The Vinyl Café Notebooks

by Stuart McLean

  “I hadn’t heard of them,” he said.

  And then, he says, he felt at peace. That’s when he dropped over the edge of Niagara Falls.

  He told me when he went over, he felt as if he were floating, floating on a cloud of mist. He said it felt like he was suspended in the mist.

  “There was no sensation of falling,” he said. “My stomach didn’t jump into my throat. And there was no smack when I hit the water, no rocks, no pain. There was nothing but mist.”

  The next thing he remembers is coming out of the mist and seeing the Maid of the Mist tour boat.

  The captain that day was Clifford Keech.

  One of Captain Keech’s deck hands thought he spotted a child in a life jacket. And though they couldn’t tell if the child was alive, Captain Keech decided to take a risk. He steered the Maid of the Mist off course. Roger was now in the current again—so Keech had to anticipate where the rough water was going to take him so that he could be there at the same time.

  And he did. They threw a life ring to Roger, but he missed it. So they tried again.

  Roger was tired and bruised. He missed it again.

  On the third throw it landed right in front of the boy and Roger flopped his arms around it. They towed him up and onto the Maid of the Mist.

  Roger remembers the nurse who looked after him at the Niagara Falls hospital. He even remembers her name, Eleanor Weaver. She brought him chocolate milk, he said. It was Eleanor who told Roger that he had gone over Niagara Falls.

  And yes, he’s been back to the falls. A few weeks after the accident Roger went out on the Maid of the Mist with Captain Keech. He said it was the first time he realized the magnitude of what had happened to him. He said he was terrified. A few months later his family went to Atlantic City. It was Roger’s first time on an airplane. The pilot knew Roger was on board so, as a special treat, he flew the plane over Niagara Falls. Roger said he became hysterical. “I was afraid the plane would fall. I was afraid I’d have to do the whole thing over again.”

  Roger’s family left Niagara a year after the accident. He didn’t return to the falls again for ten years, until he was a freshman in college. He came back with his father. He says as an adult the falls didn’t seem as big as they did when he was a child--not quite the monster he’d seen years before.

  After college, and marriage, and kids, Roger ended up in Farmington Hills, Michigan. He and his family used to spend their holidays touring the Great Lakes on their forty-two-foot yacht. He says he didn’t often think about that Saturday afternoon, so many years ago. But sometimes, when he was standing on his boat and looking down at the water of Lake Huron, he would get a pang in his stomach, knowing that the water he was floating on would flow from Huron into the St. Clair River, and from there into Lake St. Clair. And from Lake St. Clair into Lake Erie and then eventually, inevitably, become part of the violent rapids of the Niagara River on its way to and over the falls.

  25 April 2004

  MY HELLO PROBLEM

  Over the years, it has been my experience that other people, my friends, my colleagues, members of my immediate family, just about everyone actually, all seem to have more understanding of how I work than I do. They are certainly all quite willing to tell me things about me, and explain various behaviours of mine, at the drop of a hat. And 99 percent of the time, if I am going to be honest about this, the things they say are insightful. They are able to explain, sum up and capture me in a way that I could never do.

  Even complete strangers seem to know me better than I do. Just the other day, for instance, I was biking to work when I came upon a yellow light, and in a moment of intemperance, instead of slowing down, I sped up. A guy standing on the sidewalk, a complete stranger who had never met me, not once in my life, yelled out, “You idiot!” As I peeled through the intersection, and I thought about it, I had to admit it, he got that right.

  It is as if there is a Stuart Instruction Manual out there and everyone has read it except for me. I don’t even know where to get my hands on one.

  I don’t want to imply that I am a complete moron. I do know certain things about myself. I know, for instance, that if I am feeling tired or cranky, that can often mean that I am actually hungry and if I have something to eat, I will find out that I was not tired and cranky at all, just hungry. So I do have some insight, as they say, but most of what I seem to know about myself hovers in my brain stem, the part of the reptilian me, the place that looks after breathing and digestion. I am fairly good about that stuff, but the rest of it is pretty much a mystery. And I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that I do, from time to time, wish it were otherwise.

