A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Rambling One Province Over

Circumstances can conveniently converge and collude.

Ann and I had yet to change our backdrop this year. Summer air travel hadn’t appealed, fuel surcharges and labour disputes, the rigmarole of airports and delayed flights. Germs and other people. Other people’s germs. Years had passed since we’d simply tossed a couple of pieces of luggage and a cooler in the car and set off with no particular place to go, nowhere we were obligated to be.

A holiday roadtrip compass in Alberta usually points in just two directions. West to the mountains and maybe through them to British Columbia. The other is south, a dip below the forty-ninth parallel which demarcates a significant stretch of what was once the world’s longest undefended border. This Labour Day long weekend, we heard the siren song of the near east.

Lloydminster has always intrigued me. The city’s main street demarcates the boundary between Alberta and neighbouring Saskatchewan. Different time zones (Mountain and Central), different telephone exchanges and different consumption taxes. Schizoid. And praise the Lord, thank God Ann’s son Harry suggested we continue on to Saskatoon, “You’ll be halfway there.” I believe he ran a cross-country road race in the Paris of the Prairies whilst a university student. I’d never set foot in Saskatchewan except for an hour’s layover at Regina’s airport back when Canadian Airlines was still a viable carrier.

Ann and I set off. Beyond Edmonton’s corporate limits Ann said, “Is the Alberta roadmap in the glovebox?” “No.” “Do you know where it is?” “Yes.” “Where is it?” “On the stand in the front hall.” We listened to the radio for many kilometres.

There are two constants in small town Alberta. There is always a Chinese restaurant on the historic downtown main drag which will also serves “western” food in a pinch. And that town will have a whimsical municipal monument which speaks to its cliched character. Mundare’s pride and joy is a massive and massively unappetizing sausage link (the real sausage is delicious). St. Paul offers visiting space aliens a landing pad – provided their craft is no bigger than a station wagon (SUVs did not exist when the concrete was poured in 1967).

Vegreville is renowned for its colossal Easter egg which hovers over a well-maintained park. The patterns painted on it suggest Ukrainian folk art or perhaps the hope and faith of the Eastern Orthodox Church. There’s also an “ite” colony in the vicinity, one of those strict, traditional sects that adheres to the old ways – modern conveniences excepted; electricity isn’t inherently evil. I was charmed by the dun art deco Capitol Theatre on Fiftieth Street (the town had big plans upon incorporation in 1905). Its marquee promised tales of brave Ulysses and the amazing Spider-Man, and Elvis in concert before he descended into a pathetic hell – as Vegreville obviously had.

When you drive east on Highway 16 into Lloydminster it’s natural to expect something, anything, once you pass the malls, big box retailers and chain restaurants on the outskirts. Together the local tourist bureau and the Chamber of Commerce should offer, proffer something, anything other than the string of garish orange steel obelisks at the crossroad. Because of the insanely peculiar state of political affairs in Alberta and because I feel an affinity with dystopian fiction, I could imagine some sort of “Checkpoint Charlie” right there at the traffic light, mere goosesteps away from Lloydminster’s woefully nondescript city hall. Razor wire rented like building site temporary fencing.

Ann pulled into a parking lot so we could stretch our legs and have a cigarette. We were wanting our supper and a room for the night. I pointed to an Original Joe’s. I needed a beer and a toilet and the two of us needed to confer. I didn’t want to eat at OJ’s. An Edmonton location is a Tuesday Night Beer Club lynchpin. Stats Guy likes their food. My American refugee neighbour Ted likes the chicken wings. I appreciate their company and our conversations more than the food which ranges between indifferent and okay. The Lloyd OJ bartender suggested a place called The Proper just across the provincial line, the left-hand lane of Fiftieth Avenue (Albertans tend to drive on the right these days). Meanwhile, Ann scanned the traveller apps on her iPhone. 

