Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - The World of Work - Boy Wanted & Carl’s Retirement

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

“It was Sam’s first year in high school. And it was not going well.”On today’s episode: two of Stuart McLean's hilarious Dave & Morley stories about the wonderful world of work. And Jess talks about her work on the Vinyl Cafe.Ad-free listening is here! Listen to the pod ad-free and early, PLUS a whole bunch of other goodies – like virtual parties, Q&As, listener shout-outs & more. Subscribe here: apostrophe.supercast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the apostrophe podcast network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. I've been thinking a lot about work lately. I started a new job about a year ago, working at the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards. I was drawn to the job because I really missed working in the arts. I missed working with performers. I missed putting on shows. When I started on the vinyl cafe, I came to it through journalism, through production. But as the show evolved and as I put my stamp on it, it really became more of a live show.

It became more about the performance than the studio, although even the studio sessions became in a way a bit of a performance. Stewart was an incredible performer and watching him do his thing, watching him stand on stage 100, times a year and somehow make it feel like it was his first time ever. Well, that was an education in itself. And it wasn't just Stuart. We worked with so many talented musicians over the years, artists who could transform a room just by stepping out into the light. I didn't study performance, but I grew up around it. My mom was an actor, and she worked at the Arrilla Opera House when I was a kid. I used to walk down West Street every day after school and hang out on stage while my mom worked in the box office. I sang opera as a kid. I sang in choirs. I was in the musical every year.

And then later, I spent 15 years watching performances, hundreds of them, in the wings, taking notes, wearing headphones, listening. You learn a lot that way. And now I'm back at it, working with artists again and I guess it kind of feels like coming home. So I've been thinking a lot about work. The strange, joyful, frustrating, funny, glorious business of doing what it is we do. So today, today's show is all about work. We're going to start with this. This is one of my favorites. 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, the fact is, most people wouldn't have started.

Louis, 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. Tipped. 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 crackling. 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 Louis. Never. He applied. 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, 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. 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. It 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 beside 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 Louis 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 counted up said Mr. 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, $2.4.17. A loony, 18, and tuny 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 right 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, 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, 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 there first lunch. Every day, from the 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 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-sequiters. 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 barbershop, 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 barbershop? 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 spatter. 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 Louis. 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 store, 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 beats and golden beats and striped beats and baby peat. beats. 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. 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. Krusty baguettes that tasted a fire. Black on the bottom, brown on top, soft and airy in the middle, the crust so hard it'd 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 shelves of pasta.

Pasta di Simola de Gran Duro. Brown paper bags with cellophane windows. Capilini, Bucatini, spaghetti, Linguini, and on the shelf of honor, all by itself, Farfellé. Pastas shaped like bow ties. Each one dyed with squid ink and beet water. Red and black striped bow ties.

So perfect you can wear them. They made him laugh. Now he had a favorite job and a favorite section. One day Mr. Herman 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.

Wasn't long after that that Mr. Herman 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. Burt 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, 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 walking 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 past a section, and he came back with a brown paper bag, of the bow-tie farfelly 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 in Morrisburg, Ontario. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another David and Morley story. So stick around. Welcome back.

Time for our second story now. This is Carl's. retirement. On Saturday morning of the long weekend, Thanksgiving weekend, Carl Lobier showed up at Dave and Morley's house just before dinner unexpectedly. Flannel's sports shirt corduroy is a blue windbreaker standing on the stoop looking embarrassed. Carl's not the sort of person who drops by unannounced. Dave answered the door.

