Mel and his Many Talents

There was this older, thin, slightly stooped guy that I saw in neighborhood grocery stores. We always nodded  "How you doin?" one day we went for coffee. His name is Mel, he lives alone, a retired book keeper who said he was a very boring person with a very boring life but has talents, one: excellent shoplifter, two: very clever with witty, come-back lines. 

Wasn't he afraid to be caught? "They'll never catch me, I am really good". I could tell he was dying to share something and asked him his story: He was working at an  accounting firm involved in vote counting for the film festival and his boss asked him to "assist with the awards". It was a coveted assignment for junior staff. You went with the boss to carry the shiny brown leather briefcase with the sealed envelopes. "Wear your best suit, be here at seven!" A limo was waiting, Mel took the case and the "All Access + BACKSTAGE" pass with his name and picture and sat with the boss in the car. At the hall they took the side entrance to the "Green Room". It was large and very bright, full of people around tables with expensive looking food and exotic deserts. Waiters in white gloves and black ties walked around with trays of drinks. Mel sat on a couch by the door and the boss "mingled". A pretty waitress asked "Anything to drink?", he whispered "Just coffee". He felt somebody sitting down next to him and when he turned, he almost spilled his cup: it was the great Alida Venti multiple winner of Best Actress Award. She seemed smaller, older and wearing more make up than on-screen. "Hello, I am Alida Venti from Verona, nice to meet you, how is the coffee here?" She was smiling and talking to him! Mel choked, he  managed: "Just coffee". He saw the boss, eyes bulging, fighting the crowd making his way towards them. A loud group burst in:  "Andiamo Alida" she stood up just when the boss got there to hear her say "Ciao caro!" "You talked to Alida Venti?! She called you caro?!" Mel told him that Alida introduced herself and said that she is from Verona. "And what did you say?" Mel said he told her that everybody knew who she was and that he watched all her movies many times and he thought her to be magnificent. "That was clever, Mel". Somebody called and the boss turned  "Let's go!", Mel ran behind him with the briefcase. "The case! Wait here!" Mel stood against the wall, heard the murmur of the crowd and saw people with headsets busy in the half-shadows. There was applause and gasps and shouts and music and applause again over and over, Alida and a bunch of others rushed past laughing and holding shiny little statues. He waited for a long time: things settled and it was quiet when he asked a guy if he knew where his boss was "Everybody left". Mel found the stage exit and took the bus home. The next morning he proudly hung his precious backstage pass in his cubicle as people came to ask  how it went. The boss emerged from the elevator and told a stunned audience how Mel had a tête-à-tête with Alida Venti on a couch and how Mel came up with really clever lines. 

Mel turned to me: "This was the highlight of my very boring life", then stood up looking for the right bin to throw his empty coffee cup. A tall blond girl said: "Can you move already?!" Mel came back to the table saying in a sarcastic tone "Was there anywhere a 'please' that I didn't quite hear?" He had a shy smile when he said: "See? I always come back with a clever, witty line ... but late".

Jancsi and the Legend of the Air Beast

I meet Jancsi every Thursdays at ten in the admin office on the ground floor to borrow the cart to deliver food to Parkdale Foodbank clients in the building. He is a big guy (at least 300 lbs.) of an age difficult to guess (I'd say thirty something to fifty something) with masses of dark hair covering his face and head. He also has remarkably small feet. His English is grammatically excellent and he has a perplexingly rich vocabulary all spoiled by his atrocious Hungarian accent. We say ”Hi!” and load the boxes from the trunk of my car onto the cart and go to the elevator. I used to start at the top floor working my way down but when I was paired with Jancsi he insisted we deliver in ascending order, I am easy, so this is how we do it: unit 103 first and 909, on the ninth floor,  last. Then we take the empty cart to the elevator, punch the down button and wait. Inevitably we end up looking at the dirty sign: ”EXIT AIR BEAST”. Jancsi jokes (I cannot tell if is German, Hungarian, English or his combination of the three) so I nod and smile to get the few seconds I need to untangle the words from his messy pronunciation. He usually quotes Schiller's Fiesco's Conspiracy at Genoa: ”The Moor has done his work—the Moor may go" He says: disappear, exit like us, the Air Beasts. We take the cart back to the office and say ”So long, until next week, yeah?”. Yesterday Jancsi stared at the so familiar sign for a long time and then started scratching the lower left-hand corner of the cardboard with his fingernail. In time, the grimy paper peeled off to reveal the surprising full original text: ”EXIT STAIR B EAST --->” Janci grabbed his heart and cried out: ”Jaj, Istenem!” and we laughed all the way to the office

Murad et Grand-père

This young man approached me to ask where to dispose of his banana peel, I showed him the nearby rubbish bin and asked his name, he was Murad Piez, severely myopic refusing to wear glasses as he thought to see the world as God intended him to see it. His voice was unusually high and melodious reminding of the Barry Gibb falsetto. When I asked if he is the singer of "The Ziegenzwischenwirtshaft" he was astonished to be recognized and by my so correct pronunciation.

