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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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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....
$750 a month.
It's crazy, I'd live there a couple of months, all you can do is write and sleep, it's the perfect cabin in the woods, I imagine Thoreau must have had bigger, better, when he wrote "On Walden's Pond" - but it would suffice. The Landlady, though, she's her own little nightmare - still trying to shake the cobwebs out of her head, she's telling me "I don't want any junkies or alcoholics..." - points to a tin filled with baking soda outside the cabin and sniffs..."the last tenant...what was he into?", she knows, and then dashes back inside, she's parched, she needs a drink...7 other prospective tenants to show it to, I'm pretty sure I won't get it, I'm not what she's looking for ...
You could live for a while in the cabin, but it would be yet another one of those bad-landlady situations, the house, estate in ruins, she's advertising for a tenant but she's really looking for a partner, someone to clean up the yard, the house, been there, done that, and I'm thinking that rent should exempt one from the monotony of chores and labour, where she, well, like a lot of the hippies out here she's hoping...
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They looked familiar, on the ferry from the East Shore, took their picture, took a few more. Bikers on vacation.
And, sure enough, in the pub, they tip exorbitantly - any tip from bikers, better than 10%, is rare, he's leaving me 7$ on 2 beer, so maybe he recognizes me as well. The rest of their party ponies up as well, I'd like to imagine that they don't recognize me, preserve my anonymity, but they probably do. Reciprocity. Small good deeds pay great dividends, I should ride the ferry every day...
They're from Drumheller...and so I enquire (I have to) if they know so-and-so...they don't, doesn't ring a bell, we chat, oddly enough I miss the place, look forward to a couple of visits in September and October, fossicking, find some dino-skulls and bones, other treasures...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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A younger couple, mid 20's, he, Australian, she from down east, arrived in the Koots a few weeks ago, loved it, so they took their money and bought a local business.
I know it, everyone does, hole in the wall between here and there, not worth stopping in, although I've done a couple of times. I enquire as to the costs - business, $15,000 - plus a lease of $600 /month in the summer and $100 in the winter. Yep. It's a pretty good opportunity, if they can make it work - it hasn't so far, every wing-nut and loon has given it a try, opening from 11:00 - 7:00, $100 sales per day, if they're lucky, bad art, consignment, no real reason to visit.
But they're excited, and really, they can't do any worse than the previous owners. We talk, I wish them luck, promise to drop by, if they have the right idea in the summer this place is a gold mine. We'll see.
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3:00 PM and the stubble's on her face, 6'6", 240 lbs, built like a linebacker, maybe 35 years old, gym socks stuffed roughly in her bra, the hair, long and to her shoulders, it might be real....
She's not fooling anyone...
She's with her footman, or slave, a diminutive older man, maybe 5'5", shorter even, 60 years old, she orders a diet coke, he asks - meekly - if he may have one too. "Of course", and she waves dismissively. She's catty, in that camp-exaggerated sort of way, paying the bill up front she tells me - "He'd dying for a cigarette, but I'm going to make him wait...".
It's a seriously fucked up little sadistic sex game being played out in public at a rural pub in BC. If they'd have been only half an hour earlier the pub would have been filled with bikers in colors, and what a little scene that would have made...I imagine - buying one of the bikers, the biggest, the ugliest, the loudest and most obnoxious, a drink, saying it was from her, and asking why he hadn't called her back - mayhem ensues, but only in my head...
It's a Kootenay thing I've noticed, along with a few other things ("Side of ranch" - everything here, everyone wants that side of ranch, with their wings, their appetizer, their pizza, new to me), the Trans population - relatively large per capita, puts absolutely no effort whatsoever into their new and assumed gender identities. Throw on a wig or a dress or a name-tag and expect, demand that everyone treat you as a woman. Hang around Waits newstand and coffee shop for an hour or so and you will see some of the least convincing trans people in the world. It's as if they've just given up. I'm used to the big-city version, where every effort is put in to your appearance to outshine your (legitimate?) competition, where guise and artifice rule the scene. Not so here.
I've discovered that my liberalness has it's limits, too, I mean, really, if they're not going to play the game, why should I? I'm a little impatient with these confused and deranged gender identities, if they want me to play their game, they should have to too. People can get a little too comfortable in themselves, Clearly I seriously need to revamp my thinking...