When I was five and six, we lived in an upper duplex on Parent Street in McMasterville. I still have fragmented memories of that time.
... a huge kitchen with an icebox, the ice arriving in a big block and lifted by a wicked-looking pair of tongs
... Dad playing the accordion
... punching the kid across the street in the nose and making it bleed
... the power going out at my sixth birthday party, on Friday the 13th
... flattening pennies on the train tracks at the end of the street
... learning from the kid next door that "Comment vous appelez-vous?" was actually pronounced "Cammatt stappell?"
... a balcony that stretched from one end of the apartment to the other.
This balcony figures prominently in my most vivid memory. I had been reading Mary Poppins, and was quite impressed with her mode of travel, so I decided to try it for myself. Though a curious and adventurous child, I was also a pragmatist. Before risking life and limb, I first sent the umbrella over the balcony on its own. Instead of drifting gently down, it tumbled end over end and smashed into the ground at the bottom. Mary Poppins would get no competition from me.
The duplex is still there on Parent Street. The insul-brick has been replaced by vinyl siding; the new balcony is a shadow of its former self.
