Three Things from Edmonton podcast -- Episode 146: open house, fellowship of the rinks, alliteration


From the vortex, here’s a weekly collection of three things that left behind marks of happiness and gratitude. 

Three Things, episode 146:

                            

1. Open house 

The Grim Reaper has been to our door. It was not unexpected. It was that time. It was Halloween.

Halloween is still a thing for me. I haven’t dressed up since going as Elliot, the kid in ET, eight years ago now. I wore a red hoodie. My friend Aminah gifted me an ET doll that I rigged up at the front of my bike for the ride into work. It was fun. 


Shelagh always has the better costume ideas, though. This year she went as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Shelagh considers these things, and makes rulings. Unable to sleep one night before Halloween, she started making lists in the middle of the night. In addition to Notorious RBG, she considered going as: candy corn, Maria from Sound of Music, the guy who got stuck in the Talus Dome or Beebs.


There’s lots about Halloween as an adult that makes it a pale version of north end Halloweens past. Nobody uses their pillowcases as bags anymore. Houses that don’t observe the low holiday don’t get egged. Parents are everywhere. Kids get driven around in cars. Most alarming is that trick or treaters now knock on the door or ring the doorbell. It’s like they’re selling natural gas contracts. All that said, it remains a one-of-a-kind night in the neighbourhood. It’s the night where the sidewalks get used. It’s the night where our neighbour erects the 12-foot high skeleton in the front yard, and, this year, a life-sized, motion-sensored heavy metal guitarist at it hip bone. It’s the night where our front door stays unlocked, when the doorway becomes a kind of jaw or mouth in conversation with the approaching creatures and their sweet teeth. 


2. Fellowship of the rinks 

I don’t quite believe today’s professional hockey players when they wax nostalgic, as they did at the Heritage Classic, about growing up  playing hockey on outdoor rinks. What’s the average age of an NHL player? 27? That means they were born in 1996, a couple of years after our youngest son, Michael, who played or practiced regularly on outdoor rinks approximately zero times in his minor hockey career. I will tell you who did play minor hockey on outdoor rinks. Me. I went back to the source to confirm this, and got a flood, a mother-load, of memories. She talked about the rink behind the college at St. Francis of Assisi Church. And the great players—the Berezan brothers, Mitch de la Salle, Bruce Straka. She talked warmly of the cold. 

“Freezing feet,” she said. “Standing around the stove and just being at outdoor rinks and watching, especially at St. Francis. Even watching practices. That’s how loyal we were. I got a special parka and ski pants to wear to your games. Special boots and heavy socks. Before that I just had thin little boots, just dressup boots.” 


The Heritage Classic happened in front of almost 60,000 people at Commonwealth Stadium last week in part because outdoor games in front of 30 and 40 people happened at outdoor rinks in northeast Edmonton and across the country in the good, cold days. 


3. Alliteration 

I like alliteration. Check that. I love alliteration. I delight in the way it allows the listener who is following a linear line forward in a story or a sentence to simultaneously loop back and linger for in the sonic residue of what has gone before. It’s a kind of echo. A bit of time travel. In alliteration we deal in traces and generations. In Tryin’ To Get To Heaven, Dylan, under the P,  sees the people on the platforms and feels their hearts a-beatin’ like pendulums swinging on chains. Under the B, he's riding in a buggy with Miss Mary Jane, 

Miss Mary Jane got a house in Baltimore
I've been all around the world, boys…

Under the SH, he’s been to Sugar Town and shook the sugar down. There’s a looser kind of alliteration afoot in the song, too. Listen for all the Hs—hotter, high, heat, haunt, hurry, heart, hear, hearts, house, hollow. All these Hs that tremble faintly in memory under the tolling H of heaven. 

Thanks for being out there, friends. 

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