HUMAN WRECKAGE

A Shopping Trip with a (Wait for It) Punchline

All I wanted for Christmas last December was Bob Dylan’s latest book The Philosophy of Modern Song. And because Ann knows me well, she chose Prisoners of the Castle by Ben Macintyre for me too. Ann conducted that particular shopping expedition in Audreys Books downtown on Jasper Avenue. And while she was in the store she spotted a fine gift for our grandchildren, a laminated wall map of the world.

Audreys is Edmonton’s premier independent bookseller. I was delighted to discover it when I first arrived in town 33 years ago. I’ve supported Audreys ever since; I make a concerted effort to avoid purchasing books from Amazon or Canada’s national retail chain Indigo which seems to be concentrating more on housewares these days. Audreys has supported me as well. I’ve held two successful book launches on its premises and it stocks my two most recent titles.

The wall map was a hit, colourful and educational. Ann’s son Harry hung it downstairs in his basement in the kids’ playroom. He later mentioned, a tad too casually, I thought, that similar maps of Canada and the solar system would make fine additions to the wall décor. Ann and I took the hint.

Colditz Castle was the fortress in which the Wehrmacht remanded its most difficult POWs, troublemakers and escape artists, nearly all of whom were commissioned officers. Macintyre’s compellingly readable book is an objective history and a very human story. The most sympathetic protagonist is a former schoolteacher and an Anglophile, a German officer. I said to Ann about the text, “You may not care about this stuff, but if you start reading you won’t be able to stop.” One of the prisoners who passed through Colditz was David Stirling, founder of Britain’s legendary Special Air Service (SAS). While reading Prisoners of the Castle I was thrilled to learn that Macintyre had earlier written a book about the SAS, Rogue Heroes.

The tide of the Second World War on land began its slow turn in the Western Desert. Blitzkrieg (lightning war) tactics required passable roads (the plural is crucial) for armour and mechanized infantry, and clearly demarcated front lines. Conditions in the North African theatre broke Germany’s audacious European warfare model, they shifted like the temperatures between day and night and the sandy terrain (Russia’s botched February 2022 invasion of Ukraine presents a couple of pertinent parallels: a single decent highway and spring-like weather rendering the surrounding terrain so muddy as to be near impassable). The British 8th Army augmented by Commonwealth troops, mainly Anzac, prevented Afrika Korps General Irwin Rommel from reaching the Suez and occupying Egypt. Securing Africa’s Mediterranean coast after the disasters of Dunkirk and Norway provided the Allies a launching pad for the successful invasions of Sicily and Italy.

This dusty theatre of operations looked very neato to a boy in grade one watching The Rat Patrol on a second-hand portable television in his basement in the late 60s. Sand dunes! Jeeps with mounted heavy machine guns! Half-tracks and Tiger tanks! Bullet-riddled Nazis falling from great heights, roofs and watchtowers! My father, a veteran, sometimes sat with me to watch Sergeant Troy and his commandos wreak their havoc. During commercial breaks he’d patiently explain that the American network television show was historically, laughably and painfully, inaccurate. He’d describe the unconventional tactics of the British Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and the SAS; their exploits being the basis of The Rat Patrol’s cartoony take on desert warfare. We watched movies broadcast on the local television stations too: The Desert Rats starring Richard Burton and James Mason as Rommel (Baby, won’t you take me back: Ann and I screened it last Saturday night); The Desert Fox (Mason as Rommel again); Raid on Rommel (Burton again); and Tobruk - sort of a Hollywood big budget Rat Patrol featuring co-stars Rock Hudson and George Peppard.

These disparate desires combined to bring Ann and me back to Audreys last week: maps and Macintyre. I made certain to greet the gentleman who will likely facilitate my next book launch by name, although God knows where he or I may be two years hence (Of Course You Did has done well by my standards and I now regret not staging a formal launch, but the lingering affects of the pandemic were easy camouflage for my utter lack of confidence). I plucked the lone copy of Rogue Heroes from the military history shelf. While Ann browsed the basement bargain books I went in search of myself: The Garage Sailor was displayed cover out and Of Course You Did’s slim, pale blue spine stood out enough beside it to catch a reader’s eye. On the other hand, they were still in stock. No sales.

The maps were located on the main floor in the rear of the store, that arcane corner where all the shelf signs include the “studies.” They were rolled and stowed in a red wire rack. A header card displayed the assortment of available subjects in miniature. Audreys had the two we were seeking, Canada and the solar system. While Ann reviewed their specs, I noticed a National Geographic map of the universe. Now, that gave me pause. What was its scale? Kurt Vonnegut: “The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.” How accurate and up to date could it be? I know that when I look at the sun I’m seeing it as it was a little less than nine minutes ago; everything is relative to the speed of light. And I thought of those Old World maps showing the edge of the known world and monsters beyond.

The gentleman at the till was older, although not as old as Ann and me. A new employee, Audreys is the kind of place where customers will notice turnover because there’s hardly any. He said to us, “These are the first maps I’ve had to ring up.” Evidently scanning a bar code adhered to a convex surface is fussy business and so he had time to note their subjects.

I said, “You have a map of the universe back there too.”

He said, “Really?”

I said, “Yeah. And I need to know something.”

“What’s that,” he asked me, “the price?”

“No! How’d you fit it in the store?”  

 meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source conspicuous consumption since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format from various retailers. Visit Audreys at www.audreys.ca.