Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Christmas Preparations - The Christmas Card & Morley’s Christmas Concert

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

“There is something about sitting on a plastic chair several sizes too small for you that puts you in touch with feelings you never knew you had.” Ah, the trials and tribulations of Christmas preparations! On today’s episode we have two wonderful stories for you: our first is the final Christmas story Stuart wrote. Jess tells the backstory of the recording of that story, and the strong emotions that came with it. Our second story is vintage festive Vinyl Cafe. 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 Cafe. Welcome. We're going to start things off today with an ending of sorts. This will always be one of my favorite Vinyl Cafe Christmas stories. Probably because it was the last Christmas story that Stuart ever wrote. We didn't know this at the time. We couldn't have imagined this at the time. But it was recorded at what would be Stuart's final show,

the very last time he stood on stage. It was a fluke that I even recorded this story. I had my computer with me, and I pressed record at the last minute as an archive. It was supposed to be a reference track. I only recorded it so that Stuart and I could listen to the story before the next tour. Of course, that tour, the next tour, never happened. After Stuart died, it took me a long time to listen to this recording. Months.

I kept putting it off. When I finally listened, the tears came quickly. But they weren't tears of sadness. They were tears of happiness. I miss Stuart so much. But listening to his voice again after all of those months brought back so many happy memories of sitting in the wings for all of those years. Stuart and I were lucky to do something we love for so many years. We got to tell stories. We got to bring joy and laughter into other people's lives. We got to connect people to each other, to themselves, to the country,

and we had fun. I thought it would make me sad, but it did the opposite. It made me feel the way I felt every day working on the Vinyl Cafe. It made me feel the way I feel working on this podcast. It made me happy. I hope it makes you happy too. This is Stuart McLean with his final Vinyl Cafe Christmas story. This is the Christmas card. So the 1950s was probably the heyday of the Christmas card.

There were actually Christmas card salesmen who went door-to-door back then with catalogs under their arms. I know, I was one of them. Post office had to hire extra staff to get through Christmas back then. In busy neighborhoods, they had to assign two carriers to each route. When Marley was a teenager, her parents would hang their cards like lines of laundry around the living room. In bumper years, they'd slip surplus cards over the slats of the louvered kitchen doors. Marley would take them down a handful at a time and lie on the couch and read

all of them. Those cards were, in an odd way, a precursor to the internet, if not a worldwide web. A web of everyone you knew, a parade of family and friends that popped through the mailbox and marched around the living room. It was the perfect holiday gathering. Everybody was there and you didn't have to clean up. Christmas cards have fallen out of favor these days. Unlike her mother, Morley doesn't need a little leather-bound book with columns so she can tick off the cards she sent and received. Morley's Christmas card list is counted in tens rather than hundreds. Even then, getting them done is not an insignificant chore. Every year around now, she reserves an evening for the writing and the addressing. Once she gets down to it, it's not an unpleasant night.

She has her own rules. She'd never use a picture of her family on the front. She buys her cars from a charity where the purchase will do some good. And she has never, never, ever included one of those Christmas letters, no matter how well everyone was doing. Until this year. This year, Morley broke all her rules. This year, she not only featured a picture of Dave on the front, she enclosed a two-page Christmas letter.

The long and sorry tale explaining why no one received a card from her last year. It's not that I forgot you, her letter began. The story begins on a blustery night last December, a night when hunkering down with a mug of tea and a pile of cards seemed like a perfectly cozy idea. It's good to get that done, she said to Dave when she crawled into bed. I wrote a little more than most years. Next morning, those cards were waiting by the front door, addressed and all ready to go. All they needed was stamps.

I'll do that, said Dave. I can go to the post office at lunch. Morley shook her head. Dave insisted. It's no trouble, he said, and he scooped up the cards and he tossed them in his backpack. Now, it was against her better instincts to let him do that. But he really didn't give her a choice. It would have seemed ungrateful and a little insulting to keep protesting. Dave seldom varies his walk to work. He has a route that avoids the busy streets and favors the quiet ones. So it was just before he rounded the corner

that would take him past Kenny Wong's Cafe and on to his little record store that he saw the mailbox and remembered the cards. Dug them out of his backpack, pulled the big red handle open and placed them carefully in the metal scoop, and he shut it. He began to walk away and then he turned and he reopened the door just to verify they had fallen.

