I didn’t always get up early to see him off to work, but that morning I did. I remember sitting on the kitchen chair looking out the trailer window. I had moved in with Dad that September to attend the local College. There had been a big dump of snow the day before, it was November 18th. Even though it was still dark outside it looked like a blanket of white. We chatted briefly while he got his things together. Hugged me and we said, “I love you” and then he was out the door. I watched him climb into his old green Ford pick-up and I waved until I couldn’t see him anymore. I didn’t realize it would be the last time I would ever see him.

Charlie was Born in 1944, the 5^th child of Elliot and Winifred Jeans. He was the first boy after 4 girls. In his own words his parents spoiled him because he was the first boy. Dad thought he was named after 3 Kings of England. Charles, George, and Edward. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s doing genealogy research that I realized that he was named after his 2 grandfathers Charles Jeans and George Edward Sponagle. It is still curious to me that he did not know that. Or maybe he did and just didn’t like it?

The Jeans family lived in a small house in Trenton, Nova Scotia, where they raised 10 children. Three boys and seven girls. Dad described his family as poor. Like most men in the town, his father worked at the steel factory. Small town Trenton was known for it’s Trenton Works railcar and heavy steel manufacturing, which employed most of the men that Charlie knew. His grandfather, uncles and eventually brothers would all work there.

Dad told me Grandpa would walk home after work gathering glass bottles which he would bring in to collect the change. He would use the change to buy a pop for the kids to share. He remembers that it was fizzy, and he didn’t like that, but he liked the sweetness.

I’m not sure how strong cribs were in the 1940s but there is a wild story that Dad often talked about from his days as a toddler. Apparently, due to the fact he was spoiled, or so he said, Charlie would have wild temper tantrums. He would bang his head on the floor or near by furniture. Sometime during the ages of 2 or 3, he broke his crib with his head during one such temper tantrum. Seems he was hard-headed from a young age.

At about 4- or 5-years old Charlie and another child (maybe a sibling or neighbor) were playing in the yard. While crawling around pretending to be some sort of animals, Charlie had crawled up the other side of the ditch onto the road. Now the children had been told not to play on the road. A car came whizzing by and narrowly missed the young Charlie. His dad who had seen Charlie roll out of the way just in time, rushed over to see he was ok, then promptly spanked him. This was something Dad remembered and relayed often. He felt that he was spanked/beaten more than necessary because he had been allowed to do what he wanted as a smaller child. He decided that because of this “spoiling” his parents struggled to get him under control as a youth. As a result of his resentment towards the harsh discipline, he didn’t have a great relationship with his dad.

The Jeans’ family were faithful church goers. Although Elliot had been raised in the Methodist church, he and Winnifred were members of the Pentecostal Assembly. I heard that Grandpa Jeans had left the Methodist to marry Winnifred and that there was tension in the relationship with his mother, Cecilia Emma Jeans (Strickland). There is no one left to collaborate the story. I had guessed this was the case from my dad’s mad distaste for denominations and the divisions they had caused. Also added to the fact he never talked about nor seemed to know anything about his paternal Grandmother, who I learned through genealogy search lived down the street from my dad’s family home. He did relay a story of wealthy cousins who would only invite him to things because he was good at sports, so he would help them win. He resented them for that. And he became ashamed of being poor.

Sometimes the stories I heard where not from him. During a phone call from my Aunt Janet. I learned a story I had never heard before. She told me how my dad at 12yrs of age would be up at the front of the church with the men, speaking in tongues. This surprised me as I fully believed my dad told me all his stories of his youth, on repeat. This seemed like such a significant part of his past that I assumed he must have deliberately left it out. But why? Or did he forget? I did know from him that he would pray for people at church. And they would be healed. He once remarked “I was once like you, you know. I used to believe” And he would sometimes jest by putting his hand on my forehead and saying “Healed!” If I had a headache or felt sick. Then he would chuckle. I was never part of a church that was “charismatic”, so I really had no clue what he was talking about.

When Dad was around 12 years old he was sent by his parents to go pray for an elderly neighbor man. I always found this to be a strange story. First of all, I can’t imagine sending my 12-year-old down to the neighbor alone. Secondly, because of they way the story it ended. On the way to the sick man’s home, Dad picked up a stick. As he walked, he was hitting rocks. Suddenly he sent a rock flying into the window of a house near by. The window smashed. And Charlie never made it to the man’s house to pray. And there he ended the story. I do not recall him ever telling me if the owner of the broken window came out, or if he ran and hid, or if the old sick neighbor lived or died. He would only say that his life changed that day. So, in not knowing what to believe I came up with my own conclusion. He ran and hid and was too ashamed to go to the sick person’s house to pray for him. Whether he ever told his parents about the broken window I don’t know but I doubt it. From what I understand the change that Charlie meant was shame. He no longer prayed in tongues at the front, and he no longer prayed for people to be healed. He said he became more interested in girls at school, trying to flip up their skirts as they walked by. He experienced shame, and it stayed with him for his life. Later in life Charlie would describe it as self-hate.

