The Doll Dress

2021

 The Doll Dress

     by Douglas Reimer the Orderly

This is how our breakfast ran mornings till I left home at 18 years of age. Mother or father called down the stairs for us boys to get up. Initially, my brother Jim and I, and then later my brother Rudi and I, slept in a room, built into a corner of the basement, that we called ours. The boys’ room. There was only a bunkbed as the sleeping arrangement, as sleeping equipment. A set of shells, a table, a chair or two, a window to the outside, and a bare gray cement floor constituted the visible qualities of that space. So many of my childhood moments of discovery owe their existence to, or their memory to, this room.

     So, we would file upstairs after taking off our longjohns (pyjamas) and putting on our jeans or slacks, or whatever they may have been that we wore then, and a shirt likely already worn the day before, and rushed up to eat our oatmeal with brown sugar and milk. Hungry always. Always! Like boys always are. Never more food than they can eat. Such a thing as orange juice didn’t exist at our house. I doubt whether I had ever tasted orange juice as a young person. Bacon and eggs were food for lunch or dinner. Toast happened along with porridge at our breakfast. And coffee. Coffee not for the kids, but for mom and dad.

     Speaking of coffee, this one time, this one morning, dad complained after devotions and prayer that his coffee tasted off. When the pot got emptier and dad wanted more, still complaining, mom got up to take a look at the inside of the pot.  

     “Oh! My goodness,” she yelled, “there’s a doll dress in here.” Both Lois and Gwen,  my sisters, had dolls with dresses that had been used for 10 years without being washed. They would have looked filthy and they would have been filthy. With spit, with germs from the toilet, with handling by many children, all with questionable hygiene, and with the remnants of the juicy evacuations of all of the Mexican Chihuahuas we had ever owned (some 15 of them).

     “No! Oh! No! Not a doll dress! No! No!” my father yelled. “Neij, obba neij! Nich noch dot uck noch! (Not yet that also yet!) Nich noch en puppae Kleit! (Not yet a doll dress!) He poured the rest of the coffee left in his cup into the sink and in exasperation left the kitchen. None of us had exactly smirked or laughed until then, but once he was out of sight we all, including mother, roared with the humour of it all. Doll dress coffee is what we called it then and still do in recollection. Never to be forgotten by anyone in the family who witnessed it. I smirk just now in memory

Once Before

 Once Before  

     by Venerable Douglas Reimer-Leigh

Once before, on another occasion, I had inhabited on that island for a night, in that case with my then friend, Barry. I recall nothing of the trip, really, except one thing, and if you asked for more details I believe I would scratch my head and puzzle in vain. That "one thing" constitutes the reason for this memory. Barry and his wife, Petrova, must have been visiting us in Thompson at the time of this event. They made the trip twice or thrice in the nine years that Marty and I taught in northern Manitoba, first for two years in the hydro town of Grand Rapids and then for seven in the nickel-mining city of Thompson. They appear in our photographs of Christmas one year, Petrova and Marty still vibrantly youthful-looking and Barry, with his straight thin hair shoulder-length, typically somber and aloof, silent, somber and aloof. 

     So, on this summer adventure out to this remote and mildly inaccessible lake, we two, unfamiliar with Philips Lake outside of knowing of the waterfall somewhere in its farthest reaches, arrived at and set up camp on the island of which I wrote earlier. I clearly remember our excitement about the site, so "luckily situated" with a front row view of the raging waterfall. The earth trembled a little with its rushing force and it appeared to entertain and welcome us in the deep, complex discordances of a natural choir. Vaguely, I recall casting in our lines and bringing back from below the waterfall enough pickerel for the evening meal. As darkness came and the sun awayed, we stoked the fire and rolled a few joints. Habitually a  pipe smoker, I likely interspersed  marijuana between bowls of either red-packaged and fully aromatic Amphora tobacco (which I still think of as one of the two or three best tobaccos ever) or the bright yellow-packaged Sail, both Dutch-made and delicious. 

     On my own I lived quite comfortably without grass, hating the sensation of dizziness it inevitably gave me. Also, the very first time I used it back in Winnipeg, it must have had some hallucinogen cut into it because I experienced an eight hour trip from hell, not unlike what I imagine a day-long hellish ferris wheel ride at twenty rpm would feel like. Here, in the gathering dark, we smoked, we drank a few beers and a glass of red wine, we crawled unsteadily into the tent and then proceeded not to be able to fall asleep. Immediately and increasingly the ground began to tremble and shake, the trees on this windless night moaned and moaned, and the dread of some unknown but terrible threat overwhelmed our senses. And ever louder, ever more threateningly, a gathering presence, that waterfall made its way horribly over the waters straight for our tent. Oh! the fear! I whispered to the "somber and silent" Barry, finally, if he, too, felt as if we were being stalked by the roaring thing out there and he admitted he did. But, he added, much more aware of the effects of grass on the senses, that that can happen when you're high at the wrong time and space at an unfamiliar place. His wisdom helped. Though the roaring increased, and the falls crept closer, blessed sleep finally freed us of our terror. 

     That is the other story of Philips Lake in my memory. One trip exhilerated us and the other tortured us. Not only a few experiences with Barry caused me painful memories. A trip to Prince George with Barry and his wife, a winter hike on snowshoes deep into the bush on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, a morning around the breakfast table when I felt mortally insulted, and more, are not joyful memories and best forgotten. Ah, well! Life pitches its curves regardless of the relative blindness of the catcher. Life throws at us. Life's "thrownness."

