Now that Dad doesn’t need his binoculars to keep tabs on things, he’s given them to me. They’re useful for keeping an eye on the horizon, writes Mark Farmer
First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at“What the hell are they doing there?” Was it a backhoe tearing up the sidewalk? A pile of dirt freshly deposited on a neighbour’s front lawn? A pickup laden with equipment backing into a nearby driveway? Whatever it was, dad had to know what was going on.Suburban Halifax in the 1970s wasn’t exactly a thrill a minute.
“What the hell are they doing there?” He made it sound like an accusation: who were these people waltzing into this quiet suburb –quiet suburb – and depositing gardening soil? Or performing scheduled maintenance? Or renovating things? If this was nosiness, it was entirely benign, driven by a sense of responsibility and concern, of ownership for the neighbourhood and its inhabitants. That’s a core feature of small towns and their ilk: connection, of people to a place and to each other.
He’d scan the horizon like a ship’s captain, itching to give orders to the crew. Sometimes he would even wander over to personally scrutinize the work. I’m certain he didn’t hesitate to give his opinion of how things could be done differently or better, but in a way that said, “I’m one of the guys.” Being the man of the house, a father of four and a manager for decades, it’s not easy to let go of the need to direct.
That’s when I discovered, “What the hell are they doing there?” is hereditary. From my 20th-storey perch in downtown Toronto, I can watch what the hell they are doing for miles around: passenger planes on approach to the city centre airport; harbour traffic coming and going; the Gardiner Expressway getting replaced one monster chunk at a time; an army of cranes rising and falling, throwing up progressively taller condos all around. It’s my TV.
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