The highway Holiday Inn promised a decent room for $154. When we turned up at the desk the clerk informed us that same room was to be had for $159. I said, “But it’s advertised online for $154.” She said, “I can’t match that.” Five dollars. I said, “So if we were to step back from your desk, maybe two feet and book online right here in front of you in the lobby with our phone, you’d charge us $154?” Five dollars. “Yes. Feel free to go right ahead.” I said, “Do you understand the nature of irony?” She did. That phantom five dollars was refunded to us in the form of a seniors’ discount.

Edmonton is divided by the North Saskatchewan River. Saskatoon is split by the course of the South Saskatchewan River. Both river cities boast extensive and elegantly designed park systems lining their defining feature. Tragically, both cities have scarred their modest downtowns with midrise pre-fab Brutalism. Edmonton and Saskatoon are sisters.

Listen to the music of the traffic in the city/Linger on the sidewalks where the neon lights are pretty …

When I book urban hotels for Ann and me, my default is downtown. I’ve never been a quick study and so I’m still learning to sublimate my inner Petula Clark. My flaw is blind faith in the teeming vibrancy of a big night out on the big town anywhere we go. A bit flash, a bit swish. Poor boy. The reality is usually some after dark netherworld populated by the homeless and crazy or combinations thereof. I’d just like to stroll around without looking over my shoulder. I’d just like to smoke a cigarette outside my hotel without being accosted. Ann and I realized we should’ve opted for some sort of neighbourhood stay, but what did I know?

Should you ever find yourself in downtown Saskatoon, head for the Blackrose Whiskey Club. You can’t miss it because there’s no place else to go. Its proprietor, an imposing gentleman with green tattoos and unsurprisingly clad in black, was friendly and engaging. His menu boasted a ratio of fifteen whiskeys to one food item. Very tasty. If I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that what you want in the moment vis-a-vis what is a very bad idea frequently courts disaster, even marries it. I ordered a Kilkenny.

Like Jimmy Cliff and Willie Nelson, Ann and I crossed that river. We walked up and down Broadway Avenue on a fine, fine September’s day. I was reminded of Edmonton’s hip, south side Whyte Avenue except there weren’t as many FOR LEASE signs. I was reminded too of Magazine Street in New Orleans, a distinct and inviting strip of small businesses who welcome browsers and casual conversation. No pressure. We shopped and didn’t sweat the added expense of a provincial sales tax.

Heaven cost me $44 plus tax at Vinyl Diner: a quasi-legal, untitled clear vinyl British pressing of the Red Devils with Mick Jagger. Sharp Chicago blues recorded about twenty years before the Stones’ own Blue and Lonesome and mercifully short of excruciatingly extended audio examples of six-string virtuosity – a common crime in contemporary blues. “Checkin’ Up on My Baby” is the sole officially available track from their collaboration, something of an afterthought on The Very Best of Mick Jagger (not entirely oxymoronic although it's no Forty Licks).

Vinyl Diner tweaked a memory of Paradise Records in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The shop is on a second storey (I always fret the weight of the inventory). You go up a narrow flight of stairs papered over with too many layers music posters. The colour of the paint on those walls is open to endless speculation. I lingered by the electronic cash for a chat. The owners, Darren and Darrin, had poked around all the record stores in Calgary and Edmonton I had and still do from time to time, time after time. Maybe they’re both introverts or maybe I sensed a sudden cursory, terse politeness in the face of a rambling annoyance. A housefly with a wallet. 

Ann and I went back down to the river on our last night in Saskatoon. The Fireworks Festival was staged in Friendship Park and the seamlessly adjacent River Landing. Food trucks lined the river valley mixed use path and extended across the precise iron geometry of a repurposed Canadian National Railway bridge. The event was sponsored by Nutrien, a fertilizer company whose black, svelte yet curvy headquarters just might be the tallest building in Saskatoon. Our Delta Hotel by Marriot (Oh, please) was nineteen superstitious storeys. Our room was on the eighteenth and Ann and I were aware of the missing Janga tile between twelve and fourteen.

