The Johnstons
This is the first in a series of sad stories about untimely deaths, so if you don't like blubbering into your supper, either turn away or eat later.
The Johnstons lived up the street from us in a brown wartime house with a big Union Jack painted on their garage door. To give you an idea of how well this went over on our street, it showed up there during the summer of '67 when everybody else was painting the centennial symbol on their garage doors while the neighbourhood kids sang, "Ca-na-da, one little two little three Canadians".
I even recall my disinterested and unpatriotic mother lining us up one day in July for several hot, boring hours to tour the centennial train. I can't remember the inside of the train, but I remember every adult around us complaining about the wait and the line snaking around and around and around like it was just yesterday.
None of the other parents on our street really wanted to have anything much to do with the Johnstons, mostly because Tippy, Mrs. Johnson, was "unpredictable" and Frank, Mr. Johnston, was "unreliable". You couldn't have asked for two worse adjectives to be thought of by on our street.
I was friends with Kelly, who was what my mother called, a smartass, but I liked Frank Jr, his twin brother, better. Frank Jr was the salt of the earth. It was like he had all the good qualities of a brother and friend while Kelly had all the smarts that would bring everybody he knew to a bad end, while he himself got elected mayor. But I didn't really have a choice about who I could be friends with because Kelly had claimed me first and Frank Jr would never go up against Kelly. The sad thing was, Kelly claimed everybody first, so Frank Jr pretty much ended up with no friends. But it was part of their twin pact and everybody figured Frank Jr probably had his hands full just being Kelly's lifetime twin anyway.
And it was pretty obvious that Frank Jr took a backseat to Kelly with Mrs. Johnston. She said Kelly cracked her up - even when he steamed all the labels off her cans - and she couldn't stay mad at him for long, but Frank Jr just broke her heart because he couldn't even get the jokes on Carol Burnett.
She was probably the only mother who couldn't stay mad at Kelly for long, though. When my own mom caught Kelly hanging by his feet from the rafters in our garage, she yelled at him to get down and go home and break his neck on his own property. And the other mothers practically crossed themselves (that's just an expression, we didn't have any Catholics on our street - they lived one street over with their own sad stories of untimely deaths) every time they saw him headed down the street with a shook up bottle of pop or a stolen cat (that's another story involving an ongoing war we had with the Bouchers, two families of Catholics that lived on Rankin Street - one over from Orange Lodge Avenue. I'm kidding - we lived on Blossom Street).
Anyway, like I say, I preferred Frank Jr to Kelly, who was always one upping me with dares and trying to blame me for stuff I'd had nothing to do with, but every school day I'd pick him up and we'd head off to school, Tippy at the front door calling out, "Hey, Kelly - Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these!" and she'd do that hubba hubba thing with her hands propping up her breasts. I was mortified, of course, but Kelly would just yell back, "Cigarette?" and she'd yell back, "No thanks, I can live without it!"
Frank Jr didn't go to our school. He had cross-eyes and, as Kelly said, "Something wrong with the old pumpkin". But I really don't think he did. I think he just LOOKED like he had something wrong with the old pumpkin because I'd had numerous intelligent conversations with him that I'd never had with Kelly because Kelly just wanted to pull the wings off flies or set off firecrackers in bullfrogs' mouths.
I seriously think Frank Jr was the victim of discrimination based on his crossed-eyes, although, Tippy was the type of mother to go to the wall against the school for any perceived discrimination against Kelly - who was nothing but trouble, of course, "Mrs. James' perfume is making me want to barf all over the class more than usual" type stuff, so maybe Frank Jr really did have something wrong with the old pumpkin.
Anyway, it was always a dream of the Johnstons to run their own fishing camp. Frank was one of those odd job types who always had a bunch of stuff around the yard or in the garage that he was fixing up. And Frank Jr was always right by his side helping him. In fact, I don't think I ever saw Mr. Johnson outside when Frank Jr wasn't right there with him, working away on something. It was an even split, Kelly and Mrs. Johnston, Frank Jr and Mr. Johnston.
Pretty soon, there was a fishing theme to all the junk that was accumulating in the Johnstons' "unsightly" yard, as my mother put it, and it became apparent, to me, anyway, that the Johnstons were actually going to do this thing, that they were going to move down the line and set up a fishing camp. My mother scoffed at the very notion, "It'll never happen - unless Frank Johnston has found a real live one somewhere to take the bait."
She wasn't even making a fishing pun. She just had a way of making life sound very unlikely unless you played it straight, followed the rules, and got some kind of certification telling the world that you were qualified to be doing whatever it was you were doing - even if it was setting up a rustic fishing camp on Lake Huron.
In the end, she was wrong. Frank Johnston did set up his rustic fishing camp, about 60 miles down the line heading towards Blind River. The twins even ended up going to the same school, which was much bigger than anything in the Sault, because it took in kids from all over. Kelly helped Frank Jr catch up until he turned 16 and could "drop out with honour", and Tippy taught all her boys (she included Mr. Johnston in "her boys") how to cook up a mess o' food for the men who paid good money to set up in a hut, wake up at 5:00 a.m. and go fishing. As time went on, families started coming, and it wasn't long before Mr. Johnston really did have a fishing resort.
Frank Jr, it turned out was made for life on a fishing resort. He pretty much took to working there full-time with his mom and dad and when Kelly went off to university, he stayed behind, happy to be "swabbin' decks and totin' bales" as Kelly said.
It was toward the end of Kelly's first year at Lake State, across the bridge in Sault, Michigan, that Frank Jr got a call from a neighbour down the road to help him out with a stalled engine. Tippy actually took the call, it was about 4:00 a.m. when she'd get up to start the day, a long ways from her race to the door at 8:30 in her chiffon nightie and furry mules to yell "Smell ya later" after Kelly as we headed off to school. She got Frank Jr up and sent him out telling him she'd have a nice breakfast waiting for him when he got back from helping the neighbour. Mr. Johnston was off on a buying mission, checking out boat motors and whatnot.
Anyway, the neighbour could never understand why Frank Jr parked on the highway instead of coming down the drive. He was killed instantly, his body knocked several feet into the woods by a guest at the resort, who was doing 120 and drinking right out of the bottle when he hit him. He was so drunk, in fact, that he didn't even remember it the next day when he'd sobered up. He cried when he heard the news. He'd spent the better part of the week teasing Frank Jr about all the work his dad had him doing and thought he was a great kid. He couldn't believe what he'd done.
The saddest part for me was how all the fun went out of Tippy. It was like she'd popped, and all the life seeped out of her slowly but surely. My mom and I saw her at the mall, every once in a while, and we'd talk about Frank Jr and what a nice kid he'd been. She and Mr. Johnston had moved back to the Sault, unable to keep up with the work of the fishing resort without Frank Jr. Then we stopped seeing her at all. A couple of years later, someone told us she'd died in her sleep after taking too many pills of some kind or another.
I don't really know what became of Kelly or Mr. Johnston, but I always thought it must have been tough to be such a mismatched pair left behind to live on together. Of course, maybe they just went on singly. Like I say, I don't know.
