Time Now for the Vinyl Cafe Story Exchange

by Stuart McLean

  Understandably, not everyone was dressed for a water search at all times. As a result, the usual practice was to peel off our clothing down to our underwear while sprinting for the water. Ours was a girls’ camp and the staff was all female, so this didn’t present a problem.

  However, on one occasion, the siren sounded at the precise moment that canoeists from a boys’ camp were blithely paddling by just outside the swimming area.

  First, their ears were assaulted by the siren. After that got their attention, young women began running toward them, ripping off their clothes. The canoeists gaped at us, stunned, then oars flew in all directions as they tried to paddle the canoes closer. After being at a boys’ camp for most of the summer, those boys must have thought they’d died and gone to heaven.

  Once we got over our initial shock at having such an attentive audience, we plunged into the water and conducted our search. Fortunately, it was only a drill.

  Victoria, British Columbia

  MY MOTHER, THE PILOT

  I grew up in Charlottetown in the sixties, and until recently it never occurred to me that my mother wanted to be anything other than what she was. Now, however, it’s obvious that her secret aspiration was to become a pilot.

  My mother knew how to have a good time. During hot summer days she would take us to the beach. She’d pack a lunch, my four sisters and I would round up as many of the neighbourhood kids as we could fit into the car, and we’d be off. First we dropped my dad (usually in the front seat with two or three kids on his lap) at the office. The look of relief on his face as he slid out of the car and waved goodbye was never obvious to me then either.

  On the way home from the beach we’d count Holstein cows—isn’t that what everyone does on a car ride? But the sheer joy didn’t begin until we came closer to town and my mother took us on a shortcut through what was, and still is, called “the Experimental Farm”—a test site owned by Agriculture Canada. We stopped by the building where they kept the “hens with glasses on” and we clambered out of the car to sneak a peek. Seven or eight sunburned kids and a tall freckled woman in a two-piece bathing suit crept up a little incline to peer in the dusty windows of a circular building. “I see them!” one of my sisters yelled, and we all scurried over. It was dark in there. I don’t truthfully remember seeing any of the hens wearing glasses, but I know they were there. My mother said so.

  When we got back in the car, the excitement mounted. I insisted on sitting next to a door. We all knew what came next. This particular portion of the road through the Experimental Farm had a lovely little downhill slope. Just the right distance to gather a bit of speed. Near the bottom was a railway crossing, with a rise up to and then down from the track.

  My mother would choose a co-pilot from one of the squirming sticking-to-the-vinyl-seat-in-a-bathing-suit kids, and then holler things like “Pilot to co-pilot, over!” Those of us in the back would clutch each other, especially the lucky ones who got to operate the wings, I mean the doors. Mom warned us about turbulence and then she began the countdown. “Five, four, three …” My mother’s foot hit the accelerator like you wouldn’t believe. “Two. Lift off!”

  Four doors flew open simultaneously. We’d lean toward the middle of the car, the wind rushing in and filling our ears. We were flying! Kids hollered and whooped. Sand flew everywhere. The Kool-Aid jug rolled on its side.

  My sister Roslyn started to wail. Sometimes, for added effect and excitement, my mother would lean on the horn.

  I always kept my head down. My sisters tell me that the wheels of my mother’s car never really left the ground. Maybe. All I know is that for a nine-year-old kid in the backseat, we were flying, really flying, and my mother was the pilot.

  Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

  THE MYSTERIES OF MERINGUE

  A dear friend of mine once produced an oil painting of my mom’s lemon meringue pie. The painting is titled Jean Odlum’s Lemon Meringue Pie. It’s fitting that Mom’s pie has been immortalized this way, because her pie is the stuff of legend.

  Let me explain.

  My mom made hundreds of pies in her lifetime—many of the lemon meringue variety. But there were two that stood out so vividly in the memory as to inspire artistic interpretation. The first sparked the legend; fifty years later, the second founded a religion.

