Strange Things Indeed

Writing the last story about Barbara, I feel myself pushed to write the story about how I met my first wife.  There are only so many truly profound moments in my life, and naturally I want to hold back on them, rather than rush forward and make the rest of this blog equivalent to an afterthought.  But sooner or later I'm going to tell this story, and since I've been thinking about it a lot, I suppose now's the right time.

Barbara and I lasted about four weeks ... and all through 1984 and 1985, romance was lean.  There were dates with girls, but not with women, and by the summer of '85, I'd grown weary.  That summer was strange, and deserves its own story; it ended with the sort of drama that makes teenage television, a drama that I wasn't part of except that I seemed to be the person that both sides turned to in torment.  By September, the dust had settled and amidst all the heartache and misery of others, I found myself quite alone as others licked their wounds.

Wanting a relationship for myself, one that was mature and meaningful, I was at my wits end for how to make that happen ... and that led me down the road to doing something that was surely reckless and a bad, bad idea — except that it turned out exactly as I'd hoped.

I apologise for this.  It sounds now, as I piece it together, that the plan was monstrous.  It was, I should say, an act of desperation ... and here I beg the reader to remember, as I go through this, that apart from the plan itself, I acted with decency.  As shall be seen.  Moreover, please remember, she married me, she loved me, she had a daughter with me and we were together for ten years.

In late '85, there was a movie theatre downtown that showed films after doing their main run at the theatre for $2 a show on Tuesdays only.  The rest of the week it was $5 a film.  Movies ran from 12:30 p.m. to midnight, in 5 different theatres, so there were plenty of choices.  My plan was to be there when the theatre opened, buy tickets for movies all day, then hit on women before the shows started, hoping that I could endear myself to someone in the 20 minutes or so that we might be sitting near each other.

Now, I should explain.  In that era, before a film started, the theatre was brightly lit.  No advertisements played, not even piped music.  People actually believed that a film should be shown to an audience after they'd sat bored, waiting for as much as half an hour, because the "film experience" was a greater contrast upon the senses.  Moreover, it was possible to comfortable find one's way to a seat, or find others already sitting in the theatre, under the full lights.

We need not comment on whether or not this was a better system.

It did mean that, sitting in a bright, quiet theatre, if one wanted to talk to someone else nearby, to strike up a conversation, it was possible to see who one was talking to and hear what they said.  As such, conversations with strangers used to happen all the time in movie theatres; so my plan wasn't quite as odd sounding as it would be if I tried it in a modern movie theatre.

This was Tuesday, October 22nd, still 1985.  I decided I'd go ahead and buy a day's worth of tickets, expecting my plan to fail.  So I bought tickets to see Back to the Future, St. Elmo's Fire, Creator (with Peter O'Toole), Witness (with Harrison Ford) and Teen Wolf.  I went in, casually waited on the first film and casually tried to start a conversation with two women that were sitting together.  It didn't go well.  Kind of a splash of cold water, to be honest.  Left a bitter taste in my mouth.  I let myself watch the Doc and Marty do their thing, not the first time I'd seen the film, and had trouble shaking off my stupidity.

But I'd already paid for the tickets ... and I'd seen St. Elmo's Fire before as well, and decided not to make any further attempts, at least not right away.

The remaining three films were all new to me, so I was good to give them a chance.  I'd sat waiting for the Peter O'Toole movie about fifteen minutes when a girl came in alone, stamped rather roughly along the row behind me and sat down.  I looked, saw she was cute, noted the book bag beside her and said, "You look happy."

She didn't hear me and asked, "What?"

And cool as a cucumber, I said, "I'm sorry.  But if I'm not obnoxious, I never meet anyone."

She grinned at bit; agreed that was probably true, and before she had time to think much about it, I pointed at the seat next to her and said, "Would you mind if I sat there?"

She said "Yes," sounding pretty sure of herself, so I stood up ... and because I didn't want her to give her too much time to think about the situation unfolding, I didn't walk down the aisle away from her and then back up her aisle.  No, I climbed over the seat and sat down next to her.  In those days, the way theatres were built, this wasn't hard.

As I climbed over the seat, I was thinking fast, I've got to convince her that I'm not a neanderthal.  And so, by the time I sat down beside her, knowing I needed to say something smart and strange, I had the line in my head.  At once I asked, "Who's your favourite Renaissance painter?"

Here's the thing about that.  I'd learned, the way to convince a woman that you're not just another run of the mill moron is to catch her off guard, confuse her, make her wonder about the entity she's suddenly faced with.  This isn't done by saying some rote line, however clever; it's done by saying something so completely off the wall that it breaks the woman's initial expectation.

She, as it happened, was a very smart woman.  Without missing a beat, she answered, "Raphael."  Now here's the second part — we've got to be able to talk about the thing we've just brought up, and where it comes to Renaissance art, I can.  I love Renaissance art, have since my early teens.  I knew Raphael quite well and thus, with both of us knowing much about the subject, the conversation was soon moving fast.  I really like Botticelli; it's his self-portrait that's there on my profile, painted by Botticelli.  We talked about Titian and El Greco, and agreed that these don't get as much attention as Michaelangelo ... and we began talking about liking smart people, and agreed we were both there to see Peter O'Toole, whom we both liked a lot, especially since he had a very high forehead which was something the girl liked.  As it happens, I have a high forehead.

We'd started talking about Laurence of Arabia when the lights darkened and the film started.  We settled in to watch the film ... and she was thinking the whole time, "If he puts his arm around me, he's toast!"