  I have heard that in psychotherapy one can experience moments of blinding insight. I have wondered what that would be like and, if I started psychotherapy myself, if I would be smart enough to have a blinding moment.

  And I tell you this because just the other day I had just such a moment. A moment of startling revelation, a moment of personal clarity and self-understanding that was so stunning to me that I am still trying to process it.

  I have come to call it my Hello Problem.

  I became aware of it at the gym.

  This is what happened.

  I arrived at the gym and was walking toward the Men’s Locker Room when Erica, who works at the gym, passed me in the hallway, coming this way as I was going that. As we passed, Erica smiled and said, “Hello, Stuart. How are you?”

  Now, I happen to like Erica. Erica manages the gym, and she is a smart, funny lady. She has been helpful to me in the past and is always pleasant. But she was clearly going somewhere. And I knew I wasn’t expected to stop and have a conversation with her, so I kept walking past her and as I passed I smiled. Well, I didn’t just smile, I beamed. I was a picture of delight. I smiled and beamed, and I said, “Hi, Erica. How are you?” and I took about three more steps and then ... here it comes, this is the moment of insight.

  I stopped dead in my tracks, and I turned and I said, “Erica?” She was almost out of sight.

  “Erica?” I said. And she stopped, turned and said, “Yes?”

  “Erica,” I said, dreading the answer. “Did I just say hi to you?”

  And to my horror she shook her head and said, “No, you didn’t say anything.”

  And I realized in that instant that this was not a random moment. I realized right there and then that I do this all the time.

  “Erica,” I said, digging deeper, going for it. “You just said hello to me.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Erica,” I said. “Are you sure I didn’t say hello back?”

  I already knew the answer. But I had to hear it. Because inside of me I had been the puppy dog of hello. I was sunshine and lollipops and little lambsy-diveys. Inside I smiled at Erica and said all sorts of nice things. Outside, well, the truth was otherwise. The truth was standing in front of me.

  “You didn’t say a thing,” said Erica.

  I was into it now. I went for gold. “What did that make you think?” I asked.

  Erica paused and looked away. I asked again. “Erica,” I said. “What did you think when I ignored you like that?”

  Erica said, “Well, I thought you must have a lot on your mind.”

  That’s what she said, but I know what she was thinking. She was thinking the same thing as that guy back at the yellow light. She was thinking, What an idiot!

  “Erica,” I said. “Does this happen often?”

  I didn’t have to ask. This was, after all, my moment of insight. It was all as clear as day. Suddenly I knew what went on. People smile and say hi to me all the time, and as far as they see, I respond like this. I close my mouth, frown and nod my head, the way the prime minister might nod as he passes a member of his security detail whose face he recognizes but whose name he doesn’t know. Although not inside of me, understand. Inside of me there is effusiveness.

  For some reason there is a malfunction, some disconnect, between my imaginary hello and, well,
my actual hello.

  Don’t ask me why. I am not privy to that part yet. I dwell in the brain stem. Just know this: if you have ever passed me in the hall and I appeared to ignore you, it actually wasn’t like that at all, and I apologize if it seemed that way.

  I am not, as Erica so generously attempted to claim on my behalf, a particularly busy guy, and I certainly don’t have a lot on my mind. The truth is that the guy at the yellow light got it right. I am, it turns out, an idiot.

  4 October 2009

  SUMMER JOBS REDUX

  The summer I was seventeen I got a job at a YMCA day camp. I had had other jobs before, but this was my first real one. I don’t know what made it feel more real than the others. But there you go.

