The New Year
The year is 1951
and the place is Wainwright, Alberta, a town of roughly 3000 people located 140
miles southeast of Edmonton. At least it was until the mid-fifties when a new
highway removed about 10 miles of kinks. It was New Year’s Eve and the town was
preparing to celebrate. New Year’
Eve in rural Alberta was a big
deal. The vagaries of an
agricultural economy made official celebrations almost a duty, an obligation
not to let on that the relentless assault of hail storms, drought, floods,
volatile prices, and Father Time was getting you down.
In Wainwright, the
good citizens wishing to party in the new year – and that included pretty much
everybody but the seriously bedridden and the evangelicals who seemed always to
busy waiting for their Lord to reappear -
had three basic choices: an invitation to one of the messes at the
nearby army base, an invitation to a house party, or a ticket to the Elks
Ball.
Generally
speaking, people who showed up at the Elks’ Ball did so because they didn’t get
an invitation to any of the other two venues which meant it was a kind of
default party, the party of last resort. This was unfortunate in a way because
the food was always good and the imported band was at least one or two rungs
above anything the town could deliver.
But, for some reason, tickets were never coveted. The Ball’s modest
prestige meant it hosted an interesting array of folks with minimal social
skills, well-established drinking problems, angry couples pondering a marital
breakup, and a few with odious personal habits, dudes like Floyd Mauser who let
his pet rooster feed on his forearm and then liked to show people his scars. People who attended the Elks’ Ball
generally didn’t talk about it much afterward. On the plus side, they were well-fed.
Next up on the
social scale were the house parties, some more coveted than others but each
with a crowd of presumed friends.
Given the long line-ups at the one government-run liquor store for three
days leading up to New Year’s eve, the drinking was much like what you would
expect, Intense and unrestrained.
Rye and ginger ale was the runaway drink of choice, big spenders opting
for Seagram’s VO, not necessarily for its quality but for its distinctive
purple bag. The bag was
subsequently handed over to one of the celebrant’s kids to hold his marble
collection. This parties were
generally low budget affairs, the hosts rarely extending themselves beyond a
few sandwiches and salted peanuts.
Music was supplied either by the radio or 78’s and 45’s on the record
player. In either case, the
pickings were slim. Radio reception was erratic and one man’s cherished record
collection is another man’s occasion to grind his teeth. Every year it seemed
that one of these house parties went off the rails, as they say, and someone
entered the new year with a broken nose or dislocated shoulder. Which is what happens if all there is
to do is sit around and drink and talk about subjects you likely knew nothing
about. If there was an element of danger to partying on New Year’s eve, chances
were it was at a house party.
At the top of the
New Year’s most-coveted list were functions at the nearby Army base –
specifically the officers’ mess and the sergeants’ mess. Contrary to what an outsider
might think, it was not the officers’ mess that was the prize invitation. The mayor, town council, and
chamber of commerce received invitations to the officers’ mess, a sure tipoff
that a deadly evening lay ahead.
Combine these town worthies with a platoon or two of Lord Mountbatten
imitators all wearing kilts, ceremonial swords, and blindingly brilliant
uniforms and you could be sure a dose of harrumphing tedium was in order. It was the Raj all over
again. All that was missing was a
tiger skin and Sabu. Still, it was
a nice place to spend a quiet evening toasting the King and invitees generally
claimed to have had a happy time.
I mean, that’s where my parents went and while they reputedly knew how
to laugh, party hijinks weren’t in their repertoire. They felt, I guess, that this was where they belonged.
No, it was an
invitation to the sergeants’ mess that was as close to gold as anything got in
Wainwright. As befits the
personnel who actually made things happen in the military, the sergeants and
their mess delivered the best food, the most ample and far-ranging supply of
alcohol, and the best entertainment a small, dreary out-of-the-way prairie town
could attract, orchestras that might otherwise have graced the Trocadero
Ballroom in Edmonton.
