At 18 and 19 years old, Grand-papa Meno was a young buck about town. He would polish his shoes, complete his white shirt with starched collar, cuffs, cuff links and tie, don his best suit and newest fedora, and be off to the dance halls on Saturday nights. The dance halls of the day were the best places to meet girls. And to have the privilege of escorting the nicest ones home, you really needed to know how to dance and how to hold your own in a conversation. Many's the Saturday night that would turn into a Sunday morning when, with the last gallant escort of a young lady to her front step, would see Meno stumbling into church for 6 a.m. Mass before finding his own bed at home.
Summers offered a greater range of activities for young folk: a hop on the streetcar for a visit to a park or beach or to an amusement park was just the thing. The island of Montréal wasn't so built up then, and there were lots of places that had a more relaxed, country feel.
Grand-maman Rose came to Montréal when she was a young girl. This was somewhere between 1925 and 1928, I would think. She was hired as a housemaid to work in large homes. Her days were long and very busy, of course, but Saturday afternoons and Sundays were her own.
Grand-papa Meno met Grand-maman Rose the year he was 20. I'm not sure who introduced them. I don't think their courtship involved a lot of dancing, but I know they met regularly that summer on Mount Royal, just the two of them. Meno would bring her a box of chocolates and the comics from the newspaper, and they would sit together on a park bench on the Mountain to share them. Meno could make Rose giggle, and she loved their rendez-vous.
One Saturday, Meno invited Rose to a picnic with several of his friends. The day dawned promising and, as was the mannerly thing to do at the time, both Meno and Rose put on their best fashions, hoping to positively impress the other. Meno collected Rose, admiring the smart summery linen suit she wore for the occasion. They took the streetcar and joined his friends. All was going well, the afternoon filled with the fun and laughter of young men and women out to enjoy each other's company.
But this was the middle of the summer in Montréal, known for its heat, humidity and sudden thunderstorms. The skies opened and it just poured. In no time, everyone was soaked through. And horror of horrors, Rose's linen suit began to shrink!
With the suit tightening around her trim figure, gaping in the most inappropriate places, Rose was mortified. How could she return to her employer's house in the soggy, too-small linen suit? Meno, ever gallant and more than happy to rescue his Rose, brought her home so his mother could help.
A bedraggled Grand-maman Rose met her future mother-in-law that day. She borrowed a suit to go back to the house in. She laundered, pressed and returned it the following weekend. The story goes that Grand-maman Rose never convinced her mother-in-law that she hadn't somehow orchestrated the events to produce a luring eyeful for Grand-papa Meno.
Personally, I think the comics, the chocolates and the giggles had already done the trick!
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| Grand-maman Rose and Grand-papa Meno, celebrating 50 years of wedded bliss! |
