Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Spring – The Fish Head

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

“I guess I figured having a fish head could come in handy.” On this week’s episode Stuart celebrates the joys of birding and the Spring bird migration. And we have two springy stories, including a favourite from the Vinyl Cafe story exchange. To submit your short, true story to the Story Exchange, send it to [e-mail]. 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. When spring announces itself, it announces itself to our ears. I hear it before I see it. The sound of snow melting and dripping down the downspouts. The sound of ice breaking up on the lake. And that siren song of spring. Geese.

Is there any sound more uplifting than the sound of Canada geese flying overhead? You look up in the sky and woohoo! There they are, declaring the very thing you were hoping for. Spring. It's not just the geese who announce the season. It's their other feathery friends, too. Every morning when I wake up, it feels like the sky is bursting with anticipation, like an audience sitting in the theater waiting for the curtain to lift and the show to begin.

A winter sky is so quiet. But these days, every single morning, just before daybreak, I hear the birds tuning up, getting ready. To lay in bed on an early morning in spring feels to me like sitting on a soft velvet seat, listening to the musicians tuning, playing, all a Twitter. And I'm a Twitter too. Staring at a curtain that's about to open and reveal. Well, that's the thing, isn't it? We don't really know. We think we know. Sure, we've been to other shows and we've seen other springs. But then again, maybe this one will be different. We've had an early spring where I live, and early springs mean lots of false starts.

Just when you think the crocuses are going to pop their cheery little heads, bam, there's another snowfall, reminding you, not so fast. You are not in charge here. Early springs mean ice, too. Melting and refreezing. As you can probably tell, I am not a fan of early spring. I'm one of those crazy people who actually like snow. I'll gladly take another day on my cross-country skis, another few runs at the ski hill, and another day tobogganing with my kids. I prefer the blanket of fresh white snow to the mess underneath. Spring is messy where I live. It's less cheery crocus and more, I thought I cleaned up that dog poo. So that's part of it. But that's not the whole thing.

I'm a fan of late spring because a late spring is confident. You know where it's headed. It drip, drip, drops its way down to summer. And it only takes a couple weeks. And the birds are confident, too. They sing their song knowing exactly where we're headed, or at least where they are headed. At first light, the skies are full of bird song. All kinds of different songs. I mean, I'm used to the robin and the cardinal and the chickadee, but as spring progresses, you hear different songs, different birds. Birds that I imagine are just passing through on their way to somewhere else.

Drive-by birds, birds on tour. I am not good at recognizing bird songs, but I've got an app for that. Every time I open that app, I think of Stuart. And if you've listened to this podcast from the beginning, you know what I'm talking about. I think of Stuart. And if you've listened to this podcast from the beginning, you know what I'm talking about. I told you about this way back in season one, way back in episode two of this podcast. If you're new to the show, you can go back and listen to that. The episode is called There's No Place Like Home.

I talk about a trip that Stuart and I took to Point Pelee, where Stuart discovered that he loved birding. And I discovered I did not. But today, you don't have to listen to me talk about how much I dislike birding. You're going to listen to Stuart with a very different take on the whole thing. We're going to celebrate the season with Stuart today on the podcast. First, an essay about birds and bird migration. Then a story exchange about this season. And finally, one of my all-time favorite David Morley stories. A story about a spring that Dave spent with his dad, Charlie. A story about fishing and fish heads that really isn't about any of those things. It's a story about connection. It's a story about stories. I've told you about this one before. I've done more than that. I've quoted from it before. But it is a story that, remarkably, I have never played on this podcast.

Today is the day. But first, this. This is Stuart McLean from Migration Hall in Kingsville, Ontario. Point Pelee, Ontario, juts into Lake Erie like a long finger. From the air, it looks like Walt Disney might have been mucking around trying to build a scale model of India. Point is the home to Point Pelee National Park, one of the oldest parks in Canada, a lucky thing, too,

because it looks so perfect from above that if it hadn't been a park, someone probably would have paved it and used it as a landing strip, which is the other thing it looks like from the air. Until just before you land, of course, when you can make out the trees and the marshlands, the rocks and the ponds, and you realize why it's birds, not planes, who land on Point Pelee. Birds, not planes, who land on Point Pelee.

