By Gregory Clark, May 7, 1932.
Although he loves Toronto for its pure drinking water, its fine schools, its beautiful department stores so close together that you can easily walk across the road from one to the other to compare the prices, every time the eminent Griffin comes home from a trip to New York, he is pretty hard to get along with for a week or so.
“The trouble with Toronto,” says he the ether day, “is it has no night life.”
“I never phoned you after ten o’clock at night,” said I, “that you weren’t in bed already.”
“Granted,” said Griff, “but what is the virtue in in going to bed in Toronto when there nothing else to do? Now, in New York, you get a wonderful sensation by going to bed at ten o’clock. You feel you are making a noble choice.”
“Oh, Toronto has its night life,” said I.
“Pah,” said Griff. “A couple of frowsy beaverboard dance halls out in the suburbs. Half a dozen soda fountains. A few all-night restaurants with the police standing looking through the plate glass windows.”
“I could show you something,” said I.
“What could you show me?”
“Oh, I could show you a few things,” said I. “Toronto isn’t so straight-laced as you think. There’s a quiet little night life going on in this town that would open your eyes.”
“What do you mean?” asked Griffin. “The monthly meeting of the Stamp Collectors’ Club? The Roller Canary Society? The Ward Four Conservative Club?”
“Just because you are a stay-at-home except when you go to New York,” said I, “is no reason for supposing that this town is dead. Now, a real man about town–“
“Sez you,” says Griff.
“Step out with me some night,” I retorted, a little angrily, I fear. “That is, if you’re not too sleepy.”
“How about to-night?” Griffin said quietly, with a level glare.
“I shall pick you up at ten o’clock,” said I. “Dress, dinner coat.”
“Right,” said Griff.
I realize now that we both called each other’s bluff and we should have known better. But the older the friends, the worse jams they get into.
During the afternoon I did a little quiet telephoning to some of my youthful acquaintances, and told them I had some friends up from New York that I would like to show about. Did they know of any high spots where we might go slumming? They didn’t. It was pretty late in the season. Most of the new places that opened up in November had failed by now and were in the receivers’ hands as usual. Hinky Dink’s out on the Kingston Road had been closed up on account of cockroaches or something, and the Live Oyster, out on the Hamilton Highway, had been taken over as a fruit market.
By six o’clock, I was in rather a sweat, and I had several of my younger brothers over for supper to draw me maps and charts.
“There’s a place over the other side of Hamilton,” said one of the young ones.
“Have you been there?” I demanded of the flaming youth.
“No, but I’ve heard about it,” said he. “I think it’s near Grimsby.”
“Isn’t there anything around town?” I begged. “How about Jarvis St.? There used to be some funny joints on Jarvis when I was at Varsity.1“
“There have been big changes since the nineties2,” said the youngest one.
“Very well,” said I. “I can see you are merely deceiving me. I shall find out for myself.”
Heading For the Hot Spots
And I confess that when I picked Griffin up at ten o’clock, I had no information whatever to guide me in showing my doubting Thomas the night life of the tenth biggest city in America.
Griffin was obviously a little excited, although he tried to hide it.
“Well,” said he, settling himself back in the car, “if we had left it until August you might have taken me out to a lively corn roast out on Scarboro Heights. Or a month or so earlier, we might have gone skiing up at the Summit Golf Club.”
“Sit tight, boy,” said I, “it is early yet, but I’ll be showing you something shortly. Just for old-time’s sake, I am going to take you down into what we called the Ward a few years ago. I am going to drop in at Frascati’s. Did you ever hear of Frascati’s?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, sir, there was a joint! We students all frequented it, in the old days. I hear it is still going. Spaghetti, ravioli, insalata, anti-pasto, not to mention the odd bottle of Chianti and certain red wines–“
Griffin sat forward respectfully and began to help me to drive.
“Where is this place?” he asked.
“I’ll show you. Right in the Ward, almost beneath Big Ben.”
We wiggled around the Ward and I stopped in front of Frascati’s. Or where Frascati’s used to be. Just an old corner store, with shuttered windows, a homely restaurant. But it had a side door.
Except for a few children playing about at such an hour, the Ward was deserted. No light showed in Frascati’s. I approached the side door of my past, and after feeling in vain for a bell or knocker, I rapped with my knuckles.
A young man in shirt sleeves answered.
“Excuse me,” I said, “is this Frascati’s?”
“Whose?” said he.
“Is this Frascati’s, the restaurant?”
“You got the wrong number,” said the boy.
“This is Mrs. Frankenstein’s boarding house.”
Griffin cleared his throat back of me.
“Didn’t this used to be Frascati’s Italian restaurant?” I asked rather wistfully.
The boy turned and yelled:
“Oh, maw!”
“Yes,” answered a distant voice.
“Did this used to be Frascati’s restaurant?” yelled the boy.
“Yes,” called the faint voice, within.
“Yes,” said the boy, politely, to us in our dinner jackets at the door. “This used to be it.”
“Thank you,” said I.
The boy closed the door.
So we went back and got in the car.
