Really boring so far, right? Sorry.
A month later I was in basic training in the Air Force with many others, mostly from the South where they had grown up with two birthrights—driving and shooting.
They couldn’t believe I had never fired a rifle. They couldn’t believe I couldn’t hit a target. I wasn’t going to tell them I had never shifted a gear.
That is when a sergeant said to me in an unkind way: “Boy, bring that truck over here.”
The truck was big. I was small. I looked at it and thought no way can I push it. I climbed into the driver’s seat. I was lost. This was not like the cars in the driving school.
So many pedals. And no letters with a D and N and P. I stared at them.
“Boy! Move that truck.”
I looked out the window.
“I don’t know how.”
Two hundred pounds of sergeant with a red face walked toward me.
“You what?!”
“I don’t know . . .”
I didn’t finish before he said, “You useless subhuman waste of skin. You northerners know nothing.”
I did not feel good.
“Slide your sorry ass over to the other side of that us Government issued truck and make room for a man who knows how to drive.”
People sometimes aren’t as kind as they should be.
I slid—at least I could do that—and a fellow trainee who was barely seventeen years old and looked younger hopped up into the cab. Yes, he hopped up like he had been doing that all his life, and he probably had.
This is two generations later and I still remember how he pushed down on one pedal and wiggled the mysterious stick in the middle and gunned the engine and then the truck moved.
I thought it was a miracle. I also thought you should never insult anyone.
But outside of trucks, I needed a car. I was living off the base with my wife. Suggestion to everyone in the military: don’t get married just days before you put on a uniform.
Someone told me a ’57 Chevy was for sale, cheap.
I liked half of that. Cheap was good. ’57 Chevy was a mystery. I had no idea what that meant.
It was nose deep in a blackberry patch. I paid $150 for it. I sat inside.
Question. How do I move it back?
“Put it in reverse.” I heard that from someone outside.
There was no R on the dashboard.
I now owned a car but I couldn’t back up to drive it away. To these folks in the deep South that was like owning a rifle but not knowing how to load it. Impossible.
“How did you ever win the war?” the man selling me the car said. He meant the Civil War. That was when time stopped there.
I was worse than a failure. The friendly sergeant who drove me to the point of purchase said in a patient and understanding way: “You can’t what?” He backed it out. He showed me the clutch and the gears.
Another lesson: patience is good, even when you can’t believe the stupidity of the one you are being patient with. I still remember how kind he was.
Over the next few days I learned how to push down the clutch and shift and let the clutch up. I was a real driver.
However, there was another problem with this car. It had no floor. It had rotted out so when I drove I could watch the road under my feet. Now that would be called distracted driving. It was also bad in the rain.
I got hold of some sheet metal but I had no idea about riveting, welding, gluing or even taping, so the new floor bounced around while I drove.
And then came the blue. When I got the car it was numerous colours, some applied by brushes. I went to a garage where I could spray on one colour: blue.
I taped up the chrome and put newspaper over the windows, but no way was I going to wear a paper cover over my nose and mouth. I didn’t want to look like a sissy. So I sprayed and sprayed some more and I did some breathing while I was spraying. All in a closed garage.
When I was done I was proud. I opened the door and showed it to the first person who passed by.
He laughed. I was hurt.
“It’s a good job!” I said with emphasis.
He was looking me straight in the eyes while I was talking and he started laughing some more. Then he left.
I looked in a paint-splattered mirror in their paint-splattered bathroom and you know what I saw. Anyone with any smarts at all knows what I saw.
You don’t spray without a paper mask over your nose. I had two blue streams that rose from my chin getting thicker and thicker over my lips until they streaked up like rivers into each nostril.
I coughed up blue for quite a while after that.
A few months later I sold my classic ’57 Chevy for $150 and after that I drove a regular car that I forgot about, but as for the plaque on my friend’s wall, no thank you. It wasn’t the right shade of blue.
The Christmas Card
Ed asked us what should he do with the card?
“What do you usually do?” we answered.
“I put it under the tree. We used to have a real tree.”
He was standing next to a small, very small, artificial tree with lights and decorations already on it. The tree was on a small table in their living room. Nothing else in the room said Christmas.
“Well, put it under the tree,” I said.
And he did.
It was smaller than today’s cards and it was simpler. On the front was a drawing of Santa’s face with a beard, of course, and a cap.
And there was a funny saying, the kind one guy with no extra money would send to his friend with no extra money:
“Merry Christmas. It’s kind of old and ragged
and in spots it’s pretty thin. You can see it’s used . . .”
The saying on the card was just the kind of thing a guy would send to another. And when you opened it:
“But shucks, it’s good enough to use again!”
It was back in 1951 that Ed sent it to his friend Bill. They were both eighteen, both raised in the small town of Cupar, Saskatchewan, and they were both Boy Scouts.