Birds in big numbers and diversity, fagged out from the great flight that begins in the moist forests of South and Central America, weary from fighting the headwinds as they beat across Lake Erie, aching for a landing strip, they spot Point Pelee and dip their wings. The point at the southern end of Essex County is on the same latitude as Northern California, as everyone who lives here has been only too happy to point out this week, as we all shivered our way through the increasingly blustery weather. It has been wet and chilly, but it's chalk a block all the same. The hotels and motels are full, and if you don't already have a room tonight, you're going to have to drive an hour to find one, because this is the best time and the best place in all of North America to catch a glimpse of one of the great events of the natural world,

the spring migration of the songbirds, who winter in places like Panama and fly north to have their young in Canada's boreal forest. They eat bugs. Of course they come to Canada for the summer. We came last week, along with everyone else. As soon as he handed me my key, the hotel clerk turned and welcomed 20 birders from England. We're taking reservations for next year, he told them cheerfully as they signed the register.

What time is breakfast, asked a man fiddling with his binoculars. Breakfast, said the desk clerk, begins at 4.30. Burgers like an early start. The park gates open at 5, and there's always a lineup at the gate when park staff arrive. Or so I'm told. I miss the pleasure of the early morning lineup. But I met plenty of birders during my stay. David, who's been watching the migration for over six weeks now, he began in Florida and followed the birds north, sleeping most nights on a mattress in the back of his little station wagon.

I have screens that I put in the car windows, he told me. David has seen a lot of birds over the years, but his all-time favorite is the fluffy, black-capped chickadee. I always have a few in my garden over the winter, said David. They build their nests in tree cavities. They're great little birds, family birds. When it gets cold, sometimes as many as 20 of them will pile in together to keep warm. Margaret, who I met one night at dinner, and who comes to Pelee every year with a group of her friends, told me she favors the silky brown cedar waxwing. They are such elegant birds, said Margaret. When he is courting, the male waxwing feeds the female berries.

It's wonderful to watch them. I was delighted that these two serious birders favored birds that I'd actually heard of. I'd worried that the conversation here in Essex County would be too rarefied for me. I thought everyone here would only get excited about the LBJs, the little brown jobs. Birds too difficult and too esoteric for me to identify. LBJs and the rarities, whatever their color, or birds that have been blown off course or confused or simply overshoot and arrive in this neighborhood by mistake.

On Monday, at about 4, that's 4 p.m., I saw a rarity. My first ever. It wasn't hard to miss. I was driving home along the park's main road and found myself in a traffic jam in the middle of a forest. Someone had spotted a solitary bird with greenish feathers in the upper branches of a hardwood tray, and word had spread through the park like wildfire. Judging by the cameras circled around the base, you would have thought it was Angelina Jolie sitting in the tray. On Friday, I took the ferry across to Pelee Island. This is Canada's most southerly community, I was told,

the next morning when the ferry home was cancelled due to the gale force winds. I went to the island to watch the 24-hour bird race. It was a misunderstanding. I thought they were racing birds. The bird race turned out to be a competition to see who could spot the most birds over 24 hours. The winners, Larry and Paul, saw over 100 different species, and they did it all by bicycle. They allowed me to follow along for a while, but not before Paul took me aside and gave me a warning. There's something you have to understand about Larry, he said earnestly.

Larry loves owls. And then he squinted and fixed me with his eyes. You don't want to get between Larry and an owl. It was while I was on the island that I met Rob Timstra. And of all the birding bums I met this week, and believe me, I met a few, none hold a candle to Rob Timstra. Rob has essentially given his entire life over to birds. These days, his goal is to see an ivory-billed woodpecker. The ivory-billed woodpecker was last sighted in North America in the mid-1950s. Rob carries a laminated picture of it in his wallet.

There have been people who claim to have seen it since, he says. And so, as often as he can, Rob heads to the American South and paddles his kayak through the bayous and swamps of Louisiana with not much more than a GPS and a camera. He's like a birding Indiana Jones on the trail of a feathered Sasquatch. I tend to go in the wintertime, says Rob, when the gators and water moccasins are not as active. And then he says, I would give up every bird I'd ever see again in my life to catch a glimpse of this one.

