Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Occupational Hazards - Kenny Wong and the Tank of Tranquility & Tree Planting

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

“The secret to planting more trees, is to plant more trees.”We have two hilarious Vinyl Cafe stories for you on today’s pod. Stories of things that happen at work. In the first, Kenny helps Dave out with something at the store. In our second story, Steph experiences a summer job like no other. And Jess digs into the research process behind the 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. Step right up. Last week I promised you two fun, light, crazy stories. And I always keep my promises. So we're going to get right to it. Today on the show, two stories about occupational hazards. The crazy, zany, insane things that sometimes just come with the job. We're going to start with a story about Kenny. And I don't think I need to say anything more than that. This is Kenny Wong and the Tank of Tranquility. Occupational hazards. Occupational hazards are obvious for people who work in certain occupations.

On high-rise construction, for example. Or on a police force or at a nuclear plant. But there are hazards in the quieter professions as well. Pity the poor accountant. We have one over here. Who can't help keeping a running record of everything in his life, totaling the cost of all the spoiled milk and the unread newspapers. The lawyer who sees nothing but lawsuits wherever she turns, or the poor shopkeepers,

whatever shops they keep, they all fall victim to their own goods. Dave's friend, Dorothy Capper, has bought so many books from her own bookstore that she can barely fit a guest into her guest bedroom. Kenny Wong, who runs a cafe down the block, Wong's Scottish Meat Pies. I've always liked that one too. Kenny can't resist a deal on a case of produce. And then there's Dave, owner of a second-hand record store. Dave spends a good quarter of his working life poking around flea markets and garage sales, church basements and record shows, making him vulnerable to what might be the most insidious occupational hazard in the world, the impulse purchase. You set yourself loose in the sort of places that Dave frequents and see if you don't come home with the odd lava lamp, abused pair of cowboy boots, or as Dave did on a snowy Monday last November, a sensory deprivation tank.

A few days after it arrived, he was over at Kenny Wong's cafe, sitting on his regular stool at the end of the counter, poking at a bowl of Kenny's rice pudding. He hadn't told anyone about the tank yet, but he's about to tell Kenny because he needs Kenny's help. He finishes his dessert and he looks over at Kenny and says, where did you get your salt anyway? and he looks over at Kenny and says, where did you get your salt anyway? And Kenny waves at the cupboard behind the counter and Dave says, no, no, no, I mean, where do you buy your salt? Who supplies you? Kenny says, you looking for a deal? How much salt do you want? Kenny thought they were kidding around. Dave says, oh, about 800 pounds. Okay, now, if you are feeling unsure about something, something that you have done, as Dave was, if you were feeling shy or uncertain about how others might accept it,

chances are when you share your secret, your story is going to drift from the realm of information exchange into the world of hyperbole and justification and rationalization. Kenny said, you need 800 pounds of salt? Dave said, it's for my float tank. Kenny said, you're kidding, right? And Dave took flight. Floating, he said. Well, floating is like a return to the womb. You get into a float tank and close the soundproof lid, you're going to float away on water denser than the Dead Sea.

He leaned forward and he looked at Kenny dramatically. For the first time in your life, your brain will be free of stimulation and stress. Kenny didn't say anything. Dave said, one hour in a tank is as good as four hours of sleep. He's just making things up now. We get two hours in there, said Dave, and he's waving his spoon in the air. We wouldn't need to sleep at all. Think of everything we could get done. We, said Kenny. Think all the extra time we'd have if we didn't have to sleep, said Dave. Kenny cocked his head and looked at his friend, and he said, you know, you never struck me like a guy who was exactly short a time.

Okay, there's something else I have to tell you before we go any further. Dave has a touch of claustrophobia. And as enticing as he made it sound, as enticing as it might be, the thought of floating in the dark coffin-like capsule terrified him. What if he fell asleep and flipped over and drowned? Or worse, what if he went insane and came out stark, grave, and mad? Maybe he'd find the inner peace that they talked about online, or maybe he'd come out convinced that he could talk to shrubbery. that he could talk to shrubbery. Oh, Dave wanted to get into that tank.

