Pop 89: What makes us rich?
By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com
I don’t mind waiting on tables. I just don’t like being undervalued for it. We brag that we are a classless culture, but we often behave as if being a “paying customers” means we pay for the “right” to talk down to others. No matter how much money you make, it’s never a good idea to talk down to others. In my case, I’ll go home and write about it. I have worked countless jobs over my lifetime. From fruit-picking to weeding to chambermaiding to parade float decorating, from hosting live radio to reporting from a cloud of pepper spray, from fronting a jazz band to coaching performance to street kids. I’ve just as often been moved to the head of the line as I have to the back of the room. Money changes everything.
Waitressing exposes a writer to all manner of stories; fll stomach is, it often happens, also full of stories. (And you thought the brain was where stories reside, or maybe the heart. Nope, they live in your gut.) In the past, after a long day of waiting tables, after counting my tips - the lion’s share of my income - I’d run home and write the stories, reshaping certain elements to protect the innocent.
Because, I, too am innocent. I know what it’s like to be accused of not contributing enough to the economy because I don’t make or spend enough money. We have come a long way since the Victorian era when cleanliness was godliness and everything from verbosity to dancing all night was considered “evil,” but we still treat poverty as a personal failing. Sometimes other words explain a situation better than “poor.” Sometimes folks are “broke.” Other times they try to live “simple” lives. I’ve heard poor people described as lazy. If you’d said that to me when I was going to UVIC, working a morning shift at an espresso bar, a lunch shift at The Elephant and Castle, and an evening shift at a fancy French restaurant, you’d probably get a lap full of hot-buttered croissant or seafood chowder or Sole Meuniere, depending on the time of day. Even then, I’d managed to save enough money that one of my bosses suggested I invest in property up Island. I didn’t. I bought books instead. I’ve never thought of myself as poor. Never. My parents were both farm kids - they were poor. My mom, Aurore, was born just North of Val Marie, my dad on a farm outside Fox Valley. Mom loved caring for the baby animals. Daily, she walked the three miles to the Convent school, daydreaming all the way - and there was plenty to feed the imagination, walking the RCMP patrol line, once the Lakota Line, a trade and travel route traversing Southern Saskatchewan. Most likely, she dreamed of singing at The Globe or maybe even La Scala. The nuns taught my mother to sing. She was their chou-chou, their favourite student. She worked hard, practised scales, sang to herself constantly. As a teen, she toured with a combo - men old enough to be her father. Perfect gentlemen, she assured us. She sang songs like Moonlight in Vermont, Sentimental Journey and The Best Things in Life are Free. They played the barns and halls of Saskatchewan until her mother, my tiny, fierce, French-Canadian grandmother, made her stop because “it wasn’t what nice girls do.” She quit the band but kept practicing. She conducted us, her little family choir, with rigour and passion. “Again” was the word repeated most often. Repetition is the best teacher and the only guarantee of a consistent performance. Practice. Again. And again. And Again. There’s no way around it; art is not easy money.
Work was all my father knew. As the eldest son, Harold never had a childhood. His father was often away from the farm, working in Medicine Hat at the Glass Factory or as a doorman at the Cecil Hotel. Eduard Hamel - sometimes Ed, sometimes Eddy, - played the saxophone. Often he’d sit in with a band passing through town. There’s a story that he filled-in once for one of Benny Goodman’s horn players. Or was it Bing Crosby’s? It could have been either, they both played The Hat. At different times in every artist’s life, we find ourselves in poverty. It’s not a shame, but it’s not a lifestyle either; it’s a situation. Art does not have an instant return, it’s not a profit-driven career choice. It takes time: there’s a lot of “wood-shedding,” sitting at the desk, writing and re-writing, looking for the right word, trying to hit the right note, perfecting a craft. It’s soulful and exciting and exploratory and deeply, deeply enriching. And that’s my point: I am rich. I have never been richer. Even when I made decent money as a broadcaster, I was never as rich as I am now, sitting at my desk in my home on the prairie. And no, I don’t live in “housing”; I live in my home. Living in a place where you pay a percentage of what you earn does not make you “housed.” The fear-mongers south of the border, many who call themselves Christian Nationalists, talk like they forgot Christ’s message was: Feed the Hungry. Clothe the Poor. So I turn off the tv and pick up Pope Francis’ encyclical on the economy titled: “This economy kills.” A quote stands out: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. But when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
In Christ’s day, “poverty” or “pauperism” meant: “Detachment from obsession with material possessions.” Today that definition still holds for me. I see myself as living simply. I’m not on welfare. I have no debt. I don’t have a lot of wiggle room, but I always land on my feet, thanks in a great part to a uniquely Prairie ethos that believes in looking out for each other.