On the train ride home, sandwiched between thousands of Cuban baseball fans aka Pan Am tourists heading to Ajax, was a sweet elderly lady (let's call her Nana) carrying two white bakery boxes. She told anyone who would listen they contained meat pies from Kensington Market (I'm pretty sure she meant St. Lawrence, but since she was a daytripper, let's let it slide).
I offered Nana a seat. She refused, saying she was happy to stand. I told her the pies would get crushed. I suggested she put them under my seat, so they would be protected. She agreed.
As the train got busier and more crowded, and because I was deep in Round 5 of this week's episode of Angry Birds with Friends, I noticed when I finally looked up, somewhere around Scarborough, that Nana was missing.
I craned my neck like a gopher but couldn't see her. I had no idea where she went.
Not that I'm suggesting there was anything nefarious about the situation, but it is Pan Am, and all of sudden this stranger who gave me two white boxes to care for has disappeared. WTF? Right?
The crowd barely shifted when we arrived at Pickering, but at Ajax, it was like opening the cupboard under the sink in bright daylight in a cockroach-infested apartment. Finally I could could get up and look for Nana.
I picked up the two meat pies, and began to walk the length of the coach I was in to find Nana. I also took a peek inside one of the the boxes. It was definitely meat pie. And it looked delicious.
As tempting as it was to keep them, I could not, not until I was convinced Nana was picked up by some tourist who wooed her with some Pan Am tickets. I finally found her at the other end of the coach, seated in a window seat.
She told me she planned to come back to where I was once the train reached Oshawa. She had just assumed I was heading the same way. And even if I wasn't, she said, she was confident no one would touch her pies.
At Oshawa, she was met at the end of the platform by her husband, who looked very relieved to see her.
She did have his dinner after all.
6 comments:
More likely she got them from St. Lawrence as you say, but not impossible they came from Kensington, which has improved over the years with better quality shops and some food stops too.
Good point. I was just considering geography.
And now I am craving tourtiere! Gah.
I like it that in your rules for commenting you state that racist/bigoted comments will not be published. However you just referred to Cubans heading to Ajax as cockroaches pouring out from a cupboard. Nice... I like that. Hypocrisy at its best...
^ I bloody well did not. Don't twist my words to benefit an accusation that is based solely on an observation that you made.
Thanks
@WhiskeyRaider: WTF??? Read the the post!
Post a Comment