Remembering Charlie

When my husband and I found our dream place, I was only 27. We had dreamed of a place in the country, where we could go and rest from our busy, active work and life in the large city of Toronto. We had been looking for such a place for some time, and a colleague of my husband’s told us of a man who was in financial trouble, and might part with his property at a reasonable price.

We had looked at many places, but until then we had found nothing we wanted to buy. Both of us had definite ideas about what we wanted in the country. We were looking for an isolated place, which had green fields, hills, streams, and many, many trees.

When we visited the recommended property, we knew we had found the place we had looked for. On the Northern side, the property bordered a government forest called “Ganaraska”, which was 25000 acres large. On the West side, lived a quiet neighbor with his wife, and their place was just as beautiful. The Southern part had a quiet country road and the Western part had a similar road which led into the forest of Ganaraska.

This road was named “The Thompson Road” after a while. Our land had four gushing streams, which sprang from artesian sources, several fields, thousands of trees, wild life, and rolling hills. It was ideal. There was also a raised plateau where a Bungalow could be built. We knew an Italian builder, who promised to build us the house we wanted.

This was done in a short time by his wine-drinking Italian crew. Even though our Bungalow was winterized, the building had many flaws. The basement leaked, and the ill-fitting windows let in cold air. Local workers fixed and repaired what they could, and the rest we had to put up with. Our property, which was 100 acres large, was so beautiful we thought it was a piece of heaven on earth.

We also built a cottage for my parents there, which contained a large living room, a bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom. There was a spacious veranda in front of their cottage where my father liked to sit in the summer evenings. My father later built a sort of a shack, by his cottage, where he kept his tools and equipment for work on the farm.

We never gave our property a name, and always called it just “The Farm”. On our land by the Thompson Road, there was a house where lived an old man, who had lived in that house all his life. This house was quite comfortable. It contained a small living room, a large kitchen, 2 spacious bedrooms and a bathroom. We let the old man, Dick, live there until his death.

It soon became evident we needed to hire help to maintain the place. My parents, who were healthy and strong, loved working on the farm, but between the two of them they could not do everything that was needed. They had once owned such a place in Estonia, and they loved the country with its surrounding forests.

My mother started a vegetable garden, where every vegetable and herb known to man seemed to be growing. She weeded it every morning, and all of us loved to go to the vegetable garden to pick fresh lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peas, broccoli, potatoes, carrots, fresh green onions, chives, and so on. My father also had certain dreams and ideas he tried to implement.

Every morning, after my mother had finished weeding the vegetable garden, my parents set out with some tools to clean the streams, and clear out a pine grove, which later became a place where we could entertain friends at the barbeque and around a fire. My father, who was more interested in growing flowers than in vegetables, planted many flowerbeds and created rock gardens.

Every summer we hired young men from either high school or college to help us on the farm. There was plenty of room for everything, and we took advantage of the space we now had. At first, the property was quite primitive, which was part of its charm. There were some heavy tasks my father thought necessary, but could not do alone. My father wanted to have a large hole dug where we could burn the garbage.

Also, there were many fallen trees which had to be cut down and chopped for firewood. Our Bungalow had two fire places, and we looked forward to cheerful fires in the winter. My husband and I were still working in Toronto, and could not be of much help. My parents liked to spend all summer on what they called the farm, while my husband and I drove back and forth from the city.

I can not remember now the exact time when Charlie entered our lives. A neighboring farmer’s wife told us about a man who was living in a run-down shack, which did not shelter him from cold or rain or wind or snow in the winter. A farmer, who used the shack as a sort of barn for his tractor, let Charlie sleep there.

Helen told us Charlie did odd jobs around the area, such as cleaning out pigsties and horse barns. Helen, the farmer’s wife had her finger on the pulse of the area and knew everything that was going on. My husband decided to go and see Charlie. He found Charlie in his humble lodgings. He felt so sorry for Charlie he took him along and introduced him to me.

My husband proposed we let Charlie stay in old Dick’s now empty house. I realized Charlie was retarded as soon as I heard him speak, but I was agreeable to my husband’s idea, and Charlie moved into the empty house.

Charlie was unable to tell us his exact age. I was startled when I first met him. His clothes were dirty and rumpled, and he spoke very little because he had a speech defect. This speech defect made communication difficult, if not almost impossible. To me, he looked strange, but Charlie was not an ugly man. His features were regular, he was shaven, and he had a full head of hair.

