Tales of Canadian Rurality

By Denn Thome

Normally, a twelve-mile strip of highway from the lake to town flows easily like the wind. But as traffic suddenly comes to a screeching halt, a married couple on a simple trip to town realizes a silver van from Alberta is holding up their journey. Overwhelmed by the fact that she is going nowhere fast, the wife decides to seek revenge, in the most creative way possible.

Texas Johnny is not from Texas, he is not a singer, and he is definitely not famous. But he loves his beer and music with a deep and never-ending passion. A successful accountant for the Montreal mob until a police raid robbed him of his career, Texas Johnny is on a mission to spread the word of all things country and western, with a liberal intake of beer and humor of course.

When a small group of people reunite to discuss a land partnership, they learn truths about themselves and forge new relationships while discovering that dreams are different for everyone, that they have all changed, and that nothing is like it used to be.

Tales of Canadian Rurality presents a trio of short stories that provide a glimpse into rustic rural Canadian life and the authentic characters that populate its landscape.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491732847

Denn Thome

Denn Thome lives in the Monashee Mountains where he writes of things come and gone, of friends and love.

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Copyright © 2014 Denn Thome.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-3283-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-3285-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-3284-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014907784

iUniverse rev. date: 05/09/2014

Photo Credits to Diane Thome

Contents

Author’s Note

Silver Vans

Texas Johnny

Dream On

About the Author

To Diane Charna, wife, friend, partner, believer, editor, and supporter

To Joshua and Jade, the sons I love and admire

Author’s Note

Short stories are like good friends you get to spend some quality time with occasionally. I started telling tales a long time ago while putting my sons to bed, making them up to bring a chuckle or two before seriously getting them down for the night. My sons are now grown, and the tales in this volume are for those who are grown-up as well.

It seems I fell in love with short stories, and after almost seventy years of orally telling one tale or another, I started getting them written down on paper where a lot of them still await that final touching up. The rest are stored in my mind, and now that I have the time, they are finding their way into reality. The three short stories in this volume are Canadian good friends of mine. It seems stories need a touch of real life at times. This is the first in a series of tales that stretch from 1962 to the present.

While this is a work of historical fiction, certain businesses that thankfully do exist are mentioned in the stories. These businesses, most of which are located in Grand Forks, British Columbia, offer great country service and down-home friendliness. Grand Forks, British Columbia, is a unique little city that welcomes visitors and has transformed itself into a relaxing place to relax into retirement where you can get some real work done.

Silver Vans

The first inkling of trouble was not so much the normal lack of subconsciously feeling any vehicles passing in the opposite direction with their sleep-inducing noise passing rhythmically through the atmosphere. It did not quite disturb my road sleep, which, like a nursery tune, was soothing and peaceful in that place within the mind where the purring motor presence tells you that you have not left the road and crashed. The lack of noise that crept into that reassuring space of Are we there yet? world of car sleepers awoke me rudely from an on-again-off-again deep sleep. So I began to arise from slumber in the passenger seat of our black Dodge Nitro. Widespread Panic’s Live in the Classic City CD played to the rapping beat of someone’s hands that were not mine upon the wheel.

Arising from slumber and opening your eyes is a major commitment to accepting that there may be a reality you awake to that may not be a warm, cuddling feeling. No, a bad feeling that all was not well awoke me from some inner space of escape from such revelations, and I guessed I should have just accepted that moment of cosmos foretelling and prepared myself for what was forthcoming.

After all, many times in the past, I had understood that something, not necessarily what, was going to happen prior to it becoming a reality. It was a mixed blessing that worked upon its own schedule and not when I willed it to, like picking a winner at the racetrack or slowing down just before a speed trap. No, my gift was more a sporadic intrusion, and it now was intruding.

I, now semi wide awake and not wanting to leave the peace of sleep yet with eyes open, scanned the road, saw no approaching traffic, and felt relatively safe from any head-on collision occurring.

I said, Hi, hon, speaking to my wife who was driving or at least tapping intensely upon the steering wheel with the focus of a professional driver bodyguard escaping a terrorist trap. How it’s going?

