Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Sam - Boy Wanted

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

“It was Sam’s first year in high school. And it was not going well.” Sam’s turn this week: We have a story about Sam’s first job and about finding his passion. Plus, an essay from Stuart McLean about his first jobs. Including his life-changing experience at summer camp. 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. Last week, we played a story about one of Steph's first jobs. This week, it's Sam's turn. We have a story about Sam and his first job, about finding his passion and, in doing so, finding a little bit of himself, too. That's in the second half of the show. First, we're going to hear from Stuart about his first jobs.

Well, I met a young woman in town this week. I met her when I came here to this high school to talk to a few of the classes. Her name is Savannah Robinson, and she is 17 years old. And after she had asked me a few questions about what it is I do, I asked her a few about herself. Savannah told me that she is in grade 12, graduating this year, and if everything goes as planned, heading to university in the fall. This summer she has a job working at the Windermere Pub, where she is hoping she will make a little more money than she did last summer when she worked at the marina.

It was fun working at the marina last summer, especially because when she went to work the first day, she wore the same blue windbreaker her father Tony wore when he worked at the very same marina some 30 summers ago. Summer jobs. I got my first summer job the summer I was 16 years old. I was hired as a counselor at a YMCA day camp. It was a big deal for me. But the highlight of that summer was not at work. It came at the end of every second week when the kids were sent home early,

and we were paid cash money in little brown envelopes. My pal Alec Cunningham and I would take our envelopes and our teenage selves down the street to Murray's Family Restaurant. We'd order the very same lunch every time, vanilla shakes and the hamburger royale, which came with cheese and fries and all the fixings. And when they came, the two of us would sit there staring at our burgers like two big-time operators. There's nothing quite like the feeling of having money in your pocket that you've earned yourself. That was the start of it for me that summer at the Y. That was the start of it for me, that summer at the Y.

The next summer, or maybe the summer after that, my father got me a job in the small village of Saint-Etienne, Quebec. I had failed grade 11 French. For the second year running. And I think he decided plucking me from my Anglo-Montreal neighborhood and dropping me into the heart of French Quebec would do me good. Or more to the point, perhaps, serve me right. Got me a job working on the roads, working with a crew who were paving the highway that ran alongside the St. Morris River

between St. Roch de Mackinac and St. Jean de Pille. When I arrived, I realized, to my horror, that I was the only English-speaking person for miles. I spent an incredibly lonely couple of months there. On the weekends, when the French college boys I was living with went home to Quebec, I hitchhiked some 20 kilometers to Grand Mare, which was the closest town I knew of where I could buy a Montreal Gazette. One Saturday afternoon, I took the paper into the hotel bar, and I sat down at a table smack in the middle of the room. It was livelier in there than you'd expect for a Saturday afternoon, which I put down to the famous French joie de vivre.

And trying to get into the spirit, I sprawled my feet up on the extra chair at my table. I flung open my newspaper and I started to read. When I spotted a waiter, I waved him over and asked for a beer and he gave me one off his tray but wouldn't take my money. Guess you pay when you're finished, I thought. And I kept reading my paper. And it was some time later, much too much later, and only when I saw the bride dance by my table in her bridal gown that I realized what was going on.

I'd crashed a wedding, and everyone there was either too polite or too horrified to say anything to me. And everyone there was either too polite or too horrified to say anything to me. The next summer, the summer of 1967, was Canada's centennial. The summer the World's Fair, Expo 67, was mounted in my hometown, Montreal. I just finished my first year in university, and as spring approached, all my university friends were busy lining up jobs at the fair. The theme was man and his world. And my pal Nick decided to take that slogan as a personal challenge. Nick began that summer with a pledge

to swing a date with a woman from each of the 60-odd participating countries. Nick, who was nothing if not well-organized when it came to organizing dates, sealed the deal when he triumphantly spent the fair's final night with a flight attendant from Czechoslovakia. While my friends spent that summer embracing the world in Montreal, I, oh, what an idiot, decided that was the summer to head west. I took the train across the country and got myself a construction job in Calgary. On weekends, I would hitchhike to Banff where, instead of Czechoslovak air hostesses, I spent my nights battling the coyotes in the buffalo paddock on the edge of town.

