Uncle Bill
Jocelyn_
August 30th, 2006
I use almost every opportunity to spend time with Uncle Bill. He’s the only original Campbell left now, with Mom gone. And he hasn’t been talking much since Mom died. Frustration was quickly replaced by patience when we found out his condition is terminal. Today is Wednesday, and every Wednesday I spend the evening at the hospital so Auntie Beth will treat herself to time with her friends at their weekly meeting.
Tonight Uncle Bill opened up.
First he said the diet coke I brought for him was really good, and he hadn’t had one in a while.
Then I asked him about his job at Air Canada, and he told me stories about pets who died in cargo of 727s, or were shot by Venezulan customs authorities. Then he told me how much the family enjoyed the free air travel perk, and they took Grandma Campbell on holidays. They went to Key West and a nice man gave her a coconut, which she accidentally lost on the train.
Then he told me about the house at 419. Did Grandpa Campbell really build it? “Every last stick of it”. He refused to hire a over priced contractor to dig out the basement, so he used his vacation time from Imperial Oil to dig it out with a wheel barrel. The family had a big pile of clay in their back yard for two years. “We had more fun than a bunch of monkeys”. Mr. Jones, the plasterer from across the alley on 22nd avenue, exchanged the pile of clay to plaster the entire house. “He did a really fine job, even did some detailed work on the ceiling. It was a real community back then. There’s a house 3 doors down from the Tebo’s on 18th avenue that had the same floor plan as our place, because Dad helped Mr. Taylor out with the framing and construction. It was a real community back then” After the war, everybody needed houses. It took Grandpa Campbell two years to finish 419.
Then he got onto Mom. “She was a really nice sister.” She got him his first job, with the Crescent Theater on Center Street. Cleaning aisles at first. Then changing the letters on the marquee. They had to write out the titles of the movies on paper first, because when you’re up on a 40 foot ladder you don’t want to lose your concentration. His favourite movie was High Noon, but they had one with (who??) up for a really long time. Uncle Bill earned $25 a week in high school. A fortune when you’re a teenager. I didn’t have to ask what this lifelong hard core car-buff saved it for!
He kept talking. I could have listened to him all night, but he was tired. I folded up my knitting and I sat next to him on the bed. “It’s been a good life” he said.
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