Barry, the "Good" Daughter: The Diary of a Complicated Dutch Girl

By Barbara Wiggers Flowers

How does Barbara (Barry), a Dutch immigrant, reconcile her past with her present? Growing up a lonely girl in Sarnia, Ontario, she seems to fall behind everyone and everything, while facing many challenges tossed her way. She spends a good portion of her life feeling different from everyone else she deemed normal. How difficult is the role of the "good" daughter to understand? Were her jokes funny? Was always being "on" healthy? How long would the laughter continue? Was it all out of love? Was it out of guilt? Will the guilt ever end?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Nov 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9780228835141

Book preview

Barry, the Good Daughter

The Diary of a Complicated Dutch Girl

Barbara Wiggers Flowers

Barry, the Good Daughter

Copyright © 2020 by Barbara Wiggers Flowers

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-3513-4 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-3514-1 (eBook)

For Doug, Brian and Lori.

Table of Contents

Preface

THE FIFTIES

The Little Conductor

The Place of My Soul…My First Canadian Home

Alone in a Wilderness

Postma’s

Food Eten! (Supper!)

Captain and the Snake

Continued School Frustration

My Imaginary Friend

My New Glasses

My Many Illnesses

Music and Singing

Cousin Betty

The Pinery

The New House

THE SIXTIES

More Illnesses and Maladies

Lansdowne

Music and Singing

Holland

The Beatles

Suzie

Growing Up and Liking It?

Way Out West

The Audition

The Miracle Worker

Cathcart Boulevard

P Is for Posture Queen (and No, It’s Not a Mattress)

Kathy

Dorothy, Dot, Fred, and Her Amazing Bosoms

THE SEVENTIES

Dad and Barbara Time

Some of the Jobs I’ve Had (and the Ones I Was Fired From)

Mum

BOYS

My First Love

Me and Marie

More of Marie and Me, the Saga Continues

The Way We Were: The Story of Tom Macbeth and Me

Acting Up and Acting Out

A Friend in Norway

My Favourite Apartment — Old Victorian Ivy (or Ants, Cats And Bats)

Friends at Last

The Dentist

Lovers and Other Strangers

I Am Barry’s Bladder

How Deep Is Your Love?

A Theatrical Interlude

Back to How Deep Was Our Love

Singing Vol Uit (Singing Full Out)

Epilogue

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Preface

Accents

So, in my best English accent, I said to this lady, If I speak to you like this, with the accent I am using, would you take me for a Canadian or perhaps someone from Birmingham or Manchester?

"Well, you certainly sound less Canadian," she said, sounding like Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess of Grantham on Downton Abbey.

I like to mimic people and practise accents. When Doug and I sailed out of Southampton, England, en route to the Azores in celebration of our fortieth anniversary, I thought I had my best British accent down pretty well, so I was going to try it as often as possible, starting with this British lady who was standing beside my friend in a ladies’ bathroom cue. Not as sharp as I thought, I thought. I’ll need some practise.

The Azores are in the Atlantic Ocean, sort of parallel to Northern Africa. It was an interesting cruise with many days at sea. About 80% of the passengers on the ship were British. We had never seen so many Brits in one place — so many Brits! — so many walkers, canes and scooters, and so many bad teeth. AND so many different accents and dialects. Those always intrigue me. Doug and I were in another cue waiting to go into the theatre, and we started up a conversation with the couple in line behind us; very friendly people whom I tried the same question and accent on.

If I speak to you with this accent would you think me to be Canadian or someone from Birmingham or perhaps Manchester?

Well, not Birmingham, he said.

Too funny. My ego wasn’t too deeply bruised. At least the accent made me sound like I came from Manchester.

The Brits have funny accents. Take our single-syllable word No. With some Brits it comes out in four syllables…Neeouooow. Four syllables out of a simple little one-syllable word. I don’t get it.

I once worked in a hospital with a male nurse who was British. I asked him why British people add the letter r to words that end with the letter a. Like in the words banana or in the name Felicia.

Because I’m speaking bloody proper English, he said.

That answer did not satisfy me.

Then there is the cockney accent like the one popular singer Adele has. An interviewer asked how she came about the lyrics for one of her songs — it might have been Hello.

I was abouw the way I fewo wh I whoe I, she said, meaning, It was about the way I felt when I wrote it. Leaving all of the end letters and consonants completely ouw of the woods. Wha foe?