He was aware of how reluctant Morley had been to give those cards to him and he was aware of how he had dug his heels in when he took them. So he was feeling pretty good about himself as he rounded the corner. At noon, he headed over to Kenny's Cafe for lunch. He had decided he was going to treat himself to a plate of dumplings along with his regular bowl of noodle soup. Because you want to celebrate the small triumphs. Tend to be more of them. As he sat at the last seat at the counter, waiting for the dumplings,

he glanced at his watch. He'd have to make it quick. He had errands to run before he returned to the store. The first was to go to the post office for stamps. The world shrieked to a stop. When Kenny came out of the kitchen with the dumplings, Dave was nowhere to be seen and his stool was still spinning. Dave was around the corner and up the street, Around the corner, up the street, and staring at that little red mailbox the way a tourist stares at those red-jacketed, bare-skinned guards at Buckingham Palace. Tentatively, like a tourist poking one of those guards,

Dave reached out, pulled open the drawer, and peered in. Dave reached out, pulled open the drawer, and peered in. A mailbox drawer is a marvel of engineering. Designed so you can insert a surprisingly large package, but just try to reach in and remove a small pack of envelopes. It is, first, impossible, and pretty soon after that, painful. No matter how hard he tried, it was painfully clear he was not going to get his arm down there. As he pondered his next move, Dave spotted three boys bumping down the street toward him. They were nine, maybe ten years old? Perhaps if he took the smallest of the three and held them by his ankles,

he could lower them into the box. Even Dave knew that was a ridiculous notion. You can't have something simultaneously in and out of those boxes. Getting the kid in the mailbox would only work if he could fit him in the tray and dump him in. Dave leaned in and read the notice by the handle. The mail wouldn't be collected until 6 p.m. At least he had time on his side. Stay calm, he said to the mailbox. his side. Stay calm, he said to the mailbox. Everyone should have a friend like Itch Kerr, a guy you can turn to when you have a problem. Itch is a friend from the old days. A band member might have a dispute over rent or a visa or lost luggage. Itch always had a solution. or a visa or lost luggage. Itch always had a solution.

That's what Itch did. Itch solved problems. Been a while since David had a problem of this magnitude. It took him a while to find Itch's number. Richard, he said, I need you. Bring your keys. One of these might work, said Itch, throwing a ring of keys on the counter. They were at the record store.

Dave picked the keys up and said, will you come with me? Itch's hands floated off the counter. He held them at his shoulders, palms forward, as if he was about to be arrested. No way, said Itch. Section 23 of the Canada Post Act, man. Canada Post is an agent of Her Majesty the Queen. I don't mess with the Queen. Oh, come on, said Dave. Section 48, said Itch. Oh, it's okay. Section 48, said Itch. Any person who opens a receptacle authorized for the purpose of posting mail,

that'd be your mailbox. That person guilty of an indictable offense. Dave said, Itch, I'm not going to take anything that's not mine. Itch said, you can have the keys, but you can't have me. And then he scooped them off the counter and held them up. You can have them as long as you forget where you got them. There were 10 keys on the ring. The first one slid in perfectly, but wouldn't turn.

The second didn't fit. Miraculously, the mailbox popped open with key seven. Dave felt a wave of relief. He peered up and then down the street, and then he peered in. There was a pile of ladders on the floor of the box, but not a big pile. Enough of a pile that he couldn't see any of Morley's cards. And so he knelt down. He was trying to work fast. He was trying to stay out of view. He found the first card. He dropped it into his backpack. And that is when he heard the burst of a police siren. backpack, and that is when he heard the burst of a police siren. With his head more or less in the box, it was hard to tell if the cop car was coming toward him. He heard a second burst of the siren. It was rounding the corner. He had a surge of adrenaline, and one thought, one thought only, he had to get out of sight.

