Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - In the Woods - The Man Who Punched Trees

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

“It was a magnificent tree.”We’re thinking about our connection to the natural world on this week’s pod. We’ve got an essay from Stuart McLean about a Winnipeg tree that galvanized a community, and a story about a woodsman from Dave’s childhood in Cape Breton.Ad-free listening is here! Listen to the pod ad-free and early, PLUS a whole bunch of other goodies – like virtual parties, Q&As, listener shout-outs & more. Subscribe here: apostrophe.supercast.com 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. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, then you probably have heard me mention that I live in the woods. I used to live in downtown Toronto, and I loved it. I loved the energy, the pace, the noise of it all. But I don't think I could do it anymore. because somewhere along the way, I started to need trees, like really need them.

I don't know when or why. I guess it's just what I'm used to now. But maybe it's something deeper. All I know is that when I'm in a city, I feel like I'm vibrating a little too fast, like a tuning fork that never stops humming. There's a buzz to it. And that buzz used to thrill me. still does in small doses, but I need the forest. In the woods, I slow down. I breathe better.

There's something steady in the natural world, something that helps regulate me when I can't seem to do it for myself. Nature teaches me patience. I have to wait for snow if I want to ski, and then I have to wait for that snow and ice to melt if I want to swim. Wait through the mud, wait for the buds, wait for the seasons to turn. And while I wait, I've learned to pay attention. To the light, the temperature, the bird song that's different in May than it was in March. And something about that rhythm, the rhythm of the land, grounds me. There's a sturdiness in nature that I can trust.

It doesn't care if I'm busy. It doesn't care if I'm late. It just keeps going. Quiet, constant. And in that quiet, I find calm. That's what we're going to talk about on the podcast today. Nature. Trees, life in the woods,

our connection to the natural world. We've got a script Stuart wrote about a Winnipeg tree that galvanized a community. And in the second part of the show, a story about the woods and a woodsman from Dave's childhood in Cape Breton. Let's start with this. From Winnipeg, Manitoba, this is Stuart McLean. Every city has a verb of its own. St. John's huddles, Montreal argues, Toronto parties, Calgary, sprawls, Vancouver crowds, while Winnipeg endures. It was not supposed to be so. Winnipeg was poised on the edge of greatness

at the turn of the 20th century. At the turn of the 20th century, everything looked swell here at the confluence of the red and assiniboine rivers, here at the almost geographic heart of North America, here at the bullseye. At the turn of the century, Winnipeg, with its thriving grain market and its sprawling train yards, was ready to ride the rails into the future, destined it was said to become the Chicago of the north. It looked like Chicago, and still can from the right corner of the Exchange District. But along came the Panama Canal to spoil the view. Close to 30,000 people died constructing the canal. The long sought shortcut to get stuff from one side of America to the other. 30,000. And with them, Winnipeg's dreams. Just like that, the center shifted. And Winnipeg, as

others, no less the next Winnipeg or Neil Young have suggested, Winnipeg, which was supposed to be in the middle of everything, woke up and found itself in the middle of nowhere. First time I came here, I arrived the only way anyone should arrive in Winnipeg. I came by train. I was a 19-year-old student on my way west, going west, we used to say. It's what we did in the summer in those days. We got summer jobs or we went west. As long as you're ready to sit up all night rather than stretch out in a berth, one way, Montreal, Calgary, cost 35 bucks.

About 350 in today's dollars. Winnipeg's where the train crews changed, so when we rolled into the old CNR station, which was designed, incidentally, by the same architects who designed New York City's Grand Central Station, When we arrived at the station, we were allowed off the train. And even though it was the middle of the night, I went for a wander and managed to find a place to buy a burger.

I like to think I got a nip at the Salisbury house. But it might have been a fat boy at VJ's. These days, I like to visit in the early summer when the trees are in blossom. If I have time, I'll wander around the forks. A wander which inevitably ends at the tall grass prairie bacon. where I've stopped for a cinnamon bun more often than I care to admit. From there, with time on my hands, the Exchange District is my next stop. These days I like to visit the galleries.

The plug-in gallery is only a block over from the messy grandeur of Toad Hall, that great toy store that I've never left, empty-handed. And it, just a stone's throw from the Montragan Cafe, where I've wilded away hours with friends. I don't know all of this city, but I know parts of it. Some of the alleys, some of the architecture, some of the grit, and some of the grandeur. When you mention Winnipeg to people who've never been here, they're likely to roll their eyes and say something disparaging about mosquitoes or the winter.

