You Jew! You Polak! You uh, Messy-Hair Dumwit…

CHAPTER 6

Let’s make a hard right turn off this Mexican highway for a brief diversion and go back in time to 1958.

I grew up in south Winnipeg off Stafford St., on Hector Ave.. It was an area where everyone was living in 1000 sq. ft. bungalows populated by immigrants, mostly from ravaged post-war Europe and it truly was a melting pot of cultures. It was a time when hard work would actually get you ahead. Most men worked at manual labour jobs, the wives staying at home running the house and tending the children.

Tending the children during the summer meant opening the back door at 8:30, ushering all of the ones older than four outside and telling them to be back at 12 for lunch. As long as there was at least one kid who could tell time we were all good. You would see Ivan heading home and we would all drop our toys and dutifully head back from whence we came, scarf down a bologna sandwich on white bread (sometimes with Cheese Whiz), big glass of milk, and then back again on the playground, boulevard, or backyard where we were previously playing.

Everyone’s parents had a rec room downstairs where they gathered with friends drinking beer, and rye and coke and smoking their asses off. The walls were always made of wood paneling, usually mahogany, as it was probably the cheapest, with acoustic tile ceilings (laden with asbestos, the paint on the windows and doors stabilized with lead paint). Pictures on the walls of old people, none of them smiling, and pictures of the kids sitting on a pony, with a forced smile because your mom was paying some photographer $2.25 for this once-in-a-lifetime shot and you better not screw it up you little buggar.

There would be plates of pickles and sausage, buns and olives, and exotic meats from whatever country they had crossed the Atlantic from. This was the venue where you would here the ethnic jokes and jibes as they talked louder and louder as the night wore on. The Ukes, Polaks, Squareheads (that was us), and the Jews made up the largest contingent in our little 4 block radius.

It had been 5 years since my mom’s first impregnation and by now there had been a second son, Doug, who was the apple of my mothers eye and that allowed me a little more latitude in the outdoors as she was easily distracted by the little bundle of joy. The next year would produce another brother, Donald, but sister Darlene was still swirling around in God’s gene pool waiting for a fallopian tube to nestle into.

There was a new kid one street over who was a Limey, Robert Fargher. He spoke funny but he had some cool toys so I was willing to take a chance.

This day we were in my backyard kneeling beside the sand box pushing trucks around and making rumbling noises and screeching tire sounds (these were sporty dump trucks afterall). When suddenly Robert stiffened up, grimaced, and then plunged his hand into the back of his pants and promptly produced a medium-sized turd which he clutched close to his face (Robert wore glasses which were of the wrong prescription). Even though I was already color blind I could deduce that the dark brown, hard (ouch, that must have hurt), object was indeed from where the sun-don’t-shine area of the anatomy. Robert, nonplussed, gave it a quick sniff, reared back in Whitey Ford fashion and hurled it over the fence into our elderly Uke neighbour’s garden. He acted like this was not a first time affair and reached down and brushed his hand on the grass and resumed with truck sounds and was even whistling for awhile (why not at this point). I on the other hand was gobsmacked, as when I had my twice weekly movement I would slide off the seat, shield my eyes, and reach back and flush the toilet several times so there was no evidence of my ever having been in the bathroom.

After Robert had left I told my mother about our playtime together and she was horrified, i mean REALLY upset and told me in no uncertain terms that Robert was banned from ever coming back and I was to have no contact with that dirty Limey! Bewildered, but obedient, I scurried outside to find a new friend as there were probably 20 kids my age on our street. Easy come, easy go.

Robert probably went on to have a successful career as a defense attorney for sex fiends, while I on the other hand never played near that patch of grass again.