It's been quite a week for me. I rented binoculars and bought myself a bird guide, Sibleys, and I tramped through the woods with my binoculars swinging from my neck. The highlight, I think, was the afternoon I came across a solitary Baltimore Oriole, a bright orange male perched in a cedar tree. He was singing, and I don't know how to describe the song except to say it stopped me in my tracks. Ah, said Rob Timstro when I told him, they have such beautiful songs. The thing is, they don't need to be beautiful, not to humans. That doesn't serve them in any way,

to be beautiful, not to humans. That doesn't serve them in any way. But there you go. It does something to my soul to hear them sing, said Rob. It touches my spirit, and it makes me glad. And what can you say about that? Just this, perhaps. Watching birds, it turns out, means listening to them as much as anything.

If I learned anything this week, it was that the good birders recognize birds as much by hearing their songs as by spotting them hopping along a branch. And after you've hung around birders for a while, as I did this week, and you start paying attention, you notice that there is this dimension of song that surrounds us, or does down here anyway, and it is the song of birds. who live in the cities have stopped listening. But on an afternoon in Point Pelee Park, when it is hard not to listen, that is, you soon enter the dimension of birdsong. And when you do, you find yourself thinking that anything this small and this resilient, this beautiful and this resilient, this beautiful and this threatened. These little things that weigh

no more than a dollar coin and fly so incredibly far and then back again and sing as beautifully as they do surely must have something to say to us. Surely it would serve us well to listen to the beauty of the song, yes, but perhaps even to what it is they're trying to say. Thank you. That was Stuart McLean from back in 2010 talking about birds and birding and birders. We're talking about spring today and we have a story exchange that fits that birdie bill. The story exchange was a segment on the original Vinyl Cafe radio show. Here's the deal. We asked you to send us your short, true stories,

and we chose our favorites for Stuart to read on the air. Ever since we started this podcast, you've written in to tell us, bring back the story exchange. And so we have. We'll be playing some of our favorites on this podcast, and we'd like to play some new ones too. So send us your stories.

You can email them to us at vinylcafe at vinylcafe.com. I'll put that address in the show notes for you too. So that's a bit about the story exchange. And now here is Stuart McLean reading a story sent in by listener A.J. Mittendorf. A.J. holds the distinction of having the most stories read on the air by Stewart. I think there were three in total. And this is one of my favorites. One spring day a few years ago, my wife and I went for a drive together. The wind was blustery, but we didn't care about the wind. We wanted to see the town. We wanted to say hello to it after a long winter. We wanted to smell the air and feel the wind. So we rode with all the windows open and with no radio and very little conversation.

Our conversation was the pleasure of each other's company. The drawback to that day was the layer of winter sand covering the roads. It was dry, and the wind was blowing it and swirling dust devils. As we turned the corner onto one of the side streets near the college, we noticed two college-age girls walking together along the road. They were also enjoying the day. They were wearing light spring dresses, talking and laughing together. That was the fateful moment when two things happened at precisely the same time. The first was that a particularly strong blast of wind caught the hems of their dresses, so they both had to do a quick Marilyn Monroe stance.

I turned my head and thought, if that wind had been moving a little faster, it would have blown those dresses clean over their heads. At that same moment, a gust of wind, doubtless the same mischievous gust that had ruffled the girls' dresses, blew dust into the car through my wife's window and right into my eyes.

Another thought entered my brain. Now would be a good time for my wife to roll up her window. Those two thoughts collided in my brain, and rubbing my eyes, I turned to my wife and I said, Honey, would you please roll up your dress? She wasn't even wearing a dress, Stuart, but she just smiled and broke out laughing and I pulled the car over and we laughed together and that there, Mr. McLean, is a fine example of a woman with a sense of humor. Story comes to us today from A.J. Mittendorf of Prince George, British Columbia. That was Stuart McLean from back in 2010, reading a story sent in by listener and Story Exchange A-lister, A.J. Mittendorf. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes, so stick around.

Welcome back. Story time now. I love this one. I love the opening. The way the lens of Stuart's imagination slowly fades in. First on Dave with his son Sam, and then slowly, slowly, like ice melting, and then slowly, slowly, like ice melting, it drip, drip, drips its way all the way back to Dave and his dad, Charlie. It's a story that unfolds gradually, revealing itself to us the same way it reveals itself to Dave, the storyteller.

