TIME NOW FOR THE
VINYL CAFE
STORY EXCHANGE
OTHER BOOKS
BY STUART MCLEAN
FICTION
Stories from the Vinyl Cafe
Home from the Vinyl Cafe
Vinyl Cafe Unplugged
Vinyl Cafe Diaries
Dave Cooks the Turkey
Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe
Extreme Vinyl Cafe
Revenge of the Vinyl Cafe
NON-FICTION
The Morningside World of Stuart McLean
Welcome Home: Travels in Smalltown Canada
Vinyl Cafe Notebooks
EDITED BY STUART MCLEAN
When We Were Young:
An Anthology of Canadian Stories
It is my belief that if enough of us write, and if we tell the truth about some small thing, we will create a snapshot of our country—an archive of sorts—a picture of who we are, how we feel about things, and most importantly, what we feel is important.
—Stuart McLean, September 2003
CONTENTS
Introduction
YEAR ONE
The Mongoose
Sunlight on Leaves
Height of Humanity
A Long Way to Longlac
Orange Juice
Running in the Family
Measure of a Dog
The Outhouse
Lovingly Made by Grandma
Summerland
YEAR TWO
Mr. Fisher
Fatso, the Cat
I Told You So
How to Be a Better Man
The Fireman
Faded Love
From Father, Finally
Canadian Tires
The Cello
The Christmas Train
YEAR THREE
Placebo
Drive-Through Rainbow
Family Ties
Te Quiero Mucho
Amazing Grace
Lost in Translation
Strip Search
My Mother, the Pilot
The Mysteries of Meringue
Skating with Singh
YEAR FOUR
The Ship Pub
As Tears Go By
Cockled!
Canoe Memories
Canadian Porridge
The Art of Ironing
An Absence of Erika
Scotch Rose
Becky, from Kansas
Full Circle
YEAR FIVE
Charles the Great
The Man on the Hill
Good Catch
We Danced
My Life in Trains
The Truth of Towers
Chocolate Sprinkles
Learning to Skate
Christmas Package
Drifting Home
YEAR SIX
Class Picture
Jiggin’ for Squid
Over the Rainbow
A Tiny Silver Birdcage
Teaching the Dancer to Pull
The Big Move
The Rescue
On the Sunny Side of the Street
Discovering Dieppe
Picnic, Postponed
YEAR SEVEN
Dogging Saturn
Meeting the Queen
Mary’s Piano
Twice in a Lifetime
Spit Bugs
Culture of Kindness
Freudian Slip
Bird Dog
Standing, Proudly
Birthday Suit
YEAR EIGHT
A Proposal of Hope
Nightcrawler
A Cathedral of Fence Posts
Plus One
Tall Order
Away in a Manger
Stepping Out
Treed
No Ordinary Cat
A Current of Kindness
YEAR NINE
Mac and Cheese
A Model Boyhood
After the War
Christmas Eve
Riding the Runners
Love Story
A Reunion
Adrift in Peace River
Postmarked
The Old Buick
YEAR TEN
Fire and Ice
Sitting, Still
SkyTrain Justice
The Webs We Leave
The Gift of Goodbye
Misdirection
A Christmas Prayer
And the Band Played On
Pudding in the Post
The Lives of Others
List of Contributors
INTRODUCTION
Ten years ago I asked listeners of The Vinyl Cafe to send me their stories. “They have to be true,” I said. “And they have to be short … but after that they don’t have to be anything at all; after that it’s up to you.” The stories came in by the thousands. The Vinyl Cafe Story Exchange became a regular segment on the show. It is one of my favourite parts of the program. On the tenth anniversary of the Story Exchange I sat down with Jess Milton, producer of The Vinyl Cafe, to reminisce.
Stuart:
Do you remember when it started?
Jess:
I remember exactly when it started.
Stuart:
It was on my boat, right?
Jess:
No, it wasn’t on your boat.
Stuart:
It was.
Jess:
No.
Stuart:
It was totally on my boat. I remember the day exactly.
Jess:
No. You … you always get this confused. In your mind, the planning session … I guess we should back up and say we have a planning session every year.