It seemed a pretty lame question to ask, but I was a concerned passenger, interested in her driving well-being and wondering what had pulled me out of an enjoyable road nap on a summer afternoon. After all, weren’t road nap outcomes supposed to be Are we there already?

Damn silver cars, was the only answer I received back.

This muttering of annoyance from my wife totally woke me to the fact that we were slowing down to that point of full slowness, that state of one hoping things would speed up again but looking like it was going to become full-fledged stopping. That hopeful thought was entirely lost as we came to the untimely stoppage. I mentioned an untimely stop for anytime you stop while still in your lane on a highway. It was untimely and indicated that something was wrong up ahead, like a traffic jam or a driver dying within a vehicle and requiring immediate first aid.

At the same time, we had rapidly caught up to the vehicle in front of us, a silver van from Alberta, according to the red and white license plate. It had braked for the stopped B-Train chip truck in front of them, who was trying to air horn its way out of the way of whatever was in front of us all blocking the road. The mass of the chip truck blinded us to any visual heads-up of what was happening. Because this all was taking place just short of the crest of a hill, I assumed more vehicles were stopped in front of us upon the famous Crows Nest Highway.

While I could discern little from the passenger seat, I did notice large numbers of crows and magpies sitting upon the power wires, a sure sign of free wildlife food nearby. It was easy enough to find upon this stretch of road, where various suicidal animals from deer and rattlesnakes to wild turkeys threw themselves in front of all manner of vehicles clipping along at a hundred kilometers an hour.

Did someone hit one of the suicidal deer that offered itself up to replenish the ravens, mocking birds’, coyotes’, and bald eagles’ appetite daily while destroying dinosaur-powered vehicles? I wondered.

Whatever was stopping us, the B-Train chip truck blocked our view like the closed curtain upon a stage awaiting the start of a play. The fact we were stopped in a non-passing zone only added to the drama. The wife added to the tempo of her steering wheel drumbeat, much to my dismay. So with the wisdom of husbands worldwide, I awaited for the curtain to rise.

Traffic from the west whizzed by us in the opposite lane, mocking us with their passage with that Hey, nothing wrong with our lane, suckers! dipshit smile, unhindered passing vehicle drivers and passengers gave to stalled or stopped vehicles as they raced to their next unknown junk food destination.

Generally, this twelve-mile strip of highway from the lake to town flowed like the wind without any stoppage, but today, we had reached a foreboding event and had now come to a complete stop in our lane with all forward progress stilled.

Silence filled our Nitro even over Widespread Panic playing loudly about a chainsaw to the spouse’s impatient tapping upon the now-useless steering wheel. When one was driving, the steering wheel was like an anchor that kept you solidly within your seat through turns and swerves, while the passengers moved side to side as if on an amusement park ride, a ride my wife had pointed out to me many times from the passenger seat that I subjected her to on winding country roads. Now the Nitro’s steering wheel was more a stress release object in danger of being abused.

So as my wife swore as only she can, intoning her mantra that some Albertan driver in a silver van coming to buy up BC land was causing the whole thing, and since we stopped directly behind such a silver van, I decided that silence was a blessing for me to continue with as a strategy right now until we could see what had occurred.

Then with husbandly wisdom, I would move us on, offer to drive while she relaxed, or take care of the problem in that way of husbands everywhere. Getting her out of the driver’s seat was unlikely because it was her metaphor of the steering wheel being an anchor, and once she was anchored, I had to be very fast to regain the driver’s seat. Generally, this occurred in that age-old drama of My bladder is larger than yours. After a quick move during a piss break, the anchor was mine.

We had stopped at one of the many scenic spots along this stretch of the Crows Nest Highway, the provincial road now leased to a private company to maintain in that version of private contracting that leaves one wondering if the road would be there once you head back home.

The company that maintained the highway under an owner who did not live here acted sporadically for the care of the road when they felt like it. In fact, we had stopped directly opposite the entrance to the company’s gravel pit. Here established for many years was a much deeper pit that was used to dispose of animals that did not cross the highway in a safe and sane manner. This carcass pit had the dead carcasses in it for the whole Boundary area and attracted scavengers of all kinds to a natural buffet of roadkill.

