Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Doggone It! - Stanley & Arthur Takes the Cake

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

“You know how loud he snores? Ninety decibels. That’s the equivalent of sleeping beside a pneumatic drill.” This week, two stories about dogs. Oh how we love them! Even if, like Stanley, they snore and have – um – “digestive problems”, or if, like Arthur, they add a whole new level of challenge to Dave and Morley’s important dinner party. Jess shares a backstory about the very early days of the show and how Stuart recorded some of his first stories. 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 have two Dave and Morley stories for you today. Two stories about dogs. We're going to start with a story called Stanley. It's an older story. Stuart wrote it back in the late 80s or early 90s, but he never recorded it in front of an audience. When the Vinyl Cafe first started, Stewart and founding producer David Amer recorded all the stories in studio, not in theaters. It was just the two of them, no audience.

It was only after that very first Christmas concert, the one where Dave cooked the turkey, that they realized, whoa, this show might be something totally different than we thought it was. That's often how it works in our world. It sometimes takes a while to figure out what you have and what it is. Often it takes you, an audience, to help people like us figure that out. I can think of lots of examples of shows that started out as one thing and then became something else entirely. The Vinyl Cafe started

as a music show. David Amer, the founding producer of the show, was a legendary music producer at CBC. He and Stewart used to work together at Morningside, Peter Zosky's show. For years, Stewart did a Monday morning segment on that show. Some of you probably remember it. He'd go into the studio and talk to Zosky about, well, about anything. Yo-yos, dust, popsicles, what you can buy for a dollar. He loved working with Zosky and with Amer, who was the music producer on Morningside. One day, Dave and Amer came to Stewart and said, hey, we should do a radio show together. They produced a pilot, and in that very first pilot episode, there were no Dave and Morley stories. There was a guy named Dave who owned a record store called The Vinyl Cafe.

The premise was this. Stuart would play music that he'd found at, you guessed it, The Vinyl Cafe. The music was chosen by David Amer and introduced by Stuart. They produced the pilot and handed it to CBC management who said, We love this. And then the pilot sat on a shelf for five years. Nothing happened. Eventually, someone came along and decided to put it on the air.

So David and Stuart went back to have a listen. And when they listened to that pilot, they did not like it at all. The conceit, the concept of the show, this idea that there was a store named the Vinyl Cafe and the idea that there was a guy named Dave who worked at the store called the Vinyl Cafe and Stuart would visit him, that conceit no longer felt right to them. It felt too put on. And so they changed it. They did away with the idea of the Vinyl Cafe being a real place. They changed it so that it was a fictional place. Sometimes Stuart would tell stories about this record store

and sometimes he wouldn't. The first season of the Vinyl Cafe back in 1994 had 13 episodes. Each of those episodes had stories in them, but they were short, sometimes only a few minutes long. And of those 13 stories, Dave was only in five of them. Morley was in four. And none of them, not one, was recorded in front of an audience. They were all recorded in studio. They didn't record in front of an audience for two more years. The first time that Stuart performed a Dave and Morley story in front of an audience was in 1996 for a Christmas special. And that, that was the year that Dave cooked the turkey. So there were lots of stories that Stuart wrote back in the early years of the show,

those first few seasons, that were never recorded live. He recorded most of them over the next two decades that the show was on the air, but not all of them. Today, I want to play you a story that was written way back in the very earliest days of the Vinyl Cafe, way back in the early 90s. But it was only ever recorded in front of an audience in 2015. Ironically, it was one of the very first stories that he wrote for the Vinyl Cafe and one of the very last stories that was ever recorded. We recorded it in Huntsville, Ontario, back in 2015. This is Stanley. If it wasn't for her dog, Dorothy Capper might have ended up married to Albert Zuckerman.

Dorothy bought the dog, a golden retriever, about 15 years ago, two months after her first husband, George, left home. For a week or two, Dorothy toyed with the idea of naming the dog after George. The possibilities pleased her. I have to go home and walk, George. That's what she imagined saying, or calling him. That'd be good. George, George, come here. George, George, George, George, George. Well, probably best of all, bad George. or probably best of all, bad George. Get out of here, George. Once she had the dog, she couldn't go through with it, however.

