Brazil Street

by Robert Hunt

  Mom was born with a defective heart, and she couldn’t enjoy most of the things that active people did, but Dad was content to stay at home with her and enjoy her company. We knew that he would give his life for her if need be, and he was very protective of her during her sickness. Her rheumatic heart slowed her down at the age of twenty-five, especially when it came to walking up the two flights of stairs in our house.

  One time, a guy was so drunk he came to our house—probably thinking it was his—and started to harass Mom. With her bad heart, stress could be very bad for her. Dad was outside in the garden, and one of my brothers went to get him. While the drunk was asking Mom for some food, Dad hurried inside to confront him. In a few seconds, he had the guy by the shirt collar and up against the wall, telling him that it was in his best interest to stay away from our home.

  My brother Hubert passed away on Boxing Day, 2013. He was buried with Mom and Dad at Mount Carmel Cemetery on the Boulevard in St. John’s. Angus, our youngest brother, passed away on November 27, 2015. The two best friends went only two years apart. Ank and Hubert were not only brothers but the best of friends. Ank is buried next to Hubert, as he requested.

  Charlie O’Day: Master Checkers Player

  I came across some great guys at Holy Cross who are still my friends to this day. People like Damian Hayes, Johnny Doyle, Bobby Anderson, Ron Fitzpatrick, Garry Philpott, Steve March, Jerry Coady, Dick Christopher, and others who have been nice guys to know. They’ve influenced my life for the better in a lot of ways. Chief among them was my best friend, Dickie White. Tommy Dodd was another great friend. Both became friends I could count on to always watch my back. There were many more who would stick by me in times of trouble as well as times of laughter. Charlie O’Day was one of them.

  I’m not sure when I met Charlie, just that I went to gym class one afternoon and he was just there. He was a bit of a character, and we instantly became good buddies. Now, Dickie was a year behind me, but Charlie and I went through all the grades together. Charlie was a practical joker, always a laugh. For someone so young, nothing seemed to worry him. He was one of the funniest guys I ever knew.

  One day, when we were in church for confession, there was a long lineup to go in and see Father. I happened to be sitting next to Charlie, who had this habit of throwing his voice like a ventriloquist. He was so good that when he made these ridiculous noises, you’d never know that the sounds were coming from him. Now, church was certainly not the place for two boys looking for trouble, but waiting in line for confession was boring.

  One of the Irish Christian Brothers, one of the nice ones, had the habit of grunting without knowing he was doing it. Charlie had his grunt and mannerisms down pat. He was great at mimicking people, including his friends, movie stars, singers—anyone you wanted him to make fun of, he could do it. Bob Hope was one of them. Charlie could sing just like Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, and other great musicians of the day. When the Brother in question grunted as he kept us in line for confession, he was unmistakable. We all knew it was him. It was hard to show respect in this house of God, that is to say keep from laughing, when Charlie mimicked the Brother so well that some of the boys in the pews thought that he was right beside them!

  We’d be in a packed church and hear what sounded like a bird flying overhead, and everyone would look up to see the pigeon that had just flown into St. Patrick’s Church and was flying around trying to get out. But I knew it was Charlie. Another time he cried out like someone in pain while getting in and out of his pew, and we all laughed as the Brothers looked around to see who was hurt. Even while sitting next to him, sometimes it was hard to tell that Charlie was making those noises. He was that good at disguising them. I was one of just a few people who knew his tricks.

  One of the reasons I was drawn to Charlie was his genuine respect, even as a kid, for those with disabilities. We had a lot of disadvantaged kids at school. There were also kids in the neighbourhood whom Dickie and I took care of, whether it was helping them out with food or extra money or protecting them from bullies. Charlie was like that, too. We always sat in the front of church. There were always students who had bad eyesight or other problems, and Charlie would look after them when we went for confession or Mass. He would get up and pass his seat on to them without hesitation.

  Charlie lived close by, on the corner of John Street and Dunford Street, with his grandmother Laura and his aunt Winnie. His mother, Vera, lived in Holyrood. He stayed with them on John Street while going to school. Sometimes Dickie and I would walk home from school with him for lunch. One day on my way back to school, I stopped at his house and waited for him, and he asked me to take him on in a game of checkers. We were early, so we had time. I was pretty good, but after I won the first game, I lost three in a row to Charlie! The guy was brilliant. As good as I thought I was, he was twice as good. I think he let me win the first one just to keep me interested.

  He seemed to have figured out my next move well in advance. After a while, it became frustrating for me to play him. One day, he showed me how to think ahead of every move and to anticipate your opponent’s reaction. It worked, and I slowly caught on to how he played. I started to beat Charlie again . . . until he changed his own strategy. Then it became frustrating all over again.

  Now, Charlie being Charlie, I thought he was letting me win some games again just to keep me engaged. He said he wasn’t and assured me I was getting better. We played at least three games every day at lunchtime before heading back to class. Suddenly, it had become a thinking man’s game, and we felt like world checkers champions defending our titles and playing for our country.

