by Robert Hunt
Up to that point, the only other bar I had ever been in was the Belmont on New Gower Street, so to go with him was a treat. Dave was about ten years older than me. He said he only wanted to have one beer. Well, one cold one led to another, and before we knew it, the train whistle was blowing. I grabbed Dave by the arm and hustled him through the door just as the train was leaving. We missed it by about a hundred feet, and now we were stranded in Windsor. Luckily, a man with a car took pity on us, and we raced up the road to catch the 102 before it left its next stop, which was several miles away! That little ride cost us ten dollars, five apiece. I never left the train with anyone again! Dave gave me the five dollars on the next trip for the trouble he had put me through.
The food that CN served in its dining room was unmatched by anyone in the service industry. I’ve heard it said so many times that it was the best food you could ever eat. For the two summers I worked there, no one complained about the food. From their hot roast beef and turkey sandwiches to their pork and steak dinners, their food was the talk of the whole province. Billy, Shannon, and I shared some incredible meals together.
They had several prepared desserts, and their butterscotch pudding and cobbler pie were to die for. The best part was I could eat any of it to my heart’s content. Meals were free for employees. They also had small candy mints, with the CN logo on the package, which had to be laid by the customer’s plate at each and every meal. Great care was taken with this. When places were set before meals, all the plates, cups, and saucers—all with their own circular green CN logo on them—along with forks and knives were laid out in a certain pattern. The places were set every night for the breakfast to follow in the morning, and the procedure was repeated again before lunch and supper.
One night we had someone who decided he was going to eat every bit of food on the train. A friend and I knew by the way he spoke that he had tons of money. He also dressed immaculately. Likely some kind of businessman from St. John’s. The man seemed nice at first, but he was loud when he wanted service. He waved his hand when he needed something, and with the big tips he offered, he got it.
The trouble started when he decided to go to the bar, which was behind the front engine, to belt back a few rum-and-Cokes before he started eating. Now, this was not a good idea, as he weighed about 300 pounds. He was quite inebriated when suppertime came around. Keep in mind that the rolling of the train over the tracks was like a ship’s rolling on the open sea.
The large man had devoured three large plates of roast beef, gravy and all, and was on his second or third dessert when it happened. He moved as if to get up, starting gurgling, and proceeded to throw up all over the table. Onlookers got sick as well, and the cabin was quickly cleared. It wasn’t pretty, and someone had to clean it up before anyone else came in. Luckily, with a big crowd aboard this trip, we had two dining coaches. A few porters escorted the man back to his berth and into bed, but the problem of the mess still remained.
Someone looked at me like I should do the dirty work, but the porter said that he and another crewman should take care of it. They looked meaningfully at the five-dollar tip the man had left on the table, and so it was decided. Five dollars was a big tip, but I didn’t want it that badly. I found out later that the porter had just wrapped up the tablecloth, silverware and all, and deposited the contents over the side of the train and into the woods!
I picked up so much from watching the other men caring for the customers that it followed me for years later into my working life. Great care went into dealing with each individual. The stewards and porters treated everyone with dignity and respect, as if he was the only customer on board. Courtesy was a CN trademark, and we took care of every little detail to ensure a pleasant trip. Passengers were called sir and ma’am.
Another evening, I was dead tired after cleaning up five full coaches. I was still cleaning dishes at ten o’clock that night, when we usually finished. But before I knew it, Billy, Shannon Coombs, and another hand were telling me to go to bed, because tomorrow would be another busy day. They entered the pantry, and the last thing I heard as I was leaving was the clanking of plates and cutlery while the three of them washed and sorted. I felt bad that I was so far behind in the cleanup, but we’d had a big crowd that trip. I was grateful for what they were doing for me. What an exceptional group of people.
I did have some quiet time to myself, respites which grew less frequent the busier the summer became. When I had free time, I would go back to our coach, the second-last from the caboose, sit by the window, and watch the beautiful Newfoundland scenery drift by while I smoked a cigarette. I listened to the rhythm and sounds of the “Bullet” as it headed to its next destination.
The years 1966 and 1967 were the last I spent with CN. The next few years spelled the end of the passenger train run in Newfoundland.
Dad retired from CN in 1970 or 1971. He ended up working in the train station sorting parcels and letters for delivery across Newfoundland, but he was never really happy after the passenger trains were taken off in 1969. He told me that his days on the CN trains were the happiest of his working life.
The Final Chapter
One day, I was on my way home from work when I was stopped by a police officer who had followed me up Waldegrave Street. He shouted for me to stop. I had just left F. W. Woolworth’s on Water Street, where I was employed on weekends, the summer, and on the Easter and Christmas holidays, as well as for a few extra shifts in the evenings while still going to school.
The officer walked up behind me. When I turned around, all I saw was the coal-black uniform. I froze in my tracks. In our younger days, fear of authority, especially cops, was palpable. I asked him, in a cordial manner, why he had stopped me. He said that he was the one who asked the questions and not me, whereupon he proceeded to search through my pockets. Inside my jacket was a small pocket knife I had bought at Woolworth’s weeks earlier. He asked me where I had gotten it. Still not sure why he had stopped me, I told him the truth.
