PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY - HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT WRITING YOUR OWN?
FOLLOW ME BACK TO BURLINGTON, AND I'LL SHOW YOU HOW TO BEGIN -
I have written dozens of biographies. In fact, I just finished one. Up until several weeks ago, I had been working with the family of Muskoka Artist, Richard Karon, (1928-1987), to create a biographical resource, to be donated to the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the National Gallery archives, to assist future researchers studying Canadian and Ontario artists. It was an intense winter, working on the project, with the artist's son, Richard Sahoff Karon, but the end result (which you can view on this site), I think, lived-up to expectations. It filled in a lot of grey area, where there had only been disjointed bits and pieces of personal biography. I remember sitting down, with all the research notes I'd been making, thinking to myself, gads, this is going to be a wild amount of work. I won't deny that it was grueling, particularly because we set some tight deadlines for research to be complete, and the text prepared, in order to get the material published online, for an already-waiting audience. All the people who had sent us images of Mr. Karon's paintings, agreed to provide the visuals, if I provided the story behind them. It was intended to be an information source for any one interested in his work, but particularly as a reference site for those who have his art work, and wish to know more. Each year I get a dozen or more information requests about his work. This comes from the fact that I have been writing about the artist's work for years, much of it online, and when painting owners searched previously, for biographical material, they kept finding me. For a long time, I tried to come up with sensible and helpful responses, but when I had a chance to work on a full biography, with Richard Karon Jr., I knew it was a perfect opportunity to help the art community here in Muskoka, and of course, to assist the family, which admittedly had a lot of information shortfalls themselves. Working together on this was both rewarding, because of the more complete profile we uncovered, and the fact it provided the family with a clearer picture of "life with a husband and father," an accomplished artist, who had suffered immeasurably, through the period of the Nazi occupation of Poland
Every now and again, I will talk to someone or other, about the reasons for preserving family history, or about the relevance of working on a personal biography. I'm always encouraging folks to "write it down." You don't have to possess a degree in journalism, to write a personal biography. While it's obvious if you've journeyed with me, down my own misty, nostalgic road, that I dabble in biography frequently. No apology. It makes me feel good. Connected to all those friends and family I miss today. Yet there are a lot of details and situations I have stayed away from, because I'm still, after all these years, confused and frustrated by what I don't know……and wished I had pursued, with those who are now holding their secrets, in the obscurity and mystery of the after-life. I have no compunction whatsoever, asking them, regardless of the fact they're pushing-up the daisies, why we did what we did! As I wrote in a recent blog, about my childhood days in Burlington, Ontario, the last real conversation I had with my father Ed, was about our days in Burlington. Not that he brought it up, but because I knew the way he was slipping into dementia, I had very little time to reminisce……and I suppose I used the past as a ruse, to find out more of my own biography. We had about a full hour of good conversation about the days of the late 1950's, up to within a hair's breadth of 1964. The last major event I remember, living at 2138 Harris Crescent, in the Nagy Apartments, was the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I can remember that evening, walking up town with my mother Merle, as she tried to explain what it all meant…….the death of a president, and what murder meant. For most of us, old enough to know, November 1963 was a time to remember…..everything. The weather, the sights and sounds when you heard the news; even the smell wafting in the air, that hour, of the fateful day. Maybe it was out of fear, that we all made these mental notes……but I really didn't understand the implications…..until a few months later. It was the first time I paid attention to the news. I have such clarity of the things going on, that day, and what we did and saw on the street, as we ambled up to Brant Street, where I inevitably conned a bag of cent candy from a shop, I'm sure was called "Wamsleys." I stand to be corrected.
Ed was sitting in a chair on coasters, in the busy hallway of South Muskoka Memorial Hospital, in Bracebridge, and I hovered around him, helping him eat a pudding, and get an occasional sip of juice. He had suffered a stroke and was faring poorly. But in that hour he told me so much about what I had needed to know. Funny thing. I never thought I needed anything more than the memories I had, experienced in the actuality of being an inquisitive kid, always on the move, always discovering something else interesting, or dangerous. What was strange, that day, was that Ed had been in and out of dementia, from the time he was admitted to the hospital. Some of his conversations were wildly fantastic, and exactly what you would expect from a brain injury. The medication was also contributing to delusions. So here then, out of the blue, he is suddenly cognizant of everything around him, and I jumped on this opportunity, to ask him about our days in Burlington. Of all the years I had the opportunity to talk at length, any day or time I wanted, with both parents, I waited for what would be the last hour of unobstructed clarity, to fill in some of my faded memories. How many have you, regretfully have done the same thing, and then felt that great and lasting void of detail……and anybody else to provide it for you?