A Few Weeks Before Our Wedding

A Few Weeks Before Our Wedding

     by Marriageable D Reimer

A few weeks before our wedding Terry Berg and I assumed use of the new orange Volkswagen Marty and I had bought with Marty’s savings from her previous year of teaching. We took it for a trip, a holiday, an exciting adventure for two guys before one of them became more tied down. Banff bound. 

     It was dark when we arrived at Regina’s outskirts. We turned onto the perimeter highway to the south of the city. We hadn’t gone too many miles before we noticed ahead of us a parked semi truck with its hazards flashing. We slowed a bit but couldn’t see anything that seemed to be the matter. When we turned our eyes back to the road ahead we suddenly saw—sort of—something dark and unlit in our lane. Black against black. Terry was driving. He hit the brakes but it was too late and we slammed into the overturned vehicle. 

     Luckily we were only going fast enough by then to crunch the fender right up against the wheel, destroy the bumper and make a mess of the front end body of the car. We felt very lucky because neither of us were hurt. We had been going slowly enough to keep that from happening. The police arrived shortly and brought the two of us to a nearby motel where we stayed the night. I was dead tired and exhausted and wanted to sleep. Terry was stimulated, overstimulated. He wanted to talk and tell stories and philosophize about the whole event. It was not a good night. Instead of continuing on west towards Banff, we waited till the car was hammered back into shape enough to be driven. Not roadworthy, but drivable. Then we headed east. Home again home again jiggity jig. 

Uncle Couldn’t Shoot

 Uncle Couldn’t Shoot
     by Repeater Four-Eyes Douglas Reimer

Uncle Jake harms was standing point, my dad was driving bush and there was a half hour before the two should be meeting at the mile road where the truck was parked. Being November, it was cold outside, and it happened that at six in the morning, what with the dampness of the day before, a fog had rolled in thick and grey. Jake watched intently, peering through the fog at the spot where my father was intending to appear out of the bush. He expected, that is, Jake expected, that my father was still way back in the bush and knew a deer might suddenly appear and he’d have to be ready with his rifle. Suddenly, he did see a deer, with the head distinctly bearing a rack of horns. He raised his rifle, aimed and pulled the trigger. Nothing. His finger wouldn’t move! He tried again. His finger remains stiff and unmoving. Once more he tried and failed to get his finger to pull the trigger. Stunned he looked up, and there, emerging from through the fog was my father carrying a deer on his shoulder, the head pointing forward with its rack of horns. Jake, uncle Jake, had come within a hair of shooting my dad. He stood there, his heart pounding, and when dad came near him, smiling, proud of the buck he had shot, Jake rejoiced with him but inside he was trembling and shaking. This story he told me once many years after my dad had died. I asked him, but he said that he had never told my father about that deadly moment.

Some Years Ago on Halloween

 Some years ago on Halloween 
       by Douglas M B Reimer

Some years ago on Halloween eve in La Riviere, at a time of year when one could reasonably expect to find snow, or at least cold weather, I remember how warm it was. My grandsons, Johnny and Nicholas, their father, Jeremy, and I walked around town in shirtsleeves knocking on doors and getting treats (the boys knocked at the doors while we men stood on the sidewalk). I remember then being so amazed that it didn’t feel cold at all but instead got warm enough to make me want to take off my light jacket. Little Johnny had painted his face with moustache and little beard in black, and he had his eyes blackened with mascara. He was so excited that he ran ahead of us inevitably. We asked him to stay with the group but no matter how often we coaxed he was too excited and jumped ahead each time. Of course when they got home with their loot bags bulging their mother hid most of the sweet stuff, promising to dole it out during the year. 
     And that reminds me somehow that my father, in the 50s, 60s and 70s, correction, 50s, 60s and some years before that, probably, had at this time of the year always been starting to prepare for one of his favourite little holidays. November 11, which happens to be my grandson Nicholas‘s birthday, was the one day a year that father would go deer hunting. Early morning, long before light, he would get his white overalls ready, his thermos of hot coffee, his buns and farmer sausage, some old cheese and possibly a Pepsi or two. His lever action Winchester 30/30, which he kept somewhere in the house without a case, he had had for as long as I’d been alive. Once, before he could afford the Winchester and had only his Marlin repeating 22, he Shot a deer from a great distance. The way he said it happened was this way. He had been sitting, leaning against his favourite two birch trees, waiting at the junction of two ravines. When a couple of deer eventually came down one of them and stopped, he realized it was too far, much too far, for him to get off any kind of an accurate shot. Without debating too long he decided to and did take aim and fire. To his complete surprise, the animal dropped in its tracks, a distance of some 200 yards, and downhill at that. When he went down to inspect he realized that his bullet had broken it’s backbone.    
     One more little story about the Halloween time of year. When I was about 16, my friends and myself drove to our neighbouring town, Gretna, and unwisely threw balloons full of water from the car window at any person we passed, although not at little children. It wasn’t too long before the police, hearing from complaining constituents that they had been soaked by people in that purple 51 Pontiac, caught up to us and unceremoniously saw us out of town. We felt lucky, we felt brave, we felt excited and joyful that this had been a wonderful, wonderful Halloween evening. Looking back, I marvel at the fact that I wasn’t smart enough to realize that this was not as wonderful as we thought but really rather stupid and foolish. There are more Halloween stories I could tell you, some of them harmless, some of them funny, one or two of them impudent and naughty. I will leave those for another occasion.