Fried egg sandwich and Champlain

Jimmy got a new haircut. I saw him today while I was conjuring an image of the explorer Samuel de Champlain accompanying a war party of Huron First Nations descending the Trent River. Interesting, both Jimmy and Champlain came to the exact same spot on the global map from similar paths; Sure, maybe 350-odd years apart, and Jimmy didn’t have a war party, and Champlain reached the spot without a GPS, but it did happen.

The Trent River is about a football field wide—calm, with a powerful undercurrent as it flows beneath the bridge of Trenton’s main drag before entering the Bay of Quinte. From where I stand, I can see the distant County shoreline near Rednersville, and practically into the backyard of Campbell’s orchards. Following the pathway by the marina, near the fish-and-chips place, the route leads upstream, under the bridge and along the water, past the patios outback of the food joints along Front Street, patios with folks basking with tall glasses in hand in the autumn glow. I dare not join them or this piece will be late to deadline.

Indian summer, I think we still call it. The name has poetry about it. I say it is a season of its own—a fifth season. A tribute to all that we hold, a descriptive bounty of colour and harvest and winter-readying and preserve-making in a mix of cool and warm temperatures with cheerful moons and star-filled nights. By now, you probably gather I enjoy this time of year. And as I lean against the rail, overlooking the river and the car lot on the far bank, I gather I lost track of Champlain.

Along with his co-traveller, the Paris lawyer Lescarbot, Champlain is credited with mapping and recording, in the early 1600s, the most detailed surveys of the east coast of North America. So much so that after his several sailing missions, sponsored by kings out to build on new turf, big business out for commodities like fish and furs and by the church out to build their numbers, other countries like Spain and Britain were happy to plagiarize Champlain’s work, simply taking advantage of the Frenchman’s efforts in order to further their own exploring ventures. Why reinvent the wheel? Grab a hold of a good thing, unsmiling captains would say as they pursued Champlain’s maps and journals, sailing under the flags of rivalling countries.

So on trip number four or maybe five, Champlain and his crew followed directions given by the various First Nation communities along the St. Lawrence River and went up the Ottawa River. They eventually crossed westward into Huron Country, then a well-populated region, centred on what is today the town of Penetanguishene, Ontario. Champlain’s diaries are loaded with details of well- organized civilizations occupying various territories. In fact, his diaries are shared with American scholars and historians for the detail they provide on the Finger Lakes district of New York State and the populations that inhabited Long Island, Manhattan, Boston and the coastline of New England.

At this moment, I am imagining the Trent and a barrage of small scout and large war canoes, something similar to the motorcycle platoons along Loyalist Parkway on a Sunday afternoon that seemingly number in the hundreds. In the case of the Huron, some canoes were as large as 40 feet long and six feet wide, each carrying a brigade of 60 skilled warriors. Canoes with both Huron and Frenchmen, including Champlain in his felt hat with a feather, off to make war with the enemy Iroquois populating the regions of present-day New York State: Those wars, oddly enough, were about—you guessed it—land and commodities. A warrior thing, imbedded in the genes of most of human nature is all I can figure.

You see, the French government made it policy to enter into Indian affairs to muster allies to their cause. Champlain saw it as a passport to guided reconnaissance tours to help fill a few more pages for the record. His notations are brief when referring to the region that is now Prince Edward County except to mention that the place was a sorta no-man’s-land I take it, where both Iroquois and Huron took turns inhabiting the place between battles while the Neutral Nation to the west, down by Lake Erie tried to keep the peace by staging feasts. I can’t believe even having a party didn’t work.

I scratch a few lines into my note book and think about having a fried egg sandwich and coffee over at Jimmy’s, the Skyline Restaurant, as it is also known. It’s three hundred paces up from the river on Dundas, Trenton’s main street. I like the place because of the truth of it. It can’t be mistaken that the upholstered booths and Seeburg juke players were new in the 1950s when Jimmy built a restaurant out of a former five and dime store.

Socrates James Christos, ‘Jimmy’ to most, landed in Trenton to build a life and that he did with vigour. Arriving here in the early ’50s via Montreal from a family immigrated from Cefalonia, Greece, Jimmy married into a Dutch family, raised three children and became a key player in Trenton’s downtown. The handmade sign taped to the front window attests to that: “One Owner – Over 50 Years.” The archive of photos on the wall near the cash and also the photo albums—ask Jimmy, he’ll show you, while pointing out the faces of workers and customers that have been a part of the place for decades—these are some of the memories.

The Skyline menu of three-decker sandwiches, the Airport lunch, Aerial Delight, the Comet or Trenton Specials ring of another time and place, places before our catalogue- length-coffee-descriptive foodery era. Patty, my server, has worked at the Skyline for 20 years and reminds me that the only things to change since the beginning are the paint colours and the prices. Parts of the building hold the New Fiesta lounge with a 200-seat capacity and the Blue Room Steak House: a film set designer working on a period piece need not change a thing.

S.J. Christos is a short man, white short-sleeve shirt, gold bracelet and a stainless watch on his wrist, speaks like a Godfather in to-the-point Greek-accented sentences. When we converse, the mix of traffic sounds through the opened front door, Jimmy with a fly swatter in hand, my hard-of-hearing matched with his hard-ofhearing makes for a conversation that can be heard from the kitchen through to the entrance. So it becomes an alljoin- in kinda dialogue as the story gets told by the place and people. Jennifer, a petite blond customer in her twenties stands at the cash and tells me how she now lives away from her hometown of Trenton, but returns often. “Jimmy’s is where all of us kids practically grew up,” she tells me. “Coming home is not coming home without having lunch in here.”

The last booth by the kitchen and on the way to the washrooms and to the right is known as ‘Jimmy’s booth’. He holds court and often enjoys a snooze camped back there. Jimmy is on the job daily. “Over 50 years?” I think I hear him say. “Nah! Now, almost 60!” he projects louder. “Soon my birthday,” he adds. Jimmy was born in 1924 he once told me. That’ll make him 90 years young on October 10. He’s worth a birthday drop-in greeting.

I finish my sandwich and my coffee, jot ‘Oct 10’ in my book, pay the bill and walk out into the welcoming sun. Headed toward my truck parked down by the river, my mind spins with the idea of the juxtapositions of our lives, of Jimmy and Samuel de Champlain, of time and a river. “When you come again by here, you come for coffee,” I can hear Jimmy say. Yep. Maybe I’ll invite Champlain.