Dad’s War
My 89
year old widowed father was studying organ at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto
when the war broke out. He enlisted as soon as he could. He was 6 feet 4 inches
tall and weighed 130 pounds, scarcely the stuff of either bomber crew or front
line infantry. Nonetheless, all were welcome, and off he went.
The train
trip to the Prairies to train, and Halifax to board the transport overseas were
the first times he had seen Canada. He wrote long eloquent letters home to his
mother describing the people and scenery. He spent a year recently transcribing
and printing those letters and I have a bound copy.
In
England, he was seconded to the Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA), as the
assistant to their Canadian liaison, Capt. Bob MacKenzie. In this role, he
lectured servicemen nd war brides on current affairs, life in Canada and the
progress of the war. He organized and led meetings of Colonels and Majors on
communications and publications. And he did all this as a staff sergeant.
He worked
hard to avoid being promoted. He was well-educated, eloquent and clearly not
Other Ranks material, but smart officers got sent to the front and died, and he
was enjoying his war.
The
Archbishop of Canterbury was a friend. He played the organ at Westminster
Abbey. He hung out with artists, musicians and reporters. He sampled the
bohemian underground of wartime London. He went to country houses for weekend
house parties. He got gastritis in Ireland on furlough from eating too many
fresh eggs, which were strictly rationed in England. This was his only wartime
injury.
Not that
the work he was doing at ABCA wasn’t important. Winston Churchill hated the
group, though it was a nest of communists and a waste of money. Bob MacKenzie
was a staunch socialist, as were all the instructors. They taught
impressionable young servicemen about collectives, and nationalization, and owning
the means of production. Political scientists agree ABCA was instrumental in
defeating Churchill and electing Labour’s Clement Atlee in the election
immediately after the war.
I
recently asked my dad if would talk to a rapporteur for The Memory Project, a
group that is recording the memories of WWII veterans. “Oh, hell, no. I don’t
want to talk about it. I had a cushy war”.
I’m glad
he wasn’t promoted to Lieutenant and killed at Ortona. Enough were.
My Father, The Carny
My
widowed father, now 89, has returned to his roots, in a way. He now lives at
Serenity Towers, a luxurious assisted living place in Niagara, just blocks from
the old Lakeside Amusement Park in Port Dalhousie.
He got
his start there as a carny after the war. He ran the bingo game. It was owned
by Conklin Shows, the company founded by the legendary showman Paddy Conklin.
Dad
discovered that he could sell twice as many bingo cards by increasing the
prizes slightly, with no effect on earnings. It was a neat trick, and word of
it got to Paddy
Soon, Dad
was Paddy’s driver, chauffeuring him around in a brand-new post war Chrysler.
Paddy put Dad to work on some other math problems.
Soon Dad
was working the winter midway in Brantford, Paddy’s home town. He was an
enforcer. He figured out the rate at which the carnies in the game booths
should be giving out the sawdust filled crap toys you win, and if they were
giving out fewer than that, they were screwing the house.
He was
respected and feared and called “The Professor”, because he wore glasses and
could add. Carnies are tough, but they’re not that bright, not even Paddy, and
this was the carnival industry’s first experience of forensic accounting.
By the
summer of 1947, dad was working the Midway at the Ex, still counting the
stuffed bears and going over the receipts at night. He was making $1500 a week
in 1947, the equiivalent of about $15,000 today. Paddy valued him, obviously.
What goes
around comes around. A client of mine is the CNE. I happened to mention to a
senior executive that my dad once drove for Paddy Conklin. His eyes lit up.
“You’re dad KNEW Paddy? He drove for him?” This was like meeting someone who
had met god to him, and his staff were equally enthralled. When I told them
about dad’s role as “The Professor”, they exchanged looks. Apparently those
accounting rules are still used on the Midway to this day.
Dad
didn’t stay a carny long, just two or three exciting, lucrative years. It allowed
him to get married and get set up doing what he was born to do, sell pipe
organs. But, for a while, Dad was “The Professor”, feared on the Midway by the
toughest guys on the road.