If you would get stopped on a highway, it was a good thing to at least be able to observe the interaction of man, machine, and animals, all working together for their common good. Obviously, the various birds and coyotes that were enjoying a meal paid us little attention. After all, we were stopped dead, and no one was shooting at them, nor causing them any alarm.

For some reason, every time I passed and looked at this scenic wonder, very visually noticeable from the highway, I thought of the auto body workshops fixing the damage from the collision of machine and animal or ordering parts that would not be in until next Tuesday. I thought of the insurance company working overtime, figuring out how to do the repair as cheaply as possible while the poor motorist was left wondering, Why me?

Okay, I did experience this once, or was it twice? You see, there was this interaction of the civilization and the wild happening in a carcass pit, spurring the economy forward in these troubled economic times upon their meeting on the asphalt byways that connected us all to the common good and bad. You might have noticed that I had not yet continued my spousal conversation, heeding my inner foreboding powers. Inner thought was the better part of valor right now.

Just as I was understanding this profound thought, I noticed a Pacific rattlesnake choosing that moment to slither up from the depressed shoulder of the road to bask upon the very thin asphalt shoulder the Crows Nest Highway in these parts was so well known for. He was directly opposite my side of the Nitro. It, the more peaceful member of the rattlesnake family, nonchalantly stretched itself out and began sunning itself, as if winter had just ended and this was the first warm day of spring. The rattler did not seem in any way bothered by the stopped line of cars and trucks that had now stretched as far as I could see behind me.

Just to make what I thought would be safe conversation, I mentioned the three-foot-long Pacific rattler to my wife, thinking she would enjoy seeing this wonder of nature herself. Instead (and my powers of foretelling did not once again warn me of any danger in this action), the wife calmly took in my explanation of nature’s majesty, and then she volunteered me to get out of the vehicle, pick up what looked to me like a very contented and comfortable snake from its warm tanning bed upon the shoulder of the road, and walk with it to the head of the stopped line of traffic. If there I found an Albertan silver van or car that was the cause of holding us all up, I should politely knock on the driver’s window and, when they opened it, drop the formerly contented snake into their vehicle.

You might now see why I was maintaining a meditative silence, for my loving spouse had come to believe that she was under a curse that silver Alberta vans and cars were on the road to annoy her to no end. I, of course, could only mention that silver was obviously the favorite color of Albertans, and in no way was this directed at her. If you are married, you can understand how the spouse did not take this wisdom to heart, and I was generally only rewarded with a Not tonight, asshole look for not following her advice on how to deal with this crisis.

Now there was certainly nothing wrong with Albertans. Okay, so they did use more of their scarce water supply than was prudent while pumping oil from the earth or separating it from sand while getting very rich doing it. Maybe their idea of pollution was more of the Texan school of business, Do it than not if you can make a buck. Not to forget Albertans had a unique culture, which was very well seen at closing time at their favorite watering holes. True to their credit, they did have beautiful concert theaters, ice rinks, auditoriums, the Stampede, and, not to forget, the Rocky Mountains. As well as more silver-colored vehicles than seemed necessary according to my wife. All of which were trying to destroy her.

Still even with their faults of driving like beheaded chickens running loose, dropping a rattlesnake into their vehicle seemed a little harsh to me. I mean, ever since the continual recession, hadn’t we all become brothers and sisters?

Now that Albertans themselves had become aware of just how much their petroleum industry was polluting their new richness, they had questions. Had this oil boom thing caused them to live in a Is the water safe to drink? province while their government had no regulations to control corporate rape and pillage of their Wild Rose province. Not getting many answers, they were escaping Alberta in droves and moving to BC, where real estate agents felt like it was like Christmas in July.

Most of these escapees fleeing in silver vans and cars traveled up and down the roads of British Columbia. At every stop, they jumped out to buy every lot, acreage, home, and trailer they could at high prices. Now this had been good business for those who owned the above-mentioned properties, but it had made it impossible for young British Columbians to be able to afford a home, lot, acreage, or