LIGHT TRAFFIC

I was walking down Lacombe Street, near my house, when I noticed this massive, battered old pick-up truck that looked totally out of place Côtes des Neiges’ urban-ness. The bed of the pick-up had raised wood sidings, like the farm trucks my uncle Tom drives up and down Baird Hill Road, in New Hampshire, and was filled with all kinds of rural paraphernalia: one-bushel wood baskets, saws, axes.

As I got closer, I saw two fellows, in heavy lumberjack shirts and boots, busying themselves on an apartment building’s front lawn. One look at them and you knew they belonged with the truck. The taller one, with the wool hat perched way above his ears, was tending the hedges. The other, who wore a grey hunter’s cap (ear-flaps down), and had red, shiny rabbit eyes, swept the sidewalk with this great big twig broom.

Nice and full and tightly-bound, it was the kind of broom that makes you think of witches, haunted forests and Eastern European peasants – the kind that got real creative about making things out of nothing under communist rule. But for this fellow, sweeping the winter’s salt-and-rock dust off Montreal’s streets with this gorgeous, anachronistic implement, seemed to be just as banal as cracking open a can of Pepsi. I stopped to compliment the sweeper on his broom. “Nice broom you got there,” I said. “This?” he said, looking at me tentatively. “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one like that.”

He twirled it around, a bit, staring down, visibly disconcerted by my interest. The twigs, long and supple, were tinged with pink, which made me think maybe they were cherry branches. “What do you make them with,” I asked. He looked up again, and I got a good look at his beady eyes and weathered face, punctuated by a three-day beard that looked like you could cut your face on it. “This, no, you can’t find in Montreal.” Although this is a little game I’m usually pretty good at, I couldn’t even begin to place the accent. “This it comes from the bush,” he added, one hand leaning on his beautifully obsolete thing, the other pointing to the distance. Coming from him, it had to be true. We both nodded and I went on my way.