Aren't you glad you came? He lunged into the mailbox. He scrambled to draw his legs in. In the nick of time, he pulled the door shut behind him. As he sat there with his knees drawn up to his chest, he heard the police car whiz by. He felt another wave of relief and then a tingle of anxiety. That other sound he had heard as the cops shot by the little click was that the door now you would think he might have panicked he didn't panic was actually cozy in there sitting on the little pile of ladders and he had his cell phone with him. Instead of panic, he was struck by the ridiculousness of it. Why did these things keep happening to him?

Just once, couldn't he be the hero? And that's when he heard footsteps drawing close. And the post box lid opened. As the lid opened, the tray inside where he was sitting pulled up, catching him under his ear. Hey, he said. But he clapped his hand over his mouth as he said it. Nothing good would come from someone realizing there was

a grown man hiding in the mailbox. As the tray crashed shut, an envelope fluttered down and landed between his knees. Whoever had been had been in God. More footsteps and voices this time, a mother and her child. It sounded like the mother was lifting the child up so she could put her letter in the box. Dave leaned away from the tray as it rose. Another envelope fluttered to his feet. It was addressed to the North Pole. Make sure it's gone in, said the mother. Before Dave could move, the tray opened again, clipping him on the chin this time. And then it dropped and raised again, and then again, and again. The kid kept checking while Dave bobbed and weaved.

Finally, he reached up and pushed the door shut. The child said, I think we broke it. He heard the blessed sound of footsteps scurrying away. The next 15 minutes were quiet. He pulled out his cell phone. He called Itch. He was careful to whisper. I'm not going to jail, said Itch, because you forgot to mail your wife's Christmas cards.

We're talking about indictable offense here, and I'm talking about plausible deniability. The phone went dead. Who else could he call? Morley was out of the question. Sam was possible. But what kind of father would he be if he made his son an accessory to a crime? He was distracted by a new sound. Footsteps, yes, but slow footsteps, tentative footsteps, and each step followed by an odd metallic scrape. Dave reached up, ready for the tray to rise. When it began, he used one hand to slow the lid and the other to snatch the letter before the

door was fully open. An elderly man said something Dave couldn't make out. Dave dropped his voice an octave. He said, you have just used a Canada Post automatic vacuum box. Your letter is already on its way. Merry Christmas. Au revoir. There was an uncomfortable pause and then the old man said, au revoir. Dave said, would you like to complete a customer satisfaction survey? But the old man was gone. Dave turned back to his phone and was startled when the tray raised again. This time, when the metal

drawer fell back down, the remains of a half-eaten hot dog fell into his lap. Hey, yelled Dave, suddenly incensed. The indignity of what just happened outweighed his discretion. He began banging on the walls of the box. He took the hot dog and placed it in the tray and shoved it back up. He heard it plop on the sidewalk. There was a moment of dead silence. Then he heard the sound of someone running. I took your picture, yelled Dave. I'm the post office.

I know where you live. Dave. Someone was whispering his name. Dave. Emil, is that you? Emil? Emil is a neighborhood fixture. Until a few years ago, Emil used to sleep in the stairwell next door to the Heart of Christ religious supplies and fax services, just across the street from Dave's record store. just across the street from Dave's record store. Before bed, Emil used to use his universal remote control to watch whatever show he wanted on the television

in the electronic store window just down the street. Most often lost to the world and most often too agitated to communicate, Emil is capable of moments of lucidity. Emile, how did you know it was me? You're the only person I know crazy enough to get into a mailbox, Dave. Emile, I need your help. Dave had stuck his fingers out of the mailbox slot. He was holding Itch's keys. He was waving them back and forth.

He felt Emile's hand touch his. He felt Emile take the keys. Dave said, Emile, use the key and open the door. It's the seventh key. Emile said, oh, I couldn't do that, Dave. That would be tampering with the Queen's mail. That's an indictable offense. Emil, said Dave.

But Emil was gone. And so were the keys. A few minutes later, the slot opened again. A paper bag had dropped in. Dave opened it. A grilled bag had dropped in. Dave opened it. A grilled cheese sandwich and the keys. It was nearly five. The pace of visitors had slowed.

