Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - All’s Well That Ends Well – Car Wash & Murphy’s Bar Mitzvah

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

"Thank God, he thought, help has arrived.”Dave tries to be helpful by offering to take Mary Turlington’s car to the car wash — but things don’t go exactly as planned. No stranger to car wash shenanigans herself, Jess fesses up about the inspiration for that story idea. In the second story, Dave plays an unanticipated starring role in Murphy’s Bar Mitzvah. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Café. Welcome. We have two stories for you today, both of them stories with the theme, all's well that ends well. Stories that end happily, although all the evidence along the way suggests otherwise. Let's start with this one. This is a story we recorded in Morrisburg, Ontario. Here's my friend Stuart McLean with The Car Wash. It's one of those car washes you wouldn't necessarily notice if you didn't know it was there. Tucked behind the coffee shop, off the road you take if you're going out to the airport, which is what Dave was doing, going to the airport, going to pick up his neighbors, Bert and Mary Turlington.

Saw the coffee shop and glanced at his watch. He had plenty of time. And so on an impulse, he turned left at the next light, went around the block and pulled up in front of the big glass door. The car wash is one of those automatic operations. There are no attendants. You pull up to the door, you insert your credit card in a little gray box, and you choose what level of service you want, and you wait there for the door to lift up. Dave put his car in park,

pressed a button on the armrest beside him to open his window. Trunk popped open. Rolled his eyes, he tried another, nothing, and he began stabbing buttons at random. Dave was struggling because this wasn't his car. The car belonged to the Turlington's. The Turlington's had gone to Vegas for a week. Bert had dropped by the evening they had left. The car's in the shop, said Bert. It won't be ready until Monday.

I was wondering, could you pick it up for us? Mary's new Lexus. It's her pride and joy. Bert handed Dave the keys. Feel free to use it while we're away, he said. And Dave ended up doing that. He used it twice. And now Bert and Mary were coming home from Vegas, and Dave was on his way to the airport to pick them up and he thought, well you know he could surprise Mary.

He slid his credit card into the machine and stared at the billboard beside the car wash door. He could choose from seven options. He went right to the top of the list, the premium super deluxe wash, 1995. Now, Dave and Mary Turlington have had their, what should I say, difficult moments. There have been any number of things that have gone wrong over the years. The night he lit and then completely melted her treasured choir boy Christmas candles. The ones that have been in the family for

decades. The winter he iced her into her house with the artificial snow making machine. I guess I don't need to go down the list. I seem to know all the stuff. And if you don't, it is to Dave Chagrin, all in print. It's all there to read about. But what you need to know is this. Mary got the Lexus six months ago. She had a good year at work, a great year. And she had always wanted a Lexus.

Well, get it, said Bert. And so she did. Four doors, leather interior, a kind of golden brown finish. It's called champagne, said the salesman. Well, I call it perfect, said Mary. She dotes on it. She's out there every weekend hosing it down. So despite all of Mary and Dave's ups and downs, or maybe because of them, Dave wanted to do this thing right. So when the driver's side window finally slid down, Dave chose the premium super deluxe wash, which included the undercarriage pressure rinse and the hot wax treatment, undercarriage pressure rinse and the hot wax treatment because he wanted to show up at the airport with the car at its best. His credit card, which had disappeared from view, reappeared and

he retrieved it and popped it back in his wallet and the sign on the wall began flashing, advance, advance, advance, advance. So Dave slipped the Lexus into drive and he inched forward, rolled over a sensor, and the big garage door began to rattle up. Next sign read, put your car in neutral. Close your windows. He looked around the car, one, two, three, four windows all closed. Neutral, check. Windows, check. And he sat back. You'd always love this. The journey through a car wash. He imagined it was like riding a rocket into space.

Car all dark from the foam-flecked windows. The sound of the water hitting the side panels, the mysterious rocking back and forth, he tightened his seatbelt and reached down for the button that would tip his seat back to spaceship horizontal. And as the seat slowly tilted back he began the countdown 10 9 8

7 this is a literary device I'm building dramatic tension here 6 the car gave a little lurch 5 4 one last glance at the dashboard

3 Dave frowned 2 there was a glowing red light on the dash 1 it was the open trunk icon. He popped his seat, fumbled with his seatbelt, and reached for the door handle. He jumped out of the car. It's okay. Wash hadn't begun yet. And he took a step toward the trunk. Wash hadn't begun yet.