  The first inspirational pie was baked back in the 1940s. Mom’s was not a classic forties kitchen. She and my father lived at Triple Island, a lighthouse north of Haida Gwaii.

  Mom was a seventeen-year-old bride when she stepped onto that rock, and she surely didn’t know what she was getting into. But those were the best years of her life, up there with my dad, learning how to run a household that got grocery delivery once a month (if they were lucky) and how to delight in the simple things.

  One of those simple things was the occasional pie, and of course, the one-of-a-kind, myth-making lemon confection that went down in our family history.

  That soft-peaked masterpiece tasted so delicious that it overshadowed all her pies, lemon meringue or otherwise. The filling danced on the tongue with such exquisite tartness that even a half-century later the thought of it causes puckering.

  It happened well before my time, but I heard the story often enough to know there would never be another pie as mouth-scrunchingly delicious as that one. All my life, whenever an occasion warranted a lemon meringue pie, the subject of that particular pie (and of the impossibility of duplicating it) came up.

  Mom’s second lemon meringue miracle was baked in the 1990s. It was baked for friends visiting from Japan. We were all seated around the table while Mom stood and made the first cut.

  As she drew the knife back and began a delicate sawing motion, the pie squeaked. She paused. With each movement of the knife, it squeaked. It squeaked on a slightly different note during the forward sawing motion than it did during the backward sawing motion. Everyone began to laugh. The more it squeaked, the more we laughed.

  She slowed the knife down, but the squeaks only became longer. She sped the knife up, and the squeaks sped up too. The laughing continued, and Mom had to pause to catch her breath. Even our conservative Japanese guests were in tears by the time the final piece was cut. Later, we discussed our theories—I maintained that it was the flaky crust, while others were convinced that it was the meringue. We’ll never know; the results can’t be duplicated.

  It was her first and only musical lemon meringue pie. And the subject of that pie, along with the Triple Island pie, always comes up whenever I attempt to make a lemon meringue. Mine are neither remarkable nor musical. They don’t make you pucker. They don’t make the slightest squeak. But they’re important, because they inspire retellings of our family’s pie legend.

  And that means my mom, and her pies, can live forever.

  North Vancouver, British Columbia

  SKATING WITH SINGH

  Sometimes I think about a solitary man who lived in our town when I was a kid—a Sikh man who everyone called Singh. This was back in the late sixties, when my hometown, Amherstburg, was no more than a bedroom community tucked in the bottom corner of Ontario and linked to the rest of the country by a long, boring stretch of the 401 highway.

  Singh was an exotic being back then—an enigma separated from the rest of the community by his appearance. He lived in an apartment that had been converted from a business; his living room was the windowed storefront. We kids knew this because we’d steal glimpses of him through a gap in his curtain as we walked by. I remember him sitting in a straight-backed chair next to a table on which sat nothing but a black telephone. I don’t remember a television or anything else. In my memory he’s just sitting there, alone, in the sparse room. And we, in our nine-year-old wisdom, would avidly discuss him and his turban, and the rumours about the length of his hair underneath it. I don’t know where he worked, and I don’t recall seeing him with any friends. I don’t know if he had a car.

  As was typical of most small towns in Canada, the arena was the ma
in hub of community activity. The winter I was nine, Singh took up ice skating. It was with curiosity and cruel bemusement that we kids observed him during Sunday-afternoon and Wednesday-evening public skating—either in the roped-off beginners’ area or hugging the boards on his way around the ice. Singh was always smiling, as if being so out of place—winter coat and mittens over his exotic cotton clothing—amused him, too. His progress was excruciatingly slow, and I’d wonder, as I glided past, what kind of pleasure he could possibly get from his sluggish, jerky trips around the rink; he was such an easy target for the mean boys. But Singh continued to show up at the public skating sessions, and eventually he got better—eventually good enough that he didn’t have to hold on to the boards. He became a fixture that winter, and our interest eventually waned.