But what he really wanted was for Kenny to take it out on a test drive first. Which is why he was laying it on so thick. And it worked. Before lunch was over, Kenny wanted to try it too. So off they went. And they bought 16 16-pound bags of salt, and they threw them into the back of Kenny's truck,

and they drove the truck over to Dave's store, and they unloaded the salt into the back storage room where he had the float tank. And a week later, early on a Friday morning, they hooked up a hose to the sink in the washroom of Dave's store and ran it across the hallway and filled the tank with tepid water. It took all day for the salt to dissolve. Just before four that afternoon, Dave called Kenny. It's ready, he said.

And Kenny came over, and he changed in the washroom, and he darted across the hall with his belly protruding over his speedo. Why? That's not how you see Kenny? That's how I saw Kenny. That's how I saw Kenny. Kenny changed in the washroom, and he darted across the hall with his sleek, ripped body rippling in the light. Whatever you need.

I'm here to please. Whoa, said Dave, you've been working out? Can we get back to the story, said Kenny? And then he climbed into the tank and he lowered himself into the water. It's not hard, he said. It wasn't hard at all. It was just like lying on a bed, except wetter. Kenny said, close the lid. I want the total experience. So Dave closed the door, and he stood there beside the tank in the suddenly

silent room, and he could feel his heart starting to pound, and his palms begin to sweat, his breath coming fast and shallow. He was feeling the first symptoms of sympathetic claustrophobia. After five uncertain minutes, he tapped on the lid of the tank. You okay? You okay? You okay? Did he hear a muffled okay from inside the tank? It's hard to tell. It was like talking to a can of peas. Five more minutes, and he tapped again, this time as hard as he could. And this time, Kenny opened the door and he stuck his head out, blinking, looking like the door mouse in the teapot from Alice in Wonderland. Also looking peevish. I was just checking, said Dave. Kenny said, well, I was just letting go. I'm not going to be able to get into this if you keep interrupting.

And so, feeling a little reassured and a little foolish, Dave turned off the storage room light, shut the door, and left. shut the door, and left. Some of us see trouble coming. Kenny ducked down again and closed the tank door like he was getting into a submarine. Settling onto his back in the warm water, his arms and legs extended as if he were making a snow angel. And a half hour went by. And then another. Dave cracked the door and peeked in at some point. He wanted to knock again on the tank, but he didn't. Inside, where it was dark and soundless, Inside, where it was dark and soundless,

Kenny was still floating on his back in the soft, salty water. But Kenny was beginning to feel like he had floated long enough. When things go wrong, when nuclear plants melt down or buses full of the faithful leave the road, when disasters happen, that is, it's seldom the result of some big thing. It's always a chain of simple things, almost all of them avoidable. Kenny reached up in the darkness and felt around for the handle to open the tank door. The door didn't budge.

He pushed harder. Still nothing. Outside, a mere foot from his head, Brian, who works part-time at Dave's store, dropped another milk crate of records on top of the tank. Brian is used to strange things popping up in Dave's storeroom. A huge paper mache sculpture of Frank Sinatra. A rusting phone booth, once even a coffin. No one had said anything to Brian about a flotation tank. He put the crate of records down on the lid and he went back into the store to get the next one. Now you would think that it would be impossible for Dave to forget

Kenny. But that just wouldn't be any fun, would it? You would think that Kenny would be all that Dave would be thinking of that afternoon, but we all forget things, sometimes important things. It happens when other things come up, and things have been coming up all afternoon. A fellow had walked into the store with seven milk crates of soul albums to sell. One of Stephanie's old friends had come in looking for a birthday present for her father.

