Hugh Beaumont

            On Friday I didn’t go anywhere so I spent a fair amount of time working on my book cover. It’s a tedious process working with all of those little pixels.

            I did some translation of a French screenplay and a short story.

            I messaged a few more people about my gig on June 3^rd.

            I watched a couple of episodes of Leave It To Beaver. In one, Eddie Haskell was in Wally’s room while Wally was getting ready to go on a double date with Eddie. Eddie smelled Wally’s bottle of aftershave and exclaimed, “Man! You got a license to use this stuff?”

            In the second episode, Beaver bought a book for his father on how to become a millionaire in twelve months. He was disappointed when Ward didn’t take it seriously.

            The actor who plays Beaver’s father is Hugh Beaumont and he directed this particular episode, as well as a handful of others. It turns out that he was also a licensed Methodist minister and a Christmas tree farmer at the same time as he was doing Leave It to Beaver. Twenty-five years later a Texas punk band called themselves The Hugh Beaumont Experience, and one of the several drummers that came and went became the drummer for the Butthole Surfers.

Merging Mafias

            There was some kind of peaceful collaboration going on between Ann-Margret’s Swedish Mafia and Dom DeLuise’s Italian mob. It took up a whole dream but the details are fuzzy. Maybe the Swedish mobsters were teaching the Italian mobsters how to whack trees or maybe the two criminal organizations were merging Swedish practical and Italian innovative furniture design into chairs that are both crazy and functional, with the motto, “Sit on it or else!” Spaghetti with Swedish meatballs. 

            I sent an email to my friend Brian Haddon to let him know about my gig on June 3^rd. He got back to me a little later to tell me that a music project he’d been working on for the last few years was finally done and that he’d published it on Sound Cloud. It’s all instrumental and mostly classical with a bit of Country, Blues and even Japanese influences: https://soundcloud.com/user-32236949
            Here are my impressions of the Brian Haddon pieces: The first two are very rural and the premier one could easily be a song with lyrics. It feels like the opening theme of a homecoming film in which the protagonist has hitched a ride in a pickup truck that is rolling over rolling hills on the way back to the family farm where of course someone close has died of cancer. In the second composition the hero or heroine is either in the attic going through a trunk full of memories or is wandering the property that is about to be sold to big French fry. The next three creations are fugues. I always liked the word “fugue” because it sounds like what is happening on a higher level between the Hatfields and the McCoys while at the same time they are fudin. There is a Japanese feel to the third piece, which evokes the image of someone riding a bicycle over cherry blossoms. The fourth one is very bluesy and suggests that the homecomer has gone into town to drown his or her sorrows in the local bar and is walking home drunk with a dog. The finale has a military or sailory feel to it as the protagonist is staggering home drunk he or she runs into a militia that decides to militate militiaing and joins our hero or heroine against a fallen log with several shared bottles. As the sun sets the opening theme repeats as the closing credits roll down.

            

Unfinished Book Cover

            On Wednesday I felt a little depressed about not having any money for Thursday to go back and work on my bike building project. I guess it is possible that a tax return could show up in my bank account at any time, so I’ll keep checking online. But it’s also possible that I’ll have no extra money for the bike until May 10^th.

            I didn’t go anywhere and so I just spent my time writing my journal until the late afternoon.

            It felt kind of decadent but I took two siestas that day. I took one in the early afternoon and another towards the evening. I don’t know if the second one was from being down in the dumps or from being legitimately tired.

            I spent some time working on the cover for my book, "Paranoiac Utopia". My hope is that I can get it done this year if I don’t go out to any weekly open stages like The Tranzac or Fat Albert’s. Once I have a book out then I’ll feel more justified performing on a regular basis. 

Purdyesque?

            On my way out to Bike Pirates on Tuesday afternoon I checked my mailbox and found my return envelope containing my marked poetry manuscript from George Elliot Clarke. There were some errors in my prose introduction to the manuscript such as the mixed metaphor of the line, “spice up the threads”, but he gave me an A- minus on that part.

