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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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He's paranoid about my copying his work, last one with the message: "An...No FUCKIN CELL PH PICTURES NO EMAIL NO REPRODUCTION ANY SORT ... OR ... UR OUT OF PICTURE 4 FUCKIN WIT [ONLY HOMAGES R MY PALS...TUS 4 UR MEMORY- OK!""
Every picture comes with a warning - forbidding all copying. I started us off on the wrong foot when I was photographing his art, and now I'm paying the price...
As of late he's begun assigning me Quests. 2 Pictures, both good (in his inimitable style - with a note attached that I have 18 hours to take them to town and drop them off to X**** at the Bike Shop and Y**** at the Hume hotel, both collectors of his artwork, with directions and passwords to introduce myself...I've become his errand boy...
And every night after work, or after the days adventures I return to the dungeon to find he's left me a present - more rants - on paper coffee cups, tourist literature, drawings - on paper - gifts - a pair of new black steel-toed Timberlands - size 9 1/2 - about 2 sizes too small...
The next day I spot him on the beach, I'm at work, I buy him some lunch, he glances at my shoes - Oxfords, but he mistakes them for the ones he gave me:
"...you're wearing the shoes I gave you...they were my son's, he wore them through 12 different jungles...steel toed because of all the fucking venomous snakes...I had him wear plastic bags over 'em the entire time, that's why they're in such good condition..."
This is one of the rare hints at his own personal tragedy, the one that derailed him, the death of his son, I have no real details, just rumours, before that he was (relatively) normal, but that was the last straw...
He's got a bunch of garbage laid out on the picnic table on the beach, he's explaining what each object is...a bad digital watch: "This is Joe DiMaggio's watch...he gave it to his son...it needs a new strap..." and a big, slightly used candle ... "This was the candle Joe DiMaggio was burning when he proposed to Marilyn..."
...and from there on to the News, Madonna's buying his island, she's done with New York, just finalizing the sale, ... other elaborate stories ... Keith Richards is getting one of his new paintings... the same-old, same-old...
...returning to the dungeon, time to get ready for work, there's another cache left for me, a pewter cup, "Steve" badly engraved on the side, filled with notes and drawings, reading it, there's the hit-list of people who've mistreated him on the Ferry Landing, invective damning Lang's, The Fishing shop, the Bakery, I return outside to thank him...
"Steve McQueen's cup..." he explains to me ...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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He looks to be a street guy, prosthetic leg, maybe late 50's, early 60's, rides his bus up to the bus stop, parks it, goes inside the shelter.
I'm early for the bus, sitting down against the outside of the shelter, can't see in...
More people are showing up every minute, a young kid, maybe 8 or 10 goes into the shelter with him, takes a seat...
And he begins...intoning, a weird accent, high, nasal voice...."We are doing to this planet what we have done to Mars...our history is older than has been recorded..."
He's channeling, or something, I can only hear him, in the smoky haze, the sun and mountains obscured it almost seems relevant...I look over into the bus shelter at the kid, he's got a horrified, WTF expression on his face...
He continues..."The price of gas should be 10 fold what it is now...only when it is $20 per litre will it stop...."
The kid is weirded out, grabs his knapsack and leaves the shelter, homeless guy has taken off his prosthetic, eyes rolling in his head as he channels the spirits, makes his prophecies, his amputated stump hangs down, a mass of soggy flesh that resembles an elephant's trunk, "Only in Foon" I'm thinking...he continues with his prophecies and dire warnings to the human race at sporadic intervals...
As other passengers show up to wait he hops out, talks to them, shows them a pair of long-handled snipping shears, for the arborist, he's raving about what a great deal they were, fairly normal conversation, I was hoping for better, all the locals know him, humour him, I just watch..
Then, when the bus comes, he loads his bike on the front, grabs his leg, his packages and shears, hops on the bus, stands close to me and begins to amuse a young girl, he's quacking at her like a duck, speaking in that Donald-Duck voice, but mostly just quacking, the girl, her mother, they're amused, even the bus rides in Foon are an adventure...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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This place, area, it's a staffing nightmare. Kitchen staff, they're all imported, places in BC, Saskatchewan, Alberta, as far away as Ontario. We've only a single "local" couple, they've lived here almost a year, that's about as "local" as it gets.