Later that year Ed joined the Mounties. The next year Bill sent back the same card. He wrote a short note inside. That was in 1952.
The next year it went back again, Ed to Bill. The next year Bill to Ed and the next year and the next year, but in that year, 1956, Ed married Gaile so the card was signed, “Love, Ed and Gaile.”
The next year Bill married Pat and the card was signed, “Love, Bill and Pat.”
For the next endless years the card went back and forth, Bill and Pat, then Ed and Gaile.
Each time, a note was written inside. “Nothing new.” “Going on a cruise.” “New baby.” And back and forth. “Baby is big.” “Went to Barbados.” “Kids moving out.” And back and forth. Eventually the card was filled and a page was added. “Went to Expo 86.” “Son married.” “Stillborn daughter (cord around the neck.)” And back and forth.
Another page. “What happened to ’88?” “40th anniversary.” “Went to China.”
And back again, filling the backs of the added pages. “Friend passed away.” “Friend’s daughter got her PhD.” “50th anniversary.”
And forth again. “Friend’s mom passed away.” “Another granddaughter.” “Another grandson.”
Ed was a cop. Bill was involved with the John Howard Society. They said Ed caught the bad guys and sent them to jail and Bill would get them out and start them on the road to recovery.
In 2008 when they met up, the men asked that when one of them was gone their wives would continue the card, and that they would do so until there was only one member of the foursome left.
“Can we see the card?” I asked Ed before he put it on the table under the tree. He had received it a few days earlier.
It said, “Have a wonderful Christmas, Love, Pat”
It was better than all the family albums, family trees and family stories that have ever been viewed, researched or told. And this year it is again in the mail. When we left it was the only thing under the tree. Nothing else was needed.
Hey, Cabbie
Kim, the editor with the totally adorable two-year-old whose picture is on her computer and in other photos on her walls, said, “He is very good-looking.”
As a guy I find this . . . terrible. Girls and women aren’t the only ones who get jealous.
I was showing her a picture in a book of Handsome Harry Hooper, a taxi driver from the early 1900s about whom I was going to do a story for a future day.
Almost always what we find during the day is what is on the air that night, but this day I remembered a story about Handsome Harry and I love Vancouver history, so there. A tale devised ahead of time.
The picture was of Harry leaning back in his cab in 1923. He has a smile. I don’t know if he is handsome or not. He is a taxi driver who became a man about town, spent time in prison, was later a gold prospector and an actor and died poor. That’s what I cared about, his life, not his looks.
“Not bad at all,” said Kim.
I have never understood what makes a man good-looking. Other than not having a belly hanging too far over his belt, what else is there? Women see things differently.
Kim and I went on to edit the story for that day, a story of two men throwing a flying disc about the length of a football field. It wasn’t a Frisbee but a wheel with a hole in the middle.
The men were amazing. They have played this game for twenty years. The object is to get the other one to drop the flying wheel. That’s what boys and men do. Girls don’t understand that.
That is the problem through much of life. Boys want to win. That’s it. That’s all. Give us a flying disc game or a war. Same thing.
Girls also want to win but from what I have seen they also want to live with the winner and comfort the loser. I read that in a book about how we evolved. Women want a winner for the sake of their children. At the same time they comfort those who fall off the swings, who usually are their children. Women have more than a tough job—it is all but impossible. Men are different: “Ha, you dropped the disc. I win.”
Maybe I am entirely wrong and a throwback to a past and forgotten generation, but in any case, for those heading out in life: good luck.
Back to Handsome Harry Hooper. To do the story I needed to get the picture of him out of the book. Half the problem is solved because I wrote that book. Super, but I have to get a picture from it into a camera so it can then go through the editing computers and then be put on television. It was much simpler when our ancestors drew pictures on the walls of caves.
Kim and I finished the disc-throwing story with video of a great, tumbling, impossible catch by one of the guys; something he could tell his grandkids about.
● ● ●
The next day I was working with cameraman Gary Barndt and asked if he would take a picture from a book. Of course, he said, but we should find a story for today first. The story about Harry was for another day.
We go here and there, but the short of it is we go to Granville Island and as soon as we cross the wooden bridge I think: “There are turtles in that pond under the bridge.” If they are awake after sleeping all winter we can get some pictures, we talk to some people and, presto, today is done.
Turtles are amazing, like most things. They take a deep breath in the late autumn, swim down to the bottom of a pond and bury themselves in the mud and muck, then close their eyes and dream.
I don’t know how they do it. That is when humans would have nightmares, but turtles hold their breath for six months. Even bears when they hibernate keep breathing. But not turtles.
When it gets warmer, they throw off the blankets, swim up and take a breath. That’s amazing.