Dave had resigned himself to being in the box until the mail was picked up at six. He had turned on the flashlight on his phone. He had the phone tucked under his chin. He was sorting through the letters one by one. He'd been there long enough to have worked out a pretty good routine. One hand up to stop the tray coming down. So the occasional customer had to slide their letters through the slot,

his other hand sorting. Every time he found one of Morley's, he dropped it into a growing pile between his knees. From across the street, the light seeping through the cracks gave the mailbox an eerie glow. Inside, the idea of all little notes was making Dave a little teary. There was an astounding variety to go through. He'd seen a fat one addressed to Paris, the envelope sealed with a Christmas tree sticker, a card to the Czech Republic, one to India, another of Morley's. A small red envelope going to England, a lot to the United States, a lot more for Canada, another of Morley's. A second in a child's printing addressed to the North Pole. It was affecting. All of them presumably saying the same thing.

The one thing that is so hard to say in person, but that everyone says at the bottom of a letter. Love. Love me. Love you. Love Dave. Love me. Love you. Love Dave. Love Stuart. It was twenty past six when the big red and white Canada Post truck glided out of the traffic and slowed beside the box. The lights on the storefront had come on, twinkling over the snowy sidewalks and into the street. The lights in the restaurants, too, and in the crowded bars. It's funny, thought

Alf Moore. It was both the darkest and the lightest time of the year, all at the same time. Everyone walking down the street, all twinkling like they were part of some massive Christmas snow globe. Alf, a 40-year postal veteran, slipped the truck against the curb beside the mailbox and reached over and slid the sidewalk side door open. Job asked a lot of him at this time of year. Driving was hard. It was difficult to keep warm in that big truck.

But all the parcels and cards had to be delivered before Christmas. There wasn't a time of the year when Alf felt more important. Snowplow was coming down the other side of the street. Alf gave it a wave. Same sort of work, really. Moving stuff around. He had his key in his right hand and his canvas bag in his left, and he bent down to open the box. After 40 years, Alf wasn't surprised by much. But when Alf opened the door, he jumped backwards. When he tells this story

and he comes to this part, he always says, it scared the bejesus out of me to see a guy sitting in one of your mailboxes. You just don't expect that. Even at Christmas. Dave looked up at him sternly and said,

You're late. I'm late, said Alf. We're conducting random checks throughout the city. You're 20 minutes late. Dave held his hand out and said, get me out of here. We might be able to overlook this. There was a sudden flash. The camera on Alf's cell phone.

When Dave's eyes had cleared and he could see again, Alf was shaking his head. Mister, said Alf, you gotta do better than that. That's the picture on the front of dave jammed in the mailbox morley met alf at the police station where she had come to pick dave up the sergeant took her back to the cells when he got Dave, so she actually saw him sitting all alone on the little bench holding his head in his hands. She was surprised he took her back there like that. But it was Christmas after all, and she asked, and the sergeant shrugged and said, why not? It looks to me as if you have enough problems.

Why not? It looks to me as if you have enough problems. They let him go, but they wouldn't give her the cards. They don't belong to you, the sergeant explained. They belong to the queen the moment you put them in the box. They're hers until they're delivered. Alf said, If there's a return address, they'll eventually make it back to you and they did but not until February which is why no one received a card from Morley last year all that's explained in this year's Christmas letter much the way I have just told you as for Dave and his indictable offense Dave had to perform 25 hours of community service.

He chose a hostel not far from his store. Turned out to be the place where Emil was sleeping those chilly nights. Emil greeted Dave with great warmth the first night he was there. Came right up to him behind the counter where he was cooking grilled cheese sandwiches. Patted him on the shoulder. Looked him right in the eye and said, Not surprised to see you at all, Dave. Not at all. That was the story we call the Christmas card. We recorded that story in Thunder Bay, Ontario, our very last

Vinyl Cafe concert back in December 2015. I love that part where Dave's in the mailbox when he's reading the cards and he's struck by the fact that they're all saying the same thing. They're all saying love. Love me. Love you. Love Dave. Love Stuart. You can kind of hear his voice break up a bit when he says love Stuart. Did you hear that? It chokes me up every time. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another story, so stick around. Welcome back. Time for our second story now. This is a classic.

