Gems along my path

Every stop along this 18,000-mile circuitous route I’ve chosen has presented memorable people. Dozens of these folks would make excellent prospects for roles as good and lasting friends.

Once in a while I run into one or two whom I’d hire on the spot – if they were willing to relocate, of course. One quality seems to have more sway over me than others: when I meet another writer, I feel in a comfort zone.

I met such a man here in Brooklin, Ontario – a town I never expected to visit. He’s a former postal service manager and was brought to my attention by Sylvia Pugelj, the activity director here at the Court at Brooklin.

Here’s the story that piqued my interest in Vern Mechan…

The Suit

by Vern Mechan

It started with my Father saying he had made a decision – which meant my Mother had let him think it was his idea.

My Dad drew himself to his full height of five foot seven and declared in his best authoritarian tone “Son I have decided it’s time you had a suit”.

Well… you can just imagine how excited I was. Here I was, the only kid in the whole neighborhood who was going to have a suit. How lucky can you get?

I immediately ran down to the corner pool room and started to leaf through all the old Gentlemen’s Quarterly magazines that were there for the more discriminating pool hustlers to browse through while waiting for the next mark to show up.

Sad to say I discovered nothing in their pages that would look good on a nine year old boy unless he wanted to look like an overdressed midget from a Damon Runyon novel.
What to do?

Being in the throes of the great depression my Mom and Dad had become very selective shoppers so we made the rounds of the local second hand stores and when all failed, the Salvation Army.

None of these fine establishments were able to supply me with the sartorial excellence I had been looking for so my parents made a momentous decision “let’s buy the lad a new one”.

Well joy reigned supreme in the Meehan household because I was sure to be a celebrity in the neighborhood. Imagine a nine year old boy owning a new suit when not even grown men could afford one.

The next question was, where will the money come from? After all it was 1934 and, outside of getting a few part time jobs, my Dad hadn’t worked in a few years.

My Mom then surprised us by saying she had been doing washing for the rich people on Baby Point Rd. and had managed to put away fourteen dollars for an emergency. Oh joy

I was not only going to get a new suit but now I found out we were rich too. Life didn’t get any better than that.
Let’s see now, we have the money but where are we going to buy it?

It turned out the answer was in my bedroom. It was the T.Eaton catalogue which as any young boy from that era knew doubled as hockey shin pads. Now we were in business.

We turned to the boys clothing section and “Voila” there were more kinds of suits than I ever knew existed. There were suits with short pants, long pants and some with no pants (I found out later they were sport jackets which didn’t have pants).

We found a nice light brown suit with two pair of pants and it only cost eleven dollars.

The next day my Mom and I hopped on the streetcar and went downtown to the Eaton’s annex to see if they had one like the one in the catalogue. Luck was on our side and we found a suit almost the same except it had only one pair of pants but it was two dollars cheaper and I guess I should mention the pants were short which didn’t make me too happy, after all wearing short pants even at nine old years didn’t make me the coolest kid in the neighborhood.

My Mom was really pleased though, not so much about the suit but the bargain she got. My Mother loved bargains, like the time she bought the Christmas tree and she…No that’s another story …maybe next time.

To make a long story longer we took the suit home and the lady next door shortened the shorts (is that bad grammar?) to fit me. I looked in the mirror and discovered the kid in the catalogue looked a lot better than I did which upset me no end.

By this time I was becoming disenchanted with the thought of being the only kid around with a suit and I started to think of all the bad things that could happen like having to wear it to school and maybe even be forced to wear a tie and worst of all maybe the other kids would make fun of me and I would grow up with no friends and probably wind up being a hermit.

I decided the suit must go before it ruined my life. I got together with some of my friends and we decided on a plan.
The plan was to tell our Mothers we were going to go to church and on the way I would do something heroic like saving one of my friends life by pushing him out of the way of an onrushing car and of course my suit would at the very least get torn. I knew my Mom and Dad couldn’t get mad at me for being so brave.

I thought about it in later years and figured the plan wouldn’t have worked anyway because in our neighborhood in 1934 you would only see a car about every three days and I don’t think we were willing to wait that long. I guess you want to know what did happen to my suit.

Well nothing heroic happened. We were going to go to Sunday school but seeing that none of us liked church anyway we decided to go down to the creek and play around for a while. Well, boys being boys things got out of hand and I got pushed into the creek, suit, leather shoes and all. I swear I could see that suit start to shrink right on my body. I was not a happy camper.

I knew the jig was up and I had to go home and face up to my parents.

After my Mom’s colour returned to normal and my Dad stopped yelling I was asked what happened. I had one more ace up my sleeve. I told them Reverend Fisher had baptized me and I got soaked.

My Mom quickly said “Reverend Fisher is a Baptist and you go to the United church”. I was confined to the house for four weeks.

I was paroled after two. I think my Mom thought I was enough trouble and was glad to get rid of me.

By the way I got my next suit when I was seventeen and I paid for it myself. Oh yeah it also had long pants.

Mehan, 81, is a Toronto native. He was a postal supervisor and office manager for the Canadian Postal Service. He now lives in the Court at Brooklin in Ontario, Canada.