She settled on Stanley instead, after the great Canadian parliamentarian Stanley Knowles. When Dorothy was a university student in Winnipeg, she lived in Stanley Knowles's riding. Her politics were changed forever. The electrifying night she heard Tommy Douglas and Stanley Knowles at an NDP rally during the 1963 election. It was Knowles, who by then was about 60, who opened her eyes to the American involvement in Southeast Asia. It was Knowles, not her university friends, who led her on her first protest march. Knowles became her all-time hero when someone told her that he was the only Canadian parliamentarian

to dissent when Canada declared war on Germany in 1939. That was why she named the dog after him. Later she learned that Knowles hadn't been elected to parliament until 1942. That it was his mentor James Woodsworth, the conscience of Canada, who had stood up and tried to persuade Mackenzie King's government to declare neutrality. It was Woodsworth who had said, war only breeds war. So when she opened her bookstore, she named it Woodsworth's. She couldn't very well change Stanley's name. He was already four years old. Dorothy knew exactly what she was doing buying the dog. It wasn't for company, although at the time it was comforting to have something in her life that loved and,

more importantly, listened to her. She bought them because she didn't want her life getting too easy. Complications were important. Without something messing up your plans, you became self-centered, and then you became selfish. Albert Zuckerman was a complication. Albert was a book rep. He came into her store three times a year with his catalogs. He came to flog the next season's list. What was refreshing about Albert Zuckerman was that unlike most of the reps who visited her, Albert did not pretend to be interested in books. Albert loved sales. He had previously sold cars, cosmetics, cosmetics, chemicals, and gravel.

Albert was a second man in her life since George left. The first was a computer programmer named Max, a man even Dorothy came to think of as too idiosyncratic. They had also met in the store. Max was a regular customer. He came in on Friday nights near closing and took to staying after she locked the door and he would sit and they'd talk while she tidied up. Going for coffee seemed like the most natural thing in the world. They dated for two years. When they broke up, it happened on the phone, which was strange because Max didn't have a phone. I have one at work, he said. I don't understand the need for having another. Dorothy explained that it'd be nice if she could call him from time to time if she wanted to do something.

Maybe she could call him and they could do something. Max said, I had a phone once. And you know what I learned? I learned if you let a phone into your life, the thing just starts to ring. It's remarkable how seldom you get calls that you really want. One night they went for Thai food and she said, what about your parents? Max said, my parents? Dorothy said, your parents and the phone. Max said, oh, it drives them crazy.

They say, what if we need to get you in a hurry? She was watching him ladle the end of the Thai soup into his bowl. He hadn't asked if she wanted more. I think what they mean, she said, is what if one of them is sick? Yeah, I know what they mean, said Max. Well, said Dorothy, what if one of them is sick? What could I do about that, said Max. They broke up two weeks later. They broke up two weeks later. Anyway, Albert Zuckerman.

Did you know your dog snores, said Albert one morning. It was an understatement of staggering proportions. Stanley didn't just snore. Sleeping in the same bedroom as Stanley the dog was like sleeping beside a band saw. Dog slept on the floor at the end of the bed and with each buzzing inhalation, Albert imagined he could hear cupboard doors in the kitchen flapping on their hinges. Imagine the rocking chair in the living room teetering back and forth. Thought he heard the bureau drawers in the bedroom being sucked open and closed. Euro drawers in the bedroom being sucked open and closed.

First time he stayed over, Albert lay in bed while the dog gasped and gulped. And then all of a sudden, there was a profound silence. It was as if the dog had abruptly stopped breathing. First time it happened, Albert propped himself up on his elbows and tried to peer at the floor at the foot of the bed. He didn't want to wake Dorothy, who amazingly didn't seem to be having any trouble sleeping at all. It was too dark to see anything. Albert held his breath in the strange and sudden silence and then let himself down slowly onto his pillow. For the first time all night, he could hear Dorothy breathing sweetly beside him. He watched the red numbers on the clock radio blink from 237 to 238 to 239. He closed his eyes. He was finally falling asleep. The silences, he would learn later, could last as long as 20 or

