Mad Messiahs of Parkdale

            My hip was bothering me more than usual when I got up on Saturday. It might have been because it was so foggy and humid outside. After yoga the discomfort wasn’t so bad and I was physically okay during song practice. But when the fog outside lifted and the rain started another fog descended in my brain and I felt groggy through most of rehearsal. One would think that remembering and singing French lyrics and playing guitar for an hour and fifteen minutes would wake someone’s brain up but that didn’t happen until I sat down at the computer.

            I ran through “I’m a Snob”, my translation of “J’suis snob” by Boris Vian, made some small adjustments and it’s now ready to upload to Christian’s Translations.

            I finished working out the chords to “Leur plaisir sans moi” by Serge Gainsbourg, sang and played the whole thing in English and French and now that’s ready post on my blog as well.

            The prospect of going and standing in the food bank line-up in the rain kind of depressed me, but when I headed out the downpour had almost stopped.

As I was locking my bike in front of 1499 Queen Street West a man that I’ve seen for years around Parkdale but never around PARC approached me. I think I remember someone calling him Daniel once. I have often heard him storming along Queen Street in a rage and raving at someone who isn’t there things like, “I’m gonna beat the fuckin shit right out of you! Fuuuuck!!!” Sometimes he will also include the “N” word in his shouts, but people that know him, including black people, will sometimes firmly confront him and successfully tell him to behave himself, and then he calms down for a while. Other than almost lunging at pedestrians when he’s charging down the street I’ve never actually seen him confront anyone. Sometimes he sits on the sidewalk rocking back and forth beside Jason’s Coffee Shop across the street from the Salvation Army Thrift Shop two blocks west of Lansdowne. Other times he walks around and panhandles. This time he was in a state that I’d never witnessed before. He was talking very fast and enunciating his words so poorly that they blended together into long almost incomprehensible sentences like train cars that had been melted together by a nuclear blast into a long snake of slag. He was barefoot and had coloured strings tied around each ankle and his right foot had a bright red wound in the same spot where the feet of Christ are depicted as having been nailed to the cross. Another string was tied as a headband. He was trying to tell me something about “the son of hell” and about being able to fly and then he stood in front of me and demonstrated by jumping three times. Most of what he said to me was too quick to catch and I told him, “I don’t understand what you’re saying”. His response was very clear and quite serious as he stood close to me and asserted, “Yes you do!” “I do?”

I walked to the back of the line and was surprise to see Graham, who’d just gotten the first paycheque from his new job and hadn’t planned on coming back to the food bank. But there he was standing and sharing his umbrella with Veronica. I asked him, “What are you doing here?” He explained that he’d mismanaged the groceries he’d bought with his paycheque. He said that he’d tried to economize and buy larger value packs of meat. But since he didn’t want to risk putting his meat in the freezer of the shared refrigerator, he’d stored it in his little bar fridge and some of it had gone bad. I suggested to him that next time he should cook all of the meat at once and then it would last longer in the fridge.

I told Veronica that I’d done the research on hernias that she'd requested and I asked her if she wanted the good news or the bad news first. She said, “The bad news.” The bad news was that if she doesn’t have surgery she has a 100% chance of keeping her hernia. Graham nodded in agreement and added, “Yeah, they don’t go away by themselves. Veronica asked for the good news and I told her that after surgery, in the worst-case scenario she would have a 70% chance of her hernia not popping out again. Graham told her that he’s had two hernias. Veronica asked, “You mean you had a hernia and it came back?” He answered that he’d had two separate hernias, one on each side and that after surgery neither one of them returned. His first hernia came from overdoing it while lifting weights and the second came from lifting his two-year-old son the wrong way. I told Veronica that most hernias come from physical strain or too much exercise but since she got hers after surgery she’s lucky that she hadn’t had to work for hers.

A big fluorescent green plop of pigeon shit bombed the sidewalk a couple of metres away followed by another next to it but about half the size. Graham said that he didn’t want to get bird poop on his umbrella because it’s acidic and would eat right through. He said seagull shit did it to the cover of his boat. I asked if he still had his boat but he said he’d had to sell it to pay for medical treatments for his wife. I had thought that everything that physicians and surgeons do was covered by OHIP but apparently it didn't cover treatment for pre-existing conditions in the 1990s.

I commented that people complain about the cost of caring for refugees but ignore the fact that people from the US come up here to steal millions of dollars worth of health care in Ontario alone.

The rain began to come down hard and Veronica was dissatisfied with Graham’s umbrella holding talents. She decided to take shelter in the entryway and requested of Graham to take a number for her when they’d be passed out later.

Daniel was standing in the middle of the sidewalk with his arms extended sideways like Christ on the cross while balancing a cigarette package on his head.

I asked Graham how he gets along with the co-workers at his new job. He said he gets along with them fin but the two guys closest to him are dispatchers who are in their 70s and are hard of hearing. On top of that most of the people they are speaking with on the phone are elderly and often also hard of hearing. One of the guys doesn't like to wear his telephone headset and so he puts his customers on speaker phone, resulting in Graham having to hear shouted conversations while he’s trying to work on complex formulas on the computer.

Graham said that neither of his nearby colleagues needs their jobs and only work because they are bored. He hears them discussing how well their investments are doing and he thinks there’s a bit of an injustice in these guys taking jobs that people like him are trying to get.