Stuart:
Yeah.
Jess:
And in your mind we had one magical planning session on your boat where every good idea we’ve ever had came from.
Stuart:
That’s right.
Jess:
But that planning session, the one where you think we came up with the idea for the Story Exchange, was my first year producing the show, and the Story Exchange started before I was producing it. The Story Exchange started my first year as production assistant.
Stuart:
So where do you think it happened? Where do you think we came up with the idea?
Jess:
I know exactly what happened, how it started.
Stuart:
Okay. Tell me.
Jess:
You were down in the States. On book tour. And when you came back you had a book.
Stuart:
The National Story Project.
Jess:
That’s right. You handed me the book and you said, “There’s something here that we could do on our show.” And I said, “Okay, well, like what?” And you said, “That’s your job,” or something to that effect.
Stuart:
Yeah.
Jess:
And so I took it home and read the stories. And we talked about it. I don’t remember that whole middle part.
Stuart:
That was the part that happened on the boat.
Jess:
No, no, it wasn’t. You didn’t even own a boat yet. You didn’t own a boat for two more years. This is so easy to prove. We can go back and look at when you purchased the boat, and I can guarantee that the Story Exchange started before you owned your little boat. So it’s time for you to get over the whole boat thing.
Stuart:
Yeah, you’re right.
Jess:
So then we got together one night. I think Dave Amer was there too. In your office at the old house on Madison.
Stuart:
You were sitting on the fl oor.
Jess:
That’s exactly right. And you had that weird chair with the sticky arms and you used to pick at the arms like you were a rodent …
Stuart:
More like a teething puppy …
Jess:
And—
Stuart:
I actually didn’t pick at it. It just, sort of, disappeared. It was—
Jess:
Magical?
Stuart:
It was kind of falling apart.
Jess:
Anyway, we tossed around ideas and we didn’t quite get it. We talked for a long time, the three of us, and we came up with a bunch of ideas. You had a bulletin board by your desk. You pinned them on the board.
Stuart:
The ideas?
Jess:
Yeah. And you had come up with … you got really close. Like, you knew it should have the word “story” in it.
Stuart:
Oh, we were talking about titles?
Jess:
Yes.
Stuart:
But what about the idea of people writing in stuff?
Jess:
Oh, that was your idea.
Stuart:
Okay.
Jess:
Yeah. I mean, it was pretty obvious from the …
Stuart:
From the go.
Jess:
Yeah.
Stuart:
We’d have people write in their stories.
Jess:
Yeah, yeah.
Stuart:
And then we were struggling to get a name?
Jess:
We thought we’d start with a name and that would help us define what we were doing.
Stuart:
Sort of backwards.
Jess:
I don’t think it’s that backwards. We started with “They have to be short and they have to be true.”
Stuart:
Was that us?
Jess:
You stole that from Paul Auster.
Stuart:
No, I don’t think I stole it.
Jess:
Mm-hm.
Stuart:
No, I don’t think—
Jess:
Yeah—
Stuart:
I think I have the book right over on that shelf, we could probably check. I don’t think he said it had to be short and true.
Jess:
Yeah. Yeah, he did.
Stuart:
I don’t think so. I think you’ll fi nd it’s different.
Jess:
I think you’ll fi nd I’m right.
Stuart:
Okay.
Jess:
So we had that, we knew … they had to be true.
Stuart:
Yeah.
Jess:
And they had to be short, we knew that.
Stuart:
Yeah.
Jess:
And we didn’t really know what else they had to be. You had the idea of The Moment. When you were a teacher, you described The Moment thing.
Stuart:
Oh, yeah, yeah. My favourite writing exercise. I used to send my students out of the classroom. I wanted them to describe, in about a page, a perfect distilled moment. And the directions I came up with were “Tell me a story, about someone, doing something, somewhere.” They had to have all three elements: a character, a place, and an action. If they got all three they were almost guaranteed to write something beautiful. A little observation piece. Like you used to see in The New Yorker in the old days.