And then, right before closing, Morley phoned to remind Dave that they were going to dinner at the Loebiers. And he promised he wouldn't be late. And now he was. In his rush, he just forgot. He locked up and he left as simple as that, leaving Kenny in the tank, cursing like a sailor. Kenny in the tank, cursing like a sailor. Dave remembered him two hours later.

He was sitting at the Loebier's dining room table. Gerda carried in four beautiful fillet of cod. I cooked them sous vide, she said, which means sealed in plastic and immersed in warm water. It's quite remarkable, said Gerda. You leave anything in warm water long enough, it'll eventually cook. Dave stared at his piece of fish and said something unspeakably inappropriate. And then he jumped up and ran out the front door without a word.

Gerda watched him go, poked at her cod, and then looked at Morley and Carl and said, Mine looks fine to me. But Dave was already out of earshot. Dave was pounding down the dark neighborhood streets, racing back to his shop. When he got there, he rushed toward the back room, praying that what he was going to find was a transformed and mellow Kenny Wong. What he found was $500 worth of salt and water leaking through the floorboards

and crates of records scattered everywhere, and a noticeable absence of candy. Dave gave Wong's Scottish meat pies a wide berth for a day or two. But after a few days, he knew he had to face the music, and so he screwed up his courage, and he headed for Kenny's Cafe. He went early and found Kenny all alone, behind the counter, unloading the dishwasher. Dave sat down on his regular stool, last one in the row, and he said, I guess you've been wondering where I've been. Kenny shrugged.

Dave said, well, I'm here to apologize. Kenny was unexpectedly gracious he turned and picked up the coffee pot from the warmer on the counter behind him he poured a mug of coffee and set it down in front of Dave nothing to worry about he said all's well it ends well and then he looked up and down the countertop. Hey, he said, could you grab me a basket of creamers? And Dave got up from his stool and he headed for the big walk-in fridge. It's too bad Dave doesn't spend more time in Calgary. He's not quite as quick as you. He couldn't believe this was going so well.

The creamers were at the back of the cooler. He walked in and stepped over a crate of lettuce and around a box of tomatoes and he reached for them and that is when he heard the big cooler door click shut behind him. He walked back and he reached for the handle with a sinking heart. Just as he expected, it was locked. What he didn't expect was the envelope with his name on it taped to the inside of the door. It was a sympathy card. Thinking of you in your times of trouble. Inside, Kenny had written,

Don't worry, I won't forget you. Dave had just enough time to read that before the fridge light snapped out. And he sighed. He knew this was coming. He sat down on the tomatoes to wait it out. They'd always made it clear you should forgive your enemies. But no one ever said anything about your friends. Thank you.

That was Kenny Wong and the Tank of Tranquility. We recorded that story in 2015 at the Jack Singer Concert Hall in Calgary, Alberta. And I suspect that there were many of you listening today in Calgary who were at that show. We've had so many great letters from in Calgary, Alberta. And I suspect that there were many of you listening today in

Calgary who were at that show. We've had so many great letters from our Calgary listeners since we started this podcast. I love Stuart's interaction in there, that part with Kenny Wong and the Speedo. He's just, he's clearly having such a good time. It's really nice to hear. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another Dave and Morley story. So stick around. Welcome back. Time for our second story now. Another story about occupational hazards. This is the story we call tree planting. This is the story we call tree planting. Stephanie landed a job as a tree planter this summer. She thought it was going to be a ton of fun.

She had heard that you could make a load of money in no time flat planting trees. So she signed up and found herself on an old school bus heading north out of Thunder Bay in the early days of May, full of hope. She imagined she was heading into some sort of hippie commune, a world of tents and hammocks and guitar-strumming nature lovers. When the bus pulled into base camp, it turned out to be a burned and logged out field of charred stumps, smudged by the smoke of a dozen campfires that looked more like the Battle of Passchendaele than a party Boys digging trenches Girls fighting with huge, flapping blue tarps A large guy with a ponytail sitting on the back of a pickup

Sharpening a shovel with a file Dogs jumping around, barking, everyone smoking And ACDC's dirty deeds done dirt cheap Blaring from a speaker nailed to the top of a portable toilet. Wow, said the boy who stepped off the bus behind her. This is perfect. There was a meeting after dinner. Stephanie's foreman, Scott, called them all together. Stephanie's foreman, Scott, called them all together. Scott stood on one of the picnic tables, his long hair brushing the cage of the work light that was swinging from the tent ceiling on a yellow electric cord.

