Time Now for the Vinyl Cafe Story Exchange

by Stuart McLean

  There was no comment or applause. The singing ended with one solo performance—from a darkened seat in the middle of the car—something from Handel’s Messiah. It was past midnight as quiet descended and people drifted off to sleep.

  I can’t remember now which part of the Messiah closed that impromptu concert, but I’m reminded of that magical night each Christmas. The passengers in that car shared the unexpected gift of the joy and peace of that first holy night and, by the end, we were no longer strangers.

  Blind River, Ontario

  PLACEBO

  When I was in college, back in the sixties, I worked part-time in a drugstore in Warren, Michigan.

  One day we received a telephone call from the doctor at a nearby clinic. The doctor asked if we could still compound prescriptions. Although most drugstore pharmacists count pills from larger bottles into small plastic vials, they would— on occasion—have to mix a compound as directed by a physician. I don’t know if druggists still do this, but they did back then.

  So when the doctor asked if we could do it, I said sure. “I have this patient,” he said, “and he’s been to every doctor I know. He complains about everything, but there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s a hypochondriac. Here’s what I want you to do. Take the largest empty capsules you have and fill them with sugar. Make up ten of these capsules. Tell my patient that it’s the most powerful painkiller ever devised. Tell him you can’t even tell him the name of the pill, because it’s experimental. Tell him the ingredients are secret. Tell him it’s so powerful that he can take only one a day. Tell him that it’s a narcotic. Tell him it’s highly addictive. Tell him that it’s so addictive that he can never, ever get a refill. Tell him whatever you want—just so he believes it … Oh,” added the doctor, “charge him a lot, or else he won’t think it’s any good.”

  Richard, the night pharmacist, gleefully filled the prescription. He stuck one of every warning label we had on the small bottle. He put two of the bright red skull-and-crossbones “DANGER” stickers on it.

  When the customer arrived, Richard took him aside and gravely counselled him on the horribleness and extreme potency of this medication. He gave him explicit instructions not to drive after taking it, not to operate machinery, not to go out in the sun, not to do just about anything.

  Sure enough, ten days later the customer called, declaring the sugar-filled capsules the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  And although he did beg for a refill, or even just one more of the miracle pills, Richard had to apologize and tell him that, according to the law, we couldn’t do that.

  Huntington Woods, Michigan

  DRIVE-THROUGH RAINBOW

  My family decided to celebrate Thanksgiving weekend in a cabin on a lake, not far from our home. My husband and I left on Friday afternoon, a little earlier than the rest of the family, so that we could open the cabin and get organized before they arrived.

  The weather was interesting.

  We drove through rainy patches of road and sunny patches of road. Then, all of a sudden, the windshield misted over and there was a brilliant white light filled with coloured spectrums. The colours were more intense than any I had ever seen. It lasted about fifteen seconds. The speed limit was ninety kilometres an hour and I prayed that the road ahead was straight, because I couldn’t see anything else. It was a bit scary. But I kept telling myself that maybe there’d be a pot of gold under the hood when we arrived at the cabin.

  Alas, there wasn’t. But we’d been granted an unusual life experience; I suspect my husband and I are the only people to have driven through the base of a rainbow.

  Westbank, British Columbia

  FAMILY TIES

  In 1945 my father-in-law, Harvey Botham, was twenty-four years old. It was the tail end of World War II, and Harvey was among the last of the Canadian liberating forces in France to depart for home. One blistering summer day Harvey and a pal were resting on a Lilles street corner when they were approached by a young French boy.

  The boy, Stéphane, was able to communicate with gestures, a little English, and a friendly tug that he had a meal for the two soldiers. They followed him to the humble apartment of his parents, M. and Mme. Hancart.

  The meal was marvellous. The conversation, however, was stilted. They spoke little French, and their hosts little English, but most importantly, the boys felt an appreciation for the work the Canadians had done. A bond was forged. Harvey returned to the Hancarts’ home several times before he shipped back to Canada. They exchanged addresses but there was little communication … until 1971.

