The Long Road South

The Long Road South

I’m a Boomer, and I’ve lived through 11 presidents, Eisenhower to Obama. Right in the middle was Jimmy Carter, naval officer and peanut farmer. I got off the long distance Greyhound in DC and walked to the White House. It was late the night before Jimmy’s inauguration, and the hustings were built, the stands erected and the bunting draped in front of the White House. There was no one around.

I climbed over the fence around the CBS booth, which was right across from the presidential reviewing stand. I sat in the chair Walter Cronkite was going to occupy 12 hours later and smoked one of my last joints. I left the roach under Walter’s chair, and headed back to the bus.

I had started in Montreal that morning, and was bound for Mexico City, by way of Laredo, TX. I was on my way back to Mexico after returning to my home in Quebec for Christmas. This was during the two or three years in the late 70s when I was laying low in Central America.

I had a job to return to, being the manager and director of an expat theatre company in Cuernavaca, a garden city full of ruins, human and stone. Before that, I had spent a winter on an island off the coast of Belize, close to the barrier reef and great diving. I started out slinging my hamaca from a pair of palm trees outside Tony Vega’s Far Inn, the traveller’s hostel on the beach..

This was the cheapest accommodation on the island, apart from living on the beach with no anchor at all, so to speak. Not that there was much more accommodation. Several rooms to rent in local houses were about all there was, besides Tony’s. Nowadays, this island is covered with condos and resort homes, and I don’t know what they do for water, when I was there the small population could hardly make it on the rainfall.

I eventually graduated to a room in Tony’s, which I shared. I paid for that by painting an attractive swinging sign for the Inn, done in the kind of font you’d see on a Grateful Dead concert poster. Tony loved it.

Tony was a middle-aged Belizean, nut-brown and wiry, with a little terrier called Chip. His invariable greeting was “Chip! Bite their ass Chip!” Tony had to go to Miami for a couple of months to deal with a family matter (his divorce, I think) and he left me in charge of the Far Inn. Not much to be in charge of, it was a ramshackle two story beach house with rainwater cisterns and that was about it.

The delight of the island was the Barrier Reef, just offshore. Still unspoiled and mostly unfished, the reef was an accessible wonderland of marine life. Riotous Parrotfish, glowing Red Snappers, glowering Groupers, Conchs, Hammerhead sharks. I had a spear gun, a mask, snorkel and fins. That was all the hunting gear one needed for dinner. That winter, I met a fellow with a dive shop on the island, who would take us out for twenty dollars; two tanks, buoyancy compensator vests and all the gear. No training, no certificate, just a twenty dollar bill. Fun.

When spring rolled around, I headed north into Quintana Roo, which was still a lawless wilderness then. In Mexico City, they talked of Quintana Roo like it was the Amazon. It was where the gangsters from Veracruz went when it got too hot on the Gulf Coast. My destination was Tulum, now a feature on every tourism poster of the Mexican Riviera, but back then, largely unknown and little visited.

The most romantic white sand beach lies at the foot of the cliff Tulum is built on, and it stretches for miles. A couple of hundred yards down the beach from the temple was a collection of palapas, palm thatched huts, which were rented out for protection from the sun during the day at the beach. I stayed there, with the beach to myself, regular meals at the restaurant in the car park, almost always empty between the infrequent tourist buses, and explored the ruins at moonlight.

That part of the Yucatan peninsula is covered with ruins. It’s said that flying over the Yucatan in 1000 AD would be like flying over Ontario today, farms and villages everywhere. Years later, while driving the coast highway, I pulled over to pee. I walked a few yards into the jungle for modesty, and bumped smack into a tiny temple, split by a tree. In the shelter of the temple’s door and remaining roof, there was an exquisite fresco of an ascending god, still brightly coloured. This would have been the centerpiece of a modest museum’s collection; here it was forgotten in the encroaching jungle.