The population - apart from the very few that have jobs - get by - Medical EI, Workman's Comp, EI, Welfare, Disability, Welfare, Alimony, Grow Ops, WTF, it seems everyone here has a alternative or government income of some sort...everyone but me.
We hire a local girl, she has a job, she only wants part time. She's on the schedule - once a week - can't work long weekends (the busiest weekends) - over the period of a month she calls in sick for 3 out of 4 shifts, the fifth shift she just gives up, she quits...
It's ridiculous, this, everyone is underemployed, unemployed, not working, and I'm overemployed...
We get another waiter, he's nice, calls everybody "brother", older, a proper old-school hippy, but he doesn't want to work as well, this gig, it's a lot of running around, side duties, he's got another gig lined up, bus-driver, this is his big ambition, he's forever pleading to leave early, wants to get out of the side-work, get out of here, is exact in his minutes clocking in and out, you come to loathe him, he's the classic union-guy, who wants to be a bus-driver anyways?
***
Every restaurant is hiring, the long weekend, busiest of the year, check the local paper, the restaurants up in Kaslo, all of a poor reputation, they're all hiring, can't get or keep staff, some (the Hotel) end up just offering partial service, limited or no menu....I'm getting calls from resume's I dropped off 6 months ago...
There are the people you spot on the street, weed tattoo on their forehead, and you think, "Goddamn", this is a lifetime commitment to unemployment, and you think again, we're paying for this, we pay his EI, Unemployment, Disability, just because he never wants to work again, and I'm thinking (yet again) that the system is completely fucked, that these people should be allowed to slip through the cracks, go hungry, starve to death, because, because, really, why?
Music Festivals, Crawford Bay, Shambhala, they're the death of a lot of restaurants, they hire staff on the commitment they're not going to go, then muddle through with the surviving staff the fact that they have clearly "gone", if you owned a restaurant here, - if - you'd be far better off closing the restaurant during music festivals - buying the staff tickets - then you wouldn't be firing them all after the event. It would be cheaper. Priorities here are different. It highlights my point - out here - it's impossible to get staff.
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There is no doubt about it, drive around for a day even and you'll understand, this is the very Land of Foon. From the podcast "The Magic Tavern". Driving, round Ymir way, a withered old stick of a woman out hitchhiking, I stop to pick her up...
She makes 4 trips to load in all her belongings, carts, bags, slowly, slowly, I'm in no rush. She tells me her name, then tells me I can just call her by her street name "Captain Liza", she's 70 years old but doesn't look a day over 90, frail, and in the 20 minute drive back to Nelson I get her life story. Living, in the hostel in Vancouver, the junkies and thieves were all very polite. In Victoria how she'd go to the health food store 3 times a week and steal some particular supplement she's recommending, cured her, she doesn't consider herself a thief but it was expensive and she needed it and sometimes you just have to...about how her car got towed because she didn't have insurance and it had everything she owned in it and she's going to Nelson to try and get it back. About how in Ponoka they changed her anti-psychotics and it made all the difference, and I look into her huge, watery blue eyes and I got it, I knew from the many turns the conversation was taking anyways, and she keeps talking, about all the places she's lived, she's itinerant, lived everywhere, and I drop her off in an alley off Baker, she's going to meet some friends, try and get some things done, she wants to start a business so that she can get an employers salary from the government, I just listen...
Waiting for the Salvation Army to open, I need some new shoes. There's a lineup of homeless men, maybe a dozen, waiting for the free bread, one loaf per person, and they're feuding over who's first, who gets the least-moldy donations, they're not the nicest guys by a long shot. There's a disabled man, something wrong with his arms, like a T-Rex, born that way, on the bus bench beside the trash, it's one of the covered containers with a swinging lid on the side, a girl saunters up, bends over and sticks her head inside the trash, begins to expectorate, it turns into a heaving up of all her internal organs, he sits there like nothing is happening, when she's done she pulls her head out of the trash and carries on...