Anyway, I love accents and funny characters. I have been mimicking people since I was about nine, starting with all of my Dutch uncles and aunts then moving on to imitate every one of the characters from the television show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In.

Barry, are you studying? I would hear from the hallway.

Yes, Mum.

I was actually recording myself impersonating all of the characters on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In — with the theme music and everything. (Cue: sing theme music!) The easiest for me was Lily Tomlin’s telephone operator, Ernestine.

Hello, Felicia, this is Ernestine, or Mr. Beagle…did you order those telephones in flamingo pink or chartreuse? I could also do her little girl in the big rocking chair: Mommy was mad at me cuz my baby brother had the chicken pox and I took a magic marker and connected up all the dots and that’s the tuuuuuithup, (raspberry tongue sticking out). I spoke the latter as if I had a cold in my nose.

We had a nine-year-old foster kid named Gordie staying with us at the time. I had him come into my room and instructed him to say Sock it to me! at a given time. He didn’t quite get my cue in time so on the recording you can hear him ask, Should I? I nod, and then came his abrupt, Sock it to me!

I also imitated Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was president at the time, from one of the Laugh In skits. I’d put on his Texan accent and say, My fellow Americans, we come together this evening, for this very important message. And I took the microphone and hung it in the toilet bowl and flushed the toilet. A very important message.

There was another Laugh In skit with LBJ sitting in bed with Lady Bird when they hear a knock at the door. It was his daughter, Linda Bird…

Daddy, Daddy…I have a problem.

LBJ turns to her and says, Well, come on in and we’ll talk about it.

So she climbs into bed with her parents. Then there is another knock at the door. It’s Lucy Bird (what’s up with all the birds anyway?).

Daddy Daddy, I have a problem.

Again, her father says, Well, come on in and we’ll talk about it.

The skit goes on and on and eventually the bed is crowded with people. It was very funny.

Who else did I imitate? Let’s see…there was Gladys Ormphby’s character, played by Ruth Buzzi. She is a frumpy and homely looking woman, wearing thick sagging nylons and a hairnet.

Well, she says, I’ve very often been called a home-loving person. Well, I would rather be at home…loving.

And then there’s the dirty old man character played by Arte Johnson. White-haired, all hunched over with a cane, he sidles up to Gladys who is sitting on a park bench.

Dumdeedum dee dum, he sings. Do you believe in the hereafter? he says to her.

No reply from Gladys.

Well, then you know what I am hereafter…

Dirty old man laugh and Gladys whacks him in the head with her purse and he falls to the ground. It made all of my family laugh. The whole family watched Laugh In together.

Mum really kinda liked Jo Anne Worley’s character where she hollers, Was that a chicken joke? Chortel! When Mum imitated her it came out, Vas dat een shicken yolk? Hah hah!!

Well, my recorded pretend Laugh In show went on for quite a while. I got little or no studying done. I hated studying. Anyway there isn’t enough room here for me to recite the entire show. Besides it is much more impactful when a person hears my mimicking.

I can still mimic Jimmy Cagney…

You dirty rat. Yoo da won dat killed my bruddah and now yo gonna get it. Oh yes you awwww. Yo gonna get a belly full a lead. ratatatatatatat

And I’ll leave you with this final imitation. It is…well it’s for anyone who has a birthday…and I’ll let you guess who it is.

I don a blonde wig for this one. Again, much more effective if you hear me doing it in her soft and breathy voice.

Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, Mr. President. Happy birthday to you. Blowing kisses…

I have never written all these stories down before but because they happened I need to document them. Perhaps I will understand myself better. Perhaps my sister will understand me better? She said she had forgiven me for all the misery I caused her but, has she really? I wouldn’t blame her if she hasn’t. As adults, I introduced her to my friends saying, This is my little sister. She got her period before me, got her first bra before me, got married before me and had a baby before me. Ruby didn’t appreciate that and I only came to understand that years later.

People always talk about what your life was like in your early years, the family of origin. It stays with a person throughout their lives, forms their psyche. Then again, our mother was a catalyst for much that went on. She always said in her final years that she wanted to see Ruby and I getting along, getting closer. But I could never conceive of that. Mum was the wedge that was between us. She always favoured me and treated Ruby like crap. It was not fair, and I was no help.