It's a story about spring. It's a story about fathers and sons. But above all else, it's a story about stories. It's one of my favorites, especially the ending. Make sure you stick around for that part. The ending is my favorite thing that Stuart ever wrote. This is Fish Head. The ending is my favorite thing that Stuart ever wrote. This is Fish Head. Dave and his son Sam were having lunch at the Maple Leaf Cafe in Big Narrows, Dave's hometown. It was a Saturday, early May. Dave and Sam were in town for the weekend to help Margaret with things, their spring ritual. Take down the windows, turn the garden.

Saturday lunch at the Maple Leaf was part of it. Club sandwiches and fries, vanilla milkshakes. Last time, said Sam, we had grilled cheese. We did, said Dave. I don't remember that. Barbara brought them their shakes, two tall glasses and an aluminum container with the overflow. She set the overflow down in front of Sam. A real shake, said Dave to Sam, made with real ice cream.

Sam rolled his eyes and bent his straw down. It's good, he said. And then he said, tell me another story about him. Dave said, I don't know. He was a good guy. It's a hard question. You live your life in minutes and hours. You move along beside the people you love. And in the midst of all of the moments, in the middle of all the movement, you don't often stop to commit things to memory.

in the middle of all the movement, you don't often stop to commit things to memory. You never imagine there's anything about anything that's going to be of any historical importance, that someone's going to come along one day and quiz you about things. But he was my grandfather, said Sam, and I don't know anything about him. I know, said Dave, I know. He put his sandwich down. He liked to play the bass, he said. His friends would come over to the house on Sunday nights and they'd play music. I know that stuff, said Sam. He was slow. He wasn't slow, said Dave. He'd fall behind the beat.

Dave was twisting around in the booth. The lady behind the counter, Barbara, held up a bottle of ketchup. Dave nodded. Thanks, he said. And then he turned back to Sam. Did I ever tell you the one where we jumped off the bridge into the river on our way home from church? I was afraid to jump, and all the other kids jumped all the time. and my dad wanted to show me I shouldn't be afraid so he jumped with me. In your clothes, said Sam. Holding hands, said Dave, and our Sunday best. He got in trouble for that. Dave glanced at his son. You knew that one. Yup, said Sam. And he dipped one of his fries into the ramekin of ketchup the lady had brought. And he ate it and picked up another and hesitated. And then he looked at his father and said, how did he die? Heart, said Dave. He smoked.

Did it hurt? I don't know, said Dave. I hope not. Sam said, did I ever meet him? Dave said, he died just before you were born. He would have liked you a lot. They finished lunch and they walked along to the end of River Street and then they took the shortcut along the old railroad tracks up to the high street. They had just passed that little creek that runs beside the tracks there when Dave said, did I ever tell you the story about the fish head? That's a good story. Sam shook his head. OK, said Dave, this is a good one.

I'd forgotten all about this one. And they still had a long way to go. So Dave told it slow, like a movie. It began like a movie anyway, like a movie about spies at night and in a rain so misty it was as much fog as rain. It was around midnight in the sneaky month of April. Two shadowy figures scrambling along a riverbank with miners' lamps strapped to their foreheads. The light from the lamps bouncing off the river and the balsam trees and the wet rocks along the river's edge. Here and there they step over patches of granular corn-like snow, but mostly the snow is gone from the path. Though there's still plenty in the woods under the trees where the land is low and bedded soft with pine needles.

The person in front, the one with the peak hat and the oiled canvas jacket, is carrying two nets. The nets are on long poles like butterfly nets, but more substantial, made for sturdier things than butterflies. The second person, the one following, is a boy. He's carrying a rucksack on his back and in the rucksack he has a cheese sandwich, two pieces of black licorice and a homemade slingshot. That's me, said Dave. The man stops and reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of Export A. He shakes a cigarette loose and lights it and when the match is out he puts it in his pocket beside a mickey of whiskey. That's my dad. Your grandfather. We're going smelting.

It was the April that Dave was 11 years old. The smelt were running, and everyone knows that the best time to net smelt is in the middle of the night when the water is ice cold, and you can use a flashlight to spot the fish in their silvery clouds. That was a great winter, said Dave. And it was the first spring he went smelting like that in the middle of the night with his dad. The perfect end to a perfect winter. The night they caught the famous king cod. Sam said, how did you catch it?