30 minutes, but they always ended with an explosion. Something that sounded more like a whale breaching than a dog snoring. Albert gasped the first time it happened and sat up sweet Josephat, or something like that. It took 20 minutes for him to settle. His heart was pounding. He was still awake, lying there as stiff as a two-by-four, when Stanley snorted and stopped snoring for the second time. Lying there in the darkness, waiting for Stanley to start up again, nearly drove Albert mad. Dorothy, who had been sleeping with Stanley for 12 years, didn't notice any of this. She continued to take the dog with her to the store every morning. He passed most of each day on an old piece of blanket

near the cash register. People seemed to like having a dog in the store. Enough customers mentioned it that Dorothy had come to believe that Stanley had something to do with whatever small success she had found over the years. She wasn't a superstitious person but there was some superstition blended with her love for him. Albert however was having trouble coming to terms with the dog. Whenever he stayed over, he only slept fitfully. He always left Dorothy's place exhausted. A few weeks later, he saw an ad on the subway for laser surgery. He copied down the clinic's number and called them from his office. I'm phoning about the snoring operation, he said. Could you send me

some literature, a pamphlet or something? We don't have any pamphlets, said the woman, but I could book you an appointment. You come for a consultation, and then if you want to proceed, there's a sleep study, and then the operation. Everything's covered by insurance, except for the operation. The operation is $2,400. Do you do dogs, asked Albert. There was a pause. No, said the lady, we don't do dogs. The next Saturday, Albert turned up at Dorothy's house with a device that he had bought at a drugstore. It was called the nose-o-vent. You tried one? Cost ten dollars. It was a small horseshoe-shaped piece of plastic that you inserted in your nose. The instruction booklet said that controlled

clinical trials had shown the elimination of snoring in about a third of the people who had tried the noso vent. The instruction booklet didn't mention dogs. When they're getting ready for bed that night, Albert got down on the living room floor and called Stanley. He had a dog biscuit in one hand and the nose-o-vent in the other. Stanley, who wasn't used to getting much attention from Albert, sniffed the cookie suspiciously. Albert put the nose-o-vent in his mouth so he would have both hands free, and then he grabbed Stanley's collar. He pulled the dog towards him. Stanley started to growl. As Albert wrestled with the dog, his hand slipped between the dog's collar and its neck, up to the wrist, and it got stuck there. No matter how hard he pulled, his hand wouldn't come out.

The pressure of Albert's hand against the dog's neck panicked Stanley. He began to snap. Oh, for crying out loud, thought Albert, I'm in a dog fight. He tried to roll away, but when he rolled, he pulled Stanley with him. The dog flew over his body. They both landed in a heap against the sofa, Stanley's back leg resting against Albert's face. Albert's shirt was hanging out. The nose-o-vent was hanging out of his mouth. In that unexpected quiet moment, Albert looked at the dog's leg and considered biting. In that unexpected quiet moment, Albert looked at the dog's leg and considered biting. Maybe it would establish his dominance.

Stanley beat him to the punch. And that's when Albert swallowed the nose-o-vent. It went down surprisingly smoothly. And that's when Dorothy called down from the bedroom. How's it coming? Two weeks later, they were getting ready to go to sleep again. Do you know, said Albert, that the Guinness Book of World Records snoring champion lives in Huntsville, Ontario? Oh, what a cheap laugh. It was the first time Albert had ever read to her.

You know how loud he snores? 90 decibels. That's the equivalent of sleeping with a pneumatic drill. I don't hear him, said Dorothy. Dorothy wasn't bothered by the snoring. And truth be known, there were things about Albert that were beginning to get under her skin. She didn't like his taste in movies, or that he always chose what they watched. She didn't like the fact that he didn't read. You sell books, she said, you should read one occasionally. One Sunday morning, Albert, unshaven and exhausted, looked at

her and said, it's either me or the dog. Dorothy felt a great sense of freedom wash over her. Albert said, I don't believe this. Stanley developed his digestive problems the next summer. It started innocuously enough, but by August, Stanley would lie by the cash register at the bookstore emitting an intolerable stream of gas. Gas so rank that the store smelled like there was an elk carcass rotting behind the shelves. Customers in the store began glaring at Dorothy.

