by John Demont
My friend Dan Callis likes taking photographs, angling for salmon, playing the congas and smoking cigars. He also likes folk art—not the awful cutesy stuff but the real thing. He says the Naugler brothers are it: collectors from California to Israel own their stuff; gallery owners from New York leave with their van shocks sagging under the full load. I’m no judge. But these guys do have eyes. Of that I feel sure, walking past the country-western combo made up entirely of bears, the lion tamer with the lion chewing on his leg, the strange shapes and colours and designs. I feel as if I’ve drunk too much coffee.
Ransford, who has a round face covered with a day’s growth and wears jeans, workboots and a blue workshirt over his thick trunk, only adds to the hallucinogenic mood as he explains his transformation into folk art giant. “I was a fisherman, working on the trawlers, and when I was laid off the boats I needed something else to do. I’d go do maintenance work, or I’d be a carpenter’s helper, or do construction work, or anything to make it go,” he says. “I was always fooling around carving and such and making homemade skis and taking old trees that fall and carving them down. But I didn’t know anything about folk art back then. The first two pieces I made were a beaver and an eagle. I made a few more things and, Jesus, I showed them to a few guys and they said, ‘Gee whiz, that’s folk art.’ So I called Christ Huttington and he came and had a look and he said, ‘Oh, yes, that’s folk art.’ So he suggested I take it to Alma Houston and she said, ‘Oh, yes, it’s folk art, all right.’ That was 1988, and that’s how I got started.”
We walk around some more and look at his stuff.
“What is folk art, anyway?” I finally ask.
“It’s something that comes right out of your head,” he replies without hesitation. “And you make it as you think it should be, not what somebody else says. If it doesn’t suit me, then I can keep doing it until it does suit me. I just dream it up. It comes right out of my brain. I just visualize it.”
Now that is as good a common-sense explanation of the creative process as I have ever heard. I take his card, a chunk of cardboard with his name on it, and head out into the sunlight. Next door, by a sign that says ‘Leo’s Art,’ stands a lean, friendly-faced man with big sideburns and a worn cap adorned with a tractor logo. A few seconds later, Leo, Ransford’s younger brother, is smiling sheepishly and confiding to me with wonder, “You know they call me an artist.” Then we are inside his cool, dark little shed looking at his work, which to my untrained eye is every bit as whimsical and wild as his brother’s. “Oh, Ransford, he started about three months before I did,” he explains quietly. “I started January 13, 1989, in the afternoon. And Bradford Naugler, down in Middlewood, he started about two weeks after I did. We all just learned ourselves, I guess, as we went along. Even my dad. I used to visit him quite often and liked what he was doing. He was the guy who nagged me to do folk art. I told him, ‘No, I couldn’t do folk art.’ But one day, when there was nobody around, I thought I’d make a goose, and nobody was going to see it. Well, it turned out pretty good, and a fella called Christ Huttington come along and he bought it.”
There seem to be a lot of Nauglers creating folk art, I say.
“Me and my two brothers, and my brother-in-law, James Swiggey. He’s in the hospital right now; he had a bad attack of kidney stones. He wanted to go to the Lunenburg Folk Festival, but it don’t look too good. If he can’t blast the big kidney stones out in Bridgewater today, they’ll have to send him to Halifax. And then, well, Adam Wade, my nephew, is doing it. And Craig Docker down in Middlewood—he’s my brother’s son—he’s doing it. And Bradford’s wife, well, she claims she ain’t doing it, but she’s been painting now for the last year. And my mother, she does painting too. Yes, it’s good fun.”
He shows me some of the work for the upcoming Lunenburg festival—a fowl with a split personality who doesn’t know if it is a hen or a goose, a flying elephant, a series of indescribably strange and colourful chairs, love seats and tables. “I used to do auto body work. Yeah, I got a body shop right down there—that’s where my nephew works now—and I was doing that for thirteen years. You go back into Mahone Bay a ways and the Holy Mackerel Gallery has got one of my metal pieces there. It’s got a cast-iron sink on the bottom of it, then two disc brake pads off a 1980 Dodge Omni for the feet, and hollow pieces of pipe for legs. The body is a propane tank of a travel trailer, and the tail feathers are the springs off a Cherokee Jeep. The wings are the bumper off a Chev truck and the neck and the head was off of a 750 Honda motorcycle exhaust. Then I made bells for on to it, and I called it Bella the Swan. There’s a lot of fun into them. But I make them the way I want to make them, and if somebody tries to tell me how to make them, I always tell them no, I make them my own way.”