Carl stared at him awkwardly. This went on for longer than was reasonable until finally Dave said, come on in Carl, come on in. I wasn't thinking of actually coming in, Dave, said Carl. I was wondering if I could speak with Stephanie. Carl Lobier, 66 years old, a year and a half into retirement, civil engineer, husband of GERDA, Carl of the sourdough starter, Carl Lobier calling on Stephanie, Dave's 19-year-old daughter. Chapter 2. Carl at work. Carl didn't want to retire. He'd watched guys around him getting ready. Jack Meriwether, for instance. Jack had a digital calendar on his desk that ran backwards, counting down the days. You walked into Jack's office. The first thing you saw was this red digital readout that said 274. The days he had left. Can't wait, he said. The calendar made Carl uncomfortably avoided going into Jack's office. office, Carl didn't want to think about his retirement. Jack Meriwether, who was building a ferro cement

boat in his backyard and planning to sail it around the world and damned if he didn't do it. His wife, Judy, starting with him but bailing in Hawaii. And Jack kept on going. Was in New Zealand last time Carl had heard. Or Greg Jones, who took up golf on his 50th birthday, joined a club, took lessons. I hate it, said Greg to Carl one Wednesday afternoon as he was heading out. I hate the damn game. But you have to have something to do when you leave this place. Not Carl. Carl just kept working.

Carl loved his work. He couldn't believe they'd make him stop. He figured if he kept busy, if he was busy, if he was in the middle of something important, what were they going to do? Make him leave? When he was 62, he started to take on jobs with long, time. timelines. Summer of his 64th birthday, he was working as hard as he had worked when he joined the company. Working weekends, working nights. When he finished his own work, he started on other

peoples. One Monday, startled clerical staff, discovered an entire week of filing had mysteriously vanished, had seemingly filed itself. And then the janitor noticed that someone was using as windex, that the garbage cans had often been empty, by the time he showed up. In the PR department, Lori Beeman wondered if her mother was sneaking into the office at night to organize her in-basket. And then Carl got a phone call from Marilyn Struthers, Human Resources. Marilyn told him he had to start passing files to a guy on the 43rd floor.

The guy was only a kid, barely 50 years old. It's the law, Carl, said Marilyn. Carl couldn't believe it. He didn't believe it. He kept working. He was still the first person in every morning, made coffee, put a post-it note on the machine with a time and had brewed. How else would anyone know it was fresh?

Figured they would change their minds. They had to change their minds. There was too much to do. Chapter 3. The retirement party. 40 years. Two months short of 41 if you wanted to be accurate. So you might as well call it 41.

Carl would have called it 41 if he was in charge. But in the program it said 40. The buggers? They gave him a set of golf clubs. Golf clubs. What was he supposed to do with golf clubs? He couldn't believe it. They made him clear out his office the next week.

Well, they didn't actually say he had to clear out. No one actually said anything. But one day a guy in blue coveralls appeared with a load of cardboard boxes and began to show him how to assemble them. I'm an engineer, damn it, growled Carl. grabbing the box from the guy in the coveralls. Later that week, Ross Harrison, who was always complaining about his windowless office across the hall,

poked his head in the door and said, do you mind if I look around? Carl sat at his desk as Harrison moved around his office as if he was buying a condo. Nice view, he said, looking over the rooftops to the park, running his hand along the edge of the desk. He was fondling my desk, damn it. Couldn't get his hands off it, said Carl to Girda when he got home.

Carl came in the next weekend and went through his desk. It would have been too humiliating to do it while everyone was there to watch him. He found a brown paper bag at the back of one drawer. There was a little fire engine and a box of crayons in the bag. He used to keep stuff in there for his kids in case he went on an unexpected business trip, so he'd have something to bring home. He took the red crayon and crawled under his desk.

Lying on his back, he wrote his name on the bottom of the middle drawer. Carl Lobier. Chapter 4. The first morning. On his first Monday at home, Carl woke up at 6.45 like he always did. Fixed coffee and sat there reading the paper like he always did. He wiped up the last bit of egg yolk from his plate and he carried his plate to the sink and he said, well, I have to get to it.

