Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Sam and Murphy - The Science Experiment & Macaulay’s Mountain

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

“I found my father’s old chemistry set…” This week’s episode is about good friends and friendship: two stories about Sam and his best friend Murphy. In the early days of their friendship they get their hands on a vintage chemistry set, with explosive results. And on their first trip to Cape Breton the friends find adventure in the form of an abandoned car on Macaulay’s Mountain. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. We're already well into our first season of this podcast, and I just realized we've hardly had any stories about Sam. I think just like one or two so far. We're going to set that right today. And of course, if you've listened to the Vinyl Cafe for many years, you'll know that where there is Sam, there is often Sam's best friend, Murphy. Such a great character. And I'm really glad we'll get to spend some time with him today. So let's just get to it, shall we?

Our first story is one from the early days of their friendship. This is The Science Experiment. At recess on a Tuesday morning not too long ago, Sam met his best friend Murphy where they always meet when they have important business. At the far end of the playground, under the tree where they first met, that was the autumn Sam's best friend Ben moved away. The autumn Sam found himself without a friend in the world. Till Murphy came along. Murphy arrived out of the blue from Winnipeg. And on his very first day at school, he struck out at soccer baseball.

Something that no one had ever done. After Murphy's second whiff, the gym teacher, Mr. Reynolds, who was pitching, rolled the big white soccer ball towards Murphy extra carefully, trying to make it as easy as possible to kick. And Murphy, chewing his tongue anxiously, took an awkward hop and kicked at the ball a full second and a half before it reached the plate. Then propelled by the forward motion of his kick, Murphy had collapsed in a cloud of dust, a feat of athletic ineptitude of staggering proportions. Later that day, as they ate their sandwiches in the staff room, Mr. Reynolds told Murphy's teacher about it. He said he couldn't remember a student ever striking out in soccer baseball.

He said he couldn't remember a student ever striking out in soccer baseball. Never ever, he said, shaking his head. If the ball just hits you, you have a good chance of making it to base. Did they tease him? asked Mrs. Hayes. No one said a word, said Mr. Reynolds. Everyone was too stunned. Murphy did seem doomed, however, and no doubt he would have been teased soon enough.

But before the teasing began, words spread around school that Murphy was a special needs kid. And instead of teasing him, kids began looking out for him, giving him stuff, candy and little toys, offering him the small kindness they might offer a little brother or a pet. It was only months later, when Sam and Murphy were best friends, that Murphy told Sam that he had started the special needs rumor himself. Sam and Murphy rendezvoused under the tree on this recent Tuesday, and Murphy looked at Sam earnestly and said, I have made an extraordinary discovery.

What, said Sam? You have to swear to secrecy, said Murphy. I won't tell anyone, said Sam. You have to swear, said Murphy. I won't tell, said Sam. Not good enough, said Murphy. And Murphy walked away. At lunch, Sam said, okay, okay, I swear. Too late, said Murphy. Come on, said Sam, running beside him to keep up. You had your chance, said Murphy. It took Sam two days to wear Murphy down.

I promise, he said, standing in front of him in the hallway. I won't tell anyone. Murphy glared at Sam in his owlish way. I was in our basement, said Murphy, finally. I was looking for Christmas presents. I found my father's old chemistry set. Why were you looking for Christmas presents in April, said Sam? I sweep the house every spring, said Murphy. Every year at Christmas, my parents buy stuff and they hide it. And then they forget about it. Did you find anything, said Sam?

I already told you, said Murphy. I found my father's old chemistry set. But what about presents, said Sam? I already told you, said Murphy. I found my father's old chemistry set. But what about presents, said Sam? Did you find any presents? You know, said Murphy with affection, you just missed the important part again. Oh, said Sam. Murphy shook his head. It's okay, he said. It's one of your best features. Then Murphy said, There is stuff in those old chemistry sets that they wouldn't let kids near these days. Like what, said Sam.

You see, said Murphy, you can do it. When you concentrate. There's carbon powder. There's a sealed bottle of carbon powder. Am I supposed to know the significance of that, asked Sam? The significance, said Murphy, comes when we find powdered sulfur and some potassium nitrate. Once we do that, do you know what we have? Sam shook his head. We have gunpowder, said Murphy. shook his head. We have gunpowder, said Murphy. This, said Sam, smiling, is just one more example of why you're my best friend. They spent an hour and a half in Sam's basement after school.