“Charlie needs a place to stay,” said my husband. “Maybe he can even do some odd jobs around here.”

                             

Charlie was installed with his meager belongings, which consisted of his clothing and an old, worn blanket. From what we could understand and hear from others, life had been cruel for Charlie until then. As an adult, he had never had a home, and slept wherever someone let him stay for a couple of days.

A few days later, Charlie showed up at my father’s cottage and asked if he could work for him. He seemed to assume the property belonged to my father. My father and my husband decided to try him out. We asked Charlie how we could pay him because we knew he was illiterate. Charlie said he wanted 1 dollar, but we paid him a regular wage.

Later, my husband also arranged for an old age pension for Charlie, to which Charlie was entitled. Soon, he became my father’s helper. He regarded my father as his boss, although he never called my father by name. To Charlie, my father was always HE or HIM. Charlie was muscular and strong.

My husband and I are easy-going people, and we were glad we could give Charlie an opportunity for a better life. My husband and I have always tried to help people less fortunate than we were, and this was one of these cases.

Within a year, Charlie had made himself indispensable. He reported for work every morning at my parent’s cottage, looking for my father. Often, he would ask “where is He?” in an almost insulted tone. Charlie seemed to think my father should be waiting for him, ready to go to work.

My father had so many plans for the property, and the two of them would set out content to work on that day’s project. Among his many ambitious plans, was the making of roads throughout the property, which would be lined by all kinds of trees, some of them pines, birches, maples, and many other varieties.

Often, my father would remark one could do so much on the place with a bulldozer.

My husband’s dream was to make a lake on the farm. At first a pond was dug, and I found it nice to swim in. We planted sticks of willow trees around the pond and they grew fast, so the pond became a scenic spot. My father built a wharf on the pond where we could sun ourselves. It was charming, but my husband was still not satisfied. He dreamed of a large private lake, and after a few years, he hired people to make one.

For many weeks we lived with the noise of bulldozers, which were creating an enormous whole in the landscape. My father now took full advantage of the situation. He talked to the men who operated the bulldozers, and persuaded them to make roads throughout the property. By now, my husband and my father knew the land so well they knew just where they wanted the roads to be.

Together with my husband, my father marked the trees where he thought the most beautiful roads could be made. Charlie was told to stay away from the bulldozers because we were afraid he might get hurt. But Charlie had not lived this long without having acquired some survival skills. He insisted on helping whenever he could.

On the whole, we let Charlie do what he wanted, but we did worry when he and my father used the chainsaw or when the bulldozers were around. After a short time, an enormous three acre lake was created, and it was so beautiful it was breath-taking. We bought a lovely canoe and also a small sailboat, and my husband and I would spend private moments on the lake on sunny days.

Charlie was often bewildered by the things we did. He could not swim, but sometimes we saw him looking wistful by the lake, seeming to be in contemplation. There was an abundance of trees around the lake, which reflected their glory in the water. However, there were a few empty spots, and Charlie took it upon himself to plant some trees. The problem was the firs he planted were all the same size and they grew up to stand like sentinels in a row.

The bulldozers had made excellent roads throughout the property, and there was also a road around the lake. One could either walk or drive on these roads, and we did so often at different times of day.

My family tried to make Charlie’s house comfortable. My husband and I installed both electricity and plumbing in the house. We liked to attend local auctions where many good things could be found without having to pay too much. We provided Charlie with an excellent bed, blankets, sheets, pillows, and chairs and tables. My mother even put curtains on all the windows. Kitchen cabinets already existed, but we got Charlie a refrigerator and an electric stove.

Charlie got it into his head the refrigerator gave out cold air, and used to cover it with blankets in order to keep the cold air inside the fridge. We were unable to convince him otherwise. We worried a little about the electric stove, and we were afraid Charlie might leave it on and set the house on fire. Therefore, we tried to check on Charlie on a regular basis.

Charlie also wanted to keep chickens in his house, but we told him it couldn’t be done. He was disappointed and never understood why chickens were forbidden. We did not think Charlie had an eye for beauty, and were surprised when we found Charlie had planted a lilac tree by his house. He had carried it all the way from the Northern part of the property, and seemed proud of his tree.