And I know, I know it's a dry cold. Those who've passed through might mention the beauty of the rivers or the good. golden boy on top of the provincial legislature, their memory of the jets or their feelings about portage and Maine, that most famous of intersections now shackled in concrete barriers like some sort of political prisoner. They would mention these things, and probably something about the mosquitoes in the winter. But I would like to put forward these are not the things that make Winnipeg what it is. There is a spirit of about this city and the people who live and come from here

that I'd like to suggest is closer to the heart of it. There's an intellectual and political commitment to the collective, to the greater good that runs deep here. Winnipeg's motto is Unum-Cumvertute Meltroam, Latin for one with the strength of many. This is a city where people fight for things, maybe because they have to. It's where in 1914, Nellie McClung and her fellow reformers staged their famous mock parliament at the Walker Theater.

Rolls were reversed. Men had to beg for the right to vote. McClung's piece of theater was so successful that two years later, Manitoba's women were the first to get the vote in Canada. Winnipeg's the crucible of the Canadian Labor Movement. workers in Winnipeg led the struggle for collective bargaining, better working conditions, and higher wages. The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 had a profound effect on Canada, and no doubt, contributed to the political education of Tommy Douglas, who was living here at the time. It's a spirit that is still alive today. You can read it in the biology of this city. It's a, it's a spirit. It's a spirit that is still alive today. You can read it in the biology of this city.

It's written in the trees. The American elm is the most gorgeous parasol-shaped tree. Planted along boulevards, an elm will grow tall and meet the trees on the other side of the road to form a dappled and dancing canopy. Any Winnipegher will tell you that walking under the shade of an elm canopy can make you feel as if you're walking through a cathedral. Dutch elm disease has devastated most of the elms of the island.

this world, but not here. Like the city, the elms of Winnipeg endure. Alone of the great cities of Europe and America, Winnipeg still boasts an elm forest, arguably the greatest urban elm forest in the world. And that's not an accident of biology, but a result of this sense of commitment that I'm trying to get at. I want to tell you the story of the Wolesley Elm. Wolesley Avenue meanders along like many of Winnipeg streets as if it still believes itself to be the riverside path that it probably once was. Back in the 1950s, when Walsley Avenue was a favorite shortcut if you wanted to avoid the traffic of Portage Avenue, there was near the corner of Basswood Place a solitary elm growing unbelievably right in the middle of Walsley, standing in the middle of the street like a forgotten century box.

The tree was circled at the trunk by a low brick curb in the tiniest fringe of grass. So tiny you could barely stand on it. So tiny it was designated by Ripley's as the smallest park in the world. You could read all about this on the web. Story goes that the elm was planted in the 1800s by a farm girl. And there it remained. until city officials, fretting that someone might hit the tree and kill themselves, decided to cut it down.

Neighborhood residents disagreed. In 1957, when the city finally sent a crew to deal with the Walsley Elm, they were met by a group of neighborhood women who circled the tree arm in arm and told the city workers if they were going to chop it down, they'd have to chop through them first. A crowd of over 200 people gathered. The mayor arrived and the tree was saved. A Pyrrhic victory. Within a year, the Walsley Elm had been hacked at and set on fire by vandals,

and it had to be brought down anyway. Fifty years have gone by, but Winnipegers are still talking about that tree. Protted by longtime Winnipeg newspaper columnist Val Warier, the citizens of Manitoba alone in the world took action to save their elms. Manitoba enacted legislation to make it an obligation under the law to cut down and dispose of diseased trees before the disease could spread. The Walsley elm was lost, but Winnipeg's elms have survived. Life isn't always easy here in Winnipeg. It is hotter in the summer and colder in the winter, and every 50 years there's a monumental flood. Sometimes, as Guy Madden in his mysteriously beautiful

film, my Winnipeg, it's so cold your breath freezes in front of your face and falls to your feet with a tinkle. The winters may keep people away, but as Madden says, Winnipeggers know the enchantments that can be squeezed out of a snowflake. So yes, It's easy to look at Winnipeg from a distance and say it didn't become what it was supposed to be. More difficult to look deeper and to remember that farmers have for years left fields fallow as they seek to regenerate the soil, that there are cycles of birth and renewal, and in that light, to ponder where in that cycle Winnipeg may be and where it might be in the years ahead of us. Winnipeg, I've heard it said, is the hardest city in the country to get someone to move to and the hardest to get someone to leave.