I'd somehow come to the conclusion that the fence around the paddock would keep me safe from the bears. I can't explain what made me think that camping out in what amounted to a cage full of buffalo should be any safer than camping in a forest full of bears. should be any safer than camping in a forest full of bears, except to say I was young and probably shouldn't have lived to be this old. Certainly not if Darwin was right about anything. I thought it was a pretty good one, too. I saw a little of Expo when I got home at the end of August,

though not nearly as much of the fair or the world as my pal Nick. I had a number of other summer jobs over those years. I worked in a bar as a busboy, in a factory assembling ski poles, and in a paint factory stacking boxes of paint onto pallets. But my favorite summer job was my last, which was in a pleasing sort of symmetry, working once again for the YMCA, which, of course, was where it began for me. In the summer of 1969, I got a job at Camp Canawana

on the shores of Lake Canawana in the Laurentian Mountains. This is where I found my sea legs. I arrived at camp with a backpack full of fears. But I found myself in a place where I felt for the first time that I was as good as everyone else or where I could contribute to the greater good anyway. And that gave me confidence. And confidence is very important to the growth and development of a young person. Camp was my safe place. And it's only because I found myself there or my best self there

that I was able to find my heart's desire, CBC Radio. I couldn't have done that. I couldn't have tramped off into the unknown if I hadn't had my summers at camp and no doubt all those other summer jobs. I learned something at all of them. You wouldn't expect that a summer camp or a construction job or a few weeks in a bar or a paint factory would amount to much.

But these things add up. And what they add up to is always bigger than you could possibly imagine. So, as another summer takes us in its warm embrace, here's to you, Savannah, and to all of your friends, and to all of their summer jobs. Here's to the summer hotels and the summer camps. Here's to the life hotels and the summer camps. Here's to the lifeguards and the counselors. Here's to the chambermaids and the tour guides, to the gardeners, helpers, and the landscapers. Here's to the landscape of summer work. Here's to waiters and waitresses,

to beginnings and to endings, to hellos and goodbyes, to everyone heading off into the wild blue yonder, I pray that you will learn, as I did, in your summer work, that work is prayer, that God is in the details, and that it is a good life, with so much happiness to be had when you can find it, with so much happiness to be had when you can find it, and that a summer job, like a summer love, can be much more than you had ever imagined. That was Stuart McLean with a script recorded at the Reen M. Case Theatre in Bracebridge, Ontario.

You heard Stuart talk about camp there and about the impact camp had on him. It was the same for me. In fact, summer camp was the very first thing that Stuart and I bonded over. I didn't arrive feeling the same way Stuart did, but I arrived needing something. And someone had seen that in me. At school, I had an incredible teacher named Mary Marshall. I wasn't in her class, but she was my cross-country coach. And I think she saw my eagerness for, I don't know, more, more activity, more experiences, more life. But here's the thing. She didn't just see this in me. She said something about the thing that she saw. She went to my parents and she told them about the camp that

she went to when she was a kid, GBC. She told them what it had done for her and what she thought it could do for me. I have no idea what made them go ahead with it, but they did. And my dad says that they were a bit apprehensive that first year, sending me off to camp. But all of that faded away the day he picked me up. The parking lot at my camp is about 500 meters from the camp itself. Parents park there in the parking lot and then they wait for their kids to walk down the long straight trail into the parking lot. My dad loves telling the story about watching me walk out of camp that very first year. He could see me approaching. And even before talking to me, even before hugging me, he knew camp had been a success. There was just something about the way I was inhabiting my body. I was happy. I was confident. I was sure of myself. I was different. I was the best version of myself. And he could see it all the way from the parking lot. That's how glaringly obvious it

was. And he was right. It had changed me. I've thought a lot over the years about why this is. Everyone talks about the friendships, and sure, that's a huge part of it. One of my very best friends, Wendy Nicholson, is a camp friend. We met at camp, and we never would have met otherwise. And it's through Wendy that I met Josh, my husband. So my camp friends have expanded my world. They come from different backgrounds and different places, and they showed me a way of living that was different than the way I grew up. So yeah, that's a part of it for sure. And so it's fun, of course. I got to do things at camp that I never would have done otherwise. Canoe trips, zip lines, sailing, trampoline, rock climbing, kayaking, high ropes courses, all stuff my family was not into that I got into at camp.