And he took a step toward the trunk. And when he did that, he tripped a sensor that triggered the high-pressure underwash. A blast of ice-cold water hit his crotch. And it hit with enough force to lift him off the ground. When he landed, he gasped and reached for the side of the car. But the car disappeared in a white cloud of water vapor. And that's when he noticed he had left the driver's door open behind him. That's when he realized that he was caught betwixt and between. When he realized it was time for action, so he lurched back and he slammed the door shut and then he took a deep breath and

he headed for the trunk and he slammed it shut to Wow Wow spray had stopped he was soaked but more or less just from the waist down important thing was the car was all right. And so he headed back for the driver's door. And when he got there, he pulled the handle. And then he pulled again. Exactly. The door was locked. and the keys were locked inside and that's when the conveyor engaged

and the Lexus shuddered and it lurched and it began to move and the only thing Dave could do was stand there in horror the untethered astronaut watching in disbelief as his spaceship floated away. His first instinct was to look around.

Part of him praying he'd see someone who could help. More of him praying that he was alone. David being through enough situations like this to know this, David being through enough situations like this to know this that whatever was about to happen it would undoubtedly be better if there were no witnesses he still hadn't moved though it was beginning to occur to him he shouldn't just stand there while Mary's car rolled away

unattended. And so, seized by fear and panic, never the most helpful emotions, Dave ran around to the front of the car, leaned against the hood and started pushing. Backwards. Trying to push the car back toward the doors he had just driven through. And it's while he was doing that that he felt the reassuring tap on his back. Thank God he thought help has arrived. And he smiled and he let go of the car and he stood up and turned around. And it was when he was turning that he was slapped in the face by a giant wet hula skirt. Which began slapping him left and right and right and left.

And while it slapped him, it began lathering him up. And with a felt slapping and the water spraying and the lather lathering and up. And with the felt slapping and the water spraying and the lather lathering and no obvious way out, Dave did the only thing he could think of doing. He followed the path of least resistance. He jumped up onto the hood of Mary's car. And he sat there like an oversized hood ornament as the car passed under and through the wash arch.

He made it through the soap and the spray by the skin of his teeth. And he was sitting on the hood trying to wipe his stinging eyes when he heard a distant whir. A whirr. A whirr that began in the distance but was getting closer by the second. And so he pulled his shirt out and he rubbed his stinging eyes clear with his shirt tails and he peered into the future.

And his heart nearly stopped. He was staring at a monster rotating brush a brush that looked like a street sweeper and it was heading his way before he had time to react the brush hit him and it hit him like it hit any other loose object in its path it hit him like he was a piece of dirt that had to be removed

and it would have done that. It would have picked him up and spun him around had Dave not grabbed on to Mary's windshield wipers, which saved him, and then snapped off and became entangled in the spinning brush and began flapping around at over 60 beats a minute, spanking Dave's bottom

with disturbing enthusiasm. Until they abandoned him and beat their way over the roof of Mary's car, leaving Dave spread-eagled on the hood, the perfect position for the hot wax treatment. That's more or less the moment when he gave up.

That's more or less the moment when he gave up. Foam flecked and defeated, he lay back on the hood and he rode through the final rinse, which wasn't, as it turns out, unpleasant. Soft and warm like a tropical rain. Would have almost been relaxing. Was he not blinded by the wax foam? And was he not startled by a distant roar of wind? It sounded like an approaching freight train.

It was the dryer, of course. But Dave was too muddled to figure that out. When the wind hit, it hit with such a force it felt like it was peeling his eyelids off. He began to scream for help. Lying on the hood of Mary's deaded car, his eyes closed, kicking and screaming like a newborn baby. He was still screaming when the garage door opened and the car rolled out into the coffee shop parking lot. The door opened and the car rolled out into the coffee shop parking lot.

Screaming so loud he didn't sense the crowd gathering around him. Until the guy with the ball cap stepped forward and tapped him on the shoulder. His shirt was torn off. His pants were in tatters. He was half naked, beaten and bruised. But he was exceptionally clean. Someone called a tow truck. Tow truck guy arrived, opened the driver's door in the blink of an eye.

And the crowd, as crowds do, drifted away. And Dave stood there, alone, beside Mary's car, bare-chested, foam-flaked and dripping. He looked down at his tattered, soaking pants, and then at Mary's leather seats. There was no way he could drive to the airport like this. Reached in and pressed the button and popped the trunk again. Thought he'd spotted a gym bag back there. After all that, he still made it to the airport on time. He was waiting there for Bert and Mary when they came out the gate pulling their suitcases behind them.

Waving enthusiastically. They spotted him right away. They would have known him anywhere. He was wearing a pair of Mary's stretchy yoga pants. And a lime green sports bra. Bert and Mary were still out of earshot. Bert stopped and looked at his wife. He said, should we ask?

