Sherman, I just heard about you from some other Substacker, I forget who now. Read the above, laughed and loved it. Before it, I read your absolute killer of a piece, The "I" in BIPOC: Not all Native Americans are Leftist Activists.
Your fine dry wit dragged me happily back the '70s, when I left home in Toronto at 16 to work in Alberta's Oil Patch and got hired onto a seismic crew. Our dozen-strong gang of young knuckleheads would be stationed in one-horse towns for anything from a week to a whole season to "shoot lines", or methodically let off dynamite inside 60ft holes drilled underground across the open country in search of oil & gas.
We stayed in local motels and drank in local dive bars every night. Some of these towns were near or part of reservations -- places like Lac La Biche, Vegreville, Red Earth Creek, Cynthia, Turtle Lake in Saskatchewan, Fort St. John (aka Foreskin Johnny) in BC and dozens of others.
I got to meet lots of First Nations people, as we now call our indigenous folks up here. Back then, they were called Indians, which made no sense to me, because in history class we'd been taught that this was an explorer accident; bastards thought they'd discovered India when they'd only hit Canada. Why hadn't it been corrected yet, I always wondered, and I never got a decent answer.
Anyway, being a curious teen, I thought it was damn cool that we got to mix it up with the Western tribes all over the Prairies and northern swamplands, aka the muskeg. The biggest surprises to me were: None of them hated me or white people in general; the girls liked me enough to get involved with me on one or two occasions; and every last "Indian" was fucking hilarious, even if they hailed from dark and gnarly family situations, which many did.
At one stage, a Cree guy, Rob, joined us. He was not Albertan, but from Northern Ontario, and so damn funny he even gave the Newfoundlanders on our crew a run for their money. They'd been keeping us in stitches through long days waiting in the muskeg for the shooter to finish dynamiting so we could pick up and lay out another mile of geophones. But once Rob joined in, the humour riffage between the Newfs and him spiked so high my guts ached from laughing all day long when I crawled into bed nights.
One night in '77 in Calgary, while we were off for Xmas holidays, we all went to the Bowness Hotel, home of a massive, legendary rig pig party bar. Someone scored LSD and I ended up dropping it with Rob and the funniest of the Newfs, Sid I think his name was. I didn't tell them then, but on my cassette player I recorded an hour-and-a-half of the three of us peaking on acid, three loons locked up in a hotel room. I'd always wondered if LSD conversations would be as funny when you're sober as they were while stoned.
Hell yes, they were. We kept the cassette deck in our truck and would listen to that tape again and again out in the muskeg, and the boys would riff on their riffs, to ever greater heights of stupid delightful absurdity.
So, I must thank you for bringing back my Wild West memories. I doubt I've met anyone funnier than Rob The Cree, and thought you might get a kick out of that story.
writing that demands one sees what is being said vividly. Trees speaking, silence and compromise. Men sharing their hurting souls while laughing at the reality of it.. thank you
Can I ask a format question? How do you decide whether to format it as you did in this story with spacing like this and lines all flush left... or the traditional way of paragraphs with indents, etc.?
I feel like I am having an affair with Sherman Alexie. I meet him in my early morning hours after he has arrived and waited for me to open the door to my email box and invite him inside. He tells me stories nobody else can tell and shines a light nobody else carries. I don't tell anyone else about it, because I don't want to listen to anyone else's ideas about what his stories mean. I just want it to be his voice and my heart, alone, like we are having an affair. Then I want to imagine him leaving and going to the cafe and ordering eggs and sopping them up.
I love this story! It could have gone in so many different directions. But it goes in the direction of two souls divided by so much yet connected by grace…the grace of a great story in the hands of a great writer. Thank you! Made my day!
Sherman, I just heard about you from some other Substacker, I forget who now. Read the above, laughed and loved it. Before it, I read your absolute killer of a piece, The "I" in BIPOC: Not all Native Americans are Leftist Activists.
