Canada XIX - Brown Gravy

     We stopped for lunch at a cafe, The Northman or maybe it was The Disappointed Appetite, I forget which.  When we walked in the door, every head in the place snapped around to check out the strangers.  Gave us an up and down, a derisive snort and went back to eating.  The place wasn't big and wasn't all that pretty.  Had a used look to it.  But was clean and the tables didn't wobble much on the cracked linoleum.  Sun streamed through the window and lit up three of the five calendars on the walls.  All but one had an outdoors scene on it.  Big fish exploding out of a lake, Mounties on horseback and elk in snow-capped mountains. The other was an ad for a bail bondsman. The curtains on the windows were the white lace kind slowly bleeding tar and nicotine yellow.  We squeaked out our chairs and sat down.

     The twin waitresses bustling about looked like they'd been there since the construction crew had built the restaurant around them during the days leading up to World War I while the ladies, probably around forty at that time, stood waiting with pencil and pad in hand.  Menus were simple plastic binders with a couple of mimeographed pages between.  Breakfast and lunch only but you could get breakfast all day long.

     Our waitress didn't even ask.  Simply turned over Uncle Emil's cup and filled it with coffee followed by a "what'll you have boys?"  Emil went for the Trapper's Surprise breakfast in hopes there was something alongside his eggs over easy that'd once felt steel jaws or at least a bullet.  Me, I had the burger, fries and a coke.
     That settled she turned to me, "Did you want the gravy over it all or just a bowlful on the side?"
     Can't say I'd ever been asked that question before.  Or since.  My simple, "No gravy for me ma'am," set her penciled-in eyebrows all aquiver.
     "You sure?  You might want to think that over young man."
     I was petty sure I wanted no gravy.  What for?  But her raised eyebrow had me wondering if I was making a big mistake.
     "Yes ma'am.  I'm sure.  No gravy for me, thank you."
     Her pencil was returned to its proper place above her right ear and stuffed into her updo along with two pens and a yard stick.  She snapped around on the gray linoleum floor and shuffled off toward the stainless steel kitchen counter.
     "You've never eaten in small town Canada before have you Archie me lad?  Up here, gravy is not only a cultural necessity but also comes in handy for other reasons as you will soon discover."  With that Emil rose and began to work the tables.
     Once again I felt embarrassed for him, mostly for me actually, when he did things like that.  Going up to total strangers and asking them how the food was.  Then I saw what he was really up to.  A few sentences in, with a laugh or two along the way, the conversation always turned toward fishing, ice-out, weather and bugs.  Nearly all of the men up in Northwest Manitoba wet a line now and then.  Spend some time nearly every day in the local outdoors.  We hadn't.  Simple enough.  All he was doing was getting the lay of the land out on the water.  And the locals had no problem filling him in.
     Emil figured people were people wherever he went.  And few would withhold information from a fellow fisherman even if he wasn't a local boy.  By the time our meals arrived he'd learned all he felt was needed.
     Lunch was, hmmm, a little different than what I'd expected.  When I asked for ketchup our waitress gave me a look that said I'd done something disgusting.  Maybe even sinful.
     "Ketchup?  What for, eh?"
     "For my fries ma'am."
     "Ketchup on fries?  That's a new one on me.  That's what the vinegar on the table is for young man."
     And that was a new one on me.  Gave it a moment's thought and decided I'd eat 'em the way the good Lord intended, saturated in molten lard and fried to a snap.  Maybe the vinegar was intended to cut through the grease?  Kinda like drain-o for the digestive tract.
     The burger was more of the same.  Oak board patty, pickle, mustard and onions on a few days old, toasted bun.  To me a burger wasn't a burger unless it had something red on it.  Maybe the tomato hadn't made it this far north yet?  Snapped off my first bite with my molars.  Figured my front teeth weren't sturdy enough for the job and might give before the patty broke apart.
     "Archie me lad, you figured out what the gravy is for yet?"
     Uncle Emil paused while my head slowly rose from my task.  I nodded no.
     "Up here they usually put it on both the fries and patty for a couple of minutes before they set to chowing it down.  Softens the fibers so it's possible to eat the stuff.  Problem is it doesn't smell good to me as it passes my nose, smells worse come morning.  That's why I ordered breakfast."
     "It's kind of a chicken and egg thing.  Don't know which came first.  The gravy to soften up the food or frying the food to a crisp so the gravy didn't make it too mushy.  Oh well, your stomach is still young.  Could probably digest concrete.  Can't say for sure if it'll make a dent in a Canadian burger though."

