the most part, travelling with the carnival meant four or five months of a relentless grind in sweltering heat, stormy wind, soaking rain, or cold so intense that fingers fumbled with tickets and money.
After the Canadian National Exhibition, which, except for Sundays, was a two-week stretch of eighteen-hour days, the show travelled through a series of fall fairs in towns such as Leamington, Ontario, or Trois-Rivières, Quebec, until heavy rain and bitter cold, the harbingers of winter, kept spectators away. Then the show wound its way back to storage in Brantford to hibernate until the following spring. Performers and concessionaires were exhausted. Many would head south for the winter or go to home bases across Canada.
Mom and Dad would come back from a summer on the road, tired and very thin, the result of having shaken pounds off all summer racing their motorcycles round and round inside the Globe of Death. For their efforts they would have a few extra thousand dollars to pay some bills and buy a big-ticket item or two, like a sewing machine, refrigerator, or new furnace. But no holiday was on their agenda. Instead, Dad immediately went to work as a plumber/steamfitter for Stelco, Hamilton’s mammoth steel plant.
Our summer lives consisted of Mom and Dad on the road and Bobby and I living with our great-uncles and great-aunt. Our winter lives consisted of Dad working for Stelco, Mom running the household, and I (and later Bobby) attending Memorial Public School just two blocks away. Life, as far as I was concerned, was perfect. We had distinctly different summer and winter lives. We had a permanent home. Our lives were stable but far from dull. Something was going on all the time, and we all were happy partners in it.
Dad worked at Stelco full-time, but he always had other projects in the works that we all believed would someday make our lives better. We lived on the ground floor of a three-storey brick house in Hamilton; Dad worked on weekends and evenings to build two apartments above us to provide a bit of extra income. He also designed carnival rides and built them in the backyard. One was called the Ski Lift; it gave your heart a little lift each time you swooped down from the top. Several other adult rides and quite a number of kiddie rides followed.
Dad was great at figuring ways to use commonly available parts, like vehicle axles, gears, and sprockets, instead of expensive custom-made parts. Nevertheless, carnival rides were costly to construct, and any money that was realized from them was immediately plowed right back into whatever came next. Ideas for new rides came quicker than the money to finance them. I remember the dismay Bobby and I experienced after struggling valiantly to help Dad complete a ride, only to see him tighten the last nut, take pictures, then immediately set about tearing it down to cannibalize it and use the parts for his next ride, which he promised would be even better.
The whole family was involved in his enterprises. Using a steel brush, Bobby and I scrubbed the rust off of his latest ride and Mom climbed up and applied the silver undercoat, then the enamel final coat. Whatever the project, we were all in it together.
I’ll never forget one winter when Dad spent all his spare time at a table in the corner of the living room, with pen and India ink, making meticulous drawings for patent applications; a folding boat was one project, some new kind of bathtub was another. Someone bumped the table and the India ink fell on the new living room rug. I expected an ear-splitting shriek from Mom, but not a sound. Then Dad quietly said, “Milk might work.” Immediately all four of us were on our hands and knees with a big bowl full of milk, scrubbing the rug like mad. Not another word was uttered until the job was done. Then we shared a good laugh while admiring our handiwork.
When Dad was occupied with segments of projects that only he could work on, the rest of us kept busy in other ways. Mom played the piano or sewed while Bobby and I spent our time drawing, making models, or developing other skills for the fantastic futures we planned.
Dad’s projects weren’t hobbies. They were always something that, if successful, would free him from Stelco and benefit us all. It wasn’t that he didn’t like plumbing and steamfitting, but he felt a life working for others was a life wasted. Dad dreamed of being free of daily constraints so that he could devote himself totally to his inventions and projects.
I remember coming home one day and telling him I’d just met our next-door neighbour in the fabric store downtown, where she was working. She had told me that she didn’t need the money, but now that she was a widow what else was there for her to do with her time. Dad looked at me sombrely and said, “Imagine having so little creativity that you have to get a job for excitement.” We both shook our heads piously. Lack of creativity would never be our problem.
At home I learned that work can be fun and that it is great to always be working towards something. But Sundays were different. Sunday dinner, the best meal of our week, was served around noon, then the family piled into the car and away we went on a mystery tour. Dad kept the destination a secret, letting it slowly reveal itself as the journey progressed. Sometimes we visited Grimsby or Jordan to see the beautiful cherry blossoms, or to Hamilton’s Rock Garden, or maybe Niagara Falls. Sometimes we carried our aluminum boat on the roof of the car and launched it in Lake Ontario at Van Wagner’s Beach. Then we’d slowly putt along the shoreline for miles. Not having a lot of faith in our little craft, Mom, Bobby, and I nagged Dad to keep close to shore so we could swim in if anything went wrong. It never did. In winter we often went tobogganing or ice skating on the Back Bay. Whatever the adventure, at the end of the day, we always hurried home in time to huddle together in the dark, on the living room carpet, with a sandwich supper, sharing our once-a-week treat of Canada Dry ginger ale or Orange Crush, listening intently to Lamont Cranston and The Shadow on the radio.
We were a happy lot. Mealtimes were great times in my family; everyone shared hopes, dreams, and recitations of daily foibles. Conversations were cheerful, optimistic, and revolved exclusively around the present or the future. No crying over spilt milk, no gossip or negative talk. Not that we were all that virtuous; more likely we were so egocentric that the only topic of conversation that stood a chance was us. Ours was a family of laughter and high hopes, where the most precious thing of all was time. Dad was the one who set that tone.
But he didn’t mind indulging in a bit of dreaming. Many times he would smile and begin, “When our ship comes in …,” and then he’d spin some fantastic dream like “Your mother and I will have his and hers Cadillac convertibles” or “We’ll throw away the old washing machine in the basement and send all our laundry out.” Time after time he would draw us through these little imaginary journeys. We’d all listen, spellbound.
Mom always said that she would be satisfied with very little, and that it was Dad who had the grandiose plans for wealth. I believe that’s true. But it always made her smile when he started his “When our ship comes in” talk.
We all believed that Dad was a genius. Time and again he proved he could put together whatever was needed out of the most unlikely everyday materials. He could fix anything structural or mechanical, any kind of engine. He took care of things for us, and he was always ready to help a friend. He knew working parts and he knew the principles behind them — hydraulics, magnets, generators.
Dad read a lot. He was unable to pass by a newspaper without reading at least a snippet of it. I remember waking on a school day one morning and being amazed to find Dad sitting at the kitchen table reading a newspaper.
“Aren’t you going to work today?” I asked.
“Yes, but I was going to be ten minutes late and they dock you a half-hour, even if you’re only late five minutes. I thought I’d just read a bit and go in on time for the half-an-hour late,” he said. Some time later, when I began getting my breakfast ready, he was still there. “I was so engrossed in my reading I missed the half-hour, so I thought I’d just read a bit more and go in for the one-hour late,” he explained. Half an hour later, on my way out the door to school, he was still in the kitchen but no longer reading; now he stood, noisily gathering his things together.
