by Alan Doyle
All this pondering must have shown on my face, and Elizabeth leaned in and whispered, “Museum interpreter is just a fancy union term for tour guide, dear.”
Phew.
“So, have you ever done any tour-guiding?”
“No,” I said, “but I’ve done a lot of talking.” They laughed. I had no idea why they thought this was funny, and their laughter made me even more nervous.
“Do you know anything about Newfoundland’s history?”
I said I knew a lot about history and am grateful that they believed me, because I was lying. I told them I had a hands-on knowledge of the Newfoundland fishery and could talk at length about it to visitors from other parts of the world. I explained that I could talk about tongue cutting and about Newfoundland’s music. I also told them I did not mind singing as a part of a tour, if they saw fit.
“And what would you sing?” they asked, looking both mystified and fascinated.
I told them I knew some traditional songs that might be appropriate, and I sang a verse and a chorus of “Tickle Cove Pond.”
When I finished, they clapped, albeit a little awkwardly, and for a second I thought maybe I’d charmed them. This was neither the first nor the last time that having a song ready at the hip wound up being a good thing.
They showed me around the office and introduced me to a few people and then we walked down Duckworth Street to Water Street towards the Newfoundland Museum at the Murray Premises. There I was, Alan Doyle from Petty Harbour, strutting down Water Street with real live St. John’s ladies in business attire. I was doing my best to keep up with the conversation, but what I really wanted was my uncle Eddie to roll by in the Petty Harbour garbage truck and see me. That would have been awesome.
We arrived at the museum, which was closed, and one lady unlocked the small door and the other dashed in to a keypad and typed a code into a security alarm panel. I’d seen those on TV, but never in real life. It was very high tech.
They hit the lights, and the first thing to illuminate was a row of glass display cases that I would later learn contained exhibit highlights. In one was a beautiful model of a wooden ship that served as a teaser for the Maritime History section on the third floor. I had never seen anything quite like it. It had been made by an award-winning shipbuilder, Varrick Cox, and its detail and scale were incredible, right down to the tiny barrels on the aft. Next to that was a long, narrow glass case with a large World War I machine gun in it. There were a few dozen other cases, most notably one housing a stuffed bald eagle.
The two ladies took me on a brief walkthrough of the entire exhibition, and at the end they handed me a binder of information, which I assumed I would have to learn for a final job interview. But what followed was a smile from both ladies and another handshake.
“Tomorrow, we’ll introduce you to your co-workers,” Ms. Gibson-Taylor said. I was confused. Then Elizabeth went into the staff kitchen and came out with two new white golf shirts that had “Newfoundland Museum” embroidered above the heart.
At the Newfoundland Museum, circa 1992. I’m grinning because I loved that job so much.
“What should we put on your name tag?”
I was not ready for this. I had no idea. “Alan Doyle, from Petty Harbour?”
They nodded and smiled and said they thought that was perfect.
And that was it. I had the job.
I could have started the hitchhike home, but I really did not want to. Instead, I walked up and down Water Street and Duckworth Street for the next hour trying to look like everyone else. I was in town. And I loved it.
I went into the Atlantic Place food court and bought a Pepsi. Over the next hour or so, I watched hundreds of people file in and out. I did not know a single person. It was brilliant. I scanned the different vendors, imagining ordering lunch there in my ironed shirt, glancing at my watch because I was in a hurry. Maybe I’d order chips, dressing and gravy at Skipper’s Fish & Chips one day. Perhaps I’d get a Whopper at Burger King the next. At the Chinese Garden, I’d make a point of trying hot and sour soup. I’d never had that before.
I must have sat in that chair for three hours people-watching. I fell in love with the girl at the Tim Hortons counter and consequently finished my first-ever cup of coffee, thus kick-starting a love affair with that beverage that runs strong to this very day. I became aware for the first time that being in an active place is far more soothing to me than sitting in silence. Later, I would come to know that quiet makes me edgy, whereas the sound of people doing something reassures me that the whole world keeps spinning even if I fall asleep.
