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Memories of JJ, 7 — Sartorial splendour

Posted on by Patrick
Dad

If you knew Dad, you knew he had his own sense of style. He wore moc­casins as much as he pos­si­bly could*. In the sum­mer­time, if he was­n’t wear­ing moc­casins, then he was bare­foot. (Well, maybe sandals.)

At work and at play, he’d wear blue jeans and a but­ton-up short-sleeve shirt. Lat­er, after I’d left home, he dis­cov­ered den­im shirts. There was always a pen or a mechan­i­cal pen­cil in the shirt pock­et, and usu­al­ly a tube of Certs. (Remem­ber Certs?)

The only time you’d see his legs was at the beach, in a bathing suit**. Oth­er­wise, like I said: jeans.

–

* I wore jeans and moc­casins at his funer­al. It just seemed right.

** Which reminds me of anoth­er fun time. We were camp­ing up at Blue Lakes. My sis­ters and I were swim­ming, and the water was cold. Like, my thumb­nails turned blue cold. Dad, from the shore, asked how the water was. “Fine,” we said, and he ran in. And then com­plained all the rest of the weekend—and for years lat­er, let me tell you—about his damn kids lying to him.

My dad passed away recent­ly. I hope you’ve enjoyed my lit­tle memo­ri­als to him. This is the last one in the series, but rest assured, I’ll prob­a­bly men­tion him again. Thanks for reading.

Posted in JJ.

Memories of JJ, 6 — Tar Fumes

Posted on by Patrick

(This one’s Susie’s, but I’m steal­ing it.)

Dad was, shall we say, not a fan of The Simp­sons. (Nei­ther is Mom, for that matter.)

Susie was home for the week­end, or maybe for the sum­mer. She was down­stairs watch­ing The Simp­sons. It was the episode where Ralph falls in love with Lisa, and makes the mis­take of telling Homer that he’d do any­thing for Lisa.

“Any­thing?” says Homer. Aaaaand smash cut to the scene above.

Just at that moment, Dad walked into the room. He laughed. And as I’ve men­tioned before, Dad did­n’t gen­er­al­ly laugh aloud unless some­thing real­ly tick­led him.

Susie gave him a Bust­ed! look.

He still refused to watch The Simp­sons, though.

My dad passed away recent­ly. I’m going to be post­ing lit­tle mem­o­ries of him for the next lit­tle while. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Memories of JJ, 5 — Dietary quirks

Posted on by Patrick
Dad

Every­one’s got things they like to eat and things they’d rather not share a plan­et with. For instance, I love lasagna*/** and loathe turnips.

***

How do you eat your French toast? But­ter and syrup, right? Maybe some whipped cream and berries, yeah? Not Dad. No, he’d but­ter it, add salt and pep­per, and then slice it up and dip the pieces in straw­ber­ry jam.

I asked him once why he ate it that way. “When I was up North,” he told me, “I’d nev­er had French toast before. Some­one told me it was like scram­bled eggs mixed into toast. So I rea­soned that you put but­ter and jam on toast, and salt and pep­per on eggs.”

Try it. It’s deli­cious. (Rasp­ber­ry jam is also a great choice.)

***

Dad hat­ed yogurt. Hat­ed it. For years I would­n’t eat it, because I assumed he was right. (He told me once that it looked, and I quote, “like the end prod­uct of a sick horse.” But he enjoyed cot­tage cheese. Go figure.)

Also he refused to eat kiwis. “I’m not putting some­thing in my mouth that’s that shade of green.” I used to real­ly enjoy eat­ing them right beside him. I’d even exag­ger­ate the smack­ing sounds that are pret­ty much de rigeur when you eat kiwi.

(Hmmm. Read­ing this back, it appears I might be a ter­ri­ble son. Oh well. Je ne regrette rien.)

–

* I don’t much care for Mon­days, either. Maybe I’m Garfield.

** Also, Dad taught me how to make lasagna Flo­ren­tine, which is the best. Maybe I’ll make some this week.

My dad passed away recent­ly. I’m going to be post­ing lit­tle mem­o­ries of him for the next lit­tle while. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Memories of JJ, 4 — Resemblance

Posted on by Patrick

I look a lot like my dad. Every­one tells me that. (At the care home, on the day before he died, one of the admin­is­tra­tors, meet­ing me for the first time, said, “Yeah, you look like him.” With the gal­lows humour I also inher­it­ed from dad, I thought (but did­n’t say) Hope­ful­ly you mean before, because I scarce­ly rec­og­nized him anymore.)

