The stories WWII veterans told me are hard to forget. Some of the stories are about dashing adventures and some are horror-filled tales. No matter what, it was always an honour to hear their stories. ‘Ernie and the dolls’ is a short foray into creative non-fiction/an essay. Sometimes it feels like strange territory for a journalist. Everything in this piece is exactly how I remember it, but this happened almost twenty years ago and memory is a funny thing.

I saw Ernie outside my crappy apartment building many, many times, riding his scooter, grasping tool in hand, scavenging for bottles and cans. This was before there was a bin for everything from recycling to compost.

  I had no idea he would tell me he had shot someone in the face. 

  He was a grand-looking, even imposing old man, and you could tell he didn’t live on the street.

  I nodded to him many times as I jumped in my car on my way to work. One day, we had a chat.

  “I live in that house a few streets over,” Ernie had said. 

  “Why do you go through the garbage?” I asked.

  “People are so wasteful. You see a bottle on the ground. I see 25 cents. You know how much you could buy with 25 cents when I was a kid?” Ernie told me.

  “Maybe I could interview you some time?” I asked.

  “Sure thing.”

  So one day, I went to Ernie’s house, an infant journalist, still a baby, really. 

  Ernie’s house was nestled among boring blocks of identical apartment buildings, his house a warm piece of architecture in what was otherwise more of a penal colony for university students and other poor souls.

  I remember the carpet as green. Circling the kitchen and dining area was a thin wood shelf where a collection of dozens of plates perched. I don’t remember what was on them, but I would bet my eye teeth that some had orange prairie lilies and some commemorated old brick and one-room schools, and others were blue prairie winter scenes. 

   I was a young woman living in the city, but from the farm, so I said things like ‘bet my eye teeth’ and ‘bull-tweet.’ So I fit in perfectly well with eighty-year-old Ernie who dug through my trash for fun.

  I found out he didn’t do it for money. He did it on principle. 

  Ernie sat me down on a great old couch in the living room. He dug through a box of horrifying doll parts he had scavenged to show me treasures. Disembodied kewpie-like doll hands and legs, and even bellies were in the terrible box. But Ernie did his best doctoring to make the toys and dolls whole again. The good ones he sent to his grandchildren.

  I learned that Ernie’s wife was dead. His children didn’t live nearby. His mouth turned down, and it seemed to me he was a little bitter. But if you wake up everyday thinking you might find some treasure in the trash, you have to have a little hope inside somewhere, don’t you think?

  I loved talking to Ernie. He told me about the war. I wish I remember where exactly his battles were and what unit he was in.

  “I haven’t even told my own children the things I did in the war,” he said.

  I sat listening. They tell you in your first year of journalism school, not to talk too much — keep silent. Give people space to tell their stories.

  “I shot a German woman in the face,” he said one time. “She was in a bell-fry. Shooting at the men in my unit. I didn’t have a choice. But I was close enough to see her face before I did it.”

  I don’t remember what I said. I don’t really remember what happened next. It has been years now. But I carried his story with me for a long time. I’m glad Ernie got to tell someone.

  You dig through a lot of trash stories as a journalist, but sometimes you make a connection, a person shares something special — or awful — with you, and it’s not just a garbage assignment. 

  You carry a small piece of the weight with you. Somehow, it’s not a burden. The story is treasure.