A Journey to Spirit #5: The Clothesline Romance

Life was good.

In his hay day, Boo ran The Boat House that sat next door to the Shady Rest on the beachfront in Qualicum. I can still smell the French fries and vinegar, their scent tantalizing my grumbling stomach after a full day of swimming and playing in the sun.

And I can still recall the bobby-soxers and poodle-skirts as they lounged on the porch of the cabins across the road from the Shady restaurant and pub. Wow, I used to wonder how fabulous it would be to rent a cabin that was mere steps from the beach, the ice cream and those fries.

My mother and father both worked at the Shady in their early twenties, in fact, this was where Mom first laid eyes on Dad. It didn’t take her long to find out who the good-looking bartender was next door in the pub. Mom worked in the restaurant and either walked to and from work or caught a ride with a local cab driver and friend of hers. One late Friday afternoon Don picked her up from work as usual, and asked if she minded if they stopped by someone’s place for a bit before driving her home.

The Clothes Line Romance

The party was in full swing and Don and Mom joined in. Mom spotted the blonde bartender and her heart skipped a beat, she told me. It’s funny, isn’t it? Sometimes you just know some things. A while later, she excused herself to make a trip to the bathroom, which she found out was an outhouse out back. In the dark of the night, with stars twinkling in the inky black sky, Mom was instructed to follow the clothesline to the outhouse. Hand over hand she moved slowly in the quiet darkness. And, who do you suppose was coming back from the outhouse on that very same clothesline? They were married two years later, and Mom loved Dad more than she loved anything or anyone else in the world, and he loved her.

And I loved The Boat House and Boo, and rumour has it I spent many a day walking the sandy beach telling the tourists, “If you want to catch fish, you have to go and see Boo.” Mom had a wonderful habit of ‘dressing me up for the beach’ when she was around. There I was in my white outfit, white socks and white shoes tripping along the beach drumming up fishing business. My first real sales job!

So, you see, I spent an awful lot of time with grown-ups, and before my sister was born I’d hit my fifth birthday. In my first year of school though, Dad moved us all to the mainland. I hated leaving the Island and my beautiful beach, but I vowed I’d always come back. It was my new first grade city teacher who found out I couldn’t count. She asked me to count to twenty one morning, and I started off with confidence: “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king.” My Mom thanked my grandparents for teaching me my numbers so well.

While in school however, I often wondered how come I didn’t seem to be quite like the rest of the kids. In the days of the Beatles for instance, I would watch as the girls would gather in huddles around a transistor radio and scream to the “Ya, ya, ya.” It all seemed so silly, always playing dumb games or getting into trouble. They were immature, I thought. And after years of watching their antics, in high school I finally decided that I must be much more mature than they were “because I spent so much time with all the grown-ups.” I’d eat those words one day, but for the time being, it worked.

I would have to leave dear Toby behind when we moved to the mainland; Mom’s Heinz 57 dog who I shared dog biscuits with for my first seven years: he’d eat one and then I’d eat one, and so on. This gentle giant became a real buddy for me, a kid who came to play alone a lot. Toby fit the bill perfectly. Moving at age seven was bitter sweet.

These were the Lights of my life, the best of memories: the smell of bread baking, the music of laughter and the heartbeats that gave me wings. If I had one wish, I’d wish to go back to that porch, that beach, the restaurant and Toby so I could play and laugh…and do it all over again.

Life would catch up with me though. I didn’t know back then that I was not destined to have that kind of happiness in my adult life. In fact, my life would become almost unrecognizable.

…to be continued

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