POSTING # 15

Return of the Robins of Virgil?; Enrolling at Queens; Padre Laverty; Moving out of Residence; The High Cost of Alcohol; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Return of the Robins of Virgil?

In Posting # 10 (March 8, 2009), I told about our battles last year with robins who were determined to build a nest above our front door. After many attempts to discourage them, we finally succeeded with a strip of plywood with projecting nails---the kind used by carpet layers for wall-to-wall carpets---duct-taped to the ledge above our door.

The nail strip is still there, but we have been apprehensive. Would the robins figure out a way of building a nest on top of the nails?

This week, a male landed on the ledge, to scout out the situation. He looked in at us through the transom window, looked at the nails, thought for a while and then flew off.

A short time later, a female robin landed on the ledge. We assume that her mate had told her, “Yes, we can”.

We could see that she loved the location. Sitting on a nest, hatching eggs must be pretty boring stuff but from a nest on our ledge, she could watch both us and the activities on the street and sidewalk. And be safe from cats, crows and other pests.

She gingerly tried the turn-around maneuver that robins use to shape straw and mud into a nest. We could almost hear her wince as she ran into a nail. After thinking about things for a while, she flew off.

We hope she told her hubby that if he wants a nest on the ledge, he can build it himself.


Enrolling at Queens

My wife Pat and I are preparing for our respective 50th university reunions to be held next month. Pat’s is at Smith College in Northampton Massachusetts (she started university at Trinity College, University of Toronto, went on an exchange to Smith for her third year, and decided to stay there and graduate) while mine is at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Here are some stories about Queen’s---there will be tales about Smith in a later posting.

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In September 1955, after making French fries for the summer in Port Stanley (see Posting #8, February 22, 2009), my brother Jim drove me to Kingston to register at Queen’s.

I was more than a little terrified. It wasn’t the prospect of living away from home---I had spent all my high school summers away---but the thought of being at a university. Coming from a small town and a small town high school, I wondered whether I could cope with the courses, professors, essays and examinations.

(Over the last few years, I’ve been leading tours of foreign employment officials to Canadian universities and I’ve been enormously impressed---as have the visitors---with the orientation programs now offered new students---including trips to the campus several months before enrollment. I wish they had had something like that in my day.)

Jim helped me carry my stuff to my room in the newly-finished McNeil House Residence and made sure I was settled in before he took off for the long trip to his home in Guelph.

Jim and his wife, Fannie, encouraged and supported me in so many ways during my years at Queen’s. I will always be grateful to them!

Padre Laverty

As I adjusted to life at Queen’s, I gradually figured out who did what---the Principal, the Deans, the Departmental Chairs, and the professors in various shades: full, associate, assistant, and lowly lecturers.

But I had trouble understanding the role of Padre Laverty.

The formal duties of the Padre, who was in his early 40’s, dark hair, with some gray, a mustache and a military bearing, seemed to include conducting a church service on Sunday mornings in Grant Hall and providing prayers and invocations at official functions.

But he appeared to me to spend most of his time wandering around the campus, chatting with students. Later on, I realized that he was trying to ensure that the 2800 full-time students had a successful stay at Queen’s.

In a sense, he was trying to provide the advice and assistance that today’s well-staffed and trained Student Services departments offer.

By himself.

To establish a rapport with students, he tried to memorize the surnames and home towns of all the 2800 on campus.

Walking along the street, he would sort through his mental index cards and greet a student, “Well Jones, how are things in Gananoque?” Or, “Well Smith, how are things in Guelph?”

You just had to look at a student’s face to know that the greeting meant a great deal. The student wasn’t just a file in the Registrar’s office, he or she was SOMEONE.

Unfortunately, the good Padre had trouble with my name and home town. We had met at one of the home gatherings that he and his gracious wife, Frances, held for new students. As the books on memory recommend, the Padre had made sure he used my name (Hunter) and hometown (Arthur) a couple of times during the gathering.

However, when we ran into each other a few weeks later on the street, his greeting came out:

“Well Arthur, how are things in Hunter?”

I explained that I was Hunter from Arthur. He looked embarrassed and a little surprised that his system had let him down.

Whenever we met later on, I could see his eyes moving from side to side as he tried to figure out which name came first.

To tell the truth, I still felt good---during that first year at Queen’s---to know that two bits of information about me were stored away in his head, even if he sometimes mixed them up.


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Later on, I got involved in student government and met the Padre fairly often at different events. (By that time he had sorted out Hunter and Arthur.)

During a break in one of the events, he leaned over and whispered, “We are going to have to keep an eye on (the name of a student). I’m afraid he’s a bit of a bounder.”

I looked at him with surprise. I knew the student but he didn’t strike me as a threat to the virtue of the Queen’s coeds. He was bright, self-confident and more affluent than most of us---judging by his clothes---but he didn’t fit the image I had built up of the serial seducer.

That person was usually a jock, especially a football player, from a Toronto high school (can I make it clear that I am NOT saying that all football players from Toronto high schools fell into that category!)

I said I would keep my eyes open. When I checked with friends, they all had the same reaction as I had had---they didn’t see that student as a seducer.

But none of us dismissed the Padre’s concern. We had grown to respect his intelligence network---he knew what was going on around campus. There were things that showed up on his radar that just didn’t appear on ours. (For example, we could never figure out how he managed to include dating couples in his get-to-know-you gatherings. How did he know who was dating whom?)

Fifty years later, I am still wondering whether the student he identified was one of the most successful and secret seducers ever? Or was the Padre wrong?

I will be making discreet inquiries next month, at our class reunion.


