1977 International Scout II

In the 1980’s I was blessed to have been given my dad’s truck to drive to and from high-school, but I was forced to attend a school outside the zone linked with my neighborhood. I had to switch due to an unfortunate incident that involved tennis balls, vandalism, the police department, and a series of court appearances. Long story, not this story.

 

As the high school was way across town, having my own wheels was especially handy in that I didn’t have to bus-it, just to fall asleep in class. Say what you will about misplaced adolescent bravado, it’s really tough to look cool, when you arrive on public transportation.

My sweet ride was a 1977 International Harvester Scout II 2-door, mustard yellow, with the optional cloth bucket seat package. I often wondered…optional to what? Plastic bench-seating?

You may remember International Harvester as the famous manufacturer of big-rig 18 wheelers and farm implements. I can attest to the fact that the vast amenities of the 18 wheeler fleet were not adapted for my Scout. The good folks at IH dutifully applied everything they knew about farm implements, and parlayed that Spartan feel into their consumer-market 4X4 offering. With the steering wheel of a bus, and the get up and go of a wheat thrasher, this baby was ready for anything the barnyard could throw at her.

Farm implement or not, I loved that truck, and without a hint of creepy Stephen King ‘Christine-esque’ drama, I can assure you, that damn truck loved me right back. It was as if we shared a silent secret – I could abuse her, but as long as we were both having fun, her bodywork would stay (relatively) intact and my license wouldn’t be revoked.

Back in the early 1990’s the Highway Traffic Act was a bit different. They would suspend your license for extreme moving violations (say 120 in a 50-zone) but the suspension was always short lived – three months or so. This system was pretty smart, because it ensured that the worst drivers were always returned to the road quickly, thereby generating a steady flow of incremental cash to both the Province (in the form of fines) and to the Insurance companies (in the form of premiums). Drunk driving was still in its infancy (in that nobody actually ever lost their license for it) and nobody ever really thought to police the roads for drunks in the middle of the day. After all, who the hell is drinking in the middle of the day anyway?

On a beautiful sunny early afternoon in mid February, the bell that would signal lunch for about 500 high school kids was ringing. Books were quickly stuffed into lockers, and those with their own ride were heading for the parking lot. Those with bus passes had the sad little sack-lunches, and were slowly trudging to the cafeteria.

Our plans were made early in the day, and like an ultra-cool western, all participants in today’s lunchtime drama were approaching the Scout at the same time from different schoolyard exit doors. We smiled as we moved farther away from scholastic servitude, out gait quickening as we got closer to our waiting chariot.

Long before the days of ridiculously outfitted automobiles, the Scout II was a shining example of utilitarian simplicity. There was never any need to lock the doors (what’s there to steal?) Even the way it was parked - askew with one wheel up on a curb, the other in a slush puddle as deep as the floor-pan – the Scout seemed to whisper under its breath…‘fuck-off, I couldn’t care less…’

I reached in to pull open the driver’s door through the open window (the outside handle naturally inoperative) and pushed forward the bucket seat to let Andy in the back. Eric was a friggin’ tree at 6+ feet, and needed the legroom of the front cabin. We never ever talked about it, Eric always rode shotgun.

Eric had a ride too, as did Andy, but when you’re gonna go to someone’s house to drink some beer, and then return for classes, and you only have an hour to squeeze it all in, even we could see the wisdom in carpooling.

I can’t remember Andy’s car, but Eric had something special, and it was special for none of the reasons you might think. I was a spoiled kid, who even after having been tossed from my local high school, still managed to score the family truck. (As a sidebar, none of those criminal charges actually stuck)

Eric’s car was special, but not because it was cool or refined. Eric’s car was special because he bought it used with real money he earned from working at a crappy job. And he had a whole string of crappy jobs that kept him in gasoline, brake pads, Players Light, beer and Bruce Springsteen cassettes.

In 1971, an extremely limited run of only 784 American Motors Hornet SC Super-Coupes were built. Of those 784, just 19 were made with 360 cubic inch engines. Eric didn’t have one of those coupes. He had one of the 2 million 4 door Hornet sedans that were sold around the same time. But hey, quite the heritage eh? There were no limited edition Scout II’s – you either got the slow one, or the slower one.

 

So Eric would end up leaving his beloved Hornet in the parking lot that day, hop in the Scout with Andy and I, and head just up the way for some liquid lunch. The short adventure that would unfold, would take place on the way to the beer, not on the way back.

One rarely remembers the prelude to stupidity, or the catalyst for the bad decision-making processes. Somewhere between the high school and the end of the adjacent street, somebody goaded me into driving as fast as possible. Now had we been in the Hornet, all would have been just fine, for two specific reasons:

1)    The Hornet had some cornering ability, and didn’t weight ¾ of a ton.

2)    Eric could drive, and I, in all honesty, could not.

When I was in Eric’s passenger seat, a sort of calm indifference would drift over me. I could rummage though his vast tape collection, have a drink and a smoke, and never once worry about massive head trauma. He could make that car scream around corners in a controlled dry-slide, and I would  be more concerned about losing my smoke, than losing my life. We used to joke that his car tires spent more time breaking away from the pavement, than they did actually riding upon it.

But today it was all about me and The Crew, a willing farm implement, a tight timetable, and a dare to drive that flying brick as fast as I could. The crappy portable cassette deck in the storage bin between the front bucket seats, was bleating-out Ted Nugent’s ‘Wango-Tango’.

I wasn’t really much of a ‘Nuge’ fan, but it was good enough to make side two of ‘Driving Tunes #12’, and it had a nice frenetic pace that fit the mood.