There's a scale of things here that some might dismiss as small, while others might see it as simply human. That was Stuart McLean. We recorded that in Winnipeg, Manitoba. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with the Dave and Morley. story. So stick around. Welcome back. Time for our second story now. This is the man who punched trees. The branch came down in the spring. No one saw it happen. It happened overnight. Someone could have been killed if they'd been there. That's what everyone said in the morning.

By breakfast, half the neighborhood had been over to take a look. It was lying half on Jim Schofield's front lawn and half on the street, as thick around as your thigh where it snapped off. It missed Jim's fence and the chuttery's jetta, but just. By noon the city had come and gone, and all it was left were some leaves in the gutter and small branches on Jim's lawn. No harm done. But that wasn't the end of it. Next week some guys arrived with drills and clipboards and poked around for over an hour. Everyone knew the tree's number was up.

It was a magnificent tree, a maple. And for as long as anyone could remember, it had arched over Jim's corner lot with the benevolence of a sermon. It had something to offer every season. In the spring, a rainfall of flowers, the excitement of seeds. In summer, the benediction of shade, you could almost feel the temperature drop as you walked under its graceful shadow. But best of all, the red glory of autumn. Jim's maple tree sang its way through the years, and now it would be singing no more. It took them a day to bring it down, buzzing around the branches like hornets with their mechanical crane and chainsaws.

Sam saw the crew from the city arrive in the morning. He kept returning to the living room window all day. The forlorn witness. By the time Dave came home, both the truck and the tree were gone. You'd think it would take longer, said Sam. It should have taken a week or something, but it took a day. They came and they went and they carted it away. And that was that.

A hundred, 150 years gone. The corner looked barren. Sam looked barraffed. After supper, Dave said, let's go check on Jim. What he meant was, let's check out the hole on Jim's lawn. Jim was sitting on his front porch. He was looking at a brochure. The man from the city had told him they'd be back with a replacement. He said Jim could choose what they planted.

Jim held up the brochure. He had three choices. He could have a honey locust, a ginkgo, or a little leaf linden. Why not a maple, said Sam. They should plant a maple. They want smaller trees, said Jim, so they don't get in the wires or you know. And he waved his hand around his yard, so they don't come down in storms. Jim didn't sound happy. They were quiet for a few minutes, squinting at the upturned soil where the tree had been, strangely exposed to the rays of the evening sun.

Dave was the first to say something. Dave said, can you tell them not to plan anything? Jim said what? Dave said, tell him to leave the place alone. I have an idea. When they got home, Sam looked at his father and said, what's your idea? And Dave sat on the front stoop and padded the stair beside him. He grew up with trees, Dave did. He grew up with trees all around him, on the mountains and the woodlots, and the tree shaped. dated streets of big narrows, Cape Breton. But most fish never noticed the water they swim in. Dave never noticed trees until the summer he was 11.

The summer he met Gabriel Dubois. That was the summer he went to the Dubois farm with Billy Mitchell, who was 12 and who had been to the old man's house before with his big brother. Dubois's place was in the hills on the far side of the Macaulay farm. If we take him crab apple, said Billy, he'll pay us. Billy knew a crab apple tree that grew along the fence line at the back of McCollies. They left their bikes in the graveyard and followed the fence in. They had an old rock sack, and they filled it with apples,

and took turns carrying it up the mountain road to the blueberry field, where they stopped and rested. As they sprawled there, all sweaty under the office, a son, Dave pulled an apple from the bag and held it all red, waxy, and perfectly sweet-smelling. He shook his head and then he bit into it. And as soon as he did, he spat the mouthful out with a groan. It was the tenth he had tried. How can they look so good, he said. When Billy didn't answer, he said, why does he want them anyway? Makes Jen. said Billy, who was on his way again. Come on. Actually, it was jelly he made. Crab

apple jelly, though he hadn't made it for years. Mostly because it wasn't him who made it, it was his wife. And that summer, Ellen Dubois had been dead a decade, maybe more. He would pay the boys for the apples, nonetheless, and any other boys who brought him apples. He had his reputation to maintain. And besides, he liked the idea of boys messing around in trees. He liked it when they showed up with their bags of apples. Come on, said Billy. And he helped Dave put on the backpack, and then tramped off to the far corner of the field, where he stepped around a big maple and slipped out of sight, onto a path that Dave didn't know existed. Come on, he. He said, he, he was a way. He he called again. Dave looked back over his shoulder and then hustled to catch up. Almost immediately

they were walking downhill, down through the quiet, cool forest, past the large rocks and through a ravine. After a while, the path leveled and wound through a stand of cedars, skirted a tamarack swamp, the ground spongy from the beavers who lived there before they were born, back when Ellen Dubois was putting up her jams and jellies. On the far side of the swamp, they started up again, through the pines and the stands of birch and maple, into the back hills. They came out on the edge of an overgrown field,

the grass up to their waist, crickets flying all around, the house, paint all peeling, the gray shed, the fading barn. Billy said, come on. Dave said, are you sure? It was spooky, coming out of the woods like that and finding the place, no road or anything. But he had come this far.