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As I was writing the above story, Pat and I tried to recall what these Don Juans were called in our day---we certainly didn’t use ‘bounder’. Pat remembers Smith Students warning each other about fellows who were ‘operators’, or, even worse, ‘smooth operators’. Smithies also had the expression, “He has laid everything but the Atlantic Cable.”

At Queen’s, I remember people referring to someone as ‘a skin man’---graphic but a bit crude.

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I was delighted to learn some years ago that Queen’s had honoured the work of the two Lavertys, Marshall and Frances, by creating the Laverty Bursary to provide support to third or fourth year students in any faculty or discipline.

A fine tribute to a fine couple.

Moving out of Residence

In the 1950s, Queen’s turfed male students out of residence after two years to make way for incoming frosh.

Four of us decided to rent a small house but ended up renting roughly half of a large house. We had the downstairs (living room, dining room---which had three beds---and a large kitchen. We also had a small bedroom on the second floor.

There were two other tenants in the house: a retired Alcan worker who spent an astonishing amount of money on liquor; and a not-yet-retired Alcan worker who worked nights.

Finally, the landlady---who was a ‘Mrs.’ but with no husband in sight---had a large bedroom on the second floor. She was in her late forties, managed a store downtown and left the house each morning well-dressed, coiffed and made-up.

Like all successful Kingston landladies, she had perfected a ‘look-students-don’t-mess-with-me’ voice when talking to her young tenants. She could be cold and tough.

We had been in the house for a few weeks when she asked one morning if she could talk to us. We steeled ourselves for a blast about something or other.

Instead, she said she wanted a favour. She had a friend coming to see her that evening and she wondered if we could entertain him while she changed after her day at the store. She handed over a bottle of rye, and said her friend’s name was Frank.

Frank rang the doorbell at 7.30 pm. We told him that Mrs. XX was tied up but would he like to join us in the living room for a rye and coke. And then we tried to think of things to talk about. We soon exhausted the weather, where we were from and what we were studying. He clearly didn’t want to talk about himself---about all we got was that he was in Kingston on business.

The silences were getting longer and more painful. Then, the landlady came to the top of the stairs. Dressed in a frilly dressing gown, with her hair untied, she said in a sultry voice that we had never heard, “Oh, there you are Frank. Why don’t you come up?’

And as an afterthought, she added, “Could you bring the rye with you?”

Every few weeks we were asked to entertain a different friend.

Kingston landladies were---and perhaps still are---interesting, fascinating, memorable …(my thesaurus fails me) people.


The High Cost of Alcohol

I am not sure whether there is a statute of limitations for offenses under the Ontario and Federal liquor laws so I am going to have to be a little vague about the details of the next story. I hope you will understand.

There is a story that one of several students who had rented a house had a friend who liked to stay with him on weekends, especially during the football season. The visitor was a friendly and personable guy and the students enjoyed his visits.

But there were two problems---he liked to drink and he was always broke.

He would go through whatever beer or rye the students had been able to afford out of their tight budgets.

What to do?

One of the room-mates---with some knowledge of chemistry---suggested that they make some alcohol and put it in a vodka bottle. The visitor would never know the difference.

Gallon jugs were obtained and filled with water, yeast and various ingredients. The jugs fermented merrily, hidden under a blanket in a corner of the kitchen.

The story is that after the fermentation had ended, the brew was poured into a large pressure cooker, a coil of copper tubing was connected to the spout on top of the cooker, and the tube was circled down through a basin of ice water. After some heating of the fermented mix, a little stream of clear liquid emerged from the end of the copper tube.

“We have to test it”, someone said.

A match was brought close to a tablespoon of the liquid. It burned with a satisfying blue flame.

At his next visit, the friend complimented the students on their fine taste in vodka---as he poured a generous quantity into some orange juice.

I am told that the students felt great satisfaction from having solved a problem.

If only---they thought---essays and exams could be mastered so easily.

NOTE: I have to say that this story may well be apocryphal. It is hard to imagine that Queen’s students would ignore the country’s liquor laws in such a blatant fashion. I also have to say that there are real dangers in distilling spirits, dangers that range from explosions to the production of toxic liquids. Today’s Queen’s students should stick to the good old LCBO.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Another story about, Cassidy, our golden cocker spaniel.


We had a tradition when the children were young of having popcorn during the television program ‘All in the Family’.

Cass adored popcorn. He would be lying on the floor of the television room asleep but as soon as he heard the opening bars of the program’s theme song, his head would come up and he would do a count of who was in the room. If anyone were missing he would go on what we called his ‘Paul Revere’s ride’---up to the third floor, down to the ground floor and the basement rounding up his people.

We would all watch the opening segment of the program, and then someone--- accompanied by Cass---would go to the kitchen and make the popcorn.

Bowls of the warm popcorn would be passed around. Cass sat close to whomever he thought was the softest touch. He would get a handful of popcorn, wolf it down and then wait for another handful. If the wait became too long, he would gently scratch the person’s arm with his paw---don’t forget the dog.

After ‘All in the Family’ went off the air, we still made popcorn but Cass had lost his trigger, his Pavlovian stimulus.

He soon found another.

He would listen for the heavy popcorn pot being taken from the cupboard in the kitchen. Once he heard that sound, his head would pop up. With his ears cocked, he would listen for the rattle of popcorn going into the pot. As soon as he heard that sound, he would start his race up and down the stairs, telling everyone that popcorn was being made.

Every time we have popcorn, I think of Cass’s wild races up and down the stairs, his floppy ears bouncing.

And I smile---and then sigh, as I think about how much we miss him.

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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe! Posting #16 will include some stories about Russia.