  Today I remember Singh through the eyes of an adult—not as an exotic émigré, but as a man. I can’t remember when Singh stopped showing up at the arena, or when he left town. And I wish I could tell him that I remember him. That I know now that with every wobbly slip of his blades on the ice he was reaching out to his community. I wonder about the night he might have sat in that straight-backed chair and decided to buy a pair of skates and go skating. I wish I could tell him that his unabashed vulnerability is now, to me, a symbol of generosity and kinship. And that I wonder if he still skates.

  Burlington, Ontario

  THE SHIP PUB

  It’s early October. I’m waiting outside the Tax on Wheels office at the corner of Patrick Street and Hamilton Avenue in St. John’s. I’m waiting for a musician from Quebec who I met a few days ago up at the top of Lime Street. We were standing side by side, staring down at a rainbow that was growing right out of the harbour.

  I’m new to St. John’s; I moved here a few weeks ago to study. I recognized the woman on the street from one of my folklore classes, and so I started up a conversation. She’s also new to the city, and when she suggested going to the Ship Pub for folk music night I agreed without hesitation. So far my social exchanges have been limited to small talk at the corner store and front-porch exchanges with my neighbour.

  It wasn’t quite the social life I’d envisioned before leaving Toronto just four weeks ago. I’d imagined myself laughing over bottles of Blackhorse with my new friends at a dingy but quaint local bar—with Great Big Sea playing faintly in the background.

  Instead, I’ve spent the past few weekends alone, driving up and down the coast—my station wagon keeping me company. The scenery is beautiful, but life is getting lonely. The Québécois musician could have asked me to join her on a tour of the local slaughterhouse and I would have accepted. I’m lucky that she suggested folk night at the Ship.

  Folk night is a series that runs every Wednesday and is hosted by the St. John’s Folk Arts Council. Each week a local musician headlines. Audience members are encouraged to participate during the open mic interludes. This Wednesday two brothers from Bell Island are singing traditional ballads.

  The entrance is tucked into a staircase off Duckworth Street. Inside, there’s an elbow-shaped bar, a small stage, and about ten tables filled with people quietly listening to the Bell Island brothers sing their ballads. The walls are painted dark red. They’re covered with gold records—each one carries the name of a band that’s played there. Bands like the Saddle Horses, Slow Coaster, and Lady Luck.

  We choose a table at the very back of the bar and join another folklore student—an Irish cheese scholar from Beaver, Pennsylvania. Halfway through the second ballad a fourth student from the department joins our table. She’s a Scottish step-dancer from Edinburgh, and she’s doing her Ph.D. research on haggis. Her dancing shoes are in a beat-up plastic bag that she hangs from the arm of her chair.

  The balladeering brothers wrap up early so that they can catch the last ferry back to Bell Island. When the clapping dies down and the stage is cleared, a woman from the audience takes the microphone. She’s from Ferryland, and she runs a small café there. She sings a sad and beautiful Irish ballad that she learned from her father. The crowd roars with appreciation, but she only sings once.

  I buy another round of Blackhorse beer for our table and meet a small, white-haired Irishman at the bar. We talk about Dublin, where I lived one summer, and then he insists on paying for my drinks. I protest, but he prevails, and he helps me carry the bottles to my table. The singer from Ferryland laughs and winks at me. I introduce the man to the other girls and soon our two tables have joined.

  The stage is empty and the front door swings shut. With some encouragement the woman from Ferryland agrees to sing another ballad. She doesn’t use the microphone and she doesn’t stand onstage, she just sits on a bar stool, closes her eyes, and starts to sing.

  The haggis scholar changes her shoes and gives us a dance. The white-haired Irishman sings a song, and the Irish cheese scholar from Beaver, Pennsylvania, accompanies him.

  Then the musician from Quebec sings “Down to the River” and everyone joins in—well, almost everyone.

  “What about Toronto?” the man next to me asks. “What does Toronto have to sing?”

  Toronto, as it turns out, doesn’t have anything to sing. I hadn’t learned any ballads at the Parkdale bars and Queen Street watering holes of my recent past, and the last song I sang was either “Happy Birthday” or the national anthem.