My parents met in the mid-forties in Indonesia. He was a sergeant in the army, fighting communism in the Dutch colonies. Mum was a Red Cross nurse. She was changing a bandage on his arm, and she said they felt a spark between them. She said that in that moment, she knew she was in love with him. They courted for a few months and became engaged. Mum’s tour was up, so she went back to Holland. Dad would not be free to return for another two years.

An edict had come about where married couples could apply to get a flat to rent, so Mum and Dad were married by proxy on November 17, 1948 in the Hague, Netherlands. A friend of Dad’s stood in for him. He was to hold an article that belonged to Dad, so they chose a glove. It was over this glove that Mum and Dad’s vows were spoken. My sister and I always used to joke that Mum got married to a glove. I have a sepia-coloured photograph of Mum from that day, beaming in a white dress and holding a bouquet of flowers. Dad used to tell us that he looked out over the western sky at a certain time of that day. He looked at his watch and placed his wedding ring from his left hand onto his right. Now I am a married man, he said to himself.

He was always a romantic. He played his guitar and sang all the old folk songs. He had sung in an all-boys choir in a high soprano until his voice changed and he became an excellent tenor. He was an avid reader. His parents wouldn’t let him read during the German occupation as the lights all had to be blocked out, so he read with a candle in the stairwell. He was a very gentle man, probably because his father had been a strict brute and beat his mother and boxed his older brother, Jan, about the ears. He once hit him so hard that Jan flew across the room. Dad would never hurt a fly. Luckily, little sister, Willhemina (Willie), who was twelve years younger, was never subject to any of that.

Dad wrote longing, saccharine love letters to Mum, letters she kept forever. Mum had grown up on a farm in Groningen, in the North of Holland. She had five brothers and four sisters. She grew up rough and tumble, probably to survive the brothers.

When Dad finally returned to the motherland, the two of them set up house. It was not the best situation as the flat had to be shared with an older woman. I came along three years later, after much hoping and praying. Mum always made it sound like such a long wait, but it was really only a year. Dad got a job with the PDT Telephone Company. It paid the bills but he was restless. Less than two years later, Piet and Ally Loerts (whom they had met in Indonesia) talked my parents into coming to Canada.

Kom to Canada. It is big and beautiful and dere are more Dutchies arriving effery day.

Mum on her wedding day.

THE FIFTIES

The Little Conductor

One of my first memories of Dad in those early days in Canada is him pretending he is a conductor of an orchestra. I am lying on the fold-up couch, looking up at him in the living room of our rented farmhouse in Sarnia, Ontario. I’m squinting because of the light streaming through the window. He is waving his hands in the air, probably something in his right hand representing a baton. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is playing on a mahogany box record player in one corner, that famous and unmistakeable dum dum dum dum…. My father, The Little Conductor.

On another piece, my mother would say, Listen…it is a surprise! Haydn’s Symphony #94 in G Major, the Surprise second movement. It starts slow and quiet, and then it jumps and really gets you. Mum jumped — or at least she pretended to. The music certainly startled me when it suddenly got loud.

My father liked to call me Een kleine flammetje — little flame — because of my red hair.

Look! my father was heard to say as I was entering the world on September 19, 1951, she has red hair!

My parents formally named me Barbara, after Dad’s mother. My middle name is Johanna, after a good friend of my mother’s. But I was known then to everyone as Barry — pronounced Bah ree.

The Place of My Soul…My First Canadian Home

I loved our old rented farmhouse, but I didn’t realize how much till many years later when a friend said, That old house on Blackwell Sideroad burned down, ya know. I drove out there to see what remained: only the basement with charred split logs, the ones that had once held up the main level of the house. I also saw the furnace grate that radiated heat above the old coal burning furnace. In the winter we used to warm our cold, wet feet on it. I was saddened to see my sweet memory dashed away, likely by some careless cigarette.

There is a place I go to in my memory. It is not only a place but a feeling, a state of mind. It’s this old farmhouse where I spent the first seven years of my life in Canada. I think about the house and about the sights and sounds inside and out. There was a field next to the driveway. I once ran and fell there into a patch of tomatoes that were ripening on their vines. What a delightful smell. Tall corn, so much taller than I, stood in rows with their furry tassels, smelling fresh and wonderful like no other corn I’ve known since. On the other side, behind the garage, grew cucumbers.