We had coffee and he told me his story going back to his grandfather Zbigniew Piez: in the south-central Polish village Kraśnica of his birth, rumors started that Zbigniew was a wizard who poisons the water in wells (and should be burnt at stake - is how Catholics were known to fix this). His friend, the dentist, told him that they actually just want to take his goats. The following week when Zbigniew took his fourteen goats to the fair, he couldn't find buyers even at very lowest of prices. That night he killed the goats, threw their carcasses into as many wells he could and walked to near city of Konin where he jumped a freight train to Gdansk. He signed up on a ship to work for his fare anywhere. He landed in Halifax, Canada where he found work loading beer barrels at a brewery. In time, married the brewer's daughter, bought a house and a few goats (never more than fourteen); he had a son he called Murad who also had a son who was also called Murad. Murad (père) studied economics and ran the brewery he inherited very successfully. Zbigniew, on his deathbed, gave Murad (fils), a piece of paper saying "this is the secret of my life". It contained only one word: Ziegenzwischenwirtschaft. So Murad just had fun, wrote songs and used that word to name the alt-rock band he founded. They played along the Eastern Seaboard and had a small but dedicated fan-base. When I told Murad what the word actually meant, he stopped smiling, turned and walked away without a word.

About six months later I saw Murad on Letterman talking about signing with a major label, his band's number on hit and about his book (#1 NYT list) based on the life of his grandfather.

Charlie Melfort

This is Klaus-Heinz Frischzeit (*2 April 1922, Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany – †1 July 2010, Melfort, Saskatchewan, Canada), I never met him, but I know his story from Burt Melfort, who also supplied the picture, but let me start at the beginning:

Klaus-Heinz turned eighteen in 1940 and fell desperately in love with Gertrud, wife of his much older brother Klaus-Werner, who had a son of fourteen named Hans. In an act of incalculable cruelty Klaus-Heinz killed his brother, who was sleeping in the backyard, by trusting in his ear a very sharp thin dark hardwood stick he found in the attic. There was no blood, no sign of external injury and the doctors concluded "natural causes". When Gertrud rejected Karl-Heinz' awkward advances and "Uncle Hans" became suspicious almost violent, even pretending to see his father's ghost, Karl-Heinz, in another bout of irrational anguish, went to the recruiting office and enrolled in the Wehrmacht. He went first to France and then to Northern Africa where he was captured by the Allies and sent to the POW Camp in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Pretending to have farming skills and waiving his rights under the Geneva Convention, Karl-Heinz became a labourer in the rural community of Melfort, Saskatchewan. In 1946 when German POWs returned to (the now divided) Germany, the British government allowed him to stay as he married Ophelia, youngest daughter of Paul Danmark, his employer.  His name was unpronounceable to all around him, so he changed it officially and picked Melfort as a nod to the host community, first-name Charlie, what people called him anyway. The Melforts had five children who had children of their own: Burt was the eldest and Charlie's unabashedly favourite grand-son. One dark summer night, sitting on the porch looking out to nowhere, Charlie, by now in his eighties, told his story and showed Burt the sharp polished dark hardwood stick that he kept all these years. "Burt, meboy, this is where's y'all comes from!".

Edward Thomas

This is Phillip Edward Thomas (*3 March 1878 – †9 April 1917), I never met him as died in France during World War I, but let me start at the beginning:

The quiet Saturday early mornings are pleasant and the streets belong only to the dog walkers and the homeless. Casey was sniffing out the best grassy front-yard on Shanly when I, for no apparent reason, remembered Adelstrop. Edward Thomas was always among my favorite poets notwithstanding his relatively small volume of work, all written in a short three or so years. As father of daughter, the  opening lines of  "What Shall I Give You?" always choked me up

What shall I give my daughter the younger,

More then will keep her from cold and hunger?

. . . 

Picture credit Wikipedia under GNU and such, public domain Image copyright: Copyright expired 

So, once Casey makes her choice and makes, I go home and read meself some poetry, and, in the most respectful manner, I suggest so should you (too)!

Leonora Fitzroy

This is Leonora Fitzroy as I met her the other day at Pape and Harcourt. When she said her last name, I remarked that it was famously used by illegitimate children of the British royalty and Leonora said she knew, as she has an MA in History with a minor in Philosophy. She said people call her Leo as she is born in August and went on to say that, unfortunately, she didn't find a job in her chosen field and is currently a part-time lingerie model and volunteer for the Community Share Food Bank at The Church of the Ascension. We had that in common, I said (not de modelling, the volunteering). I asked if she'd like to have coffee and tell me her story and she said "Thank you, but that's my bus coming up".  I wished her good luck with all that stuff, said bye and walked South. When I turned around I saw her unlock her bike, put on her helmet and pedal away ... now I'm not even sure if her name is really Leo.

  

Elke

This is Elke Fuchs-Werner as I met her recently at the Dineen Café at Yonge and Temperance. There are, she told me, three things she is fanatical about: Yoga, Bridge and the Opera. There are forty-eight things that she is passionate about: the Environment, Jazz, Cooking, Watercolor, Biking, Cats, Montserrat Caballé, Venice, Arsenal Football Club, Penne Arrabiata, Rembrandt, Schubert's Impromptus, Culatello de Zibello, Merlot, James Joyce, Denmark, Vanilla ice-cream, Raisins, Richard III, Paul van Himst, the Fortified Church of Bierthelm, Comfit de Canard, James Ensor, Jasper FForde, Boca Juniors, Grey Goose, Tabasco, Toronto Maple Leafs, Dogs, Blues, Carnaroli rice, John Irving, Eric Satie, Brunello di Montalcino, Jamon Pata Negra, d'Alambert, Cashews, Guiness Stout, Bucatini All'Amatriciana, Hamlet, Giraffes, the Color Blue, Chrysanthemums, Fernet-Branca, Peñarol Montevideo, Kandinsky, Zaha Hadid and Berlin. Elke confessed that there are two hundred and thirty three things she hates but did not supply a list. As a child she had a pet zebra called Fibonacci, her cousins from Arnstadt had a pony called Klement.