Gerta wasn't about to ask, get to what? Carl took one more swallow a coffee, kissed Gerta, and stood up, and then instead of heading out the back door to the garage, Carl headed down the stairs to the basement. It set up a desk down there. All the boxes from the office were stacked up around it. At lunch, they ate tuna sandwiches at the kitchen table. Carl said, this is working out better than I thought. There are no interruptions. You can get so much done. What are you doing? said Gerta. I'm getting everything organized, said Carl. You know, like paper clips and all that stuff, into the right drawers.

I never had time to do that before. It was always a mess. Gerta went up to the bedroom and began to cry. After lunch, Carl took the red crayon and wrote the date on the bottom of the desk drawer. Carl Loebbeer, he wrote. April 15th, 2002. Chapter 5. Day 2.

At 9.30 on Tuesday morning, Carl came upstairs and emptied the coffee maker and made a fresh batch. He put a post-it note on the pot. 935, it said. Chapter 6. Day 3. At 10.30 on Wednesday, Gerta called downstairs. I'm going shopping, she said, do you need anything? Carl bounded up the stairs.

I'll look after it, he said. You relax. He took the car. out of her hands and was gone before she could say anything. Chapter 7. Carrots. By the end of the first week, Carl had taken over groceries. He'd go several times a week.

At first, Gertil liked this idea. Carl doing the shopping. She had done groceries for 40 years. She was glad to give it up. The trouble was, Carl didn't do the cooking. Trouble was, Carl didn't know what to get. A couple of times, Gerta said, let me make a list, and Carl had got prickly. I can do it myself, he said, as if a list was something you'd only give to a child.

The truth was, Carl found the gross-free store bewildering, found some sections completely overwhelming, like yogurt, for instance, and beef. There was way too much of both. Bacon was easy. Bacon he could do. You just had to find the package that Gertrude. always bought cheese was easy and so were carrots

Carl loved buying carrots carrot wasn't like a squash you could stare at a squash and pick it up and scratch the skin and never be sure what color the flesh would be when you brought it home and cut it open same with melons Carl standing in the fruit section

staring at the melons trying to remember which was the green one and which was the orange carrots on the other hand were forthright couldn't make a mistake with a carrot So to play it safe, Carl always picked up a bunch of carrots. Which would have been all right if Carl wasn't going to the store two or three times a week. Gerta, who didn't want to discourage him, started serving carrots at lunch and supper.

They ate them sliced and grated and shoestringed. They ate them roasted and sauteed. Gerta made carrot cake. She made carrot breads and carrot soup. She made carrot oatmeal. meal cookies, she made carrot jelly. She found a recipe for carrot marmalade. By Thanksgiving, Gerta had 22 carrot cakes in her freezer. When people dropped in, Gerta would make them coffee and say, do you want a carrot with that? And still, there were always carrots in the

fridge waiting for her. It's making her crazy. Chapter 8. Carl's first hobby. On the basement wall over his desk, Carl has a large print of the ferny train station, circa 1950. A winter afternoon, blue skies and bright sunshine on new snow. The eastbound Cootney Express stopped beside the station. A white plume of smoke rising over the lizard range of the Rocky Mountains. Carl, born in the dying days of the steam locomotive, has always loved trains. One night at supper, carrot ginger soup, roasted chicken with roasted winter vegetables. Gerda said Ross Hainline's husband Roy belongs to a model railroad club.

There's a open house this weekend. Carl thought, what the heck? The club met in a rented warehouse in an industrial park by the airport. They had a huge layout. Bigger than a football field, said Carl when he came home, miniature neighborhoods. with a miniature downtown, a miniature industrial area, a complete universe. So complicated, it took three guys to get it up and running. Seven of us, if you want to run it properly, said Roy proudly, like on schedule.

Roy walked Carl over to the table. There were cars and trucks in the streets, people walking in and out of stores, a model layout that seemed to have everything. And a very small man picking up after his dog. Except there weren't any trains. or come to think of a train tracks anywhere. Where's the train? asked Carl. Roy smiled and kneeled down,

motioning Carl to do the same, and there was a labyrinth of PVC pipe suspended under the table. The tracks are in the pipe, said Roy. It wasn't so much a model train club as a model subway club. But you can't see it, said Carl. Just like the real thing, said Roy.

