UnTwisted – Chapter One (pg10-13)

The years we spent in Cabbagetown were amongst the happiest of my life. We were all equal in Cabbagetown because all of us battled the common enemy of poverty. It didn’t matter what color you were, what culture you belonged to, or where you came from. Shared poverty has that calming and leveling effect. It drew us all together.

Cabbagetown was not a dangerous place—if you were a resident, but it was a rough neighborhood with cobblestone streets and tough Irish beat cops who knew everybody by name.

The row houses we lived in were interconnected by dirt tunnels that we kids dug through the adjoining basements. Using the tunnels, a person could go from one end of the street to the other without detection. The parents didn’t stop us from digging these tunnels, because if the police came to the door with an arrest warrant for the man of the house, it was very convenient for him to slip into the tunnels and disappear.

Outsiders were not appreciated in Cabbagetown. We didn’t steal from anyone else in The Projects, nor did we let anyone come in and steal from us. The police had learned from hard experience never to park on the street; they knew full well the Cabbagetown kids would be on the rooftops dropping stones and bricks on their patrol car.

It was a district that took care of its own. You knew every shopkeeper on the cobblestone street by name, and they knew you. Families purchased meal plans from restaurants. If you didn’t purchase your meal plan immediately after the welfare cheque came, chances were good that someone would drink the money away.

We had ice vendors who came with horse and cart to deliver big blocks of ice to the door for your icebox. We kids were always on hand to get a sliver of ice from the vendor to suck on.

This was also the era when vegetable people came to the door; milkmen delivered milk, eggs, and cheese; and knife-sharpeners came down the street with their big whet wheels. It wasn’t unusual to see men on the street with music boxes and monkeys, and itinerant photographers who would take your picture on a pony.

And then there were the Sheeney Men, Jewish men with long black coats, black hats, and curls, who came down the street with their horse- drawn wagons calling, “Rags and bones, rags and bones.” You could go to their wagons and trade things. Mothers with clothing their kids had outgrown could go out to the Sheeney Man and trade, maybe two shirts for one. The Sheeney Men had depots and yards where they took their wagonloads of merchandise at the end of the day.

Backyards often housed the family’s chickens and clotheslines strung with garments that flapped in the wind.

People sat on the front stoop in the evenings and paid attention to everybody else’s business. They conducted conversations with each other by yelling across the street. It was nothing to see an Irish mother beating her kid on the head with a broom. Nor was it unusual for that same Irish mother to beat me on the head with a broom.

Cabbagetown was the kind of place where a kid could walk into anyone’s home and sit down with them for dinner. I often did that because my mother worked two jobs, a day job and a night job as a dishwasher at a diner called Lou’s, where she eventually advanced to the position of waitress. The owner, Lou, had two sons, but I never met them because Lou wouldn’t think of bringing his family into a neighborhood as tough as ours.

I didn’t go to kindergarten. I went directly into Grade One at the age of six after the truant officer paid us a call. The visit frightened my mother deeply. She didn’t know I needed to be enrolled in school and thought she had done something terribly wrong.

After school, I would go to Lou’s and wait for my mother. I often had my supper there. I remember a waitress named Loretta who worked with my mother. Loretta chain-smoked and drank a lot, and had an apartment above the restaurant. She was a very nice lady and I used to stay with her when my mother was busy. I called her Auntie Loretta. Her husband was Marcel. He was a little guy. Both Loretta and Marcel were what I know today to be alcoholics.

Between Lou, Loretta, and Marcel, everybody had a piece of me, and there is no negativity attached to my memories from those days.
On Sunday afternoons, my mother would take me to a little store- front church, a Baptist inner-city mission under the bridge that spanned the Don River. They used to do puppet shows for us kids at the mission. The one I recall most clearly is the Jesus puppet.

The mission gave out sandwiches and soup, and on Sunday afternoons we would take a pot of something my mother had cooked up—maybe pork feet and shells—and deliver it to a couple of families on the street who were going through tough times. I was considered lucky in the neighborhood because I didn’t have a father. Many of my chums had fathers who were alcoholics or drug addicts. They took the welfare check or the grocery money and the kids went hungry. In my home, we always had food and the basic essentials.

I don’t remember having much of a relationship with my mother, nor do I recall her ever being affectionate. On the other hand, she was a good provider and a great cook. Our home was always clean and I had clean clothes to wear. My mother taught me proper hygiene and the habit of wearing clean clothes, and she also tried her best to teach me good morals.

My mother was neither a drinker nor a doper, and I was considered lucky in my neighborhood because my mother didn’t beat me. She yelled at me a lot and often pulled my ear. When she lost her temper, she would take a swing at me, not caring where her hand landed or if she had something in it at the time. I learned to be quick on my feet.

In spite of all that, my mother was not a mean-spirited woman. I think I frustrated her a lot. She was little more than a child herself, thrust into a confusing world of adult decisions and responsibilities.

I hardly ever saw my mother during the week. She went to work in the morning before I got up, and I was in bed and asleep when she came home. On Sundays, we spent the whole day together. It was during those times that my mother tried to teach me that I had value and worth. She encouraged me to believe I could be anything I wanted to be. She knew that as a ‘half-breed’ I would have a harder time in life than most. She taught me that I should always do the right thing.

Because I was left pretty much to my own devices, I became a solitary child, entertaining and caring for myself.

The street car was free for kids in those days, and my mother claims I was four when I began riding to Riversdale and the Don River. I do recall a lot of happy times swimming in the Don and roaming the streets. I also remember going to the park and talking to people there. Fortunately, we lived in an era when, by and large, people looked out for children.

My play included a good deal of reading, and I spent a lot of time reading books at the library. I don’t know when or how I learned to read—it certainly wasn’t from my mother—but I can’t remember a time when I could not read. I have a vivid recollection of eating a bowl of Cheerios and milk in the little house with the dirt yard and readingwhat was on the box. I also remember a little movie theatre and a second hand store or pawn shop that I used to visit. I was fearless, outgoing, gregarious, and extremely social. My friends’ parents loved me. Even when I was a teenage gang leader, they would say to their sons, “Why can’t you be like Serge?”

I hung out a lot with my friends’ families. One friend, Kenny, came from an Irish family with thirteen children. I would go to see Kenny and think nothing of sitting down with them for dinner. The food wasn’t as good as my mother’s, but in retrospect, I think I probably went more for the warmth, the family environment, and the company, than the food.

I had no family outside of my mother, though I do have a vague recollection of my grandmother, a big woman, coming to Toronto once and staying with us. I believe she came to the city for an eye operation. Grandmother couldn’t speak English and although I understood French, I didn’t speak the language so we couldn’t communicate. A strange little banty of a man came to get my grandmother. I presume he was my grandfather.

Memories of school are somewhat patchy. My only real recollection is getting the strap in Grade Two. I remember the nun being very angry because I kept pulling my hand away and she would hit herself on the leg with the strap.

My vivid memories begin when I was eight years old and probably in Grade Three. I made a bad choice that would affect me for the rest of my life: I played hookey from school.

I wasn’t the only one to skip school. There was a group of boys in the school who I thought were pretty cool. They were older than me, and I thought it would be great to be part of their gang. Since I knew one of the boys, I asked him if I could join.

“Sure,” he said, “you’re a pretty cool kid. But you have to do the things we do.”

I said, “Okay, what do you do?”

“Every Friday afternoon we skip school and go Uptown. We do a little shoplifting to get some money for the weekend.”

“Okay,” I said. “Are you in?” “Sure.”