Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Toys - Rhoda’s Revenge & Planet Stuart

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

“When Dave was a boy, dolls terrified him”Something a little different on today’s episode: two stories about kids' toys -- the good, the bad and the ugly! One is a story about Dave's childhood, the other is a story by Stuart about his own childhood experience with toys. Plus a backstory from Jess about how that autobiographical story got its name. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Your door to big deals is on DoorDash right now. Sign up for DoorDash and enjoy a free Big Mac on your first McDonald's order of $20 or more. Only on DoorDash now until June 15th. Terms apply. crypto or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. You know, here at Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe, we believe in the power of stories to transport you.

But let's face it, nothing beats actually getting away and creating your own story. Whether you're dreaming of a sun-soaked beach, a cruise through the Mediterranean, or exploring a quiet corner of Canada, Sell Off Vacations has your back. They've been helping Canadians travel happy for over 30 years with unbeatable deals and a team of experts who've actually been to the places you wanna go. It's not just about booking a trip, it's about finding your perfect escape with help from people who get it.

Happy travels, start with the experts at Sell Off Vacations. Visit selloffvacations.com and start planning your next adventure. From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. Today on the pod, two stories about toys. In our first story, Dave relives the childhood trauma caused by his sister Annie's disturbingly lifelike doll. Surely he's not the only one, is he? In the second half of the show, Stewart shares a little autobiographical story about a toy that meant a lot to him.

But we're going to start with this one. This is Stewart MacLean with Rhoda's Revenge. It was spring, one of those glorious weeks when each morning seemed to be warmer than the morning before. The sun shining down on the trees, on the garden, on the lawn, on all of creation, on every man, woman, child, dog, cat, and squirrel. Setting everyone and everything all a-tingling, in the warmth of it, in the light of it, and most of all, in the idea of it.

The idea that it was warm today and, dear God, better yet, it was going to be warmer tomorrow. It was spring, and the world and everything in it was stretching and shedding, shaking and bursting, the whole kit and caboodle uncurling like a fiddlehead. It was spring. And for the second sweet day in a row, Morley was spending the day at home alone. She'd been planning this since February, three days by herself. Yesterday she did her office, her bedroom, and the hall closet.

Tomorrow she had attacked the kitchen cabinets. She wasn't spring cleaning. She was weeding, sorting, packing, throwing out. She was giving her house a haircut. Today she was doing the basement. They have shelves down there. Morley had taken a cardboard box off the top shelf, not the first, one of many. That's what she was doing down there, going through things. Like all the other boxes she'd gone through before, she had set this box from the top shelf on the floor beside her and flipped it open. It was full of stuff

wrapped in tissue. It was a box of tissue packets. She had no idea what it was, a vagrant box of Christmas decorations perhaps. But lying on top of all the little tissue packets was a doll. What? said Morley. She picked the doll up, laid it aside, and picked up the top tissue package and unwrapped it. It was her girl guide shirt. She held it up. Could she have ever been that small? The second package was an old diary. The third a pack of letters.

She had apparently found a box of keepsakes. She had a vague memory of putting it away, sort of, maybe. But a doll? She unwrapped a few more things. The locket her father had given her on her thirteenth birthday, her first driver's license. All these things made sense except for the doll. She had never seen the doll before in her life. And by that I don't mean she had forgotten the doll. I mean she had absolutely no memory of it, none whatsoever. A doll, she said again. It was a little odd. It's not that Morley didn't have any dolls as a little girl. She had dolls. Most girls have a doll or two, but in her box of keepsakes? Norley, you see, was never what you might call a girly girl. She lived on a street with a bunch of boys

and she learned pretty early on that if she was going to get any respect, she wasn't going to get it playing with dolls. Not that the boys on her street minded playing with her dolls. She had, for instance, one of the very early cannon Barbies. Boys were always ready to play with them. They'd take cannon, pop

off his head, and exchange it with Barbies. Pretty early on, Morley learned to leave her dolls at home when she went out, learned to be proud of her skinned knees and her messy hair. Morley's history with dolls was largely a tale of neglect. That this unknown doll had made it into her box of keepsakes made no sense to her, none at all. Strangely, her husband, Dave, had his own difficult experiences with dolls growing up. I say strangely because it wasn't common in those days for a boy to have much to do