And I did no such thing. I just don't do that.  I explained in the previous post.  I'm prepared to wait ... until it's either plain she will, or she won't.  So we sat and watched the film together.  Wasn't great.  Wasn't memorable.  Peter O'Toole was good.  But I never saw the film again.

There was a food court near the theatre in a downtown mall.  If anyone here has seen the third season of Fargo, Ewan McGregor's office looks out on that mall.  She agreed, and only then did I learn that her name was Michelle.  We got some fast food and sat in the dining area sometime about 5:30.  We talked, and talked, and talked.  We talked about everything; her schooling, music, science fiction, books, travel, quite a lot ... but not about family and in those days, I didn't tell people right off that I played D&D.

Three hours went by and we were still sitting there.  The court stayed open until way after the last film at the theatre started, which I think was 11 p.m., so no one bothered us.  I remember I looked at my watch and said mildly, "I guess I've missed my last film."  She asked and learned that I'd ignored the tickets I'd had to Witness and Teen Wolf, and that seemed to mean a lot to her.  I laughed and told it was only four dollars, but it still seemed to mean a lot to her.

Past ten, she explained she had to start home.  I suggested a taxi but she insisted on the bus, so I walked her to the bus.  Then talked as we waited for the bus.  I had a monthly bus pass, which meant I could ride as much as I wanted, so I offered to get on the bus with her and she said yes.

We went up to her apartment in Bankview, where she asked me inside.  She had a one-room flat with a futon couch and a rattan chair, the sort that were like a big throne.  She made tea, which I drank by the bucket in those days, and we settled in, still talking.  Midnight, one a.m., two a.m. when by and we were still talking.  She edged the conversation around to sex somewhere about then and so we talked about sex for awhile ... all the usual stuff for the time, g-spots and the importance of clothing and things that seemed to matter then, which are awfully dull-talk nowadays.  She folded down the futon into a bed and we sat corner to corner, cross-legged, drinking tea and talking about sex.  Three o'clock went by.  I didn't know it, but by this time, Michelle was convinced that I was gay.

But the way I talked about sex didn't seem to add that way in her head, as she would tell me later.  So, at 3:30 a.m., by which time we'd known each other about ten hours, in frustration she asked point blank, "Are you going to make a pass at me?"

And I said, carefully, "Do you want me to make a pass at you?"

She nodded ... and we had sex until 6:30.

Then we laid peacefully in each other's arms for another hour, still talking, until she admitted she had a class and nine o'clock that she couldn't miss.  I gave her my number, got hers, gave her a hug goodbye and then I walked home.  On clouds, all the way.

We saw each other the next night again, and the night after that, and most nights for about three weeks, when we agreed that we did love each other and that we wanted to let things move forward without worrying about them.  And we didn't.  I asked her to marry me in July of 1986 and we were married on November 15 that year.

Strange things indeed.

P.S.,

When the movie The Pick-up Artist came out in 1987, we saw it together.  Watching the trailer on television, when Robert Downey Jr. says, "Has anyone ever told you that you have the face of a Botticelli and the body of a Degas," we laughed ourselves fit to kill.  No need to guess why.

Pick-up

It's May of 1984 and my last day of working as a statistical clerk for Gulf Canada, where I'd worked for two separate contracts over nearly 17 months.  The pay had been $33 an hour in present day money, $15 then.  I'm 20 years old, single, still living at home, not even paying rent there.  A few days before, I'd turned down an offer to go to school for two years at S.A.I.T., a technical school, to gain a certificate to work more thoroughly in the industry ... I didn't like the work, but the money was so good, I stayed as long as I could.

I was celebrating my departure from work with the members of Tau Ceti at a bar called the Penguin Club downtown, long since gone.  I'd gone to hang out at a makeshift practice studio a few blocks away, just to listen.  Can't remember the name of the place; it's a parking lot now.

I'd known Dan, Alice and Barry about five years.  I was present when this was filmed in 1982; Barry, who posted the video on youtube, is the drummer at the back.  Dan and Alice were married.  The venue is a place called 10 Foot Henry's, which had a literal 10 foot tall painting of Henry from the long-forgotten comic strip on wood.  The figure survived, repurposed for a restaurant much later, as shown in the picture ... but the bar, which featured indy punk music, didn't.  It was demolished to make room for the city's commuter train.

If the reader can imagine, while the band sings Bathed in Dark Light, imagine me about 20 feet to the right of the screen, dancing by myself, looking for all the world like Peter Wolf.  I love to dance. The dance floor was huge there, and most of the time the room was only half empty; but no one would dance with me then, as they were all too shy or they thought dancing was stupid.  So I learned to dance alone.   I was described at the time as looking like a man dancing with a knife in his back.  I didn't care then, and I don't care now.  I'll still dance alone if I'm on a dance floor and no one will dance with me.

Anyway, the Penguin club.  We were served by a very strong-featured, wonderfully sharp-tongued server, whom I bantered with for a couple of hours as the band and I chatted and hung out.  When it was time to go, I went along as they headed to where their car was parked, but I only went about a hundred steps before stopping dead in my tracks.  Dan asked what was wrong and I told him, "Gotta strike when the iron's hot."   I turned around and ran back to the restaurant, picked a table and sat down ... and when the server came over, I asked her straight up, when did she get off work.

She said a couple of hours.  I asked, if I wait, want to get a drink?  She agreed, and two hours didn't seem that long.  I said I was single.

Barbara wasn't sure.  She didn't know me, and naturally she began to have doubts.  I had no preconceptions about what might happen; I meant what I said.  I was happy just to get together with a girl for drinks, particularly liking that she was sharp-witted and sarcastic. Once upon a time I could have recalled the back-and-forths we'd had, but it's been too long.

