy little lights that are more about decoration than serious illumination. A piano sits at one end of the salon. Dad says it's bolted to the floor so it won't come loose in stormy weather.
Mom and Dad settle themselves on the leather seats with our suitcases piled nearby, while my brother and I rush to the window to watch the loading. Expertly, the dark, rusty winches rattle up and down, placing pallet loads of goods deep inside the hold. Dad joins us at the window.
"Moist of this stuff is for the grocery store" he explains, pointing to the labels glued to the cardboard boxes.
Cases of Royal City peas disappear into the maw of the ship. Royal City pork and beans and Royal City pears. Sacks of flour and sugar,. Stacks of lumber are piled on deck and mysterious crates of industrial goods - big gears and metal cables - are added to the load.
I can't see any of our trunks and boxes, but Dad isn't worried.
"They were loaded earlier," he says. "They're probably down in the bottom of the hold already."
I hope he's right.
The crew bustles around settling a heavy wooden cover over the hatch. They - and they alone - are allowed to walk across the hatch. Dad explains that the cover keeps water out of the hold when the waves build up. It's hard to imagine the gentle waves lapping at the sides of the boat, many feet below the level of the railing, ever reaching the deck but the sea on a gentle summer day is not the same as the sea in winter. In years to come I'll feel the ship shudder as waves crash over the deck and slap against the windows of the salon.
We watch the last items come eon board - big canvas sacks of mail - and the engine rumbles into life as the giant propellers start to churn. The gangplank slides in and a crewman snaps the lock on a chain that blocks the empty space on the rail. Suddenly the loudest whistle I've ever heard splits the air. Seagulls shriek in response and the ship is underway.
There's an independent life to the ship. The floor vibrates with the mechanical heartbeat of the engines far below. I thought the ship would sail smoothly in a nice flat line like the North Van ferry as it chugs back and forth across the Narrows, but this ship moves with the waves - a gentle rise and fall and a slight weave from side to side.
We watch familiar landmarks pass by. The greenish dome of the Sun Tower stands out. Dad tells us it was one of the tallest buildings in the British Empire when it was built. Nearby is the huge 'W" that stands atop Woodward's store. I watch the statues holding up the top floors of the Medical Dental building squinting to see the gargoyles and griffins nearby.
Salt streaks across the window, blurring our vision.
We approach Stanley Park, Deadman's Island and the floating village in Coal Harbour, with squat little houses built on square barges. Some of the houses have tiny yards around them. Lawn chairs sit on lawnless decks, amid pots of shrubs and flowers. The boats are moored along docks that look like floating sidewalks. Kids ride bicycles and scooters and pull wagons along these walkways.
"Can we go outside?" I ask.
Mother shakes her head. No.
Dad reaches out to take her hand.
"They'll be okay.":
She looks at him for a long minute, then smiles.
"All right. But don't go far."
We rush to the door and grab the shiny brass handle. It's heavier than any door I've ever known. I struggle with it while my brother stands impatiently behind me. Dad laughs and comes over to help us. We step over a four inch sill, then we're outside where the wind pulls at us, tugging our coats. The flag at the back of the boat cracks so loudly it seems it must split apart, but it doesn't.
The Lions Gate bridge passes over our heads and we crane our necks looking up. The underside of the bridge is awesomely high and ugly. Two men hang from a scaffold, painting the bridge. I'm surprised it needs to be painted already. It opened on November 12, less than a year ago. The newspapers pictured the first people to walk across it and the first car to drive across it. It's a toll bridge, so you have to pay to use it.
What would it feel like to be so high in the air? Would it be too scaring to look down? Dad says some people freeze when they get in high places and have to be led to safety.
The ships whistle cuts the air as we pass under the bridge and a piece of grit lodges in my eye. I turn my back to the wind, blinking, tears running down my cheek as I rub at my eye. Eventually the cinder washes out and I look at the water.
My brother pokes me, pointing ahead excitedly, at seals swimming in the water, their sleek heads bobbing above the waves. Large, liquid eyes gave at us. Abruptly, they sink below the surface. We can the water anxiously, waiting to see them again, but they don't come back.
People fish in the waters off the Capilano River, the floating lines of net buoys looking like patches sewn on the water. On the Stanley Park side, people walk along the beach, the men with rolled up pants, buckets and shovels in their hands. I wonder what they are looking for - what is hidden under the sand?