They think it's me, she thought. The vet was encouraging. It's something in his diet, he said. But after three months of juggling dog foods, the vet gave up. I don't know, he said, maybe you should put him down. Dorothy was horrified. It was her friend Vicki who said, stop feeding him meat. Dorothy said, but that's all dogs eat. Vicki said, I'm telling you, stop feeding him meat. Dorothy found a pet store that sold vegetarian dog food, healthy pets. She felt a bit ridiculous going into a health food store for animals, but she decided to try it for a month. Stanley wasn't ecstatic about his new diet. He didn't eat anything for the first week.

Don't give up, said Vicki. He'll come around. And she was right. Eventually he did, and eventually it worked. Who would have guessed, Dorothy said to Vicki. Me, said Vicki. Stanley was eating again, but he wasn't happy. Walking him was like taking a vacuum cleaner for a stroll. He kept his nose to the ground and sucked up anything that resembled food. However, the gas had virtually disappeared, and Stanley did seem livelier than he had in years. Hungry or two, said Albert, who stayed friends with Dorothy. Albert was living with a vegetarian himself, and he used to show up and take Dorothy for lunch.

Let's have shish kebab, he said. Not having to sleep with Stanley anymore, he felt a sense of canine kinship, something he hadn't felt before. When Stanley was 16, Dorothy knew the end was drawing near. He developed arthritis in his hips and his gums were giving him problems, which meant walking was hard and so was eating. And what else does a dog do for fun, asked Dorothy. Maybe it's time to put him down, said Albert one day at lunch.

He'd taken her out for smoked meat. Dorothy looked at him. I could do it, he said. I could take him out to my brother's farm and I'll like, I can like, we could, you know. Dorothy didn't say anything. Think about it, said Albert. When they got back to the store, Albert squatted down beside Stanley and petted his head. Two months later, Stanley had a stroke.

Dorothy had to hold him when he was walking upstairs, had to put her arms under his chest and take the weight off his legs. Their walks got shorter and slower. Everything about Stanley was slowing down. He wanted to be beside her all the time, as if he was scared, confused. Finally, she phoned Albert. Okay, she said. Albert came on Saturday morning.

He had a blanket on the back seat of the car. I'm not coming, said Dorothy. Albert said, you sure? Dorothy said, yes. said, you sure? Dorothy said, yes. So Albert moved the blanket into the front seat and they carried Stanley out to the car. Dorothy said, well, at least he doesn't have to go to the vet. And then she scratched her dog behind the ears and said, good dog. the ears and said, good dog. Albert said, I'm going now. Dorothy said, okay. When he got out of the city, Albert stopped at a roadside hamburger joint and bought himself a cheeseburger, a vanilla shake, and an order of fries. Stanley, who had been sleeping beside him on the front seat, woke up as soon as he opened the burger, and Albert thought, well, what the heck,

and he slipped him a mouthful of the burger. The dog's tail started to thump on the seat. He looked so grateful for the meat that Albert made a U-turn, headed back to the burger joint and ordered four cheeseburgers. No, five, he said. He ate one himself and fed two to Stanley during the hour it took him to get to the farm. He gave Stanley a third when they got there. They went out behind the barn to a grassy spot and he gave him the last burger and Stanley lay down and let out a loud happy fart. He was sound asleep, snoring by the time Albert's brother showed up. Thank you. Thank you. That was the story we call Stanley. We recorded that in 2015.

That was one of the very last stories that Stuart ever recorded. We have to take a short break right now, but we'll be back in about a minute with another Dave and Morley story about dogs. Welcome back. I told you we had two stories for you today. Two stories about dogs. Time for the second one. And this is also a story from the very, very early days of the Vinyl Cafe. Way back from those first few seasons.

This is Arthur Takes the Cake. On a Friday afternoon a month ago, Ralph Holden, the artistic director of the Century of Wind Theatre Company, where Morley works, slipped into Morley's office, shut the door conspiratorially, and said, I have two words that are going to change our lives.

Two words, said Morley. Theo Stavros, said Ralph. Theo Stavros, said Morley. The developer, said Ralph, who we despise, said Morley, because I forget, who we love and respect and honor, said Ralph. What, said Morley? Because, said Ralph, he is married to Vivian Stavros. Aha, said Morley. That would be the Vivian, said Ralph, who just pledged $5,000. Love him, said Morley. Respect him, she said. And honor, said Ralph. Don't forget honor. Deeply, said Morley. And then she said, we should. You bet we should, said Ralph. And that's how Morley came to be standing in her kitchen on a recent Saturday at 8.15 a.m. with a cookbook open in front of her.