Be careful not to step on the vines, now, Barbara. Or the cucumbers will turn bitter, said Ownt (that’s how we Dutchies pronounced Aunt) Jenny Wilson.

They were such interesting little things with their soft prickles and freshwater, green aroma.

Tiny blue grapes grew in bunches on vines that draped over two or three small fences. I remember their sweet-sour taste so distinctly.

When the sun was hot and the sky so powder blue, with puffy white clouds, my mother would say, Dat is Hollandse Sky, (Dutch sky).

Crows cawed in the distance. Sparrows flitted and chirped in the elms that surrounded the house. A warm breeze would catch my hair and toss it about. I would inhale the sweet fragrance of lilac bushes that hid the house from Blackwell Sideroad. I remember wandering down the walk in the back yard, under the washing line where a peach tree grew and blossomed in the spring. The cherry and pear trees and currant bushes separated our yard from the neighbours, Uncle Maurice and Ownt Jenny Wilson who were our landlords.

One summer evening, Mum took a colander outside and brought it over to the currant bushes to pick the little berries that she liked to make besse sap (berry juice) out of. I sat down on a bald spot in the grass near her. I was wearing shorts. All of a sudden I felt a stinging sensation in a hundred little spots on my butt. I started screaming and crying. Mum dropped the colander and picked me up, and after having a look at my stinging rear end, she quickly carried me into the bathroom and plopped me and my butt into the sink with soapy water. It felt better and I stopped crying. Mum showed me what remained in the sink…hundreds of floundering or dead ants. I was careful about sitting anywhere after that.

The yard was encircled by a barbed wire fence. As I ventured farther while holding my father’s hand, he pointed to a spider’s web. I shielded my eyes from the sun that shone through the dew, making the web gossamer like.

These memories and visions haunt me more times than not. They were such simple times, uncomplicated and blissful.

Mum, Dad, me and Ruby in the back yard.

These were the early fifties, and the farmhouse and yard were my only world, sheltered as I was from other people, other places. My parents loved me. I believe I was their everything until things started happening, things over which I had no control. Perhaps that was the problem. I had no control over anything. I didn’t need to worry about control then.

My favourite room in the house was the living room. It was bright and sunny, facing west. I knew which direction was west because the head of my bed faced north toward Lake Huron just a short drive away.

We had a spare bedroom for a while. I was not allowed to go into it in the beginning. One afternoon when I was supposed to be napping, I tiptoed across the hall and, quietly as a mouse, opened the door and peeked in. An amazing smell drifted over to me. I was curious as to the source of this delectable aroma. The room was dark, as a cracked green blind was drawn over the window. Closer and closer I came to what I recognized as wooden bushels. Inside the bushels were apples, lots and lots of apples, each wrapped in their tiny individual purple tissues. I touched one, and I so desperately wanted to pick it up and bite into it. I held one in my hand and spread apart the little tissue. It was wrapped like a little gift. I was about to bite when — Woosh! — my mother appeared in the doorway.

Get avay from dose apples! Dey belong to Uncle Maurice! Dey are not for us.

She had frightened me. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t have a single bite. I was little then, only about four years old.

We had only just moved back to the farmhouse after living a short while in a small rented upstairs apartment on top of a house on Mitton Street. That was when Dad had begun working at Dow Chemical. A Dutch family named Pronk owned the house. What I remember most of all about living there is the sound of trains in the distance. It is another sound and memory that haunts me. I always heard the trains moaning. I wondered where they were going, who was travelling on them and where they had been.

One sweet smelling fall afternoon, my father carried me on his shoulders down Mitton Street, leaves crunching under his feet and his cigarette smoke blowing into my eyes. He carried me all the way to the train station. There were trains shunting back and forth. One of those black beasts was chugging by, steam spewing out of it. The pistons pounding up and down, black smoke plumes from the stack. The ground shook as I stood there, holding my daddy’s hand. The man sitting way up high, the engineer, was wearing a red bandana about his neck, and he waved.

Hey Red! he hollered.

Dat man is waving at you! said Dad.

I suddenly felt puffed up and proud. This very important man was waving at me? Little insignificant me? It’s a moment I have never forgotten and have cherished always. Me and my daddy.

Dad always seemed happy to me. Always singing and playing his guitar, whistling and laughing. He liked to joke around. He liked people and they liked him back. He used to tell us the story of getting his job on the labour gang at Dow.

