Saturday, August 30, 2014

The Pain of Adolescence and Sparky: Chapter Sixteen


This is a poult, a young turkey, photographed in Beacon Hill Park in Victoria earlier this summer. 

Suddenly, a little acne doesn't seem so bad.

Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Chapter Sixteen 

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

Carol's story about how Pea set about to discard Stuart's bastard child seemed incredible to me.

"How does anyone order the fate of another person like that?" I asked.

"Things were different back then," Carol said. "Even these days, rich people get to do pretty much what they want."

But, Pea did not entirely get her way. The two cousins did not exactly follow instructions. Instead they grew fond of the groundskeeper's daughter and conspired with her to frustrate Pea's intentions. 

When the baby - a boy - was born, they sent a message to Pea that the child had been stillborn. They then demanded their consideration anyway, as a guarantee that the story of the child would stay with them. Pea sent a small amount of money - too small thought the cousins and that planted the seeds of a simmering resentment they nurtured and elaborated over the years.

The groundskeeper's daughter and her son stayed with Pea's cousins until the son was eighteen years old and the groundskeeper's daughter thirty-four. Then, after a tearful and heart wrenching farewell, the groundskeeper's daughter took her son back with her to her childhood home. 

In his new town, the son quickly met and married a young woman. Just as quickly they had their only child, a son, the little boy who would grow up to be Gerry Ringbold. 

Bob Harrison's account of Gerry's life goes only as far back as his birth. Had Harrison tried a little harder at his job, he might have found out about Gerry's lineage, his connection to Pea's second cousins in upstate New York and about the anger that had built over the years around how Pea had thrown away Stuart's child. Harrison might also have found out that the upstate New York cousins bankrolled Gerry's legal education, their intention from the beginning being to use Gerry as their avenging angel.

As for the groundskeeper's daughter, with her son grown and her best years still ahead of her, Gerry's grandmother set about to rebuild her life. 

By now it is the mid-seventies. Without even a high school education and no social network but her family, the groundskeeper's daughter found herself back where she began, in Pea's house, asking for a job. 

Stuart had been dead for almost five years. Pea was prepared to show some magnanimity, especially because she was not aware that Stuart's child was alive, living in the same city, and raising Stuart's grandson. So she brought the groundskeeper's daughter back on staff to cook, clean and do laundry.

Settled as well as she ever might be, the groundskeeper's daughter married one of the other members of the staff. They had two children, both girls, one born in 1978 and one in 1980. The groundskeeper's daughter named her second girl Carol, after one of Pea's cousins. If Pea noticed the coincidence, she never said anything about it. 

"And that," said Carol, "is how someone born five years before me can be my grand-nephew. My mother and Gerry's grandmother were the same person."

You can read Chapter Seventeen here.


Saturday, August 23, 2014

Still Life With Tin Can and Sparky: Chapter Fifteen


A while ago I wrote about the Brickworks turtles and lucky cats. Consider this the sequel. The old houses on Glen Road, long boarded up and home only to feral cats and raccoons are now under some kind of painstaking evisceration, a process leaving just the brick superstructure. As this photo shows, the houses are all brick, right down to the foundation floor.

Cool.

Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Chapter Fifteen 

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

I had first met Carol the same way I meet a lot of people these days. She walked into the women's washroom. It was my first day on the job. She struck up a conversation with me then and it became a regular part of my work day: tirades from Marriba, bullshit from Jennifer and normal talk with Carol.

Her out-of-the-blue revelations of living with Pea and being related to Gerry Ringbold knocked me off my centre for a second.

"How on earth is someone a half-nephew?"

Carol laughed. "I can explain everything, but you're going to have to wait. I gotta run."

And she was gone.

Carol did explain everything over the next couple of days. Some of what she told me I have already told you, such as the details of who got what in Pea's will. But, because life is a mystery that unfolds on its own schedule, I've been holding out on you.

Here's Gerry Ringbold's real back story, far more complete than what Bob Harrison - the Gerry-obsessed reporter - wrote in his piece of alleged journalism I described at the beginning of this story. I'll start with Pea and Stuart.

Peony MacDonald and Stuart Chester's marriage was arranged by their families. Basically a business deal, their union was a merger of old and new money, a trade of a car load of social respectability for a car load of cash. As a bride, Pea was self-involved and spoiled. She considered her new husband to be a social inferior and she never really loved Stuart. Turns out Pea's assessment was fairly astute. Stuart was a gambling, opium-smoking, alcoholic lout who, despite his failings, probably loved Pea, but that didn't stop him from stepping out on her. Or from squandering her money.

