The Honey Bucket Story

Dear Mom;

It's May 6 2022 now, just two days before Mother's day. We are a long way from 1940, the year you were born, and 1959 when I was born. So many things have happened and so many memories have been created over that time; a lifetime of memories, good and bad, to look back on.

I know your memory is fading now and sometimes you have trouble remembering names or events but I also know there are somethings that you remember clearly as if they happened yesterday.

It's said that the strongest memories are tied to emotions and I'm so glad that your clearest memories revolve around moments that have filled your soul with laughter. Hearing you laugh uncontrollably as you recount a story that happened over fifty years ago, with perfect clarity, warms my heart more than you know.

The story I'm about to tell is that story.

I love you Mom.

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Growing up on the outskirts of St. John’s, on a dirt road where all the houses backed onto the forest, could be a magical place to a ten-year-old boy.

Some people would say we were poor because we didn’t have fancy things, like toilets or running water, but we didn’t care as all our neighbours lived the same way.

Our toilet was out behind the house; I guess that’s why it was called the outhouse, and our water came from what dad called the drop-bucket Well a little way up the hill from the outhouse. I disliked that Well for a couple of reasons.

As I was the oldest boy, it became my job to go to the Well every morning and carry two one-gallon buckets of water back to the house for my mom.

I mean every morning, rain, sun or snow; in every season, winter, spring, summer or fall. When I look back on it now, I realize my dad was teaching me an important lesson. That was my first job, at ten years old, and taught me that hard work was important and had value that was not always measured in money.

The other reason I disliked that Well had a much larger impact on me. The first time I saw my mother angry with my father was the winter day I crashed into it and broke my hand.

All the houses on our side of the road were built at the bottom of a fairly steep hill, but ours was the only one where the forest didn't come right up to the back of the house. Sometime in the past, long before I was born, the forest behind the house was cleared, leaving a grassy hill. The tree line started about 200 of my little boy strides up the hill, and in winter was the best place in the neighbourhood for tobogganing.

On the fateful day that the Well broke my hand, my brother and I, with four of our neighbourhood friends, were having a wonderful time sledding behind the house. The largest sled we had was a four-seat toboggan, so we tried piling all six of us on a couple of times but never made it halfway down before we would tip over. After the second attempt, I came up with a brilliant idea. My dad and his friends were always working on cars around our house and had spare parts stacked against the fence at the bottom of the hill. One of those parts was a hood from a rather large car. It was large enough to fit all of us easily, so I suggested we drag it up the hill and ride it down together.

The six of us pulled it all the way up to the tree line and climbed on board before pushing off, screaming and laughing as we barreled down the hill. The laughter soon turned into fear as we realized we had no control over the speed we were descending or the direction we were heading. We were spinning in circles and travelling at what felt like a hundred miles per hour, with the back of the house getting closer by the second.

I was shaking with fear and bracing for the inevitable impact when we suddenly hit a rut in the snow and were redirected sharply to the right, away from the house. I had just enough time to think, "Thank God," before we slammed full speed into the Well. The car hood stopped abruptly, and we were all thrown into the air in different directions; my direction being the worst. I flipped head over heels in the air several times before slamming into the back of the house and landing in the snowbank beside the back door.

I guess I was in shock because I didn't feel any pain until I noticed my mother kneeling in the snow beside me, crying as she stared at my right hand with fear. My dad came out the back door just as I looked at my hand and noticed my thumb was pointing in a direction it should not have been able to point.

That's when the pain set in, and I burst into tears. My dad got angry and started to give us all hell for using the car hood as a sled and breaking the Well cover. That’s when my mom lost it and started giving my dad hell for keeping his junk around the house. She was yelling at him, saying, “This is all your fault. I’ve asked you countless times to get that junk out of here. I told you these things are dangerous around the kids.”

As I said, that was the first time I saw my mother angry with my father, and I guess it was the first time he'd seen her so upset because he didn't say anything; He just stood there looking at her with shock.

As an adult, I can look back on it now and see that it wasn't as much anger towards my father she felt that day, as it was the fear she felt seeing her child lying in the snow with a broken hand.

My fear and pain went away later that day at the hospital when I was given what to a young boy was a badge of honour; my first cast. The cast went over my hand and almost to my elbow, and I loved it. Over the next few weeks, everybody I knew signed my cast, and as I was the first one of my peers to break a bone, I was given nothing short of hero status by my friends.

