Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Valentine’s Day - Holland

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

“It was the greatest skate of her life.” Love is in the air today on the pod, with a Dave and Morley origin story—the one about how they first met. For our second story, we’re bringing back the Vinyl Cafe Story Exchange, with one of our favourite listener love stories. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. We have two stories for you today. Two stories about love. We're going to start with this story because where better place to start than at the beginning? This is Dave and Morley's origin story. This is a story about how they met and about the early years of their marriage. I have always loved this story for a whole bunch of reasons. I love how visual it is. It's written like a movie. I love how we get to go back in time to meet Dave and Morley as they're just meeting each other. When I was a kid, I used to love looking at old photo albums. I loved seeing my parents before I was born.

I loved seeing the them that existed before me. Or I guess I liked seeing the them that created me. I liked seeing who they were rather than who they became. This story feels like that to me. We get to see Dave and Morley back in the day before we met them but also before they meet each other. I like thinking about who they were back then and trying to tease out how they influenced each other. And I also love how they meet. Skating. I mean, is there a better way for two Canadians to meet than on a skating rink? Especially these two, because they're two people who just sort of skate through life. That sounds negative, but I don't mean it that way.

I meant it as a compliment. It's one of the things I admire most about them. Their ability to just let go when they need to. Their ability to glide. Their ability to seek out smooth ground. The path of least resistance. They figure out how to seek out smooth ground, the path of least resistance. They figure out how to keep it smooth. I like that.

And I like this too. This is the story we call Holland. I mentioned earlier that we wanted to get Dave and Morley here tonight. They come to Ottawa every winter to skate on the canal. And as I said, Dave and Morley met on an ice rink. It was in Providence, Rhode Island, in the autumn of 1970. Morley was working in summer stock, four plays, two months. Dave came through town with one of those cavalcade of rock shows.

He was the technical director of a Dick Clark production. Eight acts in two hours, including Question Mark and the Mysterians, the Archies, and Bobby Goldsboro. It was a hateful tour. The musicians hated the music they were playing, and they hated the venues they were playing in, and a sourness descended on the whole enterprise before the first week was over.

It was the rock and roll equivalent of a Ford Pinto. The only salvation, the only salvation was the most hated moment of all, the last number of the show when Bobby Goldsboro sang Honey. About two weeks into the tour, one of the Mysterians bought a Fisher-Price battery-operated megaphone, and every night a group of musicians would huddle just offstage

and try to distract Bobby Goldsboro by singing alternative lyrics during the number. They'd sing just loud enough so he could hear them and the audience couldn't. In Saratoga Springs, they rigged up a microphone behind stage so they could feed their version of the song through Goldsboro's monitor. And somehow the feed got rerouted. It was never clear how.

And their version, which involved Honey doing unspeakable things with a shaved, greased goat, got routed through the arena's PA system, and to everyone in the audience, it seemed as if the rude version was actually coming out of Goldsboro's mouth. The next morning, he kicked up such a fuss that they had to stop their antics. And instead every night when it was time for Goldsboro's big number, the Mysterians would move into the audience where Bobby Goldsboro could see them. And they'd put on these big construction ear protectors. And they'd smile evilly and wave at him.

Things got so bad that Dave left the show and began to advance it, which meant he would have to arrive in town a few days ahead of everyone else to check the arena out and then thankfully to leave town before anyone else got there. And that's how he met Morley. At the end of August, 1970, in a 3,000-seat arena in Providence, Rhode Island. It was a Thursday evening, and Dave was leaning on the arena boards, waiting for the free skate to end, so they could start laying a temporary floor over the ice. And the lights were dim, and they were playing waltzes over the arena's PA,

and everyone was paired up and holding hands as they skated around and around. And Dave got a coffee and a styrofoam cup, and he watched the skaters. He was transported back to the arena in his hometown in Cape Breton to the annual Valentine weekend ice waltz. And they used to put lights in the arena ceiling that would twinkle, just like stars, and the big face of the moon. And the moon would wink its eye every so often, and there was a live orchestra suspended on a plywood platform over center ice. Musicians would have to climb a rope ladder before the show began. Haul their instruments up there. And Dave's mother made him promise he wouldn't skate under

the platform during the polkas. Because when the orchestra played polkas, the platform would swing back and forth. And Margaret would light a cool and say that she didn't mind if the cigarettes got her, but she was damned if she was going to become an item on the TV news because she was the only woman in the history of Cape Britain to be squashed to death by a polka band. That's what Dave was thinking about when Morley skated into his life. She had long chestnut hair, cutting bangs that were no more than an inch below her eyebrows. She was wearing a poncho over a blue army surplus turtleneck sweater.

