Pirates on Folding Bikes
a letter to my father
I remember when I was a little girl, maybe nine years old or so, and you were living on Lyle Street. It was summertime and Lyle was a street like all the others around it. Kids were out riding bikes. Parents were mowing lawns and weeding their marigolds. The whole neighbourhood was lined with modest, well-kept, postwar homes. Big, mature trees shaded us from the sun. Your house had a weeping willow, magnificent and large, drooping its forlorn branches over the entirety of your yard. A few years later that tree would succumb to some sort of disease despite your valiant efforts to save it. At one end of your street there was a busy road, but at the other, it was only a field, then a chainlink fence, then an airport runway. In that field, a large, busy community garden buzzed with retirees and all sorts of odds and sods looking to grow their own tomatoes and beans.
Little Carly and little me had come to spend the weekend with you and Heather. We went to the Co-op and you let us buy fudgesicles and KitKats. We ate pancakes for breakfast and spaghetti for supper. You made us popcorn - back when you still made it in a pot instead of the microwave. I make it in the pot even still. It reminds me of Saturday nights, living in the country, watching Love Boat as a family. Carly and I would lie on the living room carpet with that big, buttery bowl of popcorn between us. You and mom sat on the red leather sofas. We used to have to leave when Fantasy Island came on after or else we’d get nightmares.
But that was then and this story is from a different then - the time of the house on Lyle street. Mr. And Mrs. Nicks had given you their folding bikes. They were ugly things, heavy and weirdly shaped to hinge over themselves in an attempt to be compact for the travelling, active senior. Carly and I wouldn’t have been caught dead on them in our neighbourhood, but in yours, where our friends were far away, they were safe to use. They served their purpose as Carly and I zoomed around, pulling flowers from back lane fence lines and plucking peas from any garden within reach. I remember being yelled at by a woman who saw us coming “Don’t you touch my flowers! I saw you yesterday!” We just flew by and marked her house for later. Pirates on folding bikes.
One of the stops on our marauding route was the community garden at the end of your street. It spread out in grids with posts and poles dividing up each person’s plot. Sometimes we would walk on the thin paths between the vegetables, secretly sizing up what was ripening, looking for that garden absent people so we might grab a treasure or two. But the seniors there were onto us. They watched us like hawks. Sometimes they told us that if our parents didn’t have a plot, we had no business walking around. Sometimes they just stood silently, had on hoe, ready to pounce. Don’t let them fool you with those walkers, there was a lot of spring left in those old codgers. We learned that the hard way.
But we were seasoned in the art of vegetable heists. Years earlier, Carly and I had spent many an afternoon in the hedgerows around our country home. One hedgerow was all that stood between our fields and our neighbour, Mrs. Gerchin’s, garden. She had the sweetest peas in the hood and we needed our daily fix. We would watch her tending her garden and then, the second she went in for lunch, we would attack! We would run as fast as we could, plucking peas from the vine and filling our makeshift shirt baskets with them. Sometimes she came out of her house hollering. Sometimes we got away scot-free. Either way, we got the peas. Any scolding was well worth the risk.
Back in the community garden, seasoned criminals that we were, Carly and I walked along the plots nonchalantly, feigning innocence, but the tensions were thick. We never took our eyes of our bikes lying at the edges, primed to make our hasty escape. Could we grab the cucumber and make it to the bike and be off before the old French Canadian glaring at us could get ahold of us? Yeah, we probably could.
One particularly lovely Saturday evening, when the glaring sun of a hot summer day partnered up with the coolness of a setting sun, Carly and I unfolded our trusty steeds and headed out to pillage and plunder. First the back lanes, a safer and more assured land to conquest. Most people were in their houses at that time of night, televisions blaring the evening news through their open windows. The raspberry canes were thick with berries and the skinny, chain smoking old lady that always wore polyester short and blouse sets wouldn’t be there to monitor. We rode to our treasure and left our bikes tucked behind a neighbouring garage. We slithered to her raspberries and sat crouched below them, carefully plucking them from their thorny defences. I’m not sure how many we ate, but we only left when our bellies began to ache.
From there we were off to the community garden. Planes came and left, their massive bellies almost within touching distance of our reaching hands. But that was old news and the new news was waiting for us in that lush garden. If there were raspberries, there were other delights. Maybe even a melon! It was evening, most people would be gone. Imagine! We might just have the whole garden to ourselves!
But it wasn’t to be. There were more people there, working in the relief of the cool evening, than there were during the day. Defeated, my little sister and I started poking around the fields surrounding the gardens. There was a path that led from the parked cars to the boundaries of the plots and in that place, large holes dotted the earth. I recognized them as groundhog holes. I grabbed a stick off the ground and went to a hole. I told my little sister that you could fish for groundhogs with just a stick. That when they heard a noise at the top of their house, they’d rush to the sound to come and bite whoever disturbed them. If you used your hand, they would bite your finger right off. Every kid worth their salt knew that. I poked my stick around for effect and she watched with intense dread, expecting, at any moment a maniacal rodent to appear, hellbent on chewing off little girl fingers.
But there was no groundhog. I decided that the groundhogs must be off doing other things. I moved to the next hole, just on the edge of the garden plot. I looked down, into the hole and jumped back, letting out a scream at what I saw. There was a groundhog! I had looked in many a gopher and groundhog tunnel, but had never actually seen one close up! But there it was, as sure as day, a big groundhog! But he wasn’t slipping down and into the safety of his underworld home. He couldn’t. His arm was stretched out and away from him, towards the surface just below my feet. His front paw clutched in the teeth of a metal trap.
I stood above him, looking into his eyes that burrowed deep, deep into my guts. He pulled back but his paw remained. I could see, up close, this wonderful little creature and I could feel his fear. But I was little and didn’t know what to do. I started to cry and called for help. One person came, an older man (but who isn’t old when you’re nine). He looked into the hole and said “Aha! Serves the thief right!”, and walked away. A few others came, looked in and left. Nobody was going to help the gopher. Nobody cared.
I was frantic, made all the more so by the apathy of the adults around me. They could do something and they wouldn’t! I was hopping, exploding with intention and frantic worry and they were slow and lazy and dumb. I got on my bike and pedalled with all my might, back to your house. I flew in through the door, yelling my story through gasping sobs. “The groundhog, the groundhog, he’s stuck in a trap and his whole hand