It didn’t take long for the flying farm-implement to get up to about 90 km’s an hour, which in and of itself, wouldn’t be much of a problem, except that we were hurtling down a residential street. Andy had a death grip on the back of Eric’s bucket seat, and Eric had one hand planted on the dash, the other holding the outside of the door, as if he expected it to swing open at any moment.

We would soon have to navigate the curve of

Featherstone Drive

, which was soon to make a 45 degree turn. Unfortunately, set to complicate matters, there was another car rounding the turn, heading towards us.

The small 6 inch paper cone speakers of the crappy cassette player were distorting the Nuge’s insightful lyrics.. ..

…..If you wanna take a little chance
I'm gonna show you a new dance
Baby I gotta Wango down one time with you honey
I like it, I like it, I like it, I like it, I like it………

The lady with the five children in the four-door Ford, had seen us hurtling towards them, just as she rounded the turn. She had already put the car in reverse, and was now frantically attempting to back her car out of harms way.

Eric’s face became pinched, as he clutched the Players Light in his teeth. It was hard to tell if the smoke was making him tear up, or if the afternoon’s events were making him laugh so hard he was crying. It might have been a little of both. Andy was voicing his protest from the back seat in the form of something between a scream and a loud moan, as we drifted sideways toward the Ford.

While the goings-on inside the truck were of interest, the real engaging visual would prove to be the five kids bouncing about in the Ford, all of them unfettered or restrained by safety-harnesses. They bounced around with glee, in odd contrast to the hysterical look of fear in the pie-shaped eyes of their mum.

You got to pretend your face is a Maserati
It's a Maserati
It's a Maserati
It's a gettin' hotty
It's a Maserati, Maserati, Maserati
It's a fast one too man, that thing's turbocharged
You feel like a little fuel injection honey?

After what seemed an eternity of dry-sliding into the turn, we finally made contact with the hapless carpool-mum. With precision and grace the Scout handily stripped every single piece of chrome and accessory from its opponent, and sent it all flying up the street. Hubcaps, the aerial antennae, and the rear-view mirror were all treated with equal disdain.

Eric (to this very day) swears that I had both the brake and the accelerator depressed simultaneously as we rounded

Featherstone Drive

. An odd sort of pedal ‘fight-to-the-death’ conflict, that would claim no real winner. This theory may explain why our journey didn’t end abruptly, after we smashed into the Ford.

Onward the fearless Scout traveled, bouncing off her adversary, and then crossing back across the street, smashing through a huge snow bank, showering the windshield with ice and slush. Eric was definitely laughing now, yet only the filter of his cigarette remained clenched in his front teeth. He had pulled his arm inside the cabin though, when it seemed apparent we weren’t going to make that last turn. Andy looked visibly shaken.

Finally, we came to rest with the truck’s headlamps peering lazily into the front window of #1387 Featherstone Drive, just inches from the window pane. Nothing gets a homeowner out of his Lazyboy quicker than the threat of oncoming traffic in his living room.

Victim #8, the dude at house #1387 (if you’ve been keeping score…..Andy, car-pool lady + 5 kids) was out on his porch in a flash. With an odd mix of surprise and pity on his tired face, he peered up the street to survey the carnage.

…..Yeah, shiny now baby, heh heh heh
You've been drivin' all night long
It's time to put the old Maserati away
So you look for a garage, you think you see a garage
Wait a minute, Hey!, there's one….

My right hand slid down between the seats to the ‘entertainment pod’ and depressed the stop button. It was time to silence the ‘Nuge.

I turned off the engine, and an eerie calm descended on the crew of the Scout, just the hissing of the snow in the grillwork heard.

Eric was out of the truck first, then Andy shakily emerged.  You can’t count Eric as a victim, because he was really having way too much fun. Eric could always spot the humour in any situation, and while he tried to speak, his belly-laughing was making it difficult to get his point across.

“Mudd, I know your mad, and your dad’s gonna fucking kill you, but you have to get out here and see this. Etch this sight in your mind because while it may not be funny to you right now, one day you will be mad you missed this.”

He pointed back up the street, and there it was, the saddest sight any driver ever did lay his eyes upon:

Carpool mum was dragging her rear bumper back up the street. After she threw it in her open trunk, she headed back up the street to retrieve the trim work, and even stopped to scoop up the rear-view mirror. She was carefully plucking the broken glass and dropping the slivers shard by shard into one of the hubcaps. She didn’t even bother looking up the street at us, although if she had, she would have seen Eric topple over into the snow, clutching his stomach.

Some dude I recognized from Period 5 Drafting was leaning on the mailbox about a hundred yards away, and he too looked like he was going to have trouble staying upright. Andy, on the other hand, still looked shaken.

“That’s some fancy-driving son” The homeowner at #1387 proclaimed.

“Fancy aint what I’d fucking call it” muttered Andy.

Eric was still laughing in the snow as the police cruiser pulled up in front of the house. He was right, my dad was gonna freak.

“Step into the car son.”

the officer said, holding open the back door of the cruiser, while, peering over his Foster-Grant’s. He too was craning his neck to examine the carnage behind him.

“Lets see if between the bunch of us, we can figure out what we have going on here!”

He slammed the door, shot a quick glance at Eric & Andy, and walked back to the Ford, and stood there for a while chatting with carpool mum. I watched them speak in the rear-view mirror, and noted that he was smiling broadly while he had a hand on her shoulder. I could almost hear the conversation….”Don’t you worry ma’am, when I’m through with this idiot, it’ll cost him $1000 a month to drive in Ontario”.