In his teens he did very well at school. He said that he could get good grades without trying. He excelled at sports.

His relationship with his dad was a rough one. They fought a lot. Dad would often say his parents did the best they could with what they knew. He didn’t call his father Dad as a teen; he called him Stevie, which Grandpa hated. Why he did that, I asked, he told me that his dad didn’t like it. At age 16, probably the end of 11^th grade, Charlie jumped in the back of a truck with 3 other young men heading to the great Western Frontier Province of British Columbia. When he quit school, his mother cried. Dad said he was always making his mother cry; it pained him to see her cry. To try and keep him on the right path, they bought him a nice new jacket. It was the class of 62’ and he promised to go back to school. But instead, he ran away. I’m sure their hearts were broken. I don’t know exactly what he was running from. Maybe the shame of being a disappointment. Or the shame of being poor. One thing was for sure, he was never going to work in that steel factory like his dad!

Charlie seemed to get into a lot of fights. I don’t know if this was his personality or just what happened with most young men growing up in the 50s and 60s. Charlie had a brother only a year younger. Jerry would get picked on in school. Dad thought maybe he was bullied because he was quieter or slower, but that wasn’t going to happen as long as Charlie was there! He said his fighting days began in the school yard defending his brother and grew from there. Anytime someone was being bullied Charlie would fight to defend them. I had asked if he always won. He said no but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t fight. He often gave me tips like, if you act crazier then they are they usually don’t want to keep fighting you.

It was late 1961 and only 16 he was on his way to a land far away. He said he felt like he’d be free. He felt like he could stop making his mom cry. I don’t know if that’s all he was running away from. I know he had a girlfriend named Lisa Leanne. She did track him down a year after his leaving. He said he treated her mean, being cold and distant. He did it so she’d go back home. He figured she’d be better off with someone else.

I know he made it to Vancouver and lived in an apartment with other young men. There he met his friend Barry. Barry and his brother were orphans shipped over from England. He talked about kicking out ceiling light bulbs for practice. He mentioned street fighting and how back then fighting was all different.

At some point between 1962 and 1964 Charlie lived in Terrace. Here he and Barry had found jobs in the forest industry. You may be wondering how Charlie managed to find work without a high school diploma. Well, he would tell his prospective employer that the school he attended in the little town of Trenton, NS had burned down, so records were lost. Because he was a friendly, hard-working guy he usually got hired.

As a young man living in BC, he had a suit. Just one suit. He would wear it if he flew or special events like dances. He seemed to always get into a fight and have to the suit ripped, so he was always having it fixed up.

At 19 he bought his first car. Some how he had convinced a bank to give him a loan and he bought a Black Comet. I believe a 1962. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the car more than a few weeks when he wrapped it around a telephone pole. I recall he was drunk driving. He managed to dodge paying the loan because the bank failed to confirm his age with a birth certificate. Which he didn’t have. He was actually 18, his birthday was in August, and he hadn’t turned 19 yet at the date of the loan. Honestly, I would have thought they checked his drivers license? But how he got one of those I’ll never know!

He made some new friends while living in Terrace. One was Johnny. Or as I know him Uncle John. My dad found out that Johnny lived on a ranch in Francios Lake, BC with his dad, who we called Pop.

We’ll step back for one minute. You see Charlie had an insatiable love for animals. As a kid he was always bringing home stray cats or dogs. To which his parents always made him take to someone else. One time he even brought home a horse. He was never allowed to keep any dog or cat, but he would try to keep the horse, it didn’t work. He thought being on a farm or ranch with lots of animals would be a dream come true. Charlie traveled home to Uncle John’s and here he got to be around all the animals he loved.

One story he told, that occurred in Terrace, was at a community dance. The town bully had pinned his own girlfriend against the wall with a chair. Now we know dad couldn’t let a bully go without a fight. So, he marched over there took that chair from the guy and told the girl she was free to leave and with that the fight ensued. From what I remember my dad saying, and corroborated by a friend named Butch, he single-handedly fought of the Wagner Brothers. Whether true or not, Dad became a target for fights after that. He said “See if you fight off the toughest guy, then you become the toughest guy, and now everyone wants to fight you to become the toughest guy. It’s not really a title you want to have.”

At some point Charlie moved into the ranch and lived with Johnny and Pop. He acquired his own horse, a paint, named Poncho. Dad told me stories of hunting trips. Just him and his horse sleeping under the stars in the mountains. He talked about it as if he could go back there and stay in the peaceful woods with his horse.

