A stomping good time, all for a good cause

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/09/2018 (2848 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When I became a crusading newspaper columnist more than a decade ago, I didn’t realize the job would involve so much grape-stomping.

The unvarnished truth is I am starting to lose count of the number of times I have been invited to climb into a barrel and make wine with my feet in support of worthy causes.

For the uninitiated, thrashing around in a sea of ice-cold grapes is easily 100 pounds of fun in a 50-pound barrel, but it is also an activity fraught with peril.

I say that because the first time I stomped was in support of Special Olympics Manitoba, and when I was finished, I discovered I had managed to break my big toe by smashing it into the side of the barrel.

When I got home and displayed my mangled digit, which resembled a mutant black-and-purple eggplant, to my wife, She Who Must Not Be Named, she simply frowned at me and declared, “You’re an idiot.”

For the record, that was the same response I got a few weeks later when I turned to my spouse for sympathy after being the only guy at a women-only pole-dancing class, wherein I bruised an area of my anatomy I will describe as the “Maximus Buttoculus” after plummeting to the floor while attempting a manoeuvre known as the “fireman.”

Getting back to my point, however, I once again found myself spending time in the barrel last week when I agreed to be the MC for Mona Lisa Ristorante’s Stomp to Remember, a grape-stomping gala dinner in support of the Alzheimer Society of Manitoba.

It was a Roman-themed affair, which meant almost everyone at the fundraising dinner was decked out in a toga, many cobbled together from bedsheets or table linens. What with being the master of ceremonies, I decided to impress everyone by shelling out $14.99 for an authentic plastic Roman centurion’s helmet from a party store, along with a very realistic $3.99 plastic Roman sword.

It is difficult, using mere words, to describe how thrilling it was to watch a bunch of toga-clad human beings attempting to remain in the upright and locked position while simultaneously flailing around to pounding rock music in a barrel containing 36 cases of imported grapes, but I will try: it was very, very thrilling!

There’s nothing my buddy Joe Grande, Mona Lisa’s ebullient owner, enjoys more than stomping grapes with friends and family, because it takes him back to his childhood days in the village of Amato in southern Italy.

“The town made community wine,” Joe, who arrived at the stomp on top of a chariot and dressed like a Roman emperor, told me. “They’d all go to the centre of town and stomp grapes in big tubs.

“My uncle picked me up and plopped me in the tub. I was pretty much up to my neck in grapes. I was only five or six. It was like quicksand for me, but they were singing and dancing because it’s a fun thing. When we left Italy for Canada, that memory stuck with me.”

In the 35 years he’s been running his Corydon Avenue landmark, Joe has helped out a lot of charities, but raising money for families affected by Alzheimer’s, the most prevalent form of dementia, is intensely personal because his 86-year-old father, Angelo, is struggling with the disease.

“My father came down with the illness about seven years ago,” Joe told me in a quiet moment. “When he first got it, it didn’t seem that bad a disease, but as time goes on and as they go through more stages, it becomes more difficult.

“The changes in people’s lives are hard to comprehend. My dad can’t do the things he used to do. My mother now has to be a totally different person — the things my dad used to do, she has to do now, like all the banking.”

That’s the cruel truth about this degenerative brain disease: it doesn’t just affect individuals, it profoundly affects families.

“It’s really hard when your father sees you and doesn’t recognize you for the first time and doesn’t know your name,” Joe said softly. “You are already starting to lose your father before he’s even passed away.

“My father is still alive, but I haven’t had a father for over five years that I can go see and ask for advice.”

My effusive buddy is the kind of overtly passionate guy who will hug anyone who wanders within a 30-yard radius, so it was impossible for him to hide his joy when he informed me the Stomp to Remember managed to raise $32,000 to help families affected by Alzheimer’s.

I am also pleased to inform you that, as far as I know, no one broke a toe or mangled any other medically important appendages while thrashing about in the gigantic wooden barrel parked on the crowded stage at the Caboto Centre.

Accompanied by my buddy Bob, who also happens to be my boss, I managed to spend roughly two minutes turning grapes into wine, and my Hobbit-sized feet into blocks of purple ice.

“I can no longer feel my feet!” is what Bob declared as we gingerly climbed out of the slippery barrel. Bob is an extremely fit human being, but my heart was pounding like the drummer for a heavy metal band because stomping is pretty intense cardiopulmonary exercise.

The highlight for me came when we got to sit down and have toga-clad volunteers gently scrub our feet with warm water to wash away the mucus-like layer of grape slime.

The grapes were cold, but when we stomped away, our hearts felt more than a little warm and fuzzy. And I’d feel even better if someone wouldn’t mind telling me how to get (bad word) grape stains out of a toga.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca