Tsimshian

            Saturday morning was so warm that I envisioned standing in line at the food bank in jeans and Blundstones to be very uncomfortable. So I dug a pair of shorts out of the laundry basket and exposed my ugly toenails in sandals before heading over there. On the way though I realized that I’d forgotten to put my denture in and so when I got to the already much longer than usual line I removed my backpack and put it behind Robbie’s cart, and then I rode back home to get my false tooth. I was taking a risk because my backpack contains my wallet and all my identification as well as my camera. But it was still there when I got back and I’ve never seen anyone in the line-up messing with anyone else’s stuff anyway. I wouldn’t make a habit of leaving it there though and I put it back on as soon as possible.

            I took out my copy of the Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period and began reading William Wordsworth’s preface to “Lyrical Ballads”, the book of poems that he co-wrote with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The preface became a manifesto of the Romanticist philosophy and stressed that poetry must come from intense emotion experienced in response to quotidian life and that common language is the best way to express it after quiet reflection. Something tells me Wordsworth wouldn’t have been down with freestyle rap.

            Valdene was walking along and handing out a sheet of paper to everyone. I took it because I thought it might have relevant inform about a possible change in the food bank schedule or procedure, but it was something she’d printed from a website explaining "best before" dates on food products. It seemed kind of insulting to me that she would think it was her place to inform everyone on the matter. She could legitimately keep copies of the sheet downstairs and make them available to anyone that has questions about best before dates. If she’d really felt the need to hand the sheets out she could have explained what kind of information was on them before giving them to anyone. There is arrogance to just distributing them to everybody because it’s like saying, “I know something you don’t know and need to know!” It would be like me writing up instructions on how poetry should be written and read and then passing them out to everyone at every poetry reading I went to. On top of that she’d wasted half of each sheet of paper because they were all blank on one side. I considered taking it home just to make use of the other side but then I decided, hypocritically I guess, to throw the sheet in the garbage. I started walking east in the direction of the bin, though not directly towards it. Valdene seemed to read my mind because she intercepted me and said, “Don’t put it in the garbage! Give it to me!” I hadn’t been watching but maybe some others had tossed theirs. She was right that I should have just given my sheet back to her rather than thinking about trashing it.

            I was surprised to see Lana in the line-up rather than volunteering. She gave me a tap on the arm and asked, “How’s it goin?” I inquired if she was no longer involved with the food bank and she shook her head. I wondered if it was because of that situation a couple of weeks before when the other volunteer had called her “stupid”. She confirmed that to be the case. She said, “I’ve been volunteering all my life!” She recounted how she’d started her own food bank years ago at Scarborough Court and had gotten two citations for her work in volunteering.

            I asked if she was going to try to get work at another food bank and she answered that she wants to work at the main food bank in the west end near Islington but right now she has to baby-sit for her daughter while she’s in school. She said, “You’ve seen my daughter” and told me that she used to volunteer sometimes when the food bank was at King and Cowan. She said her daughter was the Black girl that used to help Sylvia with the bread, but I said that might have been before I started coming.

            Lana recounted how her youngest grandchild, Malachi, had caused a big scare when he was three years old in pre-school. He’d decided he didn’t want to be there and decided to go home and watch TV. He was quite a ways from home and wouldn’t have known the way but he left school and started running anyway. After a few blocks a woman saw him all by himself, grabbed his hand and led him back to the school.

            Lana mentioned that she’s from out west and I asked her if she was Haida. She informed me that her people are next to the Haida and used to fight wars with them. I wasn’t familiar with the name of her nation but I think she said she was Tsimshia, which would make sense in terms of fighting with the Haida because the Haida are on Haida Gwaii (also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands) and Tsimshia territory is on the mainland directly across the Hecate Straight from those islands. Lana declared of the Haida, “Tough people!”

            I told her that I used to have a girlfriend that was Haida. Her name was Gerry and she had a lot of sisters, all of whom worked at the same fish canning plant in Vancouver. I recounted for Lana how I’d met Gerry. I was hanging around Granville Street near the Orpheum Theatre with my friend Greg and we were having a running and jumping contest to see which of us could touch the underside of the Orpheum marquee. Unbeknownst to us, Gerry and her sister Janice were sitting on a bench and watching us. They had already worked out between them that Gerry would get the guy that touched the marquee first. Of course I was the winner and almost immediately Gerry came up and grabbed me by the arm.

            Lana asked what happened to the relationship and I told her that Gerry wanted me to get a job at the place where she worked and I wanted to live a Bohemian lifestyle on the street and so she moved on to more practical relationships.

