The use of the word 'bent' could apply in different ways here.
All of my siblings are fairly creative beings. Perhaps it’s best understood by telling you a bit about the creativity and resourcefulness of our parents.
When Mum said, “I’ve been thinking”, we knew to clear the room without delay. Nothing was safe from our mother’s transformative powers. She could take an aging piece of furniture and give it new life … although it was sometimes a pitiful new little life, one could honestly say, it never looked the same. Both parents were fine examples of doing-it-yourself. Their many projects were not always a success, the failures were, however, always good for a laugh.
Returning my sister, Dale, home after a Christmas shopping trip in the late ’60’s we walked into the kitchen to see Dad with that proud I-did-it look on his face. He had just papered two walls, one in the kitchen and the other in his living room. He’d poured himself a drink - Captain Morgan White Rum LCBO #392B - and taken his classic pose at the refrigerator with one elbow up on the corner and his drink sitting atop the cold storage unit … if it wasn’t in his hand ready for the next sip. He was practically bursting to show us his latest handiwork.
We sat in the kitchen appreciating what he’d completed (and more than for the fact it was a job completed … do not even ask about my Dad’s, or even my own history, of incomplete projects). Our youngest brother, Mike, entered the kitchen and quickly noticed a rather large air bubble that he pointed out to our Dad.
“Psst!” came from Dale accompanied by ‘the look’, warning Mike he was on thin ice pointing out Dad’s errors.
“It’s okay Porks.” (Yes, the only one of four girls who never carried extra weight was nicknamed Porks. I’ve often wondered if I’d been given that pet name if it might have caused more control of my fork.) “It’s important to get these bubbles out.” He was up on a chair squishing the air out with a flourish. Coming down he grabbed for another sip of his drink.
From Mike, “Dad, there’s another one, quick!” Again back up on a chair and smoothing the freshly applied wallpaper. Next, the entire corner of one panel peeled back. Not at all perturbed Dad jumped up on a chair and smoothed it back with a wet sponge. It wasn’t until five panels of paper rolled down simultaneously that Dad clued (I resisted saying ‘glued’) into his mistake.
The paper he’d already proudly hung on one wall of the living room must have been the pre-pasted roll. He’d bought two rolls at the same time … one pre-pasted and one not. He’d mixed them up. Heck, that double-pasted paper may never come down even when it was time to redecorate. I can’t recall but he may have moved out of that house with that twice-glued paper still clinging to that wall.
It was the Christmas season so there were many rolls of wrapping paper strewn around. We simply took the seasonal paper from the rolls and used the emptied rolls to mark and roll up the paper until Dad attacked the job again, this time with the proper paste.
*****
Our mother loved to change the look of furniture to bring it … ahem … more up-to-date? She had a beautiful cedar chest that could have brought a fortune to a lucky heir had she left it alone to become a treasured antique. However, Mum, having purchased some of the ugly blonde furniture in its popular years of the ’50’s, butchered the potential antiquity right out of her dark, brown, cedar chest by cutting off its legs. The curved and scrolled lovely legs were replaced with so-called modern, black, wrought-iron skinny legs. She also stripped off all the carved, decorative trim and replaced it with plain trim. Finally, she painted it a kind of peachy, pinkish blonde (hoping to make it fit in with the new round coffee table and the step end tables). She then applied Roxatone to give it that all-over speckled look. Roxatone was a spray-on product meant to be used as a kind of cover-up. Well, it was the ’50’s as mentioned and Mum was just trying to bring us into the decade with a modern touch.
Let us not forget Georgie’s leather paint kick. We had an aging chesterfield that was covered in a nubble fabric. Mum heard about leather paint and really thought the old couch could use a leathery lift. So, can of leather-like paint in hand, she applied a putrid colour over the entire thing, cushions, too. She took a gray and black pattern to a shade of puce that was a cross between shocking pink and maroon - and all in just two easy coats. Except for the colour choice, she did a pretty good job.
Remember those nubbles? Well, they turned out to feel like sharp, little, pokey, needle knobs sticking into the butt of the sitter. We tried not to complain but, bare arms were scratched and posteriors poked to the point of pain. Hot summer days were a real thrill. Shorts were simply out of the question. If soreness didn’t get you, the sticky simulated leather trapped you until someone came along to help peel you off.
Mum’s lesson wasn’t learned until her lady friends started to arrive in their nylon stockings. The sight of a family friend walking across the room in increasingly laboured steps was quite a vision. Long, fine threads were being pulled from the calves of her stockings while a few feet away the lady was still attached to the couch.
As this old eyesore of a couch aged the paint started cracking and chipping away. Eventually, tired of the cracks (especially the wise ones from her family) Mum had the couch carted off.
I’ve mentioned their misfires only because they make me (and hopefully you) laugh. Both parents were very good at creating new things and making do with what we had. I’m happy to have inherited many of my parents’ creative talents. More important, the genetic gift of humour abides within each and every one of the Turner siblings. Family gatherings are never about tiffs and rattled nerves. Our get-togethers are all about sharing life and laughter.
Mum & Dad in their courting days. They were married in 1938 so, this would be sometime in the '30's. They always had a certain style about them and so good looking.
Dad in his classic pose. He rarely wore a shirt when at home ... winter or summer. He must have hated wearing a shirt and tie. I remember seeing him pull at his collar in disgust and discomfort.
This is my sister Dale (right) and me on our Christmas shopping trip prior to Dad's wallpaper fiasco. If you've waited awhile for this latest post it was my obsessive compulsive response to finding this lost but remembered photo and the one of Dad above. This particular photo was found in the last possible place to look in about the last thirty photos to search. I'm reminded, looking at this, that my creativity in those days was expressed in making my own clothes. I'm guessing, from my outfit which was made (not the leather coat) for a trip to Great Britain, the year was 1969.
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