Harrowsmith – September 2019

Harrowsmith Fall 2019 | 253

surgery pictures were great to

pull out from under the table to

quickly gross out Dax so we could

quickly inhale the last of the

McCain fries while he ran out of

the room to fake barf.

We had lousy television

reception. On a very good night,

our family had maybe five

channels available to us. If there

was any hint of wind or flurries

or a crow flying overhead, we had

a snowy screen. Not that there

was much to watch in those days.

It was either The Jetsons or The

Flintstones, Little House on the

Prairie or Magnum , P.I.

Otherwise, we wanted for very

few things. We had it all, really: a

pollywog-filled pond behind the

house, and train tracks that we

walked upon like balance beams.

We tried flattening pennies on

those same tracks, but the train

was so infrequent we usually

forgot about the pennies until

“next time.” I suppose we had a

little bit of city-kid env y.

Making money in the country

involved hard labour, unlike the

urban alternatives—lemonade

stand, paper route. Dax and I

earned a steady income taking an

S.O.S pad to the whitewalls of my

dad’s baby-blue Cutlass Supreme.

We’d Turtle Wax the tires too—

then shine up our BMXs with

the same attention but without

pay. For piecework, we would

pick gravel out of the grass after

the snow melted (whenever my

grandfather ploughed the drive,

he routinely ploughed the gravel

too, onto the grass). Seasonally, we

could also pick up pine cones in

the woods, where my dad cut the

grass with a push mower. If you’ve

ever cut grass in a pine cone–filled

forest, you’ll know that it’s like

being hit by hot shrapnel when

those cones fire out the side or

back of the mower. H

TRAVEL & CULTURE: FREE TO A GOOD HOME

ILLUSTRATION BY JULES TORTI (AGE 15)