  Charlie and I were so good at checkers we earned a kind of celebrity status. Guys in school wanted to beat us at the game. Some of the boys we played had a slow game, taking their time to develop their strategies while we picked them apart. We won most of those games. I remember one time I won ten games in a row. However, Charlie had the record in school, with seventeen wins in a row. We just ate up our opponents, usually finishing in six or seven moves.

  Then a challenge came to us at Buckmaster’s Circle Drill Hall. Seeing as we were unbeatable, Charlie and I decided to show the locals that we were the best checker players in St. John’s. So, we met at the drill hall one Saturday evening, after someone at school had told us there were some really good players there. When we arrived, we saw an assembly of boys and girls facing off against each other, tournament style, in chess, checkers, and other games.

  We knew we were going up against some of the best players in St. John’s, but that didn’t stop us, because we thought we were the best. Charlie and I were ready to take on all comers. First prize was twenty dollars, second was fifteen, and so on. Other prizes included potato chips, soda pop, and chocolate bars. The prizes had been donated by J. B. Hand Distributors on New Gower Street.

  We were paired into different groups by random draw. The tournament was a knockout, two-out-of-three-games set. In other words, if you lost two in a row, you were out for good, but winning moved you to the semifinals, and from there you might go on to the finals, which pitted the best players in the city against each other.

  Charlie and I were separated in the selection process. I wiped the floor with the first couple of guys I faced by winning six in a row, and Charlie did likewise. But I was cocky, and a young lady beat me in our first game. Also, I was so busy admiring how pretty she was I forgot some of my signature moves. Charlie finished his round victoriously, and he took me aside after the first game and gave me a pep talk. It worked, and I made a comeback, taking the next two against the girl. I tried to follow Charlie while I played, but there were so many people playing that I lost track of him.

  We moved from table to table as we moved toward the championship, until Charlie and I ended up playing each other. We hadn’t expected that. We were there to show everyone else how good we were—not to beat each other! But it was the luck of the
draw. Now there were only eight of us left, six boys and two girls.

  Still in disbelief that I was squaring off against my friend, I played poorly in the first game and lost. The second game started poorly, too, as Charlie made several moves I had never seen him make before. I was on the verge of losing! Then a strange thing happened. Charlie started making foolish moves, seemingly on purpose. He had me in the second game . . . he could have finished me off, but when it was over, I had won. In the third game, Charlie was still not making his usual plays. Now, I liked to win, but something was missing in that third game, and again I came out the winner. I knew I had won it too easily.

  I went on to the semifinals and won, with Charlie standing up and cheering me on with every move I made. Then it was on to the finals, against a young girl we’d heard was a whiz at checkers. I won the first game and she the second, and I was beaten in the third. She had outplayed me and won. I remember she was damn good—and pretty, too, I might add. When it was over, Charlie told me that he knew I was a better player than most of the other players there, but in my heart I knew it wasn’t true. I claimed the fifteen dollars for second place and gave Charlie five for being my mentor. I split the remaining ten between me and Dickie.

  Charlie was quite a guy, always helping other people. He was never the type who wanted to win it all or to make a name for himself. He just liked playing the game. Friendship meant more to him than winning a game of checkers. He had heart and a lot of class, the makings of a real man.

  Later, he left St. John’s to go to Toronto. We had drifted apart after we finished school, as all friends do over the years. It doesn’t seem ironic to me that he went to work as an addictions counsellor in Withdrawal Management Services at St. Michael’s Hospital. His love of helping disadvantaged people lived on. He always gave, and he never stopped, until his passing in January of 2016.

  Tom Henderson, Charlie’s boss in Ontario, sent a letter to his family to be read at his wake.

  I worked with Charlie for about ten years at St. Michael’s Hospital. I was his manager, as if anyone could manage Charlie. No matter how stressed I was, when I talked to Charlie I would get the support and encouragement I needed. He had an amazing memory. He always instilled hope in me and was always sympathetic, and after a few minutes talking to him, I would always feel better.

  The truth is I loved Charlie for his compassion, his wit, and his sense of humour. I was not the only one. He was admired and respected by staff that came through our services over the years. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people whom he helped loved and appreciated him also. I have never heard a client say a bad word about him. Not all of our patients would get better, but Charlie never gave up on any one of them. He was a precious human being, and if there were more people like him in this world, it would be a much better place to live. I can only hope to be remembered the same way that people will remember Charlie.

  What a legacy to leave behind, to know that your friends in life thought so much of you. He was a good man with a big heart. Also, he was also one terrific checkers player. I was a pretty good player, too, but when it came to Charlie, I was a distant second.

  God love you, Charlie. You were a good man, and you will never be forgotten.

  Catholic and Protestant: Ruled by Religion

  One day while I was playing outside with a guy from Brazil Street, a friend of my mom’s, an elderly staunch Catholic lady, called me aside for a chat after she heard me calling out to my friend. She had talked to someone in the neighbourhood and found out that my playmate was Protestant.