I learned early that if a girl likes a guy, and doesn't feel rushed or threatened, she'll come onto him.  Before meeting Barbara, I'd already become something of a pick-up artist; not because I wanted to sleep with a lot of women, but because I wanted to meet "the one" and I knew that wasn't going to happen without some effort on my part.  So, like I said, having met Barbara, the iron was hot and I struck.

As chance would have it, just as she began to doubt what sort of fellow she'd made a date with, and was seriously planning to back out, a panhandler came in to ask for change.  This part of Calgary was like that then, and yes, the Penguin Club was that kind of bar.  But I liked it, it had character; it reminded me of those drinking holes that turn up in Toulouse-Lautrec paintings, and I considered myself an artist, though a writer of course.

Anyway, I politely suggested that I wouldn't give any money, but if the fellow wanted me to buy him something to eat and drink, I was willing to do that ... so long as he didn't ask me for alcohol.  He took me up on it, I ordered him a soup, and he and I chatted while he slurped it up.  I had time to wait, and he wasn't a bad fellow, just not happy with the world.

It saved me with Barbara, though I didn't know it until later.  In her mind, the date was definitely on again.  I'd aroused her curiosity, not only because I was generous, but because I got on with the fellow.  He bowed out about 8:30, and she got off at 9:00.

We walked a few blocks and found a club on 9th Avenue, near the Gulf Canada building.  I was fixed, an easy drinker, I didn't push her to do anything and we talked pretty steady though the place was too loud.  She asked about me and I asked about her, and after an hour or so, because she was curious, the subject came around to sex.

Now, I know, the internet; guys here don't like to talk about sex ... but for the record, it does happen, and a 20-year-old hetero can't help thinking about it.  By the time I met Barbara, I'd already had an intended for marriage who went her own way.  I was experienced.  Let me stress, though, that it was Barb that brought the subject up, though as I would find out, she had her reasons.

I tell people all the time, getting together with the right person isn't about hiding ourselves, hoping they'll like us.  It's about revealing as much stuff honestly about ourselves as possible ... so that if we say something that resonates with the listener, the road will be paved before us.  That night was a case in point.

I could see I was getting on with Barbara; it was past ten, she was laughing and enjoying herself.  But that didn't mean it was gonna work out, and like I say, I just don't assume that it will.  So when she asked, frankly, if I had any kinks, I told her honestly — as it was certainly true at the time — that I had interests in bondage and discipline.  I didn't elaborate.  I just said it.

Barbara called the bartender, paid for our drinks, grabbed my hand and pulled me straight out onto the street.  She practically ripped my arm off.  Minutes later, we were in cab, going to her place ...

And that's where I'm leaving this account.  Someday, when I'm maybe eighty, I'll tell the rest.  But not today.  Farewell.

A Very Long Day

I apologise for writing an adverse number of travel stories, but to be honest these stories most easily come to mind.  This story took place 49 years ago on March 27th, 1975, so it seems appropos to write about it now.

On the Tuesday before Easter that year, once my father came home from work, we three kids were loaded into the car about four in the afternoon, bound for California.  My sister, Lani, named after a Hawaiian girl my mother had looked after when she worked in a hospital in Weyburn Saskatchewan, was 18 months older than me; my brother, nicknamed Terry, was 5 and a half years older.  As the youngest, I was 11.  The plan was to see Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, Seaworld in San Diego and then drive up to San Francisco.  My father had to be back at work on April 7th.  I'm not going to talk about the whole trip with this post; just the beginning and our first full day on the highway south.

That first leg to Great Falls, about five hours and some, was no pleasant trip.  After flurries all the way to the U.S. border, Interstate 15 through Montana was covered with sheer black ice.  My father had driven on such stuff most of his life, but it took all his concentration to keep our station wagon on the road — while we in the back were made to keep absolutely silent.  I remember only the blowing snow and that all was pitch black except for our headlights, with the road a band of jet below the front hood.  I don't think I fully understood how dangerous a situation we were in, but my father's tense grip on the wheel remains in my mind.

Great Falls itself was utterly without snow at all; we rolled into a Best Western — those were everywhere in those days — and spent an easy night before getting up the next day, Wednesday the 27th.  We were supposed to sleep the next night in Salt Lake City, and since in those days I saw much of the trip with a big red Colliers atlas on my lap, I marked every town as we passed through it.

Our target was Monida Pass, 6,870 ft. above sea level, in the Bitterroot Range; that would take us through the Rockies and down into Idaho.  We passed through Red Rock and it began to snow a little, and when we reached Dell, about 24 miles from the pass, my father inquired at the Sheriff's station there and confirmed that the pass was open.  But as we went south, starting the climb at the little burg of Lima, the snowfall got thicker and the snow deeper.  Sure enough, we encountered a roadblock, only to learn that yes, the pass was open, but only to cars with chains.  We didn't have chains, so we turned around and went down again.

My father couldn't find a place in Lima at the time that sold chains, so it was back to Dell.  He loaded the chains into the back of the car and we started up again towards the pass.  It was still snowing.  When the road was snow-covered, we stopped at the side and with some help from my brother, my dad got the chains on.  It wasn't his first time; growing up in Alberta, working on oil rigs and for a time as a firefighter, he'd encountered most things like this.  He just hadn't thought we'd need chains, as it was late March.  As I write this in 2024, here in Calgary, there's a foot of snow on the ground — but this, too, is unusual.

So, up to the pass, where we found out that the pass had been closed completely, chains or no.  So we turned back again, took the chains off, and got back onto dry roads by the time we reached Dell.

Things weren't going very well; we only had so much time to get to California and hours were slipping away.  There was talk of going around through Wyoming, or maybe getting across into Idaho somewhere by Missoula, but either pretty much meant our losing a whole day.  We went past Red Rock and north all the way to Dillon ... and there my father learned that Bannock Pass to the west was still open.  Bannock is 7,684 ft., in the Beaverhead Mountains, and this sounded uncertain.  And we headed south, then west on 324 for about an hour, and lo and behold, the road over Bannock Pass was dry.

We descended into this beautiful, wide green valley in Idaho, where we picked up Highway 28 at Leadore.  This is the Lemhi river valley, and after all the snow and difficulty we'd had with it, the March emerald grass was a most welcome sight.  My mother remarked on it more or less continuously, while we listened to the local station on our way to Idaho Falls.

Then a news report interrupted our reverie, warning travellers to stay away from Highway 28.  A state-wide notice told us that some dam was in danger of breaking and that it was, in effect, the last place anyone wanted to be.  I never could figure out which dam it was supposed to be; the Lemhi is only 60 miles long and a look along it on google maps shows no such dam.  Who knows what was really meant by that report?  It was repeated periodically, though, and when we looked up the valley, darned if the fluffy clouds on the horizon behind us didn't look like white water.  My mother, more apt to worry about such things, stayed unhinged until we got out onto the flat where we linked up again with Interstate 15, all hunky dory.  We had lost time, though, and reaching Salt Lake City that day was out of the question.  We found a place in Pocatello and sorted ourselves out.  My mother expressed a desire for a sit-down dinner rather than fast food, so we changed our clothes and walked a couple of blocks up the street to a really nice place — velvet table clothes, wineglasses for water, chandeliers, the whole works.

During that walk, as the tale would be told hundreds of times in years ahead, my mother remarked about the day, "All we need now is an earthquake."

The answer is Yes.

On the evening of March 27th, 1975, about 63 miles south of Pocatello on the Idaho-Utah border, a 6.3 earthquake occurred at 8:31 PM mountain daylight time.  We were in the restaurant, waiting for our food.  That would suggest that the earthquake hit us roughly 12 to 18 minutes after my mother made her remark.  Our first hint of it was the jingling of the glass in the restaurant chandeliers.  After that was a most uneasy feeling of the table and glasses moving; I clearly remember reaching out and snatching my glass before it fell over.  And then, queerly, as my mother put it, the building seemed to "get up and dance a bit, before settling down again."  Then it was over.

My mother was roundly accused of causing it, but we were all too tired to press the point — that would come later, when for the next thirty years my mother was firmly told not to say any bad thing that might happen out loud.  As I remember, the restaurant was practically empty; it was nearly nine o'clock on a Wednesday, so that more or less fits with my own restaurant experiences as a long-time cook.  We were served; there was no evidence of damage.  Placidly we returned to our hotel and settled down to sleep, all exhausted.

Drunkeness

I'm not a person who gets drunk.  I enjoy the taste of alcohol, which I've learned over the years is not the reason why most people drink.  When I was young, vodka was my preference, but as I've aged I'm more apt to buy a bottle of rye; specifically, Gibson's silver label.  There is a mild pleasure in being lightly affected by alcohol, but I imbibe infrequently, drinking perhaps just two or three bottles, or about 3 litres a year.

Yes, you read that right.

Once upon a time I had a friend at university, who was not a university student.  His name was Ken and he was the graphic artist for the university newspaper, the Gauntlet, in which I wrote weekly.  Ken had a degree in commercial art from the Alberta School of Art & Design ... and in some strange way, our personalities just meshed.

I would head up to the Gauntlet every once few weeks, even long after I'd finished university, and sit in Ken's office while he worked on business ads and the occasional bit of art for a story.  The atmosphere was so lax that no one cared that we would sit and chat all day, as I studied Ken's movements or asked him for advice for my own page design efforts.  And then, if I had nothing doing that night, we'd go down to "The Den," the campus bar, and buy a pitcher of beer.

Ken usually bought the first one, and then I'd buy the second ... and for reasons I've never been able to explain, one of us would then buy a third.  And sometimes a fourth.  I discussed the phenomenon often.  I did not like to get drunk, it was not my habit to get drunk; but somehow, with Ken, as we'd talk for hours in the bar about Frank Zappa and social engineering, the idiosyncracies of women and art, I'd drink and drink until yes, I would get absolutely smashed.

I'm a very relaxed, high functioning drunk, as it happens.  Ken's bus and mine both came to the same stop, so we'd walk over and go on talking until one of our busses showed up.  Mine at that time was the 73, which was just a 12 minute ride to the little condo village I was living in at the time.  From the Den to my front door, there wasn't a single street that needed crossing and I don't ever remember losing consciousness.  Michelle was always sweet to me when I got home, because I was always a sweet drunk ... and in all, this didn't happen more than about half a dozen times.

One time, however, I was sitting peaceably on the bus home.  I'd guess I was about 29 or 30.  I sat contemplating our long and fruitful discussions when the bus made a sharp jog to the left ... and whoop, it tossed me right off the seat and into the aisle.  I barely remember the short trip, but next thing I knew I was on my ass, on the gravelled bus floor, with others jumping up to ask concernedly if I was all right.  And I began to laugh.

I didn't stop laughing even as arms helped me back onto the seat, and for the rest of the short trip I giggled most of the way home.  I'd never been that drunk before, and I was never remotely that drunk again ... but somehow, I found it funny.

