Time Now for the Vinyl Cafe Story Exchange

by Stuart McLean

  There was no road connecting Rainbow Lake with anywhere else other than back to High Level.

  I had no choice but to retrace my route.

  By evening I was exhausted. I decided to call it quits and stop for the night in Peace River.

  Tuesday morning I left my Peace River hotel room to put my bags in my car before grabbing breakfast. Walking out the side door that I’d come in through from the parking lot the previous evening, I was a little stunned to find my car had disappeared. I always half expect my polar bear licence plate to be half-inched when I’m in Alberta, but not my whole car! I quickly realized, though, that I’d parked in a no-parking zone, so it was with some relief that I figured I’d probably been towed. The front desk didn’t know anything about that. So I borrowed a phone book and called the one towing company in it. They told me they knew nothing about my car. They did say, however, that they weren’t allowed to tow a car just because it was illegally parked. If they were going to tow a car they had to be asked by the RCMP.

  I hitched a ride to the cop shop and asked whether they knew anything about my car. The extremely helpful desk agent called everyone she could, and half an hour later announced that she didn’t have any good news. My car had been stolen!

  I filled out the appropriate forms, and was introduced to the constable who’d be handling my case. I got the impression that any confidence he had came from his uniform and the gun hanging from his belt rather than from within himself, especially when he wrote down my licence number incorrectly. I was at the station for ninety minutes. While there, I lost any faith that my car would be found.

  As I left, I wondered what on earth I should do. Obviously someone was trying to tell me that I wasn’t supposed to be going to Calgary. I got that, but how was I going to get home? As far as I knew there was no airport in Peace River, and who would drive ten hours from Fort Smith to pick me up? It was no use calling any of my friends in Yellowknife. The ferry wasn’t in yet so they were completely cut off. I hadn’t been planning on buying another car, but perhaps that was my best option.

  Looking back on this string of calamities, I’m proud to say that I didn’t become even slightly upset. I accepted my fate. I was in a bit of a predicament. But I was most miffed about the prescription glasses that were missing along with my car.

  I got a cab to take me back to the hotel. The driver insisted on giving me his card, and said, “I hope that next time I’ll get to pick you up from somewhere else!” I think he thought I’d been in the drunk tank overnight. I told him I was a cop. He put on his seatbelt and shut up.

  On the journey, a thought that I couldn’t shake had begun to bug me.

  Climbing out of the cab, I walked around to the side of the hotel where the parking lot was, and there, exactly where I’d left it the previous night, was my car. That morning I’d lost my bearings and exited on the wrong side of the building into an identical parking lot.

  I went back to my room to call the cop I’d dealt with and ask him to take my car off the “wanted” list. You can’t imagine how humble I felt.

  Next, I went to check out.

  “Did you find your car?” asked the girl at the front desk.

  “Oh yes,” I said. “Thanks. That’s all taken care of.” And I hurriedly departed.

  All thoughts of Calgary abandoned, I got in my car and headed for home.

  Victoria, British Columbia

  POSTMARKED

  My eighty-eight-year-old mom phoned the other night. She phoned to tell me that the mailbox at the corner of her street had disappeared. This may not sound like disturbing news to you, but I found it disturbing.

  I knew right away which mailbox she meant: the one on the hydro pole at the corner of Broadway and Torrington in Ottawa’s Glebe neighbourhood. It had been there for over seventy-five years. It’s a neighbourhood landmark. As children we were told, “Don’t go past the mailbox.” Mrs. Lennox, our elderly next-door neighbour at the time, would give us a chocolate bar to run to the box and mail her letters. Coming home late as teenagers, so as not to have car noise in front of the house, the drop point was, you guessed it, the mailbox. And after Dad’s hip operation last year, when he could walk to the mailbox and back, we knew he was going to be just fine.

  Over the years, hundreds of thousands of letters, Christmas cards, birthday greetings, and sympathy notes have been posted there and sent all over the world—feelings and sentiments, wishes and thoughts.