  She went into deep thought for a second, then started to tell me that Protestants were very nice people, but they didn’t believe in the same things we did nor have the same values as Roman Catholics. They would spend a lot of time in Purgatory, where lost souls of the dead are purified through suffering before going to heaven and entering into eternal life. She said this was something that, as a Catholic, I should have learned at school. It was one of many Roman Catholic beliefs in those days. Protestants thought the same way but in reverse—Catholics were the ones who received the short end of the stick, according to them!

  Children went to confession at least once or twice a month when out of school for summer holidays, and we marched down to confession once a week when we were in class. We would never miss Mass on Sunday, as our parents would question us on the sermon of the day when we returned home to make sure you had gone. Prayers were said each day in the classroom, and I remember faithfully writing “JMJ” on top of my scribbler to signify Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

  At that early age, it was a big concept for me to grasp that my Protestant friend was going to be in Purgatory for a year, or perhaps hundreds of years—and maybe thousands—with no possibility of going to heaven before serving his entire sentence. I never said it to him, but I pitied him, while at the same time I was happy that Catholics like me didn’t have to go to this Purgatory place.

  The seed had been planted, and off I rushed to tell the story of my encounter with Mom’s friend to my best friend, Dickie. Surely an older adult like her couldn’t be lying to me. When I told Dickie, we thought of the repercussions of staying friends with our buddy the Protestant. We had to find out why adults believed this.

  One time when I was at confession, I asked Father (Monsignor) Murphy how he knew if there really was such a person as God. I was at an age when I was asking a lot of questions about faith. His answer had a slight edge to it.

  “My son, do you know where you are going, to even ask me such a question?”

  “No, Father.” Of course it was a stupid question, and I felt stupid for having asked it. I was frightened to death.

  “The Man Above is looking down at you right now and asking me where did He go wrong with this young man.”

  I looked out through the curtain slits in the confessional and up at the ceiling of St. Patrick’s Church and the stained glass windows, and I am sure that I saw an angel, with his or her wings flapping, looking down at me scornfully because I had dared ask Father that very stupid question! Feeling squeamish, I decided that I had to end this conversation quickly.

  “I’m sorry, Father, of course I knew the answer, but I just had to ask you to verify it. One of my friends asked me to ask you, as he was afraid to and he wanted an answer.”

  Father looked at me, deciding whether or not my answer was good enough. He decided it was, though I think he knew that I wanted the answer for myself.

  Before I left, Father went on to give me a solid lecture about God and his commandments and what would happen to me in the event I did not believe in the church’s rules in life and follow them to the fullest. I eventually left the church a new man on the path to righteousness, and I was ready to tell everyone around me how to save his soul. Oh, the stupid questions one dared ask as a kid, especially of a priest!

  Dickie and I, after much discussion, decided that the only way to find out why we were so different than people in other religions was to visit a Protestant church. Thus began our manhunt throughout the city of St. John’s to find ourselves and put to rest any inward wrong beliefs we had in our minds or in our souls in order to set us straight and on the right path. It was taboo for Catholics to enter a Protestant church, but we had to find out what was going on.

  Although we were determined, we were also scared to death of what might happen to us when we entered a different religion’s church. First we went to the closest church, George Street United, on Buchanan Street, just off New Gower Street. The plan was to just go there and walk right in. We needed answers, and there was only one way to get them.

  We headed down toward this forbidden place, past the boarding houses on Brazil Square, late one Friday evening after supper, when we thought no one would spot us going into one of “their” churches. This was definitely a sin, as we were taught the only true religion in the whole world was the Roman Catholic one. But we
had to find out the truth.

  Upon our arrival, we tried a side door and found it locked. This led us to believe that a locked building had secrets to hide. We could go to St. Patrick’s Church on Patrick’s Street at almost any time and get in. Something was definitely amiss when a Protestant church had a locked door!

  While we were considering our options, an elderly man walking outside approached us and asked what we were doing. He was about five foot six with a white beard and white hair, a bright red face, and a black robe wrapped around himself. A short, broad man with large hands and a huge grin. He asked us again what we were doing, and in a gentle and kind voice he said, “You kids seem to want see the inside of my beautiful church. If you wish, I can help you in that department.”

  His church? Wow! We never knew anybody who owned a church before. Now, we had a plan, but it didn’t include this person asking us if we wanted to go inside his church. We wanted to go in by ourselves and scout out the inside. Dickie and I looked at each other and shrugged, at a loss for words.

  Dickie looked at him in his black robes and said, “We were just looking around, Father.”

  Noticing our apprehension, he again asked us if we wanted to go inside and look at his church. I asked him to please excuse us and nodded to Dickie to step to the side for a little conference. Once inside, we knew we would not be in a Catholic environment, and we would therefore be on our own. Who knew what would happen once we went in there? What if it was a trap and the Devil himself was waiting inside to carry us to that dreaded place called Purgatory? For all we knew, this guy could be working for the Devil himself! It was a frightening idea as we pondered what to do next.