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The Coulee
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Memory
- Hits: 45
At 12 years old (or thereabouts) we moved from 911 1 St. NW to 1204 Grafton Ave.
As a child it was a big house, huge, main floor, basement (where I'd play with a chemistry set gifted me for Xmas, the copper sulfate and other chemicals packed in test tubes marked with a skull and crossbones), the upper floor (where the bedrooms were) and the attic, converted into a studio by my mother, where she did her sewing, painting, stained glass, etc. I remember pictures she did for myself and my sister, of us as monkeys, and a spread of Burt Reynolds from a Playgirl magazine with my father's picture pasted over the face.
We had a garage and a big yard, the back of which was converted into a garden that I was expected to weed. I remember not being happy about that. One memory, that of finding a large ashen cinder stuck to the side of the garage, pitching a stone at it to discover that it was not a cinder, it was a bat, and it fell to the ground injured and squeaking, we found a broom and put it out of it's misery...I felt terrible.
All the kids in the neighborhood would frequently assemble to play "Kick The Can", and I had graduated from collecting bottles for change to a paper route. One day while delivering papers I discovered a body, but that's a different story...
If you headed North on the street you would arrive in a few short blocks at the outskirts of town, the north edge of which was bounded by the Coulee, a stagnant stretch of water in which we could catch garter snakes, frogs, and - if we were lucky - mud puppies, or salamanders. There were a few poplar trees, in one of which was built a treehouse which we commandeered to our purpose. The treehouse was a childhood secret, and kids would find old girly magazines and we'd look through them, vaguely excited by the taboo nature of them but not really understanding, only that we were not supposed to be looking at them...
Which brings to mind another memory, of a friend who regularly went through his parents night table and came to school with the most incredible and outlandish tales of what he'd found, he had to be making this all up, didn't he?
In a few places the coulee widened, deepened, became a pond, and we'd find wooden old palettes, stuff them full of sticks and twigs, make rafts and pole about upon it like Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn on the Mississippi...
It was the idyll of childhood, only I hated Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in general, and when being unfairly punished for a poor report card or other misbehaviour would walk west upon the railway out of town hoping to catch sight of the mountains, only returning when I realized the grim reality that I was a long way from where I regarded as home, and that I was only 12 and would have to suffer the injustices of childhood for a few years yet...
My Australian Friend...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 69
Owen, he's got it all and how I don't know.
A friend/acquaintance, who moved to Australia to pursue a doomed romance. I haven't had the heart to tell him. It doesn't matter, we all do what we do and there's no talking (me at least) anyone out of a bad idea.
He's visiting a girlfriend.
But while he's there...
And he has the same interest in gems, minerals, prospecting, that I do, only wants the experience. And he's landed in Shepperton, North of Melbourne, maybe 30-40 miles from Ballarat.
And looking for advice.
So I go looking on maps and searching what's out there, this has been a dream of mine for quite some while.
He is the hand, I am the brain.
SO I get to googling and there's everything. Diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, zircons, topaz, gold....
I could go on. It's everywhere. All in the state of Victoria. All within an hours drive. And this is in Australia, where if you stub your toe on an oversized gold nugget you call the council to remove it.
So I spend a few hours sending him links, looking at maps, warning him of hazards (don't stub your toe on that giant nugget ....) and I'm thinking....well, fucking bloody hell you know what I'm thinking....I got a job at the sushi joint and they haven't yet called to give me a schedule...
Dad, Daughter, on a Buckboard riding through...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 68
I'm in an old hotel (??), brick and mortar, big, down in the basement, and I'm with my daughter (young, toddler, under 5) and my father's on a buckboard, you know, old-styled horse drawn wagon, and he's going to be riding through and wants me to throw on my daughter...
She'll like this, and so sure enough he comes riding through and and I get her and a couple stuffed animals onto the seat, and then they're past me and I'm trying to catch up...
There's all sorts of things tripping me up, the hall's made narrow by an enamel wood burning stove, cupboards, and the wagon has knocked all the doors open and I'm wondering how it got through...
He'd driven it around the top of the hotel, the lobby, the beautiful light of the setting sun, summer, and I'm trying to snap a picture of him & the daughter on the wagon, golden hues against rich deep blues, the phone though, it's not working, can't seem to pull up my camera, and I'm trying to scrape off some duct-tape residue that must be interfering...
The daughter's coming towards me, herself now maybe 12 years old, and she's someone on her shoulders...
Outside, a beautiful garden, slivers of vanishing sunlight playing against the brick of the building, and again I'm trying to catch a photo, but this damned phone, camera...
And a Canada Goose flies right past me, into a deep green-blue hedge, and it changes there, into a silhouette of something else completely, something unreal, something formless that begins to sing...
(and I wake up, a beautiful dream and all attempts to get back to it fail...)
The Robin Hood Flour Mill in Moose Jaw
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Memory
- Hits: 90
(Photo credit Corey Bond via: https://saskwatchers2019.blogspot.com/2019/02/robin-hood.)
When I was a kid we (me and whoever) sometimes ended up down by the Robin Hood Flour Mill in Moose Jaw. There was a dirty little creek near to it, in it's shadow, and looking in you'd see crayfish (a novelty to me), old discarded tires, broken medicine bottles, pop bottles, scrap iron slowly rotting away.
It was the early-mid 70s, so environmental concerns were not yet a thing.
Robin Hood was the biggest building in the city, by far, and had the grim reputation of being the place where people that were depressed would come to kill themselves. Drug addits, drop-outs, the love-sick, whoever. Every kid had some 4th or 5th hand version of what would happen if you when you landed, and a few of our teachers as well. You'd end up with your knees through your chest, or spread out like a water balloon, every bone broken and yet still all contained within your skin like a blob, so and so knew an paramedic, police officer, fireman, someone who had been called...
In my childhood it sounded like this was a regular thing.
Probably it wasn't, it would only need to happen once or twice for the community to retain the memory and see that everyone remembered.
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