I was driving east on the 125 toward the Marion Bridge exit, listening to The Coast. It was a beautiful, sunny day, breezy, warm without the humidity, perfect.
The big thousand-foot-high cumulus clouds in the blue sky. Idyllic. Phil Thompson was playing a good, eclectic mix of tunes: Lou Rawls, Buddy MacDonald, Don Ho, Eric Clapton ... and then Raylene Rankin singing “Rise Again” with the cast from The Rise and Follies.
I was going to turn it off when it started because I was nearing my destination off of Alexandra Street and I had to think. Do I have everything? The people I was delivering to were in quarantine and I was hauling the mail. They just came back from a family funeral in the States and had to isolate for two weeks. So, I was going over the check list:
Couple slices of pie. (I made it, just so you know. It’s all in the crust. It is. It doesn’t matter ... anybody can do apples and cinnamon ... but the crust ... it’s true. It’s what separates store-bought from homemade every single time. Factory made pie crust can only do in a pinch. Pinch crust.)
Muffin tins, four cups of flour, bag of bran, vanilla, buttermilk, baking soda, baking powder, etc. Sandals, Ranch Doritos, 2-litre diet Pepsi, oatcakes, oven rice.
But I didn’t reach the dial on time. And Raylene, God rest her soul, hit that high note, and the back-up singers burst like Aug. 1 fireworks into multi-coloured harmonies, and the cymbals did that sea breaking on the shore sound ...
And the next thing you know I’m bawling.
My chest went all tight. My lower lip rolled out and quivered. I started to choke. My eyes teared up and I could hardly see. I had to do five laps around the traffic circle with the windows down to dry my face.
People were passing me by on Alexandra Street, on-coming traffic, gawking at me, seeing the tears and the contorted face. Thinking, somebody died.
No. Nobody died.
There was another time I cried spontaneously like that. I was watching that Canadian Tire commercial on TV; the kid ... his father comes home in the truck ... and tells ... he tells the kid to go get something out of the back ... and the kid climbs up ... Jayss, aww ... and there’s a new bike. Jayss!
Over a beer I used to weep for Cape Breton, y’know, as a 19-year-old back in the ’70s, living in Ontario. Kitchener. I loved Kitchener. Then it was just a fine place to live. Lots of work. Good pay. Friendly people. Small town feeling. Just marvelous. But ...
You know. Not Cape Breton.
Things would be perfectly fine. I’d finish a week at Uniroyal, piling tires. Working with the boys, telling stories and jokes all day ... Dropping into the Highland Motel Pub for a draft served up in a frosted mug, a basket of breaded, deep-fried shrimp ... heaven on earth. And then I’d get home and sit down and play The Men of the Deeps singing “Dark as a Dungeon.” And my chest would swell, and my arms would grow two feet longer and, dragging my knuckles on the ground, I’d go looking for a bar fight.
Only ever found the one though.
Lucky for me, because I can’t fight. Never could. I’m not cool and I can’t fight. My opponent that particular, and only time, couldn’t fight either. Three minutes in, swinging and missing, bored, we stopped and bought one another a beer.
My worst bouts were always with nostalgia. I might as well step into the ring with Mike Tyson as try and fend of the lefts and rights and uppercuts of the Cape Breton vapours.
The thing is ... I live here!
Yeah, but, I’m still not back in Glace Bay.
Homesickness is specific in its demands.
Baww ...
Mike Finigan from Glace Bay is a freelance writer now living in Sydney River.