I bypassed Cancun (then, just being developed, and mostly a construction site) and ended up in Merida, Capital of Yucatan state. Merida is a graceful colonial city where the men dance with each other and wear glittery sandals. There is an old palacio off the Zocalo that is the grandest rundown hotel I have ever stayed in. Twenty foot ceilings, beams, tiled floors, a central atrium open to the sky, it was built in the 17^th century and hadn’t been renovated. The windows, tall and arched, swung open on the Zocalo and the warm scented air. I stayed in Merida for longer than I should have. 

Nearby, facing the Zocalo, was another palacio, this one still occupied by the decayed remnants of Merida's colonial ruling family. Tours were available, and I took one. Decrepit furniture, dusty ripped tapestries untended since the 1800s, and the owner, a tatty aristocrat manqué who wore his tie outside his sweater, hovering around the edges of the tour, as if to make sure the silverware (of which there was none) wasn't taken.

Next stop was Palenque, in Chiapas, by bus. I got to the village of Palenque late, and was expecting to head out to the temple complex in the morning. Fate intervened though, and a Mexican staying in the hostel asked me if I wanted go with him, he was going tonight. We took his motorbike up the long rutted road into the hills. He stopped in the dark and said there were guards at the far gate, we should get off here.

We parked the bike and followed a path up a river under the moonlight. There was an opening in the jungle ahead and all of a sudden we burst out into the plaza in front of the Palace, all alone in the temple complex. The white stone of the buildings and the ball court gleamed in the moonlight and the effect was thoroughly magical. I spent the night exploring the lost city alone under the moon.

Just down the road from Palenque lies another magical place, Agua Azul, or Blue Water. And it is BLUE. It’s a river flowing down from the hills and across a large flat plain. There’s a national park. The river is about 200 feet wide and about a foot deep in most places. The bottom is composed of the cleanest white sand imaginable, and the water, through some mineral effect, is bright blue. Just sitting in the river on the sand bottom, wiggling your toes, is enough to make you laugh out loud. It looks like what rivers must look like in heaven.

I hung my hamaca between two trees in the tall silky grass at the edge of the river, and slept like a baby. It wasn’t until I arrived in San Cristobal de las Casas, up in the mountains the next night, that I realized I was crawling with ticks. I had to enlist the help of a fellow traveller to pick them from the places I couldn’t see. Visit Agua Azul by all means, but don’t camp there.

After San Cristobal, buses took me further south, to Guatemala and El Salvador. My money running out, by this time I was living on buns and avocados, which sold for about a nickel. I climbed Mt Atitlan, Guatemala’s highest volcano, in shorts and a t-shirt, and spent the night in a steam vent, soaking wet, but warm. Avocados fueled that climb. The temples (each town had one, somewhere) got smaller and cruder (I never saw the splendour of Copan) until it was time to turn around and head north.

I made it as far as Puerto Arista, a nasty little beach town right at the bottom of the Mexican Pacific coast. One unpaved street, a couple of cinder block bars with ratty palm thatched tables and that was it. The brown gravel beach dropped off about 10 feet off shore and there was an undertow which almost killed me. The waves were short and sharp and made swimming impossible.

I was sick with amoebic dysentery and my money had run out. I was stretched too far and needed an angel. He came in the form of Capt. John Yancey, USMC (Ret’d). But that’s another story, called An Everyday Hero.

Generation 5

Generation 5

I’m a boomer, and I won the lottery. I was born white, male, Canadian, in the middle of the twentieth century. It doesn’t get better than that anywhere in the world. But like all but a few Canadians, I’m not from here, or at least my family isn’t.

I come from a long line of army officers, British and Canadian. The first general commissioned in my mother’s family was in 1789. The first Canadians among my ancestors were legion - they all arrived, brothers and cousins, from England and her outposts, in the 1840s. A prominent biographer. The first Postmaster-General of Canada and later a Father of Confederation. The last Premier of the Northwest Territories and the father of Alberta.

My own direct forebears were a little more modest. They sprung from a retired Major General, who carved out an estate near Peterborough in the mid-19th century. He was my great-great grandfather. His son, born in Tounghoo, Burma, when his father was posted there, was my great grandfather.

