The Farm

The Farm

Our PMQ building was on the edge of the PMQ development, situated on top of a very high hill that sloped to a valley like a green carpet.  In the valley was  a little town called ‘St. Avold’. 

Many things were observed on that greenery. Sheep grazed, kids swatted golf balls and cars wound around on the road circling the hill.  One day when we were looking out the window of our apartment, we watched an old lady walk down the hill through the little apple orchard to the side. She was all dressed in black but when she stopped to relieve herself, she revealed shocking pink bloomers.  What a kodak moment that was!  

At the bottom of the hill there was a beautiful old French country farm house with three charming young daughters. I felt so privileged to know these girls and to be able to play with them on their farm.  They only spoke French and I had no French at all. I was going to an English school the military had set up in the PMQ’s. It took me the whole time I lived in France to be able to understand them. This was the beginning of my passion for French.

They had chickens on the farm that would run freely in the yard.  Much to my horror, the chickens even ran around after their heads were cut off.  It was nothing for my friends to witness this as this was just the normal beginning of preparing dinner. 

They also had rabbits in the barn in cages.  I had had a pet rabbit that got too big for me and I asked if I could leave it with their rabbits and they could take care of it for me.  It was dark in the barn and all the rabbits looked the same. As the months became years, I became less and less sure which rabbit was mine and suspected it had made it to the pot as rabbit stew. But I couldn’t be certain.

The worst thing I ever did, I did on that farm.  I stole an egg from one of the chickens in the chicken house. I carefully carried the egg up the hill, coddling it in my hands.  When I got to our third floor apartment, I carefully laid it in the oven and turned the oven on.  I was sure I would have a baby chick!  Hours later, nothing happened.  It was so hot when I took it out of the oven, I thought I’d killed it when I opened it to find a hard boiled egg. 

I never really got over stealing from my friends nor the added injury of perhaps killing the baby chick.  I feel guilty about this to this day. This experience marred an otherwise wonderful gaggle of memories of my French friends and their charming farm.

Mac

Mac

The story of my life in France would not be complete without mentioning Mac Prescott. I fell ‘in love’ with him the day I saw the back of his head on the big green kaki bus going to the base.  He was my life line.  I followed him to his base ball games.  I watched him in the boys play ground every day at school.  I sat beside him on the bus.  I thought of him all the time. 

I was only 7 so I didn’t know what to do with all this luuvvv  nor did I know how to talk to him.  When I left France I was eleven, but my ardor for him lasted for years. The last letter I received from him, he too had returned to Canada and the family bought a bull dog.  He named it after me.

I never thought I could marry any one else at least until I saw him again. But how would that be possible?  We lost touch and life brought us further apart as time went on.

Years later when I was packing up my locker at Carleton University to bid my final goodbyes, something extraordinary happened.  As I walked down the empty hallways I passed a student coming in the other direction.  I remember yet the sound of my heels clicking on the cement floor and echoing off the walls.  This student  was carrying an armful of maps so I couldn’t really see his face and I passed him by.  Then I froze in my tracks, turned around and said, “Mac Prescott?” 

It was he!  I was incredulous.  How could that be?  How could I possibly have known it were Mac? I hadn’t seen him since he was eleven. We exchanged niceties, how are you? What did you study? Where are you going? Then we parted.  I wanted so much to tell him what a crush I’d had on him in France, but I didn't know if he felt the same way or not. I saw him two more times that week serendipitously, once at a discotheque and at another time at a restaurant. We didn’t speak; we just waved and acknowledged each other.

Years later, around 2004, there was a 2Wing reunion in Ottawa for the air force ‘brats’.  He wasn’t there, so when I got home, I put an alert out for him on the 2 Wing Brat site.  A year later, I got the email I’d been waiting for.  

