It was one of the those wood frame
windows they built into 2 ½-storey family homes 100 years ago. Perhaps four
feet tall, and 2 ½ feet wide with a push
up lower sash that allowed cool air to flow in during summer.
My grandparents had their kitchen
table set beside that window so they could
watch the weather and whatever else might be happening outside.
There wasn’t a whole lot to see
because of the house next door, which had a similar kitchen window directly
across the driveway separating the two houses. You could see a bit of both back
yards and a glimpse of downtown, which started just a block or so behind the
houses.
It was the window through which my
grandfather saw the moose arrive one day after lunch. The big beast trotted
between the two houses and stood surveying the back yard.
My grandfather kept his legendary
.38-.55 deer rifle on a rack in the cold room just behind the kitchen. It was
the rifle he boasted could “knock a deer down, clean it and pack it out of the
woods with one bullet.” Within a minute or so the old man appeared on the
clothes line stoop, .38-.55 in hand, and dropped the moose stone cold dead with
one shot.
It probably is not the best idea
to shoot a moose just a couple blocks away from downtown. It is decidedly a bad
idea to bag a moose in a backyard only a stone’s throw from the Department of
Lands and Forests (now Ministry of Natural Resources) northern headquarters.
I didn’t get all the details of
what happened when the police and conservation officers arrived. I was told
that my grandfather was not charged with anything, that the moose was hauled
away and the .38-.55 was back on its rack when I got home. Times were different
back then.
There were other scenes viewed
through that kitchen window but none as exciting as the day the unfortunate
moose decided to visit. There is one other, however, that pushes into my memory
more these days as the U.S. presidential race becomes increasing absurd and
sad.
My grandfather and I were
finishing bowls of his famous Mulligan Stew one evening when he looked out the
window and exclaimed: “There, they’ve turned it into a bootlegging operation
and gambling den.”
I peered out and saw people next
door sitting at their kitchen table playing cards. There was a jug of homemade wine
on the table. A day or so later he announced with disgust that he had seen them
dumping garbage on their back lawn.
We learned later that they were
‘foreigners’ the first newcomers to a neighbourhood where houses almost never
changed families. It was an established neighbourhood where everyone had an Anglo-Saxon
surname. But times were changing.
Not long after, I finished school
and moved to another city where my work as a young reporter took me into what
was known as Little Italy. I met a girl there and soon was invited into homes
where families played cards in the evening and usually had a jug of homemade wine
on the table. They also gathered up their kitchen garbage and piled it in their
back yards where it rotted and became rich soil for their luxuriant vegetable
gardens.
I married that girl and wherever
we lived we had a backyard where we composted kitchen waste for nourishing our
vegetable garden. And we usually had a jug of homemade wine on our table.
My grandfather used to shake his
head and mutter when he stared out his kitchen window and saw the goings on
next door. That was because his view was limited to what was offered through a
single window.
Every time I see one of the
Republican debates on U.S. TV I think about my grandfather’s kitchen window and
its limited view. Politicians today have a view of the whole world through panoramic
picture windows, yet they see only what they want to see. Too often what they
choose to see matches what they believe will get them elected.
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