The Dead Guy #1

Perhaps this is the weirdest story I have to tell from my 40 + years working for a very large Canadian Bank. It is a very true story.

I was stationed in Brantford, Ontario in 1966-67. I held the lofty position of Second Assistant Accountant and had a young man named Robert Reynolds working for me as a Discount Clerk.

Robert was chunky and had what could only be described as a moon face usually with a great big toothy smile covering most of the lower half of his head. The picture that immediately comes to mind is the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.

On the Friday before a long weekend, Bob (only I called him that) told me he was going back to Hensall, Ontario, a little town of 600 people, 13 miles North of Exeter and about 45 miles North of London. His old clunker car was giving him fits and he was going to repair it himself. In those days, bank clerks could not afford to take their cars to real mechanics.

I spent the weekend in my hometown of Woodstock, which is about 30 miles East of London.

On the holiday Monday, I picked up the London Free Press and happened on a small item in the back pages. It read something like this:

“Robert Reynolds, Age 20, of Hensall, Ontario was killed on Saturday in a fluke accident. He was repairing his car in his family’s driveway when the car slipped off of the jack and fell on top of Mr. Reynolds. Despite emergency medical efforts, Mr. Reynolds succumbed to massive head injuries and was pronounced dead at Victoria General Hospital.”

I was stunned and thought about what I could do under these circumstances. My first thought was to phone the Bank Manager, Al Cummings, who lived in Brantford. Al was shaken at the news and told me he would gather the staff on Monday morning to break the bad news. His last words to me were “I’d better send his family some flowers.”

On Monday morning, Al asked me to stay upstairs in the branch to answer the phones while he spoke to the staff in the basement staff room at about 8:30 AM. I agreed because I already knew the bad news. Within minutes of Al starting to tell the staff the news, I could hear muffled weeping coming from some staff members. This bothered me so much I simply laid my head on my desk for a minute.

When I looked up, my heart did a 360 degree flip! Standing at the locked double doors was Bob with his great big moon-face Cheshire Cat grin covering the whole bottom of his head!

I jumped up from the desk, raced to the doors and promptly yelled at Bob “You’re not supposed to be here! You’re dead!”

Bob kept smiling and said “I know. I came to work a little later because I thought it would be funny if anyone knew what happened in Hensall.” I was totally confounded and replied “What exactly happened- why did the Free Press list you as dead?”

Here is the weird stuff, as if what already happened wasn’t weird enough.

Bob told me that Robert Reynolds was a family friend, not related, who had come into Hensall on Saturday to see his own family and to visit Bob’s sister. They were going out on a date that evening and Robert decided to work on his car in the afternoon. The rest is history.

My next words took the smile off Bob’s face in a real big hurry. “You’d better get downstairs right now because Cummings is telling the staff that you are dead. Even worse, he may already have sent your mother flowers!”

For a big boy, Bob moved pretty fast down the basement stairs. All I could hear from upstairs were gasps, oohs and “WHATS?” Minutes later, the staff filtered up; some were laughing and others were still shaking and giving Bob some pretty bad looks.

Bob on the other hand hustled quickly into Al Cummings’ office with Al following closely behind. Another minute went by and Al opened his door and yelled “Mr. Cluff. Please come in!”

I didn’t need a second invitation. In Mr. Cummings’ office, I was asked why I reported Mr. Reynolds’ death. I pulled the news item out of my pocket (Thank God I had clipped it out of the paper) and showed Al. He thanked me for calling him, and then excused me.

For the next 10 minutes, the entire staff could hear Al’s muffled voice reading the riot act to Bob for being late, for taking advantage of the ironic situation and for upsetting the staff and him. He then walked Bob out to the customer area and with a little more prompting, Bob apologized to the staff for scaring them.

Needless to say, I wouldn’t let go of the comedy in this situation. I think it was about 6 months later that I stopped introducing Bob as the Dead Guy.

You may have noticed that the title of this story is The Dead Guy #1. Believe it or not, there were others. But that’ll be a whole new Blog later.