Outside I should be savouring the silence, the sun on my face and the earthy smell of a wood fire somewhere, but I am too busy wondering about human nature. How a little artistic freedom might mean as much to one man as a feat of strength large enough for the ages does to another. They are all big dreams, born in the soul and forged in the heart.
Ten
Pilgrims and Shrines
THE MORNING AFTER THE ONLY NIGHT I EVER SPENT IN THE TOWN OF Parrsboro I awoke to find my nostrils swollen shut from twelve hours of inhaling forest-fire smoke blown down across the Bay of Fundy from New Brunswick. I staggered to my feet, made it to the bathroom, then sneezed forty-seven times in rapid succession before swallowing a Sinutab. I was beginning to feel marginally human again by the time I entered the dining room at the nice inn where I was staying. Coffee, or maybe half a dozen cups, and I’ll be almost indistinguishable from the other upright walkers. I spy the life-giving pot on the buffet table, load up with food while I’m there and head for a window seat. My path takes me past two middle-aged, bald, bespectacled men sitting silently together. I saw them last night, wandering arm in arm the way European men sometimes do, along the harbour.
Antisocial as I feel, greetings are unavoidable. “Dib u gum for the blay?” I sputter, assuming they were here for last night’s performance at the local theatre.
The shorter, huskier version grins, turns his back towards me and says, “That’s why we’re here.” His navy blue T-shirt is emblazoned with:
1945
World War II ends
United Nations is established
the microwave oven is invented
George Orwell’s Animal Farm is written
Anne Murray is Born
“My name is Horst,” he says, spinning back around and sticking out a stubby paw. “This is my twin brother, Peter, who is five minutes younger. We are Anne Murray’s greatest Austrian fans.”
I just stand there, eyes streaming, mouth open trying to swallow air, fighting through the fog to try to assimilate this new information. Not knowing really what to do, I shake hands with Peter, who is a little taller and thinner. He flashes me a sad grin. Horst, who it turns out is fifty-four and teaches English literature and German at a Viennese high school, pushes out a chair and invites me to join them. Now who, no matter how bad they felt, could turn down such an invitation? Soon as I sit down he seizes my shoulder and begins a staccato, rapid-fire monologue.
“I learned English listening to the songs of Elvis Presley and Pat Boone. Then I found out about Anne. She helps me to be strong. When she sings ‘Some days are good and some days are bad/some days it rains, some days it shines’ it helps you to help yourself. Next to sports—jogging and swimming—she is where I turn to solve my problems. I have a framed picture of her in the middle of my living room. I have all of her CDs. Listening to her music I feel in harmony with myself and the world. Do you know she has a cottage near here? I went to see her and told her husband that I am in love with your wife.”
I weigh this information carefully, knowing that the Songbird from Springhill has spent the last decade or so with a crazed Saskatchewan wheat farmer stalking her. Peter, who kept eating throughout his brother’s breathless delivery, excuses himself. O
nce he’s beyond earshot Horst leans forward and confides, “I have got problems with my twin brother who is manic depressive and is always trying to commit suicide. My whole life has been spent looking after him. It is hard, but I don’t complain. I have studied Shakespeare and all the German philosophers. But if I need help I just need to listen to Anne and I will know that she will help me and save me. Anne makes me stay strong, positive and optimistic about life. I am indebted to her for helping me get through my days.”
A lot to handle first thing in the a.m. Even if Horst isn’t babbling strangely, he’s got far too much spark for me at this hour. I keep waiting for the caffeine to mercifully kick in. But nothing happens. I slump lower and lower in my chair. Peter returns. Some small talk, then they’re getting up. I walk them to the parking lot.
“A picture?” I inquire, holding up my camera.
“Why not,” says Horst, chuckling. It takes a few seconds to get them in place. Then I snap—Horst, on the passenger’s side, beaming like a man with purpose, Peter on the driver’s seat, right hand raised in farewell, smiling his melancholy smile.
