Brazil Street Read online

  We would spend the whole day enjoying its sights, playing around the large duck pond next to the Peter Pan statue, navigating the trails that entwined the area, and then heading to the Bungalow in the heart of the park, where they had a place to buy lunch. A perfect ending to a fine day for us all. Whenever Dad suggested we head to Bowring Park, not one of us stayed home!

  There was a statue of the Fighting Newfoundlander, where Dad would stop and bless himself every time we passed it. I asked Mom why he did this, and she told me that he was blessing himself to remember his friends who had died in World War II and the people from this province who gave their lives for us. When Dad passed away in 1990, I started doing the same thing whenever I went to the park.

  Bowring Park became a haven for townies like us who just wanted to spend more time with their families without costing them a lot of money. It was mostly bus fare and a lunch. My mother loved it there. For her it was a break from the constant pressure of making ends meet with family life and from cooking dinner and supper. A trip to the park was like a holiday.

  One day, Dad came home from work and told us that we were all going with him on his next CN train ride. We were going on a big adventure, to a cabin miles away! Of course, with Dad working for Canadian National Railways, he held a pass that allowed us to ride the train for free.

  Vacations were a big thing then. Few people could afford them. Finally, the big day came, and my brothers and I were beside ourselves with excitement. Dad was wearing his full uniform. I don’t remember ever seeing him wearing it at home before that day. He usually changed into his uniform at the station.

  A taxi came to the house and took us to the Water Street train station. Dad was looking elegant and professional in his dress uniform. Mom loved him in it. He wore a dark suit with brass buttons up and down the front, with a jacket that had stripes around the wrists and collar, and a white shirt marked with CN decals on the collar. A black tie and black circular cap with a wide brim complemented the uniform. His shoes were shined to an immaculate gleam. To his proud children and his wife strolling along beside him at the terminal, he looked as if he owned the railway. I wanted everyone looking at us to know that this man was my father! It was the first time we had ever gone to his place of work. We often went for walks on Water Street when we were young, but we had never been inside the station or on the “Newfie Bullet” (or Caribou) train.

  Every time I go to the railway museum today, I remember that trip to the terminal and the spot where we all waited until Dad inquired about the reservations. He was gone a long time, but we didn’t mind at all. Waiting there was an adventure in itself. All around us, people bought train passes to their destinations while others chatted about their trip. The place was full of people, and there was movement everywhere in the building. I had never encountered so much noise in my young life. My brothers and I were awestruck as we looked around at the wooden floors and seats.

  Dad finally came over to us and passed Mom an envelope which I assumed held the train tickets. Dad, as part of his working duties, had to guide other people aboard the train by order of their sleeping berths before he put us on board. It was still daylight when we arrived, but when we boarded the train it was nearly dark. My last memory from that day, before I went to sleep, was the train whistle.

  Dozing, I felt dad lift me up and walk off the train with me in his arms. I knew nothing until Mom woke me up a few hours later. As I scanned my surroundings, I knew that we were no longer aboard the train. Somehow, my brothers and I were in a cabin a million miles from St. John’s.

  We were now at Mahers, a small settlement dotted with cabins, about fifty miles from St. John’s. Someone who worked on the trains with Dad had lent him a cabin there. The train had stopped at this isolated place, and my father had carried all of his sleeping offspring, one by one, off the train and deposited us into our waiting beds. He then continued on the trip to Port aux Basques, as he was still working.

  The next morning, I awakened to a quiet that one can never hear in the big city. A deafening silence. As I walked outside the cabin for the first time, I saw fields upon fields of tall grass beckoning to me. I looked around and could see no other cabins. It was like we were the last people left on earth! My imagination soared.

  I quickly ran back inside to awaken my brother Ed to explore our immediate surroundings with me. Mom told us to eat breakfast first, so we gulped down a quick bite, and before long her voice was drowned out by the scurry of two little boys rushing out the door. She called out to us and warned us to stay clear of the train tracks, but we barely heard her. We bounded through the grass to see what was beyond. For miles we ran as the wind blew at our backs.