            Lana is actually the first west coast Native I’ve ever seen in Ontario. I inquired whether she’s ever gone back to British Columbia and she explained that for the first ten years of her daughter’s life the father had a court order that wouldn’t allow her to take her kid out of Ontario. After that she did take her out west for a while but her daughter experienced a lot of racism in BC because she’s half Black and she had a hard time making friends, so they came back here.

            At around 10:30 Lana moved back to her place in line, which was about ten spots ahead of mine. She said, “Pray for me!” “Pray for you? Why?” “Because all the volunteers are staring at me!”

            A couple of places ahead of me in line were a middle-aged couple that I’ve seen in the neighbourhood for years. She’s of East Indian descent probably by way of Trinidad or Guyana while he’s of European ancestry. They stand out because they look so good together, as she puts a lot of care into her clothing and his grey moustache is always well clipped. They look like they were both probably quite stunning not too long ago. A few times he stepped away from her and was hacking violently while she calmly nagged about him smoking too much.

            It was after 11:00 by the time I got downstairs. I had to wait a couple of minutes because there was a bit of a jam of clients shopping the shelves and there were only two volunteers in that section.

            From the shelves I got a bag of pumpkin spice with turmeric coconut chips; three Quaker strawberry breakfast squares; three Super Food dark chocolate, cranberry and almond bars; a hand-filled bag of granola; a tin of chickpeas and a can of pomegranate soda.

            Angie wasn’t there this time and minding her dairy, meat and egg station was a young man who sometimes volunteers at the shelves. I didn’t take the two liters of milk he offered but I got four single servings of fruit bottom yogourt, three eggs and a choice between a tub of cottage cheese and a pack of pressed, dry cottage cheese. I picked the pressed kind because it was more out of the ordinary for the food bank.

            Sylvia gave me ten small red potatoes; five stubby little mangled carrots, two cobs of corn; an avocado that I could tell was probably black inside and an orange pepper that I would have to do major amputation surgery on to get the good parts. In a box I saw some chayotes and asked Sylvia if I could take one. She exclaimed, “You know what those are?” I said, “I also know that their name means something else.” She laughed and said, “In Jamaica we call them cho-cho” and so I’m pretty sure that she knew that cho-cho is also a slang term for vagina. She said I could take two.

            There was nothing in the bread section besides white loaves and buns and so I bypassed that section and left. Outside I noticed that bags of bagels were being handed out from the food bank van but I didn’t bother to take any.

My bike was in front of PARC and while I was unlocking it, right next to me the middle-aged interracial couple that had been in the line-up was getting into their car. It was an old, low-end automobile but it was the first time I’d noticed someone with a car at the food bank.

After the food bank I took my groceries home, put them away and then rode down to No Frills where I bought blueberries, organic grapes, a side of pork ribs, a jar of peanuts, a bottle of olive oil and a few other items.

When I got home I went back out to the liquor store to buy a couple of cans of Creemore. Even though I only buy three cans of beer a week they really accumulate. I’ve got two garbage bags full in my kitchen and another one filling up and now that the Beer Store on Brock is closed I guess I’ll have to go to Dundas and Dovercourt to cash them in.

I spent a lot of time that afternoon writing a journal entry and that night I watched two episodes of The Naked City. I’ve usually watched only one but I hadn’t finished my meal when the first one was over so I watched another.
            The first story was about an old homeless wino named Matty who is New York City’s last horse thief. He comes from a place named Johnson Falls and his dream is to ride home in a horse and carriage and so he is always stealing them and trying to ride out of town. The cops always stop him but they never put him in jail because the horse owners never charge him. One night after leaving a bar, the drunken Matty is looking at his reflection in a mirror and he angrily punches it, causing his hand to be cut and he bleeds on his clothes. Matty goes to sleep in a doorway. Meanwhile, nearby a rich man is beaten to death by a local thug named Chain and some of his hundred-dollar bills fly away in the wind and blow up against the sleeping Matty. The next day he buys a horse and wagon and is on his way out of town when the police stop him and arrest him for murder. Matty’s friends in the Bowery know that Matty could never kill anyone. They see that Chain suddenly has money and so all the bums in the Bowery gang up on Chain until the cops come to get him. Matty is released and a collection is taken up to buy him a horse and wagon but Matty decides to stay in the Bowery because he hadn’t realized he had so many friends.

The second story was about David, who is the son of a beat cop named Michael. David wants more than anything to become a policeman like his father but he has failed the civil service exam twice and one only gets three tries. Michael chases down a second story thief who has been robbing and assaulting people in their apartments, but the man stabs him. After failing the civil service exam for the final time, David sees the police chasing the man that stabbed his father and he just happens to be nearby. David grabs him just as the man stabs him but David holds on until the police arrive and David dies. Lieutenant Muldoon lies to Michael in the hospital and tells him that his son not only captured the killer but he passed his exam in flying colours.