Ken moved on from the Gauntlet in the mid-90s, and after that I'd go over to his house and sit in his living room, surrounded by three giant tanks that housed his turtles.  Sometimes we go for a drink at a nearby bar, but the magic that would make me drink hard with him evaporated.  Things just change.  I lost track of Ken entirely somewhere between 1998 and the year 2000.

The Piano

After Michelle and I were married on November 15th, 1986, at which time we were living in a rowhouse in northwest Calgary, she was able to convince her parents that it was time for them to make good on a promise.  See, like her father, Michelle had pursued two degrees; the second was education, because she'd always wanted to be a teacher like her father.  The first degree was in music composition and theory.  Michelle's major had been French horn, and her minor the flute ... but of course, as she had lived with her music teacher father and had invested herself in music and band since before puberty, she could also play piano.

Her parents had for a long time been in possession of a family heirloom, an upright grand piano made of rosewood, which dates to the mid-19th century.  It still exists, though I don't have it now.

This piano comes to my shoulder, or about Michelle's height of 5 ft. even, and weighs about 700 lbs.  We never did get an exact weight for the instrument, though looking around on the net they can weigh anywhere between 500 to 900 lbs.  So I'm splitting the difference.  It was made in Ontario somewhere around 1850 to 1860 and was afterwards transported by train to Manitoba after 1880, as an object of the Williamson family.  Eventually it came into the possession of Floyd Williamson, Michelle's father, who lived in Calgary before Michelle was born here.  I was also born here, and I can tell you, finding two people in Calgary who were both born here is no small feat.

And so, on a warm day in February 1987, this piano came into our possession.  My initial feelings about it were somewhat indifferent.  I am no musician and have never had any particular gravity for the profession.  I can sing, and I've performed as a singer before an audience more than a dozen times ... back when I had a voice.  But playing a piano was not my forte.

We lived in that rowhouse for not much longer that year, before moving into the apartment in Sunnyside.  The piano came with us, naturally, which was no mean feet because the Sunnyside apartment was a walk-up with no elevator, and we had to get this beast up three half flights of stairs.  Thankfully, it was on wheels and I was just 23 at the time, with 23-year-old friends.  And so, using six-by-twos as ramps, and a six-by-two as a brace, and a certain amount of stupidity (as I'll explain in a minute), we did at last get the piano into our apartment.

We lived in the Sunnyside apartment for, let me see ... 14 months.  In May of 1988, after many months of trying to determine if Michelle was fertile, and then if I was fertile (and this is a story of its own), we learned that Michelle was pregnant and was due the end of September.  The apartment did not allow kids, and though we asked for an exemption we were turned down.  So with the deadline approaching, we found a house on Centre Street (3808, it's still there and it looks like hell).  And moved the piano again.

Unbeknownst to us the first time, and frustratingly unbeknownst even to my father-in-law, who had only ever once had to move the piano, when he was in the army and had stronger friends than I had, pianos can be taken apart like any machine.  Somehow, this had never occurred to any of us.  I noticed the screws just before our leaving Sunnyside, and asked around, getting the answer, "Oh sure they come apart and go back together just fine."

I don't feel entirely bad about this.  In the last 30-something years, anytime I've mentioned that fact to someone, they've been surprised by it.  Anyway, getting the piano out of the apartment went a lot easier the second time — though taking a piano apart still leaves one rather unwieldy piece that weighs about 350 lbs.  Realistically, on any kind of stair, even a landing, it takes four people to handle it.

So we moved onto Centre Street and my daughter was born.  The rent was outlandish, but it had been the only place we could find in a tight market; in fact, all through August that year, we weren't sure we'd find a place.  We made a go of it for just a year, before finally we had to give it up.  The rent was a mere $750 for 1989, back when I was in university and Michelle was working in daycare, being unable to get a teaching job; still, we couldn't swing it.  And so I moved the piano a third time.

We moved into a townhouse next to Queen's Park graveyard; the rent was less, we had three bedrooms and no basement, and we were there for seven years.  All of my daughter's memories of the piano are mostly of that time.  Michelle tried to teach me some, and for a brief time I could play a recognisable version of Silent Night.

Steadily, I began to love that thing.  The marvelous wood, the ivory and ebony keys, the resonant sound, the very fact of the thing enchanted me year by year, until I really began to think of it as "mine" as much as it was Michelle's.

In September 1994, and I'm sorry I'm not going into this at this time, Michelle's multiple sclerosis stopped being in remission and over a period of about three weeks she lost all control over all four limbs.  Over the next three years, caring for her, caring for my daughter, trying to hold onto work, praying that something would change and things would improve, our lives became a raging sea.  It all came to a bitter end, the worst period of my life, between the summer of 1996 and February of 1997.  And on February 24th of '97, I and my father moved the piano for the last time into a storage shed, with all of Michelle's things, before giving the keys to her parents.  I have not seen the piano since.

Storms in the Mid-west

The four days of April 29th through May 2nd of 2002 were some of the hardest that Tamara and I have ever spent together ... and we had been together in person for only four weeks.  The consequences would plague and mess up our lives until just days before Canada shut down as a country on account of covid.  I can't begin to tell the whole story, not now; so much of it is embarrassing, so much would seem to an outside viewer as perhaps the stupidest string of decisions that two people might conceivably make, one destined for disaster.  Yet we are still together, nearly 22 years; in fact, we are just 15 days out from that number.