After a few hours, I decided it was time to hitch home, and I found myself in a car with an older fisherman who was listening to Open Line on the radio. We listened intently to the announcer as he described the ever-dwindling cod stocks and said that if things didn’t change, the inshore fishery might be halted altogether. The man on the radio worried a shutdown would change life in our fishing villages forever. Without the cod fishery, these vibrant towns would die a slow and painful death, he said, as would the traditions of rural life in Newfoundland. The fisherman laughed out loud as we rounded the corner and Petty Harbour came into full view.
“Towns like Ferryland and Bay Bulls and Petty Harbour will never be the same again,” the man on the radio announced. I looked ahead, and there it was: my home. The only home I’d known for the past sixteen years, and for the first time ever, it seemed too small for me. But more than that, this place carved out of rock—rock that had taken a thousand years to trace, this place that had been there for generations, been there forever—suddenly seemed very, very fragile.
I was to be at the Newfoundland Museum at nine the next morning, but it was just before eight when I arrived. I did not want to be late, but I also did not want to be waiting by the door like a lost puppy when the full-timers showed up.
I went for a coffee, fell in love with the Tim Hortons’ girl again and returned to the museum at five to nine. It was then that I started worrying that something might be wrong. Surely if work was to start at nine, someone would be there by now? Nine came and went, and at about ten past, the doors opened, revealing a mountain of a man, about six-foot-five and 250 pounds of muscle and gut. His massive forearms sported fading tattoos. His face was leathery and his nose looked like it had been broken a few too many times. Despite his Santa Claus hair and moustache, he looked harder than any fisherman I knew in Petty Harbour.
I stood there with what must have been a silly, scared grin on my face.
“You must be the new summer fella, are ya?” he asked. “Come in, b’y. I’m Ted. What’s your name?”
“I’m Alan Doyle from Petty Harbour.”
“Oh, a Doyle from Petty Harbour. You must play in a band.”
“I do. With my uncle Ronnie.”
“Ronnie Doyle is your uncle? Jesus, I’ve known Ronnie for years. Grand fella. So who’s your fadder?”
“Tom,” I said.
“Yes, Tom. I know him. He used to work at The Mental, used to sing on All Around the Circle. Leonard must be your uncle. Some hand at the guitar.”
“Yeah, he is,” I said.
Music had given me another in before I’d even started my first day. Ted led me to an office, where we sat at the three-winged desk.
“Well, Petty Harbour Dog, did the ladies walk you through the floors?”
I nodded and said that they had and that I had studied everything in the binders.
“Pile of bull,” Ted said. I could not tell if he was kidding or serious. “You mind doing tours?” he asked.
“No, don’t mind at all. Can’t wait to get started, actually.”
“That’s great, ’cause I can’t stand up in front of people and talk. I gets right worked up and out of breath. I feels like me chest is gonna burst and someone is strangling me.” He was getting red in the face just talking about it. His fists were clenched so tight his knuckles were white. “I told the ladies and the bosses I wasn’t going at t
hat tour shite and that was that. Glad you don’t mind it.”
Did I understand this correctly? One of the two full-time tour guides at the Newfoundland Museum did not give tours? It was like a restaurant hiring a chef who refused to cook. So what did this man do?
I later came to learn that before this job, Ted had been a bouncer. He’d most likely managed to get some high-powered folks out back doors when they needed and this landed him a job as a government security guard. When the museum in the Murray Premises was being constructed, he was transferred there in a security function and somehow had become a museum interpreter by default, even while he had no formal education or knowledge about Newfoundland history or even the slightest inclination to learn about it. And he had the above-mentioned aversion to talking to groups of people. Wow. Is this how government jobs worked? I wondered.
“I mostly looks after the security here,” Ted said. “Got another six years and then I can retire,” he added with a wink.