A Chequered Career
My
widowed father, now 89 and living in an assisted living facility in Niagara,
has had an interesting life, right from the start.
First of
all, his mother was probably not his mother. She was a grand Toronto lady to
whom the concept of giving birth was as remote as climbing a mountain. No, his
mother was probably a loyal family retainer known as Auntie.
In the
depression, his father, an insurance adjuster, lost his job and went to work on
the docks at the bottom of Yonge Street as a stevedore. His grand mother came
down several notches and worked as a telephone operator at the King Edward
Hotel, where she wore white gloves because she thought the equipment was
dirty..
Later,
after his father died, dad quit high school to work as an organist to support
his mother and brother. He met (and played for) Fats Waller once, and Fats
played some Barrelhouse Blues for him.
Never
religious, but always a friend of the clergy, dad was to later count
Archbishops and Cardinals among his friends. An interested bishop helped get
him into the Royal Conservatory despite his lack of a high school diploma. His
natural gift for the keyboard, powered by his long slender fingers, became even
more accomplished.
He went
to war as soon as he could, six feet four inches tall and one hundred and
thirty pounds. Unfit for the front, he was posted to the Army Bureau of Current
Affairs in London, where he lectured war brides on what to expect when they
arrived in Canada. The Archbishop of Canterbury was a friend, and he played the
organ at Westminster Abbey.
He
attended Weekends at country houses with Smart People and generally had a ‘good
war’. His only casualty was a case of gastritis brought on in Ireland on leave
from eating too many fresh eggs (then rationed in Britain).
After the
war, he went to work for Paddy Conklin, the famous showman, as his driver, This
made him an honourary “Carny” and he was also Paddy’s “strategy man”, cruising
the Midway to settle disputes between the carnies.
Later, he
worked for a man who made inflatable garages and boats. I remember an
inflatable hut in our front yard. The man offered him 10% commission and 90%
salary, or 20% commission and 80% salary. Dad asked for 100% commission, no
salary, and promptly sold the government all the inflatable liferafts for the
new aircraft carrier Bonaventure.
Soon, he
was doing what he was born to do, selling pipe organs. He traveled North
America, and later the world, entertaining Bishops and Monsignors and other
clerics. He knew what whisky they liked, where they got their cigars, how
risqué the jokes could be. He fit in with these princes of the church. And he
was a complete nonbeliever.
He worked
for all the leading pipe organ manufacturers, ending up with the best, a
company in Quebec, where I grew up. He was a meticulous model maker, cutting
facades for miniature organs from Bristol board in complicated patterns that
could all come apart and fit in his briefcase.
I slept
in his dressing room. I’d hear him in the morning, whistling under his breath
as he brushed his hair and tied his tie and shined his shoes. I do that today.
He owned cars that were bizarre for the day, Corvairs (2), Peugeots (3)
Citroens (2). He once owned a used Mercedes that cost him more to keep than his
five children.
He bought
a sailing dinghy he never learned to sail. He bought an island in a cottage
lake for back taxes, and surprised all the old-timers by building a cottage in
the middle of their lake.
He always
had the latest camera, tape recorder, hi fi, binoculars. He took trays and
trays of Kodachrome slides of us growing up. He sent us to interesting
educational summer camps run by socialists. He and my mother worked to elect,
in order, Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Gene
McCarthy, George McGovern, and then moved back to Canada.
He
retired and moved to England, then Vermont, then the Maritimes. Each place they
went, he and my mother made new firm friends, usually much younger, and always
eccentric. Wherever he went, he’d sidle into the local Anglican church and ask
if he could try the organ. He’d cut loose with an impromptu recital and the
existing organist, usually a little old lady, would quietly go home and kill
herself. He was the local organist and choirmaster everywhere he lived until he
was 87.
He
doesn’t do much now. Sleeps. Complains. Won’t eat. Can’t hear. But, boy oh boy,
I hope I have memories like that when I’m his age.
