From The Mailbag
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
It must be twenty years since I first opened an email from Cecile Ritchie. She lived in North Bay at the time and read my column in the North Bay Nugget. After a while she connected with my wife, Sharon, and they began emailing back and forth (probably about me and not too kindly I imagine). After Sharon passed away in 2010, Cecile and I kept up their on-line correspondence and still do today. When the Packet and 80 other papers were shafted by a band of scoundrels in 2017, I switched to SUNonline. I added Cecile to a group of a dozen or so other readers I send the column to whether they want to receive it or not.
Cecile and I have never met in person, but I think she is under the impression I am some sort of a handsome stud in my late thirties, a Hugh Jackman type if you will, only taller. If you should ever meet her please don’t spoil her illusions.
Cecile wrote me about last week’s column and her memories and I thought I should pass it along.
Subject: Re: Cooking in the great outdoors
Jim, what a great read. Thank you. How happy I am to report my son, now 31, had the same upbringing in North Bay. He saved some of the stuff to tell me after he was safely into adulthood thank goodness, but he and his two best buddies would take off on their bikes and return after awhile.
Front door opens, ‘Mom, do we have a saw? Nails? Hammer? ‘
They constructed a 3 bed/2 bath condo in the woods up the road, ha ha, probably the size of your forest as a child. Our biggest concern (terrible parents by today’s standards)… make sure you bring your father’s tools back. Once construction was completed a couple weeks later it would be…’ do we have a cooler?’ Snacks and drinks and off they went. I absolutely loved seeing those boys living that life, it’s why we moved north.
They were about 8-10 years old then. Navigating Lake Nipissing at age 12 was a little more frightening for me but his dad, grown up on Manitoulin Island and tossed into Georgian Bay by older brothers and cousins (every last one of them still alive), gave his blessing. Rules ensued, always together, same spot etc. They had a spot with a great sandbar not far from shore and around that sandbar was nature’s swimming pool.
What fun. I’d cruise by once in awhile to check on them (shared that years later-parents have secrets too). About a 20 minute bike ride from home, flop your bikes on the beach and jump in. Heaven. Other days they’d be equipped with fishing rods.
As older teens/young adults they enjoyed sleeping in but loved going fishing at 5 a.m., more especially when one of the dads offered up his 9ft aluminum ride. They brought home fresh fish too, cleaned and cooked it. Skills taught by parents.
He now lives way up north and nothing has changed. I’m going for a week next month. We will explore the woods, lakes and likely cook something on a remote beach (he and his wife’s secret forest). ‘We have to get you on a paddle board.’ Yikes!
One of his crew always had a band-aid on a knee or shin, a couple stitches happened along the way. Life. Never stopped them.
When he talks about his childhood I’m happy they were free to explore, figure things out, screw up. The kids in his in-laws’ family are living the same life.
As kids in South America we ran businesses in our childhood yards, had a president (who had to be a boy until one day one of the girls asked why and declared herself president, ha ha, still makes me chuckle) and I had a classroom of kids sitting on the stairs outside while I taught school. Mom saved cans/boxes from groceries; Dad got different coloured sand so we could stock our store shelves with ‘sugar’ ‘brown sugar’ etc. We had to weigh things, make change (different buttons were different coins). Tried to get the younger ones to take two dimes for a quarter (quantity) and being reported to parents for clarification ha ha. Beautiful lessons.
Thanks for igniting a trip down memory lane.
We are blessed and so are my future grand-kids. I absolutely love it when kids just show up on their bikes. When I retire and move there I’m living just far enough away I can look out the window and see them riding towards my house, drop their bikes in the driveway and ask, ‘do you have a saw, Grandma, nails? a hammer?’
Regards, Cecile
(Image Supplied)
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