Wednesday evenings it was "Fatal Bert's in the church basement" at 300 Bloor Street. Numbers were put in a hat and those who did not draw an 'x' performed. Sometimes twenty or so people signed up to sing, but only half made it to the stage. Regulars were given features and would plaster the Annex with posters. The audience sat around tables made of large wooden spools. Artists would gather in the halls and tune up room, or the main stage area waiting for their fifteen minutes of fame.
It was at Fatal Bert's on the Wednesday of June 23, 1976 that I first encountered Melissa Sternwood, the daughter of Rosedale socialites. She had just finished a set of poetry, and came over to the spool table where I was sitting. Melissa wrote her number in my journal and suggested I come to an upcoming poetry workshop at Cinema Lumierre. But first she put her hands on her hips and said, "You were laughing at my poem."
"You meant it to be funny didn't you?"
"Well not that funny."
Ran into Mary and Sam at the square dance at Mariposa Folk Festival and was photographed by a Star reporter. Mariposa was perhaps where I first became interested in being a singer. P Foster took me to my first Mariposa in 1969 where we saw Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, James Taylor and Joni Mitchell. When P Foster said, "This was a place for an unknown to get discovered," I became interested in pursuing songwriting. One of my fondest memories was seeing Pete Seeger sing a Hard Rain's Gonna Fall to people huddled under umbrellas during a sudden shower.
One person made a remark about my T-shirt: 'I bought some gas in Frog City.' It was only because of the Frog City T-shirt that I could be identified from the rear in the square dancing photograph.
The day was kind of cloudy; it looked like rain most of the time. Spent some time with Mary, Sam and Paul Nash who were blowing bubbles. When it started to pour we went to the Free Sing area and took shelter under a tent. A few regulars from Fatal Bert's got up and played. Someone put up a pole to keep the tent from sagging from so much water. The festival was declared over for the day. The rain let up for a minute so the four of us set out for the ferry. The sidewalk was one huge puddle; I ran through it sending up fountains from my feet to greet the rain. In the line for the ferry we all sang songs. I sat in the upper deck and wrote in my journal while as it poured down.
On Sunday morning I met my brother Danny at Union Station; gave him my ticket to Mariposa and let him borrow my white cowboy hat. Danny told me there was a picture of me square dancing in the Toronto Star, but that it was only my back. He had his dulcimer and and handed me the paper with my picture in it. Then I took the Subway to to the poetry workshop at Cinema Lumierre.
I entered Cinema Lumierre and sat beside Melissa. With her orange striped blouse a reddish glow, her short parted hair falling occasionally into her eyes, I felt my new friend looked familiar. As we sat in the lobby with the Mirror Tree Poets, Melissa told me about the man who was distracting everyone with a mime routine — Bud Rose.
Bud Rose was an entrepreneur with motley brown hair and a beard, who won scholarships as a child to study piano. He had the technique, but not the passion. Bud eventually gave it up, and made a living as a photographer. Bud Rose could be charming as a friend, if you could get beyond his constantly miming a climb up an invisible rope. Bud also booked folksingers at his poetry venues; he was quite the Renaissance Man.
I was tired at the reading, after spending two days at the Mariposa Folk Festival, and from disrupting my sleeping pattern. I showed the poets a newspaper clipping from the Toronto Star — a photograph of the festival featuring me square dancing with my back to the camera. Melissa looked at it and said, "If you turn the page over maybe you can see your face." Everyone laughed. I was out of sorts at the reading, as Melissa noted. I read a passage called Stream of Thought.
After the poetry reading, and dinner at Mars, Melissa suggested we go to Philosopher's Walk. I stopped at 160 Borden to pick up my guitar. The two of us sat on the grass against the wall overlooking Philosopher's Walk, as I played some songs. We exchanged poetry. After her Tulip piece I told her about the girl I met in Split, Yugoslavia who could recite Daffodils faster than a falling star. I showed her a passage from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, the book being a little soggy from the Mariposa rain out.
Melissa read a poem about a girl with Leukemia. Her poetry was moving. After a while it became apparent by her gentle poking pen where our whims would take us. We closed our notebooks. At last she asked me to look at the sunset; but even I, arch lover of sunsets was only interested in the dusky freckles that were growing scarce as stars speckled the sky. It was at that moment that I was faced with the poetic challenge of suggesting that freckles that disappeared in the dusk were to become stars. I read some Yodeling Frog Stories. I'll never forget Melissa's succinct literary criticism: "There's too much stuff in it."
The Frog Who Refused to Croak
Once upon a time a frog named Phobos decided he would become the greatest yodeler the world had ever seen. He bought a fluorescent green nickel guitar and practiced day and night. The constant twang drove everyone in his house nuts.
When Phobos was sleeping his dastardly brother Deimos sawed the green nickel guitar in half. Phobos was a persistent little frog. He glued it back together and kept on playing. Deimos teased him when his finger got stuck in the glue.
While strumming 'Fire and Rain' at a High School toga party an unruly heckler tossed a bucket of water on Phobos. But frogs are hard to drown out.
Phobos traveled West and fought forest fires to make enough money to buy a real guitar. The only number the fire fighters would listen to was 'Talking Forest Fire Fighting Blues.' That was the only song with no Yodeling in it.
With a new guitar in one hand and a soapbox in the other Phobos set off for 42 Smashville to seek his fame and fortune. As he walked out the door dastardly Deimos yelled, 'You'll never make it with a voice like yours.'
