Sure Signs of Summer and Sparky: Chapter Four

'Love locks' on the Brooklyn Bridge

It's finally summer. I am certain of this because on the May 24 weekend, unaccountably held on May 19 this year, Bruce and I strolled around the deserted city and enjoyed a beer on an outside patio without freezing to death. 

Suicide Barrier on the Bloor Viaduct

Ironically death-defying placement of
love lock on the Suicide Barrier
on the Bloor Viaduct

No one risked their lives to lock these up

The other reason I am certain it is summer is that the last two movies I have watched were in 3D. They both involved major military efforts to destroy scary misunderstood beings. Both had lots of explosions and carnage, but on the internationally-recognized mayhem measurement of "most buildings destroyed," Godzilla beat X-Men: Days of Future Past handily. On every other measure - was it fun, did the characters appeal, was there genuine tension in the story line - X-Men kicked Godzilla's ass.

Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Chapter Four 

Sparky here. This is Chapter Four of my story about how Gerry Ringbold met his untimely end. The story starts here.

"Pea," as she was called, was born in 1900 like I said, and as the towers of the World Trade Centre fell, she breathed her last in the 18-room mansion she’d lived in since her marriage to Stuart Chester in 1920.   

The marriage of Pea MacDonald and Stuart Chester was a very big deal. She was the daughter of a prominent family that traced its line back to the kings of England and Stuart was the only son of a family grown rich on the pulp and paper industry. There were no pictures of the wedding in the newspaper because the technology of printing halftones did not exist at the time. The article about the wedding described Pea as “famously fair” and Stuart as “the handsome only son of the Bracebridge Chesters.” Their wedding took more than half of the society page but most of it was about the guest list and descriptions of the clothes worn by members of the wedding party.  

There were lots of other articles about Pea and Stuart over the next many decades, but only about their parties - who were the guests in attendance and lavish detail about what they were all wearing - or about their gifts to charitable causes. There were no stories of scandals, or stints in rehab, or children born out of wedlock. By today's standards it was like there was a strict code of privacy between the Chesters and the press.

That code held for for almost fifty years, right up to 1969 when Stuart died at the age of seventy. His full-page obituary talked about his service in the military and his good works as a civilian, but did not say how he died. 

I'm going to guess that Stuart died of lung cancer. After half-tone printing was invented, photos of Stuart in the newspapers always showed him with a cigarette in his hand. By the 60’s, Stuart had that tanned from the inside out look that hard core smokers have. Pea’s first act as a widow was to make a very large donation to the then brand-new Queen Elizabeth Cancer hospital.

In the same newspaper photos that showed Stuart slowly turning himself into a piece of human jerky, Pea always looked more or less the same. Once every other year or so, she would change her hair, which was originally brown and then she coloured it for a while and then she just let it go grey. She was about the same height as Stuart and they were both pretty tall. They were these attractive people, rich by anybody’s standards, always throwing great parties to raise money for something. For fifty years, the only society address that really mattered in this town belonged to Pea and Stuart. 

Pea performed her most famous charitable act before Stuart died. On her sixtieth birthday – July 1, 1960 – Pea put ten million dollars aside in a trust to be used to create a charitable endowment for the Thompson Gardens upon her death. 

You can read Chapter Five here.