R.I.P Frank

My dad’s best friend died suddenly last week.  Frank and his family were our next door neighbours on Egerton Road, the street I grew up on.  Frank built our house.  He was an architect. He was funny. He told the most winding stories, with diversions and detours and deviations, but he had the most remarkable ability to tie these 45 minute multi – plot monologues neatly into tidy yet surprising conclusions; and we never ceased to marvel at the mastery of his tales.

I remember most, the Christmases. Dinners at their place, eventually a few doors down the street, after Frank built a fabulous new house a block away from my parents’ place. It went like this: My family spent Christmas eve with Frank & Elizabeth in their magnificent living room on the river, beside a fireplace that defied description, sitting on hand made furniture (all designed and constructed by Frank), eating amazing appetizers (made by Elizabeth), drinking wine, eggnog, Glayva, Kahlua – that great Christmas staple!

We’d do it all again the next day –  Christmas Day evening, this time at my (parents) house – that Frank built – more food, more wine, more rambling tall tales.

I remember February 26, 1979 – the total eclipse of the sun. We all watched it from Frank’s house because his decks provided the perfect location to view the spectacle, out of the blistering cold winds of mid winter on the prairies. We looked like robots or aliens, bundled in puffy down coats, wearing special cardboard viewing glasses handed out by some local institution (that I can’t remember!!!), to protect our eyes from the direct rays of the sun.  Naturally, Frank provided the play by play.

Frank was a welcome fixture in our house. Most often I’d come home from school late, to find my dad and Frank bent over some apparatus in the yard or basement, deep in a cerebral discussion about how to fix it. Or how to build “it” – this would be in various iterations over time, an in-ground hot tub (long before there were ones you could buy at Homedepot!), built-in furniture, a roof-deck, a fireplace, fixing the strange behavior of the basement foundation, or a combination of all the above.

I remember their “movie nights” where I’d drop into the family room to see what they were watching, but as if some strange spell had been cast on the four of them, they would all be snoozing away, sitting straight up, heads back over the top edge of the furniture Frank built – having been made much too comfortable for staying awake to watch movies!

Oh, those times on Egerton Road…we moved in when I was 10, and Frank and his family were there almost from the start. My parents would eventually move away to a warmer province, and Frank and Elizabeth would do the same.  But they would head for Florida to become snowbirds.

They had just been back in Winnipeg for a short time to spend the summer with their kids and grandkids when it happened. Apparently Frank was golfing at the time.

I’m afraid it’s the winding down of an era. Farewell Frank, godspeed.