            In the poetry manuscript, from my poem, “Antiprayer” he wrote “Nice!” beside the first line, “Is the world really just the result of unplanned parenthood?” He also underlined the phrases, “deadbeat deity”, “left-handed centuries”, “extra obscenity” and “stuttering of souls”.

            From my poem, “Out on the Fields of Youth”, George wrote “powerful” beside the lines, “On the one day that I felt somewhat loved / by my father / the razor strap was not swung on Christmas”.

            From my ghazal, “Failed Launch of the Rocket of the Day” he underlined the phrase, “fashioned out of shit”.

            From “This is a Manner of Flight” he underlined, “I manoeuvre my oeuvre over”.

            Beside my haibun “Tailor-made Chain” he wrote both “Nize!” and “Dreadful!” though with the second comment I think it was just a response to the subject rather than a comment on the writing.

            From my freefall poem, “Wet Traffic”, he underlined, “sonorous chorus”, “breathing shushing traffic”, “an elastic crescendo” and “dragging their damp ectoplasm”.

            He commented that the last stanza of my poem “Beneath the Rubble of Us” was “A bit prosaic”.

            From my poem, “She Would Not Settle for the Limits of Satisfaction”, in the lines, “meaning they tend to need a handle / to handle insanity, like Jesus” he circled my two uses of “handle” and beside it wrote “Okay!”

            For my long poem, “Lotus Hotel” I was surprised that he’d crossed out the first five lines that give a preview of the end of the story. Beside that he wrote, “Cut?” On the second page of the same poem he added, “Reminds me of Purdy”.

            At the top of my poem “Your Absence Forms a Shape in the Air” he wrote “Purdyesque”.  He wrote “cliché” beside “sullen mood”, and I would agree with him there. Beside the lines, “When you returned your mood would be back / to normal and we’d talk and laugh until you realized / that you were late and you’d say goodbye” he wrote “Cohen, Hey that’s No Way to Say Goodbye”.  He liked the lines, “I feel run down when you give me a cold /vagina …” and “ungoverned but downright / neighbourly …”.

            I was disappointed that I didn’t get a higher mark for the poetry, as he only gave that an A-minus as well.

            Also in my return envelope George included the gift of a book of poems called “The Bone Weir” by D.S. Stymeist. I assume that this is one of the books that George receives in the mail from publishers in hopes that he will review them, which he doesn’t do anymore. Instead he offers the books as gifts to students whenever they visit his office, and I guess whenever they give him a stamped, self-addressed envelope like I did.  The only connection I can think of that George might have considered in choosing to send me this book is shown in one review on the back where Don McKay declares that Stymeist has the “stride of Purdy” and George mentioned of two of my poems that they reminded him of Purdy.

            I went online and saw that my official mark for Canadian Poetry had been posted. George gave me 84%, which is just one percentage point short of an A.

            

The Bike I'm Building Has Sprouted Wings, but it Still Can't Fly

            On Tuesday I timed the piece that I’m going to perform on June 3^rd and found that with just a straight read and sing-through, without acting things out, it’s just under ten minutes long. That should work fine for my ten minute set. I started working on memorizing it the day before and it shouldn’t be a problem to have it all in my head by 45 days from now.

            At 17:00 I took my cycle building project to Bike Pirates. After putting the frame on a stand I went home to get the old Phoenix just in case I could still salvage parts from it.

            My volunteer was a guy who I’ve found in the past to be somewhat abrasive, but who seems to have softened towards me after seeing me a few times. I think his name is Dennis, though he’s not the Dennis that is almost always in the shop. I asked him for advice on what to do next and he suggested that I could put a seat on. I tried the old seat from the Phoenix but he told me that the post was slightly too small. After searching through three drawers of posts though, we couldn’t find one that wasn’t either too loose or too tight, so we moved on and started working on the brakes.