Canada XVIII - A Matter of Life and Death

     Once in town we filled the Nomad's tank.  While we gassed the Nomad, Emil gassed with whoever was within earshot.  Sometimes I think he's crazy to corner total strangers and start up like they're long lost neighbors.  But that's just the way he is.  And doesn't seem to care what it is he says.  At least he's usually careful enough to not bring up religion or politics.  And when he does, my uncle has a way of feeling people out, much like wading into cold water and being careful when reaching the tender parts.  When he's got a feel for the situation he seems to always know how far he can go before his nose gets broken.
     I had to take a leak and left him out there at the pump talking with a guy from North Dakota.  About my trip inside to the men's room I won't say much more than whatever passes through Canadians smells about the same as if it came from us Americans.  Kind of odd isn't it?  We think of ourselves as Americans and our neighbors as Canadians even though we're bot Americans and live in North America.  Wonder if the Canadians know that?
     Back outside, Emil and the Dakota guy were talking about what it's like to be a Lutheran.  As far as I know Uncle Emil hasn't been inside a Lutheran church in years.  Actually, I don't think he's been in any kind of church for a long, long time.  Outside of weddings and funerals that is.  And of the two, funerals are what he likes best.
     He's told me, "the only downside to a funeral concerns the dead person.  Not so much that they're dead, although, given the choice they'd probably rather be alive.  More like they're missing out on a fine party.  And they're the guest of honor.  Someone should've told them about the good church basement meal they'd miss 'cause they went and died a couple of days early.  The way I see it we should all have our funerals while we're still topside and feeling good.  People you haven't seen for twenty years could come up, slap you on the back and tell you what a great guy you are, as opposed to were and are now over there laying in a box and filled with formaldehyde and wearin' a suit for the first time in fifteen years.  And you'd remember all the good times and stuff you used to go through.  Or maybe even tell you what an total jerk you were.  Now, in my book, that'd be a good time."

Canada XVII - The Pas

     The Pas wasn't what I expected.  Not one bit.  No tepees, no Mounties, not an outpost in any sense.  Looked pretty much like small town America except for the flags.  That and a lot of black haired people with good tans.  Uncle Emil said most of them were Cree Indians whose ancestors came over from Asia even before he was born.
     "They used to know this country like the back of their hands.  My guess is most of them out in the backwoods still live off the land, fishing, hunting, trapping and gathering plants.  But I've got a feeling it isn't like it used to be before the trading posts turned into towns.  And paddles turned into outboard motors."
     "The long and short of it is that they're people just like us.  They see or learn a more efficient way to do something and that's what they'll do.  Probably won't be too long and this whole area will turn into what northern Minnesota's turned into.  Of course there'll always be pockets of what passes for wilderness.  But money talks.  Where there's a Canadian buck to be made you can be sure there'll be a way to turn it."
     "But I don't quite see what's up here that'll be worth much.  At least to the money grubbers.  But so long as there's still fish in the water and trees on the shore, it'll be worth a lot to me.
     "As to making money there's the trees of course.  Clear cut 'em and make two by fours by the millions.  And maybe some minerals.  Flin Flon up the road has gold mines.  Take a look at what happened to California back in the gold rush.  On second thought, don't.  It's not worth your time.  Shoot, in a couple of years they'll have paved every square foot of the 'Golden' state.  Freeways twenty lanes wide so filled with cars not a one will move .  Those stalled cars will turn into the houses of the future.  The entire state will have to be re-plumbed.  New power lines built.  All the abandoned houses bulldozed into the sea to make room for new amusement parks.  All that ruckus will trigger the Big One that's been overdue since June 16, 1841.  The ground'll open up and swallow every one of them and all their little lap dogs too.  About the time the whole shebang grinds its way up to Alaska in about a hundred million years, the state will be discovered by some alien race from outer space and opened up as a tourist attraction kind've like the LaBrea Tar Pits.  Only the dinosaurs those Martians find will smell of thirty weight oil and have tail fins.  Tell you the truth, I'd pay admission to see that, particularly if I knew the cars had come all the way from California via some form of underground subcontinental railroad.  Makes me feel good just thinking about it."
     "Sorry.  Guess I got side tracked.  Anyhow, here we are in The Pas, or La Pas, if you'll pardon my French.  That's another joke.  Laugh if you feel the need."
     "We're here with four things in mind: full tank, full belly, empty bladder and maybe a little information.  So let's get to gettin'."