Officer Way-Too-Friendly wouldn’t be far off that figure, but the ongoing expense of ridiculous automobile insurance premiums didn’t rest with my dad. Yes, my dad would be pissed about the truck, but it wasn’t because of the money. The deal was quite simple – he gave me the truck gratis, but I had to gas it, insure it, and if it needed repair due to mechanical failure, he would handle that. Bodywork damage on the other hand, was my responsibility alone. I gotta hand it to the old man, when he makes a point, he makes a point. Want to drive fast son? Fine, pay the officer. Wanna crash the truck son? Super, pay the body-shop. Wanna drive like an idiot? No problem, pay the Insurance son. I was a slow learner, so it took about a decade before I wasn’t redirecting 80% of my earnings to driving a 1977 farm implement.

Eric had by now picked himself up out of the snow, and was standing next to Andy, who was looking at his wristwatch. They both looked like they wanted to bolt, but the officer had his arm raised, and was pointing to them, as he was making his way back to us. He was sporting that odd grin, while gesturing with the universal gesture of ‘don’t you dare fucking MOVE from that spot, ‘till I speak with you’.

Eric lit another smoke, as the officer asked his questions. There was much head-wagging from my crew, and a couple nervous glances my way from Andy. His eyes seemed to say “Buddy we’re trying here, but you really are fucked on this one”

In general, it looked as if they were disagreeing with the officer more often than not. The officer turned abruptly away from my team, and started strolling back to the cruiser, still sporting that (by now) tiresome, shit-eating grin.

I saw Eric shrug his shoulders, give me the thumbs-up, and he and Andy started up the street, back towards the school. Thumbs up? I wondered..did they figure their bullshit would somehow get me out of this mess? 

A tow-truck arrived at the scene and started backing up in front of the Ford. Officer Way Too Friendly had made the judicious call to not allow the battered car to drive, as it was missing its rear view mirror. Can you imagine the horror? Driving with rearward visibility obscured!? Lets just ignore the 5 bouncing kids with no god-damn safety belts SHALL WE?!.

Oddly, my rear-view mirror was just fine, even though it had just Big-Bertha’d hers up the street.

Man, International Harvester could build a friggin’ tank. Peering out the back of the cruiser, I could see the damaged side of my loyal friend. As always, it really didn’t look all that bad. The bodywork on a Scout was very heavy gauge steel, and rather than looking like the Ford, the Scout’s skin was simply rippled. The Ford on the other hand, resembled what the Titanic must have looked like when it scraped along that Canadian iceberg. Ribbons of long jagged slices of bodywork jutted from the edges of a long gash that started at the front fender, and ended at the gas cap (the gas-cap cover was in her trunk by now).

“So, are we havin’ fun yet kid?”  This startled me out of my trance.

I didn’t respond to the question because I didn’t figure snappy responses to stupid questions would get me very far…

“Yes, you bet asshole! There just aint anything better than playin’ automotive pin-ball on a sunny school-day afternoon Officer-Moron!”

Hey, I’m a crappy driver, with no real moral centre, but even I knew it was time for quiet reverence peppered with a pinch of remorse. I was betting I could even squeeze out a well-placed tear if I tried. Perhaps super-cop could radio my insurance company. That’d certainly start my water-works.

Like a bad B-rate movie, the first question posed wasn’t even particularly inventive.

“So, how fast do you think you were going?”

Now this question is just annoying.

Nobody actually saw me hurtling down the street.

Carpool mum was too busy trying to get out of the Scouts way, to bother doing the whole ‘so if a mustard-yellow farm implement is traveling at X speed, and a blue Ford is traveling the speed limit....what would the speeding ticket be?’

“I really didn’t think I was going that fast officer, I don’t know what happened, it’s all a blur”.

“A blur eh?” He grinned. I could see my pitiful face in his Foster-Grants, and I was sporting a sort of pinched expression. I wasn’t even welling up.

“Lets take a look shall we?” he shouted as he turned away from the back-seat and got out of the cruiser.

We walked back towards the Ford, retracing the Scouts journey along a solid black skid mark that started somewhere in the distance, and ended about 20 feet behind the back of the Scout. Perhaps that skid stopped right when I figured out that equal application of the accelerator AND the brake, were no longer required.

Officer Shit-Eating-Grin was now morphing into some pathetic Columbo-like cop, complete with pensive scratch of the head, and thoughtful glances up and down the street. He even got down on one knee, cocked his melon and looked up along the skid mark receding into the distance. All he needed was the ratty trench coat to complete the image.

A small crowd was now gathering on the street. Any faint hope that the general population of my high school would somehow be spared my lunchtime antics, were quickly fading.

“I’d say, given the length of this here skid mark, the absence of any road particulate matter, and the generally good driving conditions..I’d say…you were going about…. 90 kilometers an hour.”

I found myself wondering if he knew any other party tricks as impressive as that one.

“I’m not sure sir” I muttered.

“Let’s sort this out then.” He proclaimed through the grin, as he led me back to the cruiser.

The next little while was spent tallying up the damage – various types of driving styles were summarized…reckless, careless etc. There was some miscellaneous property damage (there were shrubs involved…victim #9) and even some talk of cab fare for the carpool mum and her bouncing payload of unrestrained urchins.

The Ford left on the end of a hook, but the officer let me drive the Scout away, as there didn’t appear to be too much damage. Sadly, I knew how much it would cost to iron out the wrinkles in those ultra-thick steel body panels, so ‘not too-much damage’ was a relative thing really.  Either way, she was spared the indignity of the tow-hook, and I the pain of arriving home sans-ride.

