Big Jim’s Erection

I gave big Jim Troke a hand with his erection this week. Jim goes a long way back in my history. Once upon a time we were boys in the same circle at Coxheath: pond hockey in winter, pasture baseball in summer, various boyish shenanigans in between. Briefly we shared a life of crime. The alpha male in the circle was John Phillips. One day John decided it would be a good idea to perpetrate a B&E in the neighbour’s house and borrow the man’s rifle for awhile. It was only a few days later when I came home from school to find an RCMP squad car in front of the house. For a very long moment I pondered whether flight was a better option than facing the music. It was my father’s reaction I feared more than the Mounties’. But HJ read the look on my face and let the constable do his work: sure enough, it was my first and last dalliance with being ‘known to the police.’

In those days I spend dozens, no, hundreds of hours with Jim and the others. But here’s the rub, he doesn’t remember me. Not in the faintest. Sure, I was a dweeblet back then – only five-two and 110 lbs as late as Grade 11 – but come on, we did a lot of stuff together, even became an ink stain on an RCMP blotter. But Jim has no memory whatsoever of the small nerd Alan. Jim was quite a bit younger at the time but already much bigger than his invisible four-eyed friend. Eventually he got bigger still: 535 lbs worth of big at one point (now a trim 300). We crossed paths again about ten years ago, which is how I – and Jan and Bob too – gave Jim a hand with his erection this week. A big 24’x20’ storage shed is Jim’s current project. On Wednesday we helped put up the walls.

Yesterday a small high school reunion took place in the Bigadore porch. I am a member of the 1964 class of Riverview Rural High School at Coxheath. Peter Goodale and Jim are both ’68. Like myself Peter emigrated to Victoria a long time ago – and sold me a lot of camera stuff over the years – but now he has returned to Nova Scotia. We drank beer on the porch while the womenfolk – Jan and Jim’s Cindy – indulged the recollections of classmates from long ago and listened as we debated whether Bernadette Francis was a role-model teacher or hard-hearted harridan.

Adventures with wildlife continue. The fox pups spend little time in their den under Wally’s house but we still see them, just about full-grown now, going about the business of learning the ropes. At Dalem Lake the calling loons evoke The Great Green North, a mama spotted sandpiper attends to her demanding young, a kingfisher rattles his objection to our passage.

An invitation to dinner at Bob’s had to be postponed after a strange smell resulted from turning on the stove: over the winter a family of deer mice – perhaps the entire neighbourhood – had built a colossal nest in the oven. We went to the Cedar House instead and took our chances with the ovens there.

For the second time this season a bat followed us into the cabin and had to be evicted. We’d turned off the headlamps, ready for sleep, when Jan noticed the little fellow flying amongst our earlobes. Several Little Brown Bats share the domicile with us every summer. Ordinarily they content themselves to remain outside, roosting by day under the porch shutters. We are completely happy to have them there. They feed happily on the mosquitoes and black flies drawn to the screens by the meaty humans snoring inside. But we’re not so fussy about them hanging out with us in the porch; true, they weigh only nine grams but the tiny teeth are sharp. I leapt out of bed and grabbed a T-shirt to capture the bat. The little flier was not nearly as unnerving as Jan’s laughter: it seems she found the bobbing-and-weaving of her floppy old man – draped in nothing but a headlamp – a richly comedic sight.

Meanwhile, weather complaints are long forgotten. July has been relentlessly generous with sunshine and warmth. We are preparing a new, friendlier-access swimming hole down at the shore and are looking forward to our first saltwater dips. The weekend approaches, the end of lobster season draws nigh. Methinks it is time to organize a boil and try one more time to persuade The Monozygotes to go for a skinny dip.