            It took a while to find a compatible set of front brakes. I didn’t remember till the next day though that I actually had a set of Weinmann front brakes that had been dangling from the frame when I bought it, to match the Weinmann back brakes that were already attached. Dennis found a set of Shimano front brakes anyway and we ran a cable for them. He found a 68.58 cm front wheel, but we didn’t install it yet.
             Dennis was somewhat frustrated with my bike because he says that it's a classic, vintage frame from the hand-built era for which it's hard to find compatible parts. 

            We ran a brake cable for the back wheel but didn’t connect it because we needed to find a matching back wheel and a freewheel for that. At this point Dennis wandered off and Alain helped me for the rest of the time. He determined that we had to change the axel so that it fit with the freewheel.

            After three hours there was lots more to do, but I wanted to go home to start dinner. Alain persuaded me to at least put on the back rim for a sense of completion. We ended up installing the front wheel as well, so I was actually able to roll the project out of the shop this time rather than carrying it as usual.

            It was a little depressing when I put in my donation at the end because the $16.00 I had was the last of my money until I got a tax return, which might not be until May. That would mean possibly at least two weeks before I could come back and work on the project again.

            At the front desk, Dawn suggested that maybe I hadn’t gotten as much done on my bike as I’d hoped. I told her that I had no hopes about it, since things could sometimes go in a direction of just working on one tiny thing or they could move forward very quickly and one never knows. I said that hope is a waste of time and a drug. She said, “Hopium?” She reminded me that they have food there but I said that I had some at home. She urged me to at least take some cantaloupe, because it’s good for me, so I agreed and so she cut a couple of slices and put it in a baggie for me.

            My project actually looked more like a bike as I was pushing it home and it was surprisingly tall with the wheels on compared to when it was just the height of the frame.

            

Stone-Age Steering and Space-Age Spacers on a French Frame

            On Easter Sunday I was finally back on my normal animal protein diet. I had peameal bacon and eggs with two pieces of toast for breakfast and coffee with real milk in it.

            Around midday I went out to post the envelope that I’d forgotten to mail to social services the day before. It was surprisingly warm outside so I was glad that I wasn’t going far with my hoody and my leather jacket on.

            I spent most of the afternoon writing about my visit to the food bank the previous day.

            That night I cut into quarters the little chicken I’d bought the day before and grilled them. I had one of the legs for dinner with some tortillas and salsa.

           

            On Monday I needed to buy paper towels and toilet paper, but I also needed money to spend on my bike building project. I had about ten dollars already but I decided to take the risk of cutting into my May rent money and to take out $20.00. I think that I should be getting some tax return money soon but I’m not sure, because I clicked the option of having my return split up over the year. But then again I’ve made that same choice every year since it’s been available and yet I still got some money right away.

            I took a siesta earlier in the afternoon than usual because I felt tired, but I was refreshed when I got up. I had lunch slightly later than usual and at 17:00 I took my project over to Bike Pirates. Where I’d left off was finding a ring to cover the ball bearings on the headset. I looked through the bins but couldn’t find an exact match. The volunteer on the floor was Melissa, so I asked her about it. At the same time I mentioned to her that I noticed that she and my daughter are friends on Facebook. She confirmed fondly that they’ve been close for quite a while. She seems like a good person for Astrid be connected with. She’s very engaging and confident and she seems like she’s been around.

            I told Melissa that I’d already re-cut the threads on the headset and she told me that if that’s the case then that part is no longer French, that meant there was no reason to fiddle around finding a ring that matches when I can just mount any headset there now. I told her about my bike at home so she told me to go and get it. When I brought it back she saw no problem with me just using the headset from the Phoenix on the French frame. So we put my old bike onto the stand and I started removing all the parts from the headset and laid them out in order on the worktable. For removing what I think are called the upper and lower head tube races, she brought a tool from the front that looked like a pipe wearing a sheet metal grass skirt. It was inserted into either end of the head tube and then whacked with a hammer and the races popped right out.