Ed had been a fastball pitcher, with another chap by the name of Sammy Nelson, both old-timers, still playing with much younger players, in a mens' league, that played at Burlington's Lion's Club Park, on those beautiful summer evenings…..I do remember, sitting in the bleachers, watching my dad strike-out a string of batters. He had an unusual twist, wind-up, and he seemed to be a fairly good as a pitcher, but by then, he was pretty slow running the bases as a batter. I don't know how many times I would have been in those bleachers, watching my dad play, but I know how proud I was to tell other kids, the guy on the mound was my pop. Until of course the batters started pounding balls out of the park, and they had to change pitchers. "Get out of the game you bum." I was still proud. Just not so boastful. And I remember, on one occasion, Ed taking me along with him, to Sammy Nelson's house near the shore of Lake Ontario, where I sat on the steps of the old house, listening to some of the old-time players, talking about sports, work and life in general. I remember the cool breeze by the water, and the tall trees around the house. And the birds. I don't know what variety they were, but they were chirping almost until it got so dark, I couldn't see them in the overhead branches. The men drank beer. The kid got a pop. I was content. In our hospital conversation, Ed infilled exactly what I had experienced, validating memories I thought had been embellished by time and fantasy. It was my first time out with the boys, you see.
I asked him about the boy, at the ball park, who used to get sick during the games. Ed knew exactly who I was remembering, and said, "He used to carry a stick in his pocket, that we were supposed to use when he had a fit." What he meant by this, was that the young man was epileptic, and at this time, it was thought appropriate, during a seizure, to place a stick in the victim's mouth, to keep him from biting his tongue during the clenching and shaking period. I know this happened, on several occasions, when I was in the stands, because I could look down where he was writhing on the ground, and watch spectators who knew him, jump down to help. The reason this might have been so poignant a memory to both Ed and I, is the fact my son Robert is epileptic, and I can remember how dreadful he felt when childhood chums asked him about his "fits." He would patiently explain to them, they were not considered "fits," but rather, "seizures." I felt sorry for this teenager at the ball games, because he often tumbled a considerable distance from the bleachers to the ground, during his events. But I was also impressed by the reality so many people rushed to his assistance.
Ed and I talked about Harris Crescent, and our landlords, Anne and Alec Nagy, so clearly and affectionately, that it gave the impression, he had just been down to Burlington for a visit. He talked about the neighborhood, my childhood indiscretions, the fishing for smelts we used to do……driving my mother nuts, by putting the live ones in our bathtub before he'd clean them. Ed would whip-up a special tomato sauce, his mother used to make, back when he lived in Toronto's famous Cabbagetown, usually then for sardines. Which of course were plentiful and cheap, if you couldn't catch the run of smelts for free. In Ramble Creek they were abundant on certain days each spring, and he and I would spend hours, with our net at-the-ready, scooping down in the pool of deep, black water, for the catch of the day. Merle disliked fish, and certainly didn't appreciate the smell we came home with, on those fishing adventures. Ed recalled all of this, and it was great to reminisce…..even though I knew it was the last time we'd be able to do talk with clarity.
Ed was a lumber salesman, and Merle worked in a bank, but I'm not entirely sure where they were situated. I'm pretty confident one posting, was near Hamilton, and I think this is the one she took me to, on a Saturday once, to catch up on some paper work. Ed worked in Stoney Creek, at a Weldwood of Canada, lumber location. I remember this place more because of the company car they gave Ed to use, for making sales calls. It was a Corvair stationwagon, and I couldn't stand sitting in the back seat because of the exhaust fumes, that got into the car. I'd have to stick my head out the window, even in the winter, just to survive. It was a new car, but for whatever reason, the exhaust didn't leave the muffler as it should have, but instead seeped into the passenger compartment. I really didn't want to drive too far in that car, especially in the back seat. It seemed to be better if you were riding up front. I used to go on sales calls with my dad, sometimes when I was sick from school, and Anne Nagy, my alternate mother, was busy with other work. As a kid I got to travel thousands of miles through communities in Ontario, such as Paris, Dunnville, Welland, Grimsby, Oakville, Bronte, Milton, and as far as St. Catharines, where there was a steak house Ed used to take his clients for lunch. I didn't like these business meetings, and I'm sure Ed would have liked to shake me loose, but what are you going to do. It's my history now. But by golly, I got to see a lot of the southern climes of our province. I think it was near Dunnville, where Ed and I would stop to watch the migration of the turtles across the roadway. It was fascinating.