She had bell-bottom jeans on with embroidered cuffs and granny glasses. Dave was bewitched. Dave had sideburns that nearly met at his chin at the time. She was the only person on the ice who could really skate around and around all by herself.

One leg crossing over the other in the corners and every so often she would glide to center ice and get up on her toes and spin around and and Dave watched in awe, and he thought, she must be Canadian. And he had to meet her. So he rented a pair of skates, and he got out onto the ice, and he couldn't catch up to her. So he slowed down to see if she would catch up to him. And she did.

And she just kept going. And Dave was getting frantic as he watched the clock at the far end of the arena, and then suddenly she was standing right in front of him at the blue line. But Dave was going so fast he was going to shoot right by her. And without thinking, he reached out in desperation, and he grabbed a hold of her. And she screamed. And then they were suspended in midair, clutching at each other. And for a horrible moment, face to face, and Dave said, hi.

And Morley said, hi, back, like a question, hi. And then they landed in a heap. Like a question, hi? And then they landed in a heap. And then Dave insisted on driving her to the hospital where she had three stitches just below the chin. And then they went out to dinner. And then he drove her back to the arena where she had left her car and he invited her to come to the concert the next night.

They didn't see each other again for five years, but they did keep in touch by mail. Just occasional letters, and Dave's never said much, but he always sent her quirky things. The week after she and Dave had met on the skating rink, Dave sent her a package of silly putty in the mail. And when she opened it, she knew he was the man for her. Another time, he sent her a pair of glow-in-the-dark skate laces. And once a newspaper from Thunder Bay. Morley, who was back in Toronto by then and had left the theater,

she was teaching at the time, she read every page of the Thunder Bay paper obsessively, looking for the significant article. Why had he sent it? She finally decided it was her horoscope, which said, why had he sent it? she finally decided it was her horoscope which said, your love life is on thin ice don't let distance cloud your judgment no, said Dave, years later

there was nothing special I was finished with it and I just thought you'd like to see it they were so young I was finished with it and I just thought you'd like to see it. They were so young, they still thought life had a purpose. They still believed what they were doing was important. When they finally started to see each other, eight years had gone by. It was 1978. Dave was sick of life on the road. He wanted to come in from the cold,

and Morley seemed so normal. When he told her these things, Morley was overcome with absurdity. She was tired of being polite. She didn't want to be normal. She wanted to lose control, but she loved him. She had hope. They got married before the summer was over and they moved into an apartment near the Grange and on their very first night together when they were getting ready for bed, Dave said, do you want a little snack? And Morley said, you go ahead. Dave came back from the kitchen with four pieces of bread slathered with mayonnaise. And there were four slabs of cooking onion on a plate. And a glass of buttermilk. Morley stared at him and he said, it's okay, I haven't brushed my teeth yet.

A week later he had a sore throat and Morley said you should gargle with salt. And Dave said no, no, just throw me one of those socks. Morley said what? And Dave said one of those white athletic socks, the wool ones. And Morley said what are you going to do with a sock? And Dave said, you just soak it in water and fasten it around your neck with a safety pin. Morley just stared at him. Dave said, you ring it out first. Morley was thinking, what am I doing here? But she wasn't about to quit. She was determined to keep trying.

Ever since he was a child, Dave loved scrambled eggs. Sometimes when he was a boy, he could hardly wait to get to sleep on Friday nights because he knew he was going to get scrambled eggs for breakfast on Saturday morning. I make the best scrambled eggs you've ever had, said Morley. The next morning, she squeezed fresh juice and got out their two matching coffee mugs and carefully folded their one pair of linen napkins, laying them out side by side. And she whisked up six eggs and brought them to the table, and Dave stared at them in horror. They were full of green stuff.