They didn't find an old chemistry set, but they did find three Christmas presents stashed in the middle of a box of linen. See, said Murphy, I don't believe this, said Sam. Why didn't anyone tell me about this before? They were lying on Sam's bed, lying on their backs with their feet propped against the wall. They were eating a stale chocolate Santa Claus. They were trying to decide on another basement where they might find an old chemistry set, a set that might contain powdered sulfur or potassium nitrate. They never put all three ingredients in the same set, said Murphy. They spread it around. How do you know this stuff, said Sam. Murphy pushed up on his shoulders so he was almost

doing a headstand. It's important, he said. If someone doesn't hold on to knowledge like this, it'll be lost forever. Then he leaned his back into the wall and he fell over slowly so he was kneeling on the bed. Your dad was a long shot, said Murphy, but we had to be sure. We're going to check Peter Moore's basement next. Of all the basements where you might expect to find the missing ingredients for a gunpowder recipe, the Moore's basement is surely the last place on earth that would come to anyone's mind. When Peter was born, Mrs. Moore paid a consultant $300 to baby-proof their house. Today, over a decade later, there are still protective plugs in all the electrical outlets

and plastic bumpers over the corners of the kitchen table. The water heater at the Moores house is set so low it's impossible to have a shower without freezing at the end. While the possibility of finding anything combustible in Peter Moore's house was low, Murphy had his reasons for calling on Peter next. Peter Moore is a slight and nervous boy. He was homeschooled until grade five.

And even now, you couldn't say he was completely part of the school system. Whenever there was a hint of disruption to the school routine, Peter's mother kept Peter home. Whenever there was a hint of disruption to the school routine, Peter's mother kept Peter home. Peter was the only kid in the class who wasn't allowed on the annual field trip to the caves at Rattlesnake Point. Last year, when everyone else went on a weekend camping trip to the caves, Peter stayed home. He worked on math flashcards and read aloud from the complete Shakespeare tragedies for children. This, of course, meant the following Monday, when everyone at school was still babbling about the camping trip,

Peter was left quiet and sad and alone on the sidelines, which was when Murphy ate lunch with him for the first time. Peter turned out to be awkward but kind and smart and funny, and Sam and Murphy started to play with him. There were, of course, no chemistry sets in Peter Moore's basement, but it was Peter hanging upside down by his knees from the swing set in the park who said, what about Yesterdayville? You're brilliant, said Murphy. The three boys went home and they got their bikes. They rendezvoused back at the swings a half hour later. Yesterdayville is a vintage toy store. Viewmasters, Lionel trains, a Red Rider lunchbox, an original Chatty Cathy. And sure enough, sure enough on the wall behind the counter, a pale blue metal box the size of a phone book with rust spots on the back,

and on the front, a picture of a boy wearing a bright red sweater vest. The boy was holding a test tube. Houston, said Murphy, we have liftoff. Set cost $79. We can't afford that, said Peter. Don't worry, said Murphy. We aren't going to buy it. Your mother's going to buy it for us. No way, said Peter. No way, said Peter, sounding instantly defeated now as i said jenny moore is a worry wart and her son peter suffers from it peter isn't the only one who suffers from it everyone in jenny moore's orbit ends up feeling defeated and inadequate sometimes it seems that whenever anything goes wrong in the neighborhood,

Jenny Moore's there to offer editorial comment. When little Fatima tripped in the park, her mother Rashida hardly had time to chastise herself for not being right by her side when Jenny Moore appeared shaking her head. Well, she said, helpfully. That's why I never let my Peter out of reach when he was that age. Well, one of the Turlington twins got the chicken pox the week before Christmas. Jenny Moore nodded knowingly to Mary Turlington. That's why I never let my Peter go into department stores at this time of the year. And when Ruth Kellman's daughter swallowed a plastic Barbie shoe, Jenny Moore didn't hesitate to point out that the only toys that she ever let in her house were large wooden handmade things.

There's no way my mother's buying a chemistry set, said Peter again. But two weeks later, two weeks later, of all things, there was Jenny Moore walking out the front door of Yesterdayville with a chemistry set tucked under her arm. Murphy had started the sales pitch, but it was Peter who closed the deal. Tell her it's from the 1950s, said Murphy. Tell her it's educational. Maybe, said Peter, suddenly hopeful. Maybe that might work. Peter had immediately realized the effects those words would have on his mother. Chemistry and educational.