“Now where?” asked Griff.
“That was just a cast in the direction of the past,” I assured him brightly. “Now we will head out for the night clubs, road houses and dance halls. You will not find the elite there. You will find the youth of the time, the gilded youth, the incandescent youth, and all that sort of thing. Later, as the evening ripens, I shall take you to the hot spots, where society diverts itself.”
“Yes,” said Griff, “this used to be it.”
I drove down to the lake front and out the highway. Past gas stations, tire depots, shoe repair shops, all brightly lighted, we drove, watching eagerly. The fruit stores were the gayest. We passed through Mimico and New Toronto. At Long Branch I got out and went into a cigar store.
“Are there any dance halls or road houses out this way?” I asked the sporty looking gent who was reading the Running Horse behind the counter.
“Up the side roads,” said he. “Up the side roads. I don’t know where they are exactly, but I’ve seen some suspicious looking characters driving up the side roads. Try some of the side roads.”
A Mysterious-Looking House
I selected a paved side road, and we drove into darker Ontario. The pavement ended and the mud began, and nothing in the nature of a road house appeared. We came to Dundas St. and turned back toward the city.
“What’s that?” asked Griffin suddenly. Sure enough, hidden back amongst the bushes was mysterious looking house with dim lights, and several cars parked on the drive.
I turned in. We dismounted and with beating hearts approached the front door.
“A sign said, “Chicken dinners.”
“I’m not hungry yet,” said Griffin. “That sign is just a blind,” said I. “Chicken dinners, haw!”
In answer to the bell, a middle-aged lady in a pretty blue uniform and white apron opened and ushered us in.
In the deserted hall was a hatrack with a straw hat and a raincoat on it.
No sound of revelry greeted us.
“Is there any dancing or anything?” I inquired.
“Oh, no, sir no dancing ‘ere. Just dinners.”
“Are there many here to-night?”
“No, sir, not at the moment, sir; but we I did ‘ave the loveliest bride and groom for tea.”
“The cars parked outside?”
“Ah, they belongs to the market gardeners who ‘ave the farm back of us ‘ere, sir. They live in that little shanty back there, sir.”
“Well, my friend and I were looking for a little excitement, and we thought there might be music and dancing. Do you know of any place along here where there might be dancing?”
“No, sir, unless there was some sort of do in the Community ‘All, sir; that’s at the second crossing further east.”
Griffin was pleasantly silent as we got back into the car and drove on to the highway. There was quite a procession of cars.
“There’s Toronto’s idea of night life,” said Griff. “Driving out the Dundas Highway3 and so to bed.”
“The hour is just approaching,” said I. “We’ll now head out the Kingston Highway4. I know of a spot or two out there.”
“Crumpets,” said Griff, “will be served at midnight, the witching hour.”
Across Bloor, out the Danforth, across that happy miles and miles of busy, easy, small city, with its Italian fruit stores, its flower stores, furniture, red cigar stores, with its throngs of late people, all busy going home from nowhere, we drove. You get a tremendous sense of Toronto if you drive, at 11 p.m., from the Humber to Scarboro, across the great Bloor-Danforth artery.
It was midnight when we struck the nose of the car out past the lonely seminaries on the remote fields.
The stores became fewer. The gas stations grew dingier. We were abroad.
“Let’s go to Whitby,” said Griff. “They have one fine institution there5. It ought to accommodate both of us, especially you.”
“I am just putting in time,” said I, “driving around looking for these road houses. You can understand, surely, that in Toronto, the road houses do not flaunt themselves. They take some finding.”
“True for you.”
Suddenly we rounded a curve, and there, gleaming with crafty lights, lay some sort of establishment. And out in front of it were parked at least a hundred cars.
“Ahhhhh!” said I, slowing, and wheeling into the mass of cars.
“Ruin My Place, Would You?”
As we turned our engine off we heard the strains of an orchestra and rowdy voices singing.
“Heh, heh!” I cried, slapping Griff on the back. “How’s this!”
“Well, we’ll see,” said Griff, cautiously. “I don’t like the sound of that singing. It sounds like Rotary to me.”
We walked up the lane that led toward the roadhouse.
A large man in his shirt sleeves, a huge, angry, towsel-headed man, was standing near the front door, watching us eagerly. I undid my overcoat and threw it back to show the boiled shirt to indicate that we were gentlemen in search of diversion.
“Yah!” howled the huge man, leaping toward us. “Where the — have you been!”
And seizing me with one hand and Griff with the other, he propelled us violently toward the side of the house and along a dark drive.
“What’s this, what’s this!” said Griffin, attempting to struggle.
“Arrrhhh!” snarled the big brute. “Ruin my place, would you! You’ll get it for this! I ought to beat you up.”
Griff says now that he thought discretion was the better part of night life, and that is why he did not battle the big guy. I have no excuses. I found out long ago that when two hundred pounds takes hold of one hundred, arbitration is the better course.
With rude violence, the big man shoved us, taken entirely off our guard, down the side drive to a door. The door was burst open and we found ourselves thrust unceremoniously into a huge steamy room, filled with the reek of cooking.