There was silence and I took the time to turn my attention to the museum binder on the desk.
“How old are you, Alan Doyle from Petty Harbour?” Ted asked.
“Turned sixteen a month or so ago.” And that’s when the conversation started to turn in a direction I could never have imagined.
The next thing that Ted said to me was: “How many times a day do you pluck your wire? When I was your age I could service meself five or six times a day. Now I can’t do it more than once a day, max.”
Was he asking what I thought? What was I supposed to say to that?! “As much as anyone, I suppose,” was all I could muster.
“Yeah, that’s enough to be at it anyway,” he said casually, as if we were talking about buying a used car. “Save it for the real turn at the plate, eh, b’y?”
I must have blushed, but somehow I knew that this conversation was a rite of passage.
He continued. “You must be shaggin’ all the girls in Petty Harbour, are ye?”
“No, b’y,” I said. “All the Petty Harbour girls my age are my first cousins.”
“Jesus, that never stopped anyone in Petty Harbour. The closer the kin the better the skin.”
I decided to fight fire with fire. “I heard there’s a Townie or two going around with an extra toe or finger,” I said.
He sniggered. “I’m just effing with you, b’y,” he said, impressed that I’d had the gall to rib him back. Turns out he was a great joker, and he loved to make fun of the fact that he was a tour guide who did not do tours.
Some visitors approached the doors and Ted stood and announced, “Welcome to the Newfoundland Museum in the Murray Premises. Come in, come in! This is Alan Doyle from Petty Harbour. He’d love to show you around the floors upstairs.” Then he walked into the kitchen and started boiling the kettle.
I spoke to the visitors for a few moments and they were content to head up to the exhibitions on their own.
I returned to the desk and wondered how I might steel myself for further banter when the outside door down the hall slammed and I heard someone approaching. I did not hear footsteps, only loud a cappella singing/screaming: “I AM IRON MAN! DUNNA DUNNA DUNNA DUN DA DUN DUN!”
I expected to see a young punk or some crazy metal-head come around the corner but instead saw a guy in a museum uniform carrying a Walkman and wearing headphones over his thick, curly brown hair. He was shorter than your average man but incredibly stocky and strong, with Popeye-sized forearms. And it wasn’t only his head that was covered in curly brown hair; a forest of hair grew out of the V of his golf shirt, running right up his neck and covering his chin and face. It didn’t recede until it reached his thick-rimmed eyeglasses.
He repeated the chorus of the Black Sabbath tune one more time before removing his headphones. He grinned a big grin and stuck out a friendly, hairy hand.
“Hey. You must be the summer student. Stan is the name. How the f—k are you?”
“Good,” I said, shaking his hand like a Townie. “I’m Alan Doyle from Petty Harbour.”
“Well, Alan Doyle from Petty Harbour, welcome aboard. I assume Ted has been giving you a full orientation?”
“Yeah, we’ve been having a great chat,” I said.
“Oh Jesus. Not about jerking off or screwing women?”
“Both.”
“Good to know he’s going easy on the new fella. You should ask him about the time he got stabbed or about the time he nearly killed a man with his bare hands. But not today. Build yourself up to it.”
I swallowed hard.
Turned out Stan was a hard ticket in his own right. He’d been in the armed forces for a period but never finished his career there. He despised authority figures of almost any description, especially as they related to the museum. He set about telling me so in the first five minutes of our acquaintance.
“Gerry McPhearson, the head of Military History up there, wouldn’t know a World War II plane if it landed on his head. He was never in the forces. What does he know about hand-to-hand combat? Doctor of history, my arse. Come, I’ll show you around upstairs.”
Like Ted, Stan was very unsuited to the task of leading people around a museum. He loved debating the conventionally accepted version of military history and often did so with museum patrons or when answering the phones. Both men were doing this job reluctantly and were hence thrilled that I was so eager to do whatever they asked of me. On day one, they sat me down and explained “the rules”—their rules, of course.