Indeed, when he brought the subject up the next day, confident, self-satisfied, self-righteous Jenny Moore had been flooded with guilt. While she believed with all her heart that no one could teach her children better than she could, Jenny Moore also knew that she had neglected Peter's scientific education when she had homeschooled him. She had neglected it because she had at best an imperfect grasp of the world of science. She remembered precisely nothing from her old school days, had found every second of biology, chemistry, and physics so utterly baffling that the only image she could conjure up of her high school science lab was of an experiment in which she had poured a vial of something into a vial of something else,

changing the first something from a clear liquid into an extremely pleasant shade of blue. In fact, it was science, or the lack thereof, that had eventually forced Jenny Moore to abandon her teaching and send Peter off to the harsh world of institutional education. So when Peter came home and mentioned that he thought he might be lagging behind the class in science, that all of the other kids had been doing simple science experiments for years, Jenny Moore, overcome by guilt and self-doubt, didn't pause for a second to consider the dangers lurking in a vintage chemistry set.

And so the boys gathered two weeks later on a Tuesday afternoon after school. They gathered in Peter's basement, and they opened the chemistry set like they were opening the Ark of the Covenant. On one side, there was a Bunsen burner and four glass test tubes, a pair of tongs, a candle, and a can of alcohol fuel. Jeez, said Peter, life was better then. There was also a bottle brush and two instruction manuals and 22 bottles of chemicals. and two instruction manuals and 22 bottles of chemicals. One of them was potassium nitrate. Another was sulfur.

Murphy was beaming. Stand back, said Murphy. Murphy took the jar of carbon powder from his pocket and emptied it into one of the test tubes. He added an equal measure of sulfur and it into one of the test tubes. He added an equal measure of sulfur and tapped in some of the potassium nitrate. He held the test tube up. Voila, he said proudly. It was Sam who said, now what? Murphy, of course, had never considered the now what. Murphy had been driven by the force of pure science. Holding a test tube full of gunpowder was the now what as far as Murphy was concerned.

The possession of this thing was all a payoff that Murphy needed. It was Pete who said, what happens if you set it on fire? It would flare up, said Murphy. Like what, said Sam? Like a flare, said Murphy. The three boys looked at each other. We need matches, said Sam. We don't have any matches, said Pete. My mom's opposed to matches. What if you want to light candles, said Sam. She's opposed to candles too, said Pete. Ahem, said Murphy.

Murphy was holding up a package of matches. Pete said, what if my mother comes downstairs? And so they retreated to the safest place they could think of, the furnace room. Peter shut the door behind them. Murphy tapped a little of the powder from the test tube onto the floor beside the Moore's hulking gas furnace. Then he leaned over and he lit a match. Then he leaned over and he lit a match. The match flared and went out. Murphy lit another match. The same thing happened.

Then he lit a third, and it caught, and he held the burning match to the pile of powder. And just as Murphy had predicted, the gunpowder flared up with a pleasing whoosh. The flare was larger than the boys had imagined. It was like the flare from the back of a rocket ship. It flared up and then it went out, leaving the edgy smell of sulfur hanging in the furnace room. Again, said Pete.

Grinning like a boy who had all his life been living in a cave, as if this was the original discovery of fire. Murphy tipped more powder onto the furnace room floor, and he struck another match. And just like the first time, the match fizzled again. But the next one didn't, and Murphy lit the second pile of gunpowder on the floor, and then a third. Murphy held up the test tube. But the next one didn't, and Murphy lit the second pile of gunpowder on the floor.

And then a third. Murphy held up the test tube. Murphy said, there's enough for one more. Peter said, let me try. Murphy gave Peter the matches. Upstairs, Mrs. Moore was standing at the top of the basement stairs feeling smug. When the boys had arrived at her house, Mrs. Moore had conspicuated a large box of Smarties from Sam. Mrs. Moore was about to introduce her son's friends to healthy food.

She'd just finished preparing the boys a snack. She was holding a tray of whole wheat flaxseed carob cookies and three steaming mugs of hot soy beverage. Downstairs, Murphy was pouring the fourth pile of powder onto the furnace room floor. Pete had already lit his match. It was burning towards his fingers, and Murphy wasn't going fast enough. Peter said, this is the last match. It was burning towards his fingers and Murphy wasn't going fast enough. Peter said, this is the last match. Peter said, hurry up. Peter could feel the heat of the match on his fingers.

He had to do something or they were going to waste his turn. So Peter did the only thing that he could think of doing. He reached out to light the powder which Murphy was still pouring from the test tube. doing. He reached out to light the powder which Murphy was still pouring from the test tube. And that's when Peter's mom opened the furnace room door. Murphy was the only one who saw her. And Murphy froze. He was holding the test tube at a 45-degree angle. The bottom of the test tube was pointing directly at Peter's mom. Then in a horrible moment of suspended animation that always signals disaster, Murphy saw what Peter was about to do. Murphy tried to blow out the match. He was too late. Peter touched the powder with the flame. In the split second before it caught, Peter's mom looked at the boys,

crouched on the floor and said, snack time. And then the powder caught on fire. The little flame burned through the small pile of powder at the mouth of the tube. And then it continued along the rest of the powder at the mouth of the tube, and then it continued along the rest of the powder right up into the test tube itself. There was a brilliant flash and a terrifying clap, and the gunpowder blew out the back of the tube in Murphy's hand, and a bright ball of flame shot across the furnace room, heading directly for Peter's mom. across the furnace room, heading directly for Peter's mom.