The prairie is never boring because how can anything in life be boring? Tiresome, for sure. Still, the two-dimensional aspect of the landscape, its immensity, can hypnotize you like an incessantly chanted mantra. Hard proof for Flat Earthers. But just as you’re about to lock in to a permanent Zen zombie state the land will suddenly rumple and wrinkle like a patchwork quilt on a hastily made bed whose stitches are railway tracks. And all along the steel are sidings of grain terminals and great vats of what Nutrien describes as “in-depth solutions” on its website. Green and gold Nutrien signage on the prairie is as prevalent as red Coca-Cola shields and “Golden Arches” in any city.

Food truck buffets are very hip urban happenings these days. They also tend to goose my inner daintiness, release the fussier traits of my flawed character. I dislike skimpy serviettes, plastic cutlery, dining al fresco and portable chemical toilets. The Fireworks Festival Sponsored by Nutrien boasted all of this and more: scores of other people and their spoiled dogs. Ann and I ate overpriced food that did not even rate with the Tuesday Night Beer Club’s Edmonton OJ’s. I was desperate to get back to the Delta to decontaminate long before the big saltpetre show. Just as well. The twilight twitched to black a titch too soon; Ann and I recognize thunderheads when we see them. Low billows of darkness dragging themselves over the horizon.

Fireworks have a fixed trajectory and ceiling. Lightning knows no boundaries. The fireworks display was syncopated to snippets of Canadian corporate radio staples from decades ago. The storm provided its own soundtrack. We opened the suicide-proofed windows of our hotel room to listen. Way below us Twentieth Street West doubled down, glistening with reflected headlights and brake lights. The fireworks’ explosions of primary colours faded against the electric cyan of the crackling big sky. Were this the climax of a film, definitely a thriller, I’d accuse the auteur of pathetic fallacy; I’d be incapable of suspending my sense of disbelief. A great night in.

Landis is where you end up if you miss the turnoff for a bigger place like Biggar. NEW YORK IS BIG, BUT … Landis is a village. According to the Statistics Canada 2021 census, Landis houses 133 souls who occupy 68 of its 78 private dwellings. How were Ann and I to know?  The main street was a wide, oil and gravel road which terminated abruptly at perpendicular railroad tracks. We flexed our legs and spines on a small patch of lawn in the shadow of a grain terminal. We’d driven past a clapboard church and a squat brick post office. The Country Kitchen Bar & Grill was across the way, a CLOSED sign dangling in the window. No food and no toilets for us. Our roadmaps were spread out on a public picnic table. Our plan had been to take a more southern route back to Edmonton rather than retracing our steps through Lloydminster and Vegreville. Our plan seemed to be unfolding as a big mistake.

The plain, solid white door of the bar and grill opened. A woman about our age stepped out. “Are you lost?” she called. “Are you waiting for me? Can I help you?” I called back, “We’re sort of hoping for a sandwich, a cold drink and a toilet.” She said, “I don’t usually open until noon, but c’mon in.” Ann and I introduced ourselves to Karen. Karen said, “What can I get you?” Last night’s Toronto Blue Jays game was on the flat screen television. And the deep fryer had been fired up. Would a couple of BLTs on brown suit us? A sentence on the whiteboard menu read NO SOUP TILL AFTER HARVEST. I didn’t dare provoke Karen by requesting a bowl of something hearty from her stovetop.

Karen was a seamhead. The three of us compared notes on our respective, relatively recent trips to The Show in The Big Smoke. We chatted about the deplorable state of the American League once you get past the Rays and the Yankees. The Expos even came up. If sports talk doesn’t fly with a stranger, there is always the weather. After closing last night Karen had sat outside with her dogs to marvel at the same storm Ann and I watched in Saskatoon. Karen said her clientele was “antsy.” Despite what has been a remarkably abundant growing season, “You can’t harvest when it’s wet.” There are other concerns in Landis. Both the school and the grocery store have closed permanently. “The post office will be next.” Karen’s Country Kitchen Bar & Grill is the only game in the village.