A quick lock of the front hubs, and a shift into 4WD, and I was extricated from the homeowner’s lawn, and was on my way with $337.75 in fines. Homeowner could now get back to the business of pulling that imitation oak-handle on the Lazy-Boy™.

Today the same series of infractions would have likely netted me a full weapons-drawn swat-team response, an impounded and subsequently cube-crushed truck, and a 1-year license suspension. I’d be uninsurable.

Had all this happened AFTER our liquid-lunch in today’s safer environment, cell number would likely have nothing to do with my fucking phone.

I pulled into the high school parking lot, and slowly trudged to my period 5 drafting class. It was hard to believe that all this excitement could consume just a single lunch-hour, but I didn’t even need to sign-in late at the office. I entered room 203 just as the bell was ringing, with the rest of the class already firmly seated at their tables, their 4H Pencils at the ready.

“Mr. Klein!” exclaimed our overly-enthusiastic teacher Mr. Thissen. In his thick German drawl, he went on with a sly grin…. “Glad you could join us!....I hear that over the lunch-hour Mr. Klein was testing the limits of tire adhesion”

I slumped into my desk, and tried to focus on all things orthographic projection.

As I recall this singular sad tale of my misspent youth, there is one thing that I remember as clearly as it was just yesterday: On that bright sunny winter day, the sight of carpool-mum picking up all the pieces of her trashed car, and carefully putting them in her trunk.

…And I have to admit, Eric was damn right.

It’s still hilarious.

57 Channels & Nothing On

This is an older diatribe I once had out on Facebook. I'm re-posting it because I loathe bell Canada, and all the negative traffic I can generate soothes my soul. This week's issues are with e-mail access. Variation on a theme of 'same shit, different day'.

==================================================================

I am not a TV Hound. I do not spend every waking minute watching the regularly scheduled drivel that streams through my satellite dish. Yes, I have 800 available channels, but everyone knows that 75% of them are simply the same channels, repeated in different time zones or re-branded on affiliate networks.  The poet Bruce Springsteen once wrote a song, that in its quaint yet prophetic 1992 sentiment, captured most satellite subscribers angst..

Man came by to hook up my cable TV
We settled in for the night my baby and me
We switched 'round and 'round 'til half-past dawn
There was fifty-seven channels and nothin' on

Well now home entertainment was my baby's wish
So I hopped into town for a satellite dish
I tied it to the top of my Japanese car
I came home and I pointed it out into the stars
A message came back from the great beyond
There's fifty-seven channels and nothin' on

So, my baby tells me that the Satellite is down, again, and while that’s fairly typical when the weather is inclement, it hasn’t been raining, and it isn’t even windy.

Ladies and gentleman, the first satellite was Sputnik 1, launched by the Soviets on Oct 4 1957. So, while I am generally a semi-patient man, by my calculations, we have had OVER FIFTY FUCKING YEARS of research and development time to try and design a system that isn’t hampered by drizzle.

Nevertheless, I am a slave to the Bell TV Machine, for while I loathe all telecommunication companies, the concept of having nobody to call when things break, is more loathsome. So I pickup the phone – which miraculously works – and dial the 1-800-Sky Dish number. I am on hold for over 30 minutes, told ten times in repeating 3 minute intervals that my call is important, but that all representatives are serving other customers.

Holy shit, either there are a lot of people without satellite service today, or they are two customers in all of Canada calling in on a Saturday morning, and only one lonely operator manning the phones. I’m pretty sure its scenario number two.

And, like some bad cliché, I am eventually connected to a woman with a pleasant Bombay-bounce in her voice. Yes sports fans, I am connected to the one person who is actually geographically farthest from my home, perhaps even farther than the damn satellite itself.

And naturally, when I mention I’ve been on hold for over half an hour, she seems at first surprised, but quickly pulls up the handy  ‘dealing with poor wait times’ icon on her computer screen, and feeds me the generic ‘sometimes, sir, we have a high volume of yada fucking yada yada’ speech.

And why is it that when you complain about something, the agent automatically insert the ‘sir’ into the reply? This invariably creates a subtle yet palpable presence of condescension, which really sets the tone nicely for the next infuriating hour of interaction. “We are sorry you ‘feel’ as if you are being treated like livestock, sir, but….”

And why is it that before you can even be placed in the rat-maze of telephone prompts, you are asked to punch-in your phone number? I ask this question, because after you are finally connected to a human being, the first question they ask you, is (wait for it) yes, what is your phone number please??? Again dear reader, I ask you – FIFTY FUCKING YEARS OF RESEARCH – and did they simply lose the scrap piece of paper that someone in India scribbled my stuff down on?

So the ‘technical support agent’ 11,000 miles away simply will not adjust her $12 headset so I can hear her voice. And what makes matters worse, is every time she asks me to power down and up the receiver unit, it induces a deafening hum on the phone line – which is par for the course because (wait for it) yes, Bell Canada also controls my telephone lines. 

When she is sure nothing she can do will help me, she asks for my e-mail address – which is quite maddening because (yes, you have already guessed) Bell Canada also controls my Internet access, and they HAVE ALL MY GOD-DAMN CLIENT INFO ALREADY.

I am screaming my internet address over the hum, as apparently she is going to send me some ‘helpful tips’ for future use.

Future use? How about anything that will help right fucking now?

Why send tips when you havent actually solved the problem?