Everything was in slow motion. Slow enough that Peter's mom had enough time to realize that something was odd about the scene in front of her. Slow enough for her to realize that it was a fireball flying towards her. Slow enough for her to take a step backward before the ball of flame hit her dead in the center of her chest, dead in the center of her blue fleece vest. There was a thud when the fireball made contact, and Pete's mom grunted. And by the time Pete and Sam had turned around to look, Pete's mom was standing in the door looking stunned. Her vest had vaporized.

All that was left of her blue fleece vest was the inside lining and the metal zipper hanging around her neck. Later, when she took off the lining, she found the image of a zipper seared onto her turtleneck. Yet she wasn't hurt, not a bit. Neither was Pete or Murphy. No one was hurt, and no one said a word. Everyone stared for a second, the boys looking directly at Pete's mom, who was still holding the tray of snacks. It was Pete's mom who was the first to speak. Snack time? She said again, weekly. And then the heat from the fireball and the vaporizing vest set off the automatic sprinkler system. Water rained down on all of them, and Pete's mom fainted. There was another explosion when the snack tray hit the

floor a second before she did. The boys looked at Jenny Moore sprawled amidst the mess of carob cookies and soy beverage, and then they turned to each other, and Murphy said, maybe I should go home now. But Murphy didn't go right home. Murphy stayed, and the boys helped Mrs. Moore upstairs, her sodden shoes squishing all the way up.

And then while she lay on the couch and Peter stroked his mother's hand, Murphy and Sam cleaned up the spilled snack. As they finished, a fire truck and two police cars screeched up to the house, summoned by the automatic alarm built into the sprinkler system. summoned by the automatic alarm built into the sprinkler system. When Murphy finally slipped outside, the street looked like the final scene in a Bruce Willis movie. There were fire engines and two police cars and a group of neighbors who had gathered on the sidewalk. Rashida Chudry was there and Mary Turlington.

Ruth Kellman was just walking over to the house to get a better look. Everyone pressed around, wet, bedraggled, pathetic-looking Murphy. We didn't know what we were doing, said Murphy, playing to the crowd. Mrs. Moore bought Peter a chemistry set. We didn't know it was that dangerous. We were unsupervised. Jenny Moore phoned Morley that night and apologized in a roundabout sort of way. That was satisfying, said Morley when she hung up. And this coming May, you'll be happy to know, for the first time ever,

Peter Moore will be allowed on the weekend trip to the caves at Rattlesnake Park. And he'll bring with him an extra large pack of Smarties. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. That was the story we call the science experiment. We're going to take a short break right now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another story about Sam and Murphy, and this one was one of Stuart's favourite stories. So stay with us. Welcome back.

Time for our second story now. We recorded this story at one of my favorite places in Canada, the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec. This is Macaulay's Mountain. The dirt road that climbs the hill back of old man Macaulay's barn, or Macaulay's Mountain as people in the narrows call it, climbs with a steady and certain resolve. It bisects the mountain like a stripe bisects a flag, running from the bottom right of the hill until it loops around to the other side at the top and disappears. You wouldn't want to drive up it in your city car, even though you could make it as far as Macaulay's sugar shack. Above the sugar bush, you wouldn't want to drive anything

along the road, except maybe a dirt bike or an ATV, though plenty of people go walking up there. Once you pass the sugar bush, there's grass growing down the middle of the road, and the trees are closing in, and it's possible to imagine a time when the forest might swallow the road entirely. and it's possible to imagine a time when the forest might swallow the road entirely. But it is a grand place. And you can understand why two boys who walked up there for the first time unsupervised, as Sam and his friend Murphy did this summer, would come away with adventure on their minds.

