April 2, 2011
I think of you all the time.
I miss you every day.
Love,
Phyllis
My Father, George Rubin,
Serving the public for 37 years at
Metropolitan News Agency
1248 Peel Street,
Montreal, Canada
He was my father, my friend, my mentor,
My eyes on the universe.
He taught me just about everything I know.
He was hard-working, wise, kind and oh, so loyal !
I was always by his side.
My earliest memory of my father is of me as a child -
Running to greet him when he came home
From the dress factory,
And from Farnham, where he served in the army reserves.
I was knee high to a grasshopper,
But I remember how I loved him.
He took me for long walks
And talked to me about everything.
He bought me comic books at Wilensky's,
He took me to the movies and second hand book stores.
Pop took me for rides on Montreal's Golden Tramway.
He pushed me on the swings on Fletcher's Field in summer,
And pulled my sled up the hill in winter.
He took me to the band concerts held in the gazebo
On breezy summer evenings.
He helped me learn to ride a bike
Rented from Rose's bicycle store.
He made me memorize the multiplication tables,
And he kept me far ahead of my class in spelling
And composition.
When I was eleven, he started to teach me the business -
Rolling pennies and operating the olde cash register:
Newspapers from all around the world, magazines,
English Bone China and Fine Irish linens,
Bookkeeping with a pen and ledgers.
He taught me how to order lunch
At the Harmony Buffet Restaurant on Peel Street.
At seventeen, Pop taught me to drive his maroon Kaiser.
And I remember -
One evening, when I was a child,
While we were walking in the country,
We emerged from a dark wooded area into an open field.
Suddenly Pop said, "Quick ! look up !"
And for the first time, I saw the Aurora Borealis !
What Splendor !
Before my wondering eyes -
Waves of music were being written across the sky -
In technicolor !
He was my father, my friend, my mentor,
My eyes on the universe.
He taught me just about everything I know.
And I miss him so much every day.
Phyllis Carter
1 comment:
MY FATHER AND THE BROKEN SALT SHAKER
So many memories of my father. One day, when I was a little girl, perhaps eleven or twelve, I was working at Metropolitan News, "The Store", behind the chinaware counter.
I had opened a parcel from England. Small salt and pepper shakers - not bone china, but cute. They closed with a small cork at the bottom.
One cork seemed loose. I pushed it in. The china gave way under my thumb, broke and slashed my finger open. Blood spurted out. I went to my father at the cash register just across the floor.
Pop told me to go to the pharmacy across the street - kitty-corner across St. Catherine Street. Pop could not leave the store. There was no one to take over the cash.
And so I walked to the nearby corner of Peel and St. Catherine. The light was red. I stood among the other pedestrians holding my hand cupped below my thumb, to catch the dripping blood! I must have been zonked. I waited for the light to change and went into the pharmacy.
The pharmacist looked at my hand and said, "You should go upstairs and see the doctor. You might need stitches”. I started to faint.
The pharmacist brought me behind his counter and sat me down.
I still have the scar but now, at age 81, I think about my father, and how he must have felt, seeing his little girl bleeding and not being able to leave his post.
It makes me so sad.
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