Saturday, March 14, 2020

the last book I ever read (Cabbagetown by Hugh Garner, excerpt six)

from Cabbagetown by Hugh Garner:

“We’ll go to the Art Gallery some Sunday afternoon.”

“Okay, but I’ve been there before. When I see the pictures I think of my father and it makes me sad. I guess he’d be the happiest man on earth if one of his paintings was hanging in a gallery. I think that losing his job was nothing compared to having to give up his painting. Nobody like my father, an ordinary unskilled working man, should ever try to be anything else I guess. All anybody down in Cabbagetown should want to do is work for wages, smoke, drink, or do simple things like that.” She saw that Ken was unconvinced. “You know it’s true, Ken. Nobody down there ever gets anywhere. They work hard all their lives and at the end they own an old living room set and maybe a piano, and if they’re lucky they might have bought a house and put a bathtub in it. I don’t want to live like that.”



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