This was the first summer Sam's been in Big Narrows without Dave and Morley. He is at that awkward age, too young to be left alone, too old to be looked after. So he went alone to visit his grandmother, and his best friend Murphy went along for the company. The boys stayed with Margaret and her new husband, Smith, and they roamed around Big Narrows on two old bikes that Smith found for them, exploring the world in a way that they never could have if they had stayed in the city. Macaulay's Mountain soon became their favorite place. There's just so much adventure for boys to find on the mountain. The jumping cliff, the lake, the old abandoned cabin, but nothing more exciting than the call to adventure that radiates like waves of heat from the abandoned car

that is rusting away where the road flattens at the edge of the blueberry field just before the pond. Over the years, countless boys have come upon the wreck and have reacted pretty much the same way as Sam and Murphy reacted when they came upon it. Murphy saw it first. He stopped dead in his tracks. His mouth dropped, his heartbeat accelerating. What, said Sam, looking at his friend. Oh my God, said Sam, looking where his friend was pointing.

Both of them motionless now. The car was no more than ten yards away. And both of them were thinking exactly the same thing. Dead bodies. As if they were one, they both took a step backwards. There can't be bodies, said Sam, reasonably. It looks like it's been there for years. Skeletons, said Murphy.

Zombies, said Sam. Lost souls. What more could a boy ask for in the dog days of summer than a half-buried, wrecked car, a whiff of fear, and the possibility of fear ratcheting into terror? A plan, said Murphy. We need a plan. And so they worked out a plan, driven more by their curiosity than their bravery. One of them would approach the car. The other? The other would hang back so if anything bad happened, he could go for help. Who, said Sam? Me, said Murphy. I run faster. If something happens, I can run for help.

You can't run faster, said Sam. I can beat you anytime. So they flipped a nickel. And so it was Sam who carried the stick they dug out of the forest, swinging it by his hip like a club as he walked ever so carefully toward the car. The blueberry field suddenly still. His feet crunching the gravel on the road, his heart pounding, his body half turned in case he had to bolt. Careful, said Murphy, ready to bolt himself. It was like something from one of those movies, that moment when the hero confronts the great fearful thing, the beast, the mountain, the werewolf, or in this case, what was left of a 1948 Studebaker Land Cruiser. The car once belonged to Peter McCauley, the older of the two McCauley brothers. Peter put the car in the ditch on an October night in the 1960s. He had planned to pull it out, but it snowed that night.

And the snow didn't melt. And that meant the car had to stay on the mountain until spring. And that was the spring that Peter Macaulay was killed. No one could believe it at the time. Peter, so full of life, so full of adventure. Peter, who everyone knew would one day take over the Macaulay farm until he died on it. Peter, dead and gone. No one had the heart to move the car that summer. And the next one, Peter's father, the original old man Macaulay, passed on himself, and so the car stayed put.

A rusting memorial to Peter and his lost youth. The present owner of the Macaulay farm, the latest old man Macaulay, is actually Peter's younger brother, Garth. Garth was in the car the night Peter put it in the ditch, and driving the tractor the afternoon the combine killed him. Car was all Garth had left of his brother, and he liked that it was up there by the field. He never made any effort to move it. Any useful bits from the engine had been long scavenged, and the window shot out by hunters, but the steering wheel was still there, and remarkably, it still had tires. Sam peered in the passenger side window. It's empty, he said.

Back seat, said Murphy. Empty, said Sam. What about under the seat, said Murphy. I can't see under the seat, said Sam. What about under the seats, said Murphy? I can't see under the seats, said Sam. Look under the seats, said Murphy. I'd have to open the door, said Sam. And he walked back and he handed Murphy the stick and he said, you look under the seats. Murphy rolled his eyes.

Murphy said, do I have to do everything? There was nothing under the seats. And soon enough, they were sitting in it. Murphy in the driver's seat, Sam beside him in the same seat where Garth McCauley was sitting that October night so long ago. Murphy had his hands on the steering wheel. If we could get it out of the ditch, said Murphy, we could drive it down the mountain. If we could get it out of the ditch, said Murphy, we could drive it down the mountain. Murphy was trying to jerk the wheel to the left and the right,

leaning forward and peering out over the hood, turning around, checking his blind spot. Then he let the wheel go and he reached out and he opened the glove compartment. There was a snake sleeping in there. It fell into Sam's lap. Sometime in their lives, those boys will move faster. After all, they're still young. It was in my lap, said Sam, when they stopped running about 200 yards down the road. It was a rattler and it was in my lap.

It wasn't a rattler, said Murphy. It was a mamba. The deadliest snake in the world. It was half an hour before they were able to summon the resolve to return. They didn't want to. They had to. The idea of being behind the wheel of that car with the wind in their hair was too good. Wouldn't we need to have our license, said Sam. They were back in the front seat. Murphy shook his head. Murphy pointed out the window. Murphy said,

that isn't technically a road, or this a car, for that matter, technically. There's no engine. It's a wreck. You don't need a license to drive a wreck. My father has a license, said Sam. The trick, said Murphy, is going to be getting it out of the ditch. Now they were circling the car, Murphy squatting down on his haunches, peering at the back wheels. Murphy said, we're going to need a jack and a pulley and some boards. We can jack it up and put the boards under the wheels and pull it out. It was Sam who found the crowbar lying on the front bumper.

