charlie gregory (Friend)
Entered
November 22, 2023
from Peterborough
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Remembering Frank Herbert...many of you like myself would have attended grade school with Frankie at Our Lady of Victory Catholic school. Sadly, I received news of his passing yesterday, after being hospitalized for a month, in a coma after taking a fall. When I first heard of his stay at Toronto Western, a pile of mostly good memories flooded back of times we spent together in Mt Dennis. He lived on Emmett Avenue possibly #33 though I may be wrong. His mom Rosie was lovely did she have some Nova Scotia in her? Frank Senior was my buddy, he bailed me out of jail one time when the RCMPs planted some marijuana in the Cadillac Hook and Cooper shared. Frank Senior drank Melchers Very Mild Canadian whiskey and for a time worked at Loblaws in Weston and then ACME Novelty Company as a travelling salesman. Rosie worked at the Toronto Tuberculosis Hospital in the laundry department the same time I worked there as a jack of all trades, it was when the Inuit were there for treatment. They treated me like a son which is not soon forgotten. My first recollections of young Frankie are from a bright winters day, maybe in 1960, there was a street hockey game in the playground and the little bugger checked me hard and I challenged him who was in a grade lower than me at the time. I remember him being quite able to defend himself and a bit wisecracky with me. Neither of us threw a punch that time nor did we ever in life, we were good friends from then on, as if we were from the same clan and had shared wars together in other lives, the way friends do, so I am told. Life went on, we had been at York Memorial together where he got into the gee gees (horse racing) and skirts though not at the same time, while I played sports. Then when we became hippies (me after a few years as a greaseball) Frank would let me back into the gang of people who accepted me and would mould this flesh into what it is today. At one point he bought a van trying his hand at a delivery gig, we would take pails of ink to a place in London Ontario, chewing the fat in both directions, making plans to be famous, I once managed a small band Frankie had, he was the drummer, and I took a tape, it may have been on Beta as I do not think VHS was around back then in the early 70s! Anyways my guy at Capitol Records never approved the signing of the band to that label and we parted ways, once the thin veneer of being part time hippies wore off. When Julia and I opened our own Diner in the early 80s there was Frankie with his advice on how to do it and there was not a safe single woman within miles of the Cafe`, that time I put him on a bus in Kaladar headed back to the City. The next time we got together, we had sold the Diner and found a place to recuperate south of Westport. Julia reminded me the other day as we pre mourned his passing that I picked up at the Kingston train station along with a new microwave to heat and XL pizza up with when we got home to the old home. We ate the pizza in a modernized kitchen, the rest of the house was from the turn of the century situated on a small acreage across form a lake, I remember when the heat was first turned on, about a million cluster flies awoke and would be seen swimming in your morning coffee. So Frank decides to pull out a mickey of ski and gets hammered, again and is ranting about things from this overhanging balcony area in the house, and just got him in the truck and drove him back to the train station. Like many of us, he was a different person when on the drink. In time we saw more of each other. One time he brought his GF/partner Kay to visit us at a small home we had on the Trent River near Hastings. Our daughter Christine had just been born, so it was busy times, it was early May and he and Kay went on day trips and would take our tin boat out on the River. We ended up moving back to the City to a a house on Joyce Parkway. Again Frank and Kay visited, that time Julia made a doughy pizza that was eaten but not without Frank commenting on the crust. They really seemed to be the perfect couple for some time. We drifted apart after we moved out of town again after some tough events at and around the Beverly Hills on Wilson Avenue. I was too young to die. Frankie and Kay had a couple of kids, we never met them. Each had/has successful careers, he in real estate where he patented the name Mr. Lakeshore, I guess in response to his condo selling skill set. Others would keep me posted on his adventures, often the stories had drink related anecdotes. I give him credit for calling me three or so years back, for congratulating me on my successes, my family in a life that was not 'by the book.' He will be missed..Frank Herbert...regards and condolences to his family, his wife and children and his brothers John and Victor.