Those lucky enough to wangle invitations to the Sergeants’ mess tended
to have a supply of one-upmanship anecdotes to last the month of January. Hell, even I, a normally disinterested
12-year-old, was jealous that my parents had to hang around the dreary old
officers’ mess instead of whooping it up with the NCO’s.
But, on this New
Year’s eve, celebrations everywhere were to be cut short.
Old Man winter had
his own celebration planned. A
giant, economy-sized blizzard. Wainwrighters knew it was coming - after all the
radio told them it was - but they
hoped it would tarry up north long enough for the festivities to take
place. Well, it did and it
didn’t. It lurked up by Slave Lake
until shortly before midnight and then like a starving hawk with a fifty-mile
wingspan, swooped down on eastern
Alberta. Party-goers had just
enough time to lift a glass and sing a few bars of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ before
being assailed by fierce winds, dense clouds of swirling white and plummeting
temperatures.
Babysitters – I
was one of them – were among the the first to feel the storm, houses suddenly
rattling and shuddering, tree branches scraping windows, the wind moaning plaintively around the
yards and fine grains of snow sifting through the woodwork. It was 11:45 I knew what was happening and, naturally, I worried. What
if the parents can’t get home? How
will I get paid? How will I get
home? If they think I’m going to
sit these brats through a blizzard, they’re nuts. That sort of worry. Soon, the town’s recently-installed
dial phone system jammed with babysitters trying to reach parents. Sylvia Thompson, the town’s
long-serving telephone operator, now reduced to watching a bunch of switches do
her job, cackled when she realized everything had come to a halt. Progress, she sniffed.
My name is Andy
McGregor and I woke up when the back door slammed shut. I was sitting the two Carter boys in
the east end of town. At first, I thought it was Mr. and Mrs.
Carter coming home so I jumped up ready to testify I’d been alert all night and
engrossed in reading ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ instead of dozing. It took a few moments before my mind
and eyes cleared enough to realize it was only the wind, a wind that was
sending me a message. Go on home or I’m going to trap you
where you stand – or, to be precise, babysit! I peered out the quivering living room window and
could see snow, not yet heavy, swirling madly about the front yard. My parents and the Carters
both said they would watch the weather closely and hurry home if conditions
became threatening. Part of me
wouldn’t have minded sitting out the storm in the Carter house. Their two boys, ages 5 and 3
weren’t complete dipsticks and would still pee their pants at hearing a good
ghost story. Plus, the Carter
house was larger, newer, and warmer than our McGregor house which wasn’t really
a house at all, only four small rooms carved out of an industrial building
between a dairy, which my parents ran, and the Power Utility warehouse housing
emergency steam generators.
The wind was
getting stronger and its low whistle sounded like a tap running in a far corner
of the house. I walked through the
house checking on doors and windows.
One window in the boy’s room was open a crack but Mrs. Carter inisisted
her boys needed this fresh air if they were going to get adequate rest, so I
left it open.
Robotically, I
returned to the Carter’s fridge
for the 17th time that night. Mrs. Carter’s snack of choice for me was rhubarb
pie. I swiped my finger over the
edge of the pie. To me, rhubarb
pie was right up there with cooked cabbage, loathsome dishes that had somehow ingratiated themselves
into mainstream prairie cuisine - not that there was a lot of opposition. It didn’t help that on the prairies
both rhubarb and cabbage grew competitively with dandelions, wild clover, and
quackgrass and that my mother, like most prairie mothers, excelled at finding
new ways to prepare both plants.
This year it had been rhubarb chutney. Who knew that something called chutney even existed? I
closed the fridge door.
Outside, the snow
was falling more heavily. If the
Carters were on top of all this,
they should be home soon and I decided I’d rather be back at the dairy with
my family, even if, in a storm like this, the dairy building made more noise
than a motorcycle in a carnival velodrome. And who knew what crappy breakfasts might be served in the
Carter household on New Year’s day?
