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garryspolicememories · 5 years

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Policing Memories of

Garry Crawford Circa 1962

Part VI

I have attached a photo of members of our 1963 Recruit Class No. 6 at the Aylmer Police College. The class consisted of members of Municipal and OPP forces from all over Ontario. It was amazing how the class members bonded over the term of the class. One of the humorous stories I remember happened on a day when we were taking PT training outside. Someone spotted a Jackrabbit. We decided as a group we would try to catch it. It was a big jackrabbit. We formed a big circle and slowly started to make it smaller. The rabbit ignored us at first but as we got closer it froze. The circle was down to about 10 feet in diameter, when he decided to move. I did not think he could move that fast. He took two bounces, one on the ground and one on one of the fellows back and he was gone. We had quite a discussion later. We were thinking what would have happened if one of us had caught the rabbit. The have exceptionally long legs and sharp claws. I think it would have been something like grabbing a wild cat by the tail.

It was around mid June that we had our graduation ceremony and all headed back to our respective postings. I was especially excited as I was returning with all of this new knowledge. My wife had presented us with another boy, and we had a new house. It was a busy weekend, packing up our family and moving back to Warren. I had not mentioned that the new house had no water in it. The facilities consisted of an outhouse that was attached to a woodshed fastened to the back of the house. There was a raised walkway from the back door through the woodshed to the outhouse, but that was as modern as it got. The previous owners did not have a well, but had a cistern in the basement that they had collected rainwater in. It was then pumped to the kitchen sink. There was no water now. The town of Warren had just recently installed a water system from a drilled well. There was a water line that crossed the front of our property. We did not have money for a backhoe. So I had to work with what I had. I think it was my first day in the house and I got out my shovel and started digging a trench for the water line from the house to the water line. I remember I had just started when my boss Dick Wood appeared on the scene. He asked if I had a second shovel and the two of us went to work. It was starting to get dark when we finished and I still have to smile when I remember the look on Dick’s face as I reached down and gave him a pull out of the ditch.

Within a couple of days we had hot and cold running water in the house. I made a septic system for the sink and a new automatic washing machine with two well tile and about five feet of perforated pipe. Not quite by todays standards, but it worked. We bought the washing machine and had the installation done by Chuck Drimmie a tradesman who lived down the street and sold and installed appliances. I believe at that time he also looked after the town water system.

I served a total of nine years at Warren Detchment as a Constable and had many an interesting adventure. One that comes to mind concerned another citizen who lived north of Hwy 17 in the Markstay area. We will call him Ziggy for the purposes of this story. He lived alone on a small farm. He was of Scandinavian decent. He only had one arm, the other was off between the shoulder and the elbow. I had met him on one of my patrols in the back country. I found out later that he had lost the arm as the result of a suicide attempt. He had attempted to shoot himself in the chest, had instead shot himself in the arm. His best friend and neighbour, Joe who lived across the road had heard the shot and gone to investigate. Ziggy was attempting to drink fly tox when he found him. Ziggy survived but lost his arm. Some people will read this and think that I am kind of a callus person and perhaps I am, but I have learned to not be too judgmental of these things. It is human nature to be depressed at times, how you are able to handle it depends on what you can do to prevent that feeling of loneness. I believe that anyone is susceptible to depression and if the circumstances are right we could take the easy way out, or should I say the perceived easy way out. To get on with the story I have attached a second photograph that shows the actual two chairs that Ziggy and Joe were sitting in one day having a little party. Joe was actually Ziggy’s brother-in-law from the old country. The marriage had not lasted. The two men are drunk and Joe starts teasing Ziggy about not being able to handle his sister. Ziggy suddenly grabs a paring knife off of the table and plunges it into Joes chest. He then pulls the knife back out and hands the knife to Joe, saying I stabbed you, now you stab me.

A long story short, I am dispatched, the ambulance is dispatched. Upon our arrival there are bubbles coming out the hole in Joe’s chest, we apply a battle dressing with vaselene applied to stop the air leakage. Joe goes to hospital and survives. I charge Ziggy with attempted murder. Ziggy pleads guilty to the charge and elects to be tried by Prov. Judge alone. The Judge hears all of the evidence then finds Ziggy guilty as charged. He fines him $500.00 and has him sign a bond to keep the peace be of good behavior and stay away from Joe. About a month later I am in the area and stop in to see how Ziggy is doing.