with dolls at all. But Dave grew up in a small town and he had a small sister. So it happened that he grew up with dolls all around him, which was not always easy. Because when Dave was a boy, dolls terrified him. None more than the baby doll his sister Annie got for Christmas, the year of the big spring flood. It was a life-sized and disturbingly life-like doll baby with a head that flopped around and a serious but largely vacant expression. Mostly this doll stared into space unless

you lay her down. When you put her down, her eyes closed, and Dave thought this was just creepy. The way its eyes slid open and closed and the way they seemed to stare vacantly at you when they were open. He tried not to show it, but Annie, with the cruel and unerring sensibility of a sibling, figured it out almost immediately. Sensing a weakness, she set out to exploit it. The doll was named Rhoda. Did you know?

And he said to her brother one night as they were getting ready for bed, that when it gets dark, Rhoda comes alive? Dave laughed. Dave said, she's a doll, that's impossible. Dave said, she does not come alive. Annie saw the flicker of doubt in his eyes, and Annie knew she had him. In fact, he had dreamed of just this, of Rhoda appearing in his room clutching a knife in her evil little doll hands. Yes, she does, says Annie, and if you're not nice to me, she'll get you." Sure of herself, Annie began using the doll to torment him.

She brought Rhoda everywhere. She'd buckle her into the back seat when they went in the car. She'd take her to the park and set her on the swings. Worst of all, she'd bring her to dinner. She set a place for Rhoda every night. Their mother, Margra, thought it was sweet and she played along until one night when they came back from a night of bridge It was well past midnight when they got home and when she went to check on Dave

She found him sitting up in his room wide-eyed with terror. He was holding on to a baseball bat. "'Roda's going to hunt me down and kill me,' he said." Margaret took one look at her pale son, his dark, smudged eyes, and she thought, "'That boy hasn't slept in weeks. She told him that she would throw the doll out. Annie was livid. She didn't particularly like Rhoda, but she liked the power Rhoda had conferred on her. No one was going to throw Rhoda out.

She didn't care about her brother's fear. Like any good mother might, Margaret decided that she'd try to make both her children happy. And she hid Rhoda in the attic crawl space. She told Annie that she'd put Rhoda away in a safe place until Dave and Annie could get along. She told Dave she had thrown Rhoda out. Did you throw her in the fire? said Dave. You have to burn her. Yes, said Margaret. I burned Rhoda. But don't tell your sister. Ten years went by, and one spring weekend, Dave, now a teenager, was given the task of cleaning the attic crawlspace. He strapped one of his uncle's old mining lamps around his forehead, and he squirmed

in through the little door at the back of his parents' cupboard. He was knee-deep in insulation and old Christmas wrapping when his hand landed on Rhoda's leg. Rhoda rose out of the wrapping paper like she was rising from the dead, right into the light of day's lamp. And then to underline her evilness, she batted her eyes open and closed. Open and closed. Margaret heard his scream all the way downstairs. Good heavens, she said,

suddenly remembering the doll. She could hear her son tumbling down the stairs. Rota's alive, he screamed. And he flew past her and right through the closed screen door. Everyone thought it was very funny. Everyone except Dave, of course. Dave didn't think it was funny at all. But he was old enough that he knew he would be expected to get over it. And Rhoda was returned to Annie's bedroom where she lived on her bookshelf, making occasional surprise appearances in Dave's room, dangling on a rope in his closet on Halloween,

tucked into his bed on graduation night. The year Dave turned 21, they went out for a family dinner at the Starlight Room in the Breakwater Hotel. It's just the family for dinner. But afterwards some of Dave's friends joined them and there were presents. The highlight was when Annie gave him Rhoda. Every man needs a woman in his life to keep in line, she said. And then she told the whole story. Before she sat down she made Dave swear that he would never throw Rhoda out.

