So begins some of the happiest years of my childhood, the life of a boy growing up in the home of a “Gypo Logger.” We didn’t have much but we did have love and acceptance. We didn’t know we were poor but we always had cloths to wear and food to eat. We didn’t have a bathtub but we did have a galvanized washtub that we all got scrubbed clean in. You always hoped you would be the first one in when the water was still clear, after three baths it was getting pretty thick with debris. We didn’t have electricity but we had a gas lamp that used silk mantles. We also had oil lamps and candles for the bedrooms. We didn’t have TV but radio was big in those days and we used to sit around the wood stove in the kitchen and listen to “Hockey Night in Canada with Foster Hewitt shouting, “He shoots, He scores,” every Saturday night. During the week day nights we loved to listen to such shows as “Fibber Ma Gee and Molly,” and “The Lone Ranger,” or “The Great Gildersleeve”. But what really topped it off was Saturday evenings, when my mother made hot chocolate fudge, while listening to Hockey Night In Canada” with Foster Hewitt. It was the best fudge I have ever eaten and Foster Hewitt did a fine job too.
This brings to mind my wife Sandy’s brave attempts to satisfy my hunger for some good home made fudge just after we were married. The brave girl not having ever made fudge before got a recipe out and follows it to a “T”. However her “T” was in a different font or something. The secret of course has something to do with a precise temperature determined by dropping a bit of the gooey mixture into cold water and if it balls up just right, kind of softly between the thumb and index finger and at that precise moment you stir the mixture just right or the god’s of confection smile just right, you get this gloriously smooth stuff called chocolate fudge, not the little shiny brown rocks rattling around in the bottom of the pan. We all had a good laugh and now we just buy our fudge, better then none at all, but I can still dream about my mother’s fudge.
Growing up in the 40’s was a great experience for a kid. My sister and I being only 11 months apart grew up like brothers and at one point Dawna could put me on my back and pin me to the ground. We had a close bond with one another but as the time approached when all little girls become big girls she did not appreciate being wrestled to the ground and I had to resort to other ways of being a boy. It would seem that she did not like being hit in certain places that now had become quite sensitive. At the time I was quite disillusioned but as she seemed to be always running to mother about how rough I was treating her I soon realized that times had changed.
Read Island to me as a kid was probably as close to paradise as a person could get in this life. I can remember when coming home, after a few weeks, from a trip to see family in the US and feeling this sense of peace when our boat rounded the last few corners past all those islands that plugged the end of Georgia Straight. There right in the middle was my island home. Coming into Bird Cove was an experience of peace and belonging that I have not felt since leaving there. I suppose as a kid even though I loved the place I felt bushed and unsure of myself around people and blamed it on my growing up in the wilds. But to see the island just springing up out of the water all covered in green down to the high tide mark where the water touched the green of the trees, as if sheered with some giant sheer that God might have used when no one was about, that was an awesome feeling, and a connection with nature that can not be explained well with words.
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