I walked effery single day to Dow from de house on Blackvell Sideroad, all de vay to Dow Chemical, he would say, cigarette dangling from his mouth. "Every single day I did dat. And von day de guy at de gate probably said to himself, Dere is dat son of bitch Piet Wiggers again. I am sick of dat guy, so I am going to gif him a jop."

Dad was happy to be working there. He knew he could never be a turkey farmer like his friend, Piet Loerts. My parents had met Piet and Ally Loerts in Indonesia when Dad and Piet were soldiers and Ally and Riet (Mum) were Red Cross nurses. The Loerts’ had emigrated to Canada and kept urging my parents to come where jobs were plentiful and there was so much wide open and beautiful space. Dad was all for it, but Mum needed coaxing. Dad suffered from wanderlust and wanted to explore. Mum didn’t really want to leave her parents and nine siblings, but she was going to be where Dad wanted to be. That’s how we got here.

Oom (Uncle) Piet and Tante (Aunt) Ally sponsored my parents. Dad’s job was going to be a farmhand with Oom Piet on his turkey farm, but Dad was a softie. He could never go fishing or hurt a fly or any other creature. He was very sensitive. He could not stand it when Oom Piet would shove turkeys into a truck and stick his foot in to squeeze just one more of them in. I couldn’t have stood it either.

It would have been Oom Piet and Tante Ally who came to the Campbell Street Station in Sarnia in June of 1953 after our long train trip from Halifax and eight-day boat trip on the Waterdam from Rotterdam. We had a couple of sticks of furniture and $100. Twenty-five of those dollars were spent on penicillin for Dad to combat the pneumonia he caught on the ship. He found out the hard way that he was terribly allergic to that antibiotic.

The Loerts’ were living in the farmhouse, and the Wilsons next door were their landlords. Oom Piet took the long way home and drove downtown to show my parents the damage done by a recent tornado. The top of the Vendome Hotel was missing. Tante Ally told of a woman from church whose house had been hit. A dresser had been picked up and dropped a mile or so away. When the dresser was opened, all of its contents lay neatly as though nothing had happened.

Heading north and turning from George Street, Christina Street was lined by beautiful old homes. Then, after driving as far as one could down Christina without driving into the lake, Oom Piet turned right and onto lovely Lakeshore Road. The houses, with their yards and large gardens and old trees, were a sight to behold. Oom Piet would have continued in an easterly direction, passing Indian Road and then Murphy Road and Modeland, and finally reach Blackwell Sideroad. Then it was a short jog left to show my parents Lake Huron and the beach. It is a very large body of water.

‘Beautiful Bluewater Country’ is vat dey call dis town, announced Oom Piet.

He then headed south down the road where the house we were going to be living in was. He passed the Groendyk’s and the Van De Wetering’s on the left side.

Dey go to our kerk, said Tante Ally.

Hmm said my father.

Then, we slowly drove over a little bridge that crossed a creek, then to the stop sign at Highway 7. Across the highway and just to our left, the second house down was ours.

My parents must have been excited upon first seeing the farmhouse. It would have seemed a castle in comparison to the little flat in The Hague.

Oom Piet and Tante Ally Loerts.

My sister, Ruby, was born January 26, 1955, almost four years after me. Mum always used to compare Ruby’s and my births.

Ven Barry vas born it was so easy and Papa kept putting a hankie wit eau de cologne on it under my nose and it vas too strong but I didn’t vant to hurt his feelings. Ven Ruby came dere vas so muts blut! Dey had to poot me out and turn her around inside of me. Ven I voke up, Ruby vas beside me en I set, ‘Dat is not my kint. She looks like a monkey.’ Needless to say, my sister was not fond of that story. She brought the subject up with Mum once, and Mum came to realize how hurtful it was.

I had one friend. The Tuyl family consisted of Oom Carl, Tante Martje, Corey, my first and only real friend, then Dian, Alice and, several years later, little Derk. I loved Corey, who was just one month older than me. Her family came to visit often. We played well together. Oom Carl had stayed with us in the farmhouse for a few months before his wife, Tante Martje, could join him from Holland, bringing Corey with her.

Corey and I eating oranges on the stoop.

Oom Carl was a great man. He had deep faith, and spent time as a German war prisoner. He was freewheeling, fun-loving and compassionate. I remember him as a very happy