Memoirs of an Apprentice Nice Old Guy

Lately I've been hearing a lot about "aha moments". They seem to occur when life suddenly pops up and says, "Look here. Now." I've had a few in my time and recently I was hit with one that stuck.

While walking Dave the Dog, I came across a new neighbour struggling to get a large bag of cement from his mini-van to his backyard. I introduced myself and between neighbour Hal and I, we managed to haul the bag to it's destination.

As I was walking away, I overheard Hals wife ask who'd helped him. "It was that nice old guy from down the block".

Aha.

I was chuckling when I got home but still, I found myself peering at my reflection in the hall mirror. While the owlish, slightly sagging countenance staring back didn't look completely alien, it didn't look overly familiar either. I smiled. I grimaced. I opened my eyes as wide as I could, then I squinted. It was me of course, but oddly, it was like I was seeing me for the first time.

Later on I found myself musing about various nice old guys from my past. Of course my Dad came to mind immediately. A handsome, soft spoken man, Al Hamilton was a quiet, industrious guy with a wicked sense of humour. He loved golf and curling, and excelled at both. As National Retail Director for Holt Renfrew Canada, he was well respected and considered an over-achieivng yet personable man by employees, employers and competitors in "the rag business", as he referred to it. Above all, my Dad was a dedicated family man and in many ways, a model for how I've tried to live my life.

Through circumstances not of my choosing, I had to tell this beloved man that my Mom, Doris, his wife of 54 years, had passed away suddenly. In that instant, my Dad became an old man. His facial features caved, his shoulders drooped and a soft, low moan escaped from the depths of his chest, a sound I'd never heard before or since. He never fully recovered. Dad lived another three years but despite his and our best efforts, it was a sad, joyless existence. Looking back, I suppose this would qualify as yet another "aha moment".

Of course not all my "old guy" memories are sad. In fact, most are not. A prime example of an engaging memory concerns one Moe Love. Back in the TeleCom Canada days of the 1980's, Moe was the Broadcast Services account rep for Bell Ontario and I held a similar position for AGT. Though he was in his mid-sixties and I my thirties, we hit if off from the first time we met.

Reps from the various provincial telephone companies would meet once each year in a member city for a four day work session. The agendas were intense and the workload heavy, but at least one evening was reserved for socializing. My fondest memory of Moe involved a Toronto session. Though based out of Ottawa at the time, Moe was born, raised and had worked the majority of his life in downtown Toronto. He knew the area intimately. 

After a splendid dinner at his favourite noshery, Moe took four of us on a walking tour of his old stomping grounds; Bloor, Yonge and Dundas Streets. Amazingly, he knew most of the cops, street vendors and professional ladies (the older ones anyway) by name. The highlight of my evening came when we visited the Yonge Street "Sam The Record Man" store where Moe introduced us to his childhood pal, Sam Sniderman, the original "Sam"! We spent 20 minutes or more discussing every aspect of the recording industry. I'll never forget a moment of it.

We got back to our hotel just after one a.m. The bar was closing but of course, Moe knew the bartender so he and I were able to savour our last libation, on the house. Moe retired from Bell shortly after that session. I never saw him again but from what I've heard, he's into his nineties and still regaling people with wonderful stories of a downtown Toronto most have forgotten. Mr. Love was, and is, the quintessential "nice old guy".

Last year I wrote a piece about a favourite teacher of mine, Ivan Birdsell. He was in his early seventies when I took his summer school trigonometry course. He got me through a ball breaking regimen with his will and amazing teaching abilities but that was only part of the story. Ivan was just a shade over four feet tall and weighed roughly one hundred and forty pounds. He had a silver brush-cut and steel blue eyes. He was an outstanding golfer, a rabid Yankees fan and he loved jokes. "Groaners" and corny shaggy dog stories were his favourites. That said, Ivan detested crude or demeaning humour and he could be searingly clear with his objections.

We remained close, often meeting for lunch or coffee in the restaurant on the top floor of the Woodwards department store. Our conversations would revolve around family, sports (he had an amazing memory for jersey numbers!), music and yes, even mathematics! No subject was taboo and frankly, Ivan was probably the first true liberal I ever met. He was accepting of every social group, religious denomination, race or sexual orientation; an exceptionally rare quality for the times. This may have had something to do with his stature and his ability to live an equal life despite what he used to laughingly call his "shortcomings". At four feet tall, Ivan Birdsell was easily one of the biggest men I ever knew.

If I am very lucky, when it's my turn to take what Moe Love endearingly refers to as "the big dirt nap", someone, perhaps a number of people, will remember me as a nice old guy. Lord knows I'd be in excellent company.