bassoon

Today's Blatherings entry is my friend Craig's highly amusing contribution to Jeff's Birthday Scrapbook, used with permission. People reading through the scrapbook these days don't often realize that the entire story is fabricated. Craig is the editor of MapArt, not a bassoon player in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, for example. I was never a jamcracker. In fact, I had to ask Craig what a jamcracker is. :-)

Speaking of Craig...only a few more weeks until we go to the Erasure concert, yay!

---

Craig's Birthday Scrapbook Story

Jeff is 40: wow. It's sobering to realize that I've now known him for 33 years, for Jeff and I met when he was 7 and I was, like, 2. Okay, 6 and a half. So long ago, so long ago, but so fresh in my mindÖ

The Ridpaths had just moved to town at the end of summer and it was suddenly the first day of classes at Asymptote Junior School in Branson, MO. Prodigies each of us, Jeff and I had both made short shrift of our early educational careers, been skipped ahead 3 years, and now found ourselves together in Mrs. McNally's fifth grade class.

Initially, I was thrilled to have Jeff around. I had been dreading another year of after-school torture at the hands of the Parkinson quads, brothers who were not really born at the same time, but who arrived on this planet in such rapid succession that 3 of the 4 of them were in the same grade. Daily having to outwit the Quad Squad had been exhausting for me, but Jeff's arrival allowed the two of us to divide and conquer the Parkinson threat and I was subsequently able to arrive home for dinner safe and sound on a regular basis thereafter.

Jeff, as fast on his feet as he was a quick learner, fell victim to the fearsome foursome only once. If you haven't seen the scar, take a furtive glance next time you're in the sauna with him.

That said, with our common enemy and our shared predicament in that odd town, one would assume that he and I made fast friends that year, especially considering Jeff's obvious interest in my extensive collection of ViewMaster slide reels. Truth be known, we barely tolerated each other that year, each of us too convinced of our own superiority and far too competitive to let our guard down and just be pals.

Jeff and I lost touch when our families coincidentally moved to different towns in Belgium the following summer, (us Bruges, them Ghent) where I subsequently failed Grade 6 three times and Jeff failed Grade 7, Grade 8, and Grade 9 once each. Four years in, Jeff's kin tired of the hundred-odd recipes for Waterzooi and up and left Belgium for the new world again, leaving their son at a local boarding school, the Belgian Dyspeptic Boys Centre, or the BDBC. That's where he and I renewed our acquaintance.

You see, my parents had recently gone off to Indonesia hoping to revive the now flagging Dutch-East Indies trade, and left me alone in a giant and aging manor house where the wind whistled unceasingly through the windows, and where one was reminded of the interior of the Titanic "on that fateful night" whenever it rained. Mamma und Vati had not left me the financial wherewithal to maintain the place, let alone heat it, so to make ends meet, I was teaching Bassoon three nights a week to the boarders at the BDBC, where inevitably Jeff and I bumped into each other again.

With our parents gone to the ends of the earth, we now shared a feeling of being cast-offs, and discovered we could now look back and laugh at Branson, so friendship came naturally this time. Subsequently during the three long years I worked to keep the manor house from falling to pieces around me, it was Jeff who kept me sane. As he was not one of my pupils, a fact that will not surprise anyone who has heard Jeff's Bassooning, the time that he and I passed together was my only escape from the iron grip of that instrument.

I should insert here, however, that the Bassoon was not without its rewards, for after three years of extraordinary effort the BDBC Bassoon Band won the Belgian Nationals(!), and when my family wasn't there to share with me in the band's triumph, there was Jeff in the audience, beaming back at me. We had become true friends.

This really all came about because the dorms Jeff lived in at the under-funded BDBC were in similar shape to my domicile and were uncomfortable to the point where he had taken to reading through every do-it-yourself reno guide, every structural engineering textbook, and every home decor magazine he could lay his hands on. Soon enough Jeff gained the know-how to effect any necessary structural repairs to the building himself, and within the first few months of each stay in a new dorm room, Jeff would replace 90% of the wood panelling, the framing, the floorboards, the joists, the plumbing and wiring, and even ornate 19th century moldings and the plaster work of the ceiling, then blend it all flawlessly into the existing fabric of the building. I must say Jeff also managed some amazing deals on reproduction period wallpaper which were very impressive.





Anyway, Jeff and I would haul the refuse from his "extracurricular jobsite" (as we called the dorm) back to my drafty manor where we'd huddle for warmth by one of the huge fireplaces as the discarded material burned. Once Jeff's dorm renovations were done and my heating fuel source dried up, Jeff would call upon his newfound engineering expertise and advise me as to which structural members we could rip out of the walls of the manor while maintaining the integrity of the ceiling. Of course the place blew down shortly after I left for college three years later, but I didn't blame Jeff. I figured it was all carefully calculated on his part: he had kept me alive and provided friendship in the bleakest of circumstances, and worked the house for all it could give.

Everyone knows of course what followed: I spent 9 years in Antwerp apprenticing in the cutting of diamonds before giving it all up for 2nd Bassoon in the TSO, and Jeff relocated to northern Quebec where he designed the Grande-Baleine 1, 2, and 3 Dams (but not 4) of the James Bay Hydroelectric Project, and met and married Debbie Ohi, a "jamcracker" and waitress at a local logging camp.

And now it's years later, and Jeff still calls when he and Deb leave their beloved blackfly infested north for a getaway weekend in Toronto. We don't tend to reminisce much during the visits, but a couple of years ago when passing by a demolition site Jeff called out "exposed rafters!" and I laughed so hard that I had to pull the car over. Now it's a catch-phrase of ours, along with "Parkinson threat", which if said to Jeff at the right moment causes him to go three quarters apoplectic.

I look forward to our visitsñsoaking up the local scene, doing dinner, catching a showñand I even enjoy Debbie's company, but I catch my breath when I think back to the howling North Sea air, the faint first lick of flame through the middle of the latest Rubens to come down off the walls, the night the east wing dropped 3 inches at one end, and all the time I spent laughing it up with Jeff in that ancient house.

---

Today's Blatherpics:

To help illustrate Craig's story, I did a search via Google Image for a bassoon player. Then I Photoshopped in Craig's face (from a picture taken on our Singalong Sound of Music day) to replace the bassoon player's face. Yes, I could have spent more time adjusting the colour and lighting to make it look more real, but I thought it was funnier leaving it as is. I did Photoshop in the hair and beard, though.

This photo was taken when Craig was helping Jeff and I do renovations to our house out in the country. Craig took great pleasure in wielding a crowbar, as you can see.

Feb/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