AXE, SLEDGEHAMMER AWAIT MOTORCYCLE

I have never had a fondness for motorcycles. A fascination perhaps, but never a desire to own one.

I have seen too many people with gravel imbedded in their heads, thighs and buttocks, and I have seen too many newspaper articles reporting the death or injury of their owners. Spring is the season when it all begins anew and this is perhaps my inspiration for the telling of this story.

You can imagine my personal anxiety on the day my own son came home and announced that he was going to buy his own machine.

I said, "Have I ever told you about my grandmother and my father's boat?" This got a blank look as he obviously had not heard the story and could not imagine a relationship in this story to his desire for a motorcycle.

This story needs a little background introduction:

My grandmother was a very strong willed Irish woman. She had two sons by my paternal English grandfather Foster -- also named Matthew -- before he was killed in the trenches in France during the first world war.

I found her identification papers in my father's estate papers that said her occupation was 'bomb maker' during the war. This was the first knowledge I had that she was employed in the war effort. I assume this was the labour that helped to feed the family through the rest of the war.

Following the war she fell in love with, and remarried, a much younger French Canadian soldier from Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula. Together the new family came to Canada. My grandmother was a good Catholic woman and started to populate Quebec with an additional seven sons with the new husband -- to accompany the two "Foster kids."

It was obvious to my grandmother that every family in the area had husbands and sons lost to the sea and the fishing industry. Having only recently lost a husband to the stupidity of war, she was determined that none of her sons were going to be taken by the cold waters of the Gaspé coast. She forbade any of the kids to enter the fishing industry.

My father was the eldest. He and his stepfather were more like brothers working side by side in the bush and at whatever else needed to be done. He never dreamed that he was also included in his mother's edict - that is; being forbidden to fish.

One day he came home with a boat. He was going to be a breadwinner just like his Pa. He was in total shock when he went out to show off his newly purchased treasure to his brothers, only to find that his mother had taken the ax and chopped the bottom out of it.

Now back to my son's desire for the motorcycle - "If you bring a motorcycle home, I want you to remember this story. There is a sledge hammer and an ax sitting there in the corner of the garage and waiting for that day. OK?."

This story may have been longer except for the fact that he never did buy his heart's desire and I never had to see if my will was as strong as my Granny Chedore's.

Have a nice day.