Joe and Ziggy are sitting in the same chairs polishing off a bottle of wine. I could have charged Ziggy and taken him back to court, but I thought it was a waste of everyones time. I ask them if they had made peace with each other and they laughed and said they had. I spent a little more time with them then left. Years later I was stationed at Wawa, Ontario and had occasion to run into one of the old Constables from Warren. He advised me that things had remained calm between the two friends. However Ziggy had suffered a brain aneurysm while out in a field near his house. When he was found they discovered that he had cleared an area approximately 50 feet in diameter trying to pull himself along with his one arm. He know doubt wanted to survive.

I Could Not Help But Laugh

During the 1960,s Bootleggers were still in demand. Warren Detachment like most others had their share of them. One of ours was Joe B. in Hagar. With Bootleggers the main thing was control. Joe B. got out of control when he started selling to the teenagers. We had to take action. The local dance hall was not too far away and I think old Joe thought he had too handy of a market to miss out. I had warned him a couple times about selling to minors. When he continued we started a surveillance on his residence; checking and finding the result of his sales following their contact. He was raided, liquor was seized and I charged him accordingly. Joe was 84 yrs. old. He had pretty good health and he attributed it to his medicine. The medicine consisted of a set of beaver castor in a mason jar sitting in a sunny window. He had poured a little whisky over the castors and just let it sit. He told me he took a teaspoon full every day.

Joe was not too pleased with me for charging him, but when the court day arrived he did appear in the Sudbury Court before His Honour Judge Tony Falzetta. Judge Falzetta was one of the best judges in my opinion I ever testified before. The proceedings were into full swing and those involved were testifying as to their observations and involvement. I had completed my testimony but Joe B. had interrupted me on several occasions. The Judge had admonished him each time. It was obvious he was not going to stop. The Judge was being as lenient as he could but wanted the interruptions to stop. He instructed me to stand behind Mr. B and when I seen he was going to interrupt, I was to just tap Joe on the shoulder. I did as instructed and when the officer on the stand made a statement Joe did not want to hear he jumped to his feet and objected. I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and yelled at me: GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME I AM FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE!

I bit my lip the judge pounded his gavel and we had a ten minute recess. Poor old Joe B. was convicted when we resumed. If I remember correctly he obtained a $50.00 fine. I am not sure but I may have given him a ride back to Hagar. Such was justice in those days.

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gottahavepride · 6 years

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Putting this somewhere bc... idk, I liked it. Ultimately the flowery prosey shit didn’t really work in the context of the reply I was doing but hey ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I stole chunks of it for my actual reply but I still like the post in its entirety, whimsical bullshit or no.

Poem referenced is here.

Here is what they don’t tell you: Icarus laughed as he fell.

And she did, the sound guttural and choked, but nonetheless laughter. It echoed from her throat, torn and bloody, spitting mirth into the face of her mortality, refusing to be cowed by the idea that it had all come to an end. Was this it, then? Did they think there was something grand in taking her down, a travel-weary wanderer, underfed and footsore and tired? She laughed because it didn’t matter, none of it, because she hoped that Saboro would find them all the next day, because she had no purpose anyway, because she had fooled herself into believing she had left for any other reason but selfishness. If Gemini couldn’t be her’s entirely, then she wanted none of it.

Threw his head back and yelled into the winds, arms spread wide, teeth bared to the world.

Her head fell against the dirt, mouth agape with that laughter, which died ahead of its host, leaving only her fangs, still bared with lips peeled back, dipped in blood, ready to resume the battle. There was no fight remaining, however. If the red tattoos found her sister in a week’s time, in a month’s time, ten years down the road, Derringer would not be there to fight like she had when they found Avery, when they found Nathan, like she would have if Coven had truly walked into Gemini to bear witness to Serrate giving birth. Derringer’s battles were over, her fight for control, her struggle for power, for the upper wolfhand, all of it was done.

(There is a bitter triumph in crashing when you should be soaring.)

And shouldn’t she have soared? She could have risen high, above the rest of them, she could have conquered the sun at last, eclipsed her sister and taken it all for herself, ruled above the rest with Gaius at her side, with Falcon set poised to inherit all she’d finally stolen for her own. At her most bitter and vengeful, she told herself this, forgot about the countless wolves that held allegiance to the kinder, gentler Queen rather than the vicious one. She had left, abandoned Gemini to its Queen of ice, given her sister the peace Serrate always dreamed of, and it had caused her ultimate demise; the sweet irony of it all burned in her chest, that she had been brought down for something she had no part of. Let them believe they’d found the culprit, let Serrate blame her son’s death on her sister, let them all rot for all she cared.

