I Consider It An Honour To Be Called Fred Sanford, "Junk Man"; Writer's Block, No Way

TO MY FAMILY, I HAVE NOW BECOME THE CONTEMPORARY FRED SANFORD, OF "SANFORD AND SONS"

TELEVISION ICON OF THE 1970'S, IS NOW MY LOT IN LIFE, ACCORDING TO MY OVERSEERS

     It's quite true, and is well documented in my biography, that I never missed an episode of the sitcom, "Sanford and Sons," from the halcyon boob-tube days of the early 1970's. In fact, I've been watching the entire "Sanford and Sons" collection, as a retrospective of my youth, for the past two weeks, and in many ways, I do seem to parallel the effervescent, Fred Sanford, played by comedian Red Foxx. I'm not suggesting for a minute, that I always wanted to be a junk man, or the purveyor of those cast-off items classified as "junk." I was fascinated by the whole idea, of establishing a junk yard, as the novel background of a situation comedy, and Red Foxx did become a sort of character-example for me, as I have carried on in the antique profession. My mother always called me a junk man, even when I opened our first antique shop, across from Bracebridge's Memorial Park. She had no real affection for antiques, and stuck to giftware to infill the spaces between relics throughout the four room shop, in the house built by well known Bracebridge Doctor, Peter McGibbon. I didn't care whether she referred to me as her son, "Fred Sanford," to get a laugh from our customers. She didn't seem to have any problem banking what my antiques were earning at the shop, and over the years we worked close together, her attitude shifted slightly, and she would actually, on occasion, talk about my travels from auction to flea market, and estate sales, as if she was mildly influenced. I got to a point where I actually considered her references to me as a junk gatherer, as a sort of gentle compliment. She never believed I was spending my life wisely, in the pursuit of antiques, or in her way of thinking, junk! She did have to admit that I knew what I was doing out there, and that she had received many compliments about our selection of interesting and one of a kind "junk." I was good with this! I resolved to be the best junk man in the region. I still think of myself this way, and maybe Merle, in her heavenly reward, looks down and occasionally nods approval, for the latest find of her son, Ted "Fred" Sanford.
     Suzanne, my long suffering business partner, is in character, true to the sitcom scenario, the modern day Lamont, as she is forever chasing me out of my easy chair, turning off the television during my favorite programs, and reminding me how much work I'm shirking, being the striking image of the sitcom character, Fred Sanford, "really lazy junk man". I don't take it too personally, considering she used to call me Pa Kettle, another film character. In fairness, I would retaliate by calling her "Ma," and asking if she knew where my tobacco pouch was at! Pa, you see, was always losing his tobacco pouch. I didn't smoke, but she got the dig alright. So when this week, she began calling me "Fred," like my mother used to, forty years ago, I couldn't have bypassed the irony of it all, if my life had depended on it! It was all true. I love to lounge like Fred Sanford, need my television programs to get through each day, and love to talk more than work. I'm legendary in this regard. Just ask my friends and family. Even our customers, who don't have to ask for a history lesson, in order to receive one. As for buying and selling junk, well, you know what they say about one man's treasure, and the other's junk. I make no apology for loving stuff formerly owned by someone else. I started off as a junk collector, as a kid, no fooling, and the only check and balance on what I hauled home, was what my mother screened at the door of Burlington apartment. She was the expert, or so she told me, on what was garbage, otherwise falling under the category of "junk" and "please never bring this kind of stuff home again Teddy," unsightly relics, found on the way to school, and back, at the end of the day. I did get things past the guard tower, but less than half what I picked up on my neighborhood travels. The point is, I got used to being called a "scrounger" and a "junk collector," before I was ten years of age. I wasn't insulted by this whatsoever. I guess then, that it's the reason I can't get offended today, when Suzanne calls me her lovable "Freddy," the amiable "junk man." I only call her "Lamont" when she can't hear me. I don't want to take any chances with her sense of humor, which is a lot more conservative than mine.
     I have enjoyed the past two weeks, watching the re-runs of this television gem, that entertained me as a teenager, and still does, to this day; as wildly interpretative as it is about the second hand and antique trade. I don't have the same number of fake heart attacks as Fred did, on the show, but I know how to feign exhaustion when required to dodge work, I don't want to participate in, at the moment Suzanne beckons with her curled finger, that I should come without haste, which usually coincides with a good show on television I don't want to hastily abandon. I have been known to call her "Aunt Esther", Fred Sanford's favorite adversary, in a whisper, when she turns her back. I feel bad about this for a couple of seconds, but I get over it. And I'm pretty sure she has called me "Mr. Ed," under her breath as well. It's what the junk man, "me" has to deal with these days. I get my oomph these days, for a profession known by many titles, from long retired Sanford and Sons episodes, that still make me proud to be the purveyor of neat found junk, that may just turn out to be your perceived treasure.