There’s not much in the joint. Cafeteria furniture, a padlocked wrought iron cage for off-license hard liquor, a convenience store fridge stocked with soft drinks beside the bar which faces a wall of grey scale airbrushed portraits of The Highwaymen and Janis wearing those big, round Summer of Love sunglasses. For all that and our own antsiness to get back on the highway and maybe even gut out another four to five bladder bursting hours all the way to Edmonton, miles from nowhere, Ann and I were reluctant to leave. There we were, a really long way from many more famous places, but that incidental modicum of magic that turns up like an extra charge on a hotel bill when we connect with a stranger is the same everywhere.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel.

A FAN’S NOTES

A Big Day Out, a Big Game

The area around the box office at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium was deserted. A kissing booth at a covid fair. I’d missed the opening kickoff by half an hour. I requested a single ticket, the cheapest aisle seat available. A baker’s dozen years had passed since I’d last attended a Canadian Football League game.

Football was my favourite sport when I was young; the one I was best at. I was good enough to be co-captain and third-string quarterback on my high school’s worst-ever bantam team. Players in grades above and below me were so much better. The perks of a double-sized locker and early dismissal on game days mattered as much as the prize of an embroidered school letter for extramural sports. I believe I sustained just one concussion. Having your brain folded like an omelette back then was just having your bell rung. Once the field see-sawed back to level you got up and a whistle blew, play resumed.

As a kid I collected CFL player cards. I knew all the poses. I had a Coleco CFL electric football game. I painted the plastic players to make them appear more authentic: black or white cleats, white socks and various skin tones. I saved up to buy a set of plastic team helmets, smaller than a golf ball, at the local stationery, a one-man operation with half an aisle devoted to toys. I arranged them by division atop the cardboard grandstand. I rearranged them on Mondays after reviewing league standings in the morning newspaper’s sports section. All very professional.

In Montreal we had the Alouettes and later the Concordes. The francophone media dismissed football as an “English” sport, perhaps because of its rugby roots. Failed franchises. Baltimore’s Stallions, ridden hard and put away wet, the lone surviving club of the CFL’s audacious and disastrous US expansion scheme, relocated to Montreal and revived the Skylarks’ French nickname. Whoever was charged with operating the “expansion” franchise grasped grassroots engagement. Two of Quebec’s premier francophone universities are now U Sports (similar to America’s NCAA except for the cash and the graft) football powerhouses. I was well established in Alberta when the Second Coming of the Als was made manifest by the launch of an on-trend cartoony logo – sort of Woody Woodpecker raging on expired Soviet Olympic drugs.

Culture shock in Canada is a lot like a board game. You roll the dice. Should you move one province over you’ll find yourself in a milieu you’re accustomed to and yet something inexplicable is awry; it may be the streetcars and skyscrapers, but no, that’s not it. If you hop a string of provinces, you may wonder if you’ve landed in a different country. I migrated from Quebec to Alberta in 1990. The hardcore passion for Canadian football I encountered on the Canadian prairies stunned me.

The Edmonton Eskimos (now Elks) and Calgary Stampeders entertained fanbases whose cores had coalesced around VE Day. Broadsheets, tabloids, AM radio and television stations treated football as hockey’s equal: experts, analysts, talking heads, beat reporters and columnists. Those types of people now toil for the football team’s social media feed, an information source as reliable as Pravda or The People’s Daily. Cutesy nicknames and sports jargon, very in-crowd yet very necessary. A casual Edmonton Journal reader would never know the Elks exist, let alone the baseball Riverhawks, thoroughbred racing and university athletics. This is the state of the aptly named Postmedia newspaper chain. And there is little else beyond traditional print. Local legacy electronic media outlets are dimming or already dark. Static and snow. 