Oh, said Carl. Gerdes said, give it a chance. You might like it. So Carl went back the next Thursday night. You're on suction, said Roy. Suction, said Carl. They gave him a blue, peaked hat, and an orange safety vest,

and a wrench in a vacuum cleaner hose. The hose was attached to an air compressor. 550 CFM, said Roy proudly. Roy told him if there was a derailment, the head engineer would call for suction. Carl was supposed to hustle over with his vacuum hose open up the pipe and suck the train to the nearest junction. Carl nodded and wandered over the table. He was thinking he would watch what was going on until he was needed, except there was nothing to watch.

After a few minutes, Roy came over and pointed to a bench on the far wall. The suction man usually sits there, he said, quietly. There was a sign over the bench that read, I suck. Carl sat there for the whole night without being called. I am not going back, he said to Gerta. Give it another chance. Please, she said, there was desperation in her voice. The next Thursday, when Carl arrived, he wandered over to his bench

and started to put on his orange vasked. Roy shook his head, said, not tonight, tonight's maintenance. You have electric trains running through a couple of miles of PVC pipe in an abandoned warehouse. you're going to get dust on the tracks. How do we clean it? asked Carl. Rommel, said Roy. Over by the water cooler,

two men were spraying Gary Stevens' daughter's pet rat with end dust. Chapter 9. Second act. Over the year, Carl tried bridge, square dancing, and golf. None of them worked out. He began to go for walks.

He'd get up in the morning and put on his slack, and a windbreaker and head out. He walked all over the city. He felt like a ghost. He felt like he was disappearing. Carl walking around the city, Carl browsing in bookstores. And more and more often, Carl sitting on a park bench, staring into space, wondering how he got there. A year ago, he'd been busy all the time. Now he had time on his hands. He was unsure. He was unsteady. He was just another old man wandering around. He was full of questions.

Is this all or was to life, years of hard work, and then you peter out on a park bench? Did Simon and Garfunkel have it right? Wasn't there more to life than this? He felt like something was missing. It was not the first time he'd felt this confusion, felt questions bumping around inside his head like bees and a beehive. Carl was born in Kitchener, Ontario, German descent.

His father was a carpenter, a cabinet maker. He had a workshop in an old broom factory on the edge of the river, just past the bridge where the river curves. There's an outlet mall there today, mostly furniture stores. Except for a few years in the mid-60s, when he hired two men Carl's father worked alone. He made kitchen cabinets and windows, and from time to time, kitchen tables and wardrobes.

He always had a piece of wood in his hand, a pencil behind his ear. He was always working. Carl's mother was a chipper woman of boundless energy who lived in her kitchen. She put up jams in the spring, pickles in the fall, baked bread all year long. Idle hands or a devil's workshop, should say, as she greased her bread pans. Carl had to show her his homework every night. If it wasn't neat enough, she made him do it over again. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right, she said.

Carl would be the first of his family to go to university. the first to have the privilege of education. But as deadlines for applying to universities loomed, Carl found himself adrift in uncertainties. He didn't know what he wanted from life, didn't know where he should go, what he wanted to learn. Now that a world of possibilities was open to him, the questions seemed to grow, one from another.

Flipping through a university catalog one day, he came across these words in the description of the philosophy. courses. Philosophy is not a theory, but an activity. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Carl was delighted by the notion that philosophy questioning the world and its meaning was an activity, something that involved energy and work. It struck him that what he wanted to do was wrestle with these questions. He wanted to read great books of literature. He wanted to expose himself to the thoughts of writers and philosophers. He wanted time to think. Carl's mother and father were appalled. His father had no time for riddles that had no answers. You've wasted too much time already in that high school of yours, said Carl's father,

reading poetry and God knows what. That isn't work. Work is work. His mother, too. God helps those who help themselves, she said. School was for children, they said. It was time for Carl to choose a profession. Choose a profession or keep fooling around. Ludwig Wittgenstein had studied mechanical engineering for his first three years at university. Carl enrolled in engineering. Civil. The workload was heavy, but he enjoyed it. There was always some way to push yourself at school. There was always something to read, something to think about, but gradually all his questions faded away, like newspapers left out in the sun too long. After university, there was his first job.