 
OFF DAY WRITING HIATUS WAS BRUTAL, FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN BOREDOM, BEING THE TOTAL "LACK OF INSPIRATION"

THE NEWSPAPER WAS OUT, AND THERE WAS A WEEK TO PREPARE FOR THE NEXT ISSUE - IT WAS A TRAP FOR THE UNINSPIRED

     Forgive me my excesses of recollection. I'm old and set in my ways. But I still have a bullet-proof memory. I was thinking about my newspaper days once again, and today, it had everything to do with the stunningly quiet day, here in Uptown Gravenhurst. It might be spring, but the sun and lack of blizzard-like conditions, didn't inspire many to take a chance on a stroll along the main street. I started to recall those days when I worked in the local media, and had to contend with frustrating moments following the publication of our weekly newspaper. It was like going from a hundred miles an hour to zero in a couple of hours. I hated being in hiatus, and as I suffer from impatience, a life-long affliction, when I can't pen something or other immediately, and timely, on this laptop, I get wild with anticipation, and spin my wheels in frustration, and eventually even start delving back in time, to find out how I dealt with stalemate as a younger writer. Seeing as I don't drink anymore, well sir, I can't whip to the liquor store and dig my way out of writer's block. But my recollections serve me in good stead, and fondly so!
     It was one of those way-too-calm-and-quiet days in local retail, that can actually start a "bother," in the minds of the otherwise idle, pondering whether this seasonal downturn is ever going to end. It's kind of hard to get inspired when it's this unremarkable; when you look out the front door, swinging your head in both directions, north and south, and see nary a soul looking like a shopper on a mission. On these occasions, I start reminiscing about those other occasions in my professional life, that I was confounded by a lack of inspiration, needing the coaxing of my old writing mate, Brant Scott, to retreat to a place where we might hunt and gather some news stories for the coming week's issue of The Herald-Gazette. I used to get anxious, leaning over my typewriter, without a single letter imprinted on the stark white paper, cradled by the roller, wondering how I was going to fill the next issue. No reporter on earth can be patient for the very next scoop to carry their byline. Gads, I really miss those times of great worry, and unceasing anticipation, a dry spell had consumed me, and the rest of our reporting staff. I had nightmares about publishing a paper with just white pages, and advertising. No editorial copy and no photographs. How is it possible that I could wax nostalgic about a time in my life that inspired so much fear and loathing for the development of the very next newspaper issue? I think it was more the adventure with my reporter mates, gathering like hungry sharks, awaiting our loyal connection of news snitches that worked for pints of beer, and the satisfaction of seeing their stories ideas make it to the fruition of news print. Today, I just wanted to be yanked to the local water hold, as happened almost every week of my newspaper days, but then, well, the place we used to go most often on quiet spring afternoons, is now a pile of rubble across from the old Bracebridge Train Station, which itself is nothing but a sepia tone memory of better times.
     Back in my newspaper years, Mondays and Tuesdays, were the two most important days of the week for writing staff. Monday was the heaviest writing day, and Tuesday was known officially as "Press Day," when writers polished-up their editorial copy, and picked up any late-breaking news and photographs, so that we could run it on the front page, to out-muster the competition press. Wednesday morning, at The Herald-Gazette, is when we caught crap from the advertising manager, who was a latent proof-reader. Instead of helping us proof-read before the presses began to roll, he'd stand by his desk, flipping through the pages, almost as if trying to find reasons to berate the news staff when they arrived; and usually with heavy heads, from the celebratory drinking the night before.
    Press day could be exhausting, and sometimes we wouldn't get to the watering hole until ten or eleven Tuesday night. We were typically pretty happy to have put out another good paper; or at least what we thought would be well received at daybreak, when the corner stores and post offices, across the region, got that week's edition of The Herald-Gazette. Thus, we felt that our two day blitz deserved a minor amount of recreational celebration, at either the Bracebridge Albion, on Main Street, the Holiday House, a block away from our building, or the Patterson Hotel, where we might retreat to see one of the local bands that used to play there through the week. But on that Wednesday morning, we had to get past the critiques from management, like being reminded of headline typos like "Prime Minister Trudeau," (should have been Trudeau) and "This Young Lay," (instead of lady) as a photo caption, amongst others even more alarming. There were in fact, only a small number of typos, but the manager caught every one of them, once the ink had dried. I asked him one morning, after his typical round of cheap shots, if he would use his super-hero "typo spotting talents" to help us the day before the paper was printed; instead of circling them for my benefit, once the paper had been delivered to all our subscribers. "That's your job Ted," he would remind me, as if I hadn't known my position at the newspaper, until that precise moment in company history. "I guess then, circling errors is your job, the day after," I quipped, while walking away, muttering all the way down the hall. I got the idea to retreat to the press club after he'd yell out that I should deal with my "attitude problem." I agreed, and so did the rest of the news staff. Therefore, we would dispatch ourselves from the building before we could be berated by anyone else with an axe to grind.