It was Murphy who said they should pry open the trunk. There could be a jack in there, said Murphy. He never imagined there'd be a pulley, too. They found a pile of boards near the old cabin by the lake. By the time they gathered everything up, it was time for supper. We have to go, said Sam. And so they went home and came back the next morning. They worked at it all morning. At noon, they sat on the roof of the car and ate their lunch, their shirts off, their faces stained with mud and sweat. Soon, said Murphy, if we get it all the way down, said Sam,

we could fix it up, and when we get our licenses, we'd have our own car. They had never worked with such concentration and determination in their young lives. If they worked half that hard, a quarter that hard at school, they would skip grades. They'd win scholarships and medals. They would go to Oxford or Cambridge or God knows where. and medals, they would go to Oxford or Cambridge or God knows where. But schoolwork doesn't involve sleeping snakes or old cars or the promise of great adventure. They ate their lunch and they jumped off the roof, the smell of the sun on their skinny arms.

And they got back at it, jacking the wheels one by one and shoring them up with the wood they had found by the cabin. And slowly, incredibly, unbelievably, they got it done. All four wheels shored up and clear. Okay, said Murphy. Okay, said Sam. They had the pulley wrapped around a tree on the far side of the road. Slowly, said Murphy. Slowly, said Sam. And slowly, it came.

As if by magic, with slow and certain determination. Before they knew it, they had it on the road, lined up and pointing down the slope with a log across the front wheels to stop it from rolling away on them. Are you ready, said Murphy. Murphy was standing on the road by the passenger side bumper. Ready, said Sam. There were no seat belts. Sam was lashed into the driver's seat with the rope that they had brought with them. He was wearing ski goggles. He was wearing ski goggles. Three, said Murphy.

Are you sure you can do this, said Sam. Two, said Murphy. Just get out of the way, said Sam. One, said Murphy. And he yanked the log from in front of the wheels. Nothing happened. Sam said, nothing's happening. And Murphy ran to the back of the car to give it a push,

but before he was halfway there, the car was moving by itself, rolling down the road slowly. Slow enough that Murphy was able to easily swing himself into the passenger seat, try himself into place, and put on his goggles. They were going faster now. How fast? Depends who you ask. Let's just say a lot faster than you'd want either your son or daughter coming down the side of a hill lashed into a 1946 Studebaker Land Cruiser wearing ski goggles.

into a 1946 Studebaker Land Cruiser wearing ski goggles. Sam shouted, which one's the brake pedal? Murphy said, there are no brakes. Sam said, how are we going to stop it then? Murphy said, I'm working on that. Just get us around this corner. They made it around the corner and the next one, but not the third, which was surprising because they were actually slowing down,

coming onto a long flat stretch when the front wheel caught the ditch and Sam lost control. And then, well, if you could get them to talk to you about it. They'd both swear they were airborne. That they got air and then they hit the ground with a mighty thwack and it shuddered to a stop. Yowzas, said Sam. How fast were we going? A hundred, said Murphy. Maybe two. They untied themselves and they got out and they stood on the side of the road and sam said this is the best day of my entire life it was only when they got back to their bikes that it occurred to them that they might have done something wrong joyriding said said Sam. Grand Theft Auto, said Murphy. If they catch us, they'll send us to Juvie.

They went back up and they took off their shirts and they used their shirts to wipe the car from top to bottom. Everywhere we touched it, said Murphy. And then they went back down and got their bikes and they pedaled home. They talked it over backwards and forwards, inside and out. They lasted a day and a half before they told anyone about it. Two days after their ride on the mountain, they went to the police station. They stood by the door uncertainly. Police chief and sole member of the Big Narrows Police Force, Revlin Cavanaugh, was sitting at his desk, preoccupied with a bowl of his wife's homemade corn chowder.

Come on in, boys, he said when he finally spotted them. What can I do for you? We're here to report a crime, said Sam. Theft under, said Murphy. Joy riding and driving a vehicle with an obliterated ID. I beg your pardon, said Revlin, reaching for his statute book, confused. Section 354.2, said Murphy. Revlin stared at his half-finished soup, sadly,

and said, we better go check this out, boys. When they got outside, he said, you leave your bikes here. We'll go in the squad car. When they got into the car, he said, I'm afraid you boys are going to have to ride in back. Procedure.