I am then informed that the satellite is no longer in alignment and that I need a service tech to come to the house.

It’ll cost me $75, no matter what the problem.

I ask how they can charge me if they don’t know what the issue is, and this really stymies her. She then tells me not to worry, for I don’t have to give the technician any money. Well swell, I’m happy now. Instead of handing 75 bucks to a monkey with an extension ladder and a pair of pliers, I get to have the charge added to my monthly bill. Yes, I concede, that’s good reason not to worry.

Naturally nobody is available to come to my house soon, 3 business days is the best she can do. When I ask for an evening appointment, for I have to earn a living to be able to continue to pay $300 a month for home telecommunications (which don’t work, I add) there are no evening appointments available in this calendar month. Big Surprise there.

So I begrudgingly agree to taking off an entire morning of work to see if they can fix what I have already paid for. Given the timeframes are the typical ‘anytime between 8AM and Noon’ booking, they will undoubtedly arrive at 12:30, and stay till 2, effectively erasing a days worth of productivity, and $75 from my bank account.

The icing on the cake, is that she asks me to rate her service on a scale of 1 to 10, before I hang up. I simply tell her to give herself a ‘10’  unless of course she’s the one who has been up on my roof with a sledgehammer.

I’m shaking with rage as I hang up the phone, but am really, really happy to have received my ‘Top Ten Satellite Tips’ e-mail message, which is about as helpful as a Lifeboat Primer for all Titanic Passengers. I decide to pen a quick reply to the Senior Customer Service Manager answering the ‘was this e-mail helpful?’ question….

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lets see if we can understand one another.

I call your call centre because I have no satellite sig

nal, and therefore no mechanism to watch the TV’s in my home

After the tech advised me to disconnect wires, reboot, and otherwise manipulate the system to no avail, I am told I will be receiving a ‘helpful tips’ e-mail.

Let’s be clear - Said e-mail was sent AFTER the technician knew there was no resolution to the problem, and BEFORE the technician (3 days from now) will apparently fix the dish.

I will soon be billed $75 for a problem that hasn’t yet even been determined – to align a dish I PAID YOU to professionally install.

Here’s a helpful ‘tip’ for you - when I am billed that ‘non-negotiable $75’ to ‘re-align’ a dish you should have ensured was placed securely - I will be canceling the $290 a month I pay for all the service into my home, and finding someone else to gouge me and my family.

Charging customers a fee to rectify problems that have no root-cause with the customer, is tantamount to extortion.

Far worse however than all the above, is the fact that I know nobody will act upon the above message, or even read it.

Shame on you all.

=================================================================== 

I’ll let y’all know how things go, but if my interaction so far is any indication, I’ll be taking Mr. Springsteen’s advice soon, but I’ll spare the TV, punt the satellite onto the neighbours roof….

So I bought a .44 magnum it was solid steel cast
And in the blessed name of Elvis well I just let it blast
'Til my TV lay in pieces there at my feet
And they busted me for disturbin' the almighty peace
Judge said "What you got in your defense son?"

"Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on"

The Torpedo

It’s Saturday night in the “big-ish” City.

Our activities are varied, but they all have one thing in common – a complete lack of foresight and planning. On this particular Saturday night, we would all channel the happy bygone days of childhood. Yes, hot-damn, tonight we were going tobogganing.

At 3:20 PM in the afternoon, we had yet to craft a plan, except for our choice of poison. TJ had managed to pilfer a 66 oz bottle of Russian 100 Proof Vodka. It was no secret we didn’t really have Champaign tastes when it came to booze (the horrible experiment in home-brew beer can be offered up as proof to that point) but even we knew this oversized bottle was very special.

We were camped out in my parents basement, as they were away for a week or two visiting family. The basement wasn’t finished, but it provided everything we needed. There were big area rugs on the bare concrete floor, a bunch of odd couches rescued from various aunts and uncles, and naturally a stereo system with turntable and a whole whack of some of the best damn music ever recorded. My sister, brother and I had adorned the place with our own artwork, which really made the expanse seem like our very own studio. I have to admit, my parents were way-cool in letting us paint on the doors, walls and floors.

The handiest features though, were the cold-storage room which housed a beer fridge, and just off from the furnace room, a bathroom with a sink and shower. Add to these amenities a walk-out to the backyard (so we could come and go as you please) and you have the makings of the perfect hang-out.

My parents preferred having us nearby, so they generally put up with our crap, and the loud music.

On this Saturday night, it would be a small group, but this same group formed the nucleus of many previously boisterous nights. TJ, my brother and I were relaxing on the mismatched sofas, sipping marvelously smooth screwdrivers out of clear plastic cups.

My brother, Edge (a nickname having nothing to do with the band U2) had contributed 10 cans of frozen concentrated orange juice, and not the cheap-ass no-name crap either, but the premium Florida-grown stuff. Two pitchers of the concoction sat next to a big bowl of ice, just beside the 2 foot stack of LP’s on the floor. TJ initially objected to the pulp, but after the 6^th cocktail, his complaints dried up.

It was mid-winter 1984, and we had our music pics for the night lined up. Edge was waiting patiently through side B of Bruce Springsteen’s just released Born in the USA, which TJ was allowed to play first, but only because he brought the booze. Normally a music selection of that caliber would be relegated to the end of the evening, or when Edge fell asleep, but we were all feeling particularly gracious. Edge had a pristine copy of Johnny Cash’s 1968 Folsom Prison sitting next to the speaker, and he looked positively antsy to drop the needle. I hadn’t decided if I would request REM’s latest, Reckoning, or Van Helen’s 1984. I was figuring however, that after having to endure almost 47 minutes of The Boss, Edge would never put up with what he had categorized as “Van Halen’s shittiest album, in a catalog that didn’t even have any shitty albums”. Edge really didn’t take to the synthesizers at all.

