In Memoriam
On Tuesday May 6, 2014, at the age of 77 years young, Francesco Scali, my father passed away. My brother's and I, having lost our mother 10 years ago, will remember both of our parents as loving and caring people who gave us every opportunity they could and taught us lesson that we are still learning from today.
Our father, Frank, taught us what it meant to work an honest days work. He was very self reliant and always had a way to fix something if it broke. It may have involved cardboard and twine, but he could fix it good enough. Always willing to help out and talk to the neighbours and customers of the store, Frank had many friends. Having had the store for over forty years and been in Canada for longer than that it is hard to remember that he also served in the french military and held various labour jobs before he and Theresa even opened Frank's Variety.
I will never measure up to the people that my parents were. They allowed me to live a life far simpler and easier then theirs. For that, and my education and all the gifts they gave me and my brothers over the years. Thank you. I hope in small way, this tribute makes up for the terror I've been for the last 35 years. You will both be missed.
Life is Change
"The end of an era" is an expression that has come to be very over used in recent years. Students graduating from school use it to describe their passing from academia to the working world. Sports fans use it to describe a star player being traded to a different team. Political leaders use the phrase to address a change in governing parties after an election. The funny part is that the phrase has been both misused and appropriately used in the past week.
On September 30 2011, Frank's Variety, my family's business for the last forty plus years, closed it's doors for the final time. Many of our customers were sad to see us close but most of them realized that while my father should have retired many years ago, and the store itself represented many hours of work to maintain, sometimes the simplest tasks are the most difficult. While the future is a little uncertain with my father moving to retirement and my time finally becoming something I can control for the most part. I find myself both excited and lamenting the world. I am excited at the prospects that the future may hold and what changes and challenges I will see in the next few years. I am lamenting the changes that have occurred that were painful or even costly due to my own short sightedness or stupidity. But I digress from the reason for this post.
One of the things that people said repeatedly over the last week that the store was open was "It's the end of era". I find the statement a very poor turn of phrase. Being an historian in some small fashion I find that the statement commenting on the nature or beginning or end of an era is something that should be done in total view of the entire period. As an example, no one would say that the release of the iphone 4S represents the end of an era. In hind sight though, and due to the release coming so close in timing to the passing of Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs, one might conclude in the coming years that the iphone 4S' release heralded the end of era. The problem is we cannot draw that conclusion now since the era being addressed is too close to us. Forest for the trees would be the expression of choice to describe this phenomenon. However, concluding that Steve Jobs was a man of no small significance to the modern world and therefore his passing would be of no small significance, is, I think, very appropriate and certainly worthy of the idea that something great has ended.
So there you have it, the same phrase, used to describe two different events within the space of a single week, one use a lazy attempt to self agrandize an individual as having been apart of something far greater than themselves. The second, paying tribute to the man who quite possibly could be the last great salesman and is mosy certainly an individual. Quite possibly the end of era.