Jess:
I disagree with that because, to me, the most interesting stories aren’t about something, they’re about the moment just before the something happens. Think about when you’re having an emotional conversation with someone. The moment, say, just before they start crying is always more powerful than the tears themselves. That moment, the moment when things could go either way, is more interesting than the moment when things actually happen.
Stuart:
Well. In that case the thing that happened is the conversation.
Jess:
Okay. Good point.
Stuart:
And that’s what we wanted people to do. To describe a moment they had experienced, or witnessed, or heard about. We said it could be a moment of kindness or cruelty, of sadness or frivolity, a moment they were proud of or a moment they were ashamed of. It might not even be about them. It might be about someone they knew or maybe about someone they didn’t know at all. Something that made them smile, or cry. Happy or sad. A photo of life, but taken with words instead of film.
Jess:
So we had that much but, as always with you, you wanted a title. You love titles. You love defining things by titles.
Yeah.
Jess:
So you were stuck on the title.
Stuart:
Finding a name for it.
Jess:
Yeah.
Stuart:
I was totally right. When we got the title—
Jess:
That’s exactly right. I remember thinking, Why are we focusing on the title? But you were right. Once we got the title, we had the concept. You had the word “story.”
Stuart:
And I said we needed a word that goes with the word “story.”
Jess:
Yeah, yeah.
Stuart:
You came up with it, didn’t you? “Exchange.”
Jess:
Eventually. I remember how that happened. I came home and was thinking about the idea of sharing. And I knew the word “sharing” was too lame. Too soft.
Stuart:
Mm-hm, too sucky.
Jess:
Yeah, but that’s really what we’re doing. Sharing stories. So I was playing around with the word “share.” And I was thinking about other things you share with people. And I thought about my own life. And I remember thinking, What do I share with people? And the first thing I came up with was recipes, because that’s something I do a lot: share recipes.
Stuart:
Right.
Jess:
And that got me to “recipe exchanging,” which is a phrase you use.
Stuart:
Mm-hm.
Jess:
“Exchange” has weight and substance.
Stuart:
Yeah, it hasn’t been cheapened. The word “sharing” has been emotionally cheapened.
Jess:
But it came from that, because that’s really what it is.
Stuart:
I remember you telling me the word. And me saying right away—
Jess:
“Perfect.”
Stuart:
That’s it, perfect.
Jess:
Yeah. So—
Stuart:
Once we had the title—
Jess:
It was … discussion was over.
Stuart:
This is going to work.
Jess:
Our fi rst show with the Story Exchange had five … I think five stories.
Stuart:
Oh, that’s right. I don’t know how we did that.
Jess:
And right away we got it. That it should only be one story per show.
Stuart:
Mm. I’m proud of it.
Jess:
Yeah. I think it’s a nice idea because people love hearing your stories, but now you’re hearing their stories.
Stuart:
Yeah.
Jess:
And I love that. When someone gives you a great gift, you desperately want to find the perfect gift to give them to show them how much their gift meant to you. And that’s, sort of, what I feel happened with the Story Exchange. When we put the call out, we got a lot of letters. I don’t know for sure how many but—
Stuart:
Thousands.
Jess:
Oh, my gosh. We’ve received thousands for sure, thousands within the first year alone.
Stuart:
Yeah.
Jess:
And what that said to me—and it’s probably easier for me to say this than you—what that said to me is that people really love what you do. They love your stories and they have stories of their own that they want to share with you. You always talk about the moment of giving and receiving, and how you’re so lucky, as an author, because you get to be there when your audience receives what you’ve written. Well, with the Story Exchange, it’s the same for them. How cool is that?
Stuart:
Mm, mm.
Jess:
I think that’s great. So I like that about the Story Exchange but I also like this idea of people getting a sense of how other people live.
Stuart:
A lot of people tell us it’s their favourite part of the show—
Jess:
I love when they applaud—
Stuart:
When?
Jess:
In the live shows. When you say, “Time now for The Vinyl Cafe Story Exchange.”
Stuart:
Me too.
Jess:
What’s your favourite one?
Stuart:
Well, I know yours. Yours is … I don’t remember the guy’s name, but it’s the teacher.