Instinctively, I knew that word of this incident would soon travel like lightning to the powers that be. By now it was on its way to Brazil Street and my parents.
The cop was a big dude, and he had a small scar across his cheek. His face looked like it had been on the losing side of many fights. His right eyelid had a large black mark over it, and I guessed he had been in some kind of brawl recently. It looked like his nose had been broken once or twice, as it slewed to one side. This guy was scary. He was about six feet tall and very broad, but the uniform frightened me more than anything else.
He asked me where I lived. When a police officer asked you where you lived, it could mean trouble, so I said that unless he told me why he had stopped me, I was not going to answer his question. Defying him was a big mistake.
Whack! He cuffed me on the side of the head, then grabbed me by the coat. Today he would have been charged with assault, but back then the cops reigned supreme. It was a fact of life, and it really used to tick me off, especially at that moment. After all, I had done nothing wrong.
Some Irish Christian Brothers in school treated us the same way when we didn’t answer a question properly—or quickly. I always wished I were bigger so that I could teach my tormentors a lesson. I believed punishment should only come from parents.
Satisfied that I was not the kid he was looking for, the policeman told me to go straight home. He didn’t have to tell me twice. Quickly, I ran to my house, equally ticked off because I had been stopped for something that I didn’t do and because I didn’t even know why he had stopped me in the first place. He never did give me a reason. I suppose I should have been thankful that he never “confiscated” my pocket knife.
Unbeknownst to me, a neighbour had told Dad that a police officer had stopped me on the street. The gossip column was alive and well. My dad was a fair guy, as parents go, and he was pretty lenient when it came to discipline, but if one of his c
hildren had an encounter with an adult, and if that adult was a policeman . . . look out!
But all was forgiven when I told Dad that the police officer was looking for someone else. Dad knew that I had been working that day, so my story rang true to him. He did tell me, though, that the day a cop brought me or any of my brothers home was the day that trouble would begin inside the house. Mom and Dad were like most parents of the day. They put authority on a very high pedestal. When a priest, a Christian Brother, or a cop spoke to you, you listened.
After I left Canadian National Railway, I bought my first car, a light-green 1968 Pontiac Laurentian. It was a year old. I paid $700 for it, taxes in, which I had saved for years. It doesn’t seem like a lot by today’s standards, but it certainly was in those days. That car was my pride and joy for years. I got $500 for it when I sold it in 1971, because I kept it in good condition.
I spent twenty-four and a half years working for Coca-Cola, until the plant on O’Leary Avenue closed in 1991. It is now a Rona Home & Garden store. When the plant shut down, I went back to school to earn my grade twelve and to re-educate. When I finished, I spent the next several years working as a student loans officer for a private school in the city. After that school closed, it was on to the St. John’s International Airport as a warrant officer with the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires for another eleven years. My friend Tommy Dodd was my boss there. We lost that contract there in 2010, and I became unemployed. I retired for approximately five months before returning to work, this time at Rona on Torbay Road here in St. John’s.
As the years move on, people move on with them. Dickie and I slowly drifted apart, as our time off work didn’t mesh. I was living on the other side of St. John’s, miles away from Brazil Street, Tommy had joined the military, Dickie was working long hours with the St. John’s Municipal Council, and I was working long hours with Coca-Cola.
As a young man, and throughout my working life, I always had the desire to write. I even told my dad when I was thirteen or fourteen years old that I would one day write my memoirs. He believed me. I had been jotting things down since I was about ten years old.
I hope I have succeeded in painting a clear picture of what it was like to grow up in the 1950s and 1960s in St. John’s. Every day while writing my biographical trilogy—Corner Boys, Townies, and now Brazil Street—I knew that this, the final chapter, would have to be written, and I’ve approached it with no small degree of sadness. In everything there is a beginning and an end, and so it is with these books. I’ve enjoyed writing every single word. I said what I needed to say, and hopefully I’ve given my readers some enjoyment.
In these three books, I’ve written down everything that I could remember from my childhood. I did it so that my children, their children, and the next generation will know how we lived, how we survived, and how we became the people we are today.
I will always remember the fun that Dickie White, Tommy Dodd, and I had during the 1950s and 1960s. My best buddy, Dickie White, passed away in December 2006. I’m sure that if he were alive today he would have enjoyed reading about all of our exploits. Any words I write will not do Dickie justice, but the words of his sister Laura Martin, shared in a Facebook post, will:
He was my big teddy bear / father / friend and best brother in the world, but the best thing of all, he was our mother’s right arm after Dad died. He became the man of the house, and he kept us all on the straight and narrow. My mother had the best son when it came to Dickie. He looked after her until the day he passed away. That is why we loved him so much. I could tell you a million things about how good my brother was, but one thing I will tell you is he had a very good heart, and we loved him with all of ours.