In a vain attempt to improve his chops Phobos practiced the same shrill voice lesson every day. The sound was so ear-piercing that some piranhas jumped out of their aquarium and chased him down the fire escape, all the while nipping at his heels.
Phobos got a gig in his home town. He rented huge amplifiers, microphones and loaded everything into a bus during a blizzard. The whole town came out to hear him. In the middle of a song dastardly Deimos put a pickle in his mouth and snickered, "This will make you sound better."
When Phobos turned up at his parents doorstep with empty pockets his father took him to the tire factory to get a job. The foreman looked at his matching blue jean jacket, his long riding boots, red bandanna, dark glasses and long hair. He slowly shook his head to the left and right and then back to the left. Finally Phobos found work with a construction company operating a jackhammer and learned how to Yodel in staccato.
Phobos went on a World Tour — as a tourist. At first he packed all his clothes inside his guitar, which caused his clothes to wrinkle and his guitar to go out of tune. He opened his act with the flourish of a magician pulling a rabbet out of a hat. People thought he was great — until he opened his mouth to sing.
While traveling Phobos got a ride in a bronze colored '65 Thunderbird. He put his own homemade tape in the cassette deck and fell asleep after one song. The driver was about to fall asleep too, when a police officer pulled him over for driving too slow. The police officer heard the songs coming out of the car window and fell asleep on his motorbike. Soon the whole freeway fell asleep.
Phobos toured Norway, became ill and had a delicate operation. After the operation the nurses would come on their rounds proclaiming, "He's a great Canadian Følksånger." The hospital was spared his singing during his recovery. Traveling on to Switzerland Phobos broke into song and heard what he thought was thunderous applause. But it was just an avalanche that he set off. When the commotion died down the crowd was still booing and jeering. With the stub of his tail between his legs Phobos shrunk on home and became a recluse. To save his face he'd make up excuses, such as "Yodeling's for humans, not us guys..."
Phobos got a job catching flies with his brother Deimos' exterminating company. By this time Deimos was only dastardly towards termites and the like, and was kind to his own kind. Eventually Phobos lost interest in singing got married, and had a whole mess of polliwogs. Every one of those little tadpoles took music lessons with an opera queen and in due time the Mill Pond resounded with a melodious chorus
And so it happened, that upon the eve of Halloween in 1975, on the picturesque shores of the Mill Pond in Acorn Ontario, that Phobos, the ill-fated Yodeling Frog, sat on a Limestone Centennial monolith dangling his skinny green legs. He was in the midst of a long blue Yodel, a yodel that personified the perplexities of his being. He knew that inside his green slimy exterior there was a human being — but how on earth had he become a frog.
"You see all this is too much stuff," Melissa said, in her soft poetic voice as she leaned back on the cold gray stone of the Ontario Museum. "Just skip all the stuff and get to the point."
If that wasn't bizarre enough Phobos wondered why he had just lost his ground breaking job as a jackhammer operator. To hold on unto an alleged job was one thing; but to hold up a jackhammer was a feat for a frog. Phobos had elevated the jackhammer, at least in his mind, to an unappreciated art form. And now he had just received his hopping orders.
Didn't they realize that he was an artist? While hammering, Phobos had oft eased up on the throttle, so that he was just holding the jackhammer silently, until an unsuspecting pedestrian happened by. Then he would squeeze the trigger and pretend said jackhammer was a machine gun.
Indeed, it was an imposing figure Phobos cut, as dust encrusted him, turning his slimy green skin to gray. The status of the much maligned frog had risen with every minute speck dust. But now, with an uncertain future plaguing his pea sized brain Phobos hopped home. When he jumped in through the hole in the screen door, the door of that two story white frame house with the pink shutters and the big verandah, the budding yodeler said, "Guess what happened at work today."
“You got fired, his father said.
"'No,' said Phobos, 'I was laid off.'
A few minutes into dinner Phobos' mother said, “You needn't be so sullen. It's not your fault that you were laid off.”
Phobos's ears were still ringing from the jackhammer, as he took solace in the front room and watched Get Smart on television. The young frog could hear his parents arguing in the kitchen. 'You never give me anything,' his mother said.
'What about this bowl of chocolates?'
'They're to give the kids who come trick or treating.'
'Well you're free to have a couple.' Over the years Phobos had heard untold variations of that argument, so he went back to the limestone monolith overlooking the Mill Pond to dangle his legs in solitude.
YODELING FROG
Once upon
A wondrous time
When all good frogs
Were blessed
With wit in rhymes
Lived one frog
That I dare say
Was bound to yodel
At every hop
Of the way
And so this frog
Was slimmed
For yodeling
All the time
His perseverance
Was sublime
Indeed this most
Uncommon craft
Attracted jokes
And caused
The warty toads to laugh
The scales
He practiced everyday
Were known to scare
The precious fish away
Jealous frogs
Would stop and stare
As he drove by
In his Corvair
At a lofty altitude
This fearless one
Entertained
A multitude
Is this applause
For an encore
Or just some jeers
That could drown
An avalanches' roar
Now he sticks
To catching flies
And sings sometimes
Sweet lullabies
Tale ends
With some polliwogs
Who were born
To Mrs. and Mr. Frog
They studied with
An opera queen
And sound real good
Despite the fact
They are all so green
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