In his first five years out of school, he worked in eight different offices in Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary, and Toronto. And then he got married, and then his son was born, and there was no time for anything but the business of living. But now, here he was, 40 years later, with time on his hands, and all of those unexplored questions were rising to the surface. He was like a loaf of his mother's bread resting on the radiator. He was rising. Epilock.

On Saturday morning of the long weekend, Thanksgiving weekend, Carl Lobier showed up at Dave and Morley's house just before dinner, unexpectedly. Flannel sport shirt, cordroys, a blue windbreaker, standing on the stoop, looking embarrassed. Dave answered the door. Carl stared at him awkwardly. Carl's not the sort of person who drops by unannounced.

There was an awkward beat of silence and then Carl and Dave started to talk at once, talking over each other. They both stopped and stared, each motioning for the other guy to continue. Ah, I said, Carl, I was wondering if I might speak with Stephanie. Carl Lobier, 66 years old, a year and a half into retirement. Civil engineer, husband of GERDA. Carl of the sourdough starter Carl looking younger than he had for years Carl in a brown corduroy jacket a backpack over his shoulder

Carl calling on Stephanie Dave's 19-year-old daughter calling on her to talk about his first ever philosophy essay I was wondering he said shyly to Stephanie a few minutes later if you might have any advice I've done a lot of notes but I'm having trouble getting started I always have trouble getting started, said Stephanie. It's always hard work.

Yes, it is, said Carl, a smile spreading across his face. Yes, it is. And so on Thanksgiving Sunday, Carl Lobier sat in Dave's kitchen, and Carl and Stephanie drank coffee, and they talked about John Stuart Milne and the roots of modern liberalism. That was great, he said, when he got up to leave. Great. walking to the door, almost bouncing.

Thank you very much. That was Carl's retirement. We recorded that story back in 2003. All right, that's it for today, but we'll be back here next week with more from David Morley. There were three of them there that afternoon, and they all saw it.

Billy Mitchell, Gordy Beeman, and Dave. You could ask any of them, they tell you exactly the same thing, Gabriel Dubois wound up, punched the tree, and the tree exploded. With his bare fist, said Sam. With his bare fist, said Dave. Now, Billy, Gordy, and Dave, none of them said a word.

They just stared with their mouths hanging open while he walked away. When he was out of sight, Billy Mitchell said, Did you see that? What had happened was not only impossible, it was beyond belief. The tree actually exploded. Gabriel Dubois hit the tree and there was a sound like a whiff. And then a puff of smoke or something and the tree was gone. It vanished into thin air.

It was like a movie, said Dave. Sam said it was a big tree. It was a huge tree, said Dave, a huge tree. They went over to see it. like they were sneaking up on an animal that might have been dead, but also might have been alive, which is to say they were careful going up to it. And when they got there, it was gone, said Dave.

There was nothing left of it. Nothing, said Sam. There was a pile of sodda, said Dave, and bark like a hollow tube of bark like the skin. Of course, you know what happens then. Uh-uh, said Sam. Well, the only question, was who was going to go first. We pulled straws, said Dave. Billy won, one, said Sam. Well,

said Dave, I don't know. They pulled straws and Billy got the short one. And they found a birch that looked the same size. It looked exactly the same. And Billy took off his shirt and he wrapped it around his fist. He was a pretty determined kid, said Dave. You got to give him that. What happened, Sam. He broke his knuckles in four places, said Dave. That's how they learned about yellow birches. 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 happily retired, Greg DeCleut.

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.