MY BROTHER, ENGINEER, LAWYER, FREE SPIRIT, MASTER OF LINGO & MY HERO

In this post I will try to paint a picture of one of the most interesting characters that I ever crossed paths with. I have known him all of my life and although we have not spent a lot of time together, whenever we have had the occasion to get together, some wild and hilarious times have erupted. Even after 15 or 20 years apart when we meet up, it seems like we just continue on from where we last left off. Usually our meetings start over a beer or two. L, as I will call him, has a permanent table assigned to him in his home-pub. This pub is immediately across the alley, from the backdoor of his home.

When he wants to hold court, he just slips out of his backdoor, smoothes across the alley, sidles into his private entrance at the pub. He then strolls across the floor, sticks out his hand, as he perches on his stool, and receives a cold beer from the waitress who gives him a bright smile and a “hullo Mr. H”. He is so cool, he just nods and proceeds to take a large gulp. He has “arrived”, both literally and figuratively. It is better to watch than the godfather. He has been a practising lawyer in Calgary since the early 70’s and during that time has got himself into lots of strange situations.

As I stated earlier, L was a partner with me in a number of different ventures over the years. Most notably being the famous office building trade in the early 1990’s. A couple of these, stories, I am now going to recount in order to try and shape an image of this “free spirit”, in the minds of my readers. Time wise, these memories fit into the timeframe of the mid to late 90’s. Which happens to be the period that I am now focused on, in my journey thru this life. Both of these tales go a long way towards proving that you can’t make some of this crap up. As wild as they sound, they are both as truthful as my memory recounts and as my aging brain allows me to transcribe.

The first one occurred in the time shortly after our move into the office building that we had acquired in downtown Calgary. It was located exactly across from the courthouse and very convenient to my brother’s work as a lawyer. He could pop out of his chair five minutes before needing to appear in court. Slide out of our office and bop across the street right into the courthouse all in a few seconds. One fine summer afternoon, he did just that. A couple of minutes before court, he headed out, down the stairs, took a good look left and right and scooted across 6th Avenue.

As he reached the other side, a young policeman, who had observed him making this criminal jaywalk, shouted for him to come back across the street and “talk to him”. To which my brother replied “F@#$%#, if you want to speak to me you come across here”. So at a half lunge this young bull accepted the challenge and charged across the street to confront this arch criminal. Words were exchanged, my brother’s of course were punctuated by the “f” word about every second word. Words lead to words, push comes to shove and soon the young exuberant policeman has my brother in a choke hold. Down to the sidewalk, L‘s tie wrapped around his hand. And his knee, squarely in the middle of my brother’s suit coat.

He has subdued one of Canada’s Most Wanted Jaywalkers, and has not yet had to unholster his .44. Now really incensed, ol’ L is choking out a long string of cuss words. These included descriptions of the young cop, his ancestry, police in general and the laws of Canada. At this point you might ask, “how do you know all of this?” Well, at about the same time L was to appear in court, another rather famous court case was playing out in the courthouse. That case had attracted a lot of publicity. Camera crews from both local news stations, as well as, the local newspaper were on hand for post trial interviews.

As they waited, scratching themselves and looking for something to do. The young cop whirled my brother around by his tie and threw him to the sidewalk; RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. Geezus, a story from heaven, sent to break their daily monotony. Cameras were wwwhhiirrrrrring, microphones were shoved into the melee. Reporters were now describing a “live event” “happening now” in downtown Calgary. I had been away from the office that day, but as I arrived home Ron, meets me at the door. She is shrieking “Dad, Dad, quick you gotta come see this, Uncle L is on TV”. Sure enough it is the 6:00pm news and there in all of his glory is the arch jaywalker “L”. Now spread out on the sidewalk. Being “kneeled on” by a policeman who is trying to decapitate him by means of his tie.

“My god” I thought, “all of those times when I was a sweet little kid flashed back” where my brother “L” had bullied me. I’m thinking “justice finally, I wonder how he likes that”? The cop handcuffs him on live TV. Then wrestles him to his feet and promptly jaywalks him back across the street. And Finally slams him into the back seat of his patrol car. All the while the cameras are whirring and the reporters are trying to get a statement from the “mad jaywalker”. He is still swearing in one loud continuous string and not being the least bit selective about the words. Every swear word know to rigger, lumberjacks, fishermen, cowboys, truckers, mule skinners, bandits and other hard asses, poured from his mouth.

I am transfixed in front of the tv. My god, they repeat it about 4 times during the one hour news cast. In one fell swoop my brother had made us famous. I’m getting calls now, asking if I has seen my brother’s arrest. It would have been pretty hard to miss. It was on every newscast and even got a brief showing on the 11:00pm national news. The end, you might ask? Well anyone that knows my brother knows that this is not going to end that well. Once down at the police station he encounters the “staff sargeant” in charge of bookings that day. Him and L are acquainted, as was L with many of the longer term policemen in Calgary. He asks L what has happened, and through the still flowing string of cuss words finally pieces it together.

