Begging in a Snowstorm

            There was a heavy snowfall overnight and well into Sunday morning. The elderly or extremely weathered middle-aged woman who panhandles around all four corners of Dunn and Queen was the first person I saw walking in the storm as I began song practice. In the first hour I don’t think there were more than four other pedestrians, but she would stop cars on Dunn Avenue as they tried to turn right or left onto Queen. She would beg the drivers loudly and desperately to please help her while a horn or two from a held up vehicle behind was demanding progress. I’ve always wondered if she’s homeless but seeing her come out in the storm to panhandle pretty much clinches that she must be. Chances are that no one that had a home would venture out of it on such a wicked morning even to scratch up enough for breakfast. When there was no one to beg from she often called out “Paulie!” But Paul, her boyfriend was nowhere that I could see.

            After the sun came up I saw an elderly man riding his electric wheelchair in front of the cars heading westbound on Queen Street until he got to the traffic light at Dunn Avenue and then crossed to take the sidewalk southward. 

            One of my two favourite deep blue dinner plates that I use every day shattered later that morning. I’d carelessly set it down too close to the edge of my living room dresser and it fell to the floor. I’ll have to take a trip down the street to the Sally Ann thrift store to see if they have any more.

            I had the same thing for lunch as the day before and dinner was a repeat as well.

            I watched two episodes of Peter Gunn.

            In the first a man named Cole with a ten-year-old daughter named Angela hires Gunn to find the killer of a wealthy businessman’s wife because he was secretly in love with her but it turns out that Cole is the killer and did it for a large sum of money that he could leave for his daughter since he is dying. He dies after being arrested in a very unrealistic and sudden way, since he doesn’t behave as if he is ill.

            In the second story a woman named Helen goes to Gunn because she thinks her husband, a world famous trumpet player named Bud Bailey, is plotting to kill her. Gunn visits Bailey and finds that he clearly has emotional and mental problems. He can barely play trumpet anymore because he is distracted by a loud pounding in his head. He laughs when Gunn proposes that he wants to kill Helen. He says she is nothing and not worth the effort. Helen is missing though and when he finds out that Bailey owns a remote cabin he goes there to find it burned down. The police find a man’s body in the charred wreckage of the fire. Helen is arrested for Bud’s murder because he’d recently taken out a life insurance policy and they find letters from her insisting that he do so. Gunn smells a rat and it turns out the fingerprints of the dead man belong to a down and out man on skid row. Gunn finds the man’s address and discovers as he suspected that Bud has taken his identity.

            Bud was played by James Coburn before he became famous as Our Man Flint.

            Helen was played by Cece Whitney.

            Lola Albright as Edie Hart sings, “Candy" by Mack David, Joan Whitney and Alex Kramer.