  We went to the train tracks, and we imagined ourselves walking them to meet with our dad in Port aux Basques. That was probably only a mile or so up the track, we thought. We remembered Mom’s words and took care to walk on the side of the tracks. After walking a mile or two, we realized that Port aux Basques was really too far away, so we went back and proceeded in the opposite direction. After walking for a minute or so, we came upon an abandoned railway station.

  It was an old building with paint peeling off the sides of its weathered clapboard. The building was like the forts from all the westerns we had seen and read about in our comic books. It was about a hundred feet long and twenty feet wide, with a ramp that went up one side and levelled off for about another twenty feet or so before heading back down an off-ramp. Ed and I looked at each and knew right away that this was going to be our cowboy stronghold where we could defend ourselves from any Indians who would dare attack us. I was cowboy hero Roy Rogers with his horse, Trigger, and it was up to me to put up the resistance. We rushed back to the cabin to get our guns and holsters. My brothers and I spent days at that fort, conjuring up endless battles and defeating so many bad guys that surely we would return to a hero’s welcome in St. John’s when the trip was over.

  A few days later, Ed, Calvin, and I went in search of more adventure and found it behind the house, where this enormous tree was just begging for us to climb it. It was a small boy’s delight. For hours we were transformed into tree-climbing apes. At the top, we looked around and saw miles of fields, trees, and hills. We were now kings of our own castles with no one around to invade our privacy. Those days at the cabin seemed like they would last forever.

  When the CN train came back a few days later and blew its whistle, from the tail end of the caboose Dad tossed a parcel toward the cabin. It contained comic books, games, and a few candy treats for us. In it were also several things that Mom needed for herself. The train whistle blew again, and she waved to Dad as the train passed by. He waved back to us as the whistle blew once more and the locomotive headed into the distance. Mom told us that Dad was headed back to St. John’s but that he would join us on his next trip back this way. Then he would stay with us for a few days before we all headed back to the city.

  The next day, we headed back to our fort. We started our walk beside the track, and we were nearly there when we came upon a train trolley car on a parallel track away from the main rail line. This was a flatbed car with a crank in the middle. It took one man to run but worked better if there were two people operating it. We played on it all day, imagining we were driving it out to meet Dad.

  We went to Mahers several times over the next few years, reliving the dreams of young boys who let their imaginations run wild. It was a great time to be a kid. We didn’t have much, but in some ways we had it all.

  The Halloween Caper

  Kids will be kids, as the saying goes, and Halloween was always a time when that statement rang true. It was also a time when we knew that many of the treats that we didn’t always have at home would suddenly become readily available to us. But scurrying about the streets of our neighbourhood for treats sometimes became a real challenge. On some Halloween nights, neighbourhood bullies looked to take advantage of the smaller
kids and steal their bundles of loot.

  We always took care to protect our bags when we headed out on Halloween. When a group of us went out, we would sometimes pack together to form a small vigilante group, not only to protect ourselves but to watch out for the younger kids who patrolled our downtown streets. Sometimes we would have it out with boys who invaded our domains.

  Some kids from the areas surrounding Brazil Street and from Buckmaster’s Circle, of Prince of Wales Street fame, or those from around Sheehan’s Shute on Central Street, were never satisfied with their haul and would try to take someone else’s. This didn’t sit well with us. Halloween was a special time when we were allowed to stay out for hours on end to get treats that would keep us for days and weeks in candy, apples, and oranges. We knew that our parents couldn’t afford to give us much of what we collected. Halloween, Christmas, and Easter were the only times of the year when we could enjoy free gifts like this.