They took a picture of him with Rhoda propped in a chair beside him. Propped in a chair because he refused to hold her. Dave didn't think it was funny at all. Of course, isn't it just the way of the world? Isn't it just the way things work? The Dave and Morley, both of them doll-impaired, both of them wounded in their own way by dolls, would give birth to a little girl who was besotted with dolls. How was it that these two raised a little girl who had a room full of dolls?

There are Barbie and Ken stacked up in there like firewoods, said Dave one day. Where do they come from? I have no idea, said Marlin. Both of them had no clue that their self-reliant daughter, who had figured out early on that she couldn't count on her parents to help her amass a doll collection, had developed strategies to do it herself. The most successful being a sleepover camp she advertised at school. Stephanie's classmates actually paid for the privilege of sending their dolls to spend

four or eight weeks in her bedroom camp. She promised they'd have loads of growth opportunities and lots of personal attention. Each doll that rolled faithfully wrote at least one letter and one postcard home each session. Please let me stay for four more weeks. I've made new friends and I'm having so much fun. It's such a bargain. I love you." By the time she was eight, Stephanie had amassed a collection of such proportions that she developed a complicated rotation system to manage their sleep privileges. She wanted to make sure each doll got an equal amount of time in bed with her.

But all that was years ago. And now, all these years later, Morley was sitting on her basement floor surrounded by tissue, staring at the doll that she had pulled out of her box of keepsakes. The doll perplexed her. That night as they got ready for bed, Morley looked at Dave and said, am I forgetting things? Have you noticed anything?

She knew she hadn't lost her memory. She was worried that she was losing memories. More and more of her life seemed to be disappearing into the fog of time. And she didn't like that one bit. And so, a little perplexed, a little worried, a little discomforted, Morley did what she often does when faced with a problem she can't solve. She avoided it. She stuck the doll away in the top of the hall closet. It stayed there for months. It stayed there while spring was blown away by the great sigh of summer, and soon enough it was, once again, forgotten. Until a chilly October night, three in the morning, darker than dark, hours from bedtime and hours from dawn. Dave couldn't sleep. He'd been staring at the ceiling for hours.

Finally he slipped out of bed and stumbled into the hall. There was a nightlight glowing in the bathroom. By the dull yellow glow of the nightlight, he opened the hall closet. He was looking for a hot water bottle. He reached up onto the top shelf. Later, when she'd tell the story, Morley would say the first thing she thought was that he'd had a heart attack. Except she always thought heart attacks were more silent, slumpy sort of things. Dave sounded more like, like I was being attacked said Dave. When Morley found him he was lying on the hall floor on his back. Rhoda was sitting on his

chest blinking. Call the police said Dave. It's Rhoda she's found me. Don't make any sudden movements. It was Dave who had put the doll in the box in the basement. It's your doll? Said Marlene. I wanted her out of the way, said Dave. I wanted her out of sight. None of them, not Marlene, not Sam, and not Stephanie,

none of them had heard the story about Rhoda. They have now. And there's a problem with sharing your great weaknesses with your family, especially if your great weakness happens to be your fear of dolls. The problem is your family will not likely offer you the level of sympathy or understanding that you believe you deserve. A week passed before Rhoda made her next appearance.

A week passed, and one morning Dave woke up and dressed and came down for breakfast and there was Rhoda sitting at the table. Ha ha said Dave, very funny. A week later she tumbled out of his glove compartment. The thing about these things is if they happen enough they do lose their potency. The victim becomes desensitized. The joke loses its punch. So in a way the curse becomes the cure.

Today Rhoda sits on a shelf in Dave's store just by the cash. And if you went in there ever and you asked him about her, he might, if he were in the mood, tell you the story, beginning at the beginning. But as likely as not, he'll just tell you that it's a doll that used to be his sister's. Morley, on the other hand, tells the story every chance she can get. And she always begins the same way. Did you know, she'll say, did you know that Dave's the only one in the family who plays with dolls anymore? If he's there when she does that, Dave always says, ha ha, very funny. Thank you.