It's cooler now. The sun is out but it' doesn't have enough strength to overcome the chill of the air. I nudge my brother. Hips lips are blue around the edges, but he won't say he's cold. He likes to think he's tough - and says so, to anyone who will listen.
"I'm a tough guy," he tells people, screwing his face up with impish bravado.
People laugh when he does it.
"I'll be you are," they say.
We go back inside the salon, where our parents sit quietly. Dad is puffing on a cigarette - one of the Players cigarettes he buys in blue tin packages called flat fifties. Sometimes he gives me the empty tin to keep things in. Mom smokes too, but today she's just sitting there. They smile as we walk in.
"Well?" Dad says.
"We went under the bridge," I tell him as though he might not have noticed.
My brother grabs his arm excitedly and points toward the North Shore where a cluster of houses marks a little settlement.
"Is that it?" he asks.
Dad laughs.
"No. It's a bit farther than that. You're looking at Horseshoe Bay."
We watch the fish boats around the Horseshoe Bay wharf. There's a large floating dock, surrounded by a cluster of boats. People fish from the boats and from the dock - some with hand lines and some with rods. We're content to watch from this side of the glass, where the air is warmer and the wind doesn't nip at us with its sharp teeth.
The boat chugs on.
"Who wants some lunch?" Dad asks.
We suddenly realize we're hungry. Mom has a bag of sandwiches and we eat them quickly, crumpling up the wax paper wrappers.
"Let's go to the dining room," Dad suggests. "I could use a cup of coffee along about now."
That's the way he always says it. Along about now.
Mom murmurs something.
"I know," he replies. "But this is special. Just this once. For a treat."
He smiles at her, she shrugs and stands up. We bounce to our feet, ready to follow. Dad leads the way, swaying gently as he walks, dancing to the rhythm of the ship. We try to copy him, imagining that we look like sailors, or at least seasoned travelers. Sometimes we guess wrong and lurch to the side when the ship catches us off balance.
There is a restaurant on board the ship, with rows of tables, each draped with a heavy white tablecloth and decorated with a small vase of flowers. The china cups, banded in pale green, say 'Union Steamships'. Silverware, that weighs heavily in my hand, is engraved with a swirled ''USS'.
Mom and Dad order coffee and my brother and I get ice cream sodas. We're used to the motion of the ship now, and watch the coastline slide by as though we do this all the time. Dad points out things of interest.
"That's a lighthouse," he says. "Sailors know which lighthouse because they all blink differently."
I try to imagine how many different blinks there can be. It must be hard to memorize them all. It would be awful to get mixed up in the middle of a storm. There's a change in the rhythm of the engines. The ship slows and we see a dock ahead.
"Is that it? Are we there?" my brother asks, his eyes eager and crinkled up like his smile.
Dad shakes his head.
"No. This is Bowen Island."
A few people get off and the winches cream again as they drag some crates up out of the hold. Someone tosses the Bowen Island mail sack over the rail and onto the dock, where a man with a car waits to pick it up. It's a short stop. No one gets on.
My brother asks once again how long it will be before we reach Britannia. Dad smiles, takes an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and carefully uncaps the fountain pen that Mom gave him for his birthday last year. It has a dark red barrel with his initials carved on it and he's very proud of it. He holds the pen carefully so he won't smudge the ink as he draws a map on the back of the envelope.
"Look," he says, pointing to a squiggly ark. "This is Vancouver. Here's the Lions Gate Bridge. We're at Bowen Island, here. Gambier Island and Gibson's Landing are over there."
His hands fly, making slash marks and winding lines.
"Now up at the head of Howe Sound, we have Squamish, Woodfibre and Britannia."
I look carefully at the scrawled lines on the map.
"Is that where we're going>" I ask, pointing to one of the marks.
:"Almost. We're in a little bay, just outside of Britannia Beach."
"Is it really a beach?"
"Oh, yes," he smiles. "It's pretty nice in the summer. You're lucky kids. You'll be able to go swimming at your own beach."
"How deep is the water?" I ask.
"How deep do you think it is?"
"I don't know."
He laughs.
"It isn't deep at all at the edge, but it gets deeper as you walk out. Then it's up over your head and it keeps getting deeper and deeper, until you reach the middle."