     The problem with our intensive two day protocol, was that the other three days were more organizational than productive, simply because there was no fire in our bellies, on those off-days-of-the-week. This may seem ridiculous, but we suffered an unspecified amount of writer's block on those lead-up days to the next issue. It wasn't the same every week, and it could well happen that something would transpire in the community, that would command our attention; we were reporters afterall, and emergency situations don't stick to a schedule. Not that we looked forward to the next emergency, fire, or accident, but none the less, we needed some added measure of emotional electricity, to re-boot work for the next issue. We were like sponges in this regard. We sopped-it all up, and we honestly found the tavern a fountain of initiatives. And often, of course, when we retreated to the local Press Club, at the Albion Hotel, to have an afternoon beverage, we of course, felt it incumbent to mislead the front desk clerk. I don't think they ever truly believed us anyway. And with hope against hope, that some source (snitch) would drop by for a drink, and give us a lead on a front pager for the coming edition, we sat there with a couple of open chairs in front, and the look of congeniality on our newspaper faces. It often happened, that before we drank the last drop of draft beer, it would happen that someone would whisper in my ear, or Brant's that a bust was about to occur, or asking if we knew about charges having just been laid against a prominent individual for some rather serious infraction. We actually counted on the Albion alot for those inside tips. I get nostalgic for that old haunt, every time I drive up, or down, what was known in my day, as The Albion Expressway; but is actually "Main Street," where the Scout Hall used to be located, and of course the heritage train station, that I frequented almost daily, as a kid living across the river, up on Hunt's Hill.
     It was impossible to explain to our general manager, without sounding foppish, that hanging around the tavern was good for the news business. I didn't want to tell him, especially after he would heartily congratulate us, for getting a major front page "above the fold" story, that we had got the original tip from a hotel patron. He just didn't see this as a positive for the conservative reputation of the paper, so we didn't reveal our sources, or the place where news often generated as tips, frequently handed to us on the proverbial bar tray. It was interpreted as wasting company time, and well, drinking on the job. It was. But like an under-cover police surveillance, the only difference with us, was that we didn't have a cover, as protection; except from our bosses, who might well have terminated our employment, if our alternate news office had been identified. We were the reporters in the corner. Honestly, I would never, ever, have thought I could wax nostalgic about my days, with elbows planted firmly on the table top (they would stick to the surface from the remnants of spilled beer the night before), nursing a cold glass of beer, listening to some oldtimer tell us about the boot-legging he used to do in his youth; or how his father had been a member of the famous Boyd gang of Toronto, and for a price, would spill the beans about the real crime stories of Muskoka, that had never been told. Booze has that way of loosening lips, as they say, and the press gang would listen intently, and draw out all the stories we could, just in case one or two were worth following-up. It did happen occasionally, that we would garner something particularly useful, of a cold case, and follow it up with a few well-placed phone calls.
     In these years, from the late 1970's, pretty much through the 1980's, we held court in one of the Bracebridge area taverns, depending on our prevailing mood, (whether interested in English beer, or domestic), and we justified the time spent, by the several gems we could ferret-out, over the days prior to the very next issue of the paper. It very nearly turned us into alcoholics, because we often accepted jugs of beer, from those who may or may not, have wanted us to do business stories for them. It was border line conflict of interest, but we were thirsty and of modest income. We just couldn't resist accepting these generous gifts, that were a sort of liquid payola, yet we seldom, if ever, followed-through to the print stage. Most of the folks providing for our tavern libations, were so far under the influence, it's a wonder they didn't drown in their own over-indulgence. In other words, they didn't remember buying us the jug, or that we had sort of indicated, we would consider doing a story on their respective enterprises, for some future edition. We just never set down any firm dates. As for news stories, with any kind of vested interest attached, we refused any thing that seemed like a bribe, or an unsavoury contribution for services to follow. This might have been the case if there was a union strike and we were offered food or beverage by either side of the impasse, as an opinion loosener. It did happen, and we had junior reporters fall into this trap. You can't write an unbiased story after accepting a gift of anything, including a cheeseburger on the picket line. Tips were a little different, because that's all they were at the time. They still had to be proven and overviewed editorially, according to company policy.