Morley was not normally uptight about having people over. She's usually at ease about these sort of deals. Of course, these sort of deals usually involve people Morley is at ease with. But on this Saturday morning, the Saturday Theo and Vivian Stavros were going to be honored in her living room, Morley was not at ease. What, said Dave, can I do to help? Cut him some slack, will you?

For the rest of the day, Dave ran errands, and he picked up, and he vacuumed, and he dusted. He borrowed three living room chairs from the Turlington's. For the rest of the day, he was helpful Dave. And while Dave was busy being helpful, Morley prepared a large glass bowl of baked winter fruits, a platter of chocolate honey snaps, and her pièce de résistance, a frosty lemon cake topped with a mountain of lemon cream. At five o'clock, a caterer delivered plates of smoked salmon, Thai spring rolls, pâtés, dumplings and dipping sauce, sushi, and little crab tarts. At 5.30, more or less on top of things, Morley sat Sam down. You can't come into the living room. You can't pick at the food.

They ordered pizza and wings for Sam and a family-sized bottle of root beer. Sam went to the corner and came back with two videos. I can be seen but not heard, said Sam. But only seen briefly, said Marley. I'm not banishing you, she said. It seemed important that he should know that he could be there as long, said Sam, as I'm not here. Exactly, said Marley. I can do that, said Sam. Sam at 10 to 7 just before the guests were scheduled to arrive Sam spotted the dumplings hey he said no said Morley one dumpling said Sam you have pizza coming said Morley just one said Sam no no Sam made his brief appearance. He took coats at the door and then his pizza arrived and he disappeared. He carried his stuff upstairs and into the den and he shut the door

behind him and he put on the first movie that he had rented, a film his friend Murphy had recommended, Robert Altman's 1980 musical version of the anvil-armed sailor Popeye. One of the most shamefully neglected films of recent times, said Murphy. The trouble with having a precocious friend is the same as the benefits. Their enthusiasms inevitably lead you somewhere you'd never go by yourself. In this case, Jules Feiffer's sassy script and Harry Nielsen's eccentric songs were just too much for Sam, especially with platters of hot dumplings calling to him. He paused the film and he slipped out of the den. He went to the railing at the top of the stairs.

He lay down on the floor and pressed his face into the banister. There is, it turns out, only so much loneliness a kid can take when he's banished in his own home and the warm chatter of grown-ups is floating up the stairs mixed with a steamy, heady, sweet smell of hot dumplings. Sam had promised that he wouldn't be seen or heard, but he hadn't made any promises about those dumplings. Sam had promised that he wouldn't be seen or heard, but he hadn't made any promises about those dumplings. Getting from where he was, however, into the kitchen where the dumplings were was not going to be the easiest task in the world, especially since the kitchen was beside the living room full of adults where his father and, most importantly, his mother were. living room full of adults where his father, and most importantly, his mother were. But Sam had had all he could take of Robert Altman, and the thought of those oily white dumplings and the sweet brown

dipping sauce was more than he could take. To get into the kitchen, unnoticed, Sam would need a distraction. And there at his feet was Arthur the dog. Sam jumped up and ran back into the den. He came back with one of the pizza crusts. He waved the crust under Arthur's nose. Arthur's cloudy eyes lit up. Come, said Sam. He led the dog quietly down the stairs and along the hall.

They stopped just before the door to the living room. Sam let Arthur have one last whiff of the crust, and then he lobbed it underhand the length of the hall toward the bathroom. It arced unseen past the living room. It landed on the bathroom floor. It bounced and slid toward the toilet. Arthur barked. Arthur's legs began to windmill on the hardwood floor. Sam, who was holding Arthur by the collar, out of sight of everyone in the living room, let him go. It was like releasing a fully revved stock car. There wasn't smoke and there wasn't squealing tires, but there was everything else. Arthur blowing by the living room like a pack of wolves. And while all eyes were on the dog, Sam slipped into the kitchen. Arthur, meanwhile, hoovered up the crust, and he looked around for more. And when he spotted Sam standing in the kitchen door with an arm full of dumplings,

Arthur yelped and took off. When he hit the kitchen, he was going full speed ahead and he tried to put on the brakes, but he just slid across the linoleum like a curling stone, gliding by Sam and barking with excitement, sucking up an offered dumpling on the way by, bouncing off the fridge and finally smacking into the leg of the kitchen table. Oh, yes.

Which wouldn't have been a big deal if that wasn't where Morley's frosty lemon cake was waiting to be served. Exactly. The frosty lemon cake with the lemon icing flew straight into the air. It went up fast, but it came down faster. It landed in the middle of Arthur's back, icing side down. It stuck like a saddle. Arthur leapt in the air, twisting his head and contorting his old body like a bucking bronco, snapping at the cake which was just beyond his reach, which for all he knew could have been a living thing, was probably the cat.

At any moment it was going to sink its claws into his shoulders. The thought terrified him. Arthur took off down the hall, full speed. Sam, bolting for the washroom at the same time, slamming the door shut. Arthur, careening around the corner into, you guessed it, the living room. He stopped dead. So did the conversation. Everybody staring at him, Arthur staring at them, and poor Vivian Stavros, who had once in England been served a dessert off a toy train that chugged around a dining room table, table. Thought to herself, eating cake off a dog's back was where she drew the line.

Meanwhile, Arthur's legs stiffened and his shoulders began to twitch and he seemed to inflate. He grew bigger and bigger right there in front of their eyes. And too late to do anyone any good, Vivian Stavros realized what was really about to happen. My God, she screamed, he's going to shake. Before the words came out of her mouth, the quivering dog became a shuddering dog and bits and pieces of cake were flying off him and spraying around the room, cake splattering off the walls and the chairs and the dresses and the hairdos. It was like a snowstorm of cake. It was a nightmare of cake.

It was worse than Halifax in April. Sam watching through the keyhole with disbelief at the chaos that he had caused. There was cake everywhere. A chunk the size of a chicken breast had landed in Vivian Stavros' lap. Arthur spotted it before she did. And there he was, heading towards her, looking like a wolf. Vivian screamed and tried to struggle to her feet. Too late. Sam on his knees in the washroom, his plate of dumplings beside him.

He could see all of this as plain as day. And then all of a sudden, all he could see was Vivian Stavros heading towards him. Vivian from the waist down, her gray skirt and cake-splattered legs looming larger. Vivian heading towards the bathroom door. Sam reached up quickly for the lock. and heading towards the bathroom door. Sam reached up quickly for the lock. He glanced down at the mound of dumplings beside him and felt his heart sink. He had to do something fast because before long he was going to have to open the door

and face the lady in the grey skirt and maybe his mother. He stuffed two dumplings into each of his pockets. He carried the remaining ones morosely over to the toilet. He tipped them into it. He flushed. The cake wasn't the worst thing, said Morley the following Monday. The cake wasn't the worst thing, said Morley on that Monday

as she sat in her office going over the night with Ralph Holden. You're right, said Ralph. It was definitely the block toilet. How long do you think she was in there, said Morley. I'd say a good 20 minutes, said Ralph. If she had just asked for a plunger, said Morley. Would you ask for a plunger, said Ralph? I guess you're right, said Morley.

I guess, she said, reaching for a pen, it's time for plan two, right? Thank you very much. That was the story, Arthur Takes the Cake. That is another early story from the early days of the Vinyl Cafe. So far back, I don't even know what year it was recorded. Something like 98, 99, somewhere back there. It's an oldie, but a goodie. We have to take a short break right now, but we will be back in about two minutes with a sneak peek from next week's episode.

So stay with me. Well, that's it for today, but we will be back here next week with another Davin Morley story. This one. Jim gave Molly her first pill that evening. It was a battle of heroic proportions. By the time Jim managed to get the pill into Molly, his hands were covered in tiny bite marks. He looked like somebody had been trying to staple him to something. The two pills a day, Jim figured he'd be shredded by the weekend.

That's next week on Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Come back next Friday to hear the whole story. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Our recording engineer is man's best friend, Greg DeCloot. Theme music is by my friend, Danny Michelle. This show is produced by Louise Curtis and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.