He laughs at his joke, then pushes the envelope away, shoving it toward me.
"There now. Think you can find your way around?
I nod, and he smiles.
The waiter hovers around in the background and Mom laughs.
"He probably thinks you're drawing on the tablecloth," she says.
Dad looks surprised.
"Well, you read about it all the time. Some great artist sketches on a tablecloth and the waiter winds up with a masterpiece."
"He'll be disappointed in this case."
Mom and Dad order a second cup of coffee and he lights another cigarette.
I can't finish my soda. I play with the foam, tying to pick up individual bubbles with the long-handled silver spoon. Then I have to go to the bathroom, but I don't know where it is. Do they have bathrooms on boats?
Urgently, I pull at Mom's hand and whisper to her.
"That's a good idea," she says, and murmurs something to Dad. He points down the corridor and we all leave the restaurant. He takes my brother and I go with Mom.
The bathroom is very warm and the air is stuffy. The noise from the engines is louder here. The toilets are smaller than ordinary toilets, with a flap at the bottom that opens when you pull a chain. Mom tells me to put paper on the seat before 'I sit down, but strange air currents in the small booth pull at the paper. it's a struggle to get it on the seat and sit down before it slides off.
We're surprised at the gush of hot water in the hand basis and I wonder if it's sea water or if they carry water especially for washing. We pick our way back to the salon.
"It won't be long now," Dad says, smiling. He's excited, eager to show us our new home. Soon he points to a little cluster of houses in a small cove.
"That's it," he announces. 'That's Minetta Bay."That's how he says it and that's how he spelled it in the letters he wrote to us, but later I learn it's really Minata Bay. No one can tell me how it got the name , or what it means. I'd expected the bay to be much bigger. As hard as I look, I can't see any beach.
"Where's our beach?" I ask.
Dad smiles and points. "Right there," he says, gesturing toward the middle of a little dip in the shore line.
"There isn't any sand."
"I didn't say it was a sandy beach. All beaches don't have sand. This beach has rocks, but they' smooth rocks. You'll like it."
"Which is our house?" Mom asks.
"The middle one. The white one with the windows along the front and the big porch."
There are only a few houses in the cove. Huge logs and pieces of driftwood dot the beach in front of them. Plumes of smoke rise from the houses of either side of our house. Ours, dark and empty, looks lonesome.
"There's no dock," I say. "How do we get there?"
Dad laughs. "There's a big dock at Britannia Beach. That's where the boat stops. We'll get off there."
"How do we get to our house?" I ask.
"We walk," Dad replies.
Minutes later, we tie up at the dock and the deckhands remove the hatch cover. The winches start up again, hauling things up from the darkness of the hold. As we wait for the deckhands to put the gangway out, I look around. This isn't a busy, bustling dock like the one in Vancouver. It's quiet and almost deserted. I look toward the shore and see something that looks like a long wooden shelf curing around a rock bluff on the north end of the town.
"What's that shelf for, behind the houses?" I ask.
"It isn't a shelf. It's a flume."
"What's a flume?"
"A flume is like a wooden pipe that carries water, only it isn't all closed in like pipes. It's open at the top. The ancient Romans and Greeks made them out of stone. These are made of wood, but they do the same thing."
Now I'm curious. Why do they need to carry water in these wooden canals?
"Don't they have pipes?" I ask.
"They have pipes for ordinary water. This is mill water," he answers.
I'm not sure what mill water is, or how it differs from ordinary water, but there are too many questions bubbling through my mind to pursue that particular thought right now.
Each of the buildings I can see has a shiny metal roof.
"What's on the roofs?" I ask.
"It's tin," Mom tells me.
"Like in tin cans?"
She smiles.
"Why don't they use shingles?"
"This is easier," Dad answers.
I look again at the roofs. The sheets aren't flat but curve up and down in little ridges. Dad says they aren't really tin, although people call them that. They're corrugated iron.
Finally the gangway is secured and we walk down it. It's very steep and we have to hang on to the white painted rope railing.
"How come it's so high?" I ask. The gangway was almost level with the dock in Vancouver.
"It's because of the tide. When the tide is high, the boat is higher than the dock, so the gangplank is tipped at an angle. At low tide, the boat is just about even with the dock."
This is a new idea. Tides are something I haven't heard about before. '
"Where do the tides come from?"