Genuine word of mouth will trump an orchestrated marketing campaign every time. And there is no better sports marketing tool than a winning record. The Elks were at home on a recent Saturday. An early game hosting Toronto’s Argonauts. That’s when football should be played, in the afternoon. And the morning promised the first nice Saturday we’d had in Edmonton since the summer equinox. No rain. No nighttime prime time TV ad rate grab and no American cable football competition this time of year.

We were sitting on the backyard patio. The al fresco Saturday crossword’s ass had been collectively kicked. I was feeling frisky. I said to Ann, “I’m tempted to go to the football game this afternoon.” Ann said her interest was Elvis Costello, less than zero. Who would I call for company? “Nobody we know cares.” Check that. My friend Glenn would, but he lives in Burnaby. Glenn and his wife Margaret are certified and genuine football fans. The BC Lions should shower them with team swag – provided they keep their season ticket account current. I met Glenn in CEGEP, Quebec’s corral between high school and university. He was the sports editor of our college paper. I drew a comic strip and reviewed albums. We got to know each other at bedtime – pasting up the tabloid for the printer: hot wax, rollers, X-Acto knives and ruby tape. The four of us had dinner together on a Saturday in 2018, a Grey Cup eve. Glenn and Margaret were in Edmonton to attend something like their twenty-fourth CFL championship game. And more power to them for the extremity strangling excitement of freezing in the November dark at Commonwealth. That was the last time we hung out. There was no point calling long distance to float an inconvenient commute when I was already running late.

I caught the train from the Crooked 9’s neighbourhood station to the stadium. One direct line, just like the shopping channel. I was neither molested nor murdered or otherwise accosted. I was the only rider absorbed by a real window. Human desperation and architectural crimes. A grotesque tableau. Framed cinema verite. Despair and Brutalism: not so incongruous. The Edmonton Elks game played out as something of an impromptu shot of vitamin EE.

The concrete desert surrounding the stadium proved misleading. The lower bowl and the interior concourse teemed with modern life as I view it through a jaundiced lens: unfortunate fashion choices and tattoos. An engaged Elks executive must have been ecstatic over the crowd’s diversity and demographic. My impression was that CFL football had become something akin to YouTube episodes of The Rat Patrol, a fleeting distraction for old and hopelessly sentimental white guys like me. A family can afford a big day out at an Elks game. Better days are right here right now even if Woodward’s Knothole Gang barely qualifies as a wisp of memory.

My seat was in section FF. I never sat in it. I watched perhaps a half-hour of football from various vantage points. Had Glenn made the trip, he’d have been annoyed with me. I am my mother’s son: “Mary Riley, Mary Riley.” People watching and private investigations were infinitely more interesting. Mom lost her filter toward the end and I wonder about the integrity of my own. I lapped the stadium. I lapped up the highlights of the scenery. I try to remember that life is like a men’s toilet, you best just stare straight ahead at nothing. But, man, this innate need of mine to know. Mary Riley, Mary Riley.

The monopolistic premium atop concession prices for stuff you can buy cheaper almost everywhere else was modest in the way a $9 can of Heineken registers as reasonable. Do I add a tip at a concession stand? Am I a miser? Or am I just fed up with post-covid nickel and diming? The correct action which may or may not be proper these days eludes me. Take ten points. Is that enough? God, shut up and walk on.

I wondered on my wandering whether I’d encounter a green and gold bleeder, a football fanatic from nearly four decades ago; a former acquaintance, a friend and colleague I used to know. Would I recognize them? They would be wearing a faded green home jersey harkening back to the club’s original nickname. It won’t fit quite as comfortably as it once did and the brand of that season’s Official Supplier of the CFL will be defunct or tragically unhip: Starter or Puma. I can’t speak for other people, but me? I haven’t changed a bit.