  Dickie and I headed out after supper one Halloween. When we got outside, we noticed young Marilyn Sweeney leaving her house on John Street, alone, with none of her brothers or sisters, so we decided to let her tag along with us on our journey from Brazil Square to LeMarchant Road and all the streets in between. We figured we owed her a favour—not long before, we had thrown snowballs at her and her friend.

  We ran from door to door around Brazil Street and Brazil Square, thinking about all the treats in our pillowcases. After knocking on the doors on our street and Brazil Square, we headed to John, Haggerty, Casey, Monroe, and McFarlane streets and Flower Hill. Our pillowcases were starting to fill up with fruit and assorted candy.

  On the way to LeMarchant Road, we noticed that Marilyn was lagging along behind us. As I left a house on Prince of Wales Street with Dickie a door behind me, I turned and noticed two guys struggling with Marilyn. She was a few doors back, and I knew what was happening. She screamed while she fought with her two attackers. Dickie and I rushed toward her just as the two guys took off with her bag in their hands. They headed up Prince of Wales Street with us in pursuit, leaving Marilyn in tears on the side of the street.

  I couldn’t leave her alone, so I let Dickie run after the culprits. If he caught up with them, he’d have a better chance against them than I did, anyway. Luckily, a few buddies from school came along, and I asked them if they could walk Marilyn home. I promised her Dickie and I would share some of our candy with her if we weren’t able to get hers back. Satisfied, I headed back up the street to see what had become of Dickie.

  He was nowhere in sight. I walked through Buckmaster’s Circle, thinking I was nuts to be there by myself, then turned and headed back toward my house to see if Dickie had taken another route back home. On arriving, I searched around and still couldn’t find him.

  I began to worry. Could some Halloween ghosts or goblins have taken my friend to who knows where? Or was he in a confrontation after following those guys? I couldn’t go next door to Mary or Blackie—Dickie’s parents—and ask if they had seen him. It would only make them worry, and that would put an end to our night.

  After I hid my treats in our clubhouse, I ventured off toward the Circle again. I had just gotten to the middle of Prince of Wales Street, on my way over Ricketts Road, near the scene of the robbery, when I saw Dickie coming down the road with only one bag in his hand: his own. I took it that he hadn’t caught the guys who had stolen Marilyn’s. But when he came closer, I noticed he had a big grin on his face. Worried yet relieved to see him, I asked what the foolish grin was about.

  “You know that idiot in school, Pushy Whelan?” We called him Pushy because he was always pushing some kid around.

  I nodded, and he grinned again.

  “Well, after I left you and chased the two guys up Prince of Wales Street, I nearly lost them. But then I caught up to the slower guy as he headed into the Circle. I took a shortcut behind one of the townhouses and came out just when both of them were going inside.”

  Apparently, Mr. Whelan had just gotten home from work at the same time Dickie had spotted the two lads going into the house. So, as bold as you please, he approached Mr. Whelan and told him what had happened. He could tell the man was ticked off. Mr. Whelan didn’t need an angry father, or even a police officer, coming to his door. With that, he told Dickie to wait a moment and went inside. A little while later, he came out holding each boy by the collar and asked them how they had gotten an extra pillowcase of treats. Both knew after seeing Dickie that lying would not get them off the hook.

  Mr. Whelan took the boys inside, then he came back out and said to Dickie, “I’m not doubting your word, son, but I want you to bring the young lady back here with you to identify my son and his friend, and I will give her back her candy and more. I just want her to tell me what happened.”

  “Yes, sir,” was Dickie’s quick reply.

  It was at that point I had seen Dickie running down the street. So, we hurried down to Marilyn’s house on John Street. Ronnie, one of her brothers, wanted to go back to the house with us after we told him the story. The four of us went up Brazil Street and into Buckmaster’s Circle. Strictly speaking, Ronnie wanted to go along so he could give the two boys a “shit-knocking.”

