The Last Snowball.

SqueezingSparks

OutOfCoalVille


My maternal grandmother was born in Newfoundland in 1911. 

Her husband, who worked for BC Hydro down at the old gasworks on the edge of Victoria's Rock Bay, died suddenly one spring evening in 1966.

Grandpa Al was out cutting the grass at the house we had just moved into on Monterey Avenue when he had a massive coronary.

At the time Ethel, who our oldest kid Bigger E. would much later know as 'Cookie Grandma', was so dependent on her husband that she didn't even know how to write a cheque.

But soon thereafter she learned to drive the brand new push button Valiant that Al had bought the previous fall and, best of all for her grandkids, she got a job at Welch's Chocolates on Hillside near Quadra if I remember correctly.

She even kept living in the big house on Saanich Road above Swan Lake for a few more years and when we went to visit my favourite thing was to have a snowball or three that she brought home from the store.

Second favourite were the glazed donuts from Woodwards that she also always seemed to have on hand.

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Earlier this year Bigger E. got me a sleeve of snowball's from Purdy's for Valentine's day.

Not quite Welch's because the Purdy's cream filling is a little too high class and buttery for my memory bank's absolute liking, but really good nonetheless.

And, because I have a little willpower these days (sometimes), I didn't eat the last one, pictured above, until a couple of weeks ago.

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My Grandma passed away after a long, full life in 2001. 

One of the last things she asked me, near the end when she had finally started to lose her faculties a wee bit, was if I was ever going to finish going to school.

At the time I was just a few months away from tenure so I told her I'd probably never finish.

She smiled and said that it was OK as long as I enjoyed it.

Well, I'm not sure I enjoy my job as much as eating snowballs or glazed donuts but it's probably a reasonably close third.

Which isn't a bad way to feel about things now that I can see retirement lurking just over the horizon.

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I had been outside with Grandpa earlier on that fateful spring night but went iinside to watch Adam West and Co. do their thing....Of course, in my seven year old brain I ridiculously thought that I might have been able to do something if I had not gone in to watch what was then my favourite television program.

Speaking of Batman on the TeeVee...Here's something, I bet you didn't know...Lyle Waggoner, later of Carol Burnett Show fame, was in the running for the role of the campified caped crusader.

In the late '70's, I lucked into a summer job at BC Hydro and actually worked as a janitor down at the old gasworks for Hydro..At that time there were some offices, a warehouse, and a bus washing area down there...Because it was a union job the money was good, so good that I almost quit school when they started calling me year round to do fill-in work... I'm not sure that job would come in third behind snowball gobbling  and donut consuming if I was still doing it now. 

It was my younger brother the fireman who eventually inherited the Valiant, still in pretty good shape in, I think, the late '80's when Grandma finally stopped driving.

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