We wrote profusely of our experience and about our feelings for each other when we were kids in France.  We kept in touch every year just to catch up and say hi.  This is the first year I didn’t hear from him and he doesn’t answer my emails. (2014)

The Forest and Ravine, The Bunkers and The Mines

The Forest and Ravine, The Bunkers and The Mines

I don’t remember having a lot of toys, but I didn’t need them as there were wonderful radio programs full of stories for kids, ‘The Shadow’, ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’, ‘Dick Tracy’, to name a few. 

One of my favourite pass-times was playing in the ravine in the forest beside the PMQ’s. There was a large fallow field lined with high bushes that you had to cross to get to the ravine.   The old bunkers that dug into the hills were my palaces and I fantasized of a different life. For a while, I could be a princess, the bare walls lined with gold and the dirt floors covered with fine tiles and tapestries.  Everyone would wait on me.

The stories I heard about the field mines left over from the war concerned me just a little.  Even though it had been ten years since WWII ended, mines were still being found all over the country, some by children playing in fields. When they stepped on the mines, they would blow up and kill them.  Even though I knew my parents were aware of this, I didn’t talk about it to them because I could’t bear the idea that my fantasy world would be forbidden to me. 

So between the ages of seven and eleven, my happy worlds were the  trips on the military bus to the base, Mac, and the magical forest and ravine.

Metz, Grotenquin and 2Wing

Metz

At first we lived in Metz, near Paris, for a few months.  I have vague memories of a small class room with diminutive desks and few students.  I could never get enough of the intoxicating scent of the large pink roses that traipsed over the walls and gates everywhere. The impressive Globe Hotel sticks in my mind.  Maybe I passed it every day on the way to the small classroom through a sea of roses. Mom says we ate there often. Maybe that’s why I remember it yet.

Grotenquin, 2Wing

My dad was actually supposed to be at  RCAF Base 2 Wing in Grotenquin.  The only trouble was, the airforce didn’t have accommodation ready. So Metz was a holding tank till they had some place for us to live. 

They finally engineered accommodation for the fledging families who were first to arrive at 2 Wing. They installed trailers for us, which were positioned on the airport tarmac, on what they called ‘buttons’.  These buttons were circular and had been used to park aircraft.  Each button had a number and the trailers were placed along the edge, forming an incomplete  circle in each button.

It was summer.  It was hot. There were no trees. We were all crammed inside the small space for sleeping and eating.  My mother was pregnant with Susan.  ‘Butch’, the bratty kid next door, would chase his mother around their trailer with a stick while his mother cried out, ‘Oh Butch, put that down Butchy’.  Even at that tender age of 7, I could figure out, what do you expect calling a kid ‘Butch’?

My father emptied the ‘honey bucket’ each evening.  He would go to the toilet in the trailer, haul out this pail and walk out of the trailer into oblivion.  I never knew where he went, but he always came back with a clean bucket for a fresh start the next day.  I thought it was a job only for fathers. I was glad I wasn’t a father.

The trailer period didn’t last long, as my mother was still pregnant when we moved to the PMQ’S [Permanent Married Quarters].  These were a gaggle of several, maybe ten,  four story apartment buildings, each with their own letter. I think ours was ‘C’ block. They were  located 17 kilometres from the Base at Grotenquin. 

The military supplied large kaki green buses to transport us back and forth to the Base for movies, skating, swimming. I have indelible memories of the fun we kids had on that bus I just loved singing the old camp fire songs.  

The Base even had a grocery store, hospital, church, and bowling lanes. It seemed they built all this for us in a farmers field.  There were few trees.  I recall the merciless heat of the hot sun pounding down on me as I went from one activity to another between the buildings.

I also remember well the huge blue sign outside the guardhouse at the entrance to the Base. It was a fresh sign RCAF BASE 2 WING GROTENQUIN with a jet painted on it, probably a CF 100.  This sign had historical significance and led us to an adventure, a coup, about 35 years later.

