Life in a Northern Town
The first instalment of college follies in the 80's
“We just did an awesome job of not dying.” -John Green
Eggs were an essential part of college life. Crack one into a boiling pot of ramen noodles and you have a complete meal. It wasn’t as much about enjoyment and taste sensation as it was survival, that you can have both I didn’t know at the time.
Mr. Mike was a true character. I believe he was in the business program at college or university. He was also a consummate entrepreneur, had been since he was a child. Necessity, it’s been said, is the mother of invention.
Mr. Mike could invent the craziest stuff. He would see an open market and meet its demand. From dockside garbage removal in the bay of islands he grew up in, to roofing and boat repair.
At the same time in our living room he was rebuilding a cedar strip canoe, creating a stained glass masterpiece, and building a coffee table with an intricate design of beer bottle caps inlaid under glass. 160 caps, if memory serves. I know right? Who in their right mind would want something like that? College students, that’s who.
I call it a living room, it was really just a huge open cabin with single wood slat siding and no insulation or interior finish. A giant piece of poly went floor to ceiling and wall to wall, dividing the large room and creating a billowing protection from snow, sawdust and flying glass.
We used a small piece of the huge room for the dining table and couch, the rest was Mr. Mike’s workshop. Living in “the gateway to the north” it was often extremely cold in the winter, that billowing sheet of plastic protected us from the harshest winds blowing off the lake. These cabins were meant as summer cabins for tourists, not winter housing for students. Before you ask, yes it was cheap.
Mr. Mike was an extremely practical young man, and organized. I guess it is kind of necessary if you intend to be a successful entrepreneur. I wouldn’t know. My forays into business ownership always ended before I was owned by the business.
He had a schedule for everything. Supper schedule was invariable. Mondays were spaghetti, Tuesdays liver, Wednesdays hamburgers, you get the idea, well maybe not the whole idea.
This next part comes with a disclaimer: Kids don’t try this yourself, it is unethical, illegal and immoral, well a little titillation can’t hurt, or you could just wait for the next book. Ok, if you insist.
On very special occasions, when we had earned some extra cash, it was all you can eat Chinese food buffet, with a twist. I could talk about desperate times, needs must and all that, the truth is, more often than not, we only had enough money for food or beer, and we needed both. It only took a few visits, filling our plastic bag filled Adidas gym bags with plate after plate of food for them to catch on and ban us.
The best was always saved for Friday night, steak night. Now I’m not saying for sure how we got the steaks, I didn’t contribute towards them, far out of my budget, and always prime cuts.
Every Friday Mr. Mike would bring home two steaks, stuck in his pants, maybe he didn’t want to carry a bag? As a group of students, our regular acquaintances were generally of decent moral and ethical character, bending rules was a familiar practice. Yes, technically taking food home from an all you can eat buffet isn’t proper, but outright theft was not practiced, until we tried.
There are many reasons I didn’t become a criminal, one of the big ones being I always get caught, lying, stealing, it doesn’t matter, I will get busted.
I didn’t know that then. We thought if we are going to risk police involvement, it might as well be big, theft under of course, we were students, not stupids. We decided on a restaurant we normally cannot afford, no risk of wanting to return. It was more of a sport’s lounge, serving beer, steaks, burgers, well, you know the type of place.
We each dined, the five of us putting back more than a few mugs of ale, our fill of food, including appies, then dashed. We ran full out for two blocks, around a corner and stopped to catch our breath, and stop ourselves from puking!
Have you ever run two blocks after a heavy meal? We made it! No one was following, high fives, wait, where’s Mister Mike? Yup, that’s right dear reader, the weakest link in our chain gang of pretend hoodlums had passed out at the table.
Wednesdays were always fun! The new school season had brought new neighbours, Wolfgang and his family came to live for a while in the cabins on the lake, can’t recall the reason. Wolfie liked to spend time in our cabin drinking beer and talking about ideas. His ideas were from another generation, one raised in post war Germany. These were new thoughts to me, a new perspective, a different version of history.
Wolfie was a storyteller, and a good one, fact and fiction woven neatly together, truth clouded by mystery. Was it guilt, fear, uncertainty? I will never know, I do know he enjoyed Wednesday nights the best, vegetarians beware, it was because of the raw hamburger.
Mr. Mike couldn’t prepare the patties fast enough to keep Old Wolfie from scarfing down a few spoonfuls of raw hamburger mix. I miss our chats, old friend.
That cabin over two winters brought many an odd duck through its paper thin door. We were always open, always had beer, always had hash. While we were not necessarily popular as people, our space and hedonistic lifestyle was.
We enjoyed the company of a wide variety of folks and each brought a unique perspective on life. Some were fun, some were annoying. One thing about the Gateway, it was never boring.
You see, the thing about gateways, well the thing I wish to draw your attention to, is they easily can become bottlenecks, stopping grounds. Men would go north to work, time off would place them back at the gate. Booze, women, a little frontier freedom. People gathered there. Those born up north, those born down south all ended up there.