Stephanie and the rest of the crew had to lean in close to hear him over the generator. There are three million trees to plant on this block, said Scott. The company is paying you guys eight cents a tree. That means there is $240,000 up for grabs. There are 100 planters in camp, and that means each of you should make $2,400 before we move to the next block. Scott looked at the 15 kids around the picnic table. That's if we're an average crew, he said.

You're in the north now. The north is the land of hard work. I want everyone on this crew to do better than average. I want you guys to plant at least 2,500 trees a day. Everyone around the table was nodding. Stephanie, too. She was determined to be better than average. She was bound for tree-planting glory.

Make it happen, guys, said Scott as he jumped off the table. A boy with blonde, curly hair wearing a bright blue Gore-Tex jacket smiled at Stephanie. The boy's name was Perry. It seemed he was the only boy in camp who had come prepared. Everyone else was wearing ripped and dirty clothes. Eddie Bauer, said Perry, pointing at his jacket. They were supposed to be on the bus the next morning at 7.15. Stephanie sat beside a tall guy with a ponytail and a hemp necklace.

His pants looked like they were held together by duct tape. They were, in fact, held together by duct tape. The top half were beige, and from the thigh down, they were brown. He was wearing a white-collar dress shirt. He looked like a loser. Actually, he looked like a totally unprepared loser. Stephanie was wearing a new pair of cargo pants. Perry, the Eddie Bauer boy from the night before, was wearing orange pumas, quick-dry pants, and a dark blue denim shirt. Perry looked like a pro. After a half-hour ride, the bus rocked to a stop on the side of a logged-out clearing. The veteran planters headed out by

themselves. Scott gathered the rookies around the end of the bus. This is the block, he said. He was pointing at a scarred slash in the forest. From the bus, it looked like a field, but up close, Stephanie could see it was waist high in scrub and scattered with fallen logs. waist high in scrub and scattered with fallen logs. Scott said, you each get your own piece of land. Twenty minutes later, Scott and Stephanie were standing by the side of the road beside a stack of plastic trays. White pine, said Scott, pointing at the foot-high saplings. He pointed at the alder bushes and the deadfall and the upturned rock.

That's yours, he said. Make it happen, man. And he was gone. It took Stephanie less than 10 minutes to rip her new cargo pants. She tore them as she clambered over the trunk of a fallen pine. She swore out loud. And then she broke into tears and swore again and stood there in the forest wondering what she should do. It took her until 11 to flag her boundary. By 11, she had ripped her pants, flagged her land, eaten her lunch, and was finally ready to plant her first tree. She plunged her shovel into what looked like a nice, soft piece of ground.

It struck the rock cap of the Canadian Shield about six inches below the surface. The vibration ricocheting through her body. At lunch, Perry, the boy with the Eddie Bauer jacket, walked down the road and sat beside her. I already ate my lunch, said Stephanie, morosely. I ripped my new jacket, said Perry. They climbed onto the bus at 5 p.m. Stephanie fell into her seat, sweaty, exhausted, and starving. There was a rip in both legs of her pants. Her hands were cut and sore. Perry fell in the seat beside her. I only planted 500, said Stephanie. He must have been joking, right?