This is Morley's Christmas Concert. Thursday was the annual holiday concert at Sam's School. It's a December celebration with a 37-year pedigree that's been struggling for an identity over the last few years, ever since the school board decreed that the December pageant must acknowledge the cultural diversity of the school. It's a dictum that does not sit well with a number of parents, and changes to the concert have been debated passionately over the past few years. Efforts to find a middle ground to accommodate both the Christmas traditionalists and the Board of Education have met with varying degrees of success. Last year's solstice celebration made no mention of Christmas until the end of the show, when the grade threes lined up on stage holding big cardboard letters

that spelled out Merry Christmas. And then one by one, the kids stepped forward with their letters and they spelled their greeting out loud. M is for Muslim. E is for ecumenical. R is for reformed Jew. When they got through Mary and it was time for the sea in Christmas, Naomi Cohen held up her green sea and she sang out, Sea is for Hanukkah. And then Moira Failing, who was standing beside her, held up her red H, and she said, H is for Hanukkah, too.

The concert managed to offend so many parents on both sides of the issue that a committee was struck to review the whole idea. It was Rita Slaymaker, the committee chair, who came to Morley last April and asked for help. You're in theater, she said, and we want to put on a musical, a holiday sort of musical, and we were we were hoping that you would direct it. Morley began attending the Wednesday evening committee meetings last April, and when she came home from these meetings, it would take her two hours to wind down. They're all crazy, she'd say as she paced back and forth. I'd rather chew tinfoil than go back next week. But before summer vacation, her impatience began to dissipate.

We're getting to the meat of it, she said one night in June. It's down to the Wizard of Oz or Frosty the Snowman. Morley spent the summer rewriting Frosty the Snowman, essentially expanding the play so there'd be a part for all 248 children. She added lots of street scenes. And when she finished, there was a role for everyone, including a cameo for the principal, Nancy Cassidy, who morally coaxed into playing a talking pine tree. This is fun, she said to Dave one night as she collated scripts. She couldn't wait to get going, couldn't wait to

start with the kids. The Saturday before the auditions were scheduled, parents began showing up at the house offering help. Catherine Gilcoyne was first. I'm a seamstress, she said. I'm sure there'll be lots of sewing. I'd love to help with the costumes. Morley was delighted. They had coffee and they talked about the play. And then after an hour, when she was leaving, as if it was just an afterthought, Catherine reached into her purse and pulled out a brown manila envelope. This is Willie's resume, she said. Willie, her son, in grade five. It was a 20-page resume,

including an 8x10 glossy. Ruth Kellman arrived about an hour later, right to the point, Ruth. I heard you weren't considering girls for the snowmen, she said. Her arms folded across her chest, her car in the driveway still running, her husband sitting glumly in the passenger seat, their daughter Joanne in the back. As the rainy mornings of November folded into dark December afternoons, the play gradually took shape. Children were slowly settling into their roles. There were eventually four Frostys,

two girls, two boys. The story as Morley had rewritten it turned on a flashback, a scene where Frosty recalled his days as a country snowman. And for the all-important farmyard scene, Morley had drafted Arthur, the family dog, and cast him as a sheep. Arthur, a docile and well-behaved dog by nature, did not adjust easily to the stage. The first few times Morley velcroed

Arthur into his sheepskin, he stood dolefully in the wings and refused to move, staring balefully out from under his sheep ears with abject humiliation. But as the weeks progressed, Arthur underwent a character change. He grinned whenever he saw his costume, curling his lips back so you could see his teeth. Flattening his ears. Narrowing his eyes. It was while he was dressed as a sheep that Arthur sniffed out and ate the contents of every lunch bag from Miss Young's grade four class. He had his sheep costume on when he devoured the huge gingerbread house

that Sofia Del Vecchio had constructed and donated to the school. The closer they came to opening night, the more problems Morley uncovered. The afternoon they moved rehearsals into the auditorium, it became clear that there wasn't enough room for everyone on stage. The stage isn't big enough for the narrator, said Morley to Dave one afternoon on the phone after rehearsal. It was Dave's idea to erect scaffolding and put the narrator's chorus and put the narrator's chorus on what amounted to a balcony.

Perfect, said Morley. Brilliant. D.D. Allen's father, who's in construction, said he could provide the scaffolding. Morley had thought one of the benefits of working on the play would be an opportunity to get to know some of the kids. Mostly, she got to know Mark Portner. Mark, who couldn't sit still. Mark who spent one entire rehearsal pulling the window blinds up and down, up and down. Mark who tied Jane Capper's shoelaces together. Mark who brought a goldfish from the science lab to a technical rehearsal and dropped it in Adrian White's apple juice.

On Thursday, the kids were sent home early with instructions to return at six o'clock with their costumes and props. They were to assemble in the double science lab where they'd be supervised by a group of parent volunteers. The kids were told they could bring quiet games to play while they waited for their cues. Cards, books, stickers, no video games. At 5.30, Morley phoned Dave in a panic. Floyd, the janitor, couldn't get the PA working. No one will hear the narrator, said Morley.

Help! Now, as a young man, Dave spent, what, 20 years on the road with so many rock and roll tours he had forgotten half the places he'd been to. If anyone could rustle up a working sound system in a hurry, it was Dave. No problem, he said. I'll look after it. I love you, said Morley, and she hung up. The doors to the auditorium were scheduled to open at seven. By 6 30, the room was already half full and beginning to heat up. A half an hour later, it was full and families were still streaming in. There's something about sitting on a plastic chair, several sizes too small for you,

that puts you in touch with feelings you didn't know you had. Especially if you come to this chair on a cold December night, in a winter coat, and there's no place for you to put your coat except in your lap. You sit in your tiny seat, and you have thoughts that you'll never share with anyone, not even your mate, because the things you're thinking of are so depraved you couldn't share them with anyone, not even a therapist, especially a therapist. On Thursday night at 645, Pete Eckersall was sitting on one of the chairs at the back of the hall thinking awful thoughts. He hadn't eaten all day. He was feeling dizzy, sitting as he was in his tiny

seat, his knees up around his ears, his parka open, his tie undone, his hat pushed back on his head, staring dolefully at the Rice Krispie Square he had bought for dinner. It was Pete Eckersall's 16th straight Christmas pageant. Pete has a daughter in university, a son in grade five, and most depressingly, a third child. Another daughter who's three years old. Pete was sitting in the chair doing the addition in his mind. There'd be eight more nights like this one in his life, he thought calmly. At a quarter past eight, 15 minutes after the concert should have begun,

Dave still hadn't arrived with the sound system. Morley decided to start without him. As long as he got there before the narrators climbed into the scaffolding at the beginning of Act II, everything would be fine. On Morley's command, the auditorium lights dimmed and the curtains rose. And there on the stage was a pine tree standing all alone. And a murmur which began in the front row swept through the room when the pine tree took two steps forward. And row by row, people recognized it as none other than the school principal, Nancy Cassidy.

Nancy, smiling, bowing awkwardly, welcomed, she said, to our annual pageant. And then she gasped as a papier-mâché moon dropped abruptly from the sky and swung across the stage in front of her like a scythe. Sorry, said a tiny voice from the wings as the moon rose jerkily out of sight. The grade ones opened the show, parents craning their necks as the kids marched earnestly down the aisles, swinging their arms, singing.

When they arrived on the stage, everything ground to a halt momentarily when Eli Rasminski, who had the opening line, stood on the stage staring at his shoes, frozen in place until the gym teacher scooped out of the wings and held him up and said the lines for him. All things considered, the rest of the half went smoothly. There were the awkward but unexpected missed cues, the children who waved incessantly at the audience, parents who snuck out as soon as their child had performed, parents holding crying babies who wouldn't leave,

a Christmas tree that fell on stage. But from her vantage point backstage, Morley was feeling, if not victorious, at least grateful when they arrived at the end of Act One without a major disaster. As the intermission began, someone passed her a message from Dave. He was on his way with a sound system. As she faced the beginning of Act Two, Morley was feeling pretty good about things. The kindergartens, who everyone thought were too young to include in the play, were set up to open the second half with a single song. And as soon as they had finally organized themselves into rows, you could see that Gretchen Scheuler was going to cry. Gretchen's candle had gone out. Her head was hanging down, and sure enough, when the piano began and everyone started to sing, Gretchen's shoulders started to

shake. When no one came to her rescue, Gretchen really let loose, her hands covering her eyes, her shoulders shuddering, her sobs audible even over the singing. It was while everyone's eyes were on Gretchen that the stage door opened, sending a blast of cold air through the auditorium. And as the cold air hit them one by one, the kindergarten kids stopped singing and they turned to stare at the apparition outlined in the door. A huge man with a ponytail, wearing a black t-shirt with the sleeves cut out and motorcycle boots. He was six foot four if he was a foot. He had a studded belt and ham hock arms and a tattoo of a large bird on his shoulder and a scruffy beard.

He looked like a biker. Gretchen Scheuler was the last to spot him, and because he was the first adult within reach since her candle had gone out, she did the only thing she could think of doing. She ran across the stage and wrapped her arms around his leg. And he limped across the stage with Gretchen clinging to his leg like a brace. And he said, where do you want the speakers? And two other guys appeared through the door behind him, one unrolling a thick black coaxial cable and the other lugging a speaker the size of a Volkswagen.

coaxial cable and the other lugging a speaker the size of a Volkswagen. Dave was the last through the door. He was carrying a large control board. What are you doing, said Morley when she pushed her way through the kindergartens and up to her husband. The best I can, said Dave. They were not doing much better in the double science lab, or the holding tank, as Morley had begun to call it. There were too many kids crammed in a too small a place for even the best of circumstances, and this was not the best of circumstances. The kids were so revved up that the energy level in the lab was beyond belief. It was a deadly combination of butterflies and boredom, of nervousness and nerve. The parent volunteers who had been placed in charge of the room had no experience with this many children in one place at one time.

They didn't understand that if you didn't nip the first eruption in the bud, that the room could go completely berserk. The kids sensed their distraction. In one corner, a group of grade sixes were circled around the infamous Mark Portner, watching with academic interest as he tried to feed his Ritalin to a boy in grade four. On the other side of the room, three younger boys were trying to stuff

Simon Newbridge into a locker, which is when the door opened and Morley hit them with a blast of sound that shut everyone up. Street scene, said Morley. We need the grade threes. We're starting. Five minutes later, everyone was on stage. Morley was standing at the back of the auditorium holding Dave's hand. passage. Morley was standing at the back of the auditorium, holding Dave's hand. They were waiting for the narrators to scramble up the scaffolding so they could begin act two. Someone had lifted Gretchen Scheuler up onto the scaffolding with them, and she was sitting on the edge of the platform, her feet swinging back and forth, clutching the candle that someone had finally lit.

clutching the candle that someone had finally lit. Morley smiled at Dave as Mike Carroll stepped up to the microphone. Dave winked and he reached down and flicked the PA on and then Mike, who was about to say his opening lines, paused and frowned and looked around the room. There was a hum, an electronic hum that had begun when Dave flicked on the PA, a hum that began like the hum of a distant train but was growing louder and louder. And people were looking around, and you couldn't tell where it was coming from because now it sounded like it was coming from everywhere,

like it was the hum of God himself, like the hum of creation, like the hum at the end of the world. And the kids in the audience stopped moving and babies in the front row stopped crying because it was a hum you felt now as much as you heard. And it felt like the hum was going to swallow the room. And not knowing what to do, Mike Carroll lent into the microphone and spoke his first line into the hum, his first line which was, winter loomed, winter loomed. Except it didn't sound at all like Mike Carroll in grade six saying winter loomed. Instead, it sounded like the voice of God himself. And when he spoke this line, winter loomed, it sounded more like God had said, you are doomed.

And when he said it, Mark jumped back from the microphone, surprised at the sound of himself, and then there was a smell of smoke. And Mark looked helplessly around for Morley. But before he found her, there was a large bang from each of the large speakers on either side of the stage, and then sparks. Not Roman candles, just cone-shaped eruptions of electricity. And shrieks from the kindergarten kids who had moved into the front row and were sitting on the floor in front of the speakers. And wild applause from the boys in grade six. And there was a moment of pure, dead, dark silence. Dave was staring at Gretchen Scheuler, who was at the top of the scaffold,

holding her lit candle over her head as if it were an Olympic torch, the flame only inches from the brass nozzle of the school's sprinkler system. The heat from Gretchen's candle melted the safety nozzle, and the water pressure in the sprinkler system blew, and the fire alarm began to ring, and in the wink of an eye, everyone was drenched, their hair plastered down by the force of the water, as nozzle after nozzle popped open,

everyone ducking down, their hands over their heads as they fought their way out of the auditorium doors. It was like a British soccer riot. Nancy Cassidy, who had changed back into her pine tree costume for the closing number, was knocked over in the rush for the doors. When the school emptied, she was left in a stairwell spinning on her back like a beetle, unable to get herself up. When the fireman found her, Arthur the dog was standing over her in his sheep costume, licking her face. over her in his sheep costume, licking her face. The fireman helped her up and out of her costume, her carefully curled hair hanging limply over her forehead, her mascara streaking down her cheeks.

The dog was trying to kill me, was all she could say. There were only two people left in the auditorium, Dave and Pete Eckersall, the survivor of 16 Christmas pageants. Pete, who was still sitting in his chair when the fireman turned the sprinklers off, stood up, looked around, nodded at Dave and said, nice concert. I think I'll be heading home now. School was closed on Friday, though the word is they're pretty sure they'll have things back in shape for Monday morning. Morley only knows this second hand. She was too mortified to go anywhere near anyone for the rest of that week. On Friday night, however, she went to the mall with Sam,

and they ran into the troublesome Mark Portner. He was kneeling in front of a pop machine by the supermarket doors, his arms stuffed into the machine all the way up to the elbow. Morley watched him pull a can of Dr. Pepper out before he spotted her. Hello miss, he said earnestly, slipping the pop smoothly out of sight. That was an awesome concert. I'll never forget it. He seemed to mean it. Morley smiled and turned to go, but Mark wasn't finished with her.

He followed her a few steps. Are you going to do it again next year, miss? Morley smiled. I don't know, she said. I was wondering, said Mark, if you do, I was wondering, could I run the sprinklers? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was Morley's Christmas concert.

And now that I'm a parent and starting to go to these kinds of events, I'm relating to that story in a whole new way. And I just love the father of three, the veteran of 16 Christmas pageants, thinking awful thoughts as he squished into a tiny chair at the back of the auditorium. Hilarious. All right, that's it for today, but we'll be back here next week with one last episode for this season,

and of course, a David Morley story, a story that celebrates light in the darkness. They're both wearing backpacks. Dave is carrying a stepladder. Why are we doing this anyway, says Sam. Well, we do it every year, said Dave. We didn't do it last year, said Sam. Well, we weren't here last year, said Dave.

We do it every year, said Sam. Well, we weren't here last year, said Dave. We do it every year we're here. Well, shouldn't they put up their own lights, said Sam? No, it's a long story, said Dave. Tell me, said Sam. Oh, I don't know, said Dave. It's not a story I'm particularly proud of. I don't look so good in this story. Well, you have to tell me now, said Sam. Let me think about that, said Dave. Happened a long time ago. I was just a kid, maybe like 13. And with that, Dave stepped off the main track and onto a smaller path, a shortcut that headed into the woods.

The path followed a little creek, the black water carving lovely mushroom-shaped caps out of the snow. Truth be told, he wasn't 13 when this story began. He was 15. 15 and besotted with the infamous Megan Laureus. Head over heels. Crazy about him, said Dave. Would have done anything. And as it turns out, he just about did, didn't he? Well, I don't know, said Sam. You haven't told me anything yet. out did, didn't he? Well, I don't know, said Sam. You haven't told me anything yet. With that, Dave stopped and spun around. He was holding on to a spruce branch that was stretched across the path, holding it so it wouldn't spring back and hit his son. Have you ever felt that way about a girl, he said. Sam frowned and said, don't change the subject. Dave laughed out loud. Then he let the branch go. It smacked Sam in the face. Hey, said Sam. But Dave was already

heading down the trail again. Sam brushed himself off and hurried to catch up. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. For those of you who celebrate, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas. I hope it's filled with friends and family and festive cheer, and I hope you'll join us here next week

for one more holiday episode before we take a break for a couple weeks. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is a man who has squished his bum into a tiny chair at the back of many auditoriums, Greg DeCloot. the back of many auditoriums, Greg DeCloot. Theme music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeCloot, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, Merry Christmas, and so long for now.