And there's the thing Stuart talked about, the sense of belonging, being a part of something. But there's something else too, something a lot of people are apprehensive about. The very reason that some people don't want to send their kids to camp is the very reason I think they should. As a kid at camp, you are separated from your family. That's hard at first for some kids, but it's also powerful. Being away from my family taught me that I am enough all on my own. It developed my independence, which of course made me confident. And, and this is a big one, when I was away from my family unit, I could be fully and wholly myself. It's like without others there to define me, without the other puzzle pieces around me,

I had to fill in that picture myself. I had to figure out who I was and grow into who I wanted to be. The collective community of camp has a way of seeing the best in people, even before they can see it in themselves. It happened to me, and it happened to Stuart. And what's cool is, I think when we met, we did that for each other too. After the break, you're going to hear a story about a time when that happened to Sam. You're going to learn about Sam's first job, a place where he felt safe. That's coming up next, so stick around. Welcome back. Story time now.

This is a story about Sam's first job. This is Boy Wanted. Took a long time. Three months in all. A lot of people would have given up. Most of them, probably. Well, fact is, most people wouldn't have started. Louie, for instance.

Louis certainly wouldn't have started. It's crazy, said Louis. Why don't you just offer him the job? If you want him to work here so much, why don't you make him an offer? Because, said Mr. Harmon, that's not how things are done. And that is why every morning, just before the boy walked by the store on his way to school, Mr. Harmon slipped the sign into his grocery store window. Boy wanted. As soon as the boy passed by, Mr. Harmon would take the sign down. He didn't want any other applications. Why would you want such a clueless boy, said Louis. He's not clueless, said Mr. Harmon. He's seen the sign. He's thinking about it. He's building his courage.

Mr. Harmon, wise in the ways of boys, was wiser than most in the ways of this boy. But he couldn't be certain. So when the boy finally did come in, and he said, Mr. Harmon, I saw the sign in the window. I'd like to apply for the job. Mr. Harmon almost hugged him. But he didn't. Instead, he stood there beside the pomegranates which he had been stacking into a pyramid and he said, do you have a resume? Of course the boy had a resume. Typed. It was five pages long.

It was Sam's first year in high school and it was not going well. A minor niner. Looked down upon by all. He felt off balance, unsure and awkward. And if that wasn't enough, something was wrong with his voice. At the most inopportune moments, it would go crackly. And there were spots on his face as if his body, which he had never even noticed before, had suddenly turned against him.

Can you imagine, he said to his pal Murphy, what it would be like if on top of all this, I got my puberty? Mr. Harmon waited a week before he called Sam in for an interview. I will never understand you, said Louie. Never. He applied. What are you waiting for? Give him the job already.

And so he did. What are you waiting for? Give him the job already. And so he did. And on the very first day, he put him in charge of fruit. And he told him he had to sweep the section. He had to take the garbage outside. He had to restock, getting stuff from Estelle in the back. And he had to keep an ear open for Louis on cash, calling for a carryout. Where if he saw there was a lineup, he was supposed to go and help bag it.

Sounded easy enough, but there was no training. And truth be told, it wasn't nearly as easy as it sounded. Wasn't easy at all. To make things worse, every time he turned around, there was Mr. Harmon hovering, all eager to point out his mistakes. No, no, no, said Mr. Harmon, nudging him aside as he bagged an order. You keep one hand in the bag so you can set everything down carefully. Mr. Harmon was pulling things out of the bag that Sam had already placed in there carefully. Those figs are going to get crushed, said Mr. Harmon. Put delicate things in their own little bags.

It stops them from falling to the bottom. The worst, however, was when Louie went on break and he had to fill in on cash. Making change. Don't try to do the math in your head, said Mr. Harmon. Mr. Harmon was standing beside him, watching. How much was the bill? $16.36, Mr. Harmon.

And he gave you a $20 bill, Mr. Harmon. Just count it up, said Mr. Harmon. You begin with the pennies. $16.36, right? Harmon. You begin with the pennies. $16.36, right? Plus one, two, three, four pennies makes $37, $38, $39, $16.40. Mr. Harmon smiled. Then add a dime, $16.50. Mr. Harmon was pulling coins out of the cash and handing them to Sam. Now, two quarters, $17. A loony, $18. A to a toonie 20. See, you don't have to do any math. Sam stared at him dumbly. You'll get it, said Mr. Harmon.

But he didn't get it, not at all. He felt as if he was a step behind. He felt like an imposter, clumsy and missing the point. Even alone in his section, he felt anxious, watering, straightening, fluffing. Make it beautiful, Mr. Harmon had said on his first day. To make it beautiful meant to stand the carrots perfectly straight, to lay the romaine one beside the other, to wrap the apples and the oranges and the lemons in tissue and pile them in pyramids.

Like in a picture book, said Mr. Harmon. I want my store to look like a picture book. On this day, he was working on avocados when Mr. Harmon appeared beside him. It was his third week and he thought he was finally getting it. But no, no, no, said Mr. Harmon, not like that. Rotate the pile as you build it. Move the ripe ones to the top and the hard ones to the bottom. Mr. Harmon nudged him aside and started fussing with the fruit. No empty spaces,

every pyramid full, square, and straight. Mr. Harmon stood back and smiled at the avocados. He was proud of himself, but not only because of the avocados, Mr. Harmon was thinking that Sam was working out better than he had hoped. Sam, on the other hand, was thinking, this is my third week and I can't even stack fruit. Next morning, Sam was taking the garbage out when a group of his friends lurched past the store eating takeout. They didn't see him standing in the alley watching them bumping along, but Mr. Harmon did, and he saw the wistful look that crossed Sam's face. That day at lunch, Mr. Harmon wandered into his section and beckoned him. Sam followed him to the

little kitchen at the back of the store. Mr. Harmon nodded at the milk crate opposite the stove. Sam sat down. Sam was thinking, oh boy, I'm about to get fired. But it wasn't his last supper. It was their first lunch. Every day from that day on, Mr. Harmon took Sam into the kitchen at the back And Sam would watch Mr. Harmon cook Well, listen more than watch Because while he cooked, Mr. Harmon talked

On this day, Mr. Harmon was standing there holding a black knife over a ripe tomato When you cut a tomato, he was saying, you must always use a black knife over a ripe tomato. When you cut a tomato, he was saying, you must always use a sharp knife. A dull knife might crush the flesh. Then he said, I used to be a barber. This is the way he talked, seasoning his conversation with a sequence of delicious non sequiturs. Did you know that? asked Mr. Harmon.

I had a barber store in the connection, my own store. I had customers who came in every week. Fancy businessmen. Big tippers. He lay the blade of the knife against the skin of the tomato and looked up at Sam. I shaved them. Cleaned up their necks. He pushed the knife forward and then pulled it back towards him. The tomato fell into two perfect halves, seeds and juice leaking onto the old wood cutting board. Mr. Harmon brought one half of the tomato to his nose,

inhaled deeply, and smiled. Sam said, what happened to the barber shop, Mr. Harmon? Mr. Harmon was crinkling salt between his fingers. Flaked salt, said Mr. Harmon. It's from the sea. See how soft the flakes are? Sam nodded. But the barbershop, Mr. Harmon. Mr. Harmon said, The Beatles came.

Sam said, they came to your barber shop? Mr. Harmon shook his head. Mr. Harmon said, Jess, they came and no one wanted haircuts anymore. Mr. Harmon picked up a second tomato. Sam said, what did you do, Mr. Harmon? Mr. Harmon said, I closed the barbershop and got a job in a factory. He had four tomatoes cut in half now.

And he poured a little olive oil on each one, some salt, some pepper, and then he put the tomatoes into the spattered stainless steel oven. 300 degrees, said Mr. Harmon. Sam looked at his watch. Mr. Harmon was down on his knees staring in the oven. Mr. Harmon said, after three hours, they'll look like shrunken heads. And they will taste like the essence of tomato. But Sam didn't hear that part. It was break time. Sam had gone to relieve Louie.

Mr. Harmon didn't work in the factory for long. He worked in the factory until he couldn't stand it. And then he got a job in his cousin's grocery store. After five years, he bought the store. It was just a regular corner grocery when Mr. Harmon bought it. But slowly his love of food and his sense of order became apparent in the aisles. Slowly, the little store, like all little stores, became a reflection of his personality. What Sam liked the most was the perfection of the place.

Walking into work was like walking into a cookbook. Everything was prepped in the back by Estelle, so everything out front looked perfect. There were cauliflower so pretty you could use them as centerpieces. There were regular beets and golden beets and striped beets and baby beets. There were heirloom carrots and 28 varieties of tomatoes. And pacing up and down the aisles in the middle of it all, like an orchestra conductor, there was Mr. Harmon. Under his tutelage, Sam finally found something he was good at, facing the tomatoes. Met organizing the cans of tomatoes perfectly at the front of the shelf, labels facing out, no spaces.