Lumbering, blueberries, shipbuilding and the amazing Fundy tides used to keep this area alive. Now this is the Land Time Forgot. Water fades in and out of sight as the road from Parrsboro twists and bucks, climbs and plummets. Only a short drive to Advocate Harbour, where a hundred vessels once rolled from the slips each year. Now it’s a ghost town, with a big wild west sky and a cemetery on the hill with a number of headstones bearing the brief epitaph “Lost at Sea.” It is one of the more desolate places I’ve seen in the province.
On the outskirts of Springhill a well-dressed guy in the doorway of a car dealership gives me directions. Thirty seconds later I’m lost again, driving back and forth along the same street like a beat cop. I stop and ask a pair of skinny lads with rattail haircuts how to get to the Miners’ Museum. Speaking loudly and very slowly, as if to a child or a foreigner, one of them takes all of 20 seconds to lay out the simple route. “Jeez, there’s lots of signs, buddy,” I hear his companion mumble as I roll up the window. “This isn’t New York friggin’ City.”
No, it isn’t. Just your everyday mining town, once the last shift punches out. Stan Pashkoski is on duty at the museum. He’s sixty-seven, with a broad, happy Slavic face. He looks like he sleeps in the miner’s overalls. There are twelve of us, sporting identical helmets, rubber boots and yellow rubber rain jackets. I catch my reflection in a window: I look like a canary-coloured Pez dispenser. We follow him on a 45-degree angle down into the mine shaft. It’s damp, warm and claustrophobic. Hell of a way to make a living. Or to die. He tells us about the 1891 disaster, which claimed 125 lives, the subterranean fire in 1916, and the 1956 explosion, which killed thirty-nine men and captured the attention of the world as reporters broadcast live from the site waiting for news of survivors. He tells us about the “bump” of 1958, which claimed seventy-five. He turns off the underground lights to give us a sense of what it is like to be buried underground. We just stand there in the dark not saying a word.
When we’re back above ground Stan tells me he started working in the mines at sixteen. “It was a way of life, the only thing you knew how to do, and the money was not bad at the time. In 1956 I was a supervisor and had come out of the mine a half-hour before the explosion. Of course, I was immediately called to be on the rescue crew. In 1958, I was above ground when the bump took place. I was due to go to work at 11 p.m. and the bump came at seven. Again I was on the rescue crew. I quit after that, when they closed the mine.”
The end of coal mining just about killed the town, he said. Then in 1975 a fire that started in a small restaurant gutted the downtown. He shows me a newspaper story listing the casualties: Nelson’s Book Store, the Knights of Pythias Building with its laundromat and Brown’s Flower Shop, Letcher’s Building, Capital Theatre, John Smith’s Mens Wear, the Cookie Box pastry shop, the T. Eaton order office, town hall and the police station, Mrs. Knight’s home, McLean’s Shoe Store, Casey’s Burger Shop, James Demetre’s Candy Kitchen, Letcher’s Furniture Store, the Springhill Record office, the Halifax Herald office, Ryan’s Storage building. “A lot of those buildings are still unoccupied,” he says with a shrug of his big shoulders. “Not much industry here. Tourism is the future. But it’s a tough town. Always survived.”
Yes, it still has hopes. Springhill isn’t a pretty town, not by a long shot. But it has Anne Murray and the Anne Murray Centre, and maybe that’s all a place that wants to dream really needs. The first bars of “Snowbird” float from inside the building as I approach; a middle-aged woman in a pinkish uniform hovers at the entrance. “Not really,” she laughs when I ask if she gets sick of listening to the same songs over and over again. “She made so many we can switch the tapes.” A tour bus from Vermont has just pulled into the parking lot and the seniors begin to step out. “Museum or washroom?” she asks with a smile as the first one comes carefully up the stairs.
There is Anne Murray’s newborn outfit, her report cards, including one that said “Morna Ann Murray highest marks grade VI”; her vaccination certificate, October 11, 1950, made out by her father, J.C. Murray, M.D. There is a life-saving course certification, a photo of a sixteenth birthday sleepover, another of her barefoot on the Singalong Jubilee TV show, her graduation program (phys ed) from the University of New Brunswick, mementoes of Anne Murray Day in Toronto, of appearing in the Rose Bowl Parade and being made honorary deputy mayor of Moose Jaw. Her gowns— the sparkly one from the Roy Thomson Hall performance, the one from the Australia tour, the one she wore during her last National Arts Centre appearance in Ottawa—glitter inside a glass case. There are videos of her performing love duets with k.d. lang and television specials with Glen Campbell. There are pictures of her and Richard Hatfield, Armand Assante, Annette Funicello, Ruth Buzzi, Frank Gorshin, Johnny Cash, Dionne Warwick, Alan Thicke and Dennis Weaver.