Most sports venues have a no re-entry policy. Smokers are required to enjoy their entertainment in a mild state of agitation. Housefires, wildfires, cancer – smokers are the usual suspects. And fair enough in a wilfully blind and sniffy way. I look down on other people for other reasons, mainly zealots and other self-righteous types. And idiots. Especially idiots with power. We’re all a bit uppity, I suppose, a level above our natural grade and incapable of accepting our cosmic angle of repose.

Gates 7 and 8 at Commonwealth are directly behind the north end zone. Heavy duty fencing restricts access from the street and parking lot. This was the pariah pen. The surprisingly large space was some sort of torii beckening a benign and benevolent state of Zen emission bliss. I could smell reefer. The private security guards in their snazzy black uniforms looked smart and looked and sniffed the other way. A beer hawker made her rounds through the high mass. She was diligent restocking her tray.

Back in 2018 Glenn presented me with a custom Grey Cup badge since pinned to the bulletin board above my writing table. Its main purpose is printed on it: ALWAYS SOCIABLE. It served as a goodwill token for his travelling circus of BC Lions fans upon their arrival in Edmonton. A cheery souvenir freely handed out to fellow visitors, fans of rival teams (God bless the rapidly depleting core of Baltimore Stallions fans and the Atlantic Schooner fantasists). I view professional spectator sports in the way I’ve listened to Foreign Tongues; it’s no Let It Bleed although I remain enamoured by the very idea of the Rolling Stones. I am glad they still exist in some form. I enjoyed my football Saturday afternoon even if the full four quarters and the score (the Elks ran it up, way up, in the second half) didn’t matter. I felt at home in Commonwealth, comfortable in the company of strangers. Mary Riley, Mary Riley.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel.

EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

The Summer of Disbelief

Ann has three weather apps on her iPhone. I have one that functions fairly well on my geriatric iPad Mini whose operating system is beyond upgrading because planned software obsolescence wades in the same muck as disposable consumer durables; some kinda cooked up job. Anyway …. We compare the competing forecasts every morning before selecting the one we’d prefer for the unfurling day. Sometimes the digital world jives with the real world, it just don’t jibe.

There was a time when weather reports were no-nonsense, straightforward stuff. Temperatures were absolutes. Windspeeds were described as gusts. Sunny or cloudy skies. Rain or snow. Step outside and have a look. Make your own call. Be a cat – conditions may vary between your front and back doors. The UV Index became a forecast staple around the time Helios switched ultraviolet rays from a source of Vitamin D to melanoma mode. Sunbeams are now right up there with cigarettes and delicatessen meats. The newer Air Quality Index attempts to quantify why a noontime summer sky may resemble the fantastical jacket art of a used science fiction paperback.

“Rain” is one of my favourite Beatles songs. I’ve been singing that one under my breath these past eleven weeks. Ann has a better handle on the lyrics than I have, she knows the lines about the sunshine. This was the summer Ann and I decided we’d stay put and enjoy the season in our town. Little did we know it would be one for the books. Not one for a Polaroid album of warm memories so much as a compendium of photojournalism detailing flooding and broken trees. Neighbourhood weeping tiles and sump pumps are working overtime. My informal theorem of twelve lawn mows between Victoria Day and Thanksgiving holds, but only because the window of opportunity is the size of an iPhone screen. Mushroom grow in the tall, very green grass and they intrigue me: “High or die?” Best not to know.

The constant rain has been manna for mosquitoes. We have been infested by one or more of their 3600 species. I’ve been dropping poison pucks into our rain barrels and the murky pools of standing water in the lane behind the Crooked 9. This summer’s horde of bloated bombers sport horizontal stripes on their abdomens. Because I’m partially a product of my leisure pursuits, their markings remind me of the Allies’ D-Day aircraft recognition paint, bold black stripes on a white field. Equally confounding is insect absenteeism. I’ve not had to hang a wasp trap from our Ohio buckeye because there haven’t been any buzzing around this year.