That was the story we call Rhoda's Revenge. We recorded that story at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, Ohio back in 2011. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another story, so stick around. Your door to big deals is on DoorDash right now. Sign up for DoorDash and enjoy a free Big Mac on your first McDonald's order of $20 or more. Only on DoorDash now until June 15th. Terms apply. Some things just take too long.

A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. ["Fizz"] Welcome back. Time for our second story now. I'm pretty sure many of you will have never

heard this one before. It's not a David Morley story, it's a story about Stuart, which is already really unusual. He didn't write about himself much in that way, but it's such a sweet story about his childhood. I was happy to hear it again. It's a track that was included on an album from way back, the album Planet Boy. The title for that CD and for this story came from something that happened to Stuart in real life. Here's the story as I remember it. Stuart was driving somewhere with one of his kids and a couple of their friends.

Was it a hockey tournament? Was it summer camp? I don't remember. What I do remember is this. It was one of those long, slow drives where the road stretches out ahead of you, the trees blur together, and the conversation drifts in and out

like the radio signal. And Stuart was doing what Stuart did best. He was asking questions. "'How's school? "'Are you still playing hockey? "'Any vacations coming up this summer?" The kid in the backseat was non-committal. I don't know. Yeah, I forget. At some point, Stuart kind of gave up asking questions. He just let the silence settle in. The road hummed under the tires,

the trees flicked past. And after a long pause, out of nowhere, the kid said, Yeah, I don't know. I haven't really been paying very much attention to my life lately. Later, Stuart told this story to the boy's mom. She just nodded and said, Yeah, he's lost on planet boy. Stuart loved that. He carried that with him. That phrase and that idea.

The idea that sometimes you can feel a bit lost in outer space, floating just above your own life, grounded in your own experience on your own planet, but slightly disconnected from what's going on on all the other planets. It became a catchphrase for him, Planet Boy. And then I started using it to refer to when Stuart would get lost in his own galaxy. And he does that here. This is Stuart McLean with Planet Stuart. When I was a boy we played endless games of cowboys, which turned out to be good training for adulthood, because basically cowboys was a game of negotiation.

You ran around shooting your guns for sure, but the essence of the game wasn't the shooting, it was the arguing. I got you, you're dead. No you didn't, you missed. No you're dead, I got you. You missed me, you just winged me. Anyway, I had the whole outfit. I had the black cowboy hat with a string that pulled up under my chin. I had the black shirt. I had the black pants with fringes. I had bandana, I had gloves, almost the whole outfit. I didn't have guns. My mother didn't believe in guns. When the kids were getting ready to play cowboys outside, my mom would send me out in my cowboy clothes and I said,

well mom, they're all going to be shooting out there. I don't have guns. She said, you be the preacher. I said, you don't understand. People are getting shot. She said, pray for them. It wasn't so bad. For long I was invested with secret powers. People got dead, I'd resurrect them. Hey, you're dead.

Am not. Preacher brought me back. But you know what it's like when you're a kid? You want to be like everybody else. So before long I started campaigning for guns and I campaigned hard. Hard enough that I got them on my sixth birthday. A pair of silver six-shooters with plastic imitation pearl handles came with a set of leather holsters and I strapped them on the moment I unwrapped them and then I smiled

at my mother and slowly and ever so carefully I reversed the guns in each holster so the pistol grips faced forward the way Wild Bill Hickok's guns faced. So just like Wild Bill Hickok, I could cross draw. Left hand over the body of the right gun, right hand over the left hand to the body of the left side and the left gun. An elegant and graceful maneuver that was pleasing to the eye and strategically misguided. Now I thought that owning these guns, these beautiful, beautiful guns, was going to lead me to the heights. But instead of leading me to the heights, these guns took me straight to hell. Took me to a life of violence and petty theft.

They led me to the variety store on West Minister Avenue where I purchased with fifty cents that I had stolen from my mother's purse a forbidden package of one-shot double-loaded super-percussive exploding caps. These were not your regular roll of red paper caps. When these caps went off they went off with such force that flames shot out the barrel of the gun. That's what happens when you give a gun to a preacher. I bought the caps on a Friday afternoon, five caps, 50 cents. I shot the cat as soon as I got home.