Once they were out of town, he put on the siren and the flashing red light. Sam and Murphy sat in the back seat as white as ghosts. No one said much as they walked up the mountain, past the sugar shack and the trail to the jumping cliff, around the corner to the big rock, up the little rise, their little hearts pounding, and then around the next corner to where they had driven into the little rise, their little hearts pounding, and then around the next corner to where they had driven into the ditch. And when they got there, the car was gone. It was right here, said Murphy. There, said Sam, pointing. But it wasn't. It wasn't there at all.

They kept climbing around the three corners, one, two, three, up the long, slow hill, Revlon taking off his hat and wiping the sweat from his brow. And there it was, where it had always been, where they had found it that first afternoon, where it had been for all those years since that night in October when Peter McCauley drove it off the road with his brother Garth sitting by his side. Boys, said Chief Cavanaugh, shaking his head and pointing at it, doesn't look like we have a crime here. But you can see the dirt, said Sam, by the wheels where we dug it up.

You can see where we dug it up, said Murphy. Boys, said Chief Cavanaugh, what I see is a 1948 Studebaker Land Cruiser sitting in the same place where it sat for some 50 years now. I think you boys are in the clear. He drove them back to town, and they got on their bikes and they rode out of town slowly. They stopped on the Thamesville Bridge and they took the path down and sat on the riverbank throwing sticks in the water and tried to figure it out. It happened, said Sam. We did it.

I don't know, said Murphy. There are many cases of socio-psychological phenomena mentioned in the literature. People can become convinced of things that never happened. UFOs and religious miracles, to name a two. It's just mass hysteria. We weren't hysterical, said Sam. We did it.

Someone took it back. They'll never know the truth of it. Neither of them will ever figure it all out. Murphy will never go back to the mountain. But Sam will. And every time he goes up there, he'll tell the person or the people he's with about those three days this summer. And they'll make their own guesses as to what happened. But no one will ever get it right.

Peter's brother Garth, old man Macaulay, knows a whole lot more than anyone else about that car slowly rusting away on the side of the road that is slowly disappearing itself. But even he doesn't know all of it. He knows that Sam and Murphy found the ropes and the pulley that he left in the trunk, especially for boys like them. And he knows that over the decades, five other pairs of boys have done pretty much the same thing. Boys who found the things he left and figured out how to use them to get his brother's car out of the ditch and ride it down the mountain one more time. brother's car out of the ditch and ride it down the mountain one more time. He always knows when they're at it, and he's always there with his tractor to pull the car back up the hill and set it back where it belongs. And when he's done that, to inflate the tires and to put the rubber snake

back in the glove compartment. Reassured in some strange way that his brother left something behind that still gives people joy. He knows that part, but even he doesn't know all of it. He doesn't know, for instance, that Stephen Kerrigan and Megan Lorius were sitting in the back seat of his brother's old car on the summer evening that Stephen proposed to Megan, or that Bernadette Armstrong spent a night in it some 40 years ago when she was a young mother in her early 30s and thought that she was going to leave Alfred.

And decided the next morning as the sun rose over the mountain that she loved him too much to do that. She deserved better, but she resolved to do better instead. And she had a good cry and she walked walked down the mountain, feeling the better for it. These things he doesn't know. These moments, fading like old photographs, like the memory of his brother Peter, who left the car at the edge of the blueberry fields near the top of the mountain and vanished himself before he could get it back. All these things hover in the air up there while the forest closes in and the car

rusts and Peter lies in his grave in the graveyard at the bottom of the hill. God rest his soul. God rest his soul. That was the story we call Macaulay's Mountain. That image of a lost car in the woods is so evocative to me. Close your eyes and think back to when you were a kid you probably had one of those somewhere i i know i did i found an abandoned car at my cottage it was a i think it was a jeep or an suv something like that and it was off the road kind of maybe 50 feet or so into the woods and to my overly imaginative kid brain what had happened is it hadn't been able to make the turn on the road,

and it sort of tumbled down the hill and ended up, I don't know, 50 feet or so into the woods. I was mesmerized by it. The line in that story that you just heard where the boys see the abandoned car and their first thought is, dead bodies. I totally remember that feeling. The car in the woods at the cottage was like a magnet for me. I was drawn to it. I had to go see what was inside, but then like I couldn't go see what was inside because, well, dead bodies. dead bodies. I used to check on the car every year and God bless my parents. They were totally okay with it. More than that, I think they even encouraged it. I think it was actually

my dad who first pointed it out. I remember him taking me and my little brother Toby to look at it. And I remember him asking questions about what we thought had happened. He was always asking more questions than he answered, sparking my curiosity and blowing on the embers of my imagination. And then standing back and waiting to see if it would spark. He was so good at that. He still is. He did that with the car. And every summer when we arrived at the cottage, I'd go and check on it. Half terrified, half consumed, but too curious and too interested to stay away, even if I'd wanted to. I don't remember when I stopped checking on it. But at some point I must have.

