Tag: Neil Richler

What’s old is new

The picture below was taken in Louis and Essie’s home at 6600 Cavendish apartment 1204, likely in the late 1970s. I’m sitting on my uncle Elliot’s lap and Alicia is sitting on my mom’s lap. Besides the funky looking lamp and picture on the wall, all the furniture you see here is still in use (as of January 2015). The dining room set, including china cabinet, table and buffet (not seen from this angle) are in my house along with the screen behind the couch. Essie and Louie bought this screen on a trip to Mexico. I’m not sure how they managed to get it back to Montreal. The couch is in Alicia’s house but it is now a turquoise type of blue, having been thankfully recovered by Essie in the mid 1980s. The cabinet behind my mom is now located at their country house. This really is an example of reduce, reuse and recycle!

I remember that cabinet was a storehouse of memorabilia. One thing I wish I had kept were some old newspapers including the last Montreal Star which was published on September 25, 1979.

Riding the adult tricycle in Florida

We visited my grandparents in Florida numerous times over the years. Essie and Louis first rented in Century Village, Deerfield for a few years until they decided to buy in Century Village, Boca Raton around 1980. It is amazing that we didn’t start a war with 7 of us staying for over a week in a 2 bedroom condo. Each street in Century Village was made up of 3 to 5 buildings with a shared pool in the middle. For the first several years that we stayed there, the pool was not heated. I recall that on the cooler days we went to one of the other streets that had a heated pool. In order to give us something else to do, Essie borrowed an adult tricycle from her sister-in-law, my great-aunt Phyllis Fox.

I recall driving this thing around. I was about 6 or 7 the first time I used it and I’ll tell you that I wasn’t the right size for it, not even close!

It appears that I rode the bike while Alicia sat on the seat and Darcie had a nice ride in the basket. Back in 1993 after Darcie’s bat mitzvah, my grandmothers were having a lively discussion about various things including this biking adventure in Florida. It seems that Essie thought Alicia had an easy ride but Alicia seemed to recall that she straddled the bar. If the picture above is any indication, I seem to be the one on the bar!

Since my dad had the video camera running during the Essie and Betty conversation, you can hear for yourself what Essie had to say: