Every great meal begins with a murder. The cavemen knew it and Bill knew it as he tossed a pair of live muskrats into the rattler corral behind Teresa's drive shed. At that point the poor muskrats knew it too. "Nothing puts weight on a Massassauga rattler faster than muskrats" Bill thought to himself as he sloshed towards Teresa's storm cellar where he had spent the night awake reading. "Never seen a place with so many muskrats, even the hockey team is Muskrats. Chicken farms and muskrats - all they have in these parts" he muttered as he disappeared through the swing-up cellar door.
He had been thinking about cavemen as he moved the mastadon tusk his mother unearthed in her rutabaga garden. He needed some room to balance an old door on some boxes to make a place to write. He'd taken up writing a journal in the Buffalo Jail, almost filling a farmer's note book given to him by the jail cook who had dozens of them from the Dow beer salesman. A sort of gift with purchase premium. Bill could still make out the faded slogan on the cover - "Wouldn't a Dow Go Good Now?"
Teresa had a box of books in the cellar and Bill read one the night before. Cover to cover. It was a great read and reminded him of his own life and inspired him to revise his method of writing his journal to a much more gonzo style. There was an old Supertest pencil stub on the cellar floor and Bill began to write . . . about feelings that had welled up all night as he read the book . . .
"Strange memories on this nervous night in VirgilON. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. Buffalo in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run … but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant….
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I aimed the old Fargo across the Peace Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Wainfleet sheepherder's jacket … booming through the tunnel of lights along Garrison and Talbot, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other side (always stalling at the toll-booth, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) … but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that….
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the river, then up the I-90 or down 5 to Hamburg or East Aurora…. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning….
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave….
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Virgil and look North, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
[Alan] Cazart! Nice nod to the Doctor!
Damn, I wish I’d spent the sixties in Virgil ON. Instead I was in Vancouver, hanging out with the crowd from the Georgia Strait and taking in live performances by bands with “goofy” names like Jefferson Airplane and Country Joe and the Fish. That was the word used by ‘Otis’ Craig McDowell. “Goofy”. ‘Otis’ was a budding concert impresario who hadn’t caught the wave yet. When he finally caught it he went on to manage Mother Tucker’s Yellow Duck.
What a waste of time Vancouver was. Endless reefer with acid on the occasional weekend. But we had home delivery courtesy Pete Hlukoff of the Hanoi Peoples’ Daily. With service like that it’s no wonder Susan F. is driven to distraction by the frustration of trying to find a copy of the Globe & Mail in Virgil ON.
In those days Speed was King, and consequences were less of an issue. Motorcycles seemed to play a part in it.
When I was taking the waters in Banos, Equador, I met a dude from NYC who mainlined cocaine for breakfast. He told me his biggest thrill in the City was getting ripped on acid and going for a ride on the Long Island Expressway.
A friend of mine had several bikes. He bought a Grand Prix Bultaco that had been surplused by the factory team, and went racing. You don’t have to hang out with the racing crowd for long to realize you’re in the company of some seriously crazy individuals.
One day he let me ride his brand new 350 Yamaha road bike. The 350 was the first of the really fast Japanese bikes that would quickly drive the Brits out of the market. It was on a long, straight prairie road south of Black Diamond, Alberta, on a summer afternoon under a clear blue sky. I’d never ridden a bike before. I jumped on the thing and it took off like a rocket. When I looked down I was doing 95 miles an hour, and hadn’t hit fifth gear yet. I reflected on two things. That T.E. Lawrence had set the land speed record for motorcycles at 96 mph on the Brough Superior in the late 30’s. And that I’d never touched the brakes on a motorcycle before. I’d heard that if you hit the front too hard you’d go over the handle bars. I coasted for several miles, which gave me time to recollect the first time I’d ever driven a Jaguar XKE. It was a roadster. I was on Marine Drive in Vancouver, and I ran a stop sign at 70 miles an hour in first gear.
I bought a 350 the next day.
Indeed. Speed was King
[Filshie] I remember that road south of Black Diamond and I remember you !!! I was on the back of another motorcycle - it was my first time too and I was learning to hold on to the driver and move as he moved to help keep our balance. We were going in the opposite direction to you. When you swooshed crazily past us, obviously totally out of control, I thought we were gone for good. After we cleared the dust cloud and fishtailed to a stop, the guy I was with wanted to chase you down but then he remembered that my mother would kill him if he killed me and so we paused, and eventually kept on going. But it put us in a bad mood for quite awhile. He because he couldn't finish the business with you, and me because I was terrified and still had to ride that damn thing all the way back to Calgary. I haven't been on a motorcycle since. I have no idea what kind of bike we were riding. Probably Japanese. It was Albuuurrdah after all.
[Miller]
I don't know why the vast majority of my friends have had near death experiences
in or around Vancouver. Even Hynde flung himself into the Pacific from
high docks at Grandville Island.
