Cadavers on Cochrane Street
EXCERPT #3 FROM LEROY SOPER’S MEMOIRS GROWING UP IN ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND
(Tales of a Rabbit Town Boy was written by my late father LeRoy Soper, born in 1935 in St. John’s Newfoundland. This is the third excerpt from the book.)
While we were living on Clifford Street, my baby sister Phyllis contracted whooping cough. I was crouching in a corner watching the public health nurses try everything they could to revive her from the latest attack. Her fever was extremely high and instead of applying cold they held her in a warm bath, raising her temperature even more.
She died in a convulsion before she reached her first year.
From then on, Mom controlled the finances. She quickly made arrangements to move to a more decent part of town at 19 Cochrane Street. The house was large enough for seven children and parents. But it was now wartime, which made life all the more tenuous for everyone.
To help pay the rent, Mom took in boarders and cared for them as her own. With the help of older daughters and sons, she provided for her family as well as these extra bodies. She tried everything imaginable to restore some semblance of order to house and home.
She cleaned a three-story house, cooked, ironed, baked bread every day, made lunches for who knows how many, did the groceries and other shopping — and all of this to compensate for the losses incurred by Dad’s undisciplined ways.
Mrs. Jeffries, our British boarder
Among the boarders who occupied rooms in our house on Cochrane Street was a lady who was — well, somewhat eccentric. She came from Britain. During the war her family, which must have included her husband, sent her across the Atlantic to preserve her life during that great conflict.
I quickly learned why a husband would not want Mrs. Jeffries around during the war. She created her own wars. Why Mom put up with her I’ll never know. In this home with seven children, other boarders, three stories and many relatives and friends coming and going, there was only one bathroom. It was on the second floor right at the top of the stairs.
When Mrs. Jefferies had to bathe or otherwise use these facilities she would stand at the door and, in a high-pitched dowager ear-piercing tone, yell, “Nature calls!” If the occupant did not obey and come out immediately, she would repeat herself in even louder and higher-pitched commanding screams, “Nature calls!”
My brother Ron always had a good sense of humor and played tricks on her repeatedly. He would come out with his pants down to his ankles, or purposely sprinkle water everywhere to make it seem like something else. You want details? Use your imagination here.
Mrs. Jeffries also demanded fresh creamery butter. This was to be served in her room with afternoon tea as well as with the meals she ordered to be sent to her room. She was British: she did not want to associate with the riff-raff at our huge dining table.
In Newfoundland we have the best margarine you can get anywhere in the world. It’s the water that does it, I believe. Anyway, as long as Mrs. Jeffries didn’t see Mom serve the stuff from the package, she did not realize it was not butter. Mom had to lie a little because during the war, no one ate butter. I suppose Mom went along with some of her whims because she was a wealthy lady and Mom was getting well paid for the rental of that front room.
Cadavers on Cochrane Street
Next to our house on Cochrane Street was a mysterious garage. On various occasions long, luxury cars went in and out those large and noisy rolling doors. They were black with lots of shining chrome. I soon found out they were funeral cars.
Across the street the Carnell Funeral Home and Carriage Factory, owned and operated by the same family, was always humming with activity, until one day a huge fire burned it all to the ground.
The members of this family appeared as if they were from another world. Their dull black suits and dresses and the painful and austere look on their faces kept us always in a state of fear and dread. The president was about seven feet tall and huge in every way.
In the garage a spooky thing which no one ever saw kept us in suspense with warnings of what was within this darkness. “Never go inside that garage. There are dead bodies hanging from the ceiling in the back part.” The garage was an L-shaped storage place for their hearses and carriages. The lower part of this L backed around our house and a small window gave some light to this storied place for the dead.
The tale that was passed around was, “People died and no one ever knew them and therefore they could not be buried in the cemetery. They just hung there waiting to somehow rot and disappear.”
For all the years we lived in this house I was in fear of this place. That small window faced my bedroom window at the back of the house. There were nights I awoke in a screaming terror but afraid to tell what it was that was frightening me and entering my dreams. My family thought I was losing my mind and called it light-headedness.
In my dreams I magnified everything. The pillow was a huge cloud. My fingers were monster tubes and the feel of them was like nothing I could describe. The slightest sound magnified hundreds of times until I thought I would go deaf. When I was shaken awake by the family, I could not tell them in words what was happening.
I made up stories like, “A man was trying to get in through my window,” or, “I thought there was a huge flood of water that was thick like jelly and it was coming through the window and I felt like I was drowning in it.” Then someone had to stay with me for the rest of the night.
When we moved away from Cochrane Street, my sleep was much more peaceful.
Isn’t it amazing how the mind can play tricks on you, especially when you are young? We were quite sure that, whenever we stood on a box and peered through that small window, we could see a body hanging there.