Maybe when I was older and started working at camp or something. And my idle days of summer were behind me. must have. Maybe when I was older and started working at camp or something and my, you know, my idle days of summer were behind me. You know, those days when there's more time than there are things to do. Whatever the case, somewhere along the way, I stopped thinking about that car on the hill behind the cottage. And then years later, like, I don't know, 10, 15 years later, when I first met Josh, my husband, he was at the cottage, maybe for the first time, certainly that first summer, we just started dating. And we were still in that new love stage. It's a phase me and my friend Sherry refer to as the chocolate pudding phase, where everything is sweet and smooth and special. And by the way, Josh and I have now

been married, oh God, 14 years, I guess. We've been together for 18 and we are now in what I call the quinoa stage, which is like way healthier, obviously, than chocolate pudding. I mean, quinoa is exactly the kind of thing you should be eating and absolutely the kind of thing you can build a meal on. But it's also not, you know, quite as special as pudding. Anyway, I told Josh all about the car and how we used to go see it every year. And I was so excited to show it to him, to let him enter this little room of my brain. And we hiked up the hill behind the cottage and we left the road behind and we started bushwhacking, raspberry bushes clawing at our pants and mosquitoes swarming excitedly, multiplying

by the minute. And we got to the place where the car had been and it wasn't there. I started thinking like, this can't be the place. This can't be the place. It was hard to tell. It had been like years, over 10 years since I'd been there, but I was determined to find it. I wandered around circling like a dog with a scent until I could feel Josh losing interest. I'm not sure he had ever been interested in the car, but, you know, he was interested in me. And that was enough to get him up the hill and into the woods, but it was not enough to keep him there. You know, with the prickly branches and the mosquitoes and the squishy ground and the call of the cottage and the beach and a beer and a barbecue. He said, are you sure this thing is here? And the tone in his voice made me realize there's only one right answer to this question. And it really wasn't a question. It was a statement. So we turned around and we retraced our steps and we left the bush behind and headed back to the cottage.

When I was left wondering, is that car still there somewhere? Was it ever there? When I was a kid, I used to have these elaborate dreams, dreams so vivid, so realistic, so real, that I thought that they were memories, the foggy haze of childhood mixing with the mystery of midnight. And it was only later, as an adult, that I started to realize that some of my childhood memories hadn't actually happened. It's a weird feeling to realize that you'd made them up, or I guess not made them up, but that you'd confused dreams with reality. but that you'd confuse dreams with reality.

After that day with Josh wandering in the woods, I wondered if this memory, the car, was that. Had I dreamt it? Like, all of it? Or had it actually happened? I could find out, of course. I could just ask my dad. But I've never done that. Not even now. Not even today before recording this show. I thought about it, but I just, it was weird. I just like, I didn't do it. And I realized just a few minutes ago that I guess I just don't want to know. I don't have vivid dreams like that anymore. In fact, I don't dream at all,

like never, or at least I don't remember them. I've been told that everybody dreams and I know that and I know that's a fact, but it has been years, decades since I have remembered any of my dreams, since I felt like I had a dream. And so maybe I just don't want to know that this memory, a memory so strong and so real that right now when I close my eyes, I can picture it and feel it. Maybe I don't want to know that it was just a dream. Maybe that would strip it of its power or its mystery. Or maybe, maybe I just like the idea that the car is still up there behind my dad's cottage, engulfed by the forest. Maybe I like thinking that it's gone back to the land around it. My dad still owns that little cottage, and I go there every summer with my own kids now.

And I like the idea that one day, if I want to, I can climb that hill behind the cottage and dip into the woods and uncover that car. And maybe, along with it, my ability to dream. It's time for today. But we'll be back here next week with two more Dave and Marley stories, including this one, a story about the time Dave goes to a yoga retreat. Dave looked the menu up and down while she was choosing and visibly relaxed. Just wasn't as strict as he thought it was going to be.

Dave chose happy hour. Three honey mint refresh colonic cocktails. Three honey mint refresh colonic cocktails. You can hear the whole story next week on Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Greg Duclute is our recording engineer. Theme music is by Danny Michelle. The show is produced by Louise Curtis and me, Jess Milton.

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