In the end though I didn’t care much what was played, because even though I supplied the brand new B&O turntable, I honestly preferred to have other people pick the tunes.

There was a special feeling descending upon us all, as the Russian poison worked its magic. The warmth went all the way to our toes, and as was customary of this merry band, our casual conversation always took to spirited debate…

“Nothing beats the Crazy Carpet for overall best ride” TJ announced out of the blue.

“No fucking control” I said, dismissing the evening’s topic outright.

“Why would you deliberately choose to spend 50% of your ride facing the wrong direction?? It’s not like you have any choice as to your orientation on that cheap crappy piece of plastic.” Edge snorted.

“Have you seen the way TJ drives? The Crazy Carpet would seem like a monorail, compared to how he usually fares on the highway” I snickered.

The only real tobogganing experience is with the standard, old fashioned 6 foot wooden kind, with the curved up front end” Edge replied with an air of confidence.

“But the Crazy Carpet has two textures, one side smoother for speed, and the other rougher for grip, its so simple…so pure.” TJ said, lowering his eyes, aware his argument was losing steam.

Then suddenly Edge jumped bolt upright, and ran across the basement into the cold-storage room. After some crashes and what sounded like breaking glass, he emerged, triumphant, holding one of the old toboggans from our childhood high over his head.

 “Let’s go sleddin’! He yelled with a level of enthusiam that was very un-Edge like.

I actually had no idea we still had those tobboggans. My parent’s basement was like that. You could poke around and always find something new. It seemed like my dad was sneaking into the house in the middle of the night, and adding crap to the place, while we slept. Weird.

And there it was, in all its dusty cobwebbed splendor..an original, probably circa 1969 Bent Wooden, complete with the cushion-pad still attached. The only thing missing was the crappy vinyl rope which made it easier to drag back up the hill. You could still make out the brand-name “Torpedo” in faded red lettering across the top of the bent section.

“Uh, reality check morons, its -40 outside.”  I said with a dismissive tone.

It was getting cozy in the basement, and the Boss was singing a spirited tune called Glory Days, about what life used to be, giving examples of people watching their existences slipping away, dreams passing them by. Leave it to Bruce to find a way to twist the most moroseful of concepts into a cute pop ditty. I remember thinking I’d have to give this album another listen, soon.

The vodka was about half an hour away from making it impossible for the group to have any lofty ambitions for the night. I was fighting Edge’s sudden challenge to my plan of staying in the basement. After all, what was wrong with heading out later to have a few drinks at a local bar with a fireplace? Hadn’t they heard the statistics around tobogganing deaths?

Just last week some kid took his toboggan up on the roof of his parents bungalow, and after piling the snow from the yard up near the eaves (we have some insane snowfall in the Ottawa Valley), proceeded to sled off the roof, down onto his driveway. Problem was, he got so much momentum when he added his homemade hill to the roof’s pitch, he hit the driveway and just kept going…right into the path of the huge city snowblower making the rounds of the cul de sac. So little Johnny, while getting points for ingenuity, was unceremoniously spread right back upon his own parent’s driveway. I’ll bet it was a fucking Crazy Carpet too. No control, too much speed.

“C’mon, it’ll be awesome! TJ, get the wineskins, we’ll fill em up and hit the slope just this side of Blackburn Street.”

Oh no, I thought. This was moving from rudimentary planning to the operationalizing stage, way too fast for my liking.

I looked over at TJ, hoping he would take my side, but sadly he had the familiar vacant sort of faraway look with a twinkle in his eye, that usually meant he was up for anything. C’mon, didn’t they know that children between the ages of five and nine, account for 40 per cent of all sledding related injuries in Canada!?...over 20 per cent of these injuries involve concussions, internal injuries or broken bones…most injuries are caused by colliding with an object (e.g., trees/rocks/signs) or from being thrown from the sled!!?? OK, so those stats are for kids, not adults, but if you factor in the alcohol, I was pretty sure we were fast heading for the same risk group.

”Minus 40 man! Minus fucking 40 without the wind and there’s gonna be wind as we hurtle down the friggin hill ya stupid bastards!!”

“C’mon ya old woman…,” Edge said, “….get off yer fat fucking goo-filled ass and lets go.”

“Listen, I like ya guys….” I weakly protested, “…but the three of us aint gonna be able to squeeze onto that thing.”

“No prob, there’s another one back in the cold storage!” Edge exclaimed with glee.

It was no use, we were going tobogganing. I might as well embrace it.

“One more drink, and we’ll dig up the snow-gear.” I said, feigning some enthusiasm.

OK, so now its time for the disclaimer.

You have to understand, when you’re in high school, and it’s the mid eighties, drinking and driving was sort of like cheating on your girlfriend. Ones propensity to commit the offence was directly related to the likelihood of being caught. In 1984, in sort-of-small-town Ottawa, the cops weren’t all that interested in policing this sort of thing. They had their hands full with the fights, and the steady stream of drunkenness coming back into downtown from the bars in Hull, Quebec. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to glamorize stupidity, or justify suicidal or anti-social behavior, but it has to be stated for the record that the consequences of our actions really never crossed our minds.