There were little green flecks all through his scrambled eggs. Pieces of chives that Morley had snipped from the back garden. You live in Cape Britain, you don't put anything in your scrambled eggs, except maybe ketchup. But this was his bride, and she had made these eggs, and Dave ate them, and he said, I love your scrambled eggs. The next weekend, the eggs came with chopped up mushrooms. And then with tomatoes and cheese and then with spinach and on the fifth weekend it was olives. Dave had begun to hate Saturday mornings.

He'd lie in bed grinding his teeth while Morley chopped olives. And he'd think, how did I get mixed up with this person? By the time that first winter came, the winter of 1978-79, they were both thinking this marriage was a big mistake. It was a gloomy January. All the gloomier because January was once Morley's favorite month. When she was a child, Morley's father, Roy, used to make a skating rink in their backyard just for her.

Now, it wasn't always the easiest thing to do when you lived in Toronto. Some winters, Roy had to take Morley's wagon late at night and steal snow from the neighbor's yards in order to have enough to make a rink. But he was happy to do it because she loved to skate. She used to lie in bed at night while her father was out in the backyard, frozen to the hose. And she'd imagine her ceiling was a frozen lake. She'd fall asleep dreaming that she could skate on her ceiling forever. Her all-time

favorite book was Hans Brinker. Her all-time favorite dress was the burgundy chiffon costume that her mother made for her in 1956 for the skating club's Christmas pageant. She was a plum. And now, and now she hardly skated at all, maybe three or four times since that night in Rhode Island when she had met Dave, and here it was, the gloomiest January of all. Less than a year married, and she felt like she'd been given a sentence of solitude.

She was unhappy. And then one night on the television, it said that the canals of Holland, the canals in Holland were frozen over for the first time in ten years. And it showed pictures of people skating on the canals and Morley said, I always dreamed of doing that. And Dave said, really? That was your dream? And Morley said, yes. And Dave said, we should go.

And Morley said, don't be silly. And Dave said, maybe this is our only chance. Maybe the next time it happens, we'll have kids and we won't be able to go. It was a Wednesday night. And he went to the phone and when he hung up, he said, was it really your dream? We could leave tomorrow and be back on Monday. The next morning they went and they bought Dave a pair of hockey skates and when they got home Morley held out a present, wrapped up a newspaper. She said, it's almost finished.

I was going to give it to you for your birthday. I can finish it on the plane. It was a heavy wool sweater. This is a beautiful sweater, said Dave. I love this sweater. When the plane landed in Amsterdam, Morley had her face pressed to the window. She wanted to see everything. She wanted to make sure the canals were still frozen. She couldn't believe this was happening to her. The man at the hotel said, you have to go to Friesland. So on Saturday, they rented a car and they drove into the country. They parked at the end of a road and left their boots and coats under a long row of willows that stood bare and wispy along the bank of the canal.

And when Morley climbed down onto the ice, it was like her dream. She felt like she was a little girl again, and she had stepped onto her ceiling. She was standing on a narrow swath of ice that kept going as far as she could see, like she could start skating and she could go forever. It was the greatest skate of her life. They skated past farm

houses with roofs so low that they looked like wool hats pulled almost to their eyes, past huge creaking windmills that Morley said reminded her of herons trying to take off. For an hour they saw no one and then suddenly they went right through a village and saw an old man leading a donkey with panniers and a dog pulling a cart and a family pushing a baby carriage on wooden runners. Once in the middle of nowhere, an old man passed them going the other way. He was sitting on a contraption that looked like a wagon on blades, and he was rowing it along the canal.