On the second day, we woke up in a motel in Davenport, Iowa, anxious to drive across the country to seek a friend of Tamara's on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state.  We started out early, it was a fine day, and unquestionably Iowa is a beautiful state to drive through.  We reached and passed through Des Moines on I-80, and thereafter the scenery grew rich and green and flabbergastingly beautiful.  I'd never seen green hills like that in my life, though Tamara could remember such.  It all seemed fairylike until we came to a sign that let us know the Missouri border was 35 miles away.

Somehow, in Des Moines, we'd missed some twist and turn that would keep us on I-80, and had wound up driving south on I-35 instead.  Naturally, we took stock and turned around ... whereupon I made the stupid suggestion that we should drive cross diagonally across Iowa rather than head back to Des Moines and find the right interstate.  I had a map; I'd never been lost before; Iowa's a generally flat country and heck, while I was there, I wanted to see Iowa.  So cross-country we went.

And I got lost.  I'd spent too much time on Alberta roads, which follow rules of north and south, east and west, in grids that make sense.  Backcountry Iowa is nothing like that, as anyone who knows Iowa can say, as they vigorously nod their heads just now.  In some dumpy gas station in fuck knows where, a place not apparently marked on the map in any way that I could find (and I am a fellow who knows maps), Tamara and I had a fight.  A bad fight, an accusation fight, the sort of fight that couples who have been married for three years never want to have again.  Then we picked a random direction and drove until a place that was on the map went by.

The fight evaporated, many apologies were made, we found out way to Council Bluffs, where we took I-29 north to Sioux City, then Sioux Falls.  We bought some food for the car and struck out west on I-90, which we could safely follow all the way to Seattle.

The fight was long forgotten by then.  Tamara was feeling fairly good about still driving, so we weren't sure about stopping in Mitchell or going on.  Then the weather made up our minds for us.

I'm not a hundred percent sure on this; I've looked at maps many times and I've never quite been able to absolutely state where we wound up.  It was six-thirty, there was still sun in the west, but a storm so black that Tamara was talking about tornadoes she'd seen and lived through in Kentucky, where she lived as a girl until she was 11.  I have to admit, I can't say for sure I've ever seen a storm black out the sun like that.  We were following an eighteen-wheeler, about 50 yards ahead of us, when the hail hit.

This was literally like driving through a curtain.  The road was dry, bare, and then it was pure white and an inch-deep in hail.  Tamara's Buick LS immediately began to plane as the tires lost their grip on the road ... but we weren't thinking of that, because the truck in front of us began planing as well.  Swear to gawd, it began to swing 90-degrees to the road, right in front of us, and we thought we were going to have to aim for the space between the axles to save ourselves.  Tamara gave our car some gas, just as the trucker got the truck starting to straighten out, and we came up to his back corner, missing the trailer by about five feet.

As we slowed down, an overpass approached and we agreed, the hail still falling, that "fuck this," we were done for the day.  We turned off and rolled along a very low quality yet somewhat paved road, towards I think a place called "Spencer."  I'm pretty sure it started with an "s"; I was using a road map and identifying where we were by the road number.  If I'm right, it was "431st Ave."   The map of Spencer on google maps looks right for the layout of where we stayed the night, in this very low-brow country motel with six rooms, built of not-thick cinderblock.

We weren't keen on the accommodations.  But we were hungry and tired and the only place to eat was this little roadside cafe across the road.  We showered, changed, and tramped out for what we expected to be half-rate diner food.

I cannot remember what the place was called ... but without question, in 2002, it served the best damned food anywhere in South Dakota.  And not just because we were hungry; I was still working as a cook then.  The food was outrageously well made and served.  The server was warm, friendly, chatty, funny and had a great sense of humour.  We stayed and ate two meals each, and bought a fifth to take on the road with us the next day.  I had a hamburger and then two pieces of fish in a tartar sauce I've never tasted since.  I can't remember what Tamara ate.

We liked the restaurant so much, we went over before leaving to have breakfast there.  Damn.  It was so good.

Well, that was the 30th of April.  Probably do the first two days of May before I build up the courage to talk about the 29th.

Clouds and Rhinos

Thinking back to 1987, when my first wife Michelle and I lived in a neighbourhood called Sunnyside, along the Bow River just across from downtown Calgary.  We used to go on walks along the river, often in the evening.  I remember there was a bench we'd sometimes sit on the faced west, where we could rest and watch the sunset above the river as it flowed by.

One such evening in the summer, Michelle commented on the prettiness of the pink sky, and how sweet it looked above the trees.  Being 23 and terribly wry and cynical, I made some joke about the purplishness of her language being worse that the pink sky, and as was her want — she was a small girl, ten inches shorter than me and just half my weight — she lowered her head and butted me as hard as she could in my shoulder.

I'd felt that many times, so I just laughed and replied, "So it goes.  I married a rhino, and the clouds were pink."

She laughed, and I laughed, and I suggested that would be a good title for an autobiography someday.  The moment stayed in my head, though ... and some two years later, after our daughter was born, I was in some toy store looking for stuffed animals when I found a pink rhinocerous.  I bought it immediately and gave it to Michelle as a present.  She loved it, and it sat on her bedside table for years.  I'm sorry to say I don't know where it is today.

Michelle passed away quite some time ago ... but our daughter today has a 3-year-old grandson, who takes great delight in slamming his head at every victim within reach.  It just a coincidence, obviously, but of course I can't forget a small, ordinary set of events that took place a very, very long time ago.

The Moment that Tells the World Makes No Sense

During Easter of 1979, my parents took my sister and me on a 10-day vacation to Vancouver and Vancouver Island, the only actual time I've been to the latter.  They wanted to get as early a head start on the trip as possible, so we left Thursday afternoon before Good Friday.  A quick search on google informs me that was the 12th of April.