“Now the ladies up there don’t want me and Stan going to break together and leaving you here by yourself, but you don’t mind if we do that, do ye?” Ted inquired.
“Not at all,” I said.
Ted asked, “And do you think we should tell them about me and Stan going to have our coffee break together or should we keep that to ourselves?”
It was an easy test. “I figure we can keep that to ourselves.”
“Am I right that a young fella like yourself from Petty Harbour wouldn’t mind opening and closing the museum and operating the fancy alarm panel?” asked Stan.
“I wouldn’t mind that at all,” I said. “I’m gonna be here early every day and am in no hurry to get back home, so you guys come and go as you please.”
They looked like two fellas who had hit the jackpot.
And so began my days at the Newfoundland Museum. I was so excited to have the job, I was willing to do every tour, open and close every day and go without breaks and eat my lunch at the front desk. It was all such a leap forward from night shift in the fish plant.
I opened and closed the museum just about every day and organized tours for kindergarten classes, for teenagers, tourists and senior citizens. It was a cool way to learn how to tailor a message to an audience, when to be funny and when to keep a presentation moving or when to go into more detail.
Ted would nip off to watch baseball and Stan would spend most of a morning or two a week in the little staff kitchen deep-frying fresh fish. The tables would turn a number of years later when I started playing more and more music and the boys would let me sleep in a bit if I’d had a gig the night before. They even let me pip off on a number of occasions while recording the first Great Big Sea album.
A newspaper clipping from the St. John’s Evening Telegram, 1993. That’s me and a friggin’ cool whale head. Great Big Sea was just around the corner.
“Go on, Petty Harbour Dog,” Ted would offer. “I’ll close up while you and the b’ys are laying down a few tracks.”
“Just don’t forget us when you’re famous,” Stan said and chuckled.
Not much chance of that. Ted and Stan were unforgettable when they were in the best of moods, even more so when they were not. They both had strong opinions and had been working together for so long that they fought like a married couple, or worse.
The most troubling spat happened on my third shift at the museum, when I left Stan and Ted at the desk chatting about baseball, and in the four minutes it took me to go to the Pepsi machine down the hall
and come back, they had gotten into an argument that erupted into a full-out brawl. I heard shouting and gagging as I made my way back and then saw Ted had Stan pinned to a wooden post with one hand. He was that strong. He held the other hand back, ready to strike, while Stan’s arms and legs flailed and kicked helplessly, unable to reach Ted’s face.
I had no idea what to do. I yelled “Hey!” a couple of times but neither of them took any notice of me. I ran downstairs and got Don, one of the maintenance men.
“Stan and Ted are gonna kill each other!”
Don barely lowered the newspaper he was reading. “Ted’s got Stan by the throat?”
“Yes!”
“Did you tell them to give it up?”
“They didn’t listen!”
“For f—k sakes,” he said and slammed his paper down on his desk.
I wanted to run back to the scene of the fight, but Don was just strolling along leisurely, smiling at the museum patrons he passed along the way.
When we got to where Ted and Stan were, Ted’s hand was no longer wrapped around Stan’s neck, and Stan’s feet were back on the floor. But both men were shouting at each other about who had started the fight.
“I never said you were stupid, Ted. I just said you don’t know nothing about the Blue Jays pitching rotation!”
As Stan spoke, Ted was making one of those fists where one knuckle sticks out more than the rest. “One more peep from your saucy mouth, Stan, and I’ll shove your nose so far back in your head, you’ll be sneezing down the back of your neck.”
Don shouted, in full earshot of a few flabbergasted tourists: “Shut the eff up, will ye? Ye got the new young fella scared out of his mind!”
And with that, Ted and Stan stopped and both sat at the front desk. Don walked away, shaking his head. Within ten minutes, Ted and Stan were chatting calmly about the Toronto Blue Jays. I was exhausted and went upstairs.