Pea suffered enormous humiliation from Stuart as he philandered about town. She also suffered financial setbacks because just about all the money Chester brought to the union was gone in less than three years from gambling losses and reckless investments. Pea exacted punishment in a manner in keeping with their social status and bearing by forcing Stuart to watch her siphon gigantic quantities of money away from him to all the charities she supported over the years. 

In their heyday as the city's most beautiful, wealthy, admired and influential couple -- with lots of sad secrets that lots of people knew about but now all those people are dead -- Pea and Stuart maintained along with their charade of a marriage, a staff of about 15 people, including secretaries for each of them, a butler for Stuart, kitchen staff, cleaning staff, groundskeepers and handymen. 

One of the groundskeepers had a family of his own and was hoping the Chesters could provide one or two of his children an opportunity. When preparations began in 1955 for the annual New Years Eve party, the groundskeeper approached the butler to ask if his fifteen year old daughter might be hired to help serve guests.

The butler happily said yes.

The groundskeeper's daughter made such a positive impression at the New Year's party that she was brought onto the regular staff where she cleaned and did laundry.

By June 1956, it was obvious the groundskeeper's daughter was pregnant. Everyone knew that Stuart was the father. No one dared breathe a word.

Pea's response was measured and iron-fisted.

The groundskeeper's daughter was given three hundred dollars in cash, a one-way train ticket to Rochester, New York and taken to the train station. Once she alighted in Rochester, the groundskeeper's daughter was brought to the comfortable upstate New York home of two of Pea's cousins who had agreed, in return for consideration, to take the baby once it was born and arrange to have it put up for adoption.

As for what they were to do with the groundskeeper's daughter, otherwise known as Gerry Ringbold's grandmother, Pea forwarded no direction.

You can read Chapter Sixteen here.















Friday, August 15, 2014

Sense of Home and Sparky: Erratum


As did armies of old, some of the celebrants at the Pemberton Music Festival bore standards.

Among the ensigns held high and brandished with pride were Poppa Smurf, Steve Buscemi's head, a Jagermeister flag and... the one in the middle of the shot above.

There's a cut-out of Rob Ford on the side away from the camera. The side you can see reads: I DON'T POP MOLLY I ROCK ROB FORD. Molly, for all the non-hipsters among my readers, is slang for the party drug ecstasy. I didn't know this when I saw the sign; I know it now because I looked it up in the Urban Dictionary.

Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Erratum 

The publishers of Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery regret to inform all our loyal readers (all four of you: you know who you are) that there was an error in the closing lines of last week's episode.

Subscribers were sent a version that included the following statements:


"What do you want to know about them?"
"Everything! What do you know?"
"A thing or two," she said. "Gerry Ringbold was my half-brother."



What the author meant to say was:



"What do you want to know about them?"
"Everything! What do you know?"
"A thing or two," she said. "I grew up in Pea's house. And Gerry Ringbold was my half-nephew."


The publishers regret the error.

Also, the author's sister is getting married again. Sparky will resume next week.
  

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Did Not See That Coming and Sparky: Chapter Fourteen


Spotted at the Pemberton Music Festival: fortune-cookie-grade words of wisdom, from a movie made half a decade before most of the festival patrons were born.


Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Chapter Fourteen 

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

The rumours burning with California brush fire intensity around the Gardens were not all false. Once she turned her fervid pre-med-educated attention to Gerry Ringbold, Marriba said a few things that, after I fact checked them, rang true.

"The man is as pink as a scalded piglet, wearing long sleeves in hot weather even though he is obviously overheated and when he bares his skin he has zinc or some other substance applied to his skin to block the sun. Clear signs of Smith-Lemil-Opitz syndrome. Extreme photosensitivity. Possibly a root to the vampire myth: people who redden and blister on exposure to sunlight."

And ...

"Chagas disease. I have seen it. My father was on a medical mission to Mexico where thousands lived with the condition until it killed them young. Ringbold was infected. He may have been bitten by a disease-carrying bug on a lovely vacation. He certainly drank and probably did drugs. He was fat and did not eat the right food or exercise. He had a weak, sick heart."     

I also came to believe at least one thing Jennifer said. 

She came in one day shortly after Gerry's death as upset as I'd ever seen her.

"Man, these people should be arrested," she said.

"Arrested? What are you talking about?"

"Look, little sister, this isn't something everyone knows about, but I was raised in the woods and I know these things."

"OK," I said, my tone set to 'I completely believe you,' "What do you know?"

"There's a killer plant growing in the garden. They're giant wild carrots and they have sap that will burn you and blind you. When I was on the res, I saw deer nibble on them and drop dead!"   

