se

Sitting through details

PVE BEEN digging. In the mid-
den of my past.

As is to be expected, some
scoops are full of worms; others
turn up shards one can't im-
mediately discard. One's torced to
squat down on one’s heels and

Eleanor

THE VINTAGE YEARS

turn over those bits that have an
extra gleam to them, Oh, wasn't
that fun! Or, bury it quickly, it
doesn’t bear scrutiny.

Layers of a life. The one | was
after was nearly at the bottom of
the strata. I wanted to have a look
at the girl who cate out of the
bush to attend Normal School in
Vancouver in 1936.

ft was triggered, this rummag-
ing around in time, by a simple
enough invitation to lunch.

“Let’s go to City Square, so
you can visit the days of your
youth.’* Beware this sort of ex-
cursion, will be my motto in the
future. Never go back.

City Square, at 12th and Cam-
bie, is a glass-roofed shopping-
mall created on the skeleton of the
Norma! School, built in 1905 and
therefore inviolate. It cannot be
destroyed, but it’s perfectly ail
right to bastardize it.

Who conceives of these
anomalies? Here’s the shell of that
grim rigidiy brooding institution
used as an anchor for an acre or
so of glass which shelters a
bewildering throng of shops and
bistros. All are quite unrelated in
function or design to anything
remotely connected to the Normal
School.

Anyway, there ] was, and there
was the place in which I had spent
the best part of a year, uncom-
fortable, unhappy, unfulfilled,
unconvinced, desperately home-
sick and constantly starving. My
monthly allowance from home
was $30, $25 of which went for
room and board.

The remaining $5 [ was free to
dispose of as 1 wished, once the
fundamentals of stockings, basic
personal hygiene, extraordinary
school supplies and required ex-
cursions were taken care of. F was
trying to grow my hair, which
eliminated one expenditure.

No question that my 25
precious dollars were well spent.
{n exchange for them, | got the
only bedroom in my fandlady’s
one bedroom fat on t2th Avenue,
was permitted to do my personal
washing, and was provided with
three meals a day.

The trouble was, my gracious
landlady was elderly and ascetic,
and there was no way | could say
to her that my sturdy teen-aged
body needed’ more than a cluster
of grapes on the cottage-cheese at
luncheon.

A good thing that a chocolate
bar could be yours for a nickel.

Two of those nickels would get
you into a movie. My friend, who
lived with her family en (4th,
equally hard up, walked with me
to the movie-houses downtown
most Saturdays to watch Janet
Gaynor or Clara Bow conquer
penury and adversity and win
love. Our expectations thus reaf-
firmed, we’d spend another nickel
on a big gooey Zeigler’* choco-
late,

Trouble was, Hd net been at the
business of learning the school-
teacher trade more than a few
weeks before [ knew it was not
what I wanted to do, And | knew,
equally well, chat there wasn't a
hope of viving it up.

Tuition, some vast sum like
$200, had been paid — there was
no question of reneging. So there
were no options — I'd learn how
to do it, and I'd do it well.

And then good-bye Charlie.

Before I'd left home, so ill-
equipped “psychologically, chrono-
logically, financially, our doctor's
wife had given me a letter to
deliver. Her sister was an impor-
tant part of what was then called
**the women's pages’ in the Van-
couver Sun.

Mrs. Doctor had been telling
her about the stuff I'd been writ-
ing for our local newspaper while
studying at home for entrance to
Normal School, and the letter in-

Ld

iy
op 8 es ee oe ee

the very big difference.
é ~~

shorteuts at all .

eg Bu rard Stree:

troduced me and = sugeested |
might: work into that section of
the newspaper,

The letter was never delivered, |
simply didn’t have the nerve.

So 1 scraped through Miss Con-
ey’s music classes, and Miss Man-
ning’s instruction about canning
tomatoes, and Mr. Lord’s
awesome lectures on politics and
protocol in the profession. Miss
Bollert’s instruction in primary
teaching filled me with great
unease -— imagine being stuck in a
classroom with a bunch of peaple
who could neither read nor write!

By September [| had a post.
Back to the bush. There were no
consolidated schools in thase
far-off days, no children were
bussed. There were, instead, one-
roomed schools all through the
hinterland, all of them staffed by
one lonely, scared beginning
teacher, as far from advice and
assistance as if on the moon.

Sunday, April 14, 1991 - North Shore News - 414

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‘