“Why don’t ya take Mom for a ride?” said Barb’s son Blair with his big mouth not long after introducing me to his mother, Barb. I’d known him for a while — we played baseball in the same little town. He’d bought a motorcycle, so my wife Cheryl and I went over to his place where Barb and George had come for a visit.
Barb had a dress on, I thought for sure she’d say, “No.” But she jumped on the back and said, “Let’s go!” No qualms about it.
We went for a trip and she was like one of those kids that yells, “Faster! Faster! Faster!” I think we were out there for about 15 minutes. I could tell she had been on a bike before because she knew how to roll with the turns and everything. Then she started talking about motorcycle gangs and the Hell’s Angels and some antics she got up to. I would have liked to have met her back in the day when she was causing trouble. Woulda had a lot of fun. And could have ended up in jail. She was a limit pusher.
We had some property up by Port Perry so Cheryl and I used to sometimes stop there and see how Barb was doing and head on our way. She’d always give you a tour when you dropped by. That little art room she had up there in the loft, that room was packed with paints and pens — some of them hadn’t even been opened. She was an art major and taught art. I love drawing characters and stuff, but I never drew anything up there — she made us work!
Once I owed Blair some work time. He had done me a favour and he said, “I gotta go to Mom’s and put up some fencing.” And so I took time off and we all went up there and spent three days moving hay around in the barn and fixing the fences. She put on quite the spread in the kitchen in the loft where we were staying. It worked out quite well for us.
Blair was trying to get a lot of stuff done and they butted heads quite a bit. I actually thought that was hilarious. One time Blair was working with a horse in the ring there, exercising the horse. The horse had an attachment to Phoenix the Wonder Donkey, I think that’s what they called him. The horse and the donkey were best buddies. Blair’s working this horse around the ring and Barb and I are standing at the fence, just on the edge of the barn beside Phoenix the donkey. All of a sudden Barb looks at me and I’m thinking “What are you up to?” Every time I looked at her I wished I knew what she was thinking. Suddenly she grabbed a hold of the donkey and shut him in the barn.
That gave the horse that Blair was working with anxiety because it couldn’t see its buddy. And you know how they rear up? Well, that was it, the exercise was over. Blair said, “Why would you do that? You know they have to be able to see each other.” And I could just see her having a little chuckle. She was always on his case and they had some good arguments. I thought that’s the kind of thing my mom would do. I related to Barb because she was exactly like my mother. She spoke her mind, told you what to do and that’s why we hit it off.
They had another disagreement that weekend because people would phone up to make bookings and without looking at the calendar she’d say, “Sure, come on over!” And there were times, Blair said, she had all the rooms plus some booked and the guests kept coming. He said, “Look, Mom, you can’t just say ‘Yes,’ you gotta check the calendar.”
A little later, we were working over at the barn and guests were supposed to arrive in 10 minutes, but Blair could see that Barb had gone over to the house and got into the hot tub.
So I followed him over to the house and right away he started telling her about the guests at the front door. She hadn’t checked the calendar, so she jumped out of the hot tub in her birthday suit. He had walked me over to the house knowing she was naked in the hot tub! I had no idea. I just said, “Happy birthday.”
Cheryl loved Barb. One time we visited we arrived early; Blair was with us. Barb was at the hardware store. The next thing we know, here she comes in one of those see-through muumuus. Do you know those long dresses? Cheryl’s looking and me and I’m looking at her. Barb looked like she’d just got outta the hot tub and she was down at the hardware store buying stuff for the horses. Blair started on her right away. “Do you know what you got on? You can see right through that?” She said, “Oh, nobody propositioned me so it can't be that bad!”
She loved skiing and, man, you couldn’t tell how old she was when she was on the slopes. Cheryl and I had just started skiing when Blair talked us into going to Vail, Colorado. Barb was all for it so he rented a chalet and the four of us left from Detroit and had a great time.
Barb was all about the double diamond and black diamond. And Cheryl and I were like, “Just help me get down the hill!” At the end of one day, we are at the bottom of the hill and she takes off by herself, while Cheryl and I just wait. Blair comes down and he's like, “Where’s Mum?” The next thing you know one of those ski patrol guys comes down.
We happened to ask, “Is anybody hurt?” And he starts to explain that there was this lady who had been cut off by somebody and fell off the path, hitting one of those aspen trees. The patrol guys were called up to the top of the mountain with a stretcher. He doesn’t know us, he’s just telling the story, saying she’s lying there and his buddy’s trying to take her heart rate and apparently she grabs her shirt and pulls out her boob and says, “Here, take it right from the heart!” And that’s when we knew, “Aww shit, that’s Barb.”
We found her at the hospital and brought her back. We still had an awesome time. I had never been to Colorado and it was gorgeous. Blair rented a car and drove us to the mountain, it was seven miles straight downhill. We were staying in a chalet with a kitchen and Barb liked to cook for people, so we thought we’ll do all our meals. We went to the store and got two grocery carts filled with food, then we needed the booze. We had our ski stuff and our luggage, also. Of course, this compact car was packed and the back window was taken up by a 20-pound turkey. She figured she’d cook that up and have some sandwiches the next day — I was thinking that would do us for a month.
So Cheryl and I are in the back seat taking half-breaths because there’s no more room to breathe, but, oh it was hilarious. If you’d pulled up behind this car you would see a bunch of people squished in there and this bare naked turkey in the back window. Just like Barb right out of the hot tub!
If we ever had problems, Barb would get us talking and she would help solve them. She was a teacher and she would say, “Hey, this is what everybody goes through.” I’m like that, I like talking to people and seeing where they’re from and how they live. Everybody goes through the same phases of life. It goes by quickly. Barb knew that, too, and she squeezed every lemon she saw to make the most out of it.
As told to Alex Laws.