Your fine dry wit dragged me happily back the '70s, when I left home in Toronto at 16 to work in Alberta's Oil Patch and got hired onto a seismic crew. Our dozen-strong gang of young knuckleheads would be stationed in one-horse towns for anything from a week to a whole season to "shoot lines", or methodically let off dynamite inside 60ft holes drilled underground across the open country in search of oil & gas.
We stayed in local motels and drank in local dive bars every night. Some of these towns were near or part of reservations -- places like Lac La Biche, Vegreville, Red Earth Creek, Cynthia, Turtle Lake in Saskatchewan, Fort St. John (aka Foreskin Johnny) in BC and dozens of others.
I got to meet lots of First Nations people, as we now call our indigenous folks up here. Back then, they were called Indians, which made no sense to me, because in history class we'd been taught that this was an explorer accident; bastards thought they'd discovered India when they'd only hit Canada. Why hadn't it been corrected yet, I always wondered, and I never got a decent answer.
Anyway, being a curious teen, I thought it was damn cool that we got to mix it up with the Western tribes all over the Prairies and northern swamplands, aka the muskeg. The biggest surprises to me were: None of them hated me or white people in general; the girls liked me enough to get involved with me on one or two occasions; and every last "Indian" was fucking hilarious, even if they hailed from dark and gnarly family situations, which many did.
At one stage, a Cree guy, Rob, joined us. He was not Albertan, but from Northern Ontario, and so damn funny he even gave the Newfoundlanders on our crew a run for their money. They'd been keeping us in stitches through long days waiting in the muskeg for the shooter to finish dynamiting so we could pick up and lay out another mile of geophones. But once Rob joined in, the humour riffage between the Newfs and him spiked so high my guts ached from laughing all day long when I crawled into bed nights.
One night in '77 in Calgary, while we were off for Xmas holidays, we all went to the Bowness Hotel, home of a massive, legendary rig pig party bar. Someone scored LSD and I ended up dropping it with Rob and the funniest of the Newfs, Sid I think his name was. I didn't tell them then, but on my cassette player I recorded an hour-and-a-half of the three of us peaking on acid, three loons locked up in a hotel room. I'd always wondered if LSD conversations would be as funny when you're sober as they were while stoned.
Hell yes, they were. We kept the cassette deck in our truck and would listen to that tape again and again out in the muskeg, and the boys would riff on their riffs, to ever greater heights of stupid delightful absurdity.
So, I must thank you for bringing back my Wild West memories. I doubt I've met anyone funnier than Rob The Cree, and thought you might get a kick out of that story.
writing that demands one sees what is being said vividly. Trees speaking, silence and compromise. Men sharing their hurting souls while laughing at the reality of it.. thank you
"Or maybe it’s the winners who die." You put to words so perfectly....
Ahh, so lovely. And I'm tasting that smooth egg yolk on buttered toast, mmm.
yeah, short fiction, little vignettes, tone poems, sounds of the times, short and graphic...ok, carry on
Oh, wow. I loved this
Nice
Can I ask a format question? How do you decide whether to format it as you did in this story with spacing like this and lines all flush left... or the traditional way of paragraphs with indents, etc.?
The Substack format is set. I don't purposefully leave out the paragraph idents. That's just how it is.
That was touching.
I really liked this.
I feel like I am having an affair with Sherman Alexie. I meet him in my early morning hours after he has arrived and waited for me to open the door to my email box and invite him inside. He tells me stories nobody else can tell and shines a light nobody else carries. I don't tell anyone else about it, because I don't want to listen to anyone else's ideas about what his stories mean. I just want it to be his voice and my heart, alone, like we are having an affair. Then I want to imagine him leaving and going to the cafe and ordering eggs and sopping them up.
I love this!
Thank you, Sandy.
great story
Thank you.
Don’t tell the ^..^
I've never seen a wolf emoticon!
^^ First ears for everything!
I love this story! It could have gone in so many different directions. But it goes in the direction of two souls divided by so much yet connected by grace…the grace of a great story in the hands of a great writer. Thank you! Made my day!
Thank you, Ned.
"I always like to sop up the last bit of life."
That poor cop...
Hahahaha