I sound like him, too, and have pret­ty much since my voice quit crack­ing after puber­ty. More than once, when I lived at home (or, lat­er, was vis­it­ing), I’d answer the phone and have some­one call me JJ and ask me if I’d like to go for cof­fee, or if I could grant an exten­sion on a com­put­er sci­ence assign­ment*, or some­thing like that. It always seemed to throw the caller for a loop when I’d say “Uh, hang on,” and give Dad the receiver.

The oth­er day, I was wash­ing my hands in the bath­room sink, and I hap­pened to look up at my reflec­tion. Some­thing about the set of my mouth—a lit­tle wry smirk—and the stub­ble of a week’s worth of not shav­ing, com­bined with my eyes under, let’s face it, shag­gy old-man eye­brows, real­ly looked a lot like he used to. Back when he was my dad, not a lost stranger liv­ing in the care home.

I look like him. I sound like him. I car­ry on.

–

* That only hap­pened once, I think. As tempt­ed as I was to mess with the caller, I hand­ed the phone over to Dad.

My dad passed away recent­ly. I’m going to be post­ing lit­tle mem­o­ries of him for the next lit­tle while. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Posted in JJ.

Memories of JJ, 3 — Keys

Posted on by Patrick
Dad

Let’s not talk about how he’d clean his ears with his keys, OK? Let’s just not.

Instead here’s a sto­ry from my days as a high-school student.

I was one of the nerds* that worked on the year­book. One day, at home, I real­ized I’d for­got­ten some­thing in the year­book office. It was­n’t any­thing of seri­ous consequence—I had­n’t left my French home­work or any­thing like that—but Dad had to go get some­thing from the wood shop, and so I went with him.

Dad had a mas­ter key to the school, because he was the type of per­son that had a mas­ter key to the place where he works. (I asked him one time why that was; he shrugged and told me “Peo­ple trust me” with a lit­tle lop­sided smile.) Once he’d retrieved what he need­ed from the shop, we stopped in next door at the year­book office… where his mas­ter key refused to work.

After a cou­ple min­utes of jig­gling the key and jig­gling the door­knob, he pulled out the key, exam­ined it up close (rais­ing his glass­es up his fore­head to do so), and said, “Huh.”

Then we went back into the shop, where he fired up the met­al grinder nor­mal­ly used to sharp­en chis­els. He filed off a lit­tle bit of his mas­ter key. Sparks flew, briefly.

The new­ly-reshaped key worked, and I was able to retrieve my for­got­ten item.

I spent the next few weeks try­ing to decide if Dad was a lock­smith man­qué or a wiz­ard. (Even­tu­al­ly I real­ized that a wiz­ard prob­a­bly would­n’t clean his ear with a key.)

–

* Dweebs? Geeks? What­ev­er, we had fun. Name me anoth­er group that got high** on rub­ber-cement fumes on their lunch break.

** Well, gid­dy, at any rate.

My dad passed away recent­ly. I’m going to be post­ing lit­tle mem­o­ries of him for the next lit­tle while. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Memories of JJ, 2 — Solicitors

Posted on by Patrick

I was about twelve. Dad was watch­ing the news on CBC. There was a report about pros­ti­tu­tion, and the reporter made the point that, in Cana­da, pros­ti­tu­tion was legal, but solic­it­ing a pros­ti­tute was­n’t. I was old enough that I had a han­dle on what pros­ti­tu­tion was but I was con­fused about solic­i­ta­tion. So I asked Dad.

He explained that solici­ti­a­tion meant, in essence, a pros­ti­tute offer­ing sex for money.

“Oh,” I said. After a moment I asked, “So why do they call him the Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al?”

Dad laughed hard­er than I think I’d ever seen him laugh in his life*. He nev­er did answer my question.

–

* One thing I inher­it­ed from Dad is the way he laughed. He would find a lot of things mild­ly fun­ny, enough for a smirk or a smile, but you knew he’d real­ly been tick­led by some­thing if he guf­fawed, loud and usu­al­ly with lit­tle warning.

My dad passed away recent­ly. I’m going to be post­ing lit­tle mem­o­ries of him for the next lit­tle while. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

 

Posted in JJ.

Memories of JJ, 1 — Ketchup

Posted on by Patrick

We went to McDon­ald’s every time we were in the city. Dad did­n’t like the food, but we kids all did. So he would sigh and pull in to the park­ing lot and we’d all cheer from the back seat.

The ketchup pack­ets had just about enough in them for an order of fries. If you real­ly squeezed it out, you could make do with a sin­gle pack­et. Two pack­ets had way too much. Waste not, want not. So I got pret­ty good at squeez­ing every last mol­e­cule of ketchup onto my fries.

On one vis­it to the Gold­en Arch­es, I rolled the ketchup pack­et, start­ing care­ful­ly from one end, mak­ing sure every last drop went onto a fry. Fin­ished, I dis­card­ed the tight­ly-wound tube on the side of the tray. Dad, who had been watch­ing me with­out my real­ly notic­ing, sighed and said, “And yet you can’t do that with the toothpaste.”

