FINDING A BEST FRIEND, I FOUND A RECIPE FOR A LIFE TIME.
I have decided to stop grumbling about the disappearance of the blog entry that I wrote in 2015 about Flavius Boucher and his skills as a sculptor. I thought of trying to recapture that blog's details and instead I recalled that I had often wanted to amend it or add something about the rest of the Boucher family who played such a big role in shaping my sense of a possible alternative to family life different than my own.
I have mentioned that when I returned to Englewood Avenue after the year long exile on York Avenue, I was placed in the 4th grade. That meant that I skipped the third grade and that reflected the fact that I had been in a combined second and third grade classroom when I was at St Theresa's School.
In the new 4th grade I became friends with Lucille Boucher. She lived in a three decker at the start of Columbus Avenue and their backyard abutted McCoy Stadium. Their household was made up of three children -Raymond, Lucille and Arlene. And their mother Cecile and their father Flavius.
Since I also walked the length of South bend Street four times a day to go back and forth to school and home for lunch, we became walking friends and then good friends. Lucille invited me to her house after school and there I met her parents and siblings and her fluffy and brilliant dog Pecos. I was enchanted by them all.
There was a lot to be enchanted by--they spoke a different language--FRENCH.
Pecos would only obey commands in French! Smart dog!
They came from a different country-- QUEBEC!
Their mother was brilliant cook .
Their father was a genius sculptor. NEED I SAY MORE?
OK I will say more. I felt like I had found a treasure of domestic possibility in Pawtucket--right down the street.
The more I played at Lucille's house the more the wonders of their family were revealed. Cecile would take off her apron and put make up on before Flavius came home promptly for supper.
And Flavius did come home every night all gritty and covered with dust from work. And they kissed when he came in the door and his wife and children welcomed him, And his wife called him a pet name--Bonhomme, I have never tried to write that word before and I am not sure of the spelling but it means MY GOOD MAN.
This was an alternative world to mine--- not that my mother and father did not love each other, but it was not said out loud. After all--she was Irish and he was Yankee. They did not have these domestic rituals that hold a child's world together.
It felt like I had entered an alternative universe.
Yes, my father came home, but we never knew when. My mother would fret over keeping his supper warm and often he complained that it was dry or over-cooked. And after my father left us for good, my mother went to work on the second shift of a factory and I ran to Lucille's house every night. After I had dried the dishes and refused the bad meal that Aunt Anna somehow produced. I ran down the stairs and into the fresh night air.
I can recall so vividly opening the back outside door on Columbus Avenue and standing in the darkened hallway before knocking on their door. When it was opened, Cecile would greet me and I would help her put the dishes away and she would take out a plate of food that she had kept warm for me in the oven.
Flavius would often be sitting in their living room and be busy with some project. I recall one that went on for weeks. He was making an aquarium-- from scratch--and he was cutting the glass and joining it. Then he built a wooden frame for it and it stood one evening as he placed the decorative shells and stones and filled it with water, He prepared everything for the fish. When they splashed and began swimming, we all cheered and Pecos barked wildly. What a great night.
Now as an old person I see that this scene particularly dazzled me because it was at the time when I felt so abandoned by my father. Flavius was my new father model. And I was lucky to have found him.That sense of the wonders of Flavius Boucher only increased when I found out that he was also a sculptor. He made busts of each of his children in granite--I wonder if they have those artifacts wherever they are today.
Then he began to take an interest in creating statues of historical figures. And he made busts of figures like Eisenhower, and Pope Pius and Abraham Lincoln. He wanted to enter some exhibitions that he became aware of, and that is when he enlisted my help.
Flavius could not write in English and his reading was limited also. He would bring books home from the library with entries about the figures he was sculpting.
My job was to read them all and then tell him what they said in slow and easy English. Then he would try to tell me what he wanted to say about the person or especially about the character of the rock itself that he was using. He had a lot to say about rock. In fact he gave me a vocabulary for my interest in rock formations.
After several exchanges over several evenings, I would sentence by sentence make up a narrative that he approved. Then my job was to print it on large white cardboard which he then displayed next to the bust that he was entering in the exhibit.
I never heard much after that. Although I do know that he won some of the prizes and people began asking him to make busts for them. On his own initiative he made a statue of Saint Joseph that he gave to the parish church, and for years I would see it daily in the church yard. It is no longer there.
Flavius is gone and his work is gone--but he worked in granite. Surely those granite artifacts are somewhere. He lives in my memory, and that is why I want to remember him here. He was a genius and he was one of my life's greatest teachers because he taught that brilliance has nothing to do with education or social status.
I cherish the lessons that he gave in dogged determination and also in his constant following of his own inner artistic compass.
He is the greatest example of the adage of Gorki that I quote:
Genius is a bird that can alight on the branch of any tree.
Just think, it alighted on a three decker on Columbus Avenue. Where is it alighting tonight?
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