Monday, August 1, 2011

Some Thoughts Gathered In The Middle Of The Night


Monday, 2:45am EST
Good bus karma! Due to the number of people taking the Hound this fine night, they had to call in a second coach, meaning I get two seats to myself and a shot at some sleep. As an added bonus, the other coach is going to make all the stops and we’re going directly to Sudbury.
I may even have time to get breakfast.
I’m kind of excited to see Sudbury. I spent a lot of time in Sudbury as a child; pretty much every Saturday until my family moved to Ottawa when I was in the 8th grade. We’d go there for groceries, swimming lessons, guitar lessons and, if we were lucky, hamburgers at Deluxe.
There were also the evenings of hillbilly magic when we’d join the other cars at the lookout and watch Inco pour slag down the hill. Good times.
Sudbury was also where you had to go to see any decent movie. They’d get to Espanola eventually, but sometimes you just couldn’t wait.
Like when Christian Cook’s Dad took us to Dragonslayer, or when my Dad took us to Return of the Jedi and Jamie Ramsay puked all over the back seat of his new Buick, marring it for all time.
Sudbury was the city. If you wanted to try the fast food you saw on TV, you had to get it there (or Toronto, if you were, you know, fancy), and most field trips centered there. I have been to the Big Nickel, Science North and the pool at Laurentian University more times than I can count.
This Northern childhood also informed how I see Terry’s story quite a bit. Nothing came to Espanola. Nothing. And while Terry didn’t stop there, he ran past it, and seriously, that’s enough when you live in a town like that. 
Listening to the radio for updates all the time, watching on TV, marveling that this bigger than life figure was running past things I knew. When Terry ran through Massey, he went right by Murray’s Barber Shop, where my Dad took me for haircuts. He ran by Pacey’s Texaco, where we got ice cream, over the bridge near McKerrow, past the sawmill at Nairn.
It was a big deal.
Typing it out, it sounds a little ridiculous. In my defense, I was not quite 6 years old yet.