Can We Scrap That Word, Please?

Every year, Lake Superior College in Wisconsin publishes a list of words the school believes should be removed from general use. The 2014 list included the words ‘selfie’, ‘twerking’, ‘hashtag’, and ‘twittersphere’.  It’s hard to argue with those choices; words that are over-used, words the uncritical mind wields to impress others, words that eventually make you wince when you hear them.

I look forward to the College’s list each year and almost always agree with their choices. Yet, there is disappointment.  Year after year, they fail to select the one word I believe to be in the most dire need of oblivion. 

The word is ‘professionalism’.   

This omission may be because colleges and universities are among the worst offenders when it comes to its abuse.

North Americans like to remind themselves now and then that they’re members of an egalitarian society. There are no peerages (in spite of what Donald Trump may believe) and we’re all free to find our place in the sun, even if the truth of that statement lives more in mythology.

The fact is, we will accept almost anything EXCEPT equality.  We’re ever quick to compare our status to the next person’s.  We believe strongly in a pecking order.  It’s human nature, we’re told. 

Historically and throughout the world, money and title have been the arbiters of status.  But our North American democracies spurn the use of titles and money lost some of its cachet when better communication techniques revealed a disturbing number of the really wealthy were also untutored clowns with both appalling taste and manners.  And - although the signs are not propitious at the moment – our middle class provides a huge chunk of citizenry for whom status is a confusing and muddled issue.  Apparently, simply belonging to the middle class isn’t enough.

Greater distinctions were required. We needed other criteria.  And we found some.   At any given time, we’ve used clothing, physical fitness, education, religion, service clubs, body mutilation, and tastes in music to differentiate us one from another.  These measuring sticks all had value, no doubt, but they lacked a certain something.  Maybe they were simply frustratingly incomplete. For instance, we were conditioned to believe Ivy League schools were elite, Then someone pointed out that their exclusivity was essentially based on exhorbitant tuition fees and the provision of glorified babysitting duties for the wealthy’s indolent spawn.  And at what point do your tattoos stop being tasteful and slip into wretched excess?   And if you were a classical music buff, did that mean you had to defend Stravinsky?

It was then that someone noticed doctors and lawyers – the so-called professionals.  Professional.  It was a great word, stirring thoughts of thorough training, ethical standards and competency. Who wouldn’t want to be called a professional?

Well, that’s when matters began to heat up.  Where was it written that the word was exclusive to doctors and lawyers? Doctors and lawyers didn’t have a monopoly on the word.  Why couldn’t it be used in a wider sense?     No surprise, it didn’t take long for that idea to take root.   Use of the word ‘professional’ spread quickly.     After all, it does conjure up visions of capability and in an era where the marketing of skills takes precedence over the actual delivery of skills, having someone believe they’re hiring a “professional” seemed a definite grabber.

The stampede began in earnest with social workers and educators.   And for good reason, it should be said.  Both practitioners were reasonably well-educated and both were grossly underpaid.   

Here you are busting your hump for peanuts AND the quality of your end product is almost impossible to ascertain.  Simply getting your students to pass the curricula or getting an abusive spouse to swear off violence apparently doesn’t convince society to be more generous with tax dollars.   What to do?

Elevate yourself, of course.  Set yourself ABOVE the fray, as it were.  Call yourself a PROFESSIONAL!  Maybe this will convince the funders to sweeten the pot.  You can support this move by inventing an arcane language that makes sense only to you!   And they thought doctors’ prescriptions were unreadable!

So, presto, they all became professionals simply by calling themselves so.  And, curiously, no one objected.

Before you could say jiggery-pokery, out came various manifestos outlining a road to exclusivity and standards for acceptance into a league of professional teachers and social workers, standards that coincided beautifully to those already possessed by whoever prepared the manifesto. 

Overnight, the ranks of professionals swelled.  But the process had just begun.

Teachers and social workers may have led the way but the practice spread – with unseemly haste – into virtually any and every career choice:  bus-drivers, investment counselors, nurses , nurses aides, mechanics, realtors, media-types, bankers, and even your supermarket manager AND all the assistant managers.   Think about it; even your neighborhood hit man was referred to as a professional.

One could suggest there were no amateurs or laymen left.

So what, if the end result was an improvement in quality of work performed and a way to eliminate incompetency?   Wasn’t that what doctors and lawyers had been doing all those years?  Well, they were weren’t they?