It was 1955.  Television had not arrived here yet.  No one had a phone at the PMQ’s.  There was one phone in the office which was located in one of the buildings and it was only open some of the time. No iPhones, no electronic games, no computers, no TV. What did we do?  Well, we were brought up by the out method… “OUT!”

To France: The Great Ship

Chapter 3

France: (ages 7-11) 1955-1959

The Great Ship 

Ships were still the main method of trans-Atlantic passage in 1955.  Air travel was just getting off the ground, so to speak and not a viable option for the military to transport families at this time in history.  I was only 7, but I was thrilled we were going on the big ship, The Homeric of Canard Lines. 

We left from the port of Montreal and arrived six days later in France at the port of Le Harvre. What I remember most about the experience on that big boat were the dinner mints on the table outside the dining room.  I’d take a handful of them and savour them as their soft creamy texture melted in my mouth.  It was an unfamiliar liberty.  

Another indelible memory is the scant railings on the decks. The hungry waters broke into enormous waves along the side of the ship.  They were way too close.  There seemed to be nothing between me and that deep foreboding ocean.   Mmmm, easy for a parent to rid of an unruly child.  Just a little push and that’d be it. I found it quite horrific. I stayed well away and tried to behave myself as best I could.

My parents told us of icebergs that were huge underwater, but just showed little peaks on the top.  They explained they were very dangerous for ships because ships could hit them even when they were far away.  So that is why I wasn’t ecstatic when an iceberg was sited.  Everyone on deck didn’t seem to know what I knew as they were waving excitedly and smiling. I never got sea sick, but this experience scared me deeply and all I could think about was who was going to be in the life boat with me.

The vast expanse of ocean gave me the impression that we weren’t really moving at all. I wanted to believe the adults who insisted that we would see land one day, but by day four, I had serious doubts. Waves, waves and more waves. From one horizon to the other, nothing but water. I could see me growing old on this boat.  I was starting to wonder where we would get our food.

Then one day, everyone was on deck again, pointing to land on the horizon.  I couldn’t see anything, but it wasn’t many hours later that I, too, saw it. Our long journey came to an end when we debarked at Le Harvre in France. We made it. The ice bergs didn’t get us and I didn’t get thrown overboard by angry parents.  We were in France, our new home for the next 4 years.

The Early Years 1948-1955

Chapter 2

The Early Years: 1948-1955

It all started in the General Hospital in Ottawa on April 5th, 1948 where I was born, the daughter of Ian Bowles Fripp and Gertrude Elizabeth Thompson. I arrived a few scant months, thirteen to be exact, after their first born, Karen Elizabeth. Karen sensed my arrival was not a good thing for her and I don’t think she ever really got over my sharing the spotlight that she had learned to love and think of as her own. 

My parents already had a baby, so you might say the blush was off the rose with my arrival.  I realized this, years later as an adult, when I saw the birth announcement on a yellowed piece of newsprint about three quarters of an inch by one and a half inches: “Born to Elizabeth Thompson and Ian Fripp, a girl. General Hospital”.  As in ‘The postman delivered the mail’.  The lack of ardor was stunning. But the announcement was framed in a little black frame.  This effort convinced me that they really did care after all.

I know they truly were delighted with my arrival.  How do I know this?  My mother told me.  She also mentioned that my father’s father, Herbie, thought it would be okay to have another baby so soon after the first, if it were a boy.  My great grandfather on my mother’s side, Dr. Robert Law,  thought my mother should consider not having this baby because the babies were just too close for her comfort.  Back then there wasn’t a way of determining the sex of the unborn baby. And that’s how my life started, sort of like an accident of fate.  

I was an affectionate baby and I had a placid disposition. So I wasn’t too much trouble for my Mom.

After my parents were married, my father left the airforce to become a full time student at Carleton University. The babies came and he found being a student didn’t work well with having a family so he left Carleton to sell ‘Filter Queen’ vacuum cleaners.  

