Letters From Jake

From the time my family moved to Edmonton in 1992 until I moved in with Aunt Joyce in 1995, my cousin Jake and I wrote letters to each other regularly. (One of us more regularly than the other, you little bastard!) I don’t think Jake ever realized this, but the letters I got from him were very important to me, and I cheered up whenever I got one. During my teen years, he was my closest friend no matter where I was living. The following are quotes from some of his letters that cracked me up:

“I just thought what to get Travis for his birthday. A brand new fresh pickle that hasn’t been discoloured yet. He is still using the old one. He still bugs me, but he says things after he has passed me and is 5 feet away at least, or if he is at the top of the stairs and I’m at the bottom. He still won’t fight, I guess I’ll just have to kill him. Well maybe not, I might get charged for murder. In court when they ask me something I can just say ‘no recollection’ and then they will say ‘Either you are very stupid and can’t remember or you are lying. We think you are smart, what do you think?’ ‘No recollection.’ Then they would say ‘My gosh’ and leave and the judge would faint and all the witnesses would be nice and let me go and make the jury keep the secret and say I was abducted by a UFO and we would conspire and rule the world.”

Travis Cooper was a kid in Raymond who Jake and I both couldn't stand. In grade 7, he would always call me "Monster Jaw", as if it were the insult to end all insults. After I moved away, Jake carried the torch for me. He and Travis hated each other, and the running joke was that Travis had a pickle shoved up his butt.

“Am I small gnew named Doralynndayman? I sure hope not, because if I am I’m going to be mad.”

I have no clue what Jake was talking about in that one.

“How is it going in the city? Is it an adventure everyday? It sure is here in Raymond. Why, just last week someone broke a Coke bottle on the sidewalk. Then this guy said a bad word and everybody felt sick inside for the rest of the day. Then there are these guys and they were smoking and I said, ‘That’s not righteous’ and they stopped.”

Sarcasm.

“Nanabush will soon be visiting you. You must go to the southwest corner of the world and scream. He will come, you must SCREAM! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!!! IYE IYE IYE IYE IYE IYE! He will then be summoned and you must tell him of the long journey ahead of him, otherwise all is lost. If you do not do this you cannot be forgiven. This is an old sacred Indian chain letter which you must pass on to Nanabush. If you do not do this the birds will peck out your eyes, the wolves will eat your hands, and your head will be delivered to the Sun God.”

Utter nonsense.

“Gentlemen:

“I am shocked and appalled at what was said in the last issue of Uncle Ruben’s House. Such things should not be in print. Your magazine, or so I thought, was considered to be one of the most informative and intellectually stimulating publications on the newsstand. With deep resentment I have enclosed a Canadian nickel and a serious bomb threat. Be very alarmed, and don’t leave home without it. Thank you for you support in advance.”

“I’ve done it again. I can still remember my mom saying, ‘Jake, never drink from the short end of the straw!’ Why didn’t I listen to her d!m*it. Now I have to pay. How come mothers are always right? It just makes me malade. Of course, then again, mothers are the ones that say don’t sip your orange pop in straight order form, and hey, it works just fine for me!”

This one was mailed with a Canadian nickel and a recipe card with "bomb threat" scrawled on it in crayon.

Cam Calder

Year: 1998
Place: St. Albert, AB
My age: 20

This memory isn't funny. Sorry, but you'll understand when you see what it's about. (Many of you have probably already guessed from the title.)

In high school, I had been a member of a 12-man singing group called the MT Vibes (I will write a memory devoted to them at another time). I had already been friends with most of them, and the whole experience brought us all closer together. Cam Calder was the oldest MT Vibe.

In the fall of 1998, my pre-mission life was winding down. It was late September or early October. I had already received my mission call, and I was preparing to report to the Missionary Training Center on October 21, and later moving on to the Philippines. I was working the 9-5 shift at Soda Jerks, a local '50s-themed fast food restaurant. One morning, I was in my uniform and just about to head out the door to walk to work. The phone rang before I left, and I answered it. Mum was calling me from the college she worked at.