It was a kitchen. Half a dozen excited and bedraggled and perspiring men and women were struggling about it, some at stoves, some at tables. There was an air of frenzy about the room, frenzy in a fog of steam.
Aggrieved faces stared at Griff and me.
“Off with them coats!” commanded the big man violently. “Snap into it!”
He yanked my overcoat off and pitched my hat into a corner.
I had time to whisper to Griff, who was beginning to look Irish:
“This is a swell joint! They must do this to give you a thrill.”
Then the big man charged down on me and thrust about thirty plates, all in a heavy pile, into my arms.
“Get in there,” said he, “and get busy.”
He gave me a shove through a pair of swinging doors, and I found myself in a large room, where a hundred men, wreathed in tobacco smoke, were sitting at tables singing. An orchestra on a platform was playing. The tune was “School Days.”
My appearance was greeted with scattered cheers.
I grinned sheepishly at my fellow-revellers, and then a hoarse voice hissed in my ears:
“Lay them plates out!”
And obediently, starting at the nearest table, I began putting the plates down while the other guests, all heedless, roared the chorus of “Dear old golden rule days.”
As I worked along, I saw that except for the orchestra, I was the only person in a dinner coat.
Nobody paid the slightest attention, and then the door opened again, and in came Griffin, with a huge armful of plates. He stopped and looked at me, stared dazedly around the room, and with the big man at his ear, followed suit with me and began laying plates down.
Just a Natural Mistake
I tried to get over near Griff when I had run out of plates, but the big man, now wearing a black coat, glared threateningly at me and beckoned me toward the swinging doors.
“Look here,” I said to him as I passed, “what’s the big–“
He gave me a shove through the doors.
Just inside, a large dumb woman was standing with a huge tray covered with plates of soup. She held it out to me. I tried to go around her but she blocked my path with the tray.
“I couldn’t carry that,” I said apologetically.
“Take it,” she growled.
I took it. She held the swing doors open, and as I went out, Griff came in, and he said:
“What is this?”
“Just a minute,” I grunted, staggering out with the tray. The guests were now singing, “Pack All Your Troubles.”
I laid the soup down, plate by plate. It is really very simple. Your thumb gets soupy, but it isn’t at all difficult. In no time, I had cleared my tray. I dashed for the swing doors to get Griff privately. But out he came as I went in, bearing a full tray. The big man was close on his heels. He had a stove shaker in his hand.
Four trips with the soup, and then Griff and I coincided in the kitchen and I chased over to him.
“This is horrible,” said I.
“Hyaaah!” snarled the big man.
“Just a minute,” said Griff, resting his hand lightly and athletically on the back of a kitchen chair. “What’s the big idea?”
“Get in there and clear the soup plates,” shouted the big man.
“I tell you we will not!”
“I’ll….”
Griff swung the chair slightly.
“The Okay Employment Agency!” snarled the big man, lowering at us. “I don’t believe either of you lifted a tray before in your lives.”
“We are not waiters,” said Griff. “We are two citizens out to… well, we are two citizens.”
“What are you wearing them clothes for?” asked the big man, surveying our dinner coats contemptuously. “Anyway, you started the job. Now you’ve got to finish it.”
At that moment, the kitchen door opened and there stood two draggled gentlemen, above whose overcoat lapels peeped the black and white of servitude of celebration.
The big man charged at them. Griff and I picked up our coats and hats from the corner where they lay in a heap.
As we struggled into ours, the two newcomers were being helped rather strenuously out of theirs.
“Let’s get an apology from this big guy,” I said to Griff.
“He ain’t the apologizing kind,” said Griff. “Are you?”
“Gents,” said the big man, whirling on us, “my mistake. I ordered two waiters for ten o’clock to-night for this meeting of the Queen St. Old Boys’ Reunion, and when I seen you coming up the drive in the dark, why I… Why didn’t you tell me you wasn’t the waiters?”
Griffin, standing in that large steamy kitchen, drew himself up haughtily and looked the big man from toe to head. Then the two of us stalked from the kitchen. Out into the lane. Down to the car. I started her. We drove on to the highway. And then we started to laugh.
“What are you laughing at?” shouted Griffin.
“I’m laughing at us.” I gasped.
“Well,” said Griff, “I’m laughing at you. Night life!”
And he kept on laughing until I let him out at his house in North Toronto.
Editor’s Notes: This is another “proto-Greg-Jim Story, with Frederick Griffin as the partner.
- Varsity is the University of Toronto. ↩︎
- The 1890s when Greg was a student. ↩︎
- Before highways were given route numbers, they referred to by the major cities they connected. The Dundas Highway would be Ontario Highway 5 now. ↩︎
- The Kingston Highway, or Kingston Road was a part of the historic Ontario Highway 2 that was the principal route from Toronto to points east until Highway 401 was constructed. ↩︎
- Here he is referring to the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital, then known as the Ontario Hospital for the Insane. ↩︎
Leave a Reply