He was a young medical student when he volunteered to go out west and fight the Red River rebellion in 1869. After he completed his degree and became an MD, he joined the Northwest Mounted Police, then headed up by Superintendent Sam Steele, as a surgeon.

He fought in the Second Riel Rebellion of 1884, and was present with Steele at Loon Lake, the last battle fought on Canadian soil. He followed Steele west to Fort MacLeod, where he became post surgeon. He treated one of Sitting Bull’s favourite wives for TB while the chief was hiding out in the Cypress Hills. Sitting Bull was so grateful he offered the doctor one of his wives, something he already had.

There is a photo of the doctor and his wife and his little boy, my grandfather, at Fort MacLeod, at breakfast. The room is full of tchotchkes, there’s a big fringed lamp on the table and, amid the breakfast things, a large black cat. To this day, a large cat is often found on my breakfast table.

There are also photos of treaty day, when the Indians came to get their five dollars, their blankets, cartridges. tea, salt and flour. Tipis for miles across the bare prairie. Solemn chiefs in full war bonnets. Handsome Englishmen in tight uniforms lounging around, draped on a field artillery piece.

The doctor died at the turn of the 20^th century, leaving three boys, a girl and an incredibly stong-willed widow who had followed him across a wild continent. My grandfather, the youngest boy, took a job as cowboy on the Cochrane Ranche, a vast expanse of what was then still known as the Northwest Territories, of which his great uncle was Premier. There, he learned to roll his cigarettes with one hand, tobacco pouch and all, which is something I never forgot about him. The rest of the family headed home for Ontario and settled in the rural southwest.

My grandfather, now a young man, came back to Ontario to enlist in the first World War. He joined the brand new Royal Flying Corps and flew as an observer in two seat DeHavilland SE 5As. One of his brothers was gassed with the infantry at Ypres, another was an officer at Vimy. They were all officers. It was in the blood, as it were.

Grandfather came home, and as young man, landless, poor, but well-educated, took a job as the accountant at a pulp and paper mill in Port Dalhousie, and stayed there the rest of his life. He rejoined the army as a captain in the second World War, but, at his age, didn’t see service overseas.

His daughter, my mother, did see service overseas, though. She served in the RCAF as a Leading Aircraftwoman (not an officer, for once). She was stationed in Newfoundland, which was classified as an overseas posting, and her pay reflected it.

She was a bit of a piece of work, and got asked to fly with them to remote places by American bomber pilots. She spilled out of a bar in St John’s on her 21st birthday at midnight, only to find Operation Overlord had begun in Normandy. She was thrown out of the Ritz Carlton in Montreal on VE Day for having a man in her room.

Which leads to my siblings and I, Generation 5. None of us have served, we haven’t had the opportunity. Oldest brother and I were both US draft-fodder when our family lived in the US (he got a lottery number, one high enough it was never selected), but never had cause to fight for Canada.

It’s sad to see a family tradition going back two and a quarter centuries come to an end. I’m not sure the old family connections would get us into the officer corps anymore, anyway., so there will be no more generals in this branch of the family. Pity.

In The Woods

In The Woods

This happened in the late 70s, when I was living in a cabin under the Butternut tree at the family farm in Quebec. I was out of college, between jobs and helping my friend Barry build his great big house (castle, really) up the hill and in the woods.

He had dug the foundation and poured the concrete the year before, and when I joined him, he was ready to start raising walls and roofs. The place was built of 12 by 12s, square logs piled and joined, forming the thick walls that would insulate the house. The ground floor was one big room with a kitchen at one end and a fireplace at the other. There was an open staircase leading up to a big bathroom and two bedrooms. It was a big, solid house, but really simple. The fanciest thing in it was the antique copper bathtub.

At the far end of what was to be the master bedroom was a ladder, which led up to a small third floor tower room with one big window, This tower room, with its view of the lake in the valley and the mountains beyond, was the best thing about a fine big house, and while we were building it, I lived up there.