Canada XVI - Brule

     Uncle Emil didn't easily give up on his dreams for the future.  The way he put it, "So long as a body's got something to look forward to, life's worth living.  Don't give me credit for that idea.  I think I read it on the back of a box of Sugar Pops.  You know, life's a lot like a box of Sugar Pops…."
     "More likely I'd buy some acreage, hopefully forty or so, along the Brule River downstream from Northern Light Lake up the Gunflint Trail from Grand Marais.  Trout in the river and fine fishing in the lake.  Again it's way off the beaten path.  Far enough so I wouldn't have electricity.  I'd need a well and an outhouse.  Heat with wood."
     "Guess that's what I like about both places.  I'm not looking for neighbors at this point in my life.  And the ones I'd meet would have to be something like me.  Or totally whacked out instead of just half crazy.  So long as none of them got their kicks from hunting old geezers I'd be okay."
     "Don't exactly know why those kind of places appeal to me but they do.  And then there's the place I'd have to build.  Now that's something to get excited about."
     "I've run all kinds of cabins through my mind.  Picked up some ideas by simply driving around and boating the lakes.  Wouldn't be big.  Maybe just one room.  Seven, eight hundred square feet tops.  Easy to heat.  Lots of windows to catch the breezes when it's hot out.  Some sun during the winter months."
     "Or maybe only live there during the warmer months.  May through October.  Then go somewhere warm.  Maybe where the fish are as big as dogs.  I could even pick up a couple of acres down in New Mexico if I wanted trout.  Or Florida for the bass.  And never, ever pick up anything other than a fly rod again.  Please excuse me, I'm startin' to sound like Lenny wanting to live off the fat of the land in 'Of Mice and Men'."
     "On the flip side there's the bugs.  Skeeters, deer flies, black flies, horse flies, ticks.  They're out and about in May and June.  Oh well, there was even a snake in Eden.  Nothing's perfect.  Maybe a home on the big lake, Superior.  Cold breezes off the lake keep the bugs down.  Could be that's the solution, two homes.  Or maybe three."
     "Gotta tell you though, I go back and forth on the whole thing.  It's not easy striking out on a new life.  I'm no spring chicken anymore but that's not the issue.  Might even make it easier.  Except maybe the physical part.  Don't know if I can do all the work myself anymore.  But if that's the way she has to be…."
     Here Uncle Emil drifted off into silence again.  What was I supposed to say to all that?  But it sounded like a good time to me.  "I'd help you build a house Uncle Emil.  We could do it together during my summer vacation."
     Emil turned to me, took a drag off of his Lucky, then turned back to the two lanes of asphalt and a sign on the side that said The Pas.  What did I expect?  At least he didn't say no.

Canada XV - Dreams

     Fifteen minutes up the new road Emil began, "When I hit this stretch it always seems like The Pas should be no more than a couple of minutes away.  But it's not.  The world's a lot bigger up here.  Hours between towns.  Even on a main road like this one, it can be a long stretch between buildings.  Almost as far as between me and the truth.  Take a peek to the left, off in the woods a bit.  That steel track and the power line are about the only signs of civilization.  Unless you include the asphalt we're passing over.  And the car we're in.  And all the stuff inside."
     Emil paused, "I was going somewhere with that wilderness thought but I seem to have ambushed myself."
     "I've been thinking a lot since Lena passed.  Most of it has to do with where I'm going from now 'til I'm pushing up daisies.  One thing's for sure, I don't see me getting married again.  No sir.  Did that and did that well.  And I don't see Parkers Prairie in my future either.  Time to move on.  Someplace farther north.  Place with pine trees, rocks and water.  Kind of like what we're passing through but not so far from the civilized world."
     "There's a coupla three spots I've been thinking of.  One's along the Stump River up near the Canadian border.  Of course having the name Stump doesn't make a river sound like much more than a snake infested bayou that once had trees.  But it's not by a long shot.  Over the last few miles the Stump turns from slow and wide to a regular Rocky Mountain type stream.  The kind of rivers called freestone for a good reason.  Rapids, water falls, dead fall, the whole nine yards.  And it's way the heck off any kind of beaten path.  Off a side road, off another side road, off the Arrowhead Trail.  And the Trail isn't all that much to begin with.  Once back in there I'd still have to cut a driveway."
     "Most everything about it screams boonies.  Which it is.  Build a place there and I'd have access to the lakes of the roadless area all along the border.  But come snowfall and snowfall comes early and hard up in the deep Arrowhead, any idea of traveling by motor vehicle would be long gone.  Wintering up there would be a challenge.  Ten cords of firewood and quarter ton of food problem.  Screw up and the hospital down in Grand Marais might as well be on the other side of the planet."
    "The Stump's pretty much what I'm looking for in a stream.  There's trout in it as the river tumbles toward the border, brook trout.  You see, this old dog is thinking of learning a new trick.  Spent my life fishing pike and bass, walleye when they were friendly.  But now I figure it's time to learn trout.  Stream trout.  Fly rod some small floating flies and maybe fool a few brookies."
     "I've called myself a fly fisherman for a couple of decades but am I?  Don't know.  I can throw twenty yards of line.  Buggy whip it to fish that aren't all that hard to fool.  But trout?  That's a whole 'nuther ballgame.  Up in the Arrowhead most of the streams are forest and brush choked.  Not much call for a long cast.  Trout there need a delicate, accurate presentation.  Won't look twice at something called a cast.  Don't know if that's because they're so finicky about what they'll eat or they're just arrogant little boogers that'll make you jump through hoops and wear the right brand of hat just so Orvis can stay in business."
     "Guess it doesn't really matter.  If you wanna catch 'em, you've got to play their game.  Not so much different than the rest of life.  I suppose a man could say nearly anything is like life and not be far wrong.  Lookin' for four leaf clovers is a lot like life.  Mostly a waste of time and after a while my back hurts.  Like I said, nearly anything."

Canada XIV - Fessin' Up

     Uncle Emil asked me if I liked to read.  Well, I did and said so.
     "So, what exactly do you read?"
     That was a stumper.  Actually I tried to read a bunch of things but little held my interest for long.  There seemed to be a lot of stuff for little kids and for adults, not squat for us betweeners.
     I did read some science fiction though most of it was so badly written even a kid like me could see the lack of reality in it.  But I did like Robert Heinlien, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.  Emil seemed to think they were okay.
     I went on, "Two years ago The Hardy Boys took our school by storm.  Everyone was reading the mysteries and passing them around.  I read one, then got halfway through another.  That was it.  They were so predictable Uncle Emil, by then I could have written them myself."
     Emil nodded, "Isn't that the truth about a lot of it.  Seems you're already onto the notion most of what's published is a waste of good trees.  As for me, it's a struggle finding the good reads.  I like Steinbeck.  Not all of it but there's usually enough meat in his good ones to get me thinking.  Hemingway, not so much.  Some of the Russians, long-winded but okay.  Someday if you get the notion, try another Hardy by the name of Thomas.  Had a thing for the German writer Thomas Mann for a while.  You're old enough, try Conrad.  Takes a few pages to get into the swing of his style but it's worth the effort.  And one of the new guys, James Jones or John Updike.  Reading something worthwhile takes effort.  Slow down, read  and understand all the words.  When you get the drift, let it take you to that other world inside the page."
     Now that was a side of Emil I never saw coming.  For sure he had his weird side and his jokes.  But, someone who took literature seriously?  Food for thought.
     I sat there watching the tree parade for a minute.  Then it dawned on me.  He was always saying something funny but Emil never told jokes like the ones older guys usually told.  Such as 'three guys walk into a bar...'.  Something would grab him, something that was said, a sign at the side of the road, most anything and that would get his mind going.  Off on a tangent.  A bee line directly into the gray areas of life where pain, tragedy and tear-streaming laughter meet.  His humor was always of the moment, made up on the spot.  Strangely enough, if you gave it some thought, there was usually a message hidden within or, at the least, a grain of truth.  Uncle Emil saw life as a straight line waiting for him to add a measure of spice.
   

Canada XIII - One Thing Leads to Another (It Always Does)

     The joy lasted but a minute or two before I returned to the land of the dead-headed.  Not that I wasn't enjoying where we were.  It was more like I was sung to sleep by the hum of tires on asphalt while being rocked in the arms of spruce and pine.  Time on the road drew me inward to wander around in another world.  Did then, does now.  Sometimes a future filled with hope, at others, the past with it's should have dones mixed with a helping of happy memories.
     Seemed the same thing was happening to Uncle Emil.  Only his thoughts were sneaking out of his mouth just loud enough for me to hear.  At least I think they were.  Might have been dreaming but I don't think so.
     "Don't think I'll ever pass though a day without Lena being in the seat next to me or across the table with a cup of coffee.  A man can't live and love someone that long without her becoming a part of him.  She was the only woman I ever really loved.  The only one I wanted to love."
     "We weren't always together.  No, the War and my pig-headedness saw to that.  Of course I could have avoided being a part of the Army had I wanted.  I was way too old for the draft.  Not many men my age, at least those who weren't career military, took part.  In fact, I was so darned old they wanted to make me an officer right off the bat.  Or maybe lock me up in the looney bin.  But that wasn't me.  Never minded working with people.  Didn't even mind taking charge of a group so long as it was a mutual decision.  But there was just something about having brass on my shoulders that wouldn't have set right."
     "I volunteered for the draft on New Year's Eve of '43.  Lena was okay with it even though she was none too happy.  I'd wanted to enlist in the infantry but she wasn't having any part of that.  Said I'd come home in a box with a flag on top.  By volunteering for the draft I let the Army make up my mind for me.  Joke was on us.  They made me a medic."
     Emil paused, stubbed his cigarette butt in the ash tray, "I suppose you're wondering how I passed the induction physical?"
     I wasn't.  Didn't even know what an induction physical was.  But I did know Emil had his glass eye back then and even the Army wouldn't be so hard up as to take a one-eyed man.  At least I didn't think they would.
     "It was warm body time in the middle of the war.  Down in the cities they were cramming future soldiers through as fast as they could get them to spread their cheeks.  Didn't know Sam from Jack.  About all they did was peer in every hole, whack a prime grade on your backside and send you on.  Had a buddy of mine take the physical for me.  Simple as pie."
     About then we came up on a tee in the road and hung a right.
     "Won't be long now and we'll catch us some lunch.  Hope you like brown gravy on your pickles."

Canada XII - A Death in the Family

     I've been considering this for a couple of days and have decided to do away with Aunt Lena.  She was a wonderful woman in many ways but didn't figure into Uncle Emil's future, at least as far as this blog goes.  Requiescat in pace Aunt Lena.  Her demise was sudden, peaceful and unexpected.  She passed in her sleep.  Unfortunately, she was at the wheel of her '56 Buick Roadmaster at the time.  Fortunately, the high school gym was empty when she passed through and exited its two brick walls.  The pommel horse was repairable.  As was the Buick's cracked high beam.

Canada XI - The Dawn

     We'd passed the three or four creeks necessary to reach our turn.  Uncle Emil wasn't sure which number was right but he was positive if we missed our turn there wouldn't be another chance to hang a left for two hundred miles.  Two hundred miles?  That's a long way for a city kid like me who knew the next turn was only a minute away by bike.

     Turned out it was four.  While we headed west, the land rose.  Not a lot but thankfully we left the swamp behind.  And any kind of view.  Trees to the left of us and more of the same to the right.  Here and there a crumbling sand and gravel outcrop.  My uncle had me pull out the road map just to see what we were missing on the other side of the forest.  I looked at the map and found a pair of huge lakes to our south, no more than a mile or two away.  So close we could have smelled them.  I looked out the window.  Trees.  

     "The map isn't lying is it Uncle Emil?"

     "I doubt it.  But it might be.  I've been on this road before and what you're seeing now is exactly what I've seen.  Spruce and jack pine.  Probably better there's nothing much to see I suppose.  The way this track curves I'd be a dead man for sure.  There's no way I could keep my eyes off any piece of water wondering what the fishing might be like.  One second I'd be down below in my mental boat reeling in a yard long walleye, next second I'd be flying through the evergreens reviewing my life as it flashed by."

     A minute passed.  "What about that sunset last night?  Are all of them like that up here?" 

     "Nope, but not a one of them can hide when you're camped out on a lake.  One thing you've got to sit up and take notice of, sunsets are like rainbows.  When the sun goes down and there's an open sky with a half dozen popcorn clouds to catch the light you'll see every color of the rainbow, top to bottom and bottom to top.  On the clouds and in the sky, everywhere.  Not only that but you'll even see a couple of colors that don't exist.  And there's no way you can see them since they're out of the visual spectrum.  But you will.  And the next morning you'll forget them like they'd never been there.  But if you dream in color, they'll come back.  It's a Canadian boonies thing.  Doesn't happen down in the States.  And if it did, some booger in Washington would make both those imaginary colors illegal and people would go to jail for trying to smuggle them over the border.  Of course I'm exaggerating but not about the colors, they're there alright."
     Uncle Emil paused, fired up his Zippo, lit another cigarette and popped his inhale.
     "With a little luck we might see Northern Lights.  Not like they'll be come fall or winter but just maybe.  They're the ghosts in the heavens above put there to protect us and bring good fishing.  Can't say for sure that's true but I do like the sound of it."
     "Me too."
     The idea of good fishing and camping in the wilderness was beginning to grow on me.  The thought  of huge fish was starting to give me the tingles.  Just because you're physically in a place doesn't mean you're aware of where you are.  Sometimes it takes a while to catch up to reality.  As we continued west I began to open up to the possibility of what was waiting up the road.  And realize where we were, how far we'd come and what those lakes we were driving toward might be like.  Wow!  Light bulb time.  Finally dawned on me this was really happening.  We were on our way to one of those places I'd only read and daydreamed about.  Only it was really happening to the two of us sitting up there in the front seat of the Nomad.
      "Uncle Emil.  Thanks for taking me on this trip."
      "My pleasure.  Archie me lad, it wouldn't be the same without you."

Canada X - Terror II

     The skeeter hunt went on for ten minutes.  Can't say it did any good 'cause it turned out there'd been dozens in hiding, biding their time 'til we were hunkered into our war surplus sleeping bags.

     I figured there must have been some kind of powwow down in the heater vents where the mosquitoes decided to infiltrate our ranks one at a time.  No matter how many I killed, a minute later there was another buzzing up and climbing in my ear.  

     Worst part was when it got dark.  What I couldn't see was more than made up by what I could hear.  I never thought anything so small could be that loud.  Bet they could be heard all the way to Winnipeg.

     Oddly enough, come morning my face was way more welted from my own slapping than from mosquito bites.  And Emil slept through it all like a baby (outside of his snoring that is).  Good thing he was driving 'cause about the only sleep I found came once the sun was up and we were back on the road.

     Oh yeah, the terror.  That was outside.  And roaring.  My uncle said it was nothing more than about a hundred billion mosquitoes trying to bust their way inside the car so they could suck us dry, eat our flesh and drain the marrow out of our bones.  He said on his first trip to the far north the skeeters ate the paint right off his old Nash Rambler.  Even the white on his white sidewalls was gone.  

     He asked if I ever heard of the ants down in South America that could gnaw their way through thousands of acres of rainforest.  Bushes, trees, monkeys, dirt, everything.  Or the clouds of locusts that'd scarfed down half the prairie back in the nineteenth century.  'Course I hadn't but said yes anyhow just to keep the conversation going. 

     "Well, let me tell you, they're nothing compared to what's outside the Nomad at this very moment. And it's fools like us that're stupid enough to be spending the night in the kitchen of death that gets them so riled up.  They feel us, see us, maybe smell us.  Who knows?  I'm not sure exactly why but somehow or other it's all tied up with bug sex.  There's a life lesson in there somewhere.  Not sure where.  I'll let you figure out that out by yourself.  Also, should you feel the car rocking in the middle of the night, don't fret, it's just the skeeters trying to break in.  In the meantime, sleep tight and don't let, well, you know the rest."
     Laid there for a few minutes listening to the outside noises before falling asleep.  Then drifted into the world of my thoughts.  Night was the time when the barriers came down.  In the dark there was no way for me to hide from myself.  You see I'd been raised a Catholic and spent the last six years in parochial schools, guided to an appreciation of guilt by a handful of nuns.  It'd been hard for me to play by the rules.  Those rules being to not sin and should I sin, go to confession for absolution.  Easy enough.  But there were so many rules.  And the odds on following each and every one of them was so slim as to be impossible.  About the same as the odds of me going to confession.  Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.  Long story short, I worried a lot about going to hell.  And eternity seemed a long time to be in any kind of pain.  A real long time.  I could say a lot more but won't.  Just that sometimes in the dark, alone in my bed, I used to sweat bullets over nothing more consequential than my thoughts.  But that night it helped to be sleeping beside my uncle.  He seemed at peace with himself as a man.  Maybe someday I would too.

Canada IX - Terror

     It's a good thing it wasn't warm out.  Sleeping in the Nomad with the windows down would have been a killer. As it was we worked up a sweat just moving the gear but cleared the whole back end.  What didn't fit in the front was put in the boat.
     It was outside, in the open air where I got my first taste of the Canadian wilderness.  I think they call places wildernesses when there's a good chance you could be dragged off and eaten by something.  In my innocent, pea brain that meant bears or wolves.  Taking a leak on the edge of the clearing I learned it wasn't the big animals I had to worry about.  It was the little ones.  The flies and the skeeters.  Especially when you had your barn door down and your willie out.  When the stream's flowing there's no running away from the little critters if you want to stay dry.  And remaining still 'til you're done letting go isn't easy when you're a bald chinned kid whose grown a beard of the tiny suckers doing their best to drain me white.  Keep calm boy, time to learn some meditation and self control.
     Back in the car, the two of us went on what I came to know in later years as a search and destroy mission.  While we swatted away I could see this wasn't the first time Emil had slept in the Nomad while on a fishing trip.  Not that he said it aloud but here and there I noticed tiny blood stains browning away on the walls and ceiling fabric.  Tiny grave markers of days gone by.  Rest in peace little villains.
   