Next to Charlie’s small house, was a large barn which was not used much in those days, and contained odds and ends. Sometimes Charlie liked to eat his simple sandwich in the barn. Charlie did not know how to maintain his house, and all the things we procured for him soon became soiled and damaged.

Sometimes my mother or a kind neighboring woman would clean Charlie’s house, but Charlie did not seem to notice. Charlie changed his clothes twice a year, once in the spring and once in the late autumn. We offered to wash Charlie’s clothes in our washing machine, but Charlie would not hear of it. He preferred to live as he always had done and was set in his ways.

Charlie was able to prepare simple meals for himself, and we also gave him a lot of food was easy to cook or heat up.

One time Charlie decided to plant cabbages inside the chicken wire fence, which surrounded my mother’s vegetable garden. He watered them with the same love he used to water his lilac tree, which had now been joined by a fragrant mock orange bush.

After 18 years of marriage, a daughter was born to us. She became the center of attention in our family. We named her Katherine Anne, but it seemed like such a big name for a little baby, that we started calling her Anya, the Russian diminutive for Anne.

Anya was brought up on our farm part of the time, and spent a lot of time there before she had to enter kindergarten. After she had to go to school, I spent more time in our Toronto house, but weekends and summers were always spent on the farm. Charlie seemed to be fascinated by the baby, who soon grew into a little girl. He would approach her with his crooked grin, but Anya avoided him.

“He talks funny, mommy,” she said to me once. “I can’t understand him.”

I tried to explain that Charlie had trouble speaking, but he was a kind and good man, just as good as anybody else. Charlie would approach Anya with a bunch of wild flowers or a small branch from his lilac tree, wanting to make friends. When Anya was afraid of him, Charlie sensed it, I think, and he looked hurt.

To him, the little girl was just as beautiful as his cabbages. That is how Charlie loved all living and growing things.

Charlie never understood why my father and my husband marked trees to show where the roads should be made. We wanted our roads to be winding, not straight. To Charlie’s way of thinking straight roads would have been more sensible. I am not sure the men who operated the bulldozers did not agree with Charlie.

On a beautiful summer morning, Charlie did not show up for work as usual. My husband went to investigate, and found Charlie in his bed, shivering and feverish. My mother made some hot soup, and together, we tried to look after Charlie, thinking it was only influenza. But Charlie did not get better. My husband decided to take him to the hospital.

Charlie did not want to go, but my husband insisted. In the hospital, my husband was told Charlie had a heart ailment and would have to spend some time in a nursing home. After a few weeks, we started to realize Charlie’s problem was more serious than we had thought, and we accepted the fact Charlie would not come home again.

It was sad to visit him because Charlie always asked when he would be allowed to go home. We tried to reassure him, but we knew Charlie was in the nursing home to stay. We saw to it he had everything he needed, and my husband talked to the director of the nursing home and asked they let Charlie work in the garden there.

Charlie seemed quite content in the garden. However, he stopped asking when he could go home. I think he came to understand homecoming was not going to happen. He accepted it without complaint as he accepted everything else in his life.

One quiet day, Charlie slipped into a coma from which he was never to awaken. We arranged for a funeral for Charlie, which was attended by many local people. More than anyone else, it was my father who missed Charlie, with whom he had shared 18 years working outdoors together.

Once Charlie had told my husband he was not allowed inside the church. After asking around, my husband found the good Christians who attended church every Sunday had decided Charlie was not a desirable presence in the congregation because he did not wash or change his clothes.

My husband then told Charlie he was going to church, and on the following Sunday he and Charlie went to church together. He also told Charlie one day in the church there would be a memorial erected in Charlie’s honor. Charlie was astonished and my husband told me it was possible Charlie did not believe him.

After Charlie’s death, my husband brought a large piece of marble from the Peace Tower in Ottawa in order to arrange for a plaque in the local church, baring the inscription: Charlie Bishop, pioneer. A local craftsman built a bible stand for the plaque, and the church had to accept it. The plaque is still there and my family can testify to Charlie’s good, honest and special character.

Charlie had been a loving man but he did not know how to show his love, except by his actions. We like to think the 18 years he spent with us were happy years for Charlie. I hope the plaque will stay there forever as a testament to the fact that Charlie’s life was neither useless nor insignificant.

The End.

© Amy Thompson.