  I’m writing this letter on the ferry to Vancouver. Tomorrow I’m flying to Ottawa for two weeks with my parents. Now, when I send my postcards home to B.C., I’ll no longer be able to take the familiar walk to the corner to post them. Instead I’ll have to get in the car, drive ten or twelve blocks to the nearest post office, and hope there’s a parking spot. It’s not the same.

  That stoic little red soldier has been at its post for hundreds of seasons, weathering sun and rain, snow and ice. Through World War II, and over ten prime ministers. Its welcoming slot has accepted generations of paid bills, life stories, and shared secrets.

  Canada Post tells me that a mailbox needs fifty letters a day to remain viable. Our corner mailbox no longer met this criteria and it had to go. I’ve suggested they put it back, sealed up, as a piece of neighbourhood history, as an artifact. I have not received a response.

  I’m very aware that things are changing rapidly all around me. I’m told that I should accept these changes and adapt. Every once in a while, though, one of these changes upsets a balance in my heart, or a memory, and there’s an impulse to reject the “new” way. This is one of those times. I believe that the culture and history of a neighbourhood deserve to be protected. The mailbox at the corner was an eloquent testament to times gone by.

  Duncan, British Columbia

  THE OLD BUICK

  My parents are two of the most interesting people I will ever meet. They met, fell in love (my father choked out a proposal), and they were married. September 1, 1985. Four years later they had my older sister, then two years after that they had me. I remember a lot from my early years, but the things that stick with me the most are our family vacations.

  The trips themselves were memorable, but what was most memorable was the car we travelled in. A gold four-door 1979 Buick Electra—Limited Edition. It was bought new out of a catalogue by my dad’s dad. My sister and I called it the Loser Cruiser. At almost nineteen feet long, we could go for weeks with all our stuff packed in there, and we often did.

  I remember my father in the driver’s seat, constantly streaming trivia about the buildings we were whooshing past. When he paused to breathe, my mother would lower the visor and flip open the mirror to look at my sister and me. If we looked comatose she would ask loudly, “Girls, are you soaking up the culture?”

  As I watched the fields blur past my window, she would proclaim, “Yellow flowers!” to which we were expected to respond promptly, “Canola!”

  Yellow flowers for canola, blue for flax, purple for alfalfa, and pink for clover.

  Although the destinations always had a purpose, at least half the fun was the journey.

  The older we got, the more unreliable the Buick became. Each road trip was a gamble. The week before we’d leave, Dad would take me to junkyards where he’d point out similar models and rifle through their engines or dashboards in search of whatever part had just given up. He’d spend the night before we left repairing the Buick, which was parked on the dark street out in front of the house, packed and ready to go, a work light hooked onto the raised hood.

  Since those days, my sister and I have grown up and moved to different areas of the West Coast. The Buick still sits outside my parents’ house, its days coming to an end. It’s harder and harder to maintain. The parts we need to fix it up have become more and more scarce. It’s sad to see it sitting there, but I know it’s had a long, fulfilling life: packed with adventure and a loving family that tried their best to keep it running as long as they could.

  A few days befo
re I left home, I went and sat in the Buick for what I think may have been the last time. I sat in the back, behind the driver’s seat, my seat on all those road trips. I couldn’t bring myself to sit in the front because those seats didn’t belong to me: they belonged to my parents. I closed the door and shut my eyes, remembering. The car still smelled the same—musty and comforting—and the seat felt the same, too. I visualized the tower of pillows that I used to stack between my sister and me in case she tried to look at me. I felt the wind tangle my hair as we drove with all four windows down because the air conditioner had died again.