"I just got off the phone with Joyce," was all Mum said before she started crying. Joyce's son, my cousin and fellow MT Vibe Jake, was currently serving a mission, and my first thought was "Jake's dead."

I asked Mum what was wrong, and she managed to say that Cam Calder had died.

I was struck by a queer mixture of emotions: I was relieved that Jake was fine, but I was devastated that Cam was dead. I leaned on the counter that the phone was on and said, "How?"

Cam had just purchased a motorcycle, and he was driving it on the highway near Raymond. A grain truck pulled out in front of him, and he hit it. He died instantly.

I don't remember how the rest of the telephone conversation went. After I hung up the phone, I paced back and forth between the front door of the house and the kitchen. I was filled with this intense grief, and I wanted to cry. My body needed to express this emotion somehow, and crying seemed like the natural thing to do. This was in the middle of an eight-year stretch of not crying, though, and I couldn't cry even though I wanted to. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I often manifested sorrow as anger, so I went to the door that lead from the house to the garage and give it a double-fisted punch. The door was hollow metal, and I left two faint dents on it. And then, since, I couldn't think of anything else to do, I walked to Soda Jerks and worked my shift in a daze.

I went to Raymond for the funeral a few days later. A group of 20 or so friends of Cam got together and sang a couple of songs ("Each Life That Touches Ours For Good" and "We'll Bring The World His Truth") at the funeral. Only three of us were MT Vibes. The rest, including Cam's brother Kevin, were all on missions. It was easily the saddest funeral I've ever attended.

Neil Fingers a Truck Full of Hooligans

Year: 1996
Place: Raymond, AB
My age: 18

It was a beautiful spring. Winter was behind us. My senior year of high school was nearing a close. The MT Vibes, of which I was a member, were pseudo-celebrities in southern Alberta. Teenagers were being idiots.

It was a Friday or Saturday night, and I was hanging out with my cousins and friends. I don't remember who exactly was with me, but I do know who was there for sure: Neil Oler, Becca Heninger, Noah Heninger, Andrew Oler, and Cindy Porkalab (I'm not sure if I'm spelling that right; I'm just going on how it sounds. Her married name is so much easier). There may have been others, and to them, I apologize for forgetting. You know I love you.

So we were out pretty much wandering aimlessly about a block away from Aunt Joyce's house. We were a fairly well-behaved group of kids, so we weren't making any trouble. There was a jacked-up, dumb-looking pick-up truck stopped at an intersection across the street from us with a few boys my age inside. They turned on the fog lamps on top of the truck, and it was shining right at us. Neil thought the driver was a friend of his dad's, so he raised his fist and shook it at them. (Yes, the title of this entry is a little misleading. Neil didn't actually finger the truck.) The occupants of the truck thought that Neil had fingered them, and they started yelling obscenities at us, and before any of us could really react, the truck launched forward straight at us. Instead of standing our ground (there were four guys in our group, and a maximum of three guys in the truck), we ran. There's just something about a powerful engine driving a 1/2 ton truck bearing down on you that makes the flight instinct overpower the fight instinct.

Our retreat emboldened our pursuers, and they gleefully chased us while flinging insults in our direction. (I had flashbacks of the pickle incident from the previous summer.) We ran through a neighbour's back yard and climbed over a six-foot fence, which had boards running horizontally to help us up and over. When we reached the sidewalk in front of the house, the truck appeared and came in our direction again, so we turned and headed back to the fence we had just climbed. I was the first one there and saw that this side of the fence had no horizontal boards to act as a makeshift ladder. I didn't let that stop me. Showing an athleticism that only manifests itself when I am in peril, I planted my hands on top of the fence and vaulted over it like an army recruit in an obstacle course. I made sure everyone else was able to follow me, all the while with the occupant of the house yelling at us to get off of his property before he called the cops. If I remember correctly, Becca said, "Yes, please, call the cops" before I offered a hurried apology and ran for Joyce's house. There was a large shop that Uncle Duane used to keep his motorbikes, and we hid out there. The truck hadn't seen where we went, and so we lost them.