  The highlight of that summer was not the work, though it was work related. It came at the end of every second week, when the kids were sent home early, and we were paid, cash money, in a little brown envelope. My pal Alex Cunningham and I would take our envelopes, and our teenage selves, down the street to Murray’s Family Restaurant. We would order the same lunch every time: vanilla shakes and the Hamburger Royale, which came with cheese and fries and all the fixings. And when the hamburgers came, the two of us would sit there staring at our plates like two big-time operators.

  There is nothing quite like the feeling of spending money you have earned yourself.

  That was the start of it for me, that summer at the Y.

  The next summer, my father got me a job in the small village of Saint-Tite, Quebec. I had failed grade eleven French for the second year running. I think he decided plucking me from my anglo Montreal neighbourhood and dropping me into the heart of French Quebec would do me good. Or, more to the point, perhaps, serve me right. It was a construction job, working on a road crew who were paving the highway that ran alongside the St. Maurice River between Saint-Roch-de-Mékinac and Saint-Jean-des-Piles. When I arrived I realized, to my horror, that I was the only English-speaking person for miles. I spent an incredibly lonely couple of months in Saint-Tite.

  On the weekends, when the French college boys I was living with went home to Quebec, I used to hitchhike some twenty kilometres to Grand-Mere, which was the closest place you could buy an English newspaper. One Saturday afternoon when I had picked up my Montreal Gazette, I took the paper into a hotel bar and sat down at a table smack in the middle of the room. It was livelier in there than you would expect for a Saturday afternoon, which I put down to the famous French joie de vivre. Trying to get into the spirit, I sprawled my feet up on the extra chair at my table, flung open my newspaper and started to read. When I spotted a waiter, I waved him over and asked for a beer. He gave me one off his tray but wouldn’t take my money. I guess you pay when you’re finished, I thought. And I kept reading. It was some time later, much too much later, and only when I saw the bride dance by my table, in her bridal gown, that I realized what was going on.

  I had crashed a wedding, and everyone there was either too polite, or too horrified, to say anything.

  One Friday, when I just had to get home to see my friends, I snuck away from work early so I could hitchhike to Trois- Rivières in time to catch the Friday train to Montreal. I didn’t tell my foreman I was leaving early because I was afraid he wouldn’t let me go. I left without telling anyone. When he realized I was missing, and no one could explain where or why, the foreman decided I had stumbled into the St. Maurice River and drowned. He had the river dragged and spent the rest of the weekend in horror. When I returned on Monday, he demoted me to flagboy, a hateful and tedious job.

  I lasted until the middle of August. Once again I snuck away—this time in the middle of the night. I waited until my roommates were asleep and slipped out quietly. This time, I did leave a note. I have to go home and write a French sup, I wrote to the French college boys I was rooming with, au revoir.

  I slept on a bench at the small station until the train came. It was the middle of the night. The station master signalled he wanted the train to stop by placing a red lantern at the far end of the platform. I remember the great sense of liberation I felt as the sun came up over the St. Lawrence River and I sat in the rattling dining car drinking my first-ever cup of coffee.

  The few weeks had done the job. I passed my sup and got into Sir George Williams University by the skin of my teeth, and even though I have never mastered the French language the way I would have liked, that summer in Saint-Tite left me with enough fluency, and more importantly confidence, to muddle through whenever I have the opportunity. I feel grateful for those few weeks, although guilty about the cultural devastation I undoubtedly left in my wake.

  The next summer, the summer of 1967, was Canada’s centennial, and the summer the World’s Fair, Expo 67, was mounted in Montreal. I had just finished my first year in university. As spring approached, all my new university friends were busy lining up jobs at the fair.

  The theme was Man and His World, and my pal Nick decided to take that slogan as a personal challenge. Nick began that summer with a pledge to swing a date with a woman from each of the sixty-two participating countries. Nick, who was nothing if not well organized when it came to organizing dates, sealed the deal when he triumphantly spent the fair’s final night with a flight attendant from Czechoslovakia.