No, said Mary, don't ask. I just don't want to know. Thank you very much. That was Stuart McLean with the story we call The Car Wash. The idea for that story came to me, are you sitting down? This is going to blow your mind, In a car wash. My husband, Josh, used to work at a car wash when he was a kid, and there is nothing he loves more than a clean

car. Lucky me. He looks after washing it most of the time by hand on the weekends. But one year on his birthday, I decided to surprise him and wash his car for him. His birthday's in January, and we live in Quebec, so to say it was cold is an understatement. There was no way I was washing it by hand. So I drove to one of those automated places. I bought my ticket, I punched in my code, and I waited for the car wash door to open. I drove in and I watched the door close behind me. And as soon as it did, I panicked. I realized I had no idea what to do in a car wash. Like, I guess I'd never been to one before. I don't know. I just remember feeling like, uh-oh, do I leave it in gear? Do I put it in neutral? Do I turn the car off? Do I leave it on?

I looked around for a sign or anything to give me this information. Nothing. I opened my car door and started to walk out to see if there was somebody, you know, who worked there who might be able to tell me what to do. And as soon as I got out of the car, I saw it kind of lurch forward. So I jumped back in. And as soon as I got back in, I caught my breath and I thought, oh my God, that was close. What if the car door had locked behind me? I didn't even wait to leave the car wash to call Stuart. That's how excited I was. I called him from inside the car with the car wash still running. He picked up the phone and said,

What the heck is that sound? We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another story. This one is about the time Dave mistakenly attends a bar mitzvah dressed like the Easter Bunny. All's well that ends well. Welcome back. Story time.

This is Murphy's Bar Mitzvah. It was a misunderstanding of monstrous proportions. Understandable, I suppose, if you're the understanding type. Though you might disagree with that. It was lunchtime. The telephone rang. It was Murphy's grandmother, Murphy's Bubby on the line. Murphy is Sam's best friend.

Sam is Dave's son. It was Dave who answered the phone. Now, to be fair, Bubby was not delegated to phone. No one asked Bobby to do this. She was excited. She was trying to be helpful. She took it upon herself to start phoning people to make sure they had received their invitation to confirm that they were coming. invitation to confirm that they were coming. In Dave's defense, Bubby's first language is not English. She speaks English, but she speaks it with a thick Eastern European accent. Whenever she's missing a word, she throws in a Yiddish phrase or two to cover up here or there. If you're not used to her, Bubby can be hard to understand, especially if you

happen to have spent 20 years of your life working rock shows in arenas from here to there and back again. I'm not trying to say Dave is deaf, just saying there was a lot that played into this. So Bubby called, and she went over the date and the time and the place, and Dave, who was the only one home, wrote it all down meticulously, doing his meticulous best to get it right, and to both of their credits, he, they got it right, everything right, until Bubby started to talk about the rabbi. That's when things went south. Because when Bubby said rabbi, Dave heard rabbit. And by the time they said goodbye, Dave was under the impression that Murphy's Bubby had called to request that he attend Murphy's Bar Mitzvah in a rabbit costume.

Why would they want me to do that, said Dave. This is later the same day. This is late in the afternoon on the same day at Kenny Wong's Cafe. Dave dropped by for a little late afternoon snack, spot prawns and ginger sauce, and Kenny is standing behind the counter dishing advice with the food. People do this sort of thing, said Kenny. Michael Kanigsberg's son had a medieval theme. They had suits of armor around the room and a giant papier-mâché dragon and all the waitstaff was dressed as knights and maidens. Dave failed to notice that Kenny was failing to make a distinction between the party at the hotel and the service at the synagogue. Probably, said Kenny, picking up Dave's plate. Probably, said Kenny, they're assigning everybody an animal. So that weekend, Sam, a teenager now, suddenly long of everything, of arms, of legs, even his hair a little longer than it used to be.

arms, of legs, even his hair a little longer than it used to be. Sam came galloping down the stairs all long and gangly, wearing a white shirt and khaki pants, a red tie and a blue blazer, the tie a little big for him and the blazer too. Down the stairs and into the kitchen to find his father, bending down and peering into the fridge wearing a faded blue faux fur rabbit costume. Deep pile borg. Dave stood and turned. He was holding a carrot. He saw Sam staring at him in horror. He flourished the carrot and said,

What's up, Doc? The service was at the Beth Israel Synagogue, half-hour drive across town. Sam was sitting in the front seat, his arms crossed, furious that his father wouldn't take off the ridiculous costume. Dave was nonplussed. He was convinced that his son was overreacting. Bobby had been clear. Kenny, too. Teenagers tended to be like this. At that precise moment, the moment that Dave and Sam were driving across the city in stony silence, Rabbi Eli Kilberg was sitting at his desk in the basement of Beth Israel in stony silence himself.