No luck at the Salvation Army, try another thrift shop, an older couple, she, maybe 60, fine figure, well dressed, resting bitch face, her partner, older, stringy long greasy hair combed over a balding head, badly dressed, the archtypal rural BC Serial Killer, I recognize them from the garage sales in Kaslo, she was there in that sheer black top, breasts bared, white and yolk and all, to the world, now they're holding up the daintiest of underthings, garters, thongs, at the till, discussing them with the clerk, she knows them, catches my eye, can see what I'm thinking...
At Empire for coffee, an older man, feathers in cap, dozens of them, Ospreys, Eagle, Hawk, Chicken feathers, all of them. This is a valley thing, popularized by people who lived over Slocan way, a feather in your cap, but this guys taken it to a whole new level. And the waitress comes over, is talking to him, he's writing, she wants to know what, she draws him out, asks about the hat, and he reluctantly, sheepishly confesses to being a Shaman...
In the evening, out front of my dingy motel having a smoke (A $1000 non-refundable charge if you smoke in your room), from the room next door pops a midget, no, a dwarf, not even 3 feet tall, tiny, she climbs up the truck next to my jeep, opens the door, and sits inside smoking a cigarette. I'm texting my son, it's unbelievable this, where is the nephew when you need him, he'd have something to say, would engage her, I want to surreptitiously snap a photo, but it would be rude, belittling, but nobody would believe me without it, and then her friend comes out, a guy, maybe 6'2", they're talking and from the turns of the conversation it becomes apparent they don't know each other, just met, and reluctantly I finish my cigarette and head back inside.
Without a doubt this is the very Land of Foon.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Going to look at a place, called, arranged a viewing for 10:00 AM. Typical Kootenay house, old, (1896 the landlady tells me), once an estate but now in disrepair, a full mousetrap with dead mouse at the door, outbuildings without their roofs, overflowing with garbage, discarded furniture, the deck cluttered with tools, no obvious outstanding projects, just that rural disorganization. I knock and wait, it takes her about 5 minutes to answer, she's apologetic, big night the night before at the neighbors, she's trying to shake the cobwebs out of her head, I sit down on the deck while I wait for her to get changed...
About ten minutes, she's still shaking the cobwebs out of her head, but dressed, sits on the Veranda and talks to me, wants to feel me out to see if I'll be a good "fit", the cabin, it's on her property, a stones throw from the house, 1895, built by and for the coolies that built the house, why am I so well dressed? she asks, I'm not, What do I do for a living? I tell her where I work, how long...she's still sketchy, shows me the cabin. It's tiny, maybe 8 feet wide, 15 feet long, a 7 foot peaked ceiling, drop down ladder to "the loft" - a 2 foot crawlspace above the bathroom. It's charming - a bed immediately upon entering on the left, wardrobe and desk on the right, the shady side of the cabin is filled with cords of wood - the place is heated with a wood burning stove, a basic and tiny bathroom/shower behind an outhouse door....
$750 a month.
It's crazy, I'd live there a couple of months, all you can do is write and sleep, it's the perfect cabin in the woods, I imagine Thoreau must have had bigger, better, when he wrote "On Walden's Pond" - but it would suffice. The Landlady, though, she's her own little nightmare - still trying to shake the cobwebs out of her head, she's telling me "I don't want any junkies or alcoholics..." - points to a tin filled with baking soda outside the cabin and sniffs..."the last tenant...what was he into?", she knows, and then dashes back inside, she's parched, she needs a drink...7 other prospective tenants to show it to, I'm pretty sure I won't get it, I'm not what she's looking for ...
You could live for a while in the cabin, but it would be yet another one of those bad-landlady situations, the house, estate in ruins, she's advertising for a tenant but she's really looking for a partner, someone to clean up the yard, the house, been there, done that, and I'm thinking that rent should exempt one from the monotony of chores and labour, where she, well, like a lot of the hippies out here she's hoping...