Three Things from Edmonton podcast - Episode 87: flash of time, balls of fun, good ears

Happy end of the week, friends. Once a week I try to notice what I noticed made me happy or grateful, remember it, and then record it. So the noticing equipment doesn’t completely calcify. This week:

                              

1. Flash of time 

Placeline: middle of summer, Delwood, northeast Edmonton, 1978. I was 14 years old. Boston’s second album was still a couple of weeks away from landing at A&A Records in Londonderry Mall. What was there to do? Well, Edmonton at that time was about to host the Commonwealth Games. There was a new LRT line downtown. The Queen was staying at the Westin Hotel and would, the former Edmonton Journal reported, walk out of the hotel at such-and-such o’clock on her way to an evening function with so-and-so important people. I grabbed my camera and caught a train downtown from Belvedere Station. 

The Kodak EK100 Instant camera, which emitted a snapshot from a slot on the bottom of the device, was not a small piece of technology. Lifted to your face to compose a shot, it covered your face. The Queen emerged from the front door of the hotel. People murmured, there she is and cheered politely. I was just a few feet away from her, and could see her clearly without Prince Philip in the way. Timidly, feeling as if everyone must be looking at me, I somehow ignored my pounding heart and depressed the shutter button. 

I was on CHED radio with Chelsea Bird last week, telling the story of the photo, which I still have. A Kodak moment, as they said when Kodak was still a thing, that has lasted and can still be found (thank you, Shelagh) 44 years later. How many photos like mine are there in the world, indeed, how many different kinds of cameras have come and gone while Queen Elizabeth II was alive? In the picture, she still wears a shimmering chartreuse gown, a white fur stole, white gloves to the elbow and a tiara that flashes like a flash of a camera itself. 

2. Balls of fun 

The man who suddenly emerged from the bushes behind me on the Victoria Golf Course’s 13th hole looked like Charles Darwin, which was à propos, considering the split-second of evolutionary terror the rustle in the bushes called up in my stomach. But the fright passed quickly. It wasn’t a cougar or a bear. It was a man with a white beard and a walking staff. I was there taking a photo for my golfing sister. He was looking for lost golf balls. He said he usually finds 10 to 15 balls on his morning walks. He held up the one he had so far that morning, a TaylorMade #2. 

“Along here and if you go down and follow that path that’s over there and if you go along that other bank that’s over there, there’s another huge bush area, and it’s either they’re losing it off the top of this one or they’re losing it off the top of the other one, and they all seem to be in that particular area,” he said.

If I had to guess, I thought to myself, I’d say his name was Mike. The Mikes I know are each unique beings and observers who cut their own trails. I also thought to myself how fun must it be to tramp through the woods on a mission to find buried treasure. You’d feel like a kid again, or, what’s even better, or a character in an adventure book. He explained that the kids where he worked had an area where they could safely hit golf balls, and they had fun pounding them out there, so, he was out here for fresh air and exercise for himself, and for the balls for them. Huh, I thought, how could you ever guess the stories that make people go? You can’t, that’s the point, maybe. You just have to respect the story space people move in. My name’s Glenn, I said, offering a fist for a bump, which he accepted. I’m Mike, he said. 

3. Good ears 

The woman at the roadside corn stand at the University Farm counted out the corn cobs, 10 dollars in change and then gave me a quick recipe. Don’t boil the corn, she said. Apparently, I presented as a corn boiler. Cut a slice of the thick end off, she said, using her hand as a pretend knife, put it in the microwave for 3 ½ to 4 minutes, then squeeze from the top end. The corn comes out of the husk. That’s the best way to do it, she said. Thanks, I said. We wished each other a good day.  I pedalled home with six ears in my pannier, happy that the corn would travel only 7 km from farm to microwave. 

It worked. No shucking. No silks everywhere. It tasted like years ago. After dinner, Shelagh and I were riding back from Dairy Queen. She remembered garden corn when home for lunch on September school days.

“Like, little baby corn,” she said. “Whatever was in from the garden. A memory I have from warm days in September…”

Whatever was in from the garden—I like that way of doing it. Take your cues from the growing season. It was while we pedalled that another thought cranked into view. I appreciated how the woman at the corn stand wasn’t content to let our transaction end with the exchange of corn and money. She wanted to make sure that I enjoyed the corn, and that meant imprinting on me a method of cooking it that completed the work of the farmer who had gotten it to that point. It was a baton that was being passed to me.