I WAS A VEGETABLE DELIVERY GUY - AND FRUIT TOO - IN MUSKOKA

This morning was so bright and fresh out, with sun-sparkling dew and a slight roll of mist wafting through the moor. It reminded me of those crazy mornings I worked for Clarke’s Produce, in Bracebridge.

Jimmy Clarke would have us report for work at 5 a.m., after a wickedly exhausting load-up at the Bracebridge depot the night before. I was a pretty husky and capable kid back then, the late sixties, but loading the fifty pound bags of potatoes was a back breaker. The potatoes came off the supply truck, driven by a tough little French Canadian guy named Gabby, and were removed on skids with an hydraulic lift. When we were re-filling the orders, it was by hand and shoulder. From onions to strawberries, turnips to sweet potatoes, Clarke’s Produce kept resort and camp kitchens, around Muskoka, supplied with fresh vegetables and whatever fruit was desired. Jimmy seemed to be able to get whatever you wanted.

He and his wife Pat, had been in the business a long, long time, and even though he was getting on in years, he was still able to swing a bag of spuds, like they were weightless, over his shoulder, before I could secure a decent grip on my load. He’d clench his stubby cigar, grunt, break wind, and with the poise of a ballet dancer, pivot, walk, pivot, run, and drop with nary a sound of impact, one potato sack upon another. It was indeed, as they say, poetry in motion in the fruit and vegetable game..

I’ve written frequently about Clarke’s Produce, because it was my first serious part-time job. I worked for a dollar an hour and as exercise it was well worth it. My baseball batting averages went way up in those years of minor ball, and my legs were primed and fat free when it was time to start regular goaltending duties for my minor hockey team. The best part of my stint in produce, was the early morning starts, especially in the late spring. Outside of the fact Jim liked to chew the end of his stinking cigar, he didn’t mind me having the window of the truck open, so I could enjoy the view.......through the blue halo of smoke that is! What I saw through that ring of blue smoke was an awakening world, so bright and sun-kissed, and begging for explorers like me to break free of the tithes that bound us. I needed the money. The adventures were in my imagination.

I’ve been writing about Muskoka for decades. This is truly where it began. I saw Muskoka from every angle, and throughout the gentlest seasons of the year. I got to visit some beautiful summer resorts, and children’s camps around the lakes, and my favorite, while outside of Muskoka, was a weekly trip to Mountain Trout House, on Kawagama, near Dorset. After we’d finished loading the order, into the kitchen storage area, and huge coolers, while Jimmy settled the necessary delivery checks with camp staff, I’d find just enough time to wander down to the dock, to gaze out at some of the most amazing scenery in the world. He’d just give me a yell, or I would hear the truck engine start, and although he threatened to leave me a couple of times, I wouldn’t have cared. It was immersion by work but the hard labor was always worth the bonus of a few moments at resorts, and camps my parents could never have afforded to stay or send me for a summer vacation. When you grow up poor, you learn to take advantage of any freebie of something you wanted. Over numerous summers, I figure with accrued time, I got to stay at least one day in total (time spent free-loading after the delivery was made), at each of these picturesque, luxurious locales.

If you’ve ever read the preamble to the book “Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” you will recall the main character’s motorcycle adventure with his son......and the description of the open road, the vista, the cool morning invigoration of the senses, such that everything seemed so much more significant and enticing.......when there is open road in front, and no particular place to go. When I read that passage, for a university humanity’s course, I couldn’t help think about those morning runs around the lake with Jimmy Clarke. I daydreamed for most of those trips, and I’d be so calm and tired from load-up, that I’d frequently wake myself up, slamming my head into the passenger side glass. Now that would get a rise from the rather stoic, unemotional Jim.

This morning, I was standing out in the front yard, studying my emerging lilacs, and enjoying the perfect temperature and bright sun........and all of a sudden, I thought about those vegetable jaunts around Muskoka, so many decades ago. I half expected old Jimmy to pull up in the driveway, at that point, God rest his soul, and wave his chewed cigar at me, with the warning; “Come on kid, or I’m going to leave you here.” I guess, in retrospect, I owe the Clarkes something, for giving me this interesting opportunity to see our region at such a spectacular time of the year. I sometimes hobble these days, on a wonky hip, when it gets particularly damp or humid, and my thumbs and wrists are sore most of the time, and creak when I pick things up. I’m not sure whether that had anything to do with fifty pound bags of potatoes, or if it was from years of goaltending or outfielding. You know what, despite what was a lot of hard work, and did I mention hot and dirty, I’d do it all again knowing what I do today. So many youngsters today, never get a chance to see the region in which they reside. Muskoka is one of the most compelling and beautiful places on the planet, and yet so many restaurant-bound kids, never get beyond the urban boundaries of our communities. This is sad. They’re missing a lot.

I would have become a writer with or without the influences of “smoking, cussing Jimmy Clarke.” It’s on a morning like this, however, that I know for fact those adventures, smelling like cigar and onions, it was a needed spark of enlightenment at the most impressionable time of my young life. I often will inadvertently think about Jim, while working on some landscape piece or other, and I always get a smile and a whiff of cigar, as if he was looking over my shoulder at the computer screen. I imagine he’d be thinking something like, “Hey kid, what do you think of Muskoka now?” Thanks for the memories Jimmy.