Neither Ann nor I are gung-ho handymen. We manage to get chores done in our own time. Burnt-out light bulbs are a fine example. We treat them as psychologists would. Do they really want to change? I don’t procrastinate so much as gird. That process, getting my head around things, can range from hours to weeks. Sustained delay sometimes allows for things to sort themselves out minus any impetus from us. But last weekend we managed to refinish our two backyard patio picnic tables. The job was supposed to be completed before the summer equinox. The lag wasn’t laziness. We were waiting for a dry, bug-free window. Like wisdom, it was a long time coming. Then we just effin’ gave ‘er, eh bud? The refurbished tables were intended as useful surfaces for the weekend barbecues we’d planned to host. We’d anticipated our grandkids playing tee-ball and kicking around a cheap commemorative 2026 World Cup football whilst screeching like Yoko Ono. I pre-girded for that future scenario by purchasing a pouch of No Future rosin gummies. Five to 10 milligrams provide a pleasant fog of benign, almost Zen acceptance of chaos.

Endless rain has put something of a damper on sectors of Alberta’s ever-lengthening wildfire season (Alas, other provinces and territories are bearing more brunt). And the dog days of August never really wallop Edmonton. Mornings dawn as imprecise as the number of wasps I’ve counted so far this summer; single digits give or take one or two. The chill following thunderstorms and thundershowers creates fog heavier than the worst hangover over ever with the precision of a special effects machine. The fog doesn’t descend or roll in. It materializes as suddenly as the puff of smoke from one of Mysterio’s flash-bang grenades in a 1967 Spider-Man cartoon. Tuesday morning Ann and I flicked our Bics at each other on our front porch. Rustled sections of the grey, now camouflaged morning newspaper: “I’m over here, about two feet to your right.” The distance between us had never been an issue before.

Fire and rain. This ain’t James Taylor. This is climate change.

Although I keep a couple of scribblers upstairs, the basement of the Crooked 9 is my preferred place to write. It’s a solitary, immersive space. The décor inspires, spines of books and music on the shelves. Something of a elephants’ graveyard of non-trending paper. Thousands of pages of paper and reams of card stock which must remain dry. When I write and the words don’t come, or when a particular word I’m seeking eludes me, I pace. I have a route. A guaranteed stop is inspecting the collection tank of our portable dehumidifier. This summer its low voltage electric motor has been pushing the envelope of its limited warranty.

I usually place the unit in the doorway of the furnace room which is at the bottom of the stairs. A central location with a smooth concrete floor. When I’m in there fussing with it, I can’t help but take stock of our cache of furnace filters. This summer has been something of an abstract, a convenient noun for an informal grouping of consecutive months. Winter, inevitable, is never so obscure.                 

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel.

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Our Tuesday Night Beer Club Dinner with Billy Budd

Our waitress said, “You three guys look like dads, smart.”

Stats Guy and I exchanged glances. Ted, an actual father of two teenagers, raised his eyes from the live meteororological radar app colouring his phone’s screen. And she looked like a woman no mere boy would dare mess with: black, dead caterpillar eyelashes, an impossibly tight black t-shirt sporting an impossibly distorted 49ers logo and tattoos running up her legs from her ankles into salacious speculation.

One of us said, “Uh …. And how are you?”

The Tuesday Night Beer Club has its usual haunts. Stats Guy calls it “the rotation.” One of us always picks up the entire tab. I lose track of who was last and who’s next, not Stats Guy. We patronize particular preferred places, pubs where we’re not invisible to staff and where sports TVs are muted. A modicum of attention and a lot less noise. Perhaps we’re fussy, grumpy or even persnickety.