No one could plant 2,000 trees in a day. I did 650, said Perry. I could have done more, but I hurt my wrist. Stephanie didn't like that. She thought that she should be able to plant as many trees as any other rookie, but surely not 2,000 trees. Scott was exaggerating about that. The guy with a ponytail and the white dress shirt was sitting across from him. His left hand was completely covered with duct tape, like he was wearing a glove. How many did you plant, asked Perry. 2,400, said ponytail guy, unwinding the duct tape. Stephanie couldn't believe it, but she was too tired to fret, too tired even to shower when they got back to camp,

too tired to do anything but eat and fall into her sleeping bag. She slept for 10 hours. She woke up at 6 the next day and planted 620 trees, 120 more than the day before. Perry planted 500, down 150 from the previous day. I could have done more, said Perry, but I sat in the bus and had a nap for a couple hours. Ponytail guy did 2,500. The rest of that week was a complete blur. Every day was the same. Up at six, stumble onto the bus and drive to the block. Every second day, the bus broke down and they had to get out and push it. One morning, they had to repair a long bridge before they could cross it. Stephanie

started to hate the bus. Hate the bus and its fetid combination of sweat, abandoned sandwiches, bug spray, and the clothes that most of the planters hadn't taken off since they'd arrived, not even to sleep. As week two began, Stephanie's cargo pants were festooned with duct tape patches. She had built her total up over the first few days, but then she had plateaued at around 1,000. I did 1,100 today, she told Perry at the end of the first week.

I did 450, said Perry. But I could have done more. I played euchre last night. Until dawn, I took a nap after lunch on a bed of moss. Those little bags of saplings make good pillows. on a bed of moss. Those little bags of saplings make good pillows. One day Stephanie came back to her cache of trees to fill up her bags and the trays were thrown every which way. They're sprayed with pesticides, Scott explained later. That's why they smell so skunky. It was probably a bear. Bears love the smell. The weather created havoc too. One afternoon, the sky suddenly grew dark and the wind came up, howling through the trees, whipping everything around, even the foot-high

seedlings. When stabs of lightning began to jump out of the sky, Stephanie was so determined to push her numbers up that she just kept on planting. And then it started to rain. It rained for a solid week. And then the black flies came. Swarms of them. Like someone was pouring them out of a giant jar. The bugs got in your ears and up your nose and through your hair and in your eyes. The mess tent was open on the side, so they got in your food too. Couldn't get away from them. You breathed bugs and you ate bugs and there were bugs in your ears so all you ever heard were bugs. Some kids tied bandanas around their ears so they couldn't hear them. Some kids slathered themselves in olive oil. The only person who didn't complain was Ponytail Guy.

My name is Rob, he said. Why don't they bother you, asked Stephanie. They do, he said. I just don't complain. The inside of Stephanie's arms were covered with sap and a rash had broken out from constantly brushing against the trees. The pesticides on the saplings were drying out her skin. So when she opened and closed her fists, her knuckles would crack and bleed. But she hardly noticed her physical discomfort. The thing that bothered her the most was her stubbornly low tree total. Didn't seem right that she couldn't do this, that she couldn't master something as simple as

planting trees. She decided she was wasting too much time returning to the catch to bag up. She filled her hip bags with twice as many saplings as usual and staggered into her land. She immediately got wedged between two trees in an unlogged section. She couldn't move backwards and she couldn't move frontwards. She screamed for help over and over. What if a bear happened upon her? After half an hour, Rob showed up. He sat on the ground and laughed and laughed.

And then he made her promise she would French kiss him if he got her unstuck. When she was free, she stormed off without a word. Rob knew better than try to collect. Things were even worse on Perry's land. Perry couldn't seem to sleep at night. But no sooner did he get off the bus in the mornings than he was hit by a potent wave of narcolepsy. Just the sight of a pine sapling had him yawning and woozy and sneaking off for a nap.

That wouldn't have been so bad, except the tree planters have to pay room and board. And one night after dinner, Perry did the math. Holy crap, he shouted. I owe the company money. The next day, Perry borrowed a handful of caffeine pills from another planter. And when everyone got off the bus at the end of the day, exhausted, Perry was still wide awake, twitchy and agitated. That night he packed up and left camp without telling anyone. They woke up and he was gone.