I’m in my for­ties now and I still think of this every time I’m get­ting to the end of a tooth­paste tube. (Or a ketchup packet.)

My dad passed away recent­ly. I’m going to be post­ing lit­tle mem­o­ries of him for the next lit­tle while. Don’t say I did­n’t warn you.

A day past full

Posted on by Patrick
The moon

I shot some pho­tos of the moon through the branch­es using my longest lens (55–250mm), and was quite pleased how they turned out.

Then I retreat­ed indoors (it’s frickin’ freez­ing out there) and wrote about 800 words in a new Prairie SF short sto­ry. First con­tact with a farmer. We’ll see where it leads.

My father’s obituary

Posted on by Patrick
Dad

James Gillis Johan­neson passed away Jan­u­ary 4th, 2017, in Ste. Rose du Lac. He was 70 years old.

Jim (“JJ” to his stu­dents and friends, “Jim­my Dan­ger” to his sons-in-law—ask them why!) was born in 1946 in Win­nipego­sis, MB, to George and Jeanne (née Gilliam) Johan­neson. He mar­ried There­sa Hrushowy in 1970, and they had three chil­dren: Patrick, Nico­la, and Susan.

In his late teens Jim worked up north, in Hay Riv­er, NWT. When he returned south he took teacher train­ing. He taught Indus­tri­al Arts (ie, shop) and Com­put­er Sci­ence class­es at Ste. Rose Col­le­giate Insti­tute (lat­er Ste. Rose School) for over 25 years, and then, lat­er, taught shop in Lac Bro­chet, MB. He was a well-loved teacher, the favourite of many stu­dents. He had an approach­able, down-to-earth man­ner with every­one, stu­dents and fel­low teach­ers alike.

In addi­tion to being a shop teacher, he was a car­pen­ter and all-around handy­man. If some­thing need­ed fixing—plumbing, elec­tri­cal, insu­la­tion, you name it—he could gen­er­al­ly fix it. He under­took sev­er­al major ren­o­va­tion projects at home, and also did a lot of work at his kids’ hous­es. (Ask Nico­la about the bath­room mir­ror, or Patrick about the sid­ing and deck.)

Jim served on the Man­i­to­ba Teach­ers’ Soci­ety exec­u­tive for years. He was also a ded­i­cat­ed vol­un­teer with West­man Media, cre­at­ing tons of con­tent for the local Access TV channel.

He loved to read, and the house in Ste. Rose was full of book­shelves over­flow­ing with sci­ence-fic­tion and war nov­els. He enjoyed camp­ing, and in sum­mer 1981 some of the extend­ed fam­i­ly made a month-long con­voy trip across west­ern Cana­da to White­horse, Yukon.

Jim loved kids. He would often go for walks with his chil­dren and (lat­er) grand­chil­dren, paus­ing to check the lev­el of the riv­er or teach them to skip stones at the beach.

In the last part of his life, Jim was afflict­ed with demen­tia, and he lived the last six years in the Dr. Gen­dreau Per­son­al Care Home.

Jim is sur­vived by his wife Ter­ry; their chil­dren Patrick (Kath­leen Kalberg), Nico­la (Joël Par­ent), and Susan (Jeff Walden); grand­chil­dren Julian, Isaac, Cedric, and Genevieve; broth­ers Bri­an (“Oscar” to all), George (Bren­da), and Bill (Bon­ny); and his uncle Bill and aunt Phyl­lis Johan­neson. He is pre­de­ceased by his par­ents George Sr. and Jeanne Johan­neson, and his par­ents-in-law Nicholas and Regi­na Hrushowy.

Memo­r­i­al dona­tions may be made to:

A very spe­cial “thank you” to all the ded­i­cat­ed staff work­ing at the Gen­dreau Home; thanks to you, we nev­er had to wor­ry about Jim’s well-being.

 

Jim Johanneson

Posted on by Patrick
Dad

This is my dad, Jim Johan­neson. “JJ” to his stu­dents, his co-work­ers, and his friends. “Jim­my Dan­ger” to his sons-in-law.

A cou­ple days ago, he left this world. I miss him but I know he’s not feel­ing any pain now.

I will sure­ly say more lat­er, but for now: Thanks, Dad.

Donations

If you’re inter­est­ed in mak­ing a memo­r­i­al dona­tion in Dad’s hon­our, here are the char­i­ties we as a fam­i­ly have selected:

If you’re inter­est­ed in send­ing flow­ers, please, spend the mon­ey on one of the above char­i­ties. If you want to leave a note of con­do­lence for us, the ones left behind, you can do so on the funer­al home­’s site.