My dad was a former sailor, and I knew this because there was a photograph of him, in his uniform, hanging on our livingroom wall. He didn't like it, and actually, if you can believe this, gave it to an antique dealer who came to our apartment on a social visit. It was when we lived in Bracebridge, and I can remember feeling horribly violated, that my heirloom picture of my father, now belonged to someone else. He told me much later, that all the returning sailors and army personnel, after the War ended, had their photographs taken. It wasn't a kind gesture on the part of the government, but rather an opportunity for photographers to make money. I don't know whether they had to pay a fee to the government, for access to the sailors, but Ed felt it was a time in his life he would rather forget. That's why he gave it away, although I made him regret that he had done this…..especially considering his grandsons, Andrew and Robert, used to like asking him about his days in the Royal Canadian Navy. His ship had been the Coaticook, named after a town in Quebec. On board he operated the anti aircraft guns and was a trained Asdic operator, looking for German U-Boats approaching the convoys. It wasn't until a few years before his death, that he began talking about the war years, and how hard it had been watching men die in the water, from destroyed ships, because the captains could not allow the convoy to break apart. On these occasions, the oil-covered and injured sailors, just waved at the passing ships, wishing them better fortune, and success on their mission to get cargo ships to England. He told me about watching those sailors who were rescued, succumbing once on deck, the result of hypothermia. At the time, those suffering the effects of the cold water, were treated differently than they would be today, with what is known, as the gradual warming procedure…..instead of being warmed too quickly, causing eventual death. Ed told me about having these mates die in his arms.
My father had grown up in very adverse conditions, in a poor, largely Irish neighborhood, having been left many times by his parents, to fend for this three brothers. His father, also named Eddy, left the family when they were very young, and his mother, often abandoned them in parks, due to the stress in her own life. Ed would have to take them to a church or police station, and they'd put the boys in foster car, or in an orphanage, until his mother would eventually return to reclaim her family. He never told me this, but he did confess to my mother, after they had been married fifty years, that he had been molested as a child, when sent to summer camps operated in the city by charities. It may have also been the case for one or more of his brothers; possibly Billy, who suffered from a severe mental disorder, and was a lifetime resident of the Huronia Centre in Orillia. Even when he had the chance to visit his dieing brother, he refused outrightly, to intrude on what his brother had found of normalcy for so many years. Whether it was an excuse, or not, I don't know. I remember getting mad at him about it, because I thought it was important, for the sake of closure, to visit him before the end. He reminded me, that when his brother had been removed from the family home, it was said then, that his mother, and the boys, should leave him to normalize in care…..and that a visit could bring back his home-associated problems. I had no choice but to accept his decision. At that point it had been almost seventy years since he had seen him. My father died at 82 years of age.
My mother had come from a well-off family, in Toronto, in the Jane and Bloor region of the city, and my grandfather had been a successful home builder. He was also an exceptional violinist, who had some connection with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He was able to get Merle a summer job there, over a couple of years, while she was at school, though I've never found any Jackson connected to the orchestra. I'm pretty sure she went to Runnymede Collegiate. She had achieved success as a young pianist, and as their house was full of the pleasant sounds of musicians, at work, especially on Sundays during quartette practices, she developed a strong appreciation for what she called "good music." I was at my grandparent's house three or four times, when Stanley was practicing, in the parlor, but by that point, his fingers were pretty gnarled-up, from years in the building industry. Music became a part of my life, my biography, and while I wasn't very proficient as a performer (a brass player), my boys really had a music aptitude. In fact they have made it a profession. Until the end, Merle loved her music. Mostly classical. We couldn't afford a record player, when we lived in Burlington. We had to wait years after our Bracebridge move, to get our first console stereo…..which I was ordered never to touch without supervision. I broke it the second week we owned it. I was trying to play rock 'n roll, and things just got out of hand.