However, this career came to a grinding halt the day he strew corn starch atop the rug to demonstrate the virtues of his product to my mother’s bridge club.  In spite of her pleas to stop, he continued.  Well, it turned out that she was right. There was no way the corn starch would come out of the rug despite his vigorous efforts with his superior product.

My father applied and was accepted back into the Service. 

My father’s military career was to have an enduring impact on my development. Moving every two years, I learned to be very adaptable in dealing with new situations. The resilience I developed was one of the advantages, the primary drawback being lack of roots. 

My father’s military career started in Ottawa but soon got us on the road when he got his first posting to Centrailia. My earliest childhood memory is when I was 5 years old and in kindergarten. My parents are scolding me for biting the teacher.  I vehemently denied it because I knew what they’d to do me if I admitted it.  But it was true.  I did. 

This was akin to the story my parents told me about the visit to the post office when I was two.  A nice gentleman squatted down before me to say how cute I was, adorned in my smocked dress. It was at this moment that I chose to kick him in the shins. My mother was acutely embarrassed.

Keep in mind that I was really a very loving child.  I don’t know for certain why I did these bad things, but I have a good idea that I was reacting to something and acting out.  

I have few memories of living in Centrailia. One I do remember is when some kid threw concentrated bubble soap in my eyes. It really hurt. It was one time I remember feeling  my mother’s concern.  

Another time was when I was learning to ride my bike.  I fell off on to the gravel on the side of the road and landed on my face.  My skin was scratched all along one side of my body. I was unconscious and I remember waking up on the couch in our living room to my mother crying, ‘My baby, my baby’.  So I knew she loved me. But, unfortunately for me, she didn’t seem to feel the same way when it came to defending me from my father. 

Two years later we moved to Portage La Prairie in Manitoba.  The images that stick in my mind are the mountainous snow drifts along the drive way and the house being buried in snow. I remember the cold in the winter, the wind. I remember the heat of the summers being so hot you could fry an egg on the sidewalk and you couldn’t walk on them in your bare feet.

My mother didn’t work then, but she was industrious.  She had the job of making ends meet.  That’s why she made a snowsuit for me out of an old quilted raincoat.  Looking back on that now, I think that was pretty clever.

She was a genius at the food budget.  Our fare consisted of a Béchamel sauce on eggs, on tuna, on salmon, on peas, on carrots and on onions, all served on toast; fried baloney, spaghetti and ketchup, (that became an all time favourite), liver and onions; hamburger in pasta, in tomatoes, in Spanish rice, Shepherd’s pie, chilli and spaghetti;  eggs in sandwiches, fried egg and onions, omelettes, cream sauce and eggs, pickled eggs, and the famous egg-in-the-hole: egg in a hole in the bread and fried.  It was a favourite too.  

We had a wonderful roast beef dinner on Sundays.  That’s when my Dad would rush at the end of the meal to soak the blood of the roast in bread.  I don’t remember any one else wanting this, so I don’t know why he was so covetous. I found it absorbing the way he delighted in this ritual.

After two years in Portage, we were to get a posting that would be the highlight of my childhood.  We went to France.

Spare The Rod and Spoil The Child

Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child

Who would expect these teenage like kids, my parents, to know anything about parenting?  They must have been part of a generation who got married, had kids and just hoped for the best, not really having any idea on how to build relationships or bring up a kid. Maybe things have gotten much better. At least these days people get married when they are older and hopefully are a little more discerning.

Patterns repeat themselves and continue to do so until the cycle is broken.  My father only knew a strict dad and so he was strict too.  Being in the military didn’t do anything to heighten his sensitivities, either.  So it was, “Do as I say not as I do”, and, “If I tell you to jump, don’t ask why, ask how high.”  Or, “If you do that again I’ll knock your block off.” Or better yet, “I’ll kill you.” How about, “I’ll knock you into next week.” Yes, these were the words that reverberate through the memories of my childhood. 