What could I possible add to that? As Laura said, he was a great man. To me he was the best.
My parents had a great influence on me and my brothers. Edward Jr. told me when Dad passed away that he thought the world of us all . . . but he said that I was Dad’s favourite. That meant a lot to me. Dad also taught me to be strong in life because we only go this way once. With Mom’s passing, so went part of my life. We were very close, and I miss her. I know that a part of Dad died, too. I know that I will see her and Dad again someday.
My brother Hubert passed away on Boxing Day, 2013. The best way to describe him is he was crazy funny. He wrote the book on don’t-give-a-damn. He was the life of the party, and without him, the party just wasn’t fun. Ed, Calvin, and Angus all agreed that he was the funniest guy in the world. I never saw him sad, and his positive attitude was contagious. Angus and Hubert were very close. You would rarely see one without the other.
As I mentioned, Hubert quit school at fourteen and went off to Verdun, Quebec, to work. His lack of education didn’t hold him back. He was smarter than any of his four brothers, and we all finished school! He could, as the old saying goes, put an arse in a cat. He once told us that he was the smartest Hunt boy because he had spent seven years in grade seven.
Sometimes I wish I could be more like him, as nothing seemed to bother him, not even his COPD diagnosis, and then cancer, a few years before he died. He even joked that he had to die first because we, his brothers, were so stunned that we needed him up there in heaven to haul us through the gate. Hubert was funny right up to the end. He was sixty years old when he passed away.
While I was writing this book, another one of my brothers went to meet his Maker. The youngest of the family, Angus, passed away on November 27, 2015. He was another wonderful man. Angus and Hubert were not only our brothers but great friends, and I am sure that now they are together again.
Another sad note to add is the passing of my friend Stephen Phillips in August of 2015. He was a great guy who loved life and his family, and he was one of the nicest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. Stephen went out of his way to do things for me, and I always felt like I had a true friend with him around. He loved my writing and was both my supporter and critic. He’d joke that he should have been in my memoirs, though he was ten years my junior. So, Steve, here’s to you. You now have a place in my books. You take care.
Life sometimes throws us twists and turns. On the night of June 14, 2012, my daughter, Heather, who lives in Calgary, phoned me at work to say that my son, Stephen, who also lives there, was involved in a major car accident while on the Deerfoot Highway. He was unconscious and in an induced coma. The guy who was working with him that day said he just collapsed behind the wheel, proceeded to drive over an embankment, and then struck a concrete pillar. He had several seizures before they got him into Foot Hills Hospital in Calgary. His friend was unhurt. The doctors guessed that a piece of surveying equipment had struck my son in the head before the truck came to a complete stop. Neither one can remember the crash.
To say that his mother and I were in shock would be putting it mildly. I still play that phone call from my daughter over and over in my mind. It will never leave me. Luckily, due in part to my previous job at the St. John’s International Airport, my better half, Marion, and I, along with my ex-wife, Sharon, and her man, Jim, were on a plane the next morning and on our way to Calgary, thanks to the good people at Air Canada. We arrived there late in the evening.
I hope that no one who reads this has to look at his or her child in an ICU ward. It is a helpless feeling. Stephen required sixty-three stitches to close the head wound he sustained in the accident. His condition was diagnosed as TBI, or traumatic brain injury. Today, people use all kinds of excuses to dismiss God. But several days later I saw my son come back to life again. Slowly, he started to come around, and by the time we left Calgary, he had been given clearance to go home. Though he was left with short-term memory loss, he was alive, and that was all that mattered to me and his mother.
Stephen celebrated his thirty-ninth birthday on February 3, 2017. He can’t go back to work now and probably never will. While he was in hospital, his wife, Cheryl, gave birth to our grandson Joshu
a, on Friday, July 13, 2012. Stephen had to be transported by ambulance from one hospital to another to see his newborn son. I got to hold my grandson before we left for home.
More good news: a few years later, my daughter, Heather, gave birth to my granddaughter, her first child, Maria, on November 14, 2014. But living so far away, I don’t get to see them as much as I like.
It has taken many years, but I can say that I have found my Orphan Lake. Dickie would be proud.
When I penned my first book in this trilogy, I searched for a poem I had written years ago, called “Orphan Lake.” I had dedicated it to my good friend Malcolm “Dickie” White. It describes the belief we had that one day we would both find our lake—whatever we conceived it to be. Here it is.
Orphan Lake
We were lost in a sea of uncertainty
As we looked for our Orphan Lake
Where time and love does not stand still
Life’s changes it would make
We dreamt our dream that we did chase
As our lives quickly moved along
To a magical place we needed to be
Where nothing could go wrong
Our Orphan Lake was a visioned way of hope
To the life that we searched for
In our minds it took us from our past
And it would last forevermore
We challenged life and its mysteries
And we seemed to find the way
To find that lake within our dreams
That we knew we would have someday
We saw it there within our minds
Of that we did not deny
To us it held the many secrets of life
And we would not let it pass us by