The wax scorched his skin, ran blazing trails down his back, his thighs, his ankles, his feet.

Derringer felt blood dripping down her fur, felt it burning from where they had ripped into her, where they had stolen her life from her. She had given life to one of them! And she would have given life to the other as well, she would have taken him as her’s and given him the authority of her name, her rank, their children. No more. Her eyes flickered to Gaius, to Absinthe, and locked onto her daughter. ”I hope you burn.” The snarl echoed dimly, her eyes rolled back to Gaius, but when she tried to curse him in turn she found the words had escaped her, that there was an odd sensation of cotton in her throat where there should have been venom.

Feathers floated like prayers past his fingers, close enough to snatch back.

She felt it in her paws, first, this unique sensation; it tingled and yet was entirely numb, a static fuzz that spread from toenail to paw pad to ankle and further up, coursing through her body. A unique sense of curiosity, a naïve sensation unlike any she could remember feeling, bloomed within her thoughts. It was like a child’s wonder. She went to raise her head to look at her legs, and found she couldn’t. How odd.

Death breathed burning kisses against his shoulders, where the wings joined the harness.

Next came the heaviness. Where before there was nothing, suddenly she keenly felt her inability to move. She tried to rise, resulting in a twitch along her shoulders that she couldn’t feel, tried again to lift her head, eyes rolling, amusement replaced with anger replaced with panic. She wanted to scream at them, rage at being rendered so helpless, because for all her derision toward those smaller and weaker than herself Derringer had always found somebody else to blame when it was her in that situation, whether beaten down in a fight or demoted to the lowest of the low.

The sun painted everything in shades of gold.

She found them, again, staring at her two assailants, the child she had wanted rescued from the pits of hell, the man she had envisioned at her side until her death. They would have done well in Saboro, the both of them; Absinthe was more like her than she had ever seen before. Had she done that, through trying to unlock the secret of her sister’s strength? Had she instead unlocked some mimicry of herself, the vengeful daughter that would always hate her, that would see her dead sooner than bond with her? Did Absinthe see it, how she was nothing but the same old sad tale, repeated over and over again in this twisted scheme of fate – except this time she shattered it, that unbroken circle, bringing down the specter that haunted her dreams.

Her vision hazed over, giving the same warm tint to the surrounding area that befitted Saboro. Her former home – or her true home. Had she ever really left? Wasn’t she alone still acting under the guidelines that brutal place had instilled, weren’t her decisions only ever based off the careful molding her mother had done? Didn’t they understand? She never would have stopped. Serrate never would have rested. Derringer couldn’t ever stomach the thought of not being in control, she could only ever see justification in the weakness that was Serrate’s kindness. They would have continued, over and over and over again; Cain and Abel, Apollo and Artemis, Romulus and Remus, Castor and Pollux. Whether they were simply contrasting the other in opposition, sun to moon, ice to fire, or coexisting to survive, defending one another, fighting – all of it would have ended the same way.

She wanted to look at the two that had conquered her and scream, Don’t you understand, we would have killed each other anyway! But instead of ending in a fitting twist of fate, a scene too familiar to not become legend, Serrate’s ever-present demon fell here, two champions above her, rescuing their Queen from a reality that would have unfolded at an apex, perhaps on the cliffs overlooking the sea, or on a solitary island, full of questions and mysteries and death. Instead, Derringer’s choices had brought her here, her reckless impulsiveness leading to her unmistakable end, her desire to crush and control and take leading to her own demise.

(There is a certain beauty in setting the world on fire and watching from the centre of the flames.)

But Derringer was the only one burning. The grey crept in around the edges, pops of it exploding in the middle of her vision, body feeling cold and numb and unbearably hot all at once – and then nothing.

Her eyes closed, and so did her chapter in their overarching story. The Lunar Queen, the Vengeful Sister, the Entitled Daughter – however you describe her, Icarus fell for the last time, crashing into blackness, sinking away from them all, leaving the sun to her rightful place in the sky.

The End.

#prideglish #derringer #man i miss writing her tbh

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