Stats Guy is something of a snob. Billy Budd’s is strictly south side slumming. It’s situated at a busy intersection with too many lanes to count. It’s a neighbourhood draw, it’s a low-rise industrial area draw. It anchors a strip mall and its fellow businesses purvey pot and liquor (the rubber stamp store space is vacant). There’s a kitty-corner storage facility, and a hotel-hockey rink complex across the street. I wonder how Herman Melville would score in the endless digital quiz game. There are more televisions than Best Buy and Costco combined. Enough pool tables to support recreational leagues; VLT’s and off-track betting; booths, banquettes and tables. The food eschews pretension and associated prices. A decent Monte Cristo sandwich is a rare flightless bird. And none of that soda cracker-thin pizza crust. Side salads are always crisp and fresh. And the men’s toilets? Given our standard Tuesday night rotation, they are Fairmont hotel lobby quality. Beyond blessed relief, all things considered. I may be somewhat impatient, delicate and pretentious, but I’m no a snob.

This Tuesday we figured we were under the gun. Another colour-coded Old Testament thunderstorm approaching. What’s a cubit, Lord? Ted, our American refugee friend, used live in Indiana, Tornado Alley. He’s said he never imagined those conditions this far north. Climate related PTSD is alive and well. We figured Billy Budd’s was a sensible choice, the nearest place in the rotation to get home from.

How was she? A few irritations, she said. Namely mosquitoes.

“That’s a hundred thousand irritations,” I said.

“How come there are so many?”

Stats Guy said, “We’ve had the wettest summer on record. Mosquitoes lay their eggs in standing water. They can survive for as long as a decade; they’ll hatch when conditions are right.”

I added, “The City doesn’t spray for them as much as it used to.” Recalling one of our more idiotic city councillors who advocated nature taking its course, I added, “Bats and dragonflies are their natural predators.”

“I saw a dragonfly today!” she said.

“Of course,” Stats Guy said, “the bat population has been decimated by white nose syndrome.”

“What’s that?”

Stats Guy continued, “It’s a fungus that disrupts their internal clock. They starve to death.”

“How do you guys know all this?”

“We watch the news,” Stats Guy replied.

“We read newspapers,” I added.

“Like delivered to your door every morning?” she asked.

The three of us occupied a square table for four. Ted was to my left. His head was down, the brim of his Under Armor cap obscuring his eyes. He seemed to be absorbed by the oversize menu which hid the rest of his face. I saw his shoulder twitch, something stifled. Beyond him, through the plate glass window, I watched the sky steadily blacken over The Brick mattress store, the Lush sex shop and Latina Cantina.

I said to our waitress, “You know, if you’ve the time to scroll social media, you’ve probably got time to read or watch something, um, a bit more informative.”

“All right, smart dads, what do you know about the census? Someone came to my door and said I’d be fined $500 if I didn’t fill it out.”

Stats Guy said, “Do you own your home? Are you the head of the household?”

She said, “I’ve owned a house since I was nineteen.”

I said, “Whoa, that’s tremendous. Good on you.”

Stats Guy said, “Then you’re legally obligated to fill out the form. The short form takes five minutes.”

“There’s a long form?”

“Have you never filled out a census?” Stats Guy asked her.

She said she hadn’t. “What’s the point?”

I said, “The government doesn’t ask much from Canadians.” I continued, “Accurate statistics help inform policy. There’s a code on the notice you received. You just go online, it’s easy. You may wish to get on that, save yourself some money.”

“I lost the paper.”

Stats Guy and I said, “Ah.” ("Coke on you! You owe me a Coke!" Except I don’t drink the stuff.)

Our waitress poised her pen over her pad of paper. “So, what will you have?”

Ted said, “I haven’t had a chance to look at the menu. Can you please give us another few minutes?”

The window flashed electric blue like a black and white television with a blown vacuum tube. We heard the thunder crack. One of us said, “Here it comes.” Oh well. Just another delay on a night like tonight. I couldn’t decide between a hot dog with Swiss cheese and sauerkraut or pizza toppings into a baked sesame submarine sandwich loaf. Nothing but killer calories and time to kill.                     

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel.