A Trip Down Memory Lane

I recently joined a Facebook page dedicated to my grade school. I did a deep dive until I landed on a group picture, circa 1975, of some of my teachers, including the biggest bully to ever ruin math. So, I typed ill of the dead. This led to some private side conversations among fellow classmates. We shared anecdotes of thrown brushes, physical abuse, hiding under desks, and residual mental blocks over the eight times table.

     “He always smelled like cigarettes!” said Sue.

     Yeah, he did have a particular, Tenderflaked stink: A mix of pedological dereliction, low self-esteem, and warm polyester.

Inspired by Anniversary Trip. Image from Amazon.

Anniversary Trip

For my parents’ fiftieth anniversary, we sons banded together to buy them a trip anywhere they wanted to go. They’d already travelled a lot in retirement: Australia, Hawaii, cruises in the Caribbean and through the Panama Canal. Yet there were so many places still unseen: Paris. Vienna, Rome . . . They decided on a coach tour to the Little Bighorn and Nashville, Tennessee.

That’s what they called it: not Nashville, but Nashville, Tennessee. They were unassuming prairie people who enjoyed a good tune. Thinking back, it was not a surprising choice for a couple who’d honeymooned in the Badlands of South Dakota.

Inspired by Freedom of the Road. Image from a post by Keith Case.

Freedom of the Road

On the cusp of adulthood, one Friday in the 1950s, Dad, with his Elvis pompadour, left work and picked up his brother Alan. They drove all night from Montreal to NYC to have Saturday lunch at the Automat and catch a Habs/Rangers game at the Gardens that evening.

On the way home Sunday his second-hand Dodge broke down somewhere in Vermont. “We were late for work on Monday,” he tells me with a grin decades later. At 32, Alan died from cancer. Don’t know what happened to the Dodge.

Inspired by Blink of the Eye. Image of Madison Square Gardens in the 1950s, photographer unknown.

In the Blink of an Eye

George was her first real boyfriend. Desperate to be in love, he happened to come along at the right place and time—a drunken house-party. They were complete opposites. He was a rocker, and she a preppy. She slowly acclimatized and even started to like hanging out in the McDonald’s parking lot blaring Whitesnake from the Camaro.

She retired Ralph Lauren for a white leather fringe jacket. She had hoped he was a poet in-the-making but when, on her birthday, he wrote a card that read Happy Birthday Angle, her spelling elitism got the better of her, and it ended.

Inspired by Cat’s Eye, Photo from CarGurus.

Cat’s Eye

Sometime in 1987, I got it into my head to write some science fiction and, as authors do, decided to consult with an expert, which essentially came down to having an old high-school friend over for dinner—my pal David who was already well on his way to a PhD in theoretical physics. Only later did I learn that his Aunt Peggy was also working on a novel that year—her seventh—and had also been picking his brains. The only difference I can see is that she eventually finished hers . . . and probably ended up winning another Governor General’s Award.

Inspired by He Shoots, He Snores! Photo from House of Marbles.

He Shoots, He Snores!

Apart from Hockey Night in Canada, CKLW news, and the occasional late night soft porn, Gerry didn't watch television, he slept by it. I can still see him stretched out on the couch and wrapped in one of mom’s afghans. His empty tea mug and glass eye resting on the coffee table. And when that long Phentex burrito started snoring, the cat and I would make our respective moves. Slowly reducing the volume, I’d click over to Love American Style. After a few tentative swats, Hobo’d stickhandle dad’s falsie, bouncing it off the broadloom and straight into the heating vent.

Inspired by The Thirty Second Pitch. Image by Meta.

The Thirty Second Network Pitch

“Imagine ten men in a cabin on an island. There’s a blizzard. The power goes out. All they have is duct tape, 48 beers, three cans of beans, a flint, a pocket knife. How long will they last? They start a fire. They fix stuff with duct tape. They drink beer, play cribbage, eat beans. Pull fingers. Tell dad jokes. Who will survive? Who’ll end up dead and eaten? Think Yellowjackets meets Ozzie Nelson. Think Red Green wins Survivor. Think . . . Dad Island!” 

      The producers exchanged glances. It had a demographic. It would be cheap. But could they find a sponsor? 

Inspired by You’re Cheating. Image is a still from the 2020 Netflix series Hollywood.