This was in the fall, and nights were chilly. The room wasn’t closed in yet (the house was still half built) and there was no window. I had two arctic sleeping bags, a bedside light and a radio, and all the great outdoors to lull me to sleep. I occasionally entertained up there, with my grandfather’s Bighorn ram’s head looking down from the wall above the bed.

One night, later in the fall, when it was crisp, I got in older brother’s car to drive down the hill for a case of beer from the dépanneur at the bottom. Older brother was at college in the US and had left his car behind. It was a worn out 1967 Volvo 123 GT called Greta. This was the period when Volvos looked like 1950s Soviet taxis, round and workmanlike.

The 123 GT was special though. For one thing, it was a two door (unimaginably sporty for Volvo) and it had the GT package, with the same 2.0 litre engine the Volvo sports car had. I could get Greta up to 110 miles an hour coming down the hill from Stagecoach Road. Not legally, mind you, I had neither a license nor insurance. Quebec was a bit wild and lawless then, insurance wasn’t required, and no one ever asked to see my non-existent license.

By the time I had Greta, she was missing a front fender and the battery was gone. To get around, it was necessary to always park on a hill (it was a hilly county) so you could coast to a start. Many times, I’d had to leave her at the side of the road and walk home when I unthinkingly stalled her on the flat. 

That night, I had parked it, nose up the hill beside Barry’s new house. I got in, put one foot on the brake and one on the clutch, turned the key, put it in reverse and opened the driver’s door with my left hand so I could look behind me as I jump-started it in reverse. This was a maneuver I had completed many times before, but this time was different.

I let the brake go, felt the car pick up speed and prepared to let the clutch go and bump the engine into life. I was holding the door open with my arm out and didn’t see the young but stout tree the car was backing on to. Greta rumbled down the hill, the engine coughed and the tree crashed into the open driver’s door, with my arm sandwiched between. The car groaned, the door creaked and bent backward on its hinges and everything settled into place, all the weight of the car on my arm.

It hurt like hell and was bent at an uncomfortable angle. The first thing I did was put a foot on the ground, my shoulder to the doorframe and then pushed with all my strength. The car didn’t move. It weighed a ton and a half and I weighed 140 pounds. I was the strongest and most fit I’d ever been, from carrying logs and hammering nails into beams, but I couldn’t lift a car like Superman.

The next course of action. Call for help. Barry’s new house was a quarter of a mile up the hill from the farm, no one between. Nonetheless, I yelled for about 10 minutes until my voice was gone. Try everything once.

Another try pushing the car up the hill off my arm. It led to some creaking and groaning but no movement. Part of the problem was the inside of my arm was pressed against the door panel with my elbow sticking out. This limited movement and didn’t allow for very good purchase when pushing.

OK, next. Wait for help to come? I wasn’t expected anywhere, I was living at the new house, no one thought I’d be anywhere else. Barry would come for work in the morning, a day hence.

Next. This sounds overly dramatic, but it was very late at night, it had been more than an hour, I was getting cold, my arm was numb and I was panicking. I had a Swiss Army knife in my pocket. You’ve heard of the film 127 Hours? Well, there I was, wondering if I could cut off my own arm, and seriously considering it, 40 years before the film was made.

The thought of trying to perform auto-amputation (I have a very vivid imagination) did it. I got up once more, curled into my left arm so my back was against the door frame, dug my heels in the gravel and just barely forced Greta far enough off my arm to snatch it out from between the door panel and the tree. As I let go, the car slid back down on to the tree, groaned, cracked and the door bent back 45 degrees. That was how much weight was on my arm.

I stayed at the farm that night, my arm wrapped in ice. It got better, but whenever I butt up against the impossible, I think of that Swiss Army knife, and give it one more shove.