With what Dave swore were cross-country ski poles with toilet plungers fastened to the end. There were foot bridges to duck under and frozen intersections with signs that said, Laden, 50 kilometers, with an arrow pointing down the branch that ran off their canal. It was like being in an earlier time. It was like being in the 19th century. They didn't see a car all day. tree. They didn't see a car all day. They ate lunch on the ice at a cafe on a boat that was frozen under a leafless elm. No one could speak English and they ordered by pointing their red

fingers and shrugging. Instead of getting what they thought they had ordered, they each got a large meatball covered in gravy and a mug of hot chocolate and a huge square of gingerbread. The waiter smiled at them as they ate. It was delicious. Morley hardly let them stop. She wanted to keep moving forever. She was thinking, this is why people dance. Dave, who had been having trouble keeping up to her right from the beginning, was wondering how you said cardiac arrest in Dutch. Finally, an hour after lunch, Morley stopped and turned,

and Dave puffed up to her, and he flopped on the bank. Morley said, stand up. He struggled up, and she made him cross his arms over his chest, and she skated behind him, and she said, stand up. He struggled up, and she made him cross his arms over his chest, and she skated behind him, and she said, lean back. He tipped his head back, and she said, all of you. She said, trust me, I'm here. Dave leaned back into her arms, and she caught him, and she pushed him along the canal as if he were a statue.

It started to snow, and it was like they were skating through a painting. Dave leaning back, Morley pushing, pushing the snow on their hats, their mittens, their sweaters, everything white, above and below them, the white sky and the white ice, like they were floating. They had waffles and hot cheese for supper, and they bought a wooden toy for their balcony that would move in the wind. Dave carried the toy home in his lap.

He was being so careful not to knock it as he stood up to leave the plane that he snagged the sweater Morley had knitted for him on the side of his seat. He'd taken four or five steps before he realized what had happened. He'd taken four or five steps before he realized what had happened. The wool had caught where Morley had dropped a stitch, and the sweater had begun to unravel behind him, so there was a strand of blue wool hanging from his waist that almost reached the floor. When he caught up to Morley, he was clutching the wooden toy, and the line of wool was dangling behind him like a tail.

He didn't know what to say. So he didn't say anything. He just thrust the toy into her arms and he turned around. And they stood in the middle of the walkway staring at the hole. And the man behind them said, excuse me, and people started to push past them. So Morley reached down and gathered up the line of the wool, and they started to walk through the airport. Dave, a step ahead of Morley, like a kid on a line. And they walked that way to the luggage carousel, and they walked that way out to the taxis, and they're still walking like that today, attached together, drifting apart sometimes,

but never so far apart that one can't reel the other one in. That's the story we call Holland. That's the story we call Holland. The ending of that story is one of my favorite things that Stuart ever wrote. I can see it. Morley walking behind Dave with that bouquet of wool. The two of them walking through the airport like that. Dave ahead of Marley, but connected by that length of wool. To me, that scene perfectly captures what marriage is like. I know everyone has different experiences with marriage and also that everyone views it differently.

But one thing I think most people agree on is that for a marriage to be good, it requires some work, some compromise, and some expectation management. I don't know anyone whose marriage is all fairy tale. And that passage captures that idea, but it also captures the safety and security that a good marriage provides. Let me put this another way. There is magic in marriage, but it's not what most people think it is. Or at least not what you think it is at the beginning. The magic, in my opinion, is less fairy dust, less fairy tale, and more seat belt. This is an idea that Stuart and I used to talk a lot about. My role in his life, both as his friend and his producer, was often just that, safety net. It's important. As a creative,

you have to take risks. You have to put yourself out there. And to do that, you need to know that someone's going to be there to catch you when you fall. I knew my role was to look after the other stuff so that Stuart could leap and so that he'd know I would always be there at the bottom with outstretched hands. We often talked about the importance of that, of feeling safe and of being seen or understood, which in a way are similar and connected. It's hard to feel safe if you don't feel understood. We talked about that as creatives a bit, but we mostly talked about that just as friends. Because it's like that for all of us. We have to leap. And you can only leap if you know there's going to be someone at the bottom, ready to catch you when you fall. Because you will fall

sometimes. We all do. That's how we learn. That's how we grow. If you never fall, then you're probably not leaping enough. And I think that story that you just heard, especially that scene at the end, captures this beautifully. The idea that the best relationships, marriages, parent-child, friendships, and even work relationships. The best relationships are a mix of togetherness and independence, a mix of supporting someone, of being their safety net so that they can leap, of trusting them to catch you when you fall, and of leaping together, hand in hand. And if you can find that, well, that may not be fairy tale, but it is magic.