  Now the circle of strangers, from Ireland, Scotland, Canada, and the U.S., turn to me expectantly. I shrug my shoulders.

  “I don’t sing,” I tell them.

  They assume that I’m being modest and so they encourage me again.

  So I tell them again, “I don’t sing.”

  The man next to me asks, “What do you do then?” The group listens and waits. I want to tell them that I know several magic tricks, or that I play the oboe, or that I’m more sports inclined—which is the furthest from the truth. Instead, I say quietly, “Well, I write?”

  It comes out more like a question than a statement, but it’s all they need. The group relaxes, the step-dancer starts step-dancing again, the Irishman leans back on his stool and sings another ballad, and the man next to me says, “There wouldn’t be any songs, you know, if there wasn’t anyone to write them.” After that, he welcomes me to Newfoundland.

  The four of us stay out late that night and then we do it all over again the next Wednesday, and the Wednesday after that, and eventually I start volunteering once a month on folk nights. I’m the one who takes your cover charge and hands out the raffle tickets. You won’t see me playing the oboe or performing magic tricks onstage, but I’ll be the first to greet you when you walk through the door.

  St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador

  AS TEARS GO BY

  My dad has been a tree-planter all his life. He’s never done anything else. The outdoors is where he was born to be. From March until October, it’s just him and the mountains. In the winter, however, when the ground is too hard to dig and the terrain too treacherous to navigate, my dad is forced indoors. Lucky me.

  Most weekends in the winter, I make the silent, hour-long drive “up island” with my dad to a cabin that he likes to rent on Shawnigan Lake.

  Once we get to the cabin, we start a fire, make a pot of spaghetti, sprawl out on the L-shaped couch, and watch “the game” on the old fuzzy TV. During commercials, my dad picks up his old guitar and plays “Mr. Bojangles,” “Time of Your Life,” or some other song that he’s taught himself. When I was little, I used to find this distracting. Now I’ve come to notice, almost enviously, how talented he is.

  One weekend last February, when I was going through a particularly bad Rolling Stones obsession, I said during a commercial break, “Dad, do you know ‘As Tears Go By’?” He pulled out a tattered music book and opened it to a page that he’d highlighted years ago. He showed me which frets to put my fingers on and waited patiently until I got the chords right—G, C, A7, D, C, E, D.

  After practising quietly while my dad watched the end of the game, I took a look at the words and
started singing softly while I strummed. The game now over, my dad turned his attention to me and said, “You’re doing really well. I never knew you were such a good singer.” I blushed and continued singing, louder and stronger than before. He joined in.

  The compliment meant so much to me. My dad is confident and independent, and he has so much talent that it’s sometimes intimidating. So to be able to do something that really impressed him, especially something that he knows a lot about, well, to me, that was a big accomplishment.

  The last time I visited my dad—in the Vancouver Cancer Lodge where he now lives—he picked up his guitar and tried to play as he had last winter. But the drugs that have made his face swell and his body shrink have also made his hand shaky and unsure of the notes. Not long after he picked it up, he sighed sadly and put it back on its stand in the corner of the room.

  Later that day I picked up the guitar and slowly tried out the chords that he’d taught me a year earlier. As my steady hand strummed the chords—G, C, A7, D, C, E, D—my dad watched me enviously.

  Victoria, British Columbia

  COCKLED!

  When I was a boy growing up in England, my mother would often purchase cockles from the fish man. I loved them. When we moved to Canada, you could only get cockles in a jar with brine. They didn’t taste anything like the fresh ones, but I bought them anyway.

  Years later, I was working as a photographer at a university medical school. We had three photographers in the department: me, another senior photographer, and a rookie named Steve.

  One day at work I went out and bought a bottle of cockles to have with my lunch. I was eating them with the other senior photographer when I looked at the cockles and remarked, “These look like something that’s been cut out of a body.” And that’s when a light bulb went on.