A Trilogy of 11th Ave Memories

by Godfrey J. Ellis – October 2002

Lost on a forgotten corner of old Vancouver. A plain, frame, half-a-year home. We went back and saw it the other day.
And met a trio of flooding memories, Of a great, white house and a great, old tree.

A house of adventure,
A five-year old’s dream,
We had a porthole window in our attic bedroom!
Well, an eight-sided window
…An octa-something window.

We would stand and gaze down our gravel kingdom,
Grass gone to seed, empty alley, 
My big brother and me
…Me just five years old,
Both stand there and surveil our neighbor’s garden,
And lust at our neighbor’s English sweet peas….
And I thought we were like ocean-going fishermen,
Navigating from the porthole of our Captain’s Cabin,
Scanning the horizon of a vast green ocean,
Fishermen without fishing poles.

One day, my big brother got a pole.
He cast down into that alley-way
…And reeled back in,
With wonderful whirr;
Line vanishing into nothingness,
And he let me do it, too!
But it soon got old, even for me.
“Maybe we could fish for peas from the neighbor’s yard!”
I think it was my idea – and my brother liked it!

Casting his line into those peas
…He snapped with a jerk,
An innocent branch dropped into the dirt.
Re-casting, re-ripping, again and again.
And my brother granted me…well, one turn in twenty.
I had given our porthole fishery the thing it lacked:
…a purpose!

I don’t think we ever hooked a pea-pod;
I’m not sure we ever could.
But little boys dream big dreams.
And I never felt closer to my big brother,
Than when I was standing at that giant porthole,
Fishing for forbidden fruit from the garden of eatin’.

A picket fence on that large, corner lot.
Picketed down the football-field length,
Turned, and ran on still more,
Into the distance.
A white picket fence!  Imagine! 
A Tom Sawyer picket fence!
Very high… very long!

One day’s pre-school escape
Found Mum white-washing the pickets!
Too good to be true!
(Well, she was painting it really 
– but…close enough.)
“Can I help?”
But she said no.
She said I was too young.
She broke my heart.
“Please let me help, I’ve got to help.”
Please let me be Tom Sawyer.
Let me white-wash my picket fence!
I’ll paint that fence all the way to the corner,
Then around, and on
…and on.
“I’ll do it all, Mum!  You won’t have to.”
It’ll take about ten minutes.
She gave in, as mothers do.

I lifted that brush – it was surprisingly heavy,
And I slopped that paint on that first picket,
But the roughened wood rebelled!
Brush refusing to glide.
Out of paint, I dipped for more.
This time, loading not just the bristles 
..,.but the handle, too,
Stroking higher and higher.
Okay, I left a hole or two,
But, in other places, 
The paint was two inches thick,
And that made up for it.
Protesting arm painted more paint on that stubborn picket,
That wide, tall, long, large, spacious…eternal picket,
That picket, which reached so high….

White paint ran down my arm,
White puddles on the grass,
And, still that picket climbed into the sky 
(…was it growing?)
I wiped my brow with my painty hand,
And painted some more….
And I did it!
I had that …picky …picket …painted, yes!
“You’ve got to do the edges, too,” she said,
“And the cross bar, and the back.”
I ran off to play….

An enormous apple tree smothered the yard,
With girth of trunk – a trunk like a wall.
And leaves that filled the universe,
On branches like great arms reaching, reaching….
We were playing in the yard, my brother and I.
“Bet I can throw this dart all the way...,
All the way over the very top!” he bragged.
Ha!  No-one could throw a dart so high,
Over those leaves, that far through the sky.
So he threw it.

I stood and watched this silver missile,
This dart that was climbing and gently curving.
This rocket that was launched …higher and higher.
I think he did it!  I think it reached the very heavens,
Above that great tree of apples,
Full of forbidden fruit.
It was the first sin that I can remember,
An original sin:  his throwing that dart,
For it started to come back down.
Everything has to come back down.
It started curving back down,
And I watched it coming.

Schwunk!  It buried itself right into my shoulder,
That straight silver serpent stuck in my shoulder.
It buried itself right to that round lumpy part.
(Boy, I got my inoculation that year!)
I think I cried; I probably cried.
Perhaps I screamed (but it didn’t hurt).
Something brought Dad running,
Running out of that great, white, four-story house,
Running out of that huge, white-washed barn,
Running with his belt.

“Graeme?  Graeme, where art thou?”
And he beat my brother,
Beat him for his thoughtlessness,
Beat him because the dart was four inches from my head, 
And it scared him,
Beat him for his original sin,
He beat him for hours, maybe days....
All the way to the end of that memory.
And threw him out of the Garden.
I don’t want to think about that anymore;
It’s too scary.
I lost my innocence in that garden.

We saw the old house the other day.
What a surprise!
Just a tiny bungalow on a tiny lot,
With only one floor, part of an attic.
The spindly tree, with its narrow trunk,
Was little more than a barren sapling;
No apples in sight.
And that brutal beating?
But a sudden spanking by a frightened father.

Tom Sawyer’s short fence brought a short smile:
Just 20 feet to the corner and a little around,
And the octagonal window in that tiny attic?
I couldn’t fit my head through it today.
I doubt that we both looked through it at the same time,
Even then…. 
Even when innocence looked out at a big, big world,
And my dart-throwing brother and I,
Cast our line out into the challenges of tomorrow.Los