I met William Wallace last night.
Well…damn close anyway.
Quite late in the evening, a couple and an elderly man came to my motel and I thought they were a family checking in: they weren't. The couple said this gentleman had knocked on their door, upset and lost. He was from a town about 10 hours away and had become confused and disorientated in the fog and dark, and stopped at the first house he saw to ask directions.
They felt kindly towards him and guided him into town. After some small talk, we discovered that he had actually come to the motel 6 hours earlier, but not recognizing our new signage, had thought he was lost and ended up driving around for hours trying to figure out where he was!
So, however unlikely, here I was, on the eve of the historic September 17 2014 Scottish Vote, talking to a tiny, sweet old man from Scotland who probably knew William Wallace personally (well, he was coming 90 so I may be exaggerating ever so slightly).
And if I paid very close attention, I could actually understand him! His thick native brogue refusing to be thinned by decades of Canadian influence.
"The name is Scotty. Scotty Boal. Real name's Bob..."
He was spry, funny and very opinionated and he had the BEST stories. A writer’s dream. I could have talked to him all night, but he was rather tired out from his ordeal so I tricked him into telling me about his family and tucked him off to bed (seniors do NOT like to be treated like children and this man obviously cherished his independence, so I didn’t want him to become angry that I was checking up on him). I then called his son to make sure it was okay that his father could still drive, and the son was relieved and grateful to know his father's whereabouts; he had left on the spur of the moment and should not have been driving at night.
So here I am now, sipping my morning coffee and whipped cream, out of the Scotland
mug I had dug out from the back of some cupboard, manning the window vigilantly to make sure I catch Scotty (real name's Bob') so I can say goodbye and to make sure he is ready for the next leg of his journey. He had mentioned
briefly that he just may stay another night…and I sure hope he does.
I have a few
stories to squeeze out of him yet.
*
I waited
until the whipping cream was down to a thin white ring hugging the inside of
my coffee cup before I decided to check on Scotty. Was he going to leave us this
morning or stay another night?He was just lining up his pills on the table, and was heading out for his morning routine of breakfast at a restaurant, and then on to Tim Horton’s for a coffee and strudel. With a wistful gaze, he mentioned that his wife was usually part of the routine…and taking my cue, because I know my place in life, I asked him if he wanted some company. His eyes lit up and off we went. I drove, but not before my husband Peter told him he'd better have me home by 11.
I hope you said that to yerself in his voice...with a terrrrrrrific rolling R, a lovely lilt and a grand twinkle in yer wee eye!
He spoke of finding German soldiers, who would have been shot dead without a second thought had the Americans or Russians found them, but whom he let go after shooting a few rounds in the air to let them know who was in charge. "Ye dinna wont ta shoot thim if ye didna hafta!” He spoke of how a German Captain in full regalia, along with his 2000 men, surrendered to him and his 15 men almost gratefully because “They were forced ta fight ye ken…nobody likes ta fight and all them billionaires and their sons sat back and watched the rest of us make their war.”
He showed me his tattoo, a silhouette of an airplane that represented the British Paratroopers, braced atop with the word India on one side and 1945 on the other, and a thick blue bar under it all that represent the Rhein River in Germany (my husband was born next to the Rhein, oddly enough). He had been stationed in many countries and they were probably beautiful he said, but he hadn’t seen them as a tourist and they didn’t eat well there, so that ‘taints yer view of things’.
Scotty was the best show it town.
We scooted off to Timmy's where we enjoyed our strudels and coffees, and he told me how he moved to Canada in 1957 and found out one of his neighbors was a German named Fritz. When they met while mowing their respective lawns, 'this Fritz fella' asked Scotty if he'd been in the war. After saying yes, he had been, the man said “I sink yu shot me down!", to which Scotty replied, "Huh... looks ta me like I missed!" They would become very dear, lifelong friends.
He arrived in our manager’s suite and was very pleased to see that we went to the trouble to buy him some ‘real’ beer: Guinness Draught from Dublin. Scotty came in at 7 and didn’t stop telling stories until 11, when I reluctantly told him that I had to close up shop and call it a night. I could tell you most of them but I will only repeat a few briefly as they are good examples of how the night went:
I found it hard to swallow my beer.
The HMS Colossus 1945
The drudgery
was lightened by a noon hour soccer match on the pier. That helped a lot he
said, because every day someone died there…either from falling off a plank,
getting a rivet drilled in the head or eye, or burning to death from an oxygen leak near a torch, like his assistant. He had
heard a scream and a thump and there was
‘not much more thanna couple'a feet lefta poor Willy’.
We drank our beers
and he showed us pictures he had with him of The Boys having a cold
beer in a pub in Palestine, he recalls with a grin (Scotty is seated first), but the back reads 'June 10th 1947 Italia'. I didn't correct him;
...one of his lifelong neighbor and pal: (ink on back said: Captured in Palistine, German sailor; Afrika 28/9/47. "In remembrance of your friend Fritz");
...and one of himself when he enlisted at 18. The inked inscription on its back reads: Singapore, 7th Parachute Battalion 6th Airborne Div LOST HALF BATTALION
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Such a happy and innocent face, but the penned notation brought tears to my eye. But I hid it. I didn’t want to spoil his fun: pictures of his RCMP son, Robert Jr. of whom he is exceedingly proud; great granddaughters with inherited twinkly eyes; his ‘good lass’ wife and many shots of wartime prisoners and his mates. As a photographer, this was the icing on a beautiful cake for me. He allowed me to copy them and gave permission to share a few with you. Here is my favorite that I took: Scotty and my husband Peter looking at the photos:
Peter walked
Scotty to his room after our fond good-nights, and as he left, I heard him tell my
husband as they passed through the yard light and melted into the night “I like ta walk, but in the British
Airborne, we had ta make 124 steps per minute…”
I stayed awake long into the night, unable to focus very long on any one of the myriad pictures that dear man painted for us. I wanted him to enjoy his trip, but a part of me wanted him to stay. I was sure that parrich would never taste the same.
I stayed awake long into the night, unable to focus very long on any one of the myriad pictures that dear man painted for us. I wanted him to enjoy his trip, but a part of me wanted him to stay. I was sure that parrich would never taste the same.
We said our farewells the next morning and got a fierce hug goodbye, and after another joke or two, off drove Scotty (real name's Bob) Boal, dual small Canucks flags whipping in the wind over his hood.
I couldn’t wait to come and share him with you all and make
his words as immortal as I hoped he would somehow magically prove to be.
He deserves to be remembered as a hero in his own right.