We had a RCA television and a few chairs and end tables, a veneer coffee table, Merle used to polish to a mirror-quality, and a white ceramic vase with plastic flowers. There was a green television lamp with the "theatre" faces, "sad and happy," and a chrome, tube-legged, kitchen table with a yellow top. The chrome legged chairs were a hideous stuffed, yellow vinyl. The table had two leaves, for larger dinner accommodation, and I never once put in the extenders, that I wasn't pinched shoving the table together again. It was like a guillotine. But you know, I can see it so clearly now, and honestly, yup, I wouldn't want to own it, even for sentimental reasons. Too many painful "pinched" memories. The point is, in all the years living with Merle and Ed, they never had anything in their apartment, more than they needed. The bare necessities. We didn't entertain much in those days. Even when my wife and I were settling my father's estate, several years ago, it was a pretty easy job…..certainly compared to the way we live, and crowd ourselves with antiques and collectibles all over the place. But they liked it this way, and it's how they started out, with the apartment they thought they'd reside-in forever. I'm serious about this. Everything I ever heard, and remembered, as a child, was how great it was to live in the Nagy's beautiful apartment, looking out on the flowering cherry tree in the spring, and beyond that the flourishing ravine, where Ramble Creek tumbled so gently, and silently over the flat rocks. They were happy here. It was an excellent place to raise a kid like me.
I liked to wander, and seek adventure, and of this, Harris Crescent was a perfect place to fan out from…..and I did. I know my parents had to work at two jobs to make ends meet, and although I don't remember us being poor at this time, I know we had to buy seriously used cars, that even at the time, were more than ten or twelve years old. This meant we had a lot of argument time, at the sides of the roads throughout Southern Ontario. While Ed had the use of the company car, some times, when he'd change jobs, as he did many times, we often had to supply our own wheels for his sales trips. So the bottom line here, is that we were of modest income, living in what can only be considered, a wonderful apartment, with landlords who worked day and night, to keep their building as close to pristine as you could get. I should know, because when they minded me, when my parents were off to work, I did the chores (or created them), alongside Anne and Alec, whether sweeping the halls of the building or cutting the lawn. It had a nice big back yard, with a large wooden structure, a gray painted platform, you had to climb up the stairs, to hang-out your laundry. I used to get up there, against Anne's wishes, and pretend it was a pirate ship. I had a plank for my enemies to walk. I got a big kick jumping off the platform, and it used to drive Anne crazy, trying to prevent me from killing myself, or breaking my legs, before my parents got home at night. I don't think I gave Anne ulcers, but I must offer an apology in case I did. I'm told I've given other people ulcers, but mostly politicians who loathe another of my attack blogs.
Although I loved my parents, as any kid would under the circumstances of a generally good family life, I would be lying to myself, and you, if I didn't admit they had peculiar social interests. My mother was very attached to her family, in Toronto, and her objection to the move to Burlington, was that it increased the distance she'd have to travel, for visits with her mother and father, sisters (her brother Carmen moved to British Columbia in the 1960's) and cousins, who she was very fond of, and doting. She was the youngest of six children. Ed seemed happiest with the distance between my mother and her family, and I heard enough arguments, at a relatively young age, to know this as true. My mother didn't know how to drive, but she often took me on the bus to visit family, when my father was on one of his extended selling trips. We did have family visits at 2138 Harris Crescent, but mostly it was my grandfather Stanley, and then, only after my grandmother had passed. I won't say that my father was anti-social, but he liked social events on his terms, not by the intrusion of any one else, by happenstance, or a plan he didn't think of first. We did visit family members over time, but certainly nothing that reminds me of anything regular, weekly, or even monthly. They were pretty isolated, and I know now it wasn't my mother's idea. My father had issues from childhood, you see, that had never been resolved. He was a good father, and I adored his company and attention. He also had a wicked temper, but never once raised his hand to me. He left that to his wife, and he told her once, that he had been beaten enough as a child……to never be able to hit his own child, as he had suffered at the hands of his father, and foster parents.