So he followed Billy, brushing his hand along the top of the grass. He pulled out a stalk of Timothy and stuck the sweet, pale end of it in his mouth and chewed on it nervously. They found the old man behind the shed. He was wearing a faded green work shirt, matching work pants, suspenders, leather boots, untied. He was splitting wood, logs scattered around him. We bought you crab apples, Mr. Dubois, said Billy. He was unshaven and sweaty. He took the bag and pulled out an apple.

He bit into it and swallowed. He actually swallowed. A bien, he said. from the tree by the old fence, back of McCollies. Billy looked at Dave, the look said, see, I told you. They stood on the porch, peering into the kitchen while the old man rummaged around, opening cupboards and drawers. When he found what he was looking for, a slab of something wrapped in cheesecloth,

he carried it to the kitchen table. It looked like a brick of plastic, about the size of an encyclopedia. He got a hammer from under the sink. and hit the plastic with the hammer. A piece broke off. He hit it again. He handed each boy 50 cents and a piece of the plastic-looking stuff.

For the walk back, he said. And that, said Dave, is when the goat walked into the kitchen. Dave and Sam were still sitting on the front stoop. Sam had half a popsicle in his hand, little red drops pooling on the ground in front of him. Sam said, a goat? It was in the living room watching television.

He said the goat was sick. He said he was nursing it. This is Archie, said the old man, nodding at the goat. He's not feeling so well. So we said hi to the goat, said Dave, and then we left. What was it that he gave you, said Sam? The thing he broke with the hammer. Homemade spruce gum, said Dave.

They put it in their mouth when they were through the field, when they were back in the forest. You had to work at it to get it going, said Dave. It was brittle, and it crumbled. You had to hold it in your mouth and work up your saliva and work it together. I didn't like it at first. It's not like store-bought gum.

It's not sweet. What does it taste like, said Sam. Taste like the forest, said Dave. Taste like trees. Could you blow bubble? I don't know, said Dave, I forget. I remember it was pink like bubble gum, and it tasted like the forest, like a forest in the spring with lots of birds.

He went on about the gum for some time, about how Gabby Dubois would go in the winter with a chisel, attached to the end of a long pole, and collect the hard sap bubbles from the spruce trees, how he would take it home and put it in his sap bucket and melt it down and pick out the little bits of bar, and then strain the sticky liquid through cheesecloth and let it set in a tin pan. When it hardened, he would break it into pieces and dust them with cornstarch,

and then he would wrap the pieces and wax paper and take them to McDonnell's store. You could buy a piece for two cents. You remember that, said Sam? Well, truthfully, said Dave, he wasn't doing that when I was a boy. That was from my dad's time, but he was still making it. He was the real deal. No one knew the forest like Gabriel Dubois. That's what Dave's dad, Charlie had said that night when Dave told them they'd been to his place.

We sold him crab apples, said Dave. Charlie smiled and said, did he give you any spruce gum? Dave leaned back onto the stairs and pointed over at Jim's yard. It's strange with a tree gone, he said. Sam said, is Gabby the guy with the exploding tree? Ah, said Dave, I forgot I told you that one. I shouldn't have ever told you that one. I should have showed you.

Tell it, said Sam. I like that one. Well, said Dave, it was the next summer. We used to hike all around. Sam nodded. Dave said, we'd see him sometimes. Where, said Sam? Just around, said Dave. In the woods, I mean. Anyway, one day we were down by the swamp digging. For what? said Sam. For water, said Dave.

The ground's all spongy down there. We thought maybe there was a buried lake. And he showed up and he started to, wait a minute, wait a minute, said Sam. Like, you'd be in the woods and he would show up and you'd talk to him? Dave said, yeah. Sam said, that's just creepy. Sam said, you wouldn't let me do any of this. They did see a lot of them that summer. He was like a new word, Gabriel. You live your whole life and you never notice it ever.