First World Problems

First World Problems

Last summer, I tweeted "I can’t get wifi on my yacht". That was the first time I realized I had first world problems. It’s not really a yacht, it’s a workmanlike motorsailer, about 30 years old, and in the summer, I use it as my office. It’s moored at the local yacht club, and has air conditioning, hot water, gas, electricity, a shower, flat screen TVs and a music system. But not wifi.

I paid $300 for a wifi booster that was supposed to collect local signals, amplify them and allow me to ride on them. There is wifi at the clubhouse, but it doesn’t make it out to the end of the dock where I’m moored, and my wifi booster system doesn’t seem to help, except on still quiet nights.

So, instead, I make a wifi hotspot with my iPhone, and run all my internet connections off that. That's my phone, my browser and usually a hockey game streaming on one channel and Songza on the other. As you can imagine, the data charges are enormous, especially as I’m there all day and many nights. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, it’s impossible to get a mobile signal from about 5 PM to midnight, because the yacht club basin is surrounded by condo towers, and all those cable-cutters in their sky boxes are using cell phones to arrange dates for the evening.

Times like that, I just have to shut down the office, and enjoy the view (which is beautiful, with the city skyline twinkling with lights, the CN Tower a coloured exclamation point in the middle). The wheelhouse has a couple of comfortable settees, and the big windows provide a panoramic view of Toronto, night and day.

During the two weeks of the Canadian National Exhibition, at Exhibition Place across the basin, the evening ends with fireworks, a pretty good show every night at 11:00 PM, and that’s always worth staying late at the office for. And during the Toronto International Airshow, the quarterdeck of MS Passat is the best seat in town, with drinks cooling in the fridge below, music piping out through the speakers and the ensign flapping in the sunny breeze as the planes roar overhead.

Sleeping aboard is lots of fun, and I do it whenever my wife lets me. The most fun is a rainy night with a southwest wind. I’m moored at the entrance to the basin, and the swells come in through the breakwater and take the boat stern first, where the master stateroom is. The bumpers groan and squeak as they rub against the dock, the bunk pitches, the stays sing in the wind and a glorious time is had by all. As everyone knows who sleeps on a boat, when you get ashore, your bed still moves. And you bump into things as you walk down the hallway, swaying to compensate for waves that don’t come. Another first world problem.

Those nights I stay on the boat, I usually go to bed late, just because there’s so much to do aboard in the warm lit cabin in the pitch black. Movies on the iPad, crazy right-wing preachers from the deep South on the shortwave, emergency broadcasts on the VHF. I heard a call for an overturned outboard skiff, 10 miles off Stony Creek one cold and wet night, and thought of the poor sods who had ventured out so ill-boated in that weather. I can spend an hour just sitting in the wheelhouse listening to music and watching the CN Tower change colours.

I’ve often thought the safest place to be in a tsunami is in a boat. Offshore, of course, away from the breakers, where the tidal wave is just a big pile of water you’d ride up, then ride down again. Which leads me to think that a well-found, solid boat (like mine) is probably the best insurance against disaster. Floods don’t matter, nor droughts, when you live on a Great Lake. We don’t get tsunamis or volcanoes, and although we seem to be developing a tornado problem, they stay inland for the most part.

Among the first world problems that also come with owning a boat? Having to use special flimsy toilet paper that doesn’t plug the heads. Getting used to the chatter of the VHF when you’re monitoring Emergency Channel 16. Making sure your diesel fuel is clean and “dry”. Spending a constant dribble of money on maintenance. Spiders. Always spiders. Keeping up appearances and not letting the brightwork blister. Oh, and no cable. In addition to my wifi problem, I haven’t figured out how, short of a hugely expensive global satellite uplink, to get cable TV aboard Passat. A dish won't work on a moving boat, the club won’t allow us to install dishes on the docks, and there aren’t enough people who want it to cover the cost of bringing a link out to the end of the pier. Like I said, first world problems.

As a postscript, I had my home office IT guy come down to the boat for the afternoon. He was able (this is why I pay professionals to do these things) simply reset the wifi booster, and it now works a treat. I have to find a new first world problem to complain about.