Sunday

Sunday on Montréal South Shore in the late 50's

Sunday

 

Sunday when you are retired is the same as any other day. Watching my kid play race game on his IPod Touch, my wife sleeping  because  her  nightly  lifestyle as homebound digital scrapbooking  designer  working  on European and  Australian time schedule.  Nothing left for me  then be a baby sitter for Tonka our  mini macaw parrot When I was kid, Sundays were specials full of activities I remember....

My parents got married pretty young Mom was 18 and Dad just turned out 20 years old; I came just over nine months later.... It was important than to have kids soon after getting married but within the proper time frame. My brother and I, always woke early. My brother is eighteen months younger than me .I was born in 1954 and he came in 1956. We were baby boomers in French Canadian catholic society, if my mother didn't have miscarriages, we would have been four, maybe six. On our  street  we were one  of the  families  with the  least  children so  within of  my  own extended family;  I have plenty of ''cousins and cousines ''. 

My brother  Normand and  I always  woke up very early, so many things to do when you were six or eight: feed  the  dog, feed  the  budgie,  play with  mini-brick  ( no Lego then ) etc  . One of the  things I remember  doing is to sneak in my parent's  bedroom  and  go sleep with  them and  that  included  the  dog and bird.  Once I went  alone  and  woke  up between my aunt  and  uncle  visiting  from the State Uncle Gerry and  aunt Dora  found it  very funny ....not  me ! Anyway  usually  the  sleep in finished by  the Sunday morning wrestling  match  in the parent's bed  that is  until  I jumped on my father back, hurting him ...that put an abrupt end to our pugilistic wake up. After the  fight  was the breakfast  with 1960  Sugar loaded cereals the  word  sugar rush or  hyper active wasn't  part of the vocabulary then we were just healthy happy kids.

Then was time to prepare  for  the Mass at church.  Sunday best clothing was brought out by my mother, clean faces cow licks put back in place; everything  had to be perfect cause  everybody knew each other then and we had to look and behave our best. I hated that part of the day 45 minutes of behaving that was asking a lot from us. I always had  scare of  highs inside our  church and  most of  the  time  we  were  late  and  had  to go to the ''jubé'',  the gallery  second floor just  under  the choir and  organ third floor.  looking at  those big  forged iron lamp i always  wonder  how they were changing  the bulb also around  the inside  dome.... then my mind  started spinning .....once  a I almost  felt  someone  caught me  by the collar....ouf !  When the mass was done, the ''jubé'' people  when out  by side external shaking, see thru iron stairs another frightening experience  fifty people in the swinging stairs at  the  same time  we  were bound to make the first page of  the  journal on of these days. The church's front porch served then as  a  social gathering  ( until malls  took  the job away). Yakety yak from adults as we the children, were waiting, then when we got into school age we did our own PR, mostly lurking at girls but that is another story. One day as we pull out of church, the English school located in an old archaic building went ablaze so did the ''salle paroissiale'' . The  burning  brought  a lot  of  problem  when the English speaking  kids  were relocated in our  school lots of  fight I found  myself  in the middle  of  such  a brawl  once   and  pushing  a  kid  over  the ice ring  band   from a  snow monticule, I broke  Bob Smith's  arm.... again another  story.  

 

Usually when we got home  we had  a fast  lunch , often my parent  being  ''à jeun''  ( without  any meal at least  for one hour before the religious service as requested  the catholic church for communion), my parent being  practicing  catholics then. After dinner,  preparative  to go to the grandparents located in  what  was then called ''Ville Jacques Cartier'' , since  annexed  to the ''Cité de Longueuil'' on the South Shore of  Montreal,  from our  Town of Chambly-Bassin  it was a 12 miles  ride in my father Monarch '54,  that he had  bought used. My brother and  I couldn't  wait  cause  we would  meet our  cousins at Granma ! Granma had had twelve children and most of them had children..... So there were lots of cousins; in fact three waves or generations of them.  My brother was the youngest of the middle wave; some cousins of the third wave I never met until now. Every sunday there was always a few cousins at the grandparents: my cousins, Jean, Michel Claude and their sisters Mireille, Lucie, Diane Nicole et Michèle.  Sometime our cousin Bill and his sister Ann-Mary from the States were there too ... they didn't speak French....

Granma own a small grocery store / restaurant she sold candies in bulk we bought it with our pennies You did get a lot of candy for .05¢ ,  then. My cousin and I, we also served ourselves freely when out of money; Granma closed her eyes on this, faking to ignore our stealing.   

Grandpa was sick he had cancer, so we had to stay out of the house so we went to play in the fields Lately I went back there, the field were long gone event the houses built on them were in derelict conditions. I remember my aunts telling us to stay away from the hoboes the precursors of the homeless. Nobody ever checked on us, we were free, nothing ever happened either.

One thing that was important in our family was food, rich French-Canadian simple cuisine in quantity no question of Weight  Watchers  then and most aunts always been on the chubby side . While grandma and most of the time, my mother, held the store, the sisters and sister and law prepared the supper in the small white house across the street while uncle threw balls in the street in between.  From the cummunal family supper  I remember the children table and the youngest uncle Réal still a teenager watching upon us. Réal studied in Willimantic Connecticut with Peter Tork of the Monkeys, he used to come back by buses or train and  purchased  DC Comics for the ride he stacked  them  in the wired newspaper rack by the black and wide bulky TV.  One day, he told me to take them home, so I was exposed to Batman, Superman and Green Lantern then;  my initiation to English reading.

After the supper, we watched TV all together: ''Robin Hood'' with Richard Green, ''Ivanhoe'' with Roger Moore and ''Danger Man'' with Patrick McGohan. Now that I think of it, they were all British series but we also watched ''The Ed Sullivan Show''. In The grandparent's living room everyone had its assigned place, my family owned the main couch; the four of us spooned together in a corner.

After the show, we all went back to our respective house. Those were the days before the main highway so the route Number 1 then, Just before the Rond Point in Saint-Hubert was the railroad track that crossed the road then, it was before they build a ''viaduc'' to pass under the railroad. Sometime we waited for hundred coaches' long freight train. The Rond Poind had a bad reputation then and  was site  to  multiple accidents. The Chemin de Chambly was the main way to the Lac Champlain and the Eastern Township so the traffic back to Montréal was bumper to bumper up to Chambly, but we rode in the opposite way. The Chemin Chambly was sided by deep ditches which flew heavily toward Chambly and the Montréal River, in the spring. We witness several deadly accidents there. Most of the time my brother and I fell asleep on the bump of the driving shaft dividing the back traction car; my father carrying us one by one to our respective bed to only wake up to go back to school in the morning.