  While my friends spent that summer embracing the world in Montreal, I (Qu’elle imbécile!) decided that was the summer to head west. I took the train across the country and got myself a construction job in Calgary.

  On weekends I would hitchhike to Banff where, instead of Czechoslovakian air hostesses, I spent my nights sidestepping the coyotes in the bison paddock on the edge of town. I had somehow come to the conclusion that the fence around the paddock would keep me safe from the bears. I cannot explain what made me think that camping in what amounted to a cage full of bison would be any safer than a forest full of bears, except to say that I was young and probably shouldn’t have lived to be this old. Certainly not if Darwin was right about anything.

  I saw a little of Expo when I got home at the end of August, although not nearly as much of the fair, or the world, as my pal Nick.

  I had a number of other summer jobs over those years. I worked in a bar, as a busboy, which I left shortly after dropping a tray of drinks over a table of regular customers. In a factory assembling ski poles. And in a paint plant stacking boxes of paint onto pallets.

  But my favourite summer job was my last, which was, in a pleasing sort of symmetry, working once again for the YMCA, where it all began for me.

  In the summer of 1969, I got a job at Kamp Kanawana on the shores of Lake Kanawana in the Laurentian Mountains.

  Kanawana is where I found my sea legs, where I was able to leave the shaky and uncertain turbulence of my adolescence behind and find the road, or, more to the point, find the wherewithal to find the road, that led from adolescence to adulthood.

  I was a wholly unsuccessful adolescent—a failure on the playing field and in the classroom.

  I was the boy who couldn’t throw the ball as well as all the other boys. Who was afraid, or unable, to study. And once you remove both academics and athletics from a boy’s curriculum vitae, there is not a whole lot left to work with.

  I arrived at camp with a backpack full of fears. But I found myself in a place where I felt, for the first time ever, that I fit in and had something to contribute to the greater good. That gave me confidence, and confidence is very important to the growth and development of a young person.

  Kamp was my safe place.

  And it is only because I found myself there, or found my best self there, that I was eventually able to find, and then follow, my heart’s desire, CBC Radio.

  I couldn’t have done that, couldn’t have tramped off into the unknown, if I hadn’t had those summers at camp and, no doubt, all those other summer jobs.

  I learned something at all of them.

  I write about a family; what preoccupies me as a writer, however, is not the family I write about—Dave, Morley, Stephanie and Sam—
but the world in which they live. And I don’t mean the geopolitical world, or even the nation-state. I mean the world of the family, the neighbourhood—the safe places that foster a sense of belonging, and a sense of place, that are so enormously important to the development and preservation of healthy societies and healthy individuals.

  It turns out, if you look at my work carefully, I am still working on the things that I was taught during those summers.

  You wouldn’t expect that a summer camp, or a construction job, or a few weeks in a bar or a paint factory would amount to much, but these things add up. And what they add up to is always bigger than you could possibly imagine.

  So as another summer takes us in its warm embrace, here’s to all the kids and all their summer jobs. Here’s to the summer hotels and the summer camps, here’s to the lifeguards and the counsellors, here’s to the chambermaids and the tour guides, and to the gardeners’ helpers and the landscapers.

  Here’s to the landscape of summer work.

  Here’s to waiters and waitresses. To beginnings and endings, to hellos and goodbyes. To everyone heading off into the wild blue yonder, I pray that you will learn in your summer work, as I did in mine, that work is prayer, that God is in the details and that it is a good life with much happiness to be had if you can find it. I hope, too, that you discover that a summer job, like a summer love, can be much more than you ever imagined.

  17 May 2009

  RUG VERSUS CHAIR

  I am embroiled in a war with the rug in the room where I work. Or, rather, the wheels on my office chair and the rug are fighting, and I am sitting above them, like a Roman plebe, high up in the Colosseum as they haul away a bloodied gladiator, his bayonet and his spirit abandoned in the sand, the portal doors rise, and out comes ... the rug and chair.