He then asks him to take a seat and instructs someone to remove the handcuffs. Of course my brother isn’t going to let them take the cuffs off. He is now in a righteous rage, purple in the face and snorting abuse. The media has followed and are capturing bits and pieces of the melee. They finally get him out of sight and into a room, in order to calm the situation down. After a few minutes, in comes the officer in charge. He now tries to make an apology to a still fuming L. This guy knows, he does not want L, the media or anything else to do with this fiasco, in his area. Even though deep down, I suspect he might have been “OK” with a lawyer being choked out for any reason.

He’s trying to let my brother go, offering a ride back to his office and saying anything he can to diffuse the situation. L of course has not yet stopped swearing, insulting and threatening people. He is insisting that they jail him. I think at this point he sees a real civil rights campaign in his future. Anyway eventually he calms and they let him go. I expect that one young policeman was subject to a little “butt reaming”. Resulting from his high profile arrest in downtown Calgary in mid afternoon, in front of God and everyone. He probably got a little retraining, if he even survived. My brother was famous until all of the jokes got stale. I used to ask if he needed me to guide him to a crosswalk? He used to swear at me in return.

Now can it get anymore bizarre than that? Just wait he has not even warmed up yet. This next one is about a property that L and his son Huck (of Thailand on $2.50 a day fame) had purchased with the intent to “flip” it. My brother was the ultimate “flipper of properties”. He would buy them, him and Huck would clean them up a bit and they would then immediately sell them. For him a net profit of $10,000 was sufficient to get his juices flowing. That is, if it happened in a short period of time. I was quite the opposite. I was always looking for the longterm “home run” from any of my meagre investments.

It transpired that one of their properties turned out to be an old dilapidated “wood frame” warehouse, in an old and dilapidated industrial district in NW Calgary. The plan was to knock down the building, clean up the site and sell the resulting property. The idea was that it was quite a bit more attractive without the crap old building on the land. They come up with all sorts of thoughts on how to get this building out of there, but none of them look particularly easy or cheap. First of all you needed equipment to pull it down, them someone to break it apart and finally someone to haul the resulting piles of debris offsite.

The next idea, and I am not quite sure about who’s it was, but I think Huck came up with the general thought was; if the property was to burn, then it would be much easier to dispose of. The rubble could be reduced by 75%, could be picked up with a grader and front end loader and hauled away to the local landfill in dump trucks. There was no way that the City of Calgary was giving anyone a permit to burn down anything, including, even, your small pile of leaves in the back yard. Huck suggests maybe a little “Jewish Lightning”. This, of course, does not go over well with my brother, he can not see Huck’s attempt at humour.

While they are chewing over their options, Huck comes up with another gem. It seems like under certain conditions, the City of Calgary fire department would use derelict or donated properties to practise firefighting techniques on. They are now pumped and after a few conversations, document exchanges, agreements and understandings the fire department has agreed to burn this property down in the name of training. Great! It suits all parties. What could possibly go wrong? The fire department does not say what day they will do their training exercise, they will only give out a very general time parameter. This to prevent crowds gathering, to rubber-neck and otherwise get in the way or to present a safety issue.

Fine, not much more is said of it until one fine Monday Morning when the headlines in the local morning paper “scream” LOCAL LAWYER TORCHES NEIGHBORS PROPERTY. It goes on to say that a local lawyer named “L” has apparently had a commercial property burned to the ground. They have not many details except for his name, office location, general bio, etc. Geezus, we are famous once more! I’m having my morning coffee when in walks my brother as nonchalant and oblivious as can possibly be. I am expecting to see a swat team descend on us at any moment. I hand him, the paper, he turns white and starts cussing.

The morning is a flurry of phone calls, yelling, screaming and swearing, but what finally results is incredible. It seems like the fire department had somehow MIXED UP THE ADDRESS, and had proceeded to torch the property next door to my brother’s. I might just add “Geezus” once more. Can you believe this? L is beside himself, Huck thinks it’s hilarious and I’m stunned. Now what happens is that everyone involved stands around pointing fingers at each other all the while trying to shield themselves from liability. Luckily L was a lawyer and the papers, contracts and documents were very clear and unambiguous.

Seems like someone in the fire department assigned someone to set it up, who assigned someone to look after details, who then assigned a “clark” to tell them what to burn. And burn they did, an admirable job, right to the ground! Just as they had all envisioned. The only loser, my brother who still had a dilapidated old building in his possession, a lot of bad PR, and no one that wanted to go within 10 blocks of his property, especially carrying a match. Did he cuss, you think?