            Some customers and volunteers were discussing racing bikes and Melissa complained that she has been told that she needs to get certified for the Milton track. She said that the irony is that she certified the people that are telling her she needs to be certified. I told her that reminded me of Shelly Winters when the movie “The Poseidon Adventure” was about to be made, she was told that she had to audition. She walked into the producer’s office, put her two Oscars on his desk and then asked, “Ya still want me to audition?” Melissa liked that story and then she started singing the theme song from The Poseidon Adventure: “There’s got to be a morning after”.

I cleaned all the headset parts and then we installed them on the French frame. Melissa commented that it’s a good frame and she guessed that it’s a Mercier. I looked it up later but didn’t see any similarity between images that I found of Mercier bikes and my frame. All of the Phoenix headset parts fit fine on the French frame but there was a lot of extra space that we had to fill up. We found several rings that we screwed on one on top of the other and Melissa commented that it made it look like something out of the Jetsons. She said that down the road I could always cut the extra length of the stalk.

Finally we installed my old Phoenix handlebars onto the French frame. It looks weird but I prefer the old flat bars to the curved grips that look like ram’s horns that were on the frame when I bought it.

Melissa suggested that we could now start putting on a seat, but it was already after 20:00 and I told her that I had a piece of chicken with my name on it at home. I cleaned up my worktable and took the parts of the Phoenix home then I got the French frame with the handlebars and settled up at the desk just as Duonne was making his final donation. He’d finished his bike building project so he wouldn’t be back until he needed repairs. I assume that will be soon since he’ll be Uber driving with it, which I assume will cause some wear and tear on the machine. I had overheard him mention that he also speaks French and I asked him to confirm that. He immediately started speaking in French far too fast for me to follow. I asked him if he’d heard me singing in French from my window and he declared that was another connection that we had. The guy at the desk asked where I play and I told him mostly at home but that I have a gig at the Smiling Buddha on June 3^rd. Duonne wrote down the info and promised that he would be there.
            Duonne told me that he works for Coinamatic and told me to call him if I ever have a problem with the washers in my place. I told him that I do my wash at the Laundromat. He just said, “We’ll talk.”

One neat thing about this project so far is that the only new parts I have gotten from Bike Pirates are ball bearings and the only other parts I’ve gotten from them at all were the rings we’d used that night for spacers. Everything else has come from my old bike. I guess that will change soon when I need cables and tires because I don’t think my old tires will be transferable to the French frame. I still have my old seat but it’s not in great shape so I may need a better one of the same kind. 

Amazing Threads

            When I got home from the food bank on Saturday I had time to put my groceries away. I also made a cup of coffee but I didn’t have time to finish it before it was time to take my cycle building project over to Bike Pirates. Dennis signed me in when he saw me arrive and Ted was the volunteer that adopted me this time. I had brought along the crank set that I’d removed from the frame last time in order to set up the bottom bracket. My expectation had been that I would be reinstalling that but Ted said the bottom bracket was loose and there was lots of parts to remove before putting anything on.

            I went back to my place to get my old Phoenix bike to see what parts could be transferred from the old to the new. I was relieved when Ted told me that quite a few components might be transferable from one machine to the other, like the handlebars and even the derailleur, though the derailleur that was still hanging onto the French bike was looking functional as well.

            Another volunteer, Dave, who I recognized from both before at Bike Pirates and earlier that week at Bike Chain, indicated my velo and commented that it had the best name for a bike he’d ever heard. “Phoenix?” I asked. “No, Ditch Pig!” “Ditch Pig?” He explained that underneath the paint of the brand name “Phoenix” are written the words “Ditch Pig”. I told him I’d had the bicycle for twenty years and I didn’t know that. Looking it up later it seems that Phoenix was the house brand of Cyclepath here in Toronto. It was a good bike for the low price and I guess my ex-girlfriend bought it back in the late 80s or early 90s at Cyclepath. It was apparently called a Ditch Pig too, maybe because it was a little heavier and thicker than the average bikes being sold.