Gary’s education in camera work was much the same—totally amazing. When he was in bcit there was a crisis at one of the television stations in the city. One of their cameramen had been stopped, ticketed and punished for drinking and driving. Whoops.
The plea that he could not work without driving didn’t work, as it shouldn’t have. He was, and is, a super guy and a super photographer but now he was super stuck. He couldn’t walk to his assignments.
The powers that were in the newsroom hired two students in the journalism class to drive him around. One was Gary, the other Pete Cline, who shot the story I told you about the two veterans and the garden and the other one about the swimmer in winter.
While they missed school they got the best training. Again, even though he is at another unnamed tv station, the cameraman without the licence was one of the best cameramen in the city. Gary and Pete would drive him here and there and watch him work. There is no better way to learn. Sometimes he would let them do his work, which was good of him, or perhaps he just wanted to work less.
Gary and Pete learned from him and turned out to be as good as the fellow who had taken one sip too many. Of course, no one does anything like that anymore.
Gary and I watched some of the first turtles of spring come out of the water and struggle up on a rock. We saw a little girl named Olive and her babysitter, Kirsten, and Kirsten’s daughter, Lea, looking at the turtles.
I talked to the kids and they were sweet. And there was the story: kids seeing life. Then Olive, who was about six, walked off with their carriage while Kirsten and Lea were still looking at the turtles. What could be better? A kid who had just seen turtles who carry their homes on their back now was pushing her own home on wheels.
Okay, it’s a bit of a stretch but it works for television, which is very forgiving. Just look at some of the shows of superheroes and tell me where your level of disbelief kicks in. At the five-minute mark?
Anyway, Gary and I were finished, he was about to pack up and would be ready to take a picture for me from the book as soon as we got back to his truck when he turned around to wave goodbye to the parting kids and then . . . It is hard to describe this, but his fifty-thousand-dollar camera sitting on a tripod so he could get close-up pictures of the turtle’s head started giving into gravity and tilted forward, just a bit, then a bit more and in a slow-motion blink it leaned over past the point of no forgiveness and—plunk. It went into the pond.
It was unbelievable because you don’t want to believe this is happening, the slow-motion sliding of an immensely expensive piece of machinery slipping into the stillness of cold water over which baby ducks are swimming and next to which two turtles are sitting on a rock, watching.
It was kind of funny that Gary had put a rain jacket on his camera because it looked like rain and it is important not to let the camera get wet. I could see the rain jacket being swallowed by the pond. Rain jackets are not made for use underwater.
Gary is a large man, but now he moved like a slender gymnast. He jumped down the embankment, shoved his arm into the water, grabbed one leg of the tripod and lifted it up and out all in one motion.
The turtles didn’t have time to blink. The water came flooding off the camera and out from under the rain jacket, cascading down over Gary’s arm and back into the pond.
Then the most important thing of all happened. There was no cursing. There was no swearing or groaning or shouting or moaning.
He pulled off the battery, which was something I would not have thought of doing, and popped out the video disc. You can tell who is a good person when there is a crisis. He stopped the circuits from shorting out any more than they already had, and he saved the reason for us being there.
“Terrible,” I said.
“It’ll be all right,” he said. “I’ll bring it back to the engineers and they’ll take it apart and dry it.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
“Things happen,” he said.
And there I saw a very fine, strong individual
. I can only imagine most other people I have known going into a rage of anger or worry. Gary did nothing—except one thing.
Right after he called his boss and the engineers to let them know he was bringing in a casualty, he sent a text. It was to all the other camera folks telling them what happened.
“That will cut off the snide remarks if they hear it from someone else.”
We had a lovely drive back to the television station and the pictures were beautiful, especially the close-up of the turtle’s head that he had used the tripod to get. That was what the story ended with.
I don’t know if Gary learned patience or forgiveness or understanding or self-control after driving around another camera guy who had once been too drunk to drive, or if he was simply born with some good genes, but anyone who can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same is a neat guy. (And if you don’t know about that line, please look up the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling. It is a good lesson.)
ps: Later Gary used a spare camera and took the picture of Handsome Harry to be used in that story, and that story was fine.
I couldn’t help wondering how Harry would have reacted if the seats in his cab had got soaked in a storm. Somehow that information, which we will never know, would be more important than how he looked.
Shadows
It was like Peter Pan, only it wasn’t in the movie.
The playground was the world and the shadows were real. Peter Pan was different. He lost his shadow when he sneaked into Wendy’s bedroom and she locked it in a drawer. That was to protect it, not to put it in jail. She was a good girl.
But in the playground the shadows could not get away from the kids and the kids could not get away from those controllable puppets of themselves. And that was what made it so magical.
They were jumping up and down, as they do when they are young, before school, before they have to sit in seats and listen, before they are told to be quiet. My heavens! I am sounding like Peter Pan and realizing why he didn’t want to grow up.
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