When they checked his land that day, they found he had planted 2,000 trees on his last day, all of them upside down. Their roots drying like hay in the sun. They had a day off in Thunder Bay. Everyone spent the day showering in their motel rooms, eating in the fast food joints, writing postcards in coffee shops, or just laying in the sun. Everyone except Stephanie. Stephanie had decided if it wasn't her focus or her process that was letting her down,

it was her tools. She tramped around town looking for a garage mechanic who could cut down her shovel with a blowtorch, make it lighter, make it sharper. When she eventually made it back to the hotel, everyone else was heading out dancing. Stephanie stayed behind to clean up and hit the sack early. But the motel mattress and the clean, dry sheets

felt strangely uncomfortable. At quarter to twelve, she was still wide awake, sitting on the edge of her bed, staring out the window into the dark and deserted street. She watched a solitary man walking down the sidewalk, moving in and out of the light cast by the street lamps. His head was bowed slightly and his pace was measured and steady. He was carrying a metal lunch pail in one hand and a yellow hard hat in the other. He was heading off to work while the rest of the city slept. The north was the land of hard work, Scott said. And suddenly Stephanie felt exhausted.

She rolled back under the blankets and fell asleep. She was the only one who caught up on her sleep that night. And so she was the only one awake when two provincial police officers arrived at the motel the next morning. There being some problems at the local golf course, said one of the cops. We suspect two of your planters. Why do you suspect us, said Stephanie. Someone planted 90 baby spruce trees on the 18th green, said the cop. Back in the bush the next day, Stephanie still couldn't crack 2,000 trees, even with her modified shovel. She cornered Rob in the cook tent.

I know you aren't telling me something, she said. I know there's a secret. Tell me the secret. There isn't any secret, said Rob. Of course there's a secret, said Stephanie, her voice almost hoarse with desperation. Tell me. Okay, said Rob. Listen, there is a secret. The secret to planting more trees is to plant more trees. She thought he was making fun of her. She didn't understand he was serious. She thought he was making fun of her. She didn't understand he was serious.

The next day, Rob took her with him onto his land. Watch, he said. So she sat on a huge rock, her knees drawn up to her chest, and she watched. He took a tree from his bag with his left hand and he drove his shovel into the ground. He bent over and he fed the roots into the ground with the blade of a shovel. He kicked the hole shut, hardly standing up as he moved to the next spot. He didn't move fast, but he moved steady, bobbing up and down like he was eating the land instead of planting it, like he was some sort of grazing animal. Stephanie thought that she had been working hard all along. Watching Rob, she wasn't so sure.

He didn't listen to music, and he didn't rest or talk to people when he bagged up, and he didn't take an hour at lunch. He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and he handed it to her. I wrote this for the internet, he said. I posted this on a tree planting site. She unfolded it. Read it, he said. When it's time to plant, she read, plant. When it's time to eat, eat. Whatever you're doing, just do it. If it's raining, you can worry about the rain all day, or you can plant and make money. The rain will pass

and then it'll be dinner and then it'll be time to go to sleep. And like the rain, the night will pass too, so better that you just shut up and sleep. As for tomorrow, tomorrow, read Stephanie, doesn't even enter into it. Stephanie said, I don't think I can do that. Rob looked at her and laughed. That's your problem, he said. You think too much. There are moments in people's lives that change them forever. You go into the woods to plant trees for six weeks and you come back and your life is never the same. Stephanie hit 1,900 trees the next morning. Morning after that, she pounded in 2,000. Two weeks would pass before she'd break the magic 2,500 mark. Before that would happen, the black fives would return with a vengeance and she would get bitten to bits, so swollen and scarred that everyone started to call her Pizza Face.

