The Beginning

After an extended period of much noise and excitement i departed Vancouver and headed out on the Extra Old Stock Tour. Basically i was going to travel across Canada and stop in the cities listed on my favourite beer and do something easy and become a writer.

so after an uneventful ride I arrived in Edmonton with three hundred dollars, two bags of cloths, a few books and an old computer. I found lodging at the downtown Y in a shared room. My roommates were a conman who was just out of jail and the other was a schizo. The conman worked at bank fraud and the schizo spent time washing dishes at the Edmonton conference center.

By day three the conman owed my thirty dollars and the schizo agreed to help me find employment. That afternoon the schizo and I left the Y and walked through grassy Churchill Square, into a playhouse, down escalators, long halls finally arriving in the back corner of some strange hole where a dishwasher is roaring.

An old man with little hair and glasses is stacking small plates onto a plastic rolling rack. The schizo greets him civilly and the old man starts yelling, "I don't know. I don't know." The schizo says something else and the old man says, "OK get him a uniform." and passes over some keys.

We walk down a hall lined with silver machines, turn left before swinging doors, descend cement stairs, enter wall to wall glasses, past washrooms and fumbling with the key and we were in. I grabbed a white uniform, quickly changed and went back up.

I spent the evening stacking plates, sorting cutlery, racking glasses, seeing Chinese ladies, native women, feeling water on my hands and feeling sure something this big would pay and there would be no trouble. The night ended easily and I was fifty dollars richer. I went back to the Y and in the morning was evicted.

I took residence at a shelter for the homeless and phoned two old friends for money. With the proceeds i got a room on 97Th Street, with a gas fireplace, high ceilings and a bathroom down the hall.

Over the next few months I worked weekends at the Shaw and during the week as a telemarketer selling newspapers. The rent was $275, the phone $35, I got free food from the Shaw and between my two jobs I was netting close to $1200.

Plenty leftover for the essentials: beer, weed and time to write.