Probably something with rhubarb. Assuming the dairy didn’t cave in due, or was blown
off the foundation and dumped in a next door slough, my mom would be making
bacon and eggs and fried potatoes and sliced tomato. Maybe even waffles.
So what if I had to share that tiny bedroom with my two brothers?
I thought about my
best friend, Max, who was babysitting the unruly brood of Nesbitt brats next
door to his house, an undertaking Max swore sharpened his street fighting
skills, made him feel superhuman in the art of fending off attackers from
multiple quarters. He
wouldn’t want to have to stay the night at the Nesbitt’s unless he was given a
whip and some sleeping pills but dashing back to his own house wasn’t exactly
kings-x either, his house being even smaller than ours – a converted garage
really – and he had an erratic father and four siblings - all younger - to
contend with. Max and I had
long ago both agreed that the first – no, the second – thing we would do after
finishing high school would be to live somewhere where we had our own
bedroom. The first thing we would do is get out of
town.
A set of
headlights swung dimly into the Carter’s back yard. Leaving the car running, the Carters, looking flushed
and angry burst through the back door, wind and snow stampeding in with them.
‘The kids’
okay?’ wheezed Mrs. Carter,
bending over to remove her galoshes, snow cascading off her head and
shoulders. Mr. Carter stood
silently by the door, stamping his feet and clapping his hands
‘They been
sleeping since about 9, I guess,’ I lied. Mrs. Carter scuttled by me, her head turned away from me so I couldn’t smell liquor – as
if - and into the kids’ bedroom. Mrs. Carter always behaved as if she expected me
to beat her kids senseless and tie them to their beds. Maybe all moms acted that way.
I put on my parka
and wedged my feet into a pair of flight boots. What can you say about flight boots except that your mother
MADE you wear them? Each boot was
approximately the size of an adult porcupine. In my world of macho 12-year-old boys, anyone wearing the
wretched things was seen as some sort of cartoon character with outsized feet
and was subject to the appropriate ridicule. Tonight I was glad to have them.
‘You’ll be glad
for those boots tonight, boy,’
observed Mr. Carter, red-faced from the cold and however many dozen
highballs he’d thrown back earlier in the evening. ‘C’mon, let’s get you home. Oh, and here’s for tonight.’ He handed me 3 dollar bills.
‘Gee, thanks, Mr.
Carter,’ I was planning on 4 and
figured the storm’s early arrival cost me the extra buck. Normally, Mrs. Carter has to help her
husband into the house, given as he was to staying at a party until he couldn’t
hold a glass any more.
Mrs. Carter
reappeared, led by a frown borrowed from some martinet schoolteacher.
‘You forgot to
close the bedroom window, Andy.
Little Freddy’s bed has an inch of snow on it, I swear. A wonder the boy could sleep at all,
I’d say.’
I could see that
one coming, the witch. ‘ Freddy’s
a tough kid, Mrs. Carter. He’s
gonna be a good hockey player some day.’ I knew she wanted him to be a curler, like her, and
was determined never to buy the kid skates. His younger brother, Jeremy, could apprentice as a
safe-cracker for all Mrs. Carter cared but a lot of parental crapola was being
dumped on poor Freddy.
‘You bite your
tongue, Andrew McGregor.’ I
turned away from her glare and followed Mr. Carter to the door. ‘Night, Mrs. Carter.’
Mr. Carter opened
the back door and lunged forward, bent at the waist and pulling mightily to keep
the door from flying back against the side of the house.
‘Holy Mary Mother
of God,’ he yowled, the words carried away by the violent wind and driving
snow. I flipped up my parka hood
and bent my head into the white wind. Sheesh,
it’s 50 degrees colder than when I got
here 6 hours ago.
Mr. Carter jammed
the back door shut, took hold of my elbow and steered me to where his
cream-colored ’49 Pontiac sat heaving and clacking on, at the most, 5
cylinders, complaining about what it still had to do this awful night. Mr. Carter shoved me into the
passenger seat and began sweeping the snow from the windshield. The car was sweltering hot and smelled
of burning oil. The heat on the
windshield was just enough to melt the snow, let it exist as water for maybe a
half second before turning it to ice.