He loved all the primary colors of the labels, the bright yellow and red cans beside the bright green ones. San Marzano tomatoes from Italy. The greatest tomato in the world, said Mr. Harmon. You know why? The water, said Sam. Yes, said Mr. Harmon. You know why? The water, said Sam. Yes, said Mr. Harmon. And the volcano, said Sam.

The ash. That's right, said Mr. Harmon. Tomatoes from Naples. Figs from Argentina. Grapes from Chile. Sam was learning geography in the best way possible. With his mouth and tummy instead of his brain. First time Mr. Harmon cooked pasta at lunch was the first time Sam ate it without meat sauce.

Mr. Harmon served it with olive oil and garlic and lemon. This is so good, said Sam, sopping up the olive oil with the bread. And oh my stars, the bread. Crusty baguettes that tasted of fire. Black on the bottom, brown on top, soft and airy in the middle, the crust so hard it cut your mouth. Soft and airy in the middle, the crust so hard it cut your mouth. Tastes like burnt caramel, said Sam, except sour. Because it's made from sour dough, said Mr. Harmon, reaching for the salt. He showed him how you could tell by the bottom if the bread had been made by fire or by factory. If it has tiny circles on the bottom, it means it rode a conveyor through a factory oven. He taught him how to dip the bread in olive oil instead of using butter,

sprinkling some of the flaky salt on the oil first. Sam said, you love salt, Mr. Harmon. Mr. Harmon smiled. Mr. Harmon said, flaked sea salt from England. After lunch, Sam went and stared at the shells of pasta. Pasta di Samola di Granduro. Brown paper bags with cellophane windows. Cappellini, bucatini, spaghettini, linguine, and on the shelf of honor, all by itself, farfalle. Pastas shaped like bow ties, each one dyed with squid ink and beet water. Red and black striped bow ties, so perfect you could wear them.

They made him laugh. Now he had a favorite job and a favorite section. One day Mr. Harmon said, You've been here three months. You qualify for a professional discount. 20%. That night Sam took home a bag of pasta and a box of sea salt. He was starting to feel like he belonged.

It wasn't long after that that Mr. Harmon made him his first coffee, a cappuccino. Mr. Harmon made one for himself every morning. This morning, he put one down beside Sam. He had sprinkled sugar on the surface of the foamy milk so it crystallized. Drinking the coffee through the sugar foam, it didn't taste bitter at all. It tasted like the bread.

Burnt caramel. I like it, Mr. Harmon. It made him feel grown up. You like this too, said Mr. Harmon. The two of them were sitting on their milk crates in the little kitchen at the back, a plate of greens covered with ribbons of salty parmesan on their laps. Mr. Harmon was holding a bottle over the cheese. Balsamic, said Mr. Harmon Harmon from Umbria said Sam 18 years old thick like syrup Mr. Harmon smiled

and said Mr. Harmon you can pour it on your vegetables said Sam drizzle said Mr. Harmon you can drizzle it on your vegetables one afternoon Mr. Harmon said, I'm going to the doctor tomorrow. He was holding out a key. I want you to open, he said.

There are moments in every life when things change forever. When boy meets girl, or girl meets boy, and there's a rustle somewhere far away, the sound of a page turning, the cards being shuffled, or a great flock of birds fluttering into the sky. A coming together.

Or maybe it's a coming apart. Maybe it's a sad thing, not a hello thing at all, but a goodbye. And the birds don't flutter. They wheel into the sky, twisting and turning, and you never see them again. And you walk away by yourself under the empty sky, a giant hole ripped in your heart. Or maybe you're working in a grocery store. Maybe you're a boy working in a grocery store and the owner gives you the key to the store and tells you he wants you to open in the morning. Sam woke at six that morning, an hour earlier than he had to. He tiptoed downstairs and he sat at the kitchen table all by himself eating a bowl of Rice Krispies.

As he was leaving, his mother came down in her pajamas. Good luck, she said. He got there 45 minutes before he had to, and he slipped the key in the door, and he ran to the alarm and punched in the numbers that Mr. Harmon had written on the small piece of yellow paper. He held his breath until the flashing red light turned to a steady green. And then he exhaled and went about his business.