One morning she woke up and her right eye was swollen closed and she couldn't see out of it. Could have stayed in camp that day, but she used duct tape to hold it open. And she went out anyway. That was the day she pounded in 2,600 trees, her personal best. She sat on the bus at the end of the day, sweaty and tired, sore and stinky, her pants all ripped and repaired, her hair stringy, her hands swollen and cut and covered with duct tape. 2,600, she said.

That was awesome. Thank you very much. That was the story we call tree planting. We recorded that story in 2004 in Gravenhurst, Ontario. So many people have written to us over the years to tell us how real that story is, how true it feels. Stuart interviewed so many tree planters about that story. He used to do that all the time. He'd research his fictional stories the same way he researched his nonfiction work. For many years, for most of his career, Stuart was a journalist. He made radio documentaries on a show called Sunday Morning. And by the way, that show was one of the shows that made me want to become a journalist.

Like so many other fiction writers, Stuart applied his journalistic technique to his fictional storytelling, too. He'd do research ahead of writing, and then he'd interview as many people as he could about the topic. He was trying to get a sense not only about the subject, but about the people who cared about the subject. He wanted to understand what they cared about, who they were, what moved them, and even how they talked. And he'd often pick up little nuggets along the way. Some of the stories that you heard in that story were things Stuart got from other people, from tree planters. And that, I think, is one of the many reasons why Stuart's stories feel so true. They're fiction.

And as you've learned if you've listened to this podcast, they were very infrequently inspired by his life, but they felt true because they were often informed by real experience, by real people, and always by real feelings. All right, that's it for today, but we'll be back here next week with a special story for Valentine's Day. That's right. Love is in the air on Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe next week. We're going to hear a story from way back when Dave and Morley first met. Once in the middle of nowhere, an old man passed them going the other way. He was sitting on a contraption that looked like a wagon on blades, and he was rowing it along

the canal. With what Dave swore were cross-country ski poles with toilet plungers fastened to the end. There were foot bridges to duck under and frozen intersections with signs that said, Laden, 50 kilometers, with an arrow pointing down the branch that ran off their canal. It was like being in an earlier time. It was like being in the 19th century. They didn't see a car all day.

They ate lunch on the ice at a cafe, on a boat that was frozen under a leafless elm. No one could speak English, and they ordered by pointing their red fingers and shrugging. Instead of getting what they thought they had ordered, they each got a large meatball covered in gravy and a mug of hot chocolate and a huge square of gingerbread. The waiter smiled at them as they ate.

It was delicious. Morley hardly let them stop. She wanted to keep moving forever. She was thinking, this is why people dance. Dave, who had been having trouble keeping up to her right from the beginning, was wondering how you said cardiac arrest in Dutch. Finally, an hour after lunch, Morley stopped and turned, and Dave puffed up to her, and he flopped on the bank. Morley said, Stand up. He struggled up, and she made him cross his arms over his chest,

and she skated behind him, and she said, Lean back. He tipped his head back, and she said, All of you. She said, Trust me. I'm here. Dave leaned back into her arms and she caught him and she pushed him along the canal as if he were a statue. It started to snow and it was like they were skating through a painting. Dave leaning back, Morley pushing, pushing the snow on their hats, their mittens,

their sweaters, everything white, above and below them, the white sky and the white ice, like they were floating. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. In the meantime, if you want to find out more, you can go to our website, vinylcafe.com, or you can find us on Facebook or Instagram. We love hearing from you. And before I go, I should also remind you that you can send us your Arthur Award nominations. Every year on Thanksgiving weekend, Stuart used to hand out the Vinyl Cafe Arthur Awards. They're a set of awards designed to honor the things that too often go unnoticed. Those

little things, those small acts of kindness that are often the most important things of all. small acts of kindness that are often the most important things of all. If you know someone you think deserves an award, we want to hear about it. Tell us who you think deserves an Arthur Award and why. You can send us an email to vinylcafe at vinylcafe.com or just head over to our website and write us there. That's vinylcafe.com. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Our recording engineer is someone I think deserves an award, Greg DeCloot.

Theme music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg Duclut, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.