And then one day you read it somewhere and you look up the meaning in the dictionary. And once you do that, poof, you come across it everywhere. Like it was there all the time except until you knew what it meant. You couldn't see it. They met him by the creek, by the swamp, and at the trouting pond, at the pond where we fished last summer, said Sam, right there, said Dave, on the mountain. They'd be swimming or something, and they'd be swimming, said Sam, interrupting. What's wrong with that, said Dave?

First off, said Sam, there were no lifeguards. That's right, said Dave. Second off, said Sam, he was a stranger, and he gave you candy. Well, gum, said Dave. But only once or twice, mostly he gave us nuts. Same difference, said Sam. Now, wait a minute, said Dave. He wasn't technically a stranger.

We saw him lots. In the woods, said Sam. You would freak out if I told you I meant a man in the woods who gave me nuts. You have a point, said Dave. Sam said, whatever. Dave said, anyway, if you'll let me continue. We were down by the swamp, and he came. out of the woods. That was another thing about him. He never walked on the paths or anything. He would

just walk right through the forest. And it stopped and talk to us, you know, say hi or whatever. And that day as he walked away, he took his axe. And Sam said he had an axe. Dave said he always had an axe. Sam said, brother. Dave said, in that day, as he walked away, he walked by a birch tree. He goes by it. And then he stops and he turns around and he looks at it. And he shakes his head like he doesn't want to do what he's going to do next, but he does it anyway. He stops. He puts his axe down. This is a big birch tree, right? Like a full-grown tree. And then he swings at the tree with his bare fist, and when he hits it, the tree explodes, says Sam. That's right, said Dave. There were three of them there that afternoon, and they all saw it. Billy Mitchell,

Gordy Beeman, and Dave. You could ask any of them. They'd tell you exactly the same thing. Gabriel Dubois wound up, punched the tree, and the tree exploded. With his bare fist, said Sam. With his bare fist, said Dave. Now, Billy, Gordy, and Dave, none of them said a word. They just stared with their mouths hanging open while he walked away. When he was out of sight, Billy Mitchell said, Did you see that?

What had happened was not only a... impossible, it was beyond belief. The tree actually exploded. Gabriel Dubois hit the tree and there was a sound like a hoof and then a puff of smoke or something and the tree was gone. It vanished into thin air. It was like a movie, said Dave. Sam said it was a big tree. It was a huge tree, said Dave, a huge tree. They went over to see it like they were sneaking up on an animal that might have been dead, but also might have been alive, which is to say they were careful going up to it. And when they got there, it was gone, said Dave. There was nothing left of it. Nothing, said Sam. There was a pile of soda, said Dave, and bark like a hollow tube of bark, like the skin. Of course you know what happens

then. Uh-uh, said Sam. Well, the only question was who was going to go first? We pulled Straws, said Dave. Billy won, one, said Sam. Well, said Dave, I don't know. They pulled straws and Billy got the short one. And they found a birch that looked the same size. It looked exactly the same. And Billy took off his shirt and he wrapped it around his fist.

He was a pretty determined kid, said Dave. You got to give him that. What happened, said Sam. He broke his knuckles in four places, said Dave. That's how they learned about yellow birches. That's how they learned when a yellow birch dies, it doesn't fall over, but stands straight and tall and rots from the inside, until all that remains of it is a tube of birch bark standing there looking like a tree,

looking like a tree, and just waiting for someone with a crowd of boys to amaze. It was all about choosing the right tree, said Dave, but it took us a while to figure that out. I don't see what any of this has to do with your plan for Jim's yard, said Sam. I'm coming to that, said Dave. And he stood up and he went into the kitchen. What I'm trying to explain here is that Gabriel Dubois knew everything there was about trees. He used to make maple syrup every year.

Now, lots of people in Cape Breton used to do that. The McCauley still do. And they make good syrup. Don't get me wrong. That's the syrup we get every year. But they make it from sugar maples. That sugar bush we walk through on the way to the pond in the summer. That's the McCollies, and that's a good maple bush.

It's on the south side of the mountain and everything you'd want, but those are sugar maples. And sugar maples are what everyone taps. Gabriel Dubois used to tap silver maples. And the syrup he made, well, I wish you could try some. It was so light. And so sweet it was like heaven. He used to put it in jam jars.

Why doesn't everyone use silver maples? Because you can't make enough. So you can't make money. There isn't as much sap. But he didn't care about that. He used wooden buckets and beech wood taps. And when he collected the sap, he made the syrup the native way. They didn't have iron pots.