But the inherent problems with all this self-aggrandizement soon appeared. As any observant doctor or lawyer could tell you, establishing the cloak of professionalism won’t ward off incompetency or guarantee quality.  What it does do is create a limited supply and a homogenous group that tends to talk and act the same way.  In fact, the issue of competency is pretty much ignored in the evaluation processes.  What is really aspired to is an improved social stature and, if you’re lucky, a better salary.

Still, the results have been mixed to negative.  Most nurses deserved the appellation and a good realtor was hard to find among the army of agents stumbling through an easy-to-get-into-easier-to-get-out-of profession.  But bankers, it was discovered, were simply clerks with an extraordinary tolerance for routine manuals that told them when to get up and when to go to bed and everything in between.  On the other hand, a good mechanic deserved all the praise society could muster. Unfortunately, he was also thinly scattered throughout his arena.

Paradoxically, we now live in a world in which being good at what you do has little to do with being ‘qualified’ to do what you do.   Excelling at a job is a personal goal and too often that truth gets lost in the push to ‘market’ a line of work as ‘professional’.  When we describe our work as our ‘profession’ we’re technically correct.  But when we describe our work as ‘professional’ we steer into the realm of marketing and we all know that in its murky world, what you see isn’t always what you get.

It’s time to consign ‘professionalism’ to the scrap heap.  Time for something new.   Want to REALLY set yourself above the crowd?   Just do the job right.

Robert Alan Davidson

May, 2014 

Bucky

Bucky

It was Friday afternoon and the standup bar was busy.  Buckminster Trudgeon asked Warren for two dollars that he might place a bet in the second race.

Warren eyed Buckminster suspiciously.  “Why would you bet on a five-furlong race for two year olds, Buckminster?  I thought you were smarter than that. That is not like you.   Do you have some information you might like to share?” 

Buckminster rarely missed a day at the track.   He bet on the flats and only the flats.  Buckminster was convinced harness racing was fixed and invited arguments on the subject, concluding all verbal exchanges with ‘how many friggin’ times do I have to tell ya?’    Simulcasts confused him and were an occasion to curse the treachery of track officials and the ugliness of progress in general. 

Buckminster Trudgeon stood nearly six feet one and weighed a potato sack or two over two hundred pounds.  He was in his mid-fifties but, to Warren, he still looked like the young man he knew from the neighborhood,  a young man who hadn’t taken care of himself.  People tended to age with a certain predictability.  They took on age lines, lost their hair, grew shaggy eyebrows, saw their skin turn yellow and wattles form under the chin.  Warren supposed that was the way things were meant to be.   Buckminster’s face, however, looked like it had simply lost all muscle support,  his battle with life leaving him no strength with which to hold up his face.  There were no lines, as you might expect, only a sagging breast with eyes.    In Warren’s eyes,  Buckminster’s  entire body seemed to be in a race to see what could hit the floor first.    Apart from the drooping face, his hair was falling away from the top of his head and hung in long black tendrils, unserviced by a barber for far too long.   His chest had fallen onto his stomach and his stomach had settled into his lower abdomen.  His pants hung precariously to his wasted buttocks, defying gravity and forcing people to look away when he bent over.   Even his shoes, worn down at the heels, seem well on their way to becoming moccasins.   Gravity and too many years of booze were gradually returning Buckminster to the earth.

Buckminster’s lifelong love affair, his only love affair, was with alcohol.  When he reached the age of forty-five, doctors gave him some serious imperatives or face an early grave. ‘Your liver looks like an elephant turd.’  commented one.   Buckminster quit drinking but the damage, as they say, had been done.   Never again would he even look sober, his mournful face drooping like an oversized wattle, the eyes struggling to peek out from under heavy, inflamed lids.  He bore the perpetual look of someone whose dog had just been shot.

In his youth, Buckminster had walked the walk of the hockey hero, a respected young man about town, a person who was going places. He was good, he was cocky, and he was told he had what it took to make it to the NHL.  But it never happened.  Usually, he was too drunk to focus much on any kind of a future.  He was unable even to find the initiative to move out of his family home.    Buckminster still lived with his mother and worked hard to keep her from knowing just how much lapse there was in his Catholicism.    He had held jobs at various times but he preferred a position to a job, and found there was not, for him, enough money or satisfaction to be gained from working for someone else.   Nor did he have the skills or resources to become an entrepreneur.  Instead he drifted with alcohol.   And embraced conspiracy theories.