I was in junior high, with my last class letting out at 2:20 in the afternoon.  I remember it was Mr. Hodgekins science class.  My parents had the car packed and waiting outside the school, and knowing they were there I had to hurry.  My sister was in grade 10 of high school, so we had to stop over there to pick her up ten minutes later, and then we were off and out of town.

We drove for about six and a half hours and stayed the night in Revelstoke.  This all seems kind of rushed and irrelevant, but this is all a set-up for the point of this story.  The next day, we drove over to Kamloops and then down the old Lytton highway (the Coquihalla turnpike wouldn't be built for another seven years), stopping at Hell's Canyon on the Fraser River for a couple of hours.  We had time to reach Vancouver in the late afternoon, just at the tail-end of rush hour.

My father got lost as we came into Port Coquitlam, so that we wound up wandering back and forth across the Fraser river I think four times.  He was trying to get to North Vancouver, but he hadn't been in Vancouver for some 20 years and nothing was where he remembered it.  I remember we finally got across the bridge into North Vancouver from Burnaby Heights; I can still visualise the way the Stanley Park peninsula and the bay looked.

We were all pretty tired.  The car needed gas and we found a gas station ... but strange as it may sound, this particular gas station didn't have any drinks or candy bars, so I told my mom that I was going to run across the street where I could see a hole-in-the-wall grocery.  I took off like a bolt, caught the lights and cut through the door.  Seems I was always full of energy like that.

It was a very, very old shop, with wooden boards on the floor, a very old dusty smell and very narrow aisles.  And as I came in, paying at the counter, was my science teacher Mr. Hodgekins.  I swear.

He was as gobsmacked as I was.  I said hello to him, he answered hello back ... and that was our whole conversation.  He grabbed his purchase off the counter and seemed to rush out.  Like he was frightened or something.

Coincidences are freaky.

The Vegetable Plot Mystery

Tamara and I tried our hand at community gardening about ten years ago, when the city established a group of 24 plots in the adjacent park.  It was at the end of our street and we could see the garden being made from our 3rd floor balcony.  Upon learning a plot would only be $40, we bought in.  Without a car, however, or much money to spare, we didn't go the extra step of buying mulch and fertiliser.  It was a lark, anyway — our goal was to get our fingers dirty and join for the feel of the experience.

Wasn't much of a feel.  Though all the lots were taken, we hardly saw a soul there; when we did, they weren't particularly friendly.  We were living essentially on the edge of the city core, in a neighbourhood called Bankview.  I'd once lived in the next neighbourhood over, in the core, where the flat streets were pestered by drunks wandering home from the middle of Spring to nearly Halloween.  I used to remark that Bankview was quieter because the drunks couldn't climb the hill, which was true.  Apart from the drunks, though, the neighbourhood still had that grumbling white caucasian habit of wanting to be all grumpy together.

The city hadn't provided running water, so to water the plants we had to carry milk jugs of water, four litres each, over to the park.  Our apartment was a walk-up, so that meant five half-flights of stairs and then a journey of about 120 yards, for not much effect from one trip.  We hoped for rain which in Alberta never comes often enough, and lots of times we'd come to water the plot and find it bone dry.

Still, the onions, cabbages, carrots and especially the peas we planted were doing well by the end of August.  The peas were going crazy, having climbed all over the little metal trellises I'd bought for them, and we looked forward to a good fresh crop from the lot.

Unfortunately, coming home from work just before September began, and passing by the plot, I found that every carrot had been pulled up and every pea plucked.  I'd gotten some benefit from the onions, as I'd go over and cut off some of the greens that flourished above ground — but unfortunately, the bulbs weren't very big and we didn't get much from those.  The cabbages never did get enough water to make much headway, and we'd long given up on those.  It was really the peas we wanted, though.  Pity about that.

We didn't buy into the plot again.  There was no way of telling who in the neighbourhood robbed us; I console myself by thinking they were probably very hungry, and maybe the peas helped them get through the winter.  Though they wouldn't have lasted past the end of September.  They could have left a few for us, but nary a one.

I just don't find this kind of charity all that rewarding.

Leaving Home

My first roommate after leaving home was my best friend, a fellow seven years older than me that I'd met ... well, as it happens, I don't remember how we met.  It must have been some casual labour job that I did one summer during high school.

Mike and I would meet for dinner at places like My Marvin's or Sam's Delicafe downtown, which specialised in smoked salmon, blintzes, felafel and cabbage rolls ... but I'll talk about that later.  After three hours of talk and tea, we'd retire to his apartment and go on talking until one or two in the morning.  By the time I was 17 years old and in my last year of school, on Fridays and Saturdays I had no official curfew.  Mike would drive me home in his light blue 1977 Trans Am, and we'd sit for another hour in front of my parent's house ("home" at that time, but not now).  Then I'd get out, pat the back fin of his car twice as I walked around and he'd drive off.

We talked about the usual things, politics and art and such, especially literature and writing.  I'll go into all that another time; here I just want to note that like any 18 y.o. living at home, I'd complain about my parents and Mike would be sympathetic.  He lived in a two-bedroom basement apartment that was rented to him by his mother, who lived on the main floor of the house upstairs.  So Mike had reason to empathise.

