Back for this holiday season, the Snapshots series, a gift from journalists from Duty, offers fiction texts inspired by archive photos sent by readers to the editorial staff. Today, a text by Philippe Papineau based on a photo by François Giguère.
What I see from here makes me a little sad. No, I know, the sky is an impeccable blue and the cold is not bitter, so we can play outside for many more hours. Sometimes, lately, parents even allow us to have fun after sunset, and even, when we are good, to go back and play outside after supper.
Still, I have trouble keeping a smile. In any case, in the neighborhood, we had fun with our neighborhood friends. At 8:15 a.m., as soon as lunch had been eaten, the doors of Rue Rosa opened almost at the same time and the whole gang gathered at the park at the end of the street, their gloves still warm from having spent the night on the large radiators which reigned in the living rooms.
Mr. Leblanc, who ran the general store right next to the park, called us the “gang of seven”. There was me, Martin, Robert, Josée, Maurice and his brother Richard – you can’t make this up – and then Ti-Jean. A month ago, a stray snowball hit the window of the establishment, Mr. Leblanc came out angry, calling us little thugs. We all went to hide under Ti-Jean’s gallery, laughing – but with a little fear in our stomachs all the same. In the afternoon, we went apologize. Behind his counter, in his white apron, the boss muttered a few words, but his eyes told us that he was probably angry.
No, but with what’s coming, I’m losing a little energy. I think back to the time we left looking for a mega-giga-supra ice cube in the city. We surveyed every corner, scrutinized all the gutters and snow-covered ledges. It was finally Martin who found the sparkling marvel, under the back door of Mr. Verville’s garage, the one with the big sign “General Mechanics”. It was a good 60 centimeters long — the frozen wonder, not the sign — and we proudly showed it to everyone and shouted “tadaaaaam!” » and brandishing it like a sword. Finally, while trying to give me a big nose, he broke the ice cube in two. But it didn’t matter.
Still, I’m getting a little liquefied at the thought of what’s going to happen soon. Perhaps I should have taken advantage of it more when it was good weather, like after the big storm of December 27 when the entire region was buried under almost a meter of snow. We transformed the park into a huge slide and we almost broke the sound barrier on the brand new slide that Josée’s mother had bought in the catalog Sears. Maurice and Richard named him “Rocket” and it made us all laugh.
Frankly, the corners of my mouth have been tending downward since Robert, seeing the inevitable coming, took away my good old broom. His father told him that he would soon need it to remove the garnotte from the driveway, so as not to damage the paint of his “green” Chrysler. metal flake “.
In fact, what I see from here, from my height of 8 feet, is the snow starting to disappear, it’s the season ending, it’s the sprigs of greenery appearing around the edges. from the park, it’s my melting, my imminent collapse, my farewell to friends, my end as a snowman. At least the Rosa Street gang will have had a lot of fun. And as long as there are winters, we will relive this.