I feel the senior citizens gaining on me, loud as soccer hooligans, so I start for the parking lot, then, on a whim, stop to look at the guest book. Under yesterday’s heading in lovely handwriting that takes up twice the normal amount of space is written:
Anne, you make my life worth living, maybe I’ll see you (together with my wife Irene) some day,
Love,
Horst from Vienna
I’d like to swim with you across the ocean! Horst
I’ll be your eyes, my candle & you show me the way—
Thanks, Anne!
Now, there’s a lot of hocus-pocus concerning Nova Scotia. For a variety of reasons the province has emerged as a kind of New Age beacon. Harmonic convergences, energy vortexes, power centres, alien sightings, renegade gurus, goofy religious movements, Nova Scotia has got them all. At times it can seem as though everyone is some kind of obsessive, a weird pilgrim here in search of some freaky shrine. I used to run into them and wonder: why? Until something dawned that was so obvious that to utter it in public meant the risk of being handed a cap and bells: we are all gone in our own way, the searcher for contentment and connection as much as the guy atop the hill trying to channel back to a former life. So why not?
I love driving aimlessly. Travelling is more fun—hell, life is more fun—if you can treat it as a series of impulses. So I like to stop when something catches my eye. That happens all the time. I am, for instance, driving through the fog up along the west coast of Cape Breton when Belle, who is four at the time, points and yells, “Dad, Dad, Dad! Looook!” On a nice day, I’m sure Joe’s Scarecrows are a glorious scene. But today, the dozens of store mannequins in rubber masks and costumes set in a semicircle in this open field just look forlorn, even a little scary, like a kids’ playground designed by Michael Jackson. We get out anyway and walk around. I circle warily by Pierre Trudeau in army fatigues and René Lévesque, a smoke dangling from his lip. I narrowly miss knocking over an old crone in a wedding dress, then, turning, almost take off the wrinkled headset adorning a checked man’s suit with a note pinned to it saying: “Well, w
ell, well, you finally made it to visit us. For the love of God shake on it I’m Duncan.”
One day I am passing through Maitland, another long-ago shipbuilding centre, which sits at the elbow of the Bay of Fundy a little southwest of Parrsboro. I stop into the tourist bureau where a conservatively dressed woman looks up from her desk and says, “What the hell do you want?” Actually she said, “Can I help you?” but with such a note of surprise that an actual tourist must have been the last thing she expected to see walk through that door. I gathered up some bumf and took it out to the car, where I read that in 1831, before the big shipbuilding boom that put the place on the map, there were eleven shingled houses in Maitland, four of which were taverns. Maitland still has a well-preserved store, an old Norman Rockwell barber shop and a vintage courthouse, as well as a startling number of ornate, preserved-in-aspic homes. The literature identifies the houses as “gems of Greek Revival, soaring Gothic Revival, Second Empire, Classical Revival (Cape Cod) or Classical Revival (Colonial) styles.”
Down the highway a couple of hundred yards is a sign that says Springhurst. I park in the small lane and look the place up in my literature. The home, I learn, was built by Harris Neil, a local builder. It’s designed in a Victorian Gothic style “with a front facade that features a two-storey central bay flanked by ground-floor bay windows and bracketed gables over the second-floor windows.” I had been forewarned that Roy Rhyno, the village amateur historian who lives here, sometimes likes to greet people at the door in eighteenth-century costume. But today the small man with the glasses sports a pair of shorts, tube socks, sneakers and a white and green T-shirt advertising the Maitland Heritage Festival. He’s slightly bow-legged, but sturdy, the type of resolute soul you’d run into on some isolated hiking trail cheerfully whistling the strains of “Colonel Bogey” as he chugs along. A man, it quickly becomes apparent, with enthusiasms. “I used to teach history at one of the local schools,” he explains as he ushers me into the low-ceilinged original kitchen. “That and architecture are what interest me.”
