last fall: ‘These Eyes.’ When their new song hit the CHUM Chart July 12, a week before the moonwalk, she predicted, ‘It’ll be a monster hit. Like the Canadian Beatles!’ I figured she’d lost it. With that candy-assed little ballad? ‘Laughing’? Who calls a song that? Well, Guess Who had the last laugh. It sat on the charts longer than a pregnant elephant. Her life-size poster of Burton the Beloved, bought in a special promotion from Sam the Record Man, right downtown on Yonge Street, that was her second hand-held treasure, wrapped in Saran Wrap, sealed against even her fingerprints.
Her final hand-held gem was a handmade Countdown Calendar. Hearts and stars encircled two days: the 17th of August, our Annual Balsam Lake Regatta, and 29th of August, when Burt and boys would play Galaxie, the revolving Coca-Cola stage at the Canadian National Exhibition. Another miracle was stapled to August 29: one GENERAL ADMISSION ticket.
After extended grovelling and a Cinderella’s list of chores to earn the exorbitant ticket price of $7.50, after lectures about a fool and her money, after BS reminding Mom that when she was a girl she’d once gone all the way to Buffalo to see Glenn Miller, MC caved. She even drove Jordan down to CHUM at the crack of dawn to be one of ‘the first fifty at 10-50’ to get a special early-release ticket. In the margin of her calendar, in Jordan’s usual immature open scrawl, was a proverb in tribute: ‘A day to come seems longer than a year that’s gone.’
But I don’t think I ever believed they were really going to let her go. It was the principle of the thing. We always went to the CNE together. Well, more or less. Mom took us down. We’d do the buildings in the morning and for lunch she’d let us loose in the Food Building. We could have anything we wanted – anything that was free. In those days that was everything; we pigged out on Pogos and beaver tails and Tiny Tom doughnuts that left you smelling cinnamon the rest of the day. We saw the afternoon grandstand show with her, and then she handed us off to Dad, who met us after work at the Princes’ Gate and took us to the Midway. And we did all of that in that order, every year, on the last day of the CNE, Labour Day, because no real March ever left the cottage until compelled to do so. What March would drive Jordan all the way down to the city for August 29th? Good question.
I’ll admit to a certain shade of green. I was the one with good taste and she was the one with the meal ticket. How was that even remotely fair? The CNE would host every major Canadian band that summer – Lighthouse, the Five Man Electrical Band and Motherlode – but like the song says, Jordan only had eyes for Burton. Even rolled up, he smirked at me. With all that black hair he could have been a cousin or any paisano from Alderwood, except neither would be caught dead in his pansy outfit: purple bell-bottoms and a hippie-dippy shirt, paisley maroon with – get this – lace, hot pink lace on the sleeves. He lay in the back seat of the car, leering unbuttoned, sprouting chest hair down to his navel. Okay, so maybe I gave her elbow a little push. Maybe I was aiming for his face. Unfortunately, the High-C landed elsewhere.
SWEET CAROLINE
But a reproof is no poison. Like ordinary siblings, BS and I could be at war one second and united the next. Take the car radio, a case in point. That’s where we first heard it that Saturday – the song that sang summer, claimed summer, still is and always will be that summer. We loved it instantly; our parents despised it sooner. No small part of its attraction. At home, we’d negotiated a détente of door closing, but a three-hour ride renewed hostilities because the little yellow radio, Miracle or not, didn’t work in a moving car. So over the years, the car radio ritual – who got it, how and for how long – had become quite the song and dance.
We’d ask before Dad’s key turned in the ignition. Mom would say, ‘Sure,’ and turn it to CFRB, smiling into the back seat, ‘Oh, that isn’t what you meant?’ We’d specify CHUM and she’d say, ‘Hmmmm, you’ve got a friend on the radio? How nice. What’s her name?’ As if she’d been born a March, perfecting their tactics: deny, stall, blame. ‘What radio?’ ‘Wouldn’t it be nicer to sing? “Michael row the boat ashore … ”’ ‘Your father’s too tired.’ ‘Surely you don’t want to make him have an accident?’ She’d make us play stupid licence-plate games and I Spy. Then finally she’d say, ‘Okay, When Fenelon Falls. Win, and you can have that noise you call music.’
When Fenelon Falls was a family invention, a triumph of Marchspeak, a fact I didn’t appreciate until I discovered firstly, that not all families played car games, and secondly, that even avid mobile gamers had never heard of it. Legend has it that it evolved from a discussion of autograph books, that Mom was explaining that when she was a girl you wrote stuff in them like: ‘2Y’S U R, 2Y’s U B, I C U R, 2Y’S 4 Me,’ girlie stuff that ended with ‘Yours till Niagara Falls!!!’ when Jordan asked, ‘When Fenelon Falls, does he get hurt?’ And that’s all it took to get them falling all over themselves to show off their brains.
How do you play? Well, it sounds simple enough. Theoretically, we each had thirty seconds to add ‘when’ to any place in Canada so that it becomes personified. Swansea becomes ‘When Swans See.’ Port Hope becomes ‘When Port Hopes.’ Adding an ‘s’ is permitted. But play any game in March and it gets complicated. As keeper of the stopwatch, MC clicks, I swear, at twenty seconds for any turn that isn’t hers. ‘You’re out!’ Repeat a name and you’re likewise out. Foist a dubious construction in her direction and, well, you get it. Dad and I, we’re always out. I suspect Dad knew I often took myself out because I was sure he did. Cut to the chase: BS and MC ruled the airwaves and we all knew it. They’d memorized the classics; they had new names at the ready. They hid Canadian atlases under their beds for nights when they were too busy plotting strategy to sleep. A good one, but no joke.
Mom always starts: ‘Who names the new and learns the calls can stand alone when Fenelon Falls.’
We sound like this:
‘When Brace Bridges.’
‘When Saska Tunes.’
‘When Moose Jaws.’
‘When Green Would.’ There are lots and lots of ‘wood’s.
‘When Lind Says.’
‘When Cobo Conks.’ One of Mom’s favourites.
‘When Winnie Pegs.’ Jordan insists that Winnie the Pooh could play cribbage.
‘When Waska Peepees.’ My favourite and, yes, there really is a Waskapipi River in northern Ontario. I liked to use it in a double-play with ‘When Bummers Roost.’
‘When Dale Leaks.’ Dad loyally plays it after ‘Bummers Roost.’
Mom unfailingly rules him out, and never gets the joke. ‘It’s Leaskdale, Tommy, not Leaks-dale!’
‘So sorry, Caroline,’ Dad says, winking into the rearview mirror, ‘I just can’t seem to remember that.’
Once we’re out, Mom and MC only make triple plays. While Dad and I drive and get driven in silence, Ux Bridges, and Manito Baas, and Alber Taas. This favourite of Jordan’s is much disputed by Mom. Jordan always insists that it’s technically correct: a man named Albert, pronounced the French way, could say ‘Ta ta,’ the singular third person past tense being ‘taas.’ Mom scowls but relents. She wants to count her equally dubious inventions of ‘When Stove Ills and When Picka Rings and When Victoria Corners.’
‘When Peter Burrows and Sud Buries and New Found Land.’
‘When New Markets, Port Credits and Cale Dons,’ Mom counters.
Jordan smiles. ‘When Prince Edward’s Eye Lands. When Prince Edward, I Land.