  In 1971 Harvey, now in his fifties, had a family of his own in North Vancouver.

  Harvey’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Lynn (my wife), had been bitten by the wanderlust of youth and had set off to hitchhike with a backpack across Europe. As she was preparing to go her dad said, “Why don’t you look these people up? They were very nice to me twenty-six years ago.”

  To get her dad “off her back,” she reluctantly took the address. Lynn was hoping, however, that her trip wouldn’t involve any kind of social meeting with people of her father’s generation. She was a teenager, getting away from old fogies, not trying to be with them.

  Halfway through her trip Lynn reconsidered; she was eager to see a friendly face. She nervously called the phone number her father had given her. There was some initial confusion with the English and French, but a gracious Mme. Hancart once again hosted a tired and hungry Canadian. She prepared a wonderful meal, but like the first time, what was more important was the connection. Lynn departed the house with a promise to Mme. Hancart to look up her son, the young boy Stéphane, who had moved to Cannes.

  Arriving in Cannes after a sweaty journey via nights in gritty hostels, Lynn placed a call to Stéphane’s house. She was told to wait where she was. Moments later, a chauffeured car arrived, and Lynn was whisked to Stéphane’s estate overlooking the Mediterranean, where he and his wife, Marie-Josée, treated Lynn like a queen for a week. The neighbours and relatives came over. There was wine and dancing and singing every night. It was the visit of a lifetime for my wife.

  Fast-forward to 2002. Our daughter, twenty-two-year-old Rhoslyn, was backpacking from the Czech Republic to the South of France with a friend. Feeling tired and low, the girls called home.

  “Why don’t you call these people, the Hancarts? They’re really nice,” said Lynn. Suffice to say my daughter had the same feelings her mother had had, thirty-one years earlier.

  But by the time they reached Cannes, broke and rundown, they too had changed their minds. They made a call in broken French to Stéphane’s house. “Mon grand-père est Harvey Botham,” said Rhoslyn.

  “Reste là!” said Stéphane. “J’arriverai.”

  Moments later, the chauffeur came down. Back to the estate they went. Neighbours came again. Wine and song and dance, every night for a week. Rhoslyn had the visit of a lifetime, just as her mother had so many years before.

  Now, sixty-one years after that initial meeting in Lilles, Harvey is eighty-five. His relationship with Stéphane’s family has grown with these post-war meetings, with numerous visits, bottles of wine, and acts of kindness and hospitality.

  It’s a relationship that has blossomed from a sacrifice that many young Canadians made decades ago, far from home, as their lives lay before them. I’m thankful they did.

  Aldergrove, British Columbia

  TE QUIERO MUCHO

  I was born and raised in Mexico City. A hyper-hectic and dangerous corner of the world. Nine years ago, I travelled for the first time outside of Mexico as part of a student exchange program. It’s easy to understand how culture-shocked I was when I arrived at my foster home in the coastal community of Botwood, Newfoundland: my hometown has a population of twenty million residents, and Botwood, buried between the wild boreal forest and the rough Atlantic Ocean, had a population about the same as my high school. It was, in almost every way, the complete opposite of my home.

  Back then I di
dn’t speak much English, and after listening to the thick, almost incomprehensible accent of the Botwood locals, I thought, “Oh boy, it’s going to be a long summer.”

  Although I didn’t know anybody in town, the news of the newly arrived Mexican student spread so fast that before I had the chance to finish unpacking I received my first invitation, from complete strangers, to join them for a cup of tea. The invitation came from Wally and his wife, Maria.

  Wally and Maria were from Ecuador and spoke to me in Spanish when I really needed it. It was Wally and Maria who told me to go to the waterfront and hike the trail on the peninsula.

  The next day I went down to the waterfront and hiked the peninsula and found a series of man-made caves. They were abandoned military refuges from the war. The caves were dark, hidden, private places, surrounded by thick, bomb-proof concrete walls. It was the absolute perfect place to practise my recently purchased flute.

  A few weeks later, while in one of the caves, I got an unexpected visit from the local bike gang, about fifteen kids on bicycles ranging in age from nine to thirteen. They were all staring at me as if they’d never seen a Mexican flute player practising in a cave before.

  They came in and asked me all kinds of questions, starting with, “Where are you from?” Followed by more challenging questions like, “Is it true that if I rob a bank I should go to Mexico because police will never find me there?” and “Can you play any Guns N’ Roses on that flute?”

  After five or ten minutes of questions they got back on their bikes and took off. Five seconds later the smallest kid came back. “I have one last question!” he said. “How do you say ‘piss off’ in Spanish?”

  I peered at him and asked, “How old are you?”

  “Nine,” he replied. So I told the kid, “‘Piss off’ in Spanish is Te quiero mucho.”

  “Te quiero mucho?” he repeated.

  “Yes,” I said. “Perfect.”

  Off he went on his bike, not having a clue that he’d just learned how to say “I love you so much” in Spanish.

  I didn’t realize what I’d done until the next morning when Wally and Maria’s daughter phoned and told me that every single kid in Botwood between ages seven and fifteen was openly, verbally, and rather aggressively loving each other. In Spanish!

  I went back to Mexico shortly after that. I haven’t been back to Botwood since. But my time in Newfoundland fundamentally changed the way I see things: it doesn’t matter how tough, how rough, or how cold it gets, Newfoundlanders always make it possible to view life in a positive, friendly, and warm manner. And I’m happy to tell you that tomorrow, at last, I’ll be submitting my application for permanent residency in Canada.

  I will finally be an authentic Mexicanadian.

  Mexico City, Mexico

  (and now Halifax, Nova Scotia)

  AMAZING GRACE

  A few years ago a guy came to my door with a small present: a box of chocolate cookies and an empty travel mug.

  “This is for you,” he said. Then he asked if he could come in.

  “I have a story to tell you,” he said. “It goes back five hundred days.”

  Now, I play the bagpipes and sometimes people will give me a gift after I’ve played at a function, usually because the sound of the pipes touched them more than they expected. As I welcomed this man into our home I was trying to recall where I’d played a year and a half ago.

  When the man sat down it was obvious that what he was about to say was difficult for him.

  “I’m an alcoholic,” he began. “It’s been five hundred days since my last drink.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say or why he was telling me this. And so I didn’t say anything. I sat and I listened. He told me how he’d lost everything—his house, his family, his job, his car. He told me he’d sunk to scavenging the streets, picking up empty cans to get enough money to drink.

  He said he’d gone to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and tried to quit drinking. But after a few days, he said, he’d given up.

  “I couldn’t do it,” he said.

  Instead, he got a six-pack of beer and half a bottle of vodka and went into the bush. He told me he was already drunk when he got there and started in on the vodka and the beer. And, he said, that’s when he decided to end his life.

  “I put a gun into my mouth,” he told me. “I had my finger on the trigger. I can remember thinking, I’m coming now, God.”

  He started to pull the trigger when he heard bagpipes. The pipes were playing “Amazing Grace.”

  “I stopped what I was doing,” the man told me, “and I followed the sound of the bagpipes. They led me to your backyard.”

  It’s rare, as you can imagine, that people drop in to listen to me play the pipes. My wife says she does remember someone briefly showing up one day around that time.

  The man told me that after he left our backyard he went back to AA and someone, his sponsor I think, told him to write down everything he could remember about that Friday evening. He told me that this time he’d stuck with the program and that visiting me was part of his milestones to recovery.

  I never met him again. He’s moved out of town. But I think of him often and hope he’s managed to stay away from alcohol.