The driver of the truck turned out to be Todd Fraser, who I used to hang out with in grade six. He didn't realize that I was one of the people he chased.

Sub Sandwich Tossing

Year: 1997
Place: St. Albert, Alberta
My age: 19

Despite being the greatest year in the history of rock, 1997 wasn't a happy time for me. For a variety of reasons (they aren't funny, so I won't go into them here), I was depressed, and I usually manifest sadness as anger.

Early 1997 saw me working at the prestigious Mr. Sub sandwich restaurant (Like Subway, only it has been around longer, and it's only in Canada). I was privileged to work the glamorous 6:00pm-2:00am shift (3:00am on Fridays and Saturdays). I could maintain pleasantness, or, at the very least, civility with most customers. There were those special customers, however, who corroded my thin veneer of patience in a matter of seconds. The later at night it got, the more special the customers got. They got drunker, too. Bars closed at 2:00, and we were the only restaurant in St. Albert open until 3:00. Guess where all the hungry drunks came.

One particularly pleasant night, the credit/debit machine wasn't working, which meant people couldn't pay with their ATM cards. In other words, about 50% of people couldn't pay. This alone made my shift awful. So many irritated customers. By the end of the night, I was ready to verbally castrate the first person who gave me an excuse.

About ten minutes before closing, a fine specimen of human being walked in with his buddies. I recognized the guy from my one year at Bellerose Composite High School, but he didn't seem to recognize me. He ordered a foot-long pizza sub, with extra sauce, and loaded with pickles and olives. In other words, he ordered a messy sub.

I forget how we came to be mad at each other, but I remember him goading me and making sure I made his sub just right, and I remember feeling an utter contempt for him that I have never felt towards another person.

As I finished his sandwich, I remembered that the debit machine wasn't working. Before cutting his sub in half and wrapping it, I asked how he was paying. He was paying with his ATM card. Knowing that it wouldn't work, I tried to run the payment through. I didn't want him to accuse me of lying, because, by this point, our mutual hatred for each other had taken physical form and was jumping excitedly on the counter firing two revolvers into the ceiling and yelling, "Yippee-kiya, motherf***kers!"

The payment, predictably, failed to go through, and I told him so. He would have to pay with cash. Since the mid-90s, people my age have very rarely carried cash. Dickface here had no way to pay for his sandwich. I refrained from smiling, but I was chuckling on the inside.

But Dickface was hungry from all that drinking he had done. He suggested that I just give him the sub. I wasn't in the business of giving away free food, so I turned down his suggestion. He and his friends hung around for five more minutes figuring that if they insulted me enough, I'd give them free food. Oddly enough, I tired of this behavior and said, "Look, I'm not giving you free food, so why don't you just get the hell out of here so I can close up and go home?"

Dickface replied with, "How about I wait outside and beat the shit out of you when you leave?"

This threw me into a bit of a rage. I dropped what I had been doing. The following is an exact quote of how I responded as I grabbed his sub in both hands: "You want your damn sub? Here's your damn f***ing sub!" I slammed the sub down--unwrapped--on the counter in front of him. A shower of pizza sauce, pickles, and olives spurted out of the sub and all over Dickface's expensive coat. "Now get the f*** out of my face!" The look on his face was priceless. Almost as priceless as the sauce-soaked pickle he picked off his jacket and threw at me, but missed.

"Well, cut it," one of his friends (obviously the brainy one) said as if I had just politely handed the sub over on a good china plate.

"F*** off," I replied.

"Well, then give us the knife and we'll cut it," Brainy offered helpfully. The knife in question had an eight-inch razor-sharp blade.

"Yeah, I'm giving you assholes a knife," I said. Luckily, Brainy was familiar with sarcasm. Dickface and company left.

They were even worse than the guy from Saskatchewan who told me that Alberta (especially the me part of Alberta) sucks because I wouldn't give him a free Mr. Sub hat.