A few minutes earlier, his cantor, Cantor Bellsberg, had sighed theatrically and walked out of the office. In a huff, the rabbi would later say. He left in a huff. The cantor and the rabbi had been bickering for months. The cantor believed the 77-year-old rabbi should retire and be replaced by someone younger, hopefully someone a little more conservative, like his nephew, for instance,

fresh out of rabbinical school and looking for a job. He seemed to delight in gently pointing out the rabbi's every little slip, every little faux pas, every little senior's moment. You're working too hard, rabbi, he would say. You need a rest. The two of them had been sitting there waiting for a photographer to arrive so they could have their picture taken with the Kruger boy and his family. And now, alone in his office, Rabbi Kilberg pushed his chair back. The pictures would have to wait until after the service. He picked up the tallis, the prayer shawl that he would present to Murphy.

As long as he had the shawl, the boy would not be able to wear anything made of linen to the synagogue, for it is written in the Torah, Deuteronomy 22.11, that ye shall not wear wool and linen together. The rabbi fingered the knotted fringe of the shawl and told himself to remind the boy of this thing. The rabbi's chair scraped across the floor as he pushed it back from his desk. He put both hands on the top of the desk and pushed himself up. When he was standing, he reflexively felt the top of his head for his kippah. Maybe the cantor was right. Maybe he was getting too old for this. Maybe he was working too hard. Maybe he did need a rest. Dave and Sam, just down the street from the synagogue, were stopped at a traffic light. The car beside them honked its horn.

They both turned to look. The man in the car was giving Dave the thumbs up. Dave waved and then turned to Sam and said, see, this is fun. Sam said, no, it's not. This is a nightmare. Dave pulled into the synagogue parking lot. As soon as the car stopped rolling, Sam jerked open his door. He wanted to get in fast

and warn Murphy about the rabbit costume. Also, he didn't want to be seen with his father. I'll see you later, said Sam. Later, called Dave at Sam's back. But Dave's mind wasn't on later. But Dave's mind wasn't on later. Dave's mind was on now. The thing about a deep-piled, borg, faux-fur, blue rabbit costume is how hot it can get inside. Especially on a hot summer day. Especially in a crowded synagogue. Dave was hardly out of the car and he was already sweating. But that wasn't the

worst of his problems, because uncharacteristically, Dave had anticipated the heat of the morning and the effect that it might have on his suited self. Uncharacteristically, Dave had taken precautions. Dave had taken precautions. On his back, out of sight, under the fur, Dave was wearing a nylon camelback. The camelback is designed to allow long-distant athletes to stay hydrated without stopping for fluids. Unfortunately, on the ride over, he was so hot that he had been sipping obsessively on the plastic straw that crawled up his back and looped over his shoulder. Dave was wearing a five-liter camelback. He'd already drunk maybe four liters of water.

A fundamental law of physics was about to assert itself. The fundamental law of physics was about to assert itself. His bladder felt like a water balloon on the edge of rupture. As Sam bolted from the car, Dave had only one thought on his mind, and that was to find a washroom. His peripheral vision was already beginning to fade. Sam spotted Murphy standing by the memorial board in the upstairs lobby. Murphy was talking to a man wearing a shirt and tie, but no jacket.

Sam had never seen Murphy in a yarmulke before. The small, round hat made his friend look serious and mature. Sam felt suddenly shy. He wondered for a moment if he was supposed to be in a rabbit costume. He shrank back against the wall and watched. When Murphy spotted him, Sam was standing in the corner, biting his nails. Murphy shook hands with the man and came over. Sam took him around a corner where no one could hear them,

and Sam said, My father's dressed in a rabbit costume. Murphy said, What kind of rabbit? Sam said, blue. Murphy said, I mean like the Easter rabbit or the Playboy rabbit? There was a crowd at the front of the synagogue. Dave didn't want to navigate a crowd, didn't have time to navigate a crowd, not in his state and especially not in his oversized costume.

So while Sam had run to the front door, Dave had bolted for the back. The bathroom he found was not large, a room more suited for one than two people. He staggered in gratefully. If he had been in his right mind, he would have thought something wry about finding salvation in a synagogue, but he wasn't in his right mind. And anyway, salvation is never that easy. He staggered into the washroom and reached for the zipper that ran down the back of his costume. And that's when Dave discovered one of evolution's major flaws. Rabbits don't have opposable thumbs. He couldn't unzip. Handicapped by his thick, furry arms, he couldn't even reach the zipper.