As a case in point, while it may seem inconceivable now, at one point in time someone had to commission medical studies to prove that smoking was bad for you. These studies were intended to show the world that smoking – might just be – bad for our health. Sure, it sounds nutty now, but holy fuck man, doctors themselves appeared as pitch-men for the very consumer product that would kill thousands of people a year. Sure, drinking and driving kills, but when you’re a kid? Well, we’ll take those odds.

My folks were smart enough to lock up the car-keys, but TJ had a big van and we loaded the gear which consisted of;  vodka, (which was just below the label by now) 3 wineskins, 5 Labatt’s Blue and one mixed tape.

Now it really wasn’t TJ’s van, it was him employer’s van. His boss was (un)affectionately referred to as ‘Griz’ which was short for Grizzly Bear. That nickname was in reality far too generous, for when TJ’s boss got mad, he made a Grizzly Bear look like a fucking Kuala.

TJ had a strange relationship w Griz, one that Edge and I really didn’t understand. It seemed that no matter what TJ did, he was never in jeopardy of losing his job. Last weekend was a perfect example of this weird benevolence.

After dropping us off, and on his way home from our favorite watering hole, TJ ploughed the van into the snow-filled ditch. Truth be told, he simply fell asleep, which was pretty common for TJ. In fact, it was practically a hobby. We all hated having him drive by himself because he had some narcoleptic tendencies that really needed to be offset by boisterous passengers.

In the early morning last week, he was only minutes away from his parent’s place, when he dumped that huge van into the ditch, taking out the highways exit-ramp sign in the process.  A few feet to the left, and he would have cleared the sign, but I suppose he would have wrecked it anyway, eventually, cuz he was definitely snoozing.

We all drove by the next day, after the tow-truck pulled it free, to see where he ditched it. I remember sitting in my truck, on the side of the road, staring at what was left of the sign, laughing so hard there were tears streaming down my cheeks.

The left hand support-post was completely gone, but the balance of the signage was still affixed to the right-hand post. If one was able to actually find the passenger side rearview mirror assembly, and hold it up to the remains of the sign, they would find it fitting perfectly. It looked as if someone took a jigsaw and carefully cut out the profile shape of the passenger side and rear-view mirror assembly.

So, that fateful night TJ ran home, leaving the crippled van in the ditch. Had it not been for a tragic twist of fate, he might just have gotten away without his boss finding out, as he indeed had solid plans to cover his tracks. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the way it panned out.

Griz got a call the next morning, from one of his neighbours who had spotted the van on his way back home from her night shift. Normally, given how deep the van was buried in the snow, it’d be hard to spot, but (un)luckily for TJ, the van was emblazoned with the company name and logo in 2 foot high blue-on-white lettering. Griz’s busy-body neighbour was calling it in as she was worried one of Griz’s employees might be hurt in the crash.

Griz knew there was nothing wrong with any of his employees. TJ worked as an audio-visual technician in a posh downtown hotel. Griz knew all too well the nightmare TJ lived at work – if the meeting rooms weren’t setup on time, clients would be furious, and Griz’s pager would go off, and there’d be hell to pay.

Griz snapped a quick sideways glance at the clock on the bedside table.. 7:38 AM – No, TJ was just fine, because those hotel rooms didn’t get setup by themselves.

Ironically, while Griz spoke with his neighbour, the van was being towed out of the ditch and would momentarily be en route to a downtown body shop to assess the damage. By the time Griz arrived at the exit where the van was spotted, it was already gone. All that remained as evidence of any wrongdoing was the wrecked highway signage, and a huge long scar in the pristine snow where the van went in, and  then out of the ditch.

By 10:45 AM, a new bumper, and rearview mirror assembly was installed, and by 11:15 AM, TJ’s buddy at the auto-shop was driving the van down into the belly of the Westin Hotel’s loading dock, where TJ sat waiting to pay the man. Cash, $856.23…no questions asked. We secretly figured the body-shop guys kept 1982 GMC Van bumpers and mirrors in stock, at all times, just for TJ.

You’d think with this kind of track record, we’d be wary as we loaded the toboggans into the van. Nope. All aboard the Stupid Train – next Stop… “Wind Chill Central”.

The toboggan slope wasn’t too far from home, which was mandatory, cuz if you were driving around on the juice, it was wise to keep to familiar neighborhoods and short hops.

Because the van was a panel version, built for hauling equipment in, there were only two seats up front. There were a couple plastic record cartons stolen from a Macs Milk just behind the driver’s seat though. One was filled with gaffer-tape, the other with an assortment of horribly jumbled audio cables. These were usually flipped over as makeshift seats. TJ loved taking the corners hard, or just plain erratically, sending the hapless 3^rd passenger flying around the cargo bay like a rag doll. Once you took your first header into the van’s interior wall, and you started to laugh hysterically, it was impossible to right-yourself on the milk carton again. For some insane reason, Edge usually opted for the unstable seat, and tonight was no exception.

TJ was fond of the ‘fake the nice-n-easy left, then hard-right’ maneuver, which would almost always unseat the resident Milk-Carton Rodeo King. As ZZ-Top yelled about the virtues of cheap sunglasses on the crappy stereo, Edge bounced around the back of the van. Unfortunately the fourth or fifth sprawl into the van’s wall caught Edge’s forehead on one of the trucks internal ribs. TJ and his boss had installed plywood to the interior ribs, because Griz was tired of repairing the dents caused by the equipment cases rolling into the exposed interior sections. They ran out of wood, and while that didn’t pose much of a problem under normal circumstances, Edge quickly found out why having the entire interior outfitted with the plywood would have been a nice value-add for the trip.