  I thought of the trips, yes, but I also thought of everything that had led me to that moment and place. In just days I’d be moving far away—a thousand kilometres. Somehow, it didn’t seem too scary to be going so far. My father’s trivia and my mother’s comments made even a thousand kilometres feel like it was just around the block. Whether they knew it or not, when they took me on those trips they were preparing me for the world outside our neighbourhood. They were preparing me for the day when I’d have to leave it and explore on my own. Everything they did back then was for me; now it’s my turn. Everything I do is for them. Every favour I do for a friend, every test I study hard for, every extra mile I go to make someone feel valued—I do for my parents.

  And though I may not know how to change a tire, I know all about my home away from home. I don’t know how to check the oil but I can tell you which flowers are which. I’m not sure where the fan belt is, but I can tell you what it sounds like when it snaps on a deserted Okanagan Valley highway on a hot weekend in July.

  Vancouver, British Columbia

  FIRE AND ICE

  There was a December, back when I lived in Calgary, that was memorably, unbearably cold. The kind of cold that penetrates to the very core of your being and makes you think you will never get warm again. It was a real chore getting dressed to go outside each day. So many clothes. So many layers.

  When I went outside on the last day of December, the sound of my boots on the crisp snow was loud and crunchy. Every footstep sounded like a firecracker. It was so cold it was hard to breathe. I had a double scarf over my mouth. Even my eyes were cold. The sky may have been blue and the sun may have been shining, but there were ice crystals floating eerily in the air like snowflakes. You could hear them hitting the ground and you could see them drifting into little piles.

  Coming inside was a momentary reprieve, until you realized that even with the furnace and fireplace blazing, you had to wrap yourself in warm clothing and a comforter to feel a measure of relief.

  Cold air oozed through the cracks in my front door. I taped fuzzy strips of rags around the sides of the frame and pushed a rolled rug across the bottom. It didn’t make a difference. The metal door efficiently conducted the cold into the entrance and it drifted up the stairs.

  And so I decided to spend New Year’s Eve cocooned in my favourite chair. I would sip tea and watch TV rather than join the brave souls who congregated outside for the midnight countdown.

  But I had a premonition that something wonderful might happen that New Year’s Day. Sure enough, when I opened my bedroom drapes, the sky was full of grey clouds whizzing by and changing shapes. It looked like a Chinook, though the world was obviously still frozen.

  Fearing I’d be greeted by an icy wind, I dressed warmly to walk to Mass. When I stepped outside, however, the sky had turned crystal clear blue. Ever so tentatively, I lowered my scarf. When I did I took a deep breath and inhaled warm, balmy air. I opened my collar and my coat, I removed my scarf and my gloves. It was like a spring day.

  The squeaky crunch of frozen snow had been replaced by the sound of rustling pine—and water streaming off the trees like fountains as the ice melted.

  There was not a soul on the sidewalk, nor a vehicle on the street, just the rush of warm wind and the sound of singing birds. I took a shortcut through a park and sank up to my knees through the once-hard crust. When I got to my church it took me ten minutes to cool down.

  On the way home, the sun and the wind were in my face, kissing my cheeks with every step. It was an exhilarating way to start the New Year. Calgary was still sleeping, but the trees, wind, and birds were celebrating. I saw a young couple sitting on their balcony, still in their pyjamas, holding on to one another and sharing a cup of coffee. There was a faint sound of wind chimes from someone’s porch. I went into my home, opened all the windows, and sat on my balcony, welcoming in the New Year, good health, and the gift of life, thankful for the unexpected blessing of a Calgary Chinook on New Year’s Day.

  Mundare, Alberta

  SITTING, STILL

  Last Saturday my wife and I made a trip “up island” to say goodbye to an old friend who had finally lost her battle to cancer.

  She’d lived in Ladysmith for many years, but her family’s roots were up in Union Bay. We chose to leave the parkway a few miles before town and finish the journey ambling along the old island highway that hugs the water’s edge. There were new homes here and there, but mostly we were driving by homes from another time: yards cluttered with pickups or tarp-covered boats waiting for spring. The kind of homes where clotheslines and wood stoves still earn their keep.

