If Your Cross Is Smaller Than Actual Size You Must Think You're Bigger Than Jesus

After the food bank on Saturday I had forgotten that I couldn’t get into my building but I remembered before trying to open the door. Benji came out from the donut shop and we talked once again about our situation. The last time someone in our building broke off a key in the lock was a few years ago and it was me. We agreed that our best option was to get in through the backyard of the Japanese restaurant but it still wasn’t open yet, so I went to the supermarket.

No Frills had wild blueberries from Quebec and finally some crisp and tangy Ontario apples from the recent harvest. I also got a loaf of Dave’s organic Blues Bread; a package of drumsticks; three bags of milk; some strawberry Greek yogourt; Irish Spring soap and some Earl Grey tea.

As I rode up Dunn Avenue I saw that the sushi place was open and Benji was standing with the door open, so I thought he’d gotten in from the back. But he’d stumbled on the solution to getting in with a key. The broken key was already inside the lock and pushing up the pins and so all we needed was another key to push in and use as a lever to turn the cylinder. He found that our little mailbox key worked best. He put tape over the latch so the door wouldn’t lock again until it was fixed.

I went over to the liquor store and bought a couple of cans of Creemore.

That evening I took a bike ride. The sky was overcast but so faintly that the sun was straining constantly through a blue-grey veil. It was my first time riding in pants and a long sleeved shirt for a long time and I felt heavy. A cyclist my age or older and certainly old enough to know better decided that since there were no cars that he could go through a red light. The thing is though that he almost hit a pedestrian while doing so.

I rode up Birchmount to Foxridge and explored the whole neighbourhood between Birchmount and Kennedy and the railroad tracks and Foxridge. It has mostly the same little red brick houses that proliferate through all of the Scarborough Junction area.

On my way back down Birchmount I stopped to take pictures of a little old dirty white house with the bizarre feature of having a golden cross big enough to crucify me planted in the lawn. I wonder if it’s a coincidence that the house is directly across from the Pine Hills Cemetery. Maybe the cross is there to keep vampires from coming across at night and eating their love lies bleeding flowers. They should also have a sign saying, “Hey! All you zombies get the hell off my lawn!” I was hoping I would meet someone from inside while I was taking photos so I could ask them why didn’t they get a bigger cross, or why don’t they make their house smaller so the cross would be bigger. Do they think they’re bigger than Jesus?

I’d eaten up quite a bit of time exploring extra streets and stopping to take pictures, so even though there was still lots of daylight when I got to the Starbucks near Donlands I knew that it was going to be dark before I got home. I dug from my backpack the flasher that my upstairs neighbour David gave me and struggled with putting it onto my bike. I found that my handlebars are a bit too thin for the clamp that’s supposed to secure the light, but it stayed in place until I hit too many bumps and then dropped its head forward in shame. I kept on having to reposition it as I rode, so I’ll have to make the handlebar thicker at the place where the light clamps on in order for it to be useful.

That night I watched the first half of the final episode of Mike Hammer, Private Eye. This story was focused on smoking and the tobacco industry and it involved Hammer suddenly deciding to quit smoking. Throughout this series he smoked more than any of the other Mike Hammers in any film or TV show that I’d seen. In fact this series seemed to glorify Hammer’s smoking and tried to make it look old school romantic. I wonder if there were complaints, since I assume that if there had been a second season Hammer would not have gone back to smoking.

The story begins with Artie Chilton, a scientist for a big tobacco company having a clandestine meeting with Hammer and giving him a disc. Seconds later Artie is shot and killed. Hammer finds himself out of breath while running after the shooter and goes to the doctor. The attractive, blonde and way too young physician who looks like they plucked her out of the porn industry, tells Hammer he has to quit smoking. He teases us throughout the entire episode by often almost smoking but doesn’t have another fag again.

Hammer begins investigating the murder and the obvious suspect is the tobacco company that the scientist had worked for. Meanwhile he has Nick and Velda try to decipher the encrypted disc. The tobacco company is uncooperative but Artie’s former assistant Dina tells Hammer that she thinks the company had him killed. Dina ends up dead and floating in a fountain. Two masked thugs invade Hammer’s office, steal the disc and tape Nick and Velda together face to face. After a while they realize that they are attracted to one another and begin an affair. Hammer storms into a board meeting of the tobacco company to challenge them about how they are trying to cover something up. The chief executive is so impressed with Hammer’s look that he hires him to be the new spokesman for Minuteman Cigarettes.

This half of the story ends with Hammer figuring out that it wasn’t the tobacco company that killed Artie and Dina but Artie’s wife, who found out that Artie and Dina were having an affair. But the company is not off the hook for stealing Artie’s disc.

The tobacco company is a family owned business and Hammer is taken to Virginia to meet General Sterling, the head of the company and the family. The general is shown only in the final scene of the first act and he is an eccentric who dresses in 18^th Century clothing, including a powdered wig. He is played by Gordon Jump, who was the radio station owner on WKRP in Cincinnati and later portrayed the lonely Maytag repairman in the commercials.