| The winds of fortune blow. This day they've huffed me to the small bush town of Cumberland House, Saskatchewan. The oldest settlement in the province, it was founded by the Hudson Bay Company's Samuel Hearne in 1774 as the company's first inland trading post. (Check out Ken McGoogan's delightful Ancient Mariner for the full story.)
I've spent two great days documenting the efforts of local fishermen in catching and tagging sturgeon on the Saskatchewan River. Now that I'm finished the job, I sit near the Manitoba border with the better part of two provinces between me and home. My backside is already pulverized from the drive here.
Making the best of the situation, I'm taking on a new assignment. As the cliché goes, everyone knows everyone's biz in small towns. From here to Hanna, Alberta, I intend to join the fun.
Miles to the south, where the bush turns to wheat stubble, I gas up in the town of Carrot River. A young man pulls up, towing a boat behind his truck. Another man is exiting the gas station. Grinning, he calls out to the boat guy, "You behavin'?"
"What's ’at?"
"You behavin'?"
"What?"
"I say, you behavin'?"
The boat guy comes closer. "What's ’at?"
"You behavin'?"
"Oh," he finally replies. "No."
"That's what I thought."
The police, though persistent, are a little slack out here in the boonies. The two go separate ways.
Next stop: Melfort for breakfast. Two white-haired women are chatting one booth over.
"His wife's been dead for years," says one, "so when they see him with a woman they think, 'Oh, he's got a girlfriend!' Well, some of them don't know a damn thing. That's why, me, I don't believe anything unless I see it."
That's why, me, I think it's time for this guy to bury his wife. It'll stop people talking.
With a belly full of grub, I drive – Meskanaw, Smuts, Saskatoon, Tessier and Zealandia pass by. I stretch and snack in Rosetown. "She's got the house all done up like the ’50s, which is ugh!" explains a woman at the gas station to her friend. "I hate that, but she wants it to look like it used to."
"Well, that's back in style now," replies the friend. "It's a 50-year cycle."
The young woman ought to consider herself lucky given what's in style in Melfort, which is agh!
On the Alberta border sits the small community of Alsask. There is yet much ground to cover as I stop at the town's hotel for a bite to eat. "It was with the understanding that they wouldn't have kids," says one of a group of women having coffee at the next table. "You betcha. She came back and within a year she married her cousin."
That's the thing about styles – wait 50 years and they're back in.
"Can you imagine marrying your cousin?" is her friend's reply. "I always thought I'd have to go to Bowden (correctional institution) to find a man," she jokes. "They're fenced in there and they can't run."
That's the thing about convicts – you just wait 50 years and they're out again.
At the next table, the gossip runs to local politics.
"Louise is running for office, is she?" asks a woman of her adult son.
"I heard something like that. I absolutely don't want her to get in there," he replies.
"Why?"
"She's looking for $50 from the town for her car."
"Oh well, it was the town that did the damage."
"She backed into the town. Now she wants $50. She wants $50 now, what'll she want when she gets in?"
The other half of the town's bank account?
In a gas station in Hanna, I decide to buy a can of soda pop. "People around here are getting fed up with Pepsi," the attendant tells me, ringing in my gas and sugar water. Seems the Pepsi cooler had gone down and getting it fixed was a problem. "Pepsi is good about servicing the big stores, but not us," she explains. "You can't have a guy in here fixing the thing and swearing under his breath. The customers can hear that. That's why Coke is more popular."
And that explains the unpopularity of Pepsi's "Drink More #@*ing Pepsi You #@*ers!" campaign.
After a half-hour of soda wars talk, I scramble, light-headed, to my car. I need to return to a place where no one knows anyone – to my anonymous big-city home, a home in which I can swear profusely while drinking Pepsi, Coke or Tab with my deceased cousin/wife in our ’50s-style living room in complete anonymity. Y'know, heh heh, if I wanted to.
Good Listener is a monthly column devoted to eavesdropping. |
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