His brain cells permanently sodden, Buckminster, over the years, developed an extensive list of forces out to do him harm.   He was never too specific about why these forces were set upon eliminating him, but he was quite adamant that the facts were indisputable.  Normally, Warren would avoid any conversation with Buckminster, but the sheer diversity of the evil forces besetting the man continued to pique his interest.

The villains changed regularly, often making repeat appearances on Buckminster’s list of pursuers.  The list was a long one, including many obvious enemies of a free and doggedly independent man;  the RCMP, the CIA, the Church, the chartered banks, major oil companies, the Rosicrucians, grain conglomerates, diamond monopolies, and assorted South American drug cartels.  More curious menace came from the SPCA, the Salvation Army, the NFL, and Friends of Charlie Chaplin.

Buckminster stared at Warren, apparently weighing the question, did he have some information to spare.   Buckminster had been sponging for as long as Warren could remember.  The touch was always for two dollars.  It took place at least three times over the course of afternoon and evening.  And it always came with a promise to pay it back as soon as ‘things’ got better.   Who can refuse such a modest request?  was Buckminster’ version of a sales patter.  Several other track regulars were objects in his daily quest for borrowed funds.  Apparently, they, like Warren, treated the loan as a sort of social cost, the price of keeping one of their own, a neighborhood kid whom luck never seemed to favor, from  . . . . well, from something  . .  maybe an early grave?  . . . .  jail ? . . . . religion?    What it did do was allow Buckminster to hold his head up in a way, of not having to scour the infield for inadvertently-tossed winning tickets.

‘You want me to tip you?’   Buckminster glowered, as if the thought of having to share his pick of two-year-old maidens was akin to voluntarily filing an income tax return.

Warren smiled.  ‘Hey, Buckminster, for two bucks and maybe you know something, I figure you could share.’

‘The hell with you, then,’ said Buckminster. ‘I will get the two dollars from somebody else. And kindly refer to me as ‘Bucky, asshole.’   He turned to walk away.   Warren marveled at his efficiency.  ‘Relax, Bucky.’  Warren poked the retreating back and held out the two dollars.  

‘I’ll pay you back as soon as . . . .’  Buckminster shook his head, apparently unable to recall just when he might be able to repay the loan.   He walked away, his semi-Medusa head swaying from left to right, like a man approaching a gauntlet.

Buckminster hadn’t walked far when he suddenly lurched to his left, his heavy frame staggering from the effort, his arms flailing about to find something to keep him from falling.   He collided with a pillar and hung his head to catch his breath, his feet splayed out behind him, like a man about to puke.   Warren searched the crowd to see what might have caused Buckminster’s wild behavior.

The standup bar was a cavernous building set to one side of the grandstand and behind the paddock.  The walls were dripping with television sets, the bettor never having to look very far to find the latest odds.   One end of the bar was lined with Seller and Cashier wickets, the other end with the bar and a food outlet.  The floor contained only high tables, no chairs, a place where a man could stand to study the racing form and sip on a beer.   Prices in the standup bar were reasonable, not like the highway robbery clubs in the grandstand, and the place retained all the flavor of the rail without exposure to the elements.  

It was a place favored by the track regulars – the out-of-work trainers, compulsive gamblers, small-time wiseguys with open-neck shirts, gold chains and bracelets, their noses sniffing the air for situations and people  to exploit, packing plant workers with a ‘system’, middle-aged office workers in rumpled suits, and small-town girls wearing hockey jackets and tight jeans, imagining this was the ‘big-city glamour’ they’d heard so much about.  Among the men was an abundance of florid complexions and weary, I’ve-seen-it-all, eyes, eyes red-rimmed from staring at tote boards and horseflesh.  