So they couldn't boil it. Did you ever think of that? You know how they did it? Sam shook his head. Dave said they let it freeze up and then they skimmed off the ice over and over so it got concentrated. That way it never tasted burnt. Not many people in Big Narrows ever got to try his stuff. How come? said Sam. Because it all went to a fancy hotel in Halifax. They'd come every year and pick it up. But you don't. You don't. You don't. You don't. You'd all went to a fancy hotel in Halifax. But you'd come. did, said Sam. That's right, said Dave. But only when I was older and moved away. He was quite a guy, said Dave. He made all sorts of stuff, made toilet water from which hazel they sold in the drugstore in Bedek. Toilet water, said Sam? After shave, said Dave. And cough medicine from the wild cherry trees. He sold it to the doctor. When I was a kid, that's what they'd give me when I was sick. Gabriel Dubois cough syrup. True. Dave had been talking for over an hour.

All about Gabriel Dubois. Dead and gone now, what? At least 40 years. And now he was rummaging through the fridge. Sam was sitting at the kitchen table. The floor around the fridge was littered with food, jars of jam, hunks of cheese, half a leftover chicken, a jug of orange juice. Dave was leaning into the fridge, wrestling with.

something buried deep in the back. Finally he backed out and held up a dinted cookie tin. Aha, he said. What is it? said Sam. Dave put the tin down on the table. Sam reached for it, but Dave shook his head. Dave said, just a minute. I'm nearly finished. There was this big oak that belonged to old Mr. Nettleship. I guess it was on the lawn in front of his store. This is a long time ago. This is before I was born. I never saw the store. The store, the store, the store burnt down before I was born. And when it did, Mr. Nettleship built further down the street, near the bridge where the hardware is today. The plan was they were going to widen the street where his old store was, and to do that, they were going to take down the oak. But when the day

came, and they came to take it down, Gabriel Dubois was sitting at the bottom of the tree. The way they tell it, he was tipped back on a kitchen chair he got from the Maple Leaf Cafe, and he wouldn't let them do it. He said, the trees been here maybe three, 400 years, and no road was that important. He said, cars have wheels. They can go around it. He saved the tray, and they started calling it Gabby's Oak. And eventually they put a little bench under it and called it Gabby's.

people used to say, I'll meet you at Gabby's. And when they said that, they meant the bench under the oak tree. And he was right. The cars went around it, no problem. Well, it turned out it was the biggest oak for miles. Maybe on all of Cape Breton, as far as I know. After the big flood in 1954, the mayor nailed a yardstick on it and marked the spot where the water stopped.

People would check it every year. And if Gabby Dubois, right, that tree must be 500 years old now. Dave sat down at the table. He was wrestling with the tin lid of the box. He said an oak tree needs help getting its seeds around. They're too heavy to blow in the wind the way maple keys do. They just fall straight down. And there's not a lot of room under a 500-year-old oak tree for another one to grow. Dave had the lid off the box now. He handed it to Sam. Sam peered in. Acorns, he said. Yep, said Dave. The tin was filled with small plastic bags, each

holding a dozen or so acorns. From Gabby's tree. I brought them back a few years ago. I had this idea that I'd mail a couple of them to everyone who ever lived in Big Narrows. I wanted to have a hundred of Gabby's Oaks growing all over the country. But you didn't do it, said Sam. Well, said Dave, haven't done it yet. Next day before breakfast, Dave and Sam headed over to gyms. They were carrying a spade and a watering can and the cookie tin. When they were finished, Sam emptied the water can on the freshly turned soil.

Then he picked up the tin of acorns and gave it a gentle shake. The acorns made a pleasing rattle. Gabby's oaks, said Sam. He looked at his father and held up the tin. Gabby's oaks, said Dave. They both smiled. Then Sam said, well, where to now? That was the story we call The Man Who Punched Trees.

Just to keep you on your toes, we also sometimes call it Gabriel Dubois. We recorded that story in Mabu, Cape Breton, back in 2010. All right, that's it for today, but we'll be back here next week with more from David Morley. Okay, she said, reaching out and turning the music down, it says to make the following turns. Gosh, gosh, right. Dave said, huh? Morley said that means left, left, right. Right? Right, said Dave. Right, said Morley, but not right away. Gosh, gosh, then right, right, said Dave. But first, left, left, said Morley. Then right, right, said Dave. Right, said Morley.

That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the apostrophe podcast network. The recording engineer is crabapple Greg DeCleut. The music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeClute, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.