Dave reached out and picked up a pebble and threw it into the woods. I'm not sure, he said. Sam picked up a pebble and threw it too. Dave said, we were never able to explain how we got it. It really didn't make any sense at all. Neither of them were sure, except to say that they had parked the truck at Kerrigan's about 1130 that night and walked down the river past Big Falls, and they'd stopped and talked to Mr. McCauley, who was fishing at the bend near where

the logging road crossed, and had gone maybe a quarter a mile further to where the river narrows by the big rocks, and they'd netted up a good feed of smelt, and just before they left, Charlie somehow ended up with that big Greenland cod in his net. You see them from time to time in the lake, but no one had heard about one in the river before, but that's where they got it. It wasn't until the next morning that we saw the skull was deformed, said Dave. He and Charlie were in the shed cleaning the smelt when they spotted it.

The dog watching them hopefully from the corner. Fish guts all over the table. Charlie ran his knife over the bump on the fish's head. He said, looks like a crown. See, that's why they call him a king cod. Happens from time to time. Dave said, what are you going to do with it? Charlie said, we're going to eat it. Dave meant the head. Charlie said, well, we'll give the head to the dog.

At the word dog, Dave's dog Scout looked up and cocked his head, hopefully. When they finished, Charlie gave Dave the gut bucket and told him to empty it behind the shed. But once he got back there, back where no one could see him, Dave took the king cod head and fetched an old newspaper and wrapped it up. Before he went in for dinner, he took it to the old ice house, unwrapped it, and buried it in a barrel of pickling salt. You still had an ice house, said Sam. For sentimental reasons, said Dave.

We had a fridge, too. Why did you keep it, said Sam. The ice house, said Dave. The fish head, said Sam. I don't know, said Dave. It's hard to remember things like that. He probably didn't even know back then. Dave shrugged, I guess I figured having a fish head could come in handy. Whatever the reason, it was important at the time and he

would check on that fish head every couple of days. He'd shimmy over the cool damp sawdust and reach down into the salt barrel and pull out the gut-stained newspaper, the cloudy black eyes, the silver skin, the head which was drying out in the salt and becoming mummified. He couldn't stop looking at it. It was there for a month before he told anyone. Who did you tell? Billy Mitchell. Do I know him? No, you don't know him. It was a Saturday morning. Billy and Dave had pooled their money and gone to Macdonald's and got a lime ricky out of the cooler and a box of Dutchess potato chips. They took the pop and the box of chips to the park by the library and they were sitting on the bench. Billy's bike leaning against one of the big balsams, Dave's lying on the ground.

Billy telling Dave how he was going to see his grandfather in Glace Bay, how he was taking the bus by himself and how his grandfather always took him to the movies. He gets me popcorn, said Billy, and licorice. Dave said, what color? Billy said, black. And that's when Dave said, I have a fish head. Billy said, so what? Dave said, it's mummified and deformed. Billy said, where is it? They parked their bikes behind the ice shed. Dave said, you wait here.

And he ducked alone into the damp sawdust world of ice and he closed the ice house door behind him because he didn't want Billy to know exactly where he kept the fish head. He took in a deep lung full of the cool damp air and he fetched the head from the salt barrel, but he didn't go right out. He kneeled by the door for a minute and made himself count it out slowly. One cod head. Two cod heads. He wanted Billy to think getting the head was more complicated than it was. There were wet stains on both his knees when he came out, and little Fleck's a sawdust. There were wet stains on both his knees when he came out and little flecks of sawdust.

They set the head on the ice sled, which was lying in the tall grass behind the shed. Sam said, why didn't you want Billy to know where it was? Dave said, because I didn't want him to be able to come and get it. It was Billy's idea to boil the meat off. Billy said, if we boiled the meat off it, we could see the skull. So they went into the house together. Billy talked to Dave's mother while Dave scooped a handful of wooden matches from over the stove. They got an old apple juice can and they rode out to the quarry.

On the way, they gathered twigs and branches and a handful of birch bark so they could build a fire. But when they got to the quarry, Dave decided he didn't want to boil the meat off. I like the way it looked, said Dave, and the way it smelled. The fish head had started to get leathery and turn a golden color. They built the fire anyway. And they poked at it with sticks for a while and then they threw all the wood on it to see if they could get the flames as high as their waists. Did you, said Sam? I don't remember, said Dave.