            For the last few times that I’ve been at Bike Pirates, the guy with the dreadlocks who’s been waving up at me while I’m playing guitar and singing almost every weekday morning for the last couple of years, has been fixing his bike. He said hello to me the first time he saw me there and patted me on the back this time when he arrived, so I assumed he recognized me. I asked him what happened to his red car though and he seemed surprised that I knew about it. He told me the car had died. I guessed that he was taking the TTC to work now and he confirmed that. Then I inquired as to whether he was fixing his bike up so he could ride to work. He shared that he fixing his bike because he was preparing to become an Uber driver for food delivery. He added that he’s already signed up and has the bag. I commented that I don’t think I’d want that kind of job. He said it was wild that I remembered his car. I recounted how I’d always seen him park in the Dollarama parking lot on weekday mornings while I was playing guitar. He suddenly had a look of surprised recognition and exclaimed, “That’s you?” Then he enthusiastically shook my greasy hand and declared that his day is always off if he doesn’t see me playing up in my window and watching over him. I expressed surprise that he hadn’t recognized me before at Bike Pirates, since he’d said hi as if he knew me. He explained that was because he felt a connection with me because we’re the same kind of person. But he asserted that he must have known it was me on some level.

            He introduced himself and said his name was Duwon. Then he excitedly started telling Ted about me singing my heart out to Queen Street every morning. Ted just said, “Cool!”

            Ted had me remove the derailleur and the brakes but to keep them for when we are ready to run new cables through for them. My crank set was missing one bolt but we had a hard time finding a replacement that had a similar spacer. He thought that I might just as well get another second hand crank set from their bin. We got one and set it aside. The focus for this building stage became my headset. I cleaned out the cup for the fork ball bearings and also the one for the handlebars and replaced all the tiny ball bearings. At first though we had been having trouble getting the top ring off the headset threads. It was partially off but not turning any more after a certain point. We took it over to the vice but when Ted told me to turn it upside down all the ball bearings fell out. He was worried that now we would have difficulty knowing which ball bearings were needed. I was pretty sure they were really tiny and bent down to pick one up but Ted said that I shouldn’t pick ball bearings off the floor because one never knows if they are really the right ones. I picked one up anyway because I was almost certain they were the ones that I’d seen fall. We ended up using that size anyway. I loaded the cups with grease and ball bearings and then set them aside.

            A meal was being cooked in the kitchen and Melissa was speaking with Ted about how everything has to be vegan at Bike Pirates. I hadn’t known they were that strict. I declared, “The human body is a meat processing machine”. Melissa agreed with me, but just shrugged and stated, “Those are the rules here!” Ted added that if people weren’t meant to eat cows they wouldn’t be so damn tasty.

            With a wrench and a lot of effort I managed to get the ring unscrewed but Ted determined that the forks needed to be rethreaded. Dave seems to be the most respected bike expert in the shop. He brought out a flat box with the words, “Do not (“not” was underlined three times) use this tool unless you know what you are doing!” We put the forks in the vice and then Dave assembled the die. He showed me how to do it and then handed it over to me, but I made sure he watched me until I got it right. I needed to do a half turn clockwise, a quarter turn counterclockwise, then a quarter turn clockwise again. After repeating that process again I was to put a drop of cutting fluid on each blade of the die and then continue in the same way until the whole thing was rethreaded. Dave told me to go slow because the die is easily damaged and it costs $200.00. After about ten minutes of doing the turns as slowly as I could, Ted assured me that if I went a little faster it wouldn’t damage the die. After another ten minutes or so it was getting very difficult to make the turns but I did them anyway. Finally Dave came up and told me I was done. I asked how I should have known that I was done. He answered, “When it got really hard to turn”. He told me that I’d added two new threads to the steerer tube, but that it didn’t matter.