Graham informed me that his company employs mostly personal support workers (PSWs) and it’s a big industry. I commented that would make sense given that people are surviving longer into old age all the time. He said that if he had the cash he’d invest in old age homes because those are sure-fire moneymakers.

I got number 18, which is the lowest number I’ve had all summer.

The first set of shelves had a few 375 ml containers of mustard and relish and one litre bottle of ketchup. I decided on the mustard because I tend to go through it faster than ketchup.

I grabbed a bag of Manischewitz sriracha flavoured popped corn chips. I temped at a kosher food company for a few weeks back in the late 80s and helped deliver a lot of Manischewitz products to stores and delis around Toronto. The company was satisfied back then with simply labelling their products as kosher. The back of this bag of popped corn chips really goes over the top in a fun way to speak directly to Jewish culture to a degree that I’ve never seen in any other product that's marketed towards a specific ethnic group: “Not your Bubbie’s cracker! Want a little nosh without all the schmaltz? Chutzpah you say? Feh! They’re light and crispy and something your grandmother would be happy you’re eating. Hey, be a mensch and give her a call. When was the last time you picked up the phone, eh?”

Further down, in a plastic container three times bigger than what it held, was a single raspberry Danish with whole raspberries. My volunteer Larissa assured me it was fresh because she’d smelled it, so I took it.

I got the usual can of chickpeas. There hasn’t been any tuna for a few weeks but Larissa handed me a 30-gram packet of Speyside Smokehouse salmon jerky made from Scottish farmed Atlantic salmon. It really tasted like any dried fish and not much like salmon.

I had a different volunteer for the last three sets of shelves, but I rarely take much from those sections lately. There was no soup and so all I saw of interest were packs of two fruit punch drinking boxes. I asked if I could take more than two but my volunteer told me to look at how many there were left and I could see that there were only eight. He drew my attention instead to some squeeze packets of organic banana, apple, blueberry and strawberry puree. At first I turned it down but he insisted there was “good juice in there!” and so I took one just before he gave me another.

Angie’s perishable section had the usual 2% milk but there was also one carton of organic skim milk and so I took that. There was yogourt and eggs but I had those already. I took the cottage cheese she offered and a bag of frozen chicken nuggets. At least I assume they were chicken nuggets. She just said "nuggets" but I've yet to receive duck nuggets.

I didn’t take any potatoes from Sylvia because I still have some but I took another pack of brown grape tomatoes and a couple of tangerines. From the “take what you want" vegetable section I picked three bosc pears and an orange pepper.

Last year there were more garden fresh vegetables, but other than that it was an average haul this time around.

            I went home to put my food away and then headed back out to No Frills. I bought a basket of peaches, a couple of bags of grapes and three packs of strawberries that were on sale for $1.67 each. The strawberries weren’t in great shape but at that price it would be worth it to pick through a few bad ones. I got olive oil, old cheddar, yogourt and a pack of toilet paper.

            I had planned on taking a bike ride before going home but the toilet paper was too bulky where it was hanging on my handlebar and so I decided I would ride later.

            I had a toasted cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwich for lunch.

            In the afternoon I did some exercises and then rode to Bloor and Ossington, south on Queen and then home.

            I worked on my journal.

            I had two beef patties and a beer for dinner while watching the third episode of Wagon Train.

            In this story, travelling on the wagon train are John Cameron and his wife Julie.  John is very reserved while Julie is outgoing and extremely flirtatious with other men. Three wild brothers show up to spend the night and liven up the wagon train.  The next morning they are gone and so is Julie. All evidence points towards Julie having gone with them not only willingly but enthusiastically, yet John leaves the train to go after her, even though he is a banker and not a gunfighter. Later while hunting for meat for the wagon train, Flint, the train scout sees buzzards in the distance. He goes to the spot they are circling and finds John with a bullet in his leg. Despite his injury John is determined to continue after Julie. Flint decides to ride with him. They find one of the brothers dead and it becomes obvious that they’ve begun to fight over Julie. John is developing a fever but still insists on pursuing Julie. When thy catch up with the brothers they are involved in a shootout in the rocks. The older brother, Rich, played by Claude Akins, kills his sibling. We see Julie now only wanting to escape but Rich restrains her. John, barely able to stand shoots at him and then collapses. Rich is aiming his rifle with a clear shot when he is wounded by Flint. Julie runs and Rich escapes. Flint makes camp for Julie and John and has to cut the gangrene from John’s leg. Flint goes to check on the horses. Julie declares to John that she loves him but John tells her it’s too late and that they are through. Rich arrives and orders Julie to come with him but she refuses. John goes for a gun but he has little strength. He fires and Julie runs to him and gets in the way as Rich fires back. She is killed. 

            I think it’s unrealistic that three grown brothers that get along well enough to ride and party together would suddenly kill one another over a woman.

            Julie was played by Carolyn Jones, who married Aaron Spelling in 1953 after proposing to him when he was still poor. Her breakthrough film came that same year in “House of Wax”. In 1956 she starred in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and in 1957 “The Bachelor Party” in which she said, “Just say you love me. You don’t have to mean it.” She is best remembered as Morticia Addams on The Addams Family.