Whatever happened, they let it burn down and when it did, they melted stuff in it. An old sneaker, a plastic gun, some webbing from a lawn chair. You'd never let me do that, said Sam. And then their work was done and they let the fire burn down and they peed on it to make sure. And they let the fire burn down and they peed on it to make sure. You peed on it? Yeah, said Dave.

Haven't you ever peed on a fire? Sam said, we don't even have a quarry. Dave said, well, you should try it sometime. Anyway, Billy came back from Glace Bay and said, My grandfather has a fish head just like yours. He has it hanging in his boathouse. It predicts the weather. My grandfather says it talks to him, said Billy.

Dave hung his fish head from a nail at the back of his bedroom closet. He stared at it for days, but it didn't move, and it certainly didn't say anything. Sam said, didn't it smell? Dave said, maybe a bit, but not like fish, like the sea. And then one day he came home from school and it had shifted. It wasn't looking the same way. And that night he was woken by the sound of rain on the tin roof. He got his flashlight out of his bedside table and he got out of bed and went to the cupboard and shone a light on the fish head and he saw the head had spun completely around. Seemed like magic to Dave.

It was, in fact, the change in humidity working on the yarn. He went downstairs, the flashlight bouncing off the walls. He opened the side door and stood on the stoop. He held his hand out into the rain to be sure. When he woke up, the sun was shining and the fish head was back to normal. He told Billy on the way home from school, it works, he said. Billy said, that's what my grandfather says.

Anyway, he said, Dave, none of that's the important part. The part I wanted to tell you about, the important part is the day I wore it to school. But wait a minute, wait a minute, said Sam. Did it ever work again with the rain? Dave said over and over. If it was going to rain, it would shift. Always like 12 hours before.

All the time, said Sam. All the time, said Dave. What about snow? No, just rain. Sam said, I can't believe you never told me about this before. Dave said, I'd forgotten all about it. Sam said, how could you forget about this? This is amazing. And he shook his head. And then he said, okay, okay, tell me about wearing it to school. And Dave said, you're full of questions, ask me questions. And Sam said, okay, how do you wear a fish head? On your belt, said Dave.

On your belt, said Sam. Well, said Dave, on your belt loop. Next question. Why would you do that? That's a good question, said Dave. I'm not sure. That was a long time ago. You have to remember I was nine years old. You were 11, said Sam. You said you were 11. Yeah, but those were like different times. 11 then was like nine today. Yeah, but those were like different times. Eleven then was like nine today. He tied the fish head to his belt loop in the morning before school.

Like right in front, said Sam. More to the side, said Dave. Front, side. You are so weird, said Sam. Thank you, said Dave. Shall I keep going? Yes, said Dave. Shall I keep going? Yes, said Sam, tell me. So the fish head was tied to my belt loop with a piece of the yarn. Dave was in Miss Nicholson's class that year. And his desk was near the door.

And that morning he sat at his desk with the fish head tied to his belt, just praying Miss Nicholson would ask him a question, any question, so he could stand up and answer. And eventually she did, of course. What happened, said Sam. Well, when she noticed the fish head, she sent me to the office, and the principal phoned my dad, said Dave. Your grandfather. I know, said Sam, just what happened.

It took Charlie 20 minutes to get there to the school. When he arrived, he walked into the principal's office. He said, hello, Ned, what seems to be the problem here? Dave was sitting on the chair in the corner of the office where you sat when you're in trouble. And when his father walked in, the first thing he saw was that Charlie had a fish head tied to his belt loop. Did your father really do that, said Sam? Yep, said Dave, he really did. Then what happened? I don't know, said Dave.

He took me home, I think, or fishing. He might have taken me fishing. You don't remember? I do remember that he put his hand on my shoulder as we walked out of the principal's office. That made me feel good. Dave and Sam were coming up on the corner of the last big hill, almost home. Neither of them said anything for a while. And then as they turned into Margaret's yard, Sam said that was a cool thing for him to do. It sounds like he was a good dad. Dave said, that's what I said.

And then Dave said, I think I still have the fish head. Sam shook his head. Sam said, so weird. They found the fish head before they went to bed. In a box at the back of Dave's old cupboard with a bunch of stuff like that, a little cast iron can and a set of hockey cards, some marbles. It was leathery and golden as if it had been smoked. A piece of green yarn still tied through the top.