            Ted looked at my threading job and told me several times that it was amazing. Half forward, a quarter back, a quarter forward, repeat, add cutting fluid and start again seems like something that it would be pretty hard to screw up though, so I don’t know what I did to make it such an exceptional thread. The problem now was that the ring that came with the bike wouldn’t screw down the tube so as to cover the ball bearing cup. Ted found one that would work but it wasn’t of the right dimensions and so he just screwed it down to keep the ball bearings from spilling out until we found a ring that was the right size.

            I had only planned on being in the shop for a couple of hours because I had lunch to eat, errands to run and a siesta to take, but as usual I’d gotten caught up in things that had to be finished on my bike once they’d been started. Ted told me that I could start un-bending my forks with a special tool that he showed me, but I told him that I was burnt out and I’d be coming back Monday evening to continue. I put all my tools away and got a plastic bag in which to put all my loose parts, then I took my “Ditch Pig” home and settled up at the desk with a $10.00 donation before taking my project him.

            When I got to the front door of my building though I realized that when I had taken the Phoenix home, I’d had to pee and on my way to the washroom I’d tossed my keys on the kitchen table and had stupidly forgotten to grab them on the way out. For the first time in years I had locked myself out of my building. The only thing I could do was to stand in front and wait for someone to either come in or out. I thought hopefully that it shouldn’t take long for that to happen since I hear my six building neighbours stomping up or down the stairs at all hours of the day and night. The guy in the room next to my apartment always seems to be going down to the donut shop and Sundar, the super, is frequently hanging out below even though he lives on West Lodge now. But there was no one from my place in the Coffeetime and not one person arrived or left as I stood there for several minutes. It was late afternoon and it was just starting to edge past the point where I would be comfortable standing outside with just a sweatshirt on.

            I did see the Parkdale Amazon. She was walking east on the other side of Queen wearing a tight shin-length dress with red ruffles at the bottom. I had never seen her at street level before and she was a strikingly tall woman, even without the drastic stilettos that she was wearing. Her little female friend was up the street and when the Amazon saw her she began to exaggerate a swivily walk that made her red ruffles swing like urgent churchbells calling the faithless to prayer.

            An hour passed and several times so did an African guy that used to live in my building. He noticed that I’d taken to banging on the front door, even though the only person in the building that would ever hear someone knocking from the street would be me, and I wasn’t home. He stopped to ask, “Nobody there?” I explained that I’d locked myself out. He thought for a second and asked if I had a cell phone with me. I just happened to have my smart phone in my pocket. He gave me my upstairs neighbour; David’s number, just in case he was home. But when I tried it I got a recording from his service saying their customer wasn’t available right now.

            After an hour and a quarter with still no one from my building coming or going, I saw a young woman unlocking the door for the building next door and the apartments above the Chinese restaurant. I asked her if she lived at the back and she confirmed that she did. I told her that I’d locked myself out but if I could get to the roof I’d be able to get into my place. She told me to go around to the alley and she’d open the garage. It made sense that she didn’t want a strange guy coming into her apartment, so I gladly went around to the back. She opened the garage door and I followed her up the fire escape. She continued up to the third floor and while carrying my bike frame, I ducked under a horizontal rectangular restaurant vent pipe and stepped over the garbage and beer empties strewn all over the back of the rear second floor apartment of the building next door, till I finally made my way to the welcome railing of my own building’s deck, climbed over and got into my apartment, which couldn’t have been locked without me having had my key in the first place.

            I had to prepare my income statement and copy out my pay statements, then put them in the prepared envelope to mail. Then I walked out to the liquor store, making sure I had my keys this time, and bought two cans of Creemore. Then I put the envelope in my backpack to mail it on the way to the supermarket. Easter Sunday would be the day that I would break my annual vegetarian diet and so I wanted to buy a few things that I hadn’t gotten from the food bank. I was surprised that Freshco wasn’t crowded, considering that they’d be closed on Sunday. I bought grapes, grapefruit, strawberries and a tomato. They had a good deal on whole chickens and another on peameal bacon, so I bought least heavy of each item. I picked up some yogourt, orange juice and a block of tasteless cheddar cheese only because it was cheap and they were out of the better brand.