Dad smiles. "Well, that's a pretty hard question to answer right now. Let's leave it for later. Okay, Chookie?"
That's he pet name for me. He makes up names for everyone, but doesn't always use the same names. It takes me a long time to learn my mother's real name. He calls her Allie, Kay, Sparky, Kelly or Ducks, among others. Not until my grandmother comes to visit, do I discover her name is actually Alice. Dad frequently changes his names for people, so I'm not always sure who he's talking about. Sometimes the names he uses are funny and sometimes they aren't. When he thinks I eat too much he calls me Gertrude Prunella. It's a long time before I learn the initials really stand for Garbage Pail. He calls my brother Gregory Poindexter for the same reason. My brother's other name is Suds. His real name is Ron, but they almost never call him that. I never call my brother Suds and he never calls me Chookie.
Dad leaves us standing on the dock, watching the suitcases.
We look around, trying to make sense of what we see. What looks like a huge sand pile looms ate the foot of the mountain. Over to the right a series of long narrow buildings, made from the same corrugated iron as the roof tops, cascades down the hill, each building linked to the one below it like a metallic waterfall. I can't begin to imagine what it might be. Farther along, between us and the bay where our house is, sits a huge pile of rocks. Not boulders, but small, fist-sized rocks. Another mystery. Nothing looks familiar. I can see a few buildings but there aren't any signs on them. Every one of the buildings is painted the same -white with a dark green trim. I can't see any stores - or at least, nothing that looks like a store. I know there has to be one because my Dad works in it. I can't see any road signs or street signs either. Nor traffic signs or signals.
Bewildered, I turn to Mom. Before I can say anything she gives my hand a squeeze and turns on a bright smile.
"Well, darlings, here we are." I watch the smile. Her mouth is crinkled up but her eyes aren't. "This is going to be an adventure, isn't it?"
At that moment my father re-appears. He holds up something small and shiny that flashes in he sunlight. "Here it is," he announces. "The key to our new home."
Mom lets go of our hands and my brother and I run to him.
"Here," he says, handing the key to my brother. "You can carry it."
My brother looks immensely proud of himself and marches along beside my dad, carrying the key like it was some sort of medieval talisman.
Dad reaches out to take Mom's hand.
"Okay, everybody, let's go home."
CHAPTER THREE
Minata Bay is a great place to explore. Mom never let us go off by ourselves in Vancouver, but here she doesn't mind. The trial only goes a little way past our house and ends in another small bay. That bay doesn't have a sandy beach either but does have some interesting rocks for climbing, and others that slope out into the water like flat shelves. That summer we press against the dark rocks, soaking up their heat until we feel groggy as a pair of lizards, then explode into the water in twin cannonballs, nerving ourselves for the sudden shock of cold salt water against sun baked skin.
There's a waterfall nearby that Dad says we'll visit one day when he has more time. It's called Brandywine Falls and sounds like the perfect name for a smuggler's cove. The little river near us is called Furry Creek.
"Why is it called furry?" I ask.
"I don't know," my father replies. A rare admission for him. He makes up answers rather than admit he doesn't know something. His made up answers are usually far more interesting than the truth.
My brother and I rename everything in sight - Feathery Road, Buckskin Bay and Patent Leather Trail. Mom laughs and says we're being silly. Dad just grins.
Later we learn Furry Creek has nothing to do with fur but was named for Oliver Furry, an old prospector who showed the site to W.A. Clark sometime in the 1890s. They staked five claims, one each for Clark, his wife Bertha, his brother, J.F. Clark, Oliver Furry and his brother, Ira. That was the start of Britannia, but there are no plaques or signs announcing the discovery or founding of the copper mine.
The beach in Minata Bay is wonderful. It's made up of nothing but rocks. Most are the size of almonds or walnuts, but smooth, and range from a startling white to a deep and somber black. I find shiny slate-like rocks, rocks that glitter with mica and feldspar, and greenish rocks that we tell ourselves are probably solid jade. My brother and I search for special lucky rocks - black rocks with white circles. The rocks on this beach are all smoothly rounded. Dad says it's because of the waves. I don't understand how water can affect something as hard as stone so he explains, crashing two stones together as he talks, simulating the action of waves rubbing the rocks against each other, wearing away the sharp edges and corners.