The standup bar had its own smell, a blend of beer fumes, cigarette smoke, and fried onions – and its own sound, the high ceiling swallowing conversations and creating a hollow, railway station drone.  On slow nights, the aura was sepulchral, as if everyone was talking in a whisper.  On busy nights, the effect was of great distance, of listening to a conversation through a straw.

            u                                    u                                    u                                    u

Warren saw a hand reaching out from beneath a counter in front of Buckminster.   The index finger was pointed at Buckminster.   A voice was hissing loudly.  ‘Pow! Pow!  Pow!’ , finger jerking upwards with each ‘pow’.   Warren guessed the finger would belong to Lenny Klem, another product of the old neighborhood, a man whose journey into middle age was even more failure-laden than Buckminster’s.   The Klem family originally consisted of father and mother Klem, one of whom was generally ‘out of the house’ for an extended period, both of them attaching only nominal importance to marriage vows and maintaining a persistent need to form temporary liaisons, usually with partners even more unreliable than they.   Somehow they had managed to stay together long enough to bring four boys into the world;  Leonard, Homer, Lincoln, and Lazarus, the absence of alliteration with Homer being attributed to an especially spirited argument in the hospital, the result of which left Mrs. Klem in a state of recuperation for an extra week.   The boys, each separated by two years, grew up haphazardly, blissfully unaware of their strained circumstances, and fiercely independent.   They would eat anything, do anything, go anywhere, rarely questioning any action that could promise a meal, a bed, a roof, or a drink.  Amazingly, they stuck together, enduring brief intervals when Social Services saw a need to deliver them from their parents’ neglect and dealt them out to foster homes.

Not surprisingly, the boys all entered adulthood poorly equipped for its demands on personal responsibility.  If there was an urban school designed to graduate nothing but wastrels, drinkers, carousers, fighters, and petty thieves, the Klem boys would be their summa cum laude graduates.  Homer went from the tenth grade straight to jail where he remained until he was 25.  The others managed to avoid the law, even as they , habitually and without second thoughts, broke it.  A life skill the three brothers did possess was an ability to avoid institutions – any institution, be it a jail, hospital, school, corporation, and, especially, government.  The Klem boys would take care of themselves.

Warren thought it a minor miracle that Lenny, now 50 something, was still alive.  Booze, too, had pretty much scrambled his ability to think, but somehow he had survived.   He still had the small, wiry frame that took him to the Golden Gloves bantamweight championship back in the fifties,  the only difference being an unusual number of scars.  He bore more than a passing resemblance to Jack Nicholson and used this resemblance often to effect an embarrassing imitation of Jack.  They both had the same sharp eyes and killer leer and, as good as Nicholson was on screen at conveying menace,  Lenny’s leer was something that could produce real shivers.

Like Buckminster, booze became an early focal point in Lenny’s life.    Its effects tended to transport Lenny to some very special places, a world of child’s play, of imagination, of cowboys and Indians.  Sometimes he was Jack Nicholson.  Other times, he was the city’s most successful pimp.  And, often, he was dying.  ‘Doc says I got three months if I don’t quit drinking.  Whatta they know?  I just tell ‘em I quit.  They don’t need to know.

Lenny had obviously allowed beer drinking to take precedence over cleaning up at the track, of keeping a cool betting head.  This was something he did often and now was apparently embroiled in a gunfight with Buckminster, index fingers at ten paces.   Whatever world Lenny had created on this day, it was not a good idea.  As soon as he emerged from beneath the table, perhaps to compare bullet holes with Buckminster, Buckminster lunged forward, with an agility that belied his girth and uncertain health , and grabbed Lenny by the throat.

‘You little squirt,’ he growled, ‘That’s the last time you make fun of me, you hear?   My life is no joke!’  Lenny’s legs began to buckle.  Warren approached.

‘Buckminster!  Leave go of poor old Lenny.   You are going to kill him if you aren’t careful.  He is from the neighborhood, remember.’    Warren suspect the neighborhood was the last institution in which Buckminster had any faith.  He’d long ago given up on the Church and he despised all levels of government, all of whom had, at one time or another, formed a conspiracy to rob him of his life. 

Buckminster relaxed his death grip, his shoulders sagging, but he would not release the now-seriously-pink Lenny.   Warren leaned closer and whispered,  ‘Two minutes to post, Buckminster.’   Buckminster’s head spun around to see who had so generously shared this vital information and promptly dropped Lenny to the floor

‘You’re lucky, you little asshole,’ snarled Buckminster. ‘I will have to wring your sorry neck another time.   I gotta get this bet down.’   He disappeared into the crowd.

Lenny remained on his hands and knees, coughing and spitting, his throaty hack drawing disapproving looks from bystanders.   Warren knew Lenny would survive when he detected the retching man’s eyes scouring the floor for betting slips and salvageable cigarette butts.

‘Did you guys see that?’  wheezed Lenny as he reached out and grabbed a beer from a nearby table.  Warren was impressed.  Lenny could return from the dead with the best of them.

