Scrap Metal Scavengers

            On Saturday morning I was working on my book cover and felt very sleepy even though I'd drank most of a strong cup of coffee. I couldn’t go to bed because sleeping at that hour screws up my schedule, and besides I had to go to the food bank.

            It had not been extremely hot in my apartment but it felt like a day for wearing sandals and I was right. Outside it was not a blast furnace like some days have been recently but it was a sneaky, muggy heat and every bit of cooling clothing helps.

            Several people on the street were eating something white when I arrived and so I assumed that someone from the food bank had come up and passed a snack out to everyone. It turns out that just before I got there a stranger had come around, handed out egg, ham and egg and ham sandwiches along with bottles of water and then quickly left.

            My spot was behind the plaid cart that belongs to the guy with the neck tattoo who broods and paces up and down the street since he quit smoking and whom I’ve heard others call Jack. He definitely looks like a Jack and even wears the kind of flat cap that I assume is only worn by people named Jack.

            In my book of French stories with the French text on the left and the translation on the right I started reading Gustav Flaubert’s "The Legend of St Julian the Hospitaller". It's set in medieval times but based on the legend of St Julian, the early Christian saint, born in 7 AD. The first two pages lead up to Julian’s birth and describe the lavish surroundings of his father’s castle, complete with a mote and archer on the battlement. But these were peaceful times and the guard spends a lot of time sleeping in the tower.

            I stepped out of line to avoid the smoke and walked west up the street a bit. Moe came walking east and said hello, then about twenty minutes later he came back and stopped to chat. He complained about the heat and said he'd like to go to Sunnyside Pool and cool off but there are too many kids there. I said, “Imagine that! Children at a swimming pool!” He said these kids are all from Europe and don’t know how to behave. I asked what part of Europe he was talking about and he said that the kids are mostly Gypsies whose parents have never worked a day in their lives. “So you think that all the Gypsies in Toronto are on welfare?” “Most of them.” He went on to say that a lot of them scavenge metal for a living. I said, “That sounds like work to me.” It also sounds like a service to the city but apparently the city makes money from some of the materials that go into blue boxes and from picking up appliances that are put on the curb and so it’s against the law for citizens to scavenge from recycling bins or discarded appliances. I assume that most of the scavenging is of abandoned metal but Moe said that sometimes they take metal that is in use and attached to buildings. I don’t know about that. I also don’t know about the claim that most of the Roma in Toronto are on social assistance. It sounds like Moe might be perpetuating a bigoted myth. It’s not easy living on welfare so I doubt many people would choose it as a permanent lifestyle.

            Moe left because he had to get home and watch the World Cup football game between Belgium and England. Belgium won. 

            Our regular doorkeeper, Martina left in the van with the manager and so a volunteer with dark red hennaed hair whom I don’t usually see on Saturdays and who I remember handled reception at the old location was managing the door. She let the first five clients in right on time at 10:30 but the line moved very slowly after that. The doorkeeper was even wondering what was going on and commented, “Even I’m not that slow!” The big man in the wide green suspenders with the Keith’s Ale logo on each one offered the view that what was probably holding things up was the big woman who went down in the first group of five. He held up his right and flapped his fingers together several times onto his thumb to indicate someone that can’t stop gabbing.

            On the way downstairs there was a guy behind me that I hadn’t seen in line so I was thinking at first that he was butting in but I think he might have been Sylvia’s son because when she saw him she went looking for her purse.

            When I was at the back of the line up for the reception desk downstairs the doorkeeper impressed me by calling me by name and asking for my birth date. When I told her said that she should have remembered that. I would have been extremely impressed if she had. She checked me off and I went to the shelves.

            I took a bag of teabags with no label but I think the tea is chai; a box of granola; a handful of sweet and salty granola bars; a can of chickpeas and another of tuna. The soup shelf had quite a few canned soups but who wants hot soup in this weather?

            Angie gave me a 1.75 litre carton of grape juice; three eggs and four small containers of fruit on the bottom peach mango Greek yogourt. I’m really liking the Greek yogourt and it’s the only kind that I buy now. It’s the only product that I’ve been introduced to by the food bank that turned into a shopping habit. It seems to me that if food companies were smart they would donate a certain percentage of their fresh and not just short dated output to food banks as a means of promotion. People tend not to use food banks forever and if they try a product from the food bank that they like they will buy it when they’re back on their feet.

            Angie asked if I wanted frozen ground chicken, frozen bologna, frozen hot dogs or tofu. I told her that if that were all they had then I’d pass. She said, “I’m afraid that we’re back to the regular stuff now!” She added, “Are you sure you don’t want some tofu? You look like a guy that would eat tofu.” I told her, “Only during Lent, when I stop eating meat for a while.”

            Sylvia put a handful of potatoes; an eggplant; a cauliflower; four tomatoes (one of which turned out to be rotten) and two cobs of corn in my bag. There were also onions but I have plenty at home.

            When I'd come in I’d seen a bag of cute tiny cinnamon-raisin bagels but when I went back to the bread section they seemed to be gone. Lana handed me a chocolate chip, gluten free banana cake, which I accepted. I asked about the bagels and she went to the back to get some full-sized ones but that wasn’t what I’d wanted. I felt bad for putting her through any trouble but I took a bag of flat cinnamon-raisin buns instead.

            After taking my food home and putting it away I went back out to buy fruit at No Frills. They had grapes from Mexico and they were relatively firm, so I got five bags. I also bought a whole chicken, a wedge of two-year old cheddar, toothpaste, Greek yogourt and Icelandic style skyr yogourt.

