|
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Upstate New York
Posts: 3,101
|
AT HOME WITH RONNIE HAWKINS
Where the Hawk loves to nest
Aug 04, 2007 04:30 AM
Ellen Moorhouse
Special to the Star
LAKEFIELD, Ont.–Ronnie Hawkins sits on one of four couches in the living room of the sprawling 6,800-square-foot home on Stoney Lake that he shares with Wanda, his wife of 45 years.
They call the 77-hectare spread Hawkstone Manor, rechristened by Hawkins in recent years as ``Mortgage Manor North.''
The 72-year-old rocker is a little cranky. It's a hot summer day, he's just back from lunch and people are coming and going. Wearing his trademark black T-shirt with a white hawk, he's holding one of the family's five chihuahuas. Throws protect the sofas from the animal population, which also includes two larger dogs and two cats.
But Rompin' Ronnie – the rockabilly star who came up from Arkansas with his band of Hawks in 1958 to Hamilton – soon warms to his stories. He punctuates them with deep hearty laughs, husky from years of smoking and club singing.
He banters with Wanda in the way of long-married couples.
"One of those rich women tried to run off with me there," says Hawkins, of the days when he met Wanda at the now-gone Concord Tavern on Bloor St. W. He turned it into a Toronto hot spot when he introduced the staid city to the Twist in the early '60s.
"You know the Bronfmans, the whisky people? Well, that one daughter, she got comin' in there with an entourage and she wouldn't leave. She reached for a cigarette and 17 lighters came out to light the cigarettes."
He continues: "Wanda won me. She told me she had money. She lied to me."
"And he told me that he had money," Wanda says.
Money has been a concern for the Hawkinses, especially since Ronnie fell ill five years ago. Their property, which once had 24 hectares of mowed and sprinklered lawn, is a burden. It's tempting to cash it in.
"If we sell it, I'll be livin' good," Hawkins says. He regularly threatens to buy his grandfather's farm in Arkansas and build himself a cabin, where he'll dream of stardom and bring in a few lap dancers.
Nobody really believes him. Or the bad-boy talk that masks his vulnerability and commitment to family and friends.
"Ron doesn't want to leave, but it has been so stressful. It's been a lot of work and a lot of maintenance and a lot of everything," says Wanda, looking comfortable in an aqua T-shirt and light blue jeans with embroidered details.
The Hawk, a former gymnast who moonwalked before Michael Jackson and did back flips off the Concord Tavern stage, was given three months to live back in 2002. Bypass surgery revealed what was thought to be pancreatic cancer.
He mysteriously beat the prognosis. Now he's feeling better, and the family's finances are looking up, thanks to a couple of entrepreneurial dairymen and rockabilly fans from Minnesota – Marty Davis and his brother Mitch.
"These are our angels that came to us," Wanda says.
"With tarnished wings," adds Hawkins, laughing.
The Davises, whose family owns a $700-million-a-year milk-processing company in Minneapolis, plan to revitalize the singer's career. They've also stepped in to spruce up Hawkstone Manor, starting with the kitchen floor.
"Ronnie and Wanda wanted to upgrade the home," says Marty Davis, who came by to visit. "And so we did."
The kitchen, with its dark oak cabinetry from an earlier decade, is a work in progress. The floor is now gleaming, light fine-grained quartz that stands up to four-legged traffic.
"The Hope Diamond couldn't scratch that floor," says Hawkins, the master of aphorism.
The Davises wanted Ronnie and Wanda to test the quartz product they're manufacturing at Cambria, another business they own. They're opening a plant to fabricate countertops and other items in Bolton later this month, and they want Ronnie to be their harbinger.
With the new plant operating, the Hawkinses' kitchen will get a quartz counter, and no doubt a coat of paint. Ronnie and Wanda's daughter Leah, 37, started painting the kitchen trim turquoise last Christmas, but didn't quite finish.
While Hawkins likes to talk about raucous month-long parties, the Hawkins residence is, in fact, an unpretentious, large, family home that still has its nearby barn. Hawkins and Wanda brought their three children here to live full-time seven years after they bought it in 1969. Their oldest child, Ron, who suffers from schizophrenia, lives with them. Wanda's mother stayed with them for many years before her death in 2001 at age 100. And the four grandkids, son Robin's children, spend time in the summer, riding motorbikes and dune buggies.
The view from the eight-bedroom house is panoramic and peaceful, down a grassy hill to the lake. Two cottages that the Hawkinses rent are hidden on a rocky peninsula among the trees.
The home decor is eclectic, shabby chic. Wanda ventures the word "camp," compared with the formality of their former Mississauga home. The huge living room, with its terra cotta walls and big stone fireplace, is a gallery to the Hawk's half-century career. The walls are covered with framed clippings and photos of Hawkins, his bands, musician friends and events such as a 60th birthday show in 1995 and a tribute concert in 2002, both at Massey Hall.
Wanda is custodian. She straightens some frames that the breeze from the window has unsettled. There are snapshots of John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the Hawkins spread in Mississauga and of fellow Arkansas native and Hawk fan Bill Clinton. There are musicians Hawkins has worked with over the years, including the original band he brought to Hamilton. ("I'm the good lookin' one," Hawkins likes to say.) There's guitarist Robbie Robertson, at 15, who Hawkins whipped into shape, along with so many other talented young performers who went on to greater glory after the Hawk's "boot camp."
Wanda's there, too. "Here are the many faces of me with different colours of hair," she says with a laugh. "The older I get, the blonder I get."
Much of the furniture comes from a time when the Hawk was soaring. The ebony-black desk, angled in a corner of the living room, was custom-made by an Italian craftsman 40 years ago. Positively Napoleonic, it's embellished with 18-karat gold accents. Hawkins was measured for the matching chair, with arms supported by golden griffins. Some of Hawkins' awards – a 1984 Juno, for example – sit on the desk.
A tall, mirrored commode, with a bow front, came out of a Georgia hotel: "I shouldda bought every piece of furniture in that place," Hawkins says.
Another notable fixture: a grand piano marbleized and embellished years ago by an artist who stayed with the Hawkins family. On the sides are Michelangelo figures: Adam from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, his hand outstretched for the touch of God.
On the lid: portraits of the Hawkinses' two sons as cherubs, flanking an older, recently added Leah who hadn't been born when the artist first worked on the piano. It had bothered Wanda that her daughter wasn't represented.
Some objects in the room are gifts: an Inuit carving from Gordon Lightfoot, another Canadian icon. A couple of bronze statues from Hawkins' own collection sit on side tables.
He says he also has a lot of Indian artifacts, including seven peace pipes, gifts from seven tribes. He used to take his band to reserves on Sunday and play. "Nobody would hardly play for them, because they didn't have much money, but I had a good time."
Ideally, the Davis brothers will provide Ronnie with the perfect place for his collections and memorabilia. Marty Davis is talking about a Ronnie Hawkins' museum, preferably near the Yonge St. strip where the Hawk used to hold forth at long-gone clubs like Le Coq d'Or.
|