‘Lenny, you cannot go around provoking Bucky with those shooting matches’   Warren knew Lenny hated to be told what to do. 

‘Says you.   We been havin’ that gunfight for years and he never got mad.  He thinks he is a better shot, is what he told me.   So what does he do tonight?   He turns maniac and tries to snuff me out.   He is a menace.  Meaner than when he was a kid.  He should be put away.’  Lenny drained the beer in one amazing draught and peered about for another.  ‘ I tell you, people are crazy.  Crazy.  You can’t trust nobody.  Mother Klem taught me that.’ He paused to belch.  ‘I’ll get that big ape for that.   Nobody screws with Lenny Klem.’  You know I’ll get him, doncha.’

‘Lenny,’ Warren replied, ‘I know no such thing.  Bucky is under a lot of pressure.  People are out to get him.’

‘Sure as hell people are out to get him.  And those people are me.’   Lenny slipped a cigarette out from a pack laying on the table and waved it about to get someone to light it for him.  The cigarette lit, he scuttled off, muttering about revenge and free beer.

                        u                         u                        u                        u

The fifth race was a mile and an eighth, for four-year-olds and up, non-winners in the past year, $5,500 claiming price.  There were no Secretariats in this race.  Warren was not surprised to see Buckminster lumbering towards him, his head still shaking from side to side, his eyes ever alert to spot the assassin du jour.

‘Hey, buddy, lend me two bucks, will ya?’

‘What happened to the two-year-olds in the second race?  Did you lose?’

‘I told you I was getting something to eat.  Why would I bet on two-year-olds?  Smart people do not bet on two-year-old horses.’   Buckminster leaned forward.   ‘This race is different.  Felix Quarry is running a horse.  Blue Spinner.  Number five.   Scales is riding him.  Felix says he has bet two large.  On the nose.  On the nose yet.  No hedge.  I figger that’s worth something.’

Warren stared at Buckminster.   Terry Scales was the leading jockey that summer, so Warren was interested.  ‘Where would Felix come up with two large?’

‘What the hell do you care?  Just believe the tip.  That is my point.  Who cares if it is two large or five bucks?  Felix don’t go around tippin’ people every day.  That I know.  You got the two bucks?’

Warren looked up at the tote board.  ‘It’s early but it doesn’t look like a whole lot of people like your horse.  Twenty-five to one.  So what makes Felix any different from all the other trainers?  They all think their horse is a mortal, uh equine, lock.’

‘For two bucks we gotta debate trainers and horses?   I’ll find someone else.  I can’t waste no more time.’

‘Okay, okay, here’s the two bucks.   If I bet this horse and he runs to form – which is no form at all – I’m gonna cut you off.   It’s bad enough you have to mooch but you know I am a sucker for a tip.’

‘You do what you have to do.  Me, if I can parlay this race, I’m gonna get the hell out of this town.  Before the bastards get me.’   Buckminster pocketed the money and slipped away into the crowd.

Warren watched him go and decided to follow.   How much money could Buckminster raise before post-time?

Buckminster wandered the rail area and the main floor beneath the grandstand.   He put the touch on two neighborhood men.  Successfully.  A third told him to get lost.  Buckminster did not linger to argue the point.

The sellers’ wickets in the grandstand were in the rear, far from the rail.   Buckminster stood in line, his shoulders hunched while he stared at the racing form.  It was a body language warning for people not to bother him, a behavior, Warren had noticed, common to serious horseplayers.   Once a horse had been selected, it was then a struggle to keep the information from falling into the hands of the less-worthy, those who did not do their homework, or immune to the blinding insights of the dedicated horseplayer.   Not to mention people who would ruin the odds.  Special knowledge, gleaned from diligent research and savvy contacts, was the secret to racetrack success and was not to be shared.

The horses were now in the paddock and Buckminster, after carefully placing the betting slip in his shirt pocket, worked his way to have a look at Number Five, Blue Spinner.

Ignoring several security people, he climbed the fence at a point where the paddock met the track.   The horses began to leave the paddock to enter the track.  A few outriders glared at Buckminster, his large bulk a potential source of agitation to their temperamental charges.   Buckminster raised himself higher to get a clear look at Blue Spinner.  At the same time, Warren could see someone running across the infield toward the paddock.  It was Lenny and he was running hard, ducking around people, his rodent-like eyes fixed on Buckminster’s back.