Mr. Carter clawed at the window.
I could only see his finger tips but could hear him cursing vehemently.
Wow, I thought, My dad said Mr. Carter is a tough man but he’s not wearing anything on
his head and he’s using his bare hands.
I’m impressed. Maybe I
should offer him my mitts. Nah, no
adult’s gonna take mitts from a kid. Shit, is this ever gonna be a fun ride
home. If he gets stuck, I’m makin’
a run for it. I don’t care. I’m not pushing this heap. I sunk into the soiled front seat and
fingered his 3 dollar bills.
A new hockey stick and a puck. If I live.
Suddenly, the
blade of a shovel swept across the windshield, the icy crust on the window
shattering like glass. Soon I
could see Mr. Carter, huge foggy billows shooting from his mouth, each one
coming a second faster than the one before and each carrying a minimum of two
expletives.
The driver’s side
door opened and a short-handled shovel flew by my ear and into the back
seat. ‘Goddam, it’s bloody cold,’
growled Mr. Carter as he wedged himself behind the wheel and shifted into low.
‘Cross your
fingers, kid, we’re off like a turd of hurtles.’ The Pontiac lurched into the alley and out onto the
street. A creature of clever
clichés, Mr. Carter wasn’t about to abandon them just because he was drunk,
angry, cold, and in the company of a 12-year-old boy when he could be home
warming his feet on his wife’s calves.
I remained silent,
my hands clasped between my legs, conserving heat lest the Pontiac succumbed to
the storm and we had to make a run for it. The car slewed and whined and slowly
bucked its way through the drifts, Mr.Carter wrenching his arms this way and
that, his enthusiasm for doing war with the storm apparently growing with each drift. Street lights came and went in a dim
yellow haze, the sole intrusion into this whirling world of white. It was impossible to discern any
specific landmarks and the Pontiac seemed to float on a limitless sea of white.
Mr. Carter leaned
on his steering wheel, coaxing the car through another drift. ‘Why in hell won’t your old man join
our Elks’ club, kid?’
I was not prepared
for that question. Not at
all. Decision paralysis set
in. My parents were relentless
about the need for their children to be honest, even when it hurt. Neither nuance nor circumstance ever
mitigated this stricture but my brothers and me knew there were times when
lying, fibbing, fabricating, dissembling were the only option. This was one of those times. Not two months earlier, I
had asked my father the same question.
Why not the Elks? My dad
belonged to the Chamber of Commerce and the Town Council, and some of my
friends were always blathering on about how much fun their dads were having as sworn-in Elks. How much fun could my dad be having with the Chamber and the Town
council? These were
organizations a man joined to find other men like himself to worry with. Fun wasn’t a word they ever used. Anyway, my father’s response to
joining the Elks was ‘they’re just a bunch of drinkers. Not much else to say for them.’
How smart would
that be to pass that on to a bone-fide Elk with a snootful of Rye and ginger,
already pissed for having to be out at 1 in the morning in a blizzard with a
wonky car?
‘Gee, Mr. Carter,
I don’t really know. You’ll have
to ask him, I guess.’
‘Fuckin’ A, I’ll
ask him. You betcha. Excuse my French. Here you are kid.’ He pulled up in front of the
dairy that doubled as the McGregor home. ‘When you get out, be sure to slam the door good and
then run like hell. Can you see
where you’re goin.?’
‘Yeah, sure, Mr.
Carter. Thanks for the ride.’ I bolted from the car and almost
fell over from the force of the wind and snow. With difficulty I slammed the Pontiac’s notoriously cranky
door and crouching like someone dodging machine gun fire, scuttled into the
loading dock of the dairy and out of the wind.
1952 had begun.
Robert Alan Davidson
July, 2014
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