  Fort McMurray, Alberta

  LOST IN TRANSLATION

  Many moons ago, when I was a young university student, I spent a summer working in Berlin. This was well before the Berlin Wall came down, back when armed guards in watchtowers were on the lookout for refugees trying to flee to the West. At that time, West Berlin was home to a large number of Turkish workers who’d been granted work permits during periods of labour shortages. This is how I met my friend Ahmed.

  Ahmed and I worked side by side in a paper factory. We worked on the packaging line. As we got to know each other, Ahmed expressed a wish to learn English. Well, I wanted to learn Turkish. So we began tutoring each other using our somewhat limited grasp of our only common language—German.

  The best time for us to practise was during mealtimes. Whenever our shift broke for lunch we would sit together and talk. We talked about our homes, our families, and our dreams. Ahmed was just as curious about the Great White North as I was about his intriguing and mystical homeland.

  Most days at lunch the workers would pass around a little of whatever they’d brought to eat that day. It created a mini-smorgasbord. It was during my second or third week that Ahmed pulled out a container of what looked like tinned tuna gone horribly wrong. Since Ahmed’s proficiency in English was about as well-developed as my Turkish, it took considerable coaxing and a lot of bizarre hand gestures before I finally agreed to try a small piece.

  I just about fell off my bench. After a spartan student diet (which back in Canada consisted primarily of beer, Kraft Dinner, and beer), my first taste of halvah was the most sensual food experience I’d had in months.

  Over the course of that summer, Ahmed brought in an increasingly delicious parade of halvah that his wife would prepare for him. I would savour every piece as I attempted to make good on my promise to teach him my mother tongue. After a while, I had the idea that I should read to him.

  The only English book we had was one that Ahmed had bought at a flea market: a battered copy of John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, a ribald and explicit memoir of a young woman’s introduction to sex and romance in eighteenth-century London. The bookseller had apparently handed it to Ahmed with a nudge and a sly wink, but as far as I figured, Ahmed had bought it thinking it was a run-of-the-mill novel that would—given enough time—allow him to master the intricacies of English. Ahmed was of a religious faith that tends not to discuss racy matters in open company. I felt compelled to choose my words carefully so that I wouldn’t offend him. Whenever I came to a particularly graphic episode, I would incorrectly translate the passage as a detailed description of the room’s furnishings … scrupulously avoiding any mention of the acrobatic activities taking place therein.

  Ahmed would methodically ch
ew on his wife’s halvah and listen carefully as I slowly read aloud to him, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration and his rough-skinned fingers slowly combing his thick black beard. It was during these long and rambling passages that I would sometimes see him glancing at me out of the corner of his eye with a puzzled expression. Perhaps he was wondering just what it was about mahogany table legs that was making an eighteen-year-old Canadian blush and squirm. One can only imagine what was going through his mind as I described the “group setting” in the living room.

  My time in Berlin eventually drew to a close. As I punched out for the last time, Ahmed came over to say goodbye. He was holding two small packages in his burly arms. The first was a half-kilogram selection of his wife’s finest halvah, given with her best wishes for a safe journey home. The other contained our English “textbook,” for (as Ahmed put it) he hadn’t found it to be anywhere near as interesting as the bookseller had promised. Besides, it seemed to him that I had enjoyed it considerably more than he had. Perhaps, he said— as he shook my hand emotionally in farewell—he would take up Italian instead.

  Victoria, British Columbia

  STRIP SEARCH

  In the summer of 1969, I was a camp counsellor.

  We had a search protocol that we practised on a regular basis so that we’d be prepared in the event of a missing camper.

  At the beginning of the summer, the staff was divided into two teams: “land search” and “water search.” Each person had a specific area of the camp or waterfront to check. If you were conducting a water search, you had to duck-dive your way through the swimming area, all the while hoping it was just a drill.

  Searches were signalled by an ear-splitting siren. When we heard the siren, staff members were expected to begin checking their assigned areas immediately.