Canada VIII - Gravel

     Road, ditch, swamp, scraggly pines and Uncle Emil smoking Lucky Strikes.  About all he had to say on the subject was, "Old habits die hard.  Didn't quit cigarettes for any better reason than I felt like it.  Smoke them up here in Canada for the same reason.  Have to admit one of the reasons I look forward to my trips up here is to crack open a pack of Luckies.  Says right on the package they're made from fine tobacco.  'Spose they could have said the tobacco was mainly floor weepings and ragweed but that might have crimped sales."
     Outside of the asphalt under our tires the last indication of civilization we passed was a sign saying there was a town somewhere nearby.  Where exactly was hard to tell.  I figured the sign should have said something more along the line of:

                                   <----  ST MARTIN ---->
       (it don't matter which way you turn 'cause the town ain't there anyhow, eh)

     Emil was lost in thought.  In his fifty-some years he'd grown up in one war, lived through a Depression, fought in another war, and been married for thirty years.  Yeah, he had a lot to think about.  Me, I wasn't even in high school yet.  Been nowhere, done nothing.  On my side of the car it was just ditch and swamp.  I was ready for something to happen.  My Stevenson and Newman held no interest.  I was ready to ask for a smoke just to pass the time.  Been told good habits begin at home.  And to add frosting to the cake, for the cripe's sake, it wasn't anywhere near dark even though the clock on the dash said 9:45.
     About the time I was ready to crawl out of the window and live with the bears, Emil said, "There she is," and slammed the brakes into a graveled opening in the swamp.  Only that's all there was.  No buildings, no cars, no apparent reason for the clearing, no nothing anywhere except for the pond alongside.
     "She's not much but it's our home for the night.  First we've got us some work to do.  Archie, me lad, I want you to crawl in the back and start passing forward all of the packs.  I'll do what I can to stow them up here."
     "You see, the idea is to make enough room so we can sleep back there without hooking ourselves in our kiesters.  It won't be the Waldorf but seeing as how the nearest screened window is about a hundred twenty miles away, it'll have to do.  Anyhow, this trip isn't about bed sheets and TV.  It's about making do with what we've got at hand.  And having a fine time while we're at it."

Canada VII - Night

     Slowly it grew darker.  Night was coming on and Uncle Emil's windshield was being slathered with smushed bugs.  Layers on layers of them.  I couldn't tell what kind they were but could only judge them by the size and color of splat.  The orange, yellow, white and clear ones didn't much interest me.  But the red ones caught my attention.  We talked about them for a couple of minutes.  Emil seemed to think the red ones might be warm blooded.
     "I figure they're some kind of miniature, flying unicorn with water skies for hoofs so they can land on the lakes and ponds up here where they breed.  Not many people know this, and don't ask me how I know, just accept the fact that I do but they speak a dialect of mandarin that hasn't existed since about three thousand B.C.  'Cause of that I figure they flew over using one of the land bridges that once hooked up Alaska and Russia as a route."
     "Only problem is they're so tiny no one can see them.  Top that off with them being bigger on the inside than they are on the outside, I think Einstein was the guy who figured that out and it explains why you can see the big red splat and not the bug.  Once they hit the glass they don't so much explode as implode.  Poof!  Gone."
     "My buddy Eldon once accidentally caught one in an RC Cola bottle.  Corked the bottle up with his snot rag and hoofed off to get a magnifying glass to see what the bug looked like.  When he got back the bottle was gone.  Two days later he found it out on the road by his mail box in a shock of long grass. Interestingly the rag was still in the top.  After a minute's eyeballing in hope the bug was still inside, Eldon spied this itty-bitty hole in the RC bottle.  Never did find the bug.  He told me as near as he could figure the little bugger was so strong it flew the bottle all the way out to the road. Once there it had enough time to bore its way out.  Tough monkey."
     "Now Eldon, he doesn't lie.  And for sure he's nowhere clever enough to make that kind of stuff up so it must be the truth.  Or at least darn close to it."

Canada VI - Between II

     "'Spose you've figured out we're up here to do some fishing.  But don't take Silent but Deadly as being the means.  And we've got ourselves quite a few miles of road ahead before we can wet a line.  Good fishing extracts a price.  In this case miles.  Easier to drive for a day or two than to outwit a Minnesota walleye.  And we still have to figure out a place to sleep for the night.  Hope you don't mind I'm a cheap bugger.  We'll pull off the road in an hour or two, move the gear up front, blow up the pads and hunker down for the night."