When we lived in the apartment, rented to us by Anne Nagy, there's no way she could have known that the unpredictable moodiness of my father, was isolating the three of us from the rest of our family. He never seemed to be the type, to those close to him, who could take such a downward turn, or become paranoid…… obsessively worried Merle's family didn't care for him, or might try to break us apart. At times, he was the life of the party. He had a good friend in the apartment, named Eric, and his brothers, one who I think was named "Pilot," who often visited, and they'd often go fishing and drinking……and possibly upset a boat, or fall in the lake, which thank God, never took their lives. When Ed was up for it, he was the life of every party. In later years, his mood swings would become far more acute, and his alcohol consumption much greater. The Burlington years were kinder days for our small family.
We used to take regular Sunday motor trips, of which Ed was particularly fond, and we'd head to Crystal Beach, Chippewa, on Lake Erie, Milton and Lowville I think it was, where there was a large park with a wonderful frog-filled pond I adored. It was near Rattlesnake Point, I think, but please correct me if I'm wrong. We also used to visit a couple, Merle and Ed knew, by the name of Jack and Agnes, who had two horrible dogs, one being Cocoa and the other being Meg, both kid haters. They scared me half to death, when we'd just arrive, moments earlier, at the house, settle into a chair, and hear Jack unlocking the gate that kept the two huge beasts downstairs. Cocoa got hit by a bus, one day, and it was as if they'd lost a child. It took years for them to get over this. Meg made up the difference, by acting twice as aggressive. But this folks, was our social / recreational / cultural existence. Very thin. The way my dad liked it. Merle loved her friends, and work became very important to her, as it was all her life…..working into her seventies before health forced her to retire.
But our family life was defined by the place we called home. The Nagy Apartment. It was the place we looked back at, fondly, when we left on our picnic junkets, and it was the dear place we felt embrace us, when we arrived home again…..always to the smell of freshly mown grass, and the scent of dustbane, the dirt suppressor, Anne used on the apartment floors. And on Sundays when we didn't travel, mostly in the colder seasons of the year, I remember sitting at our extended dining room table, with a nice cloth (for Sunday dinner only), and Ed carving-up a turkey or roast beef. I know this for fact, because the dinner on Sunday, provided the leftover meals for the rest of the week……in one form or another. Ed had an electric knife….a new gadget, and as he wasn't handy with power tools, or any tools, we had lots of cuts before dinner.
On Harris Crescent I learned to out run Peter Bennet's Irish Setter, Dooley, played shinny with Dick and Henry Bosevelt, got Ray Green in trouble constantly, played my first games of billiards at the home of Bobby Crews, slept-over in an old recreational vehicle at Ronny Larose's house, and had lots of neighborhood adventures with fine chaps like Robby Cooper, Freddy Vandermullen, Johnny Burtwhistle and a few other local notables, I knew at Lakeshore Public School. Wait till I tell you about trying to shove poor George down the coal chute at recess. Another day.
As I began this blog, with the suggestion, that all those, with even a wee inkling, of wanting to start a biography, should comply to the heart's desire. I guarantee, they would feel better about the past, if they wrote it down as a personal or family memoir. Take it from a biographer in action. It's a good, soul flushing, heart rekindling exercise, even when one has to come face to face with tragedy, misfortune and misadventure. Somewhere in the mix, is enough joy and pleasantness, to counter what may not have been so nice. This afternoon, writing this short chapter, I can't tell you how many times, I found myself in a sort of virtual tour back in time, into that apartment on Harris Crescent, such that I could still see the sparkle of freshly mopped hallway floor, and smell the aroma of Anne Nagy's cabbage rolls. It was pretty easy to get back to paradise, by just composing this off-the-cuff biography, that is a mix of self-discovery, nostalgia, happiness, and a little despair at missing so many friends and neighbors for so long. It's amazing, when you zone-out for a couple of hours, with pen in hand, and lots of open pages in a journal, just what memories you can pull back from obscurity…….one avenue of thought, connecting with dozens of others, and pretty soon, you find yourself trying to find your running boots, to go out and play with the old gang again. I like this. It's a way of inviting everybody back to life, who has passed, and reconciling why it has taken so long to cherish those memories again. Most of us find ways of burying or neglecting memories, because someone once told us we should…….and not to, as they direct with a frown, "dwell in the past." As a career historian, and someone who isn't adverse to talking to ghosts, I'm telling you from experience, my life is pleasantly split three ways in thought. I'm a contemporary thinker, a dawdler in times past, and a stalwart futurist, as being an historian….taught me to always prepare for the future. Give it a try…..this time travel stuff. It's free. You own it. And one day, it might make great reading for your family……to know how you really felt about things.