Quite often he'd say that any time I needed to leave on a moment's notice, I could come and stay with him.  I never told my parents about this; they barely knew that Mike existed, as I never spoke about him to them ... but I found his offer comforting.  I used to tell him that it couldn't be that hard to move away from home, since just about everyone does it.  Still, I wasn't in a hurry to move out.  When high school ended, I'd gotten a good job and I was enjoying the money; my parents were well-fixed and didn't charge me rent; I had a basement room and I could live in solitude most of the time.

Still, the inevitable fight happened (I'll tell that another time) and I packed two suitcases and marched out without notice.  I showed up at Mike's and like a good guy, he kept his word.

I lasted six weeks.  We remained friends; in fact, he would later be my Best Man.  But he was next to impossible to live with.

His apartment was furnished, so everything was of course his, from the dishes to the bed I slept in.  The television was his, the sofa was his, the chairs were his, the books on the shelves were his.  My "room" was a closet, which was fine as my mindset was firmly Bohemian at the time; I could live anywhere that Larry Darrell of the Razor's Edge could live.  Mike freely shared his things; he wasn't bossy or selfish or resistant to my presence.  But he was "thrifty" on an order I'd never experienced.

He didn't like the way I did the dishes, as in his opinion, squirting soap into a sink full of water and then washing dishes in it wasted soap.  He liked to brush the tip of his finger on the top of a soap bottle and use that tiny dab for each dish.  He'd wet each dish in continually slow-running water (which he didn't pay for), rub into it the dab of soap, scrub with a wet dishrag and then rinse, putting it in the rack.  True enough, it works.  Now and then, I've done dishes that way since.  But it was weird to me.

Electricity, which he did pay for, was a problem.  I'd be watching television by myself and get up during a commercial, to make a sandwich or pee, and when I got back, the television would be off, the lights would be off and I'd be facing a black room.  If I protested, he'd argue that if I wasn't using the power in that room, no matter how long I was gone, I ought to turn it off.

When I left the apartment, a basement you'll remember, I used to sit on the steps leading up to the outside and put my shoes on.  One day Mike got mad at me for sitting on his sofa because, he said, my pants were still dirty from the stairs.  I found this one hard to understand.  Basically, he was saying, I'd sit on the steps, which were dirty from being walked on with street shoes, then I'd go out and spend my day doing things, then I'd come back to the apartment — with my pants still dirty — and sit on his sofa.  I remember him going into a sincere argument that furniture, like anything else, was a temporal waste of money.  Nevermind that the sofa was paid for.  What mattered was how long the sofa would last before it had to be thrown out, requiring the purchase of another sofa.  The longer something lasted — and this obviously applied to anything in the house — the more money was saved.

Well, that was enough for me.  I told him that I didn't care how much destruction I caused to furniture by sitting on it, as I considered that to be the purpose of furniture.  I promised I'd find another place and I did, within 36 hours.  And that is a story for another day.

The Edmonton to Regina Trip

When my grandmother passed away, my father's mother, my elder brother had already departed the house ... but my sister and I accompanied our parents from Calgary to Edmonton, where she'd lived.  As Ruth Ross, her maiden name, had chosen not to leave a will, my father found himself on the verge of a vicious backstabbing fight over a fairly valuable collection of housewares and artworks, including books, china and high-end furniture.  The memory of the ordeal would remain with my father for the rest of his life, more than forty years ... and affect his approach to his own will, as both my father and mother remained certain that their children would go at their legacy like jackals as well.

To spare my 13-y.o. sister and me, aged a year younger, my father chanced upon two cousins of his, a married couple, who happened to be on their way to Regina in Saskatchewan, when my mother's parents lived.  Sis and I were handed over to them, though they were total strangers to us; I don't even remember their names, and in years after I'd never see them again.

The net tells me now that it's an 8-hour drive between Edmonton and Regina, but my memory says it took much longer than that.  We did it in a day, with the couple driving a large four-door "land-yacht," as we used to call big cars during the 1970s.  My guess would be that it was a Ford LTD.  This trip took place in 1977; the car didn't have air conditioning, as hardly any cars did at the time, especially in Canada.

Soon after we left, as we approached the Saskatchewan border, the temperature began to climb.  It was summer; I think the first week of August.  As the temperature topped 100º F, the usual practice of leaving the car's windows open began to fail as a relief.  By the time we'd reached Battleford, the thermometer was hitting 105º F.  I vaguely remember our stopping to let the radiator cool down — but it was no relief to get out of the car.  This is also a time when gas stations equally lacked air conditioning, and when none of the little towns along the way offered much in the way of services to travellers.

How I remember sitting in the car, the windows closed, sweating without my shirt on.  The baking heat was so brutal, we couldn't open the windows; the rush of hot air was instantly suffocating, so that even the slightest cracking of a window was impractical.  The gas odour of the vehicle added to the misery.  No one want to talk or move, as we dragged ourselves over the flattest and hottest part of Saskatchewan.

We reached a little town called "Craik," just 60 miles from our destination.  It must have been late afternoon, though I don't remember for sure.  We stopped in Craik, which had about 400 people; apparently, it still does.  There was a little grocery store, the kind of dingy, freon-smelling place that every little town has.

The power had died in the 110º heat and the only drinks we could buy were very warm.  I remember trying to force down a grape soda which did nothing to alleviate my discomfort ... I suppose my sister and I were a terrible burden that day on a couple that knew us as little as we knew them.  When we finally arrived at my grandparents house, of course this couple, part of my dad's family, had no relation at all to my mother's family.  I'm probably mistaken, but it seems we were more or less pushed out, though of course our luggage had to be unloaded, and polite greetings made.

I have no memory of what happened after, except that we stayed two weeks with my grandparents before our parents came to collect us.