Charlie’s life was rarely peaceful I suspect. I heard many tales of bar fights. He said he once punched a guy’s car window in and pulled him out through it. I have no recollection of why he did that. Sometimes fighting could be near deadly. One such tale was from the days he was working in Kamloops, BC. He got into a fight with some guy, who once beaten by dad left the bar. I am guessing it was the Stockman Hotel and Bar, which dad’s friend was the bartender, and he and his friends frequented. What Charlie didn’t know was the guy had waited outside in his car for him to come out. Once Dad and his friends emerged from inside the bar, into the parking lot, the fellow waiting ran over dad with his car, first forwards and then backed over him again. He left him for dead. Dad’s friends, one of them being Uncle John, carried him to their vehicle but while speeding to the hospital dad came too. He yelled at them not to take him to the hospital. They argued. He insisted. His friends relented and did not take him to a hospital. From that day on his back was never the same. As a child I don’t ever remember my dad not having back pain. Around the time I was born in 1976, he had to have back surgery. He probably should have let them take him to the hospital back then. I once asked why his friends didn’t just ignore him, he said they were probably afraid that he would beat them up when he recovered. I had seen my dad’s temper a few times, I believe they had reason to think he would throw a few punches.

I think he was mostly healed up before he met my mom in an apartment in Kamloops. Both were visiting friends in the same building. My mother and her 2 teacher friends lived upstairs, and the bartender of the Stockman Hotel lived downstairs. I think this is about 1971. I don’t remember a lot of stories about them dating. They were married in Dec. 1972. What my Mom didn’t know is that my Dad had already fathered two kids between 1969 and 1970. One in Kamloops a boy. And a girl in Burns Lake. My Mom didn’t have any concrete information about this. When she would ask Dad about it, he would say no. I think she found out when I did. I was 15yrs old when Charlie introduced me to my older sister. Mom recalls hearing him say weird things while he was drunk, about a daughter or a son. But he also rambled about being in the Vietnam war so she couldn’t tell what was real or was it all drunk babble. Maybe he was in the war? I’ll never know. He said he once spent almost a year in a black out. I am not sure if you are familiar with the term “black out drunk”? It’s meaning refers to being awake and looking like you are living and functioning but once you sober up you have no recollection of what happened. Whether it be hours, days, or weeks. Charlie figured there was a significant amount of time that he didn’t know what he was doing at all.

Here's what I know about his son. Dad was in a relationship with a woman named Norma. They were not married. He came to the hospital when his son was born and held him. Norma had named him Charles Jeans, after his father. Charlie recalled this memory to me, he said he remembered looking at this baby, holding him and thinking about how he would be better off with out a dad like him. He had so much self loathing he believed that he couldn’t do any good for them. So, he walked out of that hospital and never looked back. He remembers a year later he received papers at the ranch that he needed to sign. Norma had gotten married and a man who was adopting his son. He wouldn’t tell me anything else because he didn’t want me to go looking for them. His daughter would be born to another woman, about 6mons later in Burns Lake. Now his story is that he wasn’t in a relationship with this woman. That he had cheated on Norma in a one-night stand and that the woman had said she was on the pill. There is a different side to this story, I know because I have heard my sister’s side. Since neither her mother nor our father are alive, we can’t ask them. I have no defense for my Dad. I already know he walked away from one child. Whether he knew or not about his other child, eventually he did know and in that moment, he could have decided to right by her and he didn’t.

I don’t know when Charlie’s drinking really took over. He told me of a fishing trip he took with my Grandpa, his father-in-law. Dad took a pack of beer, I’m not sure how much of it he drank before Grandpa in his calm and thoughtful way asked “Can you just drink one? Or do you drink the whole pack?” Or something like that I can’t remember. But it was said in a way that made my Dad think for the first time. “Can I just have one? And if I can’t, why?” My Dad told me he never liked anyone else in my Mom’s family, just her dad. My Grandmother was always telling him what to do! He still didn’t have any reconciliation with his own dad. And I know he called home now and then to talk to his mom, but Nova Scotia was a long way away, so I don’t think he actually saw his parents again until a trip he took there in his 30s.

It was1976 and my Dad was there at my birth. He liked to tell me often that he saw me first before my mom or anyone else. In 1978 my little sister was born. Dad said he almost had to catch her the doctor was so slow.

My Mom’s family lived in Kelowna. We lived in Houston where she’d been teaching school since 1972. She was far away enough from her family that she could hide what was happening. In 1979 Dad’s drinking had escalated. He would leave every morning sober and come home “falling down” drunk. Charlie said his most humiliating moment was sitting in a court room with his wife and 2 little girls (little enough I barely remember) facing drunk driving charges. The Judge did not send him to prison because of his little family. I don’t know what fine he got or if they let him off. My only memory of that was my mom stopping me from kicking the bench in front of me.

I remember good things and scary things.  Perhaps another story to be a page of my life and I can dive more deeply into all that I remember. I will stick to the memories I remember him telling me.

(Unless you type the author's name
in the subject line of the message
we won't know where to send it.)
*****
If the link to the letter doesn't work you can copy
 and paste in this address: preserve@storyhouse.org