  The town hall was easy to find. The parking lot was jammed and folks were standing in clusters—everyone dressed a little better than usual for a Saturday.

  Inside, the warm wood walls were adorned with records of local history: plaques, pictures, and other bits and pieces. The strains of “Tell Me the Old, Old Story” came from an upright piano near the corner of the room. The scent of fresh coffee hung in the air as several women set food on side tables: egg salad, tuna, and ham sandwiches, squares, cakes, and cookies, coffee, tea, and juice for the children.

  And then it was time for the service to begin. A hush fell over the room, stragglers scurried for their seats, and the minister settled into the story of my friend’s life: an interesting biography to some; to others, memories both beautiful and painful.

  A trio of women stood and sang. None of them had what you’d call singing voices; there was no attempt at harmonizing, they were just three cousins who wanted to present a tribute from the heart to a beloved friend.

  There was a rare honesty about that gathering. That old town hall provided an atmosphere that neither church nor funeral chapel could have offered. It sits there year after year bearing silent witness to how people really live. It’s seen a lifetime of town meetings, concerts, dances, wedding receptions and, yes, funeral services.

  We live in a world hypnotized with forward motion. That old town hall has chosen to let the world rush right on by.

  Ladysmith, British Columbia

  SKYTRAIN JUSTICE

  I’m writing to tell you about an experience I had riding public transit in Vancouver.

  I was on my way home from returning textbooks to the library downtown. I boarded the SkyTrain and settled in for my forty-five-minute train ride. I zoned out for a few stations and, following the social norm, avoided eye contact and conversation with the strangers around me.

  An older man boarded the train. The only available seat was occupied by a knapsack. The gentleman smiled kindly at the young man whose knapsack it was and asked if he wouldn’t mind moving it so he could have a seat. The young man, a twenty-something wearing a hoodie and oversized earphones, scowled up at the man and swore loudly.

  The entire car went silent. The old man was so taken aback he was speechless. He turned and walked to the other side of the car. Though most of us were cursing the young man in our heads, none of us said anything aloud. After all, it was none of our business; we were just chance observers of an altercation that didn’t involve us. But a third man, probably thirty-five or so, stood up.

  “Excuse me?” he said, as though the affront had been directed at him.

  The young man pulled his headphones down to his neck. “You talking to me?”

  “Yes, I am talking to you. That is no way to treat a fellow human being.
You should apologize.”

  The young man rudely insisted that he was not going to apologize. He had a limited vocabulary—he’d used the F-word as both verb and adjective.

  So, Mr. Thirty-something reached right over Mr. Twenty-something’s head and clicked on the SkyTrain emergency intercom.

  There was static and then: “Hello, what seems to be the problem?”

  He answered that there was a young man aboard the train who had just threatened an older gentleman.

  The voice over the intercom promised to dispatch the SkyTrain police to meet the train at the next station. Then it asked for a description.

  “He’s male, about five-ten, maybe twenty-five or so, brown hair—oh and he’s ugly as heck.”

  The young man sat bolt upright. His ears were burning pink. He looked around the train car. All eyes met his. When the train pulled into the next station, he jumped to his feet, snatched up his knapsack, and darted out of the car.

  Mr. Thirty-something sat back down. The older man thanked him and took a seat. It seemed as if the entire car let out a communal sigh of relief. We were all smiling, giving each other knowing glances, and commenting on the episode to one another as if we were old friends.

  A woman turned to Mr. Thirty-something, pointed to the yellow band under the window, and said, “You know, there are silent alarms.”

  “Oh, I know about the silent alarms. But it was public humiliation I was going for.”

  And that was that: one man taking SkyTrain morality into his own hands. One man willing to stand up for what was right, while the rest of us remained silent. He renewed my faith in humanity that day. And I’m sure that wherever that young man is now, the next time someone asks him to move his knapsack, he will do so.