Since the age of two, I was spanked and punished for doing things that my father was sure I did intentionally.  One time when I was two and Karen was three, Mom had just got us all dressed up in our little smock dresses to go out.  Well, I wasn’t quite toilet trained and I had an accident in my pants.  My father was sure I waited for the moment I was all prepared to relieve myself and so gave me a beating to teach me a lesson. 

The physical abuse started around this time.

Both my grandmother and my god father found my father’s treatment of me deplorable.  My god father, Eric Kenny and his wife, Joey were close friends of my parents.  We grew up knowing their kids, Dixon, Deirdre and Naomi.  They wanted to adopt me by the time I was four.  But my parents wouldn’t give me up.  

I grew up to be  totally convinced that I was adopted.  They didn’t love me. How could real parents treat their kid this way? I don’t remember my father having a conversation with me, but he was quick to back hand me if I said or did anything that didn’t meet his approval.  They wouldn’t treat their real kid that way.  Karen was their real kid. 

By the time I was twelve, I grew to hate him in proportions not right for that tender age. I had learned to refuse him the satisfaction of my tears.  I promised myself that when I grew up, I would kill him.  I wasn’t strong enough yet, but I fantasized that when I was older, I would somehow be that much stronger and I’d just knock him off. Revenge would be sweet and righteous. I had no way of winning now because his force was mighty.  He may be more powerful, but my will was greater.

When I was 15, my birthday present was no more beatings, with the strap on my hands or bottom or just flailing, nor with the wooden spoon or with his back hand swing. 

I never did get around to writing my father off, but I swore I would never feign a happy childhood with either of my parents. They would live with the knowledge that I carried a heavy emotional burden during my childhood and I was miserable.

After I left home at 17, I passed through about 10 or so years, resenting my parents and how they treated me as a child. I had tried to forgive my father, but the words were empty. I couldn’t get it into my heart.  However, after years of pleading the suffering victim, I got sick of hearing myself go on. Then something happened. 

I started to see the problem was within me. The only way I could truly forgive my dad, and my mom for not defending me, was to relinquish the victim mentality and take responsibility for my life. I was the only one suffering the hurt.  They had gone on with their lives and probably never thought about it.  I saw I was wasting all that energy on self pity and I was done with it. I was able to truly forgive them both and in the doing of it I discovered, “I forgave  the prisoner and set the prisoner free and the prisoner was me.”

Once this shift took place, I could understand that my parents were really kids when they had us, trying their best and wanting the best for us.  They just didn’t know how to do it.  I began to see them in context of their lives and not just mine. 

My mother was brought up in a hotel in New York and hated it.  Her mother was a glamorous, bright, feminine but unmotherly, socialite who worked as a hotel social director, and her father was a hotel manager. She quite hated it.  Fortunately, she spent some of her childhood living in Ottawa with four uncles and an aunt. There, she was spoiled, adored and indulged in.  So Mom learned to be the centre of attention and never, completely, learned how to be a doting mother.  

My father had a short father who certainly suffered from the small man complex.  ‘Herbie’ favoured my father’s older brother, John, who was the ‘white haired boy’.

Thus my father never felt accepted by his dad and some of the stories he would tell would raise the hair on your neck.  For example, Dad, an ardent animal lover, had to shoot his own dog because the dog was suspected of having rabies.  Another time he had the chance to go to Florida with his best friend.  His father punished him  for some forgotten mishap and wouldn’t let him go.  My Dad certainly suffered from the influence of his father who had committed transgressions against him and left him with unresolved frustrations, insecurities and a nasty persecution complex mixed in with feelings of inferiority.  

My Dad’s mother adored him though.  This would explain Dad’s attachment to older women later on in his life.

Don’t get me wrong. Mom and Dad were a great couple.  They loved to laugh and party and people loved to have them around. They were attractive, fun and charming. Its just that the kids of these kids were just an appendage to them, orbiting their busy lives. Children were to be seen and not heard.