He turned on the lights. He uncovered the vegetables. He fetched the float from under the potatoes in the walk-in cooler. He put out the berries and the fruit. He set the sandwich board on the sidewalk. And then, everything done, he made a coffee on the stove the way Mr. Harmon had taught him, frothing the milk in the stainless steel steamer. Then he opened the door and took the coffee over to the cash register and sat on the stool

and waited. He knew the day was going to be crazy until Mr. Harmon got there, but he also knew that he could handle it. It was a lovely feeling, sitting there in the quiet all by himself, knowing that. It was a feeling he'd never had before, like being on a stage before a play, or on a sailboat waiting for the wind, a feeling of being grown up. As it happened, the first customer was a young man that morning, older than Sam but still young, a college student. He wandered around and then he brought his basket to the counter and stared at his stuff tentatively.

Cooking supper for a girl, he said. Sam looked at the order and then up at the college boy. It's her birthday, said the boy. Sam nodded. Then he pointed at the box of spaghetti and he said, may I make a recommendation? And he walked around from the cash and over to the pasta section and he came back with a brown paper bag of the bow tie farfelli and a little jar of homemade pesto.

He said, I think this will make a bigger impression. Then he said, one more? And the college boy nodded. And Sam picked up the iceberg lettuce and came back with a bunch of arugula and a small piece of Parmigiano-Reggiano. He said, do you have a vegetable peeler? The college boy nodded. Sam said, use it to peel the cheese. Let the pieces of cheese lie on top of the arugula like ribbon.

Then, drizzle it with some balsamic. The college boy said, balsamic? From Umbria, said Sam, as he reached for his coffee, he was beaming. If he'd had a thought bubble hanging over his head, and if we could have read it, it would have said, This is awesome. That was the story we call Boy Wanted. We recorded that story in 2012 at the Upper Canada Playhouse in Morrisburg, Ontario. All right, that's it for today, but we'll be back here next week with two David Morley stories all about summertime.

And then one night, there were shooting stars. It was a night Sam and Murphy will never forget. They were in the backyard lying on the soft grass. The sky couldn't have been blacker. The stars couldn't have been closer or further away. It was hard to tell. Close and far at the same time. A constellation of confusion. They'd been lying there for maybe half an hour, lying on their backs head to head, lost from the world of words. When Murphy said, did you see that? Like a flash from a camera, except longer and streakier. From one side of the sky,

right across to the other. The two of them sat up abruptly and stared at each other in wonder. It was there and then it was gone. And whatever it was had flared into the atmosphere of their imaginations like a galloping horse. A wave of a hand, a blink of the eye, and they would have missed it, but neither of them blinked. Oh yes, Sam had seen it all right. What was that, said Sam. Murphy's eyes were bulging, but he didn't say anything. It was like he was in a trance.

Murphy, said Sam, aliens. It was aliens. And then there was another. And then another. And Murphy said, it's happening. They're coming. The boys ran inside. Inside, it was an August night like any other. Margaret was sitting on the couch knitting.

And Smith was sitting beside her in his big green chair. The television was on. They were watching the news, oblivious that the biggest news of all was just outside. We saw a UFO, said Sam. Three, said Murphy. They were hardly the first boys from the city to stare up into the night and be fooled by a shooting star. Ha ha, said Smith, smiling, sitting up. Margaret knew what was coming.

These were the sort of moments Smith loved. He was about to explain. He was about to say something about comets and meteors and cosmic hoo-ha. Ah, said Smith. But he didn't get any further than that because Margaret didn't let him. Before he said one more word, Margaret shot him a look. What, said Smith. And Margaret shot him another look.

And then she turned to the boys and she said, tell us what you saw. Right across the sky, said Murphy. Right over town. Three of them, said Murphy. Right over town. Three of them, said Sam. One after the other. Like a flash from a camera, said Margaret. Except faster and streakier. Exactly, said both boys together.

How did you know, said Sam. Well, said Margaret. You're not the first ones around here to see something like that. And then she glanced at Sam. Well, said Margaret, you're not the first ones around here to see something like that. And then she glanced at Smith. Smith was frowning at her. Margaret frowned back. That's next week on the podcast. And next week will be our last episode of the season. So I really hope you'll join us. will be our last episode of the season, so I really hope you'll join us. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is happy camper Greg DeClewt. Theme music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeCloot, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.