  When we arrived, Mr. Whelan met us in front of the house. He apologized to Marilyn and Ronnie for the trouble his son and his buddy had caused. Ronnie accepted that and asked to see the boys. After Marilyn identified Pushy Whelan and his friend, the man fulfilled his promise and made the boys return the bag to her. He then went in the house and returned with the boys’ Halloween treats! The lads looked like they were in shock.

  When we left, we heard Mr. Whelan send his son’s friend home, telling him he would be phoning his father. Then he yelled at his son, saying what a shameful thing he had done. We looked back to see him grab his son by the collar and push him inside the house. Dickie and I figured the boy would feel the wrath of his father’s hands soon enough. Mr. Whelan wouldn’t phone the police—a beating was likely to happen at the Whelan house tonight.

  I walked down from the Circle thinking that, although the area had a bad name, that night one man held our respect. I was young, but I knew what respect was, and Mr. Whelan had earned mine. He seemed like a hard-working man who held himself responsible for his family’s actions. That night he made me think that not all people from the Circle were bad, and maybe not as many of them as I had thought.

  Marilyn looked at Dickie and me that evening with a new-found admiration for taking care of her. We ended up sharing the boys’ treats between the three of us.

  A few weeks later, I was at Beck’s Cove on Water Street with Dickie, selling cod tongues for Blackie and his fisherman buddies, and I saw the same Mr. Whelan buying some fish from Blackie. He recognized us and waved. Dickie told his father that Mr. Whelan was the man from Halloween night, and Blackie gave him back his money. Mr. Whelan then used that money to buy some cod tongues for an older lady nearby who didn’t have enough money on her for the fish she wanted. Dickie and I thought he was a class act.

  Fifty years later, Marilyn and I renewed our friendship when we joined the same seniors club together here in St. John’s.

  Copper, Sheet Metal, and Car Batteries

  When we were kids, there was a metal shop on George Street, next door to where Green Sleeves Pub is now located. I believe it was called City Scrap Metal. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there might have been a dozen scrap metal places in St. John’s cashing in on old homes being torn down. Valuable house metals such as copper were in demand. But Dickie and I would go to George Street because the owner there always seemed to pay the highest prices for copper, iron, and old car batteries compared to other shops in the city. A friend of ours, Willie Rodden, would bring his stash of metal, and he knew the owner well.

  We could sometimes get twenty cents a pound for copper, iron got us ten cents, sheet metal fifteen cents a pound, and car batteries could fetch us
one to three dollars or more—five if they were in mint condition. They were hard to find, though: other kids in St. John’s had the same idea. Some kids even tried to steal batteries from people’s cars.

  Prices were paid according to the condition of the metals. The shop also collected brass and aluminum, which were rare. Sometimes we would get good prices, but they were always fluctuating up and down according to demand. I think some of the dealers were supplying their own metal, too.

  We would never have known that places in the city actually paid you for these items until my younger brother Hubert told us. He was always going to old houses with his friends looking for items to sell, and he said he had been selling materials to places like City Scrap for years. He had worked part-time tearing down old houses in the city on weekends—I believe he worked for Harding’s Trucking on Springdale Street—and had been paid good money for the materials he found. From the time we found this out, we were on a hunt for metal, and no part of the city was safe.

  Dickie and I left no stone unturned when it came to dilapidated houses. We searched everywhere in our part of the city, usually within a three-mile radius from home. But one such “pot of gold” nearly led us into a lot of trouble. We would soon find out that such metals could be dangerous to get, particularly when it came to entering some of these old homes.

  Row houses were being torn down in the east end, and in the middle of Central Street, to make way for new townhouses and apartment buildings. It was part of the city restructuring plan the provincial and the federal governments had come up with to revitalize St. John’s. Many contractors were hired to tear down houses all over the city.

  We couldn’t go to an old house while the men were working, so we waited until they had retired for the evening or for the weekend. If we bothered men while they were working, our parents would find out and reprimand us. Also, the men themselves would probably give us a kick in the rear end for loitering.