            All of the checkout cashiers were teenagers and probably still high school students.

            When I got home I discovered that the skyr yogourt had stevia in it. I try to avoid that stuff and considered taking the yogourt back but I’m curious enough to find out what skyr yogourt is like.

            I went out to buy two cans of Creemore.

            I had a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich for lunch.

            Because there was a high percentage of a chance of rain, I decided not to take a bike ride but after eight days of riding in a row I would have taken the day off anyway. It turned out that it didn’t rain after all, at least not around Parkdale.

            I spent the extra time writing about my food bank adventure, which wouldn’t have been done till Sunday at best if I’d actually gone for a ride.

            I had two eggs with toast and a beer for dinner while watching the first two episodes of the fourth and final season of Dobie Gillis. They seem to have really ramped up the production values of this last year.

            The season premier begins with Dobie and Maynard working as janitors at the top of a high-rise office building. They hear sirens and look outside only to notice that on the ledge near their window is a man about to jump. While Dobie is trying to talk the man down suddenly Maynard joins the jumper, grabs his hand and tells him that they’ll jump together. The jumper suddenly changes his mind and goes to safety back through the window. Maynard is about to go back inside but while bowing the crowd below he loses his balance and falls into the firemen’s life net, bouncing ridiculously higher than the point from which he fell. When he finally stops bouncing they cart Maynard off to the mental hospital. Under examination Maynard's normal but bizarre behaviour convinces the psychiatrists more and more that he is mentally ill. Dobie tries to stage a breakout by disguising himself as a doctor that is a parody of Ben Casey. There is a long chase scene with Dobie pushing Maynard in a wheelchair as the psychiatrists chase them. After they get caught though, the explanation that Maynard had encouraged the man to jump in order to call his bluff because he really didn’t want to die, convinced them that Maynard was okay.

            The second story features the final appearance of Tuesday Weld as Thalia Menninger. In a final attempt to win over Thalia, Dobie takes out a $20,000 and makes her the beneficiary. After telling her this he says he will be late for class but she advises him to take a shortcut through the Reserve Officer’s Training Corps building. He takes her suggestion but didn't notice that the sign on the door read "Pistol Range". We hear a series of gunshots and then Dobie emerges unscathed except that bullets seemed to have torn his clothing, there are bullet holes in his briefcase and his thermos is leaking in several places. Dobie begins to suspect that Thalia wants to cash in on his insurance policy. Later from his classroom window he looks out and sees Thalia and Maynard in the bushes. She hands Maynard ten dollars and says, “I’ll give you the rest when the job is done. Saturday night. Osborn Hunting Lodge.” You can depend on me girl!” “He mustn’t suspect a thing!” “He’ll never know what hit him!” Dobie goes to confront Maynard where he’s working as a cleaner in the library. He asks him what’s going on. “Ha ha ha, it’s for me to know and you to find out!” “Why did Thalia give you money?” “Wouldn’t you like to know?” “What did she mean when she said she’d give you the rest when the job was done?” “Curiosity killed the cat!” Maynard climbs a stepladder to clean the chandelier and tells Dobie to sit down so they can talk. “No, over there in that chair so I can hear you good!” The chair is directly beneath the ring-shaped chandelier. Maynard then spins the chandelier and holds his feather duster against it as it turns but the chandelier unscrews and falls on Dobie but it doesn’t hurt him because he’s exactly in the centre of the ring. Convinced that Thalia and Maynard are out to murder him he goes to talk to his parents, but before they see him he overhears their disturbing conversation: “But it seems so cold-blooded! I mean, after all, he’s our own flesh and blood!” “Look at it this way Winnie, the boy has to go some day, so why not now?” “I just don’t know!” “Winnie, you heard Thalia explain the whole thing and it makes all the sense in the world!” “Yes, I guess it does!” “Good, then it’s all settled!” “No, now wait a minute Herbert! I know it’s the only thing to do but my mother’s heart cries out!” “Oh, let’s not get sentimental! This is a practical matter, and I’m not talking about immediate benefits! I’m thinking about our future! Just think, after the boy is gone we can rent his room. We can save the money and take that vacation to Acapulco I’ve been promising you all these years!” Herbert begins playing “Cuban Love Song” on the ukulele while Winnie dances. Dobie imagines them dancing on his grave. Then Winnie cranks a grindstone while Herbert sharpens a butcher knife. When it’s finished he splits a hair with it, grins in what seems like a diabolical way and declares, “This’ll do just fine!” Dobie runs to his room, locks it and hides under the covers. This is about a third of the way through the episode and for some stupid reason the writers at this point decided to ruin the audience’s surprise by having Dobie the narrator clue them in that no one was actually trying to murder him but that Thalia had convinced his parents that Dobie should go out west to pursue a career and that luring him to the hunting lodge was for a surprise going away party.

            I prefer to be surprised when a hero is surprised but there seems to be a tendency in a comedy to clue the audience in on what is going to happen so they can feel superior to the protagonist in their foreknowledge.

            Just before Dobie arrives at the surprise party, Maynard, whose job had been to pick up the cake, shows up with an empty box after having eaten the cake on the way there. Winnie has to order another cake, which will be delivered in fifteen minutes, but meanwhile Dobie gets there and everyone has to hide because they need the cake for the official surprise. Dobie wanders in the dark, scared out of his wits until he finally sees Thalia, his mother, his father and Maynard, all looking spooky. He’s ready to die and then finds out it’s a surprise party.
            He refuses to go away though and this is the last we see of Thalia.