CHANGES

The Legend Of Orm Part 3

My Father chose an excellent place for us to live. We backed onto a densely wooded area with a stream running at the rear of our lot. There was wildlife galore and off to the left, an abandoned orchard. Later the first summer, we discovered that we could eat the tasty Macintosh apples, although I found out the hard way you need to scan them first for wormholes. 

You’d never know that Canada’s second-largest city at the time (soon to be the largest) was just a twenty-minute drive away. 

Mary was born in May 1960, and Jane in July 1962. The house was getting crowded, but nobody seemed to mind. 

That summer of ’62, I was eight years old, and Pat had turned ten. We were beginning to be aware of the new music flowing out of teen radio stations like CKEY and CHUM. But it wasn’t until late spring of 1963 that we really started to listen. Surprisingly, Dad let us tune in to CKEY on the car radio. He would occasionally comment on the “twangy” guitars, but he was amazingly patient with what he thought was crude music compared to his jazz and show tunes.

For years, on Sundays, after mass, he would pour himself a rye and coke and play the piano for hours. Broadway tunes, ballad standards, boogie-woogie, etc., performed with finesse and passion. I would watch, mesmerized, as his fingers danced effortlessly across the eighty-eight keys. Swirling arpeggios into rubato melodies into glissandic waterfalls, cascading from delicious tonality to suspended dissonance and finally, sublime resolve……

Then, he would have a drink and light a cigarette. After just a couple of puffs, it smoldered in the ashtray right down to the filter as he returned to Rhapsody In Blue, Gigi, Take The A Train, Days Of Wine And Roses, Claire De Lune ………

That wasn’t enough. Dad wanted to get back in the business. The Sunday afternoon solo was fine, but it didn’t have that buzz (I know it well) of playing in front of a crowd with a tight band of like-minded musicians. Show-biz satisfaction aside, a little extra money wouldn’t hurt either. 

Through word of mouth, he found other musicians in the Toronto area, and they formed a basic unit with a flexible configuration of trio through septet, depending on how much the dancehalls, legions, bars, or the bride’s family were willing to pay. 

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A Few More Choice Ormisms

Dad sometimes took a two-word phrase or name and exchanged the first letters. For example, Salt and Pepper became Palt and Sepper but to confuse the issue even more, he’d pronounce it “Palt and Secker”.

There was one that I laughed at everytime he said it. If Pat or I would do anything that remotely smacked of common sense he’d say “You’re a fart smeller.”

“There’s three things I like about you and I forgot four of them……” was a favourite of his if a conversation was getting too serious. And “There’s worse guys than you” served a similar purpose. It doesn’t sound all that witty, but he’d say it with a poker face and an impish gleam. “Thanks” seemed like an inappropriate response.

When the telephone rang, he frequently answered by saying, “Red Star Brick and Tile.” A few people hung up immediately, thinking they had the wrong number. “They’ll try again if it’s important.”……

Sometimes, without warning, he’d sing, “Oh, they don’t wear pants in the hoochey koochey dance” or “She’s the girl that pinched me in the astor, pinched me just below the mezzanine”.

Ahem,,,, Back To The Story

Not Everyone Can Do The Tough Things

In 1965, The Tijuana Brass was topping the charts. Dad put together a band in that style. They had it down. There were rehearsals in our living room, which was beyond cool. 

1965 was also the year our Mother was diagnosed with cancer. I won’t even attempt to describe the upheaval that ensued and the suffering that poor woman endured. With modern oncology in its infancy at the time, she didn’t have much of a chance and lost her battle in March 1967. 

Dad was left with four children, the youngest being Jane and Mary, who were just four and six.

Irish culture is rich in music, prose, theatre, and poetry. The arts serve the purpose of protest and celebration of beauty, love, and God and provide a buffer from life’s problems. This is particularly true of music. 

In a slightly different sense, music was Dad’s respite as our Mother gradually wasted away. The Saturday night gigs with his band weren’t an escape from reality, that would have been impossible. As anyone who’s had a close family member with a serious illness can tell you, it’s never completely out of your thoughts no matter what you do.

What he was doing was recharging. How would I know this? I didn’t right away, but Pat and I were entering into a new relationship with Dad in which we could talk to a certain degree about affairs of the heart and soul. He explained how playing those gigs helped to keep him strong.

Don’t Try To Figure It Out, Roll With It

When our Mother died, Pat was fourteen, and I was thirteen. 

I’ve observed that communication between parents and children often stops in the early teenage years. I had a friend in high school who claimed he hadn’t said one word to his Father in over a year. Most of my friends had problems at home, not Pat and I. 

Home was gold. Our sisters were platinum. Our Father was our friend. 

We were a team.

It could be argued, and I’ve heard it, that we were drawn together because of our loss. Maybe; but I’ve also seen the opposite. Families torn apart by trauma, blinded to everything but the glare of an unfair, brutal universe. I don’t mean to be judgmental; I’ve wandered into that hell myself a few times. 

It was an unspeakable loss. My brother Pat and I both have vivid episodic memories. We recall that our Mother was completely unselfish and dedicated to the family. She had few possessions, preferring to spend the limited amount of money she had on feeding and clothing us. 

For a while, it seemed as if the family’s very soul had been stolen by thieves in the night.

But Dad was a unifying force. His invaluable assistant was Pat, whose young age belied an incredibly mature sense of responsibility. Above everything else, the mission was to stay together and provide our young girls with a reasonably normal environment in which to grow up.

Me? I was part of the team, no question, but I had already begun the task of pursuing my Father’s broken dream. 

Next: Part 4: Existential Angst