Rednecks and hillbillies made up the majority of the supporting cast and way of life. A different set of rules, a different perspective on life, and certainly a lot fewer filters, less civilized — to cap a point, life was wild.
There was this dance club downtown, and under it was a small bar. It had a little live music stage at night which was used as a stripper stage during the day. The rules were simple. Pay for your drinks, pay if you lose at pool or darts, and don’t touch the dancers. One day someone didn’t want to pay.
Now at this time I knew people who knew people. I could find things others often could not. I had made an acquaintance with a server in the basement boozer. The place mostly sold draft and Jake would just walk around with a tray and people would buy the beer. His real income came from selling hash to the drunks for more than it was worth.
I would get it for a certain price, he would get it for a higher price and his customers would pay even more. I just had to sit and enjoy the music. At the end of the night everyone would settle up and await the next time.
Those are other stories, this one is about the afternoon someone didn’t feel like paying for their loss at pool. Let me set the stage a little more for you.
Buzz and Jake both rode with a motorcycle club. As decent men they were fair and just. Just make sure you pay. It was over in less than a minute. Buzz had beaten the man so bad with a pool cue that they had to carry him out and call an ambulance. The room went back to whatever was occurring previous to the interruption and it was like nothing happened, until it wasn’t.
The boys in blue showed up a while later and cuffed Buzz. Why they didn’t cuff Jake is still a mystery, sort of like what happened to the police officers in the small lobby between two sets of double doors. I watched, it really wasn’t much of a mystery, I suppose you can figure it out.
Anyway, the incident caused Jake to be cuffed and carried away in the cruiser with Buzz. Jake hadn’t settled his tab for the day. Oh well, win some and lose some.
Now listen closely to the next bit.
Honour, justice, loyalty. These are traits you can find in any familial grouping of people. Motorcycle clubs are no exception, in fact the rule. Several months later I was sitting in the same establishment when in walked Jake. I ordered us a round and we began to catch up. Buzz would be a while inside yet but Jake had gotten off lightly. He was cheerful and optimistic as he handed over what he was unable to settle on the evening he was removed. Brother you are all right in my books.
Most certainly dear reader not all in the gateway are civilized, some, not even the slightest. One evening just past dark there was a knock, knock, knocking on the door. It was early spring and the weather was warm enough for Mr. Mike to retire in the attic room. He wintered on the sofa bed in the great room. Fall and spring he slept upstairs.
It was late enough this evening for Mr. Mike to have had his fill of barrel wash, snoring loudly he did not hear the knock, knock knocking at the door. Go away, it’s late thought I. Insistent they seemed to be and as the knock, knock, knocking did not subside I screamed in my head “nevermore” and wandered out from my room to open the door.
Four young men stood in the porch light distorted by moths dive bombing to their deaths. I only knew two, one of them held a rifle. “What’s going on?” Said I. “Is Mr. Mike around?” One of the lads familiar to me said. “Sorry lads, come back tomorrow”, was my response.
I was just about to close the door and return to peaceful slumber. “Wait, can we borrow his chain saw.” I was awake and alert now. “What’s this about lads?” They looked at each other shiftily, the one I knew fairly well blurted out the plan. They were hungry and had spent the month’s allotment of money on gambling, booze and drugs. Food was an afterthought, or lack thereof.
They intended to use the rifle and chainsaw to appropriate a large chunk of flesh belonging to one of old MacDonald's cows. Too far lads, go sleep it off.
Jesus, as if our place wasn’t enough of a heat score. Door slammed firmly, bolt in place, back to peaceful slumber went I. Before long a loud banging on the door shattered my dreams and brought me instantly awake, nerves jangling.
As an aside, did you know hearing is the last sense to fade as we fall asleep and the first to awaken? What time was it? Six am! Damn this better be important. I flung open the door, anger in my eyes turning instantly to fear.
The two emotions are closely related I am told, sort of like Mokey’s parents I am sure. He was one of the posse from the evening prior. In his hands this early morning, dripping with blood, he held two bottles of XXX Sherry, “got a moke?” he said as I grabbed the front of his coat and flung him into the cabin, quickly sticking my head out the door, looking around for witnesses.
Great snapping arseholes there was a trail of blood in the snow leading right up to my door. “Ok Mokey, what have you done?” Now the reason for his nickname plays a big part in why I won’t be quoting Mokey’s words. His speech impediment made him barely legible during calm moments, times like this… well I will summarize.
Apparently he had been given some acid during the night previous as the wild cow hunt had to be aborted. I am sure dear readers you have no experience with the mind altering effects of LSD. Perhaps Aldous Huxley would be a good read? Anyway, a usual side effect of the acid leaving your system is thirst, particularly for alcohol. With no money the only alternative for Mokey it would seem was a hammer, and a liquor store with a large plate glass window. XXX Sherry was the first thing he could reach through the broken glass.
It took me thirty minutes at twenty below zero to make the blood trail disappear in the snow. By the time I returned to the cabin Mokey had passed out at the table. Shaking my head I returned to bed. By the time I woke again Mokey and his bottles were gone. Oy Vey, I didn’t need the headache.