Jennifer was lying about the deer, and bordering on nonsense with the bit about the carrot, but, I checked, and  there is a poisonous plant called giant hog weed. It grows to great heights and, back in the day, people who did not yet worry about things like invasive species planted them as showy monstrosities in their gardens. Every web site I looked at warned about exposure to the sap, which could cause blistered burns.

I searched the Garden after my shift to see if I could find any giant hog weed, which looked like a super-sized version of Queen Anne's Lace. But I couldn't find any. The next day I asked Jennifer where she'd seen the plant.

"Oh, they're gone now. Cut down weeks ago."

Pissed off that once again I had let myself be suckered by Jennifer, my next question was a bit short.

"And who should be arrested?"

"The guy who cut it down, Dubs."

"Why?"

"Because he used it to kill Gerry." 

This was Jennifer's third version of how she knew Gerry had been killed by Cornwall Dubbins, so I gave up on her. I waited until five o'clock to ask Carol when she came by for a chat.

I had a web site on hog weed up on my lap top when Carol came in. She noticed right away.

"What's the interest in giant hog weed?"

"Jennifer says it used to grow in the Garden and that someone used the sap to kill Gerry Ringbold."

Carol half laughed, half snorted. "That's ridiculous."

"Which? That it grew in the Garden or that it could kill someone?"

Carol paused before she answered. "Both," she said.

Looking like she wanted to change the subject, her eyes fell on some printouts on the desk.

"What're these?"

"I'm doing some research on Peony MacDonald and Gerry Ringbold. This could be my breakthrough story."

I had told Carol many times about my plans for my life. She gave me a big smile.

"What do you want to know about them?"

"Everything! What do you know?"

"A thing or two," she said. "I grew up in Pea's house. And Gerry Ringbold was my half-nephew."

You can read Chapter Fifteen here.























Saturday, August 2, 2014

The Office and Sparky: Chapter Thirteen

Fisgard Lighthouse, Esquimalt Harbour, Victoria, B.C.
It's public knowledge that the name of the Ministry I work at has been changed to the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change. It's less well known what, exactly, that means. 

One thing it means for sure is at least three different parts of the department I work in will have to forget their petty squabbles and learn to work together.

This sounds like -- and has proven so far to be -- a scene from a predictable sitcom.

Everyone accuses everyone else of the same high crimes: "they don't tell us what they're working on... we are asked to review materials at the last minute... they don't include our changes in the final documents..."

TV has taught me that people eventually overcome their differences. What I'd like to do now is fast forward over all the hilarity and get to the group hug. 

Then maybe we could get some work done around here. Once everyone gets back from vacation, that is.  


Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Chapter Thirteen 

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

Once Gerry was dead, the news circulated almost immediately that he used illegal drugs. 

Everyone came into the washroom carrying the news. One habitué - a long-time resident at a nearby women's shelter - claimed she knew Gerry's dealer. 

Some even said he came to the Gardens, under the influence, looking for more. 

Here's a sample conversation, carried on between two young women in tennis clothes, over the noise of peeing, flushing, hand washing and Dyson air blades.

"They say he like smoked crack and was like high all the time..."

"Like I told you, he was totally like wasted all the time..."

"Totally wasted, like what a loser..."

"But the police like they don't know a thing about it..."

"Like, they're totally lame ..."

"Totally. They like completely suck ..."

"Yeah, the cops suck... Like Craig told me that the dead guy like bought drugs from the guys that like hang at the other end of the park..."

"What guys? Like there's no guys. Craig's a loser ..."

"No. Don't be like a bitch. Craig's OK. Like it's not just like Craig that says that. I've heard like from a lot of people that there's like lots of drugs for sale here ..."

"Uh huh... Like OK. Like just don't talk to Craig ... He's like the world's biggest douchebag."

"The dead guy's like the world's biggest douchebag. Such a loser..."

"Yeah. Loser."

Before their restoration, the Gardens had been a hot spot for all kinds of criminal activity including the sale and consumption of illegal drugs. But that all changed with the Peony MacDonald Chester Foundation for the Public Enjoyment of the Thompson Gardens. The disruption on the site during the countless assessments and the construction of multiple buildings flushed the regulars from their holes. All of the dealers and hookers had moved on from the Gardens, not far, mind you, but they did move. 

That fact, plus the 24/7 security presence including foot patrols and camera surveillance, made it unlikely that Gerry Ringbold or anyone came to the Gardens looking for drugs.

Still, except for the police and me, everyone around here agrees that looking for drugs in the Gardens is just what Gerry was doing the night he died.

You can read Chapter Fourteen here.