‘Bang, bang, Bucky balls,’  squealed Lenny as he leapt onto the fence and pushed Buckminster onto the track.   Lenny jumped back into the infield and disappeared into the crowd, his cackling dying away in all the commotion.

On the track, a dangerous scene was developing.   Buckminster’s ample form rolled a couple of times and came to rest directly in the path of the four horses remaining in the paddock.  The horse closest to him was Blue Spinner.  Blue Spinner, perhaps reacting predictably to someone who had placed financial faith in him, rose up and threw his jockey, the startled Terry Scales.   At the same time, he tore the halter from the outrider’s hands .  The outrider was having enough trouble trying to stay her horse.  Contagion spread to the other three horses and soon the paddock was a rodeo of bucking horses, jockeys and outriders hanging on and swearing loudly.

Buckminster looked up from the red-brown earth and his eyes went wide with fear.  He rolled onto his side, pushed himself to his feet, and began to stumble down the track.  Running in the loose-packed earth was difficult and Buckminster advanced like a toddler running for a new toy.  ‘You’re going the wrong way!’ shouted several onlookers.

The first four horses were now well up the track, their riders looking back to see what was happening.   As Buckminster staggered onto the track,  an opening was created from the paddock to the track.   Led by Blue Spinner, the horses rushed from the paddock, riders hanging on as best they could, thrown riders scurrying to safety, and Buckminster directly in their path.

When Buckminster looked back to see his pursuers, he reacted by falling on his face.  Blue Spinner, firmly if uncharacteristically in the lead, galloped over Buckminster’ prostrate body.  Warren thought he could hear bones breaking.   Blue Spinner, and his impromptu racing competition, continued up the track, the wrong way, eventually to be brought up by the starter’s gate.   In the other direction, the first four horses continued their long walk to the starter’s gate, leaving Buckminster’ dirt-spattered body twitching in the brown earth.

Warren jumped over the rail and ran to Buckminster’ side.  Handlers and security people soon made it a crowd.  Warren knelt to see that Buckminster was still breathing, a strange rasping sound, a dangerous gurgle.

‘Buckminster!  You’re going to be okay!’

Buckminster’ eyes rolled back to see who was addressing him.  He muttered into the dirt.  ‘No, I ain’t.  I’m hurt real bad.   Didja see who it was?  Was it a heavy set guy in a cheap suit? And it’s Bucky, not Buckminster.’

‘Don’t talk, Bucky.  The ambulance is here.  You’re going to be okay.’

‘No, no, don’t let them put me into that ambulance.  I’ll never come out alive.  Just take me home.  Mom’ll be worried.  I don’t want she should worry.’

‘You need medical attention, Bucky.’

Buckminster coughed, a death rattle if Warren had ever heard one.  ‘Just take me home.  When Blue Spinner pays off, cash this ticket that’s in my shirt pocket and give it to my Mom.   Promise?’   

Warren looked up the track to see Blue Spinner fighting with his handlers,  Back in the paddock, Terry Scales was running around hitting people with his crop,    ‘You got it, Bucky.’   Warren reached into Buckminster’ shirt pocket, pleased to notice at the same time that Buckminster seemed to be breathing more regularly and might, in fact, be okay.

The ambulance attendants began to push Warren away from Buckminster.   Buckminster’ arm reached out, taking hold of Warren’s shirt.  ‘I told you they were out to get me, didn’t I?’

“Well,’ said Warren, unable to resist debunking Buckminster paranoia, ‘What you told me was that someone was following you.   Actually, it was some- thing, something with four legs and a saddle.  You weren’t worrying about a horse, were you?’

Buckminster’ eyes rolled back in his head.  ‘Don’t quibble.  I musta dropped my guard.  Not like me.  Who knew they could recruit horses?’  He closed his eyes, as if silently berating himself for being so unvigilant.

The attendants lifted Buckminster onto a stretcher and into the ambulance.  A track official began to jabber on about how it wasn’t their fault and how the race was ruined and it was all Buckminster’ fault.  Warren hoped Buckminster didn’t hear the part about ruining the race.  Despite the pain, Buckminster was no doubt still thinking about the 25 to 1 odds. 

Warren looked forward to hearing a new conspiracy theory.

Robert Alan Davidson

June 2007

New Year's Eve

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 17^th 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