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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
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My patience is exhausted.
The waiter, the one who got fed up with the Owner's son, don't blame him, we all are, but he spoke his mind and quit and moved to Nelson to live under the Big Orange Bridge.
When I'm in town I keep in touch, buy him coffee, see how the job hunt is going. He's not interested in work, not particularly, he wants to buy a restaurant, get his own show up and running, I spot him 20 bucks for food, a pack of cigarettes, he's hopeless, his priorities completely fucked...
And then there's Batshit, whom I took to the Burlesque, and bought his ticket, and then bought him chocolates, at his insistence, then he gave them away, asked for more, wanted me to buy him this, buy him that, and I did some mental addition and realized he's cost me more the past month than my own kids, and I'm not current with those bills either, and so I told him, not so kindly, to lay off, and he's offended now and ignoring me but I'm kind of loving the break...
In Nelson, for every one person who works there's a dozen that don't and feel they have a claim upon your wallet, and your good nature takes you only so far when you come to town, the highly visible contingents of homeless that party every night and panhandle the day away, and you're every best intention is pissed or smoked away. I give up.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1220
It's always the same shit, a different pile. The owner's son - Think the Bosses Nephew, only without his intelligence, good looks and charm, he's been dogging it for the last few weeks, working every other day, "Managing" the rest, which is to say in the office talking to his wife on the phone, he misses her, it's been hours, or going upstairs to visit his folks, he misses them, it's been hours as well, and his absence is perhaps the best thing about him. Customers, the ones with brains (not many, not out here), they are quick to note his insincerity, his ... well, -- something's off.
He's never worked in a restaurant other than this, for anyone other than his folks, and so his "experience" is more a lack thereof, and sometimes...sometimes...
They're going to start metering the water, and he warns me to stop giving the customers free glasses of water. I just look at him..."It's all about the costs.." he tries to tell me...
...and then, in the kitchen one day, he's doing cold side, I order a salad, split, and he tells me how much work it is, "I have to put it into two bowls!! TWO BOWLS!!", he warns me to never do it again, and I give him that sustained look of "WTF Buddy, are you an idiot?" but he merely trenches in, digs in a bit deeper, elaborates, he can see my expression, I must be stupid if I can't understand how much work that is and I get that 2 bowls, for him, that's a lot of work ...
He wants to be a politician, a few people, they say he'd be good, they don't mean it kindly, and he complains that he was bullied as a child, I can understand, but his very survival is proof that he wasn't bullied near enough...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1451
Batsh*t in Nelson, the gateway, his sister, meeting her, he's warned me, she quickly drops word of her personal relationship with Jesus, which she seems to have adopted merely to raise herself above any suspicion, a common church trick, she manages Batsh*t's pension cheques, has him on a $10 a week allowance, I figure it all out pretty quick, am joking with him that she'll in the end never give him the key to his new place, that she'll break his legs and keep him in bed feeding him from her abundance of ready-to-expire food bank donations and reading to him the bible, one of those people that forever mean well but do only harm, he can't stand her but has to shut up while he's at her place, and you begin to understand him a bit better, the bullshit, it's spread a lot thinner now, and you realize that all things told he's probably the sanest one in his family...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1584
He's disappeared, Batshit I mean, 1 month of the restaurant open and no sign of him. I start to get a little concerned, make some enquiries, in Riondel I ask at the general store, it turns out he slipped, fell, maybe broke his hip, at the hospital...they cleaned out his house in Riondel, didn't want him living there anymore, wasn't safe for him...
Call the hospital, but his alias, Kootenay name, it's not good enough.
And now to the troublesome task of finding out his real name. Ask about Riondel, no one knows it. Or if they do they're not saying. And here, I should note, is a big breach in Kootenay Etiquette - you use the name people provide you and don't ask any further. Lots of people around here have good reason not to give you their real name - from the draft dodgers, growers, and people with warrants outstanding, to the plain old "it's my party name", you take everyone at their word and don't pry.
But I gotta pry if I'm gonna find him...
Ask about in Nelson, a few carefully directed queries and I have it...
Pretty ordinary, a quick Google turns up thousands of results. (later research would prove that his real name - for the purposes of the interweb, anyways, is no better than his pseudonym).
Back to the search, rumour had it he was staying at his sisters...
Didn't know he had one. But on the first call it's BINGO.
And take him for dinner and catch up...
Found him, grown old overnight, he's been moved by agencies to Nelson, all of the doctors, nurses, chipping in to get him a place, furnishing his new apartment at a home up ... street, he describes it, he's tickled pink, loving all the attention and fuss he's stirred.
But he's of a sudden grown old, his hip, not broken but a pinched nerve, he's lost 14 lbs, the hip was minor, he was another 17 days in the hospital with pneumonia, he's telling the same stories he's told a hundred times, living in town, this will be good, easier to find him, to take him out, there's shows he'd love, the burlesque, drag shows, night-clubs, town will work a lot better for sure, but I can't help but thinking this newly found comfort will be the death of him...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1461
He starts back tomorrow, the Winter's been hard on him, the other waiter at the Pub. Already a skinny guy, he's lost easily another 30 pounds over the winter living in his crack-trailer on the East Shore. He looks like a bobble-headed skeleton, Skeletor, he's been surviving on $150 every 2 weeks EI, the last few months, and I know what that's like, no heat, no company, sitting every day in his trailer, in the dark, the punched in walls, the filthy antechamber filled with the previous residents garbage, broken BBQ's, Old Tube TV's, he was for a while capturing mice, keeping them company, letting them go, ....
Every couple of weeks you'd take him for lunch, he needs it, buy him some cigarettes, groceries, would do more but I haven't been doing so well myself. He's grateful just to get out of the trailer. And you talk to him and the isolation, it's taken it's toll, he was never a great thinker but even the little bit of reason he had seems to have disappeared, he's fallen down the Kootenay well...
He's looking forward to getting back to work. I'm hoping he's still sane enough to hold a job...