    The reason I'm writing this today, is that for the past two hours, I have, like Ray Milland, in the movie "The Lost Weekend," sat here, in this comfortable studio, in Uptown Gravenhurst, trying to think of something to write about on this infernal machine, my son tells me is a state of the art plastic laptop. I couldn't really balance my last remaining iron Underwood manual on my laptop, now could I? It took me years to calm down on Tuesdays, even years after I left the newspaper, because they were always the most stressful in our weekly schedule. The dreaded "Press Day" yelling match, that sometimes lasted for ten hours or more. On an off-day, when I'd be sitting at my desk, staring into my old Underwood manual typewriter, it would provide my writing colleague, Brant Scott, the reason to hit me with half a stale sandwich, he'd been storing in his desk for such an occasion as my stalemate. Once we planned to pen a play together, for the local stage, and we even made notes. Then we read them back for our mutual benefit, and they were so bad, and the story so pathetic, that we ripped up the pages in order to conceal the evidence, of our writing misadventure, and then retreated to the Press Club, to get a better crop of story ideas. Strange as this might read, it has all become very nostalgic to me now, especially when two of my best friends in the newspaper business have since passed away. I want to retreat back to that old tavern table, in a dark corner of the Bracebridge Albion, to sit there and talk about our glory days, the big scoops, and the incredible connections made, thanks to the fact we were holed-up in this den of iniquity, that was really pretty neat, for the writer-kind, who were keen to uncover the big stories, only a few were brave enough to talk about with a reporter. Then I think about the old hotel, covered now in a tarp, having collapsed some years back. I feel weird every time I pass by, and look at the tarpped mound rising just above the cement foundation, thinking that somewhere in the middle, there may be a table top with my gum still wadded up on the underside, left there on one of those late night social / cultural gigs, say for example, when the comedy duo of Malton and Hamilton, were playing the main stage. There was only one stage, at the Albion, but it was the main one. We saw a lot of unique and interesting life events unfold, usually in rather dramatic circumstance, in that beer-scented Victorian era hall, that did represent a certain blue collar reality of community life and times; and it wasn't on the socially conservative scale, most local historians liked to prevail upon their interested readers, in their grandly published books. Even as a rogue historian myself, I had no idea how to make a patron's unceremonious exit, head first, via the bouncer's heavy hands, out the tavern door, seem anything but what it was. An unfortunate fact of drink and bad behaviour. It still happened, and we were usually close by when things got ugly. There was social, cultural history happening in that place, mirroring what was going on in the lives of those faithful patrons, who didn't hob-knob too often, with the self proclaimed social elite, of the community, but knew stuff about the so called upper crust that we very much wanted to know about. There are stories we could never follow-up because they were too sensitive, and the sources somewhat unreliable by their level of intoxication; yet we always kept their ruminations on file, just in case something changed, that brought their tips closer to the forefront, and news of the day; and more acceptable to chase down, as far as story-lines were concerned, and management was willing to extend us as editorial privilege.
     I loved my job. We found all kinds of ways to self-inspire. We were highly competitive, and seeing as the opposition press didn't pay their dues to the press club, by buying existing members jugs of beer, we harvested story ideas without fear of any duplication by our competition. There were hundreds of great stories that were handed to us, over that bar-room table, as sticky as it was with stale beer. We earned a reputation of being loyal and protective of our sources, and it's why, right to the end of my stay as a reporter-kind, we had a large number of those citizens, willing to trust us with inside information. We didn't use every tidbit gathered there, to fill the next issue's front page. We had a stock pile of raw information, to build upon, and it was the kind of archives every reporter needs, to better, and more thoroughly understand what's really going on in the community, beyond the pretty face of a Victorian era town, with a desire to keep some things unexploited. I may have played a bigger role in this, because I was compliant in my own way, and remain this way today, having stories that never went past the initial lead. Arguably, we could have followed-up dozens of story leads, that would have made us, the reporting staff, more than just household names. Unfortunately, the town wasn't ready for us then, or the news we could have presented beneath the paper's banner.
     We all have our strange nostalgia moments, we can't always explain by the exercise of logic, and they may not even make sense at the time of penning; but just seem to swirl around in the old noggin, rattling occasionally, to get attention, and bringing about an out of place sentimentality, to revisit those old mates of once, long ago, to rekindle what was an important time for any number of reasons. Today, the rattling in my head, was just too much to ignore. I was never very good, left to my own devices, when bored, even at the newspaper. It always spawned something dramatic. I felt as if I should have had a glass of beer in my hand, and part of my arm stuck to a tavern table, but alas, I'm older now, and far more sensible. I'm just not as good a writer as I once was, and of this, I feel "sadder but wiser". Get it? Budweiser!