Went out the back door, it wasn't seen for a week. They were terrifyingly loud, these caps. I went to the park and shot some birds, but I saved one shot because I had something I wanted to try, something I'd seen on television the night before. So I went to bed that night, and before I went to bed I loaded my gun with a one-shot double-loaded super-percussive exploding cap that I had left and then I slung my holster over the bed post. I wore my cowboy outfit to bed that night under my pajamas. I had something that I wanted to try at first light, something I'd seen on television.

When I got up, my mother was already downstairs when I arrived in my parents' bedroom. My father, unfortunately, was still asleep, which is how I should have left him. Which is how I should have left him. I should have gone downstairs and asked for my mother's help, but this seemed to be a thing that men should share. My father, after all, had been in the war. I took one of my guns from the holster and approached the bed slowly. Don't get ahead of me here. Dad, I said, holding out the pearl handle of my six-shooter, take this and tell me to

put up my hands. My father stirred restlessly. Just hold it, I said, forcing the gun into his hand. Point it at me and tell me to put up my hands. Hands up. Hands up, said my father through God knows what fog. And I stood beside the bed in my black cowboy shirt and pants with my hands held triumphantly in the air, just the way Hoppe had held his hands on television when the bank robber surprised him in the cabin by the gold mine. And then

smiling just like Hoppe, I drew my foot back. Slowly, inch by inch, imperceptibly, I was looking for what the physicists call mechanical advantage. And once I got it, I swung my foot through as hard as I could. To my father's astonishment, I missed the gun. I got his wrist. To good effect, just like on television, the gun flew out of his hand. Unlike the bad guy on TV, however, my father sat up quickly as if he had been shot. Holding his wrist and peering at me with a stupid expression, he made a queer choking sound that made me think of a pig being stuck with sharp sticks.

The world seemed to freeze there for a moment between my father and me, him sitting in bed holding his wrist and staring at me stupidly and me just as stupidly standing by the bedside staring back. It had never occurred to me that I was going to hurt him. I was trying to kick the gun after all, not him, and I couldn't believe that he was angry at me, especially after this feat that I had just performed. And then as we stared at each other in stop time, I noticed the gun which had left my

father's hand and described a graceful arc toward the ceiling and had hovered there for a moment, was now heading down again. End over end it tumbled in slow motion on its trajectory from the ceiling toward my father's head. It hit his forehead with a dull thud, followed immediately by a belch of flame and a loud explosion. The impact had set off the double loaded super percussive exploding cap. My father sat up and said, My God, I've been shot! I think maybe he'd been dreaming about the war. I remember him reaching out with his hand to grab me, but I had two advantages over him. I was awake.

I hadn't been shot. I got out of the way and he lurched toward the bathroom, blood streaming from his forehead. I ran to the top of the stairs and I screamed out to my mom, Dad's being shot! shot. I heard the sound of a china bowl smashing on the kitchen floor. And I headed downstairs, I passed my mother on her way up. God knows what she thought she was going to find up there. I hid under the breakfast nook, and I cried for 10 minutes until she came down and she coaxed me out. She said, it's OK, Stuart. It's OK.

Dad's gone back to bed. He was just winged. Thank you. That was Planet Stewart. I don't know where or when that one was recorded, but I do know I love it. And I saw Stewart perform that one live several times and he loved reading it. He would change it up a little bit every time. He yeah, something about that one he really connected to. And I think I've got some photos somewhere of Stewart in his cowboy outfit.

I'll have a look for those and if I can find them, I'll put one up on Facebook. Sign up for DoorDash and enjoy a free Big Mac on your first McDonald's order of $20 or more. Only on DoorDash now until June 15th. Terms apply. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy.

Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at f phys.ca. All right, that's it for today. But we'll be back here next week with two more Dave and Morley stories. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is the disturbingly lifelike Greg DeKlout. He's so scary. He's just so scary.

Theme music is by Danny Michelle and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, disturbingly lifelike Greg DeKl, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now. Sign up for DoorDash and enjoy a free Big Mac on your first McDonald's order of $20 or more. Only on DoorDash now until June 15th. Terms apply.