He was hopping around, desperately pawing at his back and obsessively sucking on the mouthpiece when the bathroom door opened and a boy walked in. The boy was about the same age as Murphy, about 13 years old. Probably he was a friend or a relative, but who cared who he was? All Dave cared was that the boy had thumbs. The door swung open, the boy stepped in, and the boy and the rabbit stared at each other. I need your help, said the rabbit. Unzip me. The boys started to back away. The boy said,

they warned me about people like you. And he turned and walked out of the room. And wouldn't you know it, that was when the rabbi walked in. And I know, I know, it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. A rabbi and a rabbit in a washroom. The rabbi says,

what are you doing here? The rabbit replies, I found the Presbyterians too dour. Except that's not how it went down. The rabbi didn't ask a question, and the rabbi didn't say something funny about Presbyterians. At first, the rabbi and the rabbi just stood and stared at each other silently, the rabbi looking absolutely horrified. Could Cantor Bellsburg be right?

Was he losing it? Then the rabbi, who had all his life, told his congregation that they should trust in the mysterious ways of God, shrugged, shut the bathroom door, and said, what is it that you need of me? Five minutes later, inside the shul, the cantor was standing at the bima. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. The rabbi was standing behind him. Next came the standing prayer, the amida,. And the congregation stood, and the canter began. And just as he did, his voice caught. A small stumble, a stumble you would not have noticed unless you were listening for it. The rabbi was listening for it. And there he stumbled again.

And the rabbi smiled and glanced over at his canter. The canter was staring into the balcony. Where all alone, where only he could see it, hopping up and down, was a giant blue bunny, just as the rabbi had requested. The rabbit appeared every time the canter stood up. Only three people could see him. Murphy, the rabbi, and canter Bellsburg. At the end of the service, as they were walking out of the shoal,

the canter cornered Murphy and said, Did you see the rabbit up there? During the service, every time I was leading prayer, Murphy looked puzzled and shook his head, just as the rabbi had asked him. The rabbi had come to him just before the service began and invited him in on his little joke. A reminder, he said, that becoming an adult does not mean a man has to leave all fun and games behind him. As for the rabbi, when the cantor asked the rabbi about the rabbit, the rabbi shrugged and shook his head too. Then he put his old hand on the cantor's shoulders and said, Cantor Bellsburg, maybe you've been working too hard. Maybe you need a rest. Dave changed out of the rabbit suit before anyone else saw him,

and they went to the party. And the rabbi was there, but not the cantor. And slowly the story spread through the hall until more or less everyone had heard about the rabbit in the balcony. And someone worked it into a speech. And when they did, Dave stood up and took a bow. And Murphy's grandmother whispered to the people she was sitting with, It was my idea, actually. with, it was my idea, actually.

Dave and Sam drove home a few hours later, and not far from the light where the guy had honked his horn, Sam turned to his father and said, knock, knock. And Dave said, who's there? And Sam said, consumption. And Dave said, who's there? And Sam said, consumption. And Dave said, consumption who? And Sam said, consumption be done about all these wabbits? And that's where we'll leave the two of them. Driving home. A father and a son driving home telling bad jokes. As they

pulled onto their driveway, Dave turned to Sam and said, Lacham. And Sam said, they were saying that all night. What does that mean? It's a toast, said Dave. It means, well, I don't know much Hebrew, so this is a very rough translation, but it means something like, to the rabbit. That was Stuart McLean with the story we call Murphy's Bar Mitzvah. We recorded that at The Culch in Vancouver, British Columbia. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with a sneak peek from next week's episode. Stick around.

Okay, that's it for today. We'll be back here next week with two more David Morley stories, including this one. A story about the time Morley joins a book club. That month's book was a story told backwards from the point of view of a soft, ripened cheese during Napoleonic France. It wasn't made clear that the narrator was a cheese until page 268. Even then, it was only a passing reference. I found it totally unbelievable, said Alison Morin. A cheese would never behave like that in post-revolutionary France.

Of course, it was flawed, interjected Faye Struthers, but it was utterly, utterly transcendent. Morley, sitting there in Mary Turlington's chair, felt as if she'd been punched in the stomach. Morley had missed the cheese reference completely. She had assumed the narrator was an old person with a skin disorder that's next week you can hear the whole story next week on the podcast backstage at the vinyl cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Theme music is by Danny Michelle. The show was recorded by Greg DeCloot and produced by Louise Curtis and me, Jess Milton.

Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now. Music . for now.