The Taddle Creek Trilogy

The Taddle Creek Trilogy Written and Illustrated by Brian Wilson Baetz The Essence of the Taddle Creek Trilogy This is a three part work comprised of connected novellas, inspired in part by the Salterton and Deptford trilogies of Robertson Davies. They are centered around the rhythms of university life, as a backdrop to an evolving coming-of-age story set in the temporal context of the late 1970s. The work is fiction, based loosely on some events that actually happened and many other events that did not happen. Characters are based in part on real-world people, but names have been changed to reflect the fictional nature of the writing. The novellas roll out in chronological order, and contain vignettes that capture the life of a young man trying to find his way to a career and an understanding of himself. This maturation period is steeped in self-doubt, a fixation on members of the opposite sex, immersion in university life and an incremental appreciation of the complexity and diversity of the broader world. The story line is focused on seeing life from the perspective of this young man, and is largely autobiographical. This trilogy is named for the long-buried Taddle Creek, which used to flow through an earlier version of the University of Toronto with solidity and mystery. The illustrations at the frontispiece of each chapter were put in to break up the sea of text, to provide some greater sense of a subset of the characters, and because they were simply fun to create. BWB, Dundas, Ontario May, 2019 Macro Table of Contents The Reinvention of Oneself-pages 5 -78 Finding a Rhythm-pages 79-154 Nearing an End-pages 155-232 Author Profile – page 233 The Reinvention of Oneself Written and Illustrated by Brian Wilson Baetz September 1977 Moving to HogTown The two and a half hour trip to Toronto was uneventful, with traffic being light as it was the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend. His Mom sat in the back, stony-faced save a few forced smiles, not quite believing she would actually be empty nest in just a few hours. His Dad drove in a confident and practiced manner, with a non-stop litany of stories and anecdotes about the towns and their people along the route. He had driven a truck every day for fifteen years on this very route, filled to the top with butter, eggs and chicken. The last stops were the stores of Kensington market, where the old man could practice his Bavarian dialect that was largely understandable to the Yiddish-speaking Jewish merchants. Their destination today was perhaps a half a mile or so northeast of Kensington, and they located the residence on St. George Street with little fuss or fanfare. He had been slated to live his first year in a triple at New College, but a call from the Registrar of Knox College in the last week of the Summer had informed him of a senior student cancelling a single room reservation. He had jumped at this unexpected stroke of good luck, and they now found themselves at the small parking lot of the Knox College library. His worldly possessions amounted to two small suitcases of clothes and shoes, and a yellow vinyl swivel chair that had been purchased as a going-away-to-university gift by his folks at Schmitty’s Furniture in Hanover. He manhandled the chair along the sidewalk beside manicured flower beds, and a doddering older janitor pointed bemusedly towards the second floor of West House. The substantial wooden door opened to their tentative push, and the interior hallways were pin-drop quiet. His Mom looked around with big eyes, half-excited and half-frightened. His Dad had the air of a truck driver who needed to make his delivery and get moving on down the road, so they scaled the stairs and made their way to the room on the second floor. Its door was open, with gleaming white pine floors welcoming its new occupant. Spartan would be the best way to describe the appointments of the room, with its single bed, a small desk and a wooden chair. The yellow swivel chair almost looked ostentatious in this monastery-like setting. But the old woodwork was beautiful, and the leaded glass of the bay window was non-uniform and mysterious. This seemed like something out of Oxford or Cambridge, a perfect place to reside for a young scholar. His Mom made a feeble and half-hearted attempt to unpack the two suitcases and arrange things in an old chest of drawers wedged in to a closet on the left. But the amount of unpacking was so modest, and they stood a good chance of getting back home in good light if they left soon, so he gently waved her off her duties. Ten minutes later, after a tight and teary hug from his Mom and a firm but hurried handshake from his Dad, he found himself wending his way back through the quad to his room. The place was so quiet that he began to wonder if he was the only person in the College on that late Sunday afternoon. He looked around at the weathered stone building and soaked up its architectural grandeur. Copper downspouts with a green patina gave some friction to a pair of climbing black squirrels. He looked up and over to the chapel tower, and started to realize this would be his home for a while, perhaps for his whole undergraduate degree. He suddenly felt a twinge of loneliness, almost an ill- formed regret that he had left behind the comforts and confines of home. But to burst him out of his downward spiral, the door to West House popped open and out stepped a tall young man with an impressive array of curly brown hair. “Newbie? Welcome to West House! This place will grow on you…Stu Rickard’s the name, PoliSci is my game. Third year.” He shook hands a bit awkwardly with the smooth political scientist, who peeled off quickly to meet a waiting girlfriend. He had liked the energy of young Mr. Rickard, and it was a good omen for life under this old roof. He peeked into the common room on his right, full of vinyl leather couches and having a black dial phone on the far wall. Not a soul in sight. He walked up to the second floor slowly, taking in the sights of mid-town Toronto from the stairway window well, and thoroughly absorbing the pungent smell of floor wax and bathroom disinfectant. As he walked down to his room, he noticed an open door that had been closed just fifteen minutes back. At a desk sat a muscular and husky Asian chap, glasses perched on the end of his nose and a textbook open under a study lamp. “Hi…just moving in today. Looks like we might be neighbours?” He stood at the entrance to the room, leaning up against the door jamb. “Yup, busy couple of days coming up.” The guy went back to his textbook. “Jayson.” He smiled in a brittle way, clearing his throat. “What?” The big guy cocked an eyebrow in his direction. “Jayson, my name’s Jayson. What’s yours?” He stepped into the room, extending his hand. “Henry…..nice to meet you.” This guy was certainly not a chatterbox, that was for sure. “What do you study, Henry?” He nodded towards the textbook. “Economics. The dismal science. Second year. Getting a head start.” He went back to his book. The new arrival stepped away to his unpacking. It would take a bit of time to hit his stride in this new environment, that much was clear. The Sons of Bricklayers The next thirty-six hours went by in a tumble, with seemingly the whole residence moving back in and plenty of street traffic out on St. George Street to stimulate the senses when he stood outside the front entrance of the College taking it all in. The dining room was not open until the Tuesday morning after the long weekend, so he subsisted on some provisions thoughtfully packed by his Mom, and one foray up to Bloor Street to a sandwich shop. It would be some time before he came across the delights of Chinese and Indian cuisine, so for the time being the tried and true would be his mainstay. For the most part he spent this time puttering around in his room, shifting and rearranging his clothing in the closet and moving his desk to several positions to gauge ambient light levels from the windows and the limits of the cord of his study lamp. He heard the odd person moving in their stuff, but whenever he slipped out to use the facilities the hallways were dark and quiet. He napped off and on, resting up for what would assuredly be a busy week, but also to avoid bumping in to people. He was feeling a bit homesick already, missing Vince and Lou and even admitting to himself that he also missed his Mom and Dad. Tuesday morning dawned big and bright, and he arrived at the dining room just after it had opened its doors at 7:30. Friendly-enough waitresses in tired blue uniforms took his order for brown toast and fried eggs. Three young chaps joined him at his end of a dark wooden table, chattering away amiably to each other and effectively ignoring anybody outside their trio. He shifted uneasily in his seat, grinning awkwardly from time to time in their direction, hoping for some kind of conversational seam to parachute through.

Load more