Granted, the internet was relatively new. I suppose it wasn’t by then, it was 1998, and the internet had only been around since about 1992, but you had to seriously know what you were doing with a computer back then. Windows 95 and Netscape changed all that. So I bought one. And pretty well just played video games on it.
But I began to see other uses, too. I discovered that there were dating sites
on the net, and since the prospect of my meeting women through my friends was
bleak at best, I thought I’d give modern technology a shot. There weren’t a lot
of local women on them, not by comparison, but we were only just beginning to
dip our toes in the modern age, or at least I was. I crossed my fingers and
dove in.
Not much happened for a while. Slow start, small steps.
Neil had dropped out of university by then. He too was floundering. Like me, he was getting on, relatively speaking, and still had no clue what he wanted to do with his life. We hung out more and more, struck up a D&D game, grasping at the past as we were unsure about the future.
He was doing a little better than I was. Many of his friends were still in town. He was dating Sharon (not Martin, St. Jean). He may not have known what sort of career he was striving for, but he was firmly grounded.
He introduced me to the Welcome Tavern. I knew it existed, but I had never been in it. Not true. I’d been in it once, back when I was a student. My car pool of students had met up there once to bid farewell to the summer, years ago. It had been an old guys’ bar then. As far as I knew it, it still was. I was wrong.
Wayne Brown had bought it, and had transformed it by happenstance. Wayne put in a new Jukebox, banishing all country except the outlaw sort, Cash and Jennings and the sort. He began to bring it bands. Small bands, up-and-comers from down South, local bands with small followings. The university crowd, unhappy with the usual favoured establishments, heard about Wayne’s and what he was doing with it and opted to make his their own, much to the chagrin of the old guys who were finding themselves being pressed out.
Neil dragged me in there to see Babelfish, a little local band slapped together by his friends, John Huggins, John Tunnicliffe and Lee Hannigan. I was impressed. The Welcome was exactly as I remembered it, yet it was completely different. A few old guys still scowled at the trespassers from the dark corners, but it had a whole new vibe. And the price was right. The price of beer had rolled back by a decade.
I still began my weekend evenings at Casey’s (I’ve always been one for
misguided loyalties), but I vacated it a couple hours later to walk down the
hill to that shabby old Welcome, where even Dawson and crowd had begun to
frequent, owing to Wayne Bozzer’s attendance. Bozzer and Brown were old
friends. And Dawson had toiled alongside Bozzer at the college with SAC to book
bands for the college pubs, so they were all one big happy clique. Another I’d
joined the hazy peripheral vision of, one I was not afforded the privilege of
being taught the secret handshake to. Not a problem. I knew where I stood with
them now. I was filler at a party. I was a fallback when all plans fell
through. I was their failsafe.
But not with Neil. Neil called me. Neil made plans with me. But Neil had also
begun to work with the MNR, fighting fires by then too, so Neil was beginning
to be away, hanging his duffel in Chapleau a lot.
I rekindled a few tentative friendships from Haileybury while at the Welcome, with Scott Smith, with Peter Kangas, with some of their hangers-on. We had a shared history, even if we’d never been friends while there. We recalled the Matabanick Hotel, the Haileybury School of Mines, survey classes and chemistry labs. And school sponsored curling bonspiels. I recall us sitting together after my match, nursing beers, watching Boston play “More Than a Feeling” on MTV when they, Scott and Pete, decided to pool their resources. They bought twenty bucks worth of Nevada tickets and won a hundred. Pay-dirt! Their weekend had been funded. They tried that same trick the next weekend. They pooled what bills and change they had, collected their tickets, and began to rip open the perforated tabs. Hope slipped away as the pile of lost chances piled up on the table before them, and then deserted them altogether when the final two came out losers, too. They lost what was left of their weekly budget on a whim, they skulked home wondering who they could hit up for some beer.
Neil called me one week to say that Ron Hawkins was coming to the Welcome.
“Who?” I asked. My synapses weren’t firing.
“Ron Hawkins,” he said. “Ron Hawkins of Lowest of the Low!”
We bought tickets early. Good thing, too. They sold out in no time. It’s not like the Welcome was a big place.
The night came. We arrived at what we thought was an early hour. And found the bar already full to the rafters. We carved out a spot along the back wall, bought our beers and awaited Ron and his new band. It was the Rusty Nails. But they’d yet to record anything. Ron was touring his solo material he’d just released: The Secret of My Excess.
Need I say that it was loud? ‘Nuff said.
Between sets Neil and I pressed forward to meet the man. He was amicable, he thanked us for coming out (the usual cliché heard from all performers when met). He was likely stoned. He admits now to the unlikelihood, and miracle, of his survival of that period of his life, and he must have had really high tolerance when we met him, because we couldn’t tell. I bought his solo CD. I got him to sign it. Neil bought his cassette. Ron signed that, too. We made small talk. He was eloquent. We shook his hand. He promptly forgot our very existence.
I think my ears rang for a week.
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