We have to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a minute or two with another story. Another story about love. So, stay with me. Welcome back. Time for our second story now. If you listened to the Vinyl Cafe on the radio back in the day, then you'll remember we had a segment where you wrote the stories. It was called the Vinyl Cafe Story Exchange, and it was one of the most popular segments on the show.

We used to ask you, the audience, to send us your stories, and then Stuart would read them on the radio show. There were only two rules. The stories had to be true, and they had to be short. Other than that, it was up to you. We read every single story that came in. There were thousands. We received several thousand stories in that very first month when we put out the call. In the 15 years that the story exchange aired on the Vinyl Cafe, I bet we would have received over 10,000 stories from people in Canada and the United States and around the world. We read every single story, and Stuart read some of our favorites on the radio. We started this podcast a year ago, and so many of you have written us and said,

what about the Story Exchange? Bring it back! And so today, we're going to play Stuart reading one of the Vinyl Cafe Story Exchanges. We used to get so many love stories at the story exchange, and this is one of our favorites. This is a story sent in by listener David Cameron of Bowen Island, British Columbia. Dear Stuart, writes David, it was Valentine's Day, 1994, and time was running out. I still hadn't got my beloved wife and mother of my child a gift or a card. I didn't want to buy the pre-packaged sentiments of Hallmark, but I didn't feel like standing in the 530 tulip line at the general store with all the other desperate men. Nope, I was waiting for something special to come along. But it was late in the day, and there

I was in my capacity as a builder, scraping and digging amongst the foundations of a customer's house. My chances for a romantic evening were looking slim. And that's when my spade hit a particularly immovable rock. I dug around it, levered it out with a pry bar, and behold, Cupid had answered my prayers. There was a ten-pound rock in the perfect shape of a heart. Now, if I'd seen this very same rock the day before, I might have thought it was potato-shaped. But like I said, I was desperate.

She'll love it, I thought, as I brushed off the bigger chunks of dirt. And then I spent the rest of the workday chiseling our initials into the rock with somebody else's wood chisel. I hopped into my trusty white van, and I drove home imagining as I drove my wife's delighted reaction. I was so tickled with anticipation that I drove right up to the front door stairs, and I bounded in with a prize in hand and thrust it proudly at my heart's desire. Now, in my wife's defense, she had spent the day alone with a three-year-old, and I was late for dinner. and I was late for dinner. She looked blankly at what I laid on the coffee table and muttered,

A rock. We had a quiet dinner, after which I quickly volunteered to do the dishes. And then the plates dried and everything back in its place. There was only one thing left to do. I glanced at the coffee table, and there it sat, ten pounds of humiliation. I grabbed the rock. I opened the front door. I hefted it out like a shot put. It was only as it left my fingertips and was sailing through the air

that I remembered exactly where I had parked my van. The new windshield cost $259.69. The new wood chisel cost $15.78. The following year for Valentine's, I bought my wife a nice Hallmark card. $4.75. That story came to us from David Cameron of Bowen Island, British Columbia. That was Stuart McLean reading a story written by Vinyl Cafe listener David Cameron. And that was from the Vinyl Cafe Story Exchange. We know you missed the Story Exchange. You've told us. So we'll be bringing it back from time to time playing a few

of our favorites and we're ready to read a few of your favorites too. We're opening up our inboxes. Do you have a story you'd like to share with us? We would love to read it. We will read everything you send us and we'll read some of our favorites, new stories, right here on this podcast. You can send us your story by email. Just head over to our website, vinylcafe.com. All right, that's it for today, but we will be back right here next week with another Dave and Morley story. No one, well, certainly not me anyway, is ever going to reconcile to anyone's satisfaction the many and conflicting opinions about which of the thousands and thousands of hockey games ever played on ice was the greatest game of them all. Although if you ever had the chance, as I have, to raise that question with any of the old-timers

who live in the town of Big Narrows in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, you would be told that the matter was settled over a half century ago. For they'd tell you, as they have told me, that the greatest game in hockey history was played in the autumn of 1945. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is someone whose wife, Sandra, keeps his sweater from unraveling, Greg DeCloot. Theme music is written by Danny Michelle and played beautifully today by Rob Carley. And the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg Duclute,

and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.