Blood was trickling out of a nice gash just above Edge’s left eyebrow, but he seemed unfazed. Besides, we were at the slopes, and he had the sliding door open before TJ had even pulled into a parking spot.

We earlier loaded the evening gear inside my parent garage, and my folks were the kind of people to custom-build a home with a heated garage. This really made the actual temperature outside a real shock for us all. The wind ripped into the van, slicing at our faces with enough ferocity to make us gasp. Holyfuckinshititscold, TJ and I exclaimed in unison. Edge, again, was unphased.

I could hear my dad in my head – “son, the human body loses 90% of its heat through the head, you need the hat son, its mandatory.” My dad was always good for a spontaneous science-fact. I thought of that statistic as I watched Edge literally take flight (if only momentarily) just before heading down the slope. Naturally, No damn hat.

He grabbed the 1969 Bent Wooden Torpedo, with the cushion-pad still attached, and threw his body up and over onto it, and he seemed for a second or two to be hanging in the air. For a fellow who had drank his weight in 100 Proof vodka, there was a real grace to the whole thing. He didn’t even fall off when gravity slammed him into contact with the slope. A small weird snow squall seemed to be shifting its way all over the slope, and the wind sand-blasted our faces. I couldn’t see Edge anymore.

“Beer?” TJ asked.

“Sure.” I said.

Clearly I could slow down a tad on the sauce, as was evident by my complete lack of stability on a toboggan slope who’s crest  was all but covered in ice. My Kodiaks with the ‘zero-grip sole’ weren't helping much either, and I was soon wishing I had put on warmer socks.

TJ and I each held our beers up to the light from the lamp-standard, to see if they were frozen… as they were left in TJ’s van when we were in my parent’s basement. As soon as we cracked the twist-offs, the liquid solidified, spraying foam onto our gloves. As we both bent over to catch what we could in our mouths, I wondered how many times in my life this would happen before we stopped holding beers up to the light in the middle of the winter.

Shockingly, from the snow-squall, emerged three young children, about 10 or 11 years old. They were dressed in appropriate nanook-of-the-north outerwear, with only their eyes visible as they approached us.

“Michael! Evan, c’mon. lets go!” I heard from behind us in the parking lot.

TJ was so startled to see anyone else on our hill, that he suddenly launches into an ‘oops slip-recover, oops slip-recover’ dance, finally landing on his back. The beer bottle is dropped, and it shoots down the slope like a missile.

“You Bastards!” we hear from the parking lot…

 “Don’t you know kids play here! Why would you bring beer bottles here, they’ll break, you idiots!”

For a second, we feel sheepish, but the do-gooders are quickly off, and we are all alone once again with the biting wind, and a sinking feeling that we really shouldn’t have ventured out at all. TJ and I stand together for what seems like a long while, peering down the slope.

We spot Edge ascending the hill slowly, and he seemed to be wearing the toboggan as a hat, with the curved front placed over his head. One arm stretched backward, holding the length of the sled behind him, and the other holding TJ’s runaway beer. It seemed unlikely he would get to the top without performing the same dance-number TJ just executed, but somehow, miraculously, he is suddenly standing next to us.

Now Edge is a hardy fellow, but one look at his face convinced us he was done with sledding for tonight. The blood from his earlier van-wound was now frozen to this face, and he was sporting the same pained facial expression Jack Nicholson had at the end of The Shining.

“Time to go home kids.”

We piled back into the van, which was now radiating cold inward upon its hapless occupants. No Milk-Carton Rodeo for the trip back home. TJ was so cold, it looked like an effort just to turn the big steering wheel and aim us back out towards the main road. When you’re this cold, you can’t even speak. ZZ Top was playing decidedly slower, as the tape mechanism tried in vain spin at the proper speed.

The headlights of an oncoming car put Edge’s head in relief, as I had taken his spot on the milk carton behind the passenger seat. His ears caught my attention, as they had an odd hue. I reached out, and began to say…. “Edge, man yer ears are friggin white, do you….” And my words froze in my throat when my finger made contact with his skin. I felt his ear crack when I touched it, and suddenly without any warning I was flooded with a horrible sense of failed responsibility.

Now I have never really been my brother’s keeper. He’s always been his own guy, and was mature way past his years. But I was 19, and he was 14, and I could hear the whimper in my brain growing to a crescendo-scream of OH MY GOD, FOR FUCKS SAKE I FROZE MY BROTHER’S EARS OFF!

It’s hard to describe this kind of panic, for in a split second you get the visual of your kin's disfigurement, your mother’s reaction of horror, and cheap sunglasses that will never, ever stay on his damn head, without gaffer tape.

Edge clearly wasn’t grasping the gravity of the situation, as he gingerly touched one ear, then the next, with an odd grin on his face.

We got back to the homestead and naturally continued to drink (I, more than was needed) and I cannot recall much past side two of the Johnny Cash album.

The next morning Edge was acting brave, but he was clearly in a ton of pain. He likened it to having his ears actually on fire. Somehow, miraculously, his ears didn’t fall off, and while he seemed to have suffered some frostbite, at least he could wear shades.

Sometimes, not too often, I will dream of that night. I awake in a sweat, with the same feeling in the back of my throat, that I felt that ungodly cold night in the mid eighties. My brother and I have never spoken of that night again.

To this day though, Edge doesn’t ever venture anywhere past September without a hat. His ears are now sadly hyper-sensitive to cold, and while it took our ill fated toboggan adventure to drive the lesson home, Edge doesn’t lose any of his body heat from his head, anymore.