Between the rocks we find shells: clam shells ranging from the heavy, chalky horse clams to the delicate brown and black razor clams. I look especially carefully at the oyster shells but don't find any pearls. There are tiny pink shells, and twisted snail shells. I can't begin to imagine what kinds of creatures live in some of the shells. There are vast numbers of crab claws, mostly tiny little claws. Where are the rest of the crab's shells?
At night, in my bedroom, I listen to the waves. They make two sounds - the first, a big booming sound when the water hits the beach, followed by a swooshing noise, from gravel sliding back and forth, chasing the waves back into the ocean. I go to sleep at night listening to a two-beat lullaby; whump, swoosh, whump, swoosh. The sounds are there during the day too, but they're covered by other sounds.
The water in the bay is clean and clear. Sometimes I see fish, big ones, swimming close to shore. Then shoals of tiny little fish that live along the edge of the water scatter, scooting through the waves to escape. Even when they turn to flee they remain in schools. I almost never see a small fish swimming by itself.
The tide carries an endless stream of things to our beach. Pieces of wood. Old rope Soggy bits of cardboard that waft and wobble in the water, then drape themselves over the rocks on shore to dry hard and leathery in crumpled shapes. Once in a while a glass float from a far-off fishing net bobs into the beach. These floats are usually blue or green and often trial pieces of scummy rope, rotten and shaggy around the edges. Other times we find pieces of something that looks like solid blobs of tar. Slabs of bark, munched and nibbled by the waves until they're rounded and smooth along the edges, land delicately on the beach, pushed ashore by the incoming time and left, in a tangle of seaweed, at the top of the tide line. Dad says some of them come from as far away as Japan. We find glass bottles too. There are never messages in them, but we always look. Sometimes a shoe washes up. Never a pair - just one shoe, sitting on the beach, curling up its toes as it dries in the sun.
My favorites are the special shells that appear only at rare intervals after a storm, a really high tide, or a very strong wind that whips the waves to fury. Then the ocean opens its treasure chest and leaves a few really spectacular shells behind.
One day I find an abalone shell. I've never seen one before.
"Look, Mom!" I cry, carrying my treasure into the house.
It's almost a foot across and gently curved, like a baseball glove. The outside is ridged and the back is covered with a dull coating in muted pinks and greys and greens that fade into each other. Along the spine of the shell there is a series of little holes. Inside, it is lined with a luminous coating that captures all the colors of the rainbow.
"That's called mother-of-pearl," Mom says. "They make buttons from it."
"Really?" I ask. I've never thought about buttons or how they are made.
"Not all buttons, but some. They make jewelry from it too."
"I wonder what happened to the other part of it?" I ask.
"There isn't any more. The abalone lives inside this one shell. It hangs onto a rock and hides underneath the shell."
I consider this.
:How does it stay on the rock?"
"It has a special foot. They call it a foot, but it doesn't look anything like our feet. It's a big muscle that lets it cling to the rock."
I try to imagine a foot that can hang on to smooth rocks. I've seen monkeys at the zoo in Stanley Park, who0 cling to ropes with their feet, or clutch the cage bars with their feet, but I suspect abalone feet don't look much like monkey feet either.
"Abalone is good to eat," Mom adds. Then she laughs. "What will you do with your shell?"
I don't have any idea. But it's much too pretty to leave lying on the beach.
"You could put things in it - your barrettes or something."
Mom loves putting things in little containers. A cluster of tiny boxes, pots and baskets stands on one side of her vanity table, and lacquered trinket cases hold her jewelry. She has other little boxes and jars inside her sewing box, with different kinds of buttons and snaps in them.
I can't think of anything I want to put in the shell.
"Would you like it?" I ask.
She smiles. "That would be very nice, if you really don't want it."
"What will you do with it?"
"I'll put it on the smoking stand and it will be my very special ash tray."
The smoking stand, red lacquered with a three dimensional scene on its tiny door, showing oriental temples and miniature kimono-clad people, is one of her prize possessions. I don't know where it came from and it matches nothing else in the house, but I know she treasures it. I'm doubly delighted when she accepts the shell and places it on the stand and I'm free to go back outside.
As I go through the door, I hear the gramophone startup again. Mom listens to music, all day long. We have a box of gramophone records - thick, heavy, flat records, about ten inches across. We aren't allowed to put our fingers on the grooved part of the record.