Sam was sitting on the bed holding it. He said, it doesn't smell. Thought it would smell. They were both sleeping in Dave's old bedroom. And Sam was already in his pajamas. Dave was getting ready. Sam said, can I have it? He was sitting on the bed nearest the window, turning the fish head around in his hands. Dave said, I always kind of liked that it was here.

If I give it to you, would you leave it here or take it home? Sam said, I'd take it home. Dave said, what would you do with it? Sam said, I'd wear it to school on my belt. Like you. Dave said, why? Sam said, because. And when I have a kid, I'd give it to him and tell him the story and he'll wear it to school. And then it'll be a family tradition. I think Grandpa would like that.

Dave laughed. Yes, he said, I think he would like that very much. And then he turned and stared out the bedroom window, his breath fogging the glass. With the trees still not in bud, he could see right over the house where his uncle used to live and all the way down to the roofs of the storefronts on Railroad Street. Far away, the steeple of the United Church at one end and the tallest building in town, the clock tower on the town hall at the other. All these little moments, he thought. Who knows which ones are going to count and which ones will be forgotten.

It's never the things you think. It isn't the fishing trip or even the fish. It's the fish head. It's the smoke, never the fire. And the smoke is wily and wispy and the smell of it gets in your hair and your clothes. And no matter how much you try to duck around the flames, the wind always changes. It always gets in your eyes. What's the matter, said Sam?

Are you crying? Just a little, said Dave, but it's okay. It's not unhappy crying. It happens when I come here sometimes. It's like there's a big fire here for me. And sometimes when I get close to it, the smoke gets in my eyes. He turned away from the window and sat down on his old bed beside his son. Tomorrow, he said, we'll help grandma with the garden.

And then before supper, we'll go out to the graveyard and I'll show you your grandfather's grave. Can I bring this, said Sam? He was holding the fish head. Thank you. That was Fish Head. That was Fish Head. We recorded that story in 2009 at the Reen M. Case Theatre in Bracebridge, Ontario. See what I mean about that ending?

It's the smoke, never the fire. And I know, I know, I know I've told you this before, but all important things should be repeated. Stuart taught me that about storytelling. So here I go again. I think that bit of writing, the ending of that story, captures the essence of Stuart's work. He was so good at capturing the magic of everyday moments and so good at reminding us that life is made up of these little moments. day moments and so good at reminding us that life is made up of these little moments. Moments so minuscule, they don't seem to matter at first. Moments so small, you might not even notice them when they're happening. Life is made up of a mountain of moments and you never know which

one is going to matter and which ones won't. So when we can, we should live like they all matter. Because they do. Or they might. Especially because, as Stuart says there, it's rarely the things we think. It's not the fishing trip. It's not even the fish. It's the fish head. And like the smoke from the fire,

these moments get on our clothes and in our hair. They become part of us. Not only in the moment, but in the telling about that moment, in the story about that moment, in moments like this one, the one that we're having right now you and me the retelling that's why Stewart repeated himself sometimes and

why I do too because we are all assembled in story layer upon layer upon layer of little moments. And when you notice and tell it and retell it, it, the story, those moments, become part of the foundation of who you are, of who we are. All right, that's it for today. But we will be right back here next week with two more Dave and Morley stories, including the one where Dave embarks on some light home renovations. Carl Loebier was the next neighbor to arrive at Dave's house on that Saturday we're talking about. He burst through the front door without knocking.

Dave and Jim looked up and he's standing in the kitchen. Hi, said Carl, trying to slow himself down, trying to act nonchalant. Need any help? He's carrying a bright yellow thing about the size of an electric drill, except more dangerous looking. It looks like a cross between an Uzi and a woodpecker. It's his reciprocal saw. it's his reciprocal saw. Carl got the saw last Christmas.

It's his pride and joy, but there are only so many holes a man can cut in his own house before he is told to stop. At the end of August, when Carl's wife Gerda went downstairs with a load of laundry and found Carl cutting random holes in a sheet of plywood, she took the saw away from him and later she said he could have it back if he stood in front of the house on Saturday mornings with a sign around his neck, Need holes cut. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us.

Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is someone who sings like a bird himself, Greg DeCloot. Theme music is by Danny Michelle. Clute. Theme music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeCloote, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.