Anyway,
about Toronto newspaper frustrations in NoTL, I now have geo-referenced
data. Aha. Eleven news boxes are soldiered in tight double columns along
both sides of the sidewalk in front of the Valumart on Queen. Hard to
believe, but true, and the driver of the sidewalk snow plow tractor has
learned to blow between them at full speed, within an inch on either side,
ala Evel Knevel. The effect of this is to render many of the boxes inoperable
until cleaned off. The rows include the Star, Globe, Sun and two for the
Buffalo News, designed to outdo the rest in typical US style. Seven more
are found in a flanking cluster beside the Stagecoach Restaurant on Regina
at Queen. This is where the town bitches meet for strategic breakfasts.
Two are found in front of the Anglican Manse at the King Street corner.
Single Star boxes sit opposite the naked David behind Queen's Landing
and on the corner of Charlotte and Promenade in front of Even Stephen's
house.
Just thinking - motorcycles did play a pivotal role in so many near death
events among those who survive among us to this day. Old Indian bikes.
Does anybody still have their old Indian? The glass Pontiac alone would
be very cool to see again.
[Alan]
No way. It wasn’t me. I was all alone on that road that day. It was
an essential part of the experience. Just me and the road and the bike.
The road was arrow straight. The foothills were in the foreground. The
mountains were coming noticeably closer, which at that distance was a
neat indicator of the speed. I was on a smooth fast long trajectory that
had I caught fifth and cranked it open would have landed me on the pier
in White Rock, BC. Which could segue nicely into a story about going to
sea in a dry rot boat, but that’s for another time.
Too bad about that other guy. Maybe he blew a tire or something…
[Filshie] "just me and the bike and the road." - This is the perfect, cinematic image that I believe to be quite a suspect memory. I am sure it was AG on the other bike on that road on that sunny day in Alberta.
[Miller]
Talk about seques. Your story minds me of summer '66 between semesters
I was working for Hamilton Streets & San as a helper on a box-like
machine called an asphalt burner. It made an ungodly roar as it melted
cracked roadway blowing huge flames from two giant propane tanks hanging
on a back rack. In summer weather the heat from the thing drove us to
popping salt pills all day. One day we were working the cracks on Main
Street in front of the former sunken gardens at McMaster University. We
didn't hear it coming but just in the nick caught sight of a big old Indian
motorcycle bearing down on us at one hellish clip. Little did I know that
twenty years later I would employ the driver and he too would remember
the event about to occur that day.
The guy on the back was identifiable. Waving his arms wildly, was my old
school chum Fritz who, fifteen years later would be my best man. Anyway,
they screamed by us with the sound of a passing Amtrac commuter and I
could hear Fritz crying for help as he recognized me. I felt helpless
and held my breath but the Indian turned just enough to enter the ramping
turn at Hwy 102 leading down toward Dundas. The Indian, at full speed,
hit the turn with its wheels bottomed in the outer concrete gutter separating
the asphalt from the grass median. There was a horrendous cloud of dust
as the Indian did a high speed leaning turn in the left gutter. Ron Myke,
the tall Mohawk I was working with, yelled "Jethuth Chrithst"
- he had no front teeth, top or bottom.
I forgot about that event until 1982 when Leah and I were restoring the
Philip Shaver House in Ancaster. There was a bad recession underway and
we were able to win a Canada Works grant for the plumbing. Fritz, knowing
this, suggested his friend Larry Hubert who was a certified plumber and
struggling to make ends meet with his small family on a nearby farm. We
hired him and we both recognized each other. Hubert had been the Indian
driver on that fateful day in Westdale back in the 60's. I told him I
had never seen such skillful driving. Larry or "Laar", as he
called himself, spoke with a classic upcountry drawl and explained "
. . . ya know Miller, I had nothin' to do with that . . . I thought me
and Fritz was gonna die . . . the throttle was stuck full open and Fritz
was cryin' and beatin' the shit outa me . . . I was just tryin' for a
crash in the grass when the Indian got its wheels stuck in that cement
gutter . . . I wanted to hump the bike up onto the grass but it got locked
in the trough and drove through the turn at full speed . . . I felt so
lucky to be alive . . . we blew into Cootes Paradise doing over 100 heading
straight for downtown Dundas when the Indian ran outa gas . . . if it
hadn't been for that cement curb we was gonners".
[Alan]...to paraphrase Dr. Thompson, I like to operate in that grey area between fact and fiction where The Truth lies. In this case my recollection is quite Clear, and the Strory has been accurately told....the movie rights are up for grabs...
[Miller]
This episode, Brake & Roll, is really cooking nicely. I decided to
post some of it over lunch and had an overwhelming urge to go to sea in
a dry rot boat. Hunter searching for the truth in memories -
"History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but
even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable
to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes
to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands
at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually
happened."