I laugh when I think about how some of my friends were in awe and even wished that they were the ones that had broken a bone.

My second badge of honour came about a month after the first and caused a totally different reaction in my friends. It wasn't something they were in awe of but something they laughed at until their bellies hurt. This time not one of them wished to be on the receiving end of what had happened.

Our house had a room that would be called a mudroom today. It was off the kitchen and had two steps up to the door, which sealed it off from the rest of the house. You would have to go through the kitchen, up the two steps to the mudroom door and then through that room to another door, which led outside to the back of the house. Because we didn't have a toilet and would have to go to the outhouse to relieve ourselves, we kept a five-gallon plastic bucket in the mudroom. That bucket was used to handle our bodily functions during the night or on cold winter days. It was called the “Honey Bucket,” and as our street was not hooked to the city sewer system, all our neighbours had the same thing. A truck, which we called the honey truck, would come once a week to dump the buckets.

It was still winter, and I was still wearing a cast on the morning of the event that still causes laughter in my mother today, fifty-three years later.

It was a cold winter morning, and my brother and I were dressing for school in our room when we heard our little sister yelling from the mudroom. I could hear my parents rush to the room, asking her what was wrong. After a few seconds, I could hear, mixed in with my sisters crying, my parents' laughter. I hurried to the kitchen to see what was happening and stopped when I saw my mother standing at the bottom of the two steps, holding her hands to her face and crying with laughter.

I went up into the mudroom and saw my father, who was also laughing, holding my sister under the arms and lifting her into the air while shaking her up and down. He was trying to dislodge the Honey Bucket, which was stuck to her bottom.

He tried to get my mother to help, but she couldn't move as waves of laughter took over her body. He finally gave up on mom and enlisted my help. Dad turned his back to the rear door and held my sister up while telling me to stand behind her. I had my back to the kitchen steps, and he told me to put my good arm around the bucket and tap the edge of it, lightly, with my cast. My father hoped that by tapping it around the edge, the seal would be broken, and my sister would be released. It didn't work, so he started shaking her up and down while I tapped the bucket. It still didn't work, so he started shaking her harder and told me to hit the bucket harder.

Now, if you’ve ever shaken a bottle of champagne or beer and then opened it, you know what happened next.

Even though we wanted it to happen, it still surprised us when the bucket released with a pop that sounded like a champagne bottle being opened.

My father fell back against the rear door with my sister in his arms as I fell back towards the kitchen steps. I felt my world turn upside down as I fell down the steps, flat on my back on the kitchen floor, with the contents of the Honey Bucket all over me.

Let's be clear here; the contents of that bucket were definitely not honey and in no way smelled or tasted sweet.

I didn't move for several seconds, and nobody else made a sound; we were all in shock. I tried to sit up as I wiped whatever was on my face off and could see my brother standing at the kitchen door with his mouth open, staring at me. Turning my head, I could see my mother standing beside the stove with her hand to her face shaking and looking at my father. He had turned my sister around to face me and was standing at the top of the stairs. Nobody said anything until my sister, who had finally stopped crying, pointed at me and said one word that brings all of us laughter to this day.

Her face lit up in a large grin as she pointed and said, “Poop.”

**********

It's fifty-three years later now, and even though I didn't find it funny at the time, I've laughed countless times, over the years, about the events of that day.

We’re all much older now and in the Autumn of our lives.

My father died over thirty years ago, and my brother moved out to the west coast and built a life for himself, shortly after.

My mother and sister live down the street from my wife and me in Toronto, and we see them often.

Mom is in her eighties now and is starting to show signs of Alzheimer's. Her memory is getting a little worse as time goes on. Sometimes she seems a little lost, but most times, she seems perfectly clear.

Some events from our early years she can’t remember, but she has never forgotten that day and loves to tell “The Honey Bucket story.”

The look in her eyes whenever she tells that story brings me great joy, and I would be happy if she told it to me every day for the rest of her life.

The sparkle in her eyes when she tells the story of her son and the honey bucket reminds me of the young woman she once was and is still inside her somewhere.

Any day that I see that sparkle is a happy day for me, and most of all for her.