     "Where we're headed is a little piece of gravel in the middle of nowhere.  Well, it's not actually right in the middle.  The middle's floatin' atop a bog two miles west northwest, give or take a degree and there's no way we're traipsing through a slough in the dark just to be in the middle of anything.  Tried that once and nearly lost a foot to a tundra alligator.  Up ahead we'll turn into a little parking area I know of and listen to the music of skeeters scraping the paint off the side of the wagon.  You've not heard anything 'til you've been serenaded to sleep by those little scumbags.  The place we'll bed down sits surrounded by about a hundred thousand square miles of swamp.  Heard tell Big Foot used to live up there 'til he froze to death one late summer's night.  Now it's nothing but bugs, bears, wolves and five crazed Canadians who come out to howl at the moon twice a month on Thursdays.  Though I'm not so sure the Canucks are still there.  We'll have to listen for the howling to find out.  Then again the howling might be wolves.  Comes down to who'd eat who to survive.  I'd put my money on the Canucks.  Doubt the wolves'd stand a chance."
     Nice way to set a city boy up for a restful night of sleep.  I figured Uncle Emil was kidding but from what I was seeing out of the window he was right on the money about this being nearly all swamp and scruffy forest so maybe he was also right about the rest.  Guess horror stories aren't just for the movies.

Canada V - Between the Big Lakes

     Winnipeg was no more more than a gas station stop for us.  Beside fuel there was no real reason to stop, where we wanted to be was up the road somewhere and Emil already had food aboard in his coolers.  Oven roasted chicken and potato salad.  "Made up my mind to do most of my own cooking after Lena passed away.  The instructions were all there in her dovetailed recipe box.  Cooking's all about taking your time and doing it right.  When a teaspoon of salt is called for, measure one out.  Life lesson I guess."
     Once north of the big city even a kid like me could see this was hardscrabble country not meant for agriculture.  The farms grew smaller by the mile, the woods bigger.  Gone were the crisp white silos of North Dakota and southern Manitoba.  At first glance most of the houses we passed appeared well kept but a closer look said they'd been hammered by Mother Nature by hurricaned snow and minus forty degree temperatures.  It was hard to tell if those white clapboard walls were actually painted or still covered with winter ice.
     And not a sliding hill to be seen anywhere.  Made me think the kids up here played hockey 'cause there wasn't anyplace to go in the winter except neck deep in snow or out on the ice. And once outdoors, if you didn't keep moving you'd freeze to death.  That left hockey as the game of choice 'til you were old enough to hoist a few then it was curling.  Yeah, no doubt about it, this country was built around winter.
     Uncle Emil wasn't always off on a weird tangent.  More often than not he'd simply voice his thoughts.  When you're sitting next to a kid it's left to the old guy to get the conversation going.  Around the time my feet grew to size tens, I tended to clam up in front of men.  Didn't know how to deal with them.  There was no need to tell me to be seen and not heard, no sir.  Top that off with the new things entering and dominating my mind.  I didn't always think about sex, only when I was awake.  And half the time I was sleeping.
     Back in those days, and particularly since I was going to a parochial school where all of my teachers were nuns, I figured I had to be some kind of pervert.  That's not a joke.  The nuns would never come right out and say thinking about sex was sinful and sick since they didn't like to mention such things but they came close enough to give me the idea.  I came to see myself as someone who was clean on the outside and a pit of depravity - their words - inside.  Made me a little edgy speaking to adults.  Had to be extra careful what I might say.  Something might slip out.
     So Emil did most of the talking,
     "You know I wasn't always like this.  Laid back and mellow.  No sir.  In fact I even lived down in the cities for a while.  Had my own company after the War.  But it was the War made it possible.   Maybe it was 'cause I was so much older than the other dog soldiers, even the officers, they looked to me for advice. It was there I grew comfortable with the way other people saw me and learned it was okay to give men direction.  All that helped when peace finally came."
     "Don't go off thinking my business was big or anything.  But we did okay.  Things were booming what with the country gearing up to move into good times after all the misery back in the Depression and the War."
     "Didn't hurt there was some change in my pockets when I was discharged.  There was no place to spend money in a combat zone.  Cigarettes, food, clothes, all the necessities were free.  Even the bullets and artillery coming our way was free of charge.  Sent nearly all my pay home to Lena.  She had a good job down in the Cities at the Arsenal and banked most of what I sent.  In '46 I went to school to learn heating and air conditioning.  Breezed through in a few months.  Apprenticed, mastered, bought a truck, put my name on the side, did good work, expanded, hired men, then dumped the whole shebang when runnin' a business started to cut into my time on the water.  That and the stock we had was enough to last us for the rest of our lives."
    "Me and Lena weren't all that fond of the Cities so we moved back near our roots outside of Gopher Prairie next door to Sinclair Lewis.  Bought a house, a couple of acres and settled in.  We were supposed to spend the rest of our lives together there.  Didn't work out.  Some things you never see coming 'til they've moved in and made themselves to home.  Doesn't take long for tomorrow to turn into yesterday.  Yeah, when life says it's time to change that's what you do.  Happens in a heartbeat but takes a man a while to catch up.  Been better than a year and I'm still runnin' behind."
     I kind of knew what he was saying but I had too many tomorrows ahead of me for it to really sink in.