Post #26


 Here's a peek at the aforementioned 'club days' when my mom would gather a group of her friends on Thursday nights, and they'd gather at the kitchen table and make crafts for Christmas and talk; also known as 'stitch & bitch' by some today; although there was really no bitching going on when they got together, they just loved each others' company.  That would be Flo from the Tracy family on the left, Jeanette Longphee in the middle, and dear 'ol Mom with one of her Benson & Hedges or Craven M smokes.  Sometimes she smoked Matinee Special Filter or Peter Jackson.
That paneling though, eh?  And those floral kitchen chairs.  Weird how styles evolve through time.  I remember thinking it was all so modern in its own days.
One of my brothers piped in some other names Mom would have over for these kinds of nights - names like Bertille, Kay, Pauline Wilson, Anita Tracy... there were so many.  Bertille was funny.  She'd often call when Mom was out and I'd answer the old Doodle phone:  "Ehhhhh, Mi-chael... is Mommy in or out?"  Um, nope, sorry Bertille, she's at the grocery store (or wherever at the time).  "Ah, okay.  Are you over at the house playing with your boyfriends?"  Oh dear oh dear oh dear.  Poor Bertille didn't quite keep up with some of the modern language, thinking that 'girlfriends' like Mom were to her equated my guy friends being 'boyfriends'.  I never corrected her, because it was always harmless.  
All of Mom's friends were always super nice to me.  Looking back, I can see that that would likely be because Mom would say to them how much I was going through.  It's a miracle I didn't wind up at death's door, many times.  Sometimes I wonder that Dad and my deceased Uncle Maurice from my Mom's side were watching over me, pushing back The Reaper.  I can practically hear them.... "No!!  This young man has a lot of things to do yet!!"  Uncle Maurice and Aunt Gail, his wife, seemed to fancy me growing up to be a priest.  Yeah, that didn't happen.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post #44

Image
The Queen of the Cooks. At the top you see a very young-looking Thora smiling pretty for the camera at Christmas time.  There's a little glimpse also of what appears to be Dad beside her... except it's not, that's Rick!  Dad's mini-me, who's now a major-him.  Boy, am I glad I was a shutterbug in those days.  All these great pictures, especially of Mom. On the bottom, there she is in her favorite robe sitting on the Crazy Quilt hide-a-bed couch with the matching (not so much) cushions.   Not sure what papers she has in her hand there, but let me just note that Mom was extremely savvy with the finances.  She was on a shoestring budget to manage the household, and she did it quite deftly.  It left all of us wondering how she did it.  Mostly me, I guess, because I didn't have a head for money at all in those days.  Still don't, really!  Thankfully, I had the wherewithal to hand over financing duties to Janice shortly after we got into o...
Read more

Post #4

Image
  Here we have a picture of two of the most important people to walk into my life. On the left, we have Tim Berg.... Just kidding.... Tim Churchill. On the right is Janice Hansen.... later to become my wife, aka Janice Cook. Not entirely sure of the locale this was taken, but I'll venture to say that it was likely at our old abode on Satinwood Drive here in Moncton.  Likely Tim's other half at the time, Kelly, was with us at that point off camera. We're all big fans of a band called The Pursuit Of Happiness, and Tim's hair is actually not as plentiful as it might appear here as he's borrowing Janice's.  The bunch of us were always up for a fun time and this was no different.  The timeline would put this shot around the late 90s, as Janice is wearing a borrowed or hand-me-down sweater of another good friend Lucy, who used to work with me at BJ's Sub Shop, at which I was the driver for.  That logo for BJ's was actually designed by me per my boss's Donn...
Read more

Post #24

Image
  Here's The Mitzi taking a bath, and Professor Mitzi chillin' on the couch.   Every once in a while we'd have to give our lovable little mutt a bath because she wasn't smelling as pretty as she thought she looked.  The only trick was to get her in that tub, because she didn't quite have the dexterity to leap out of it once she was in there.  I still can smell those Hartz shampoo bottles that we used for her.  Not the loveliest of scents, but better than obese dog sweat at least. For the fun of it, I thought I'd take a picture of her with my windshield-style glasses.  Of course, everyone was wearing those back in the day.  In some corners, they still do.   In that bottom picture is that classic colorful afghan covering up my Dad's favorite old chair.  I'd held onto that until it just fell apart too much to make sense to hang onto.  Dad would sit in that chair on Sundays and read the weekend paper, or watch Atlantic Grand Prix W...
Read more