There is this massive dirty old dump out near our family cottage. The locals chose this huge ravine as a place to chuck all their refuse. Eventually it became the official township dump. Bruce Fish has worked there for 21 years.
French and I would sometimes swing by the dump on the way to the cottage to see how Bruce Fish was doing. Every time we went he would point at the rocky hole filled with and junk and he'd say: "That is the valley of death". Sure looked like it.
Over the years Bruce Fish has salvaged some pretty good stuff out of the valley of death. He built a little shelter and kept all the best finds inside.
We pulled up early one summer evening and he had put together a little patio, a lawn chair, a beaten up Molson Golden umbrella, and a huge cooler of beers. He asked us to lend him a hand with a project. We put up some poles and then he revealed a set of 1970's era patio lanterns. They looked to be in pretty good shape. Bruce Fish said: "these bastards still work, and they'll keep the bears away". We set them up and plugged them in to an old diesel generator; luckily we found a really long cord it was crazy loud.
Bruce Fish said: "it gets better". He popped a cassette tape into a filthy ghetto blaster. Kim Mitchell's song "Patio Lanterns" started up. French and I grabbed some old kitchen chairs and had an icy can of beer with Bruce Fish.
French kept saying: "this is art...fucking art".
2 comments:
Man. Kim. I think we'd get through Patio lanterns, All we are, and Easy to tame but by then the beers would be starting to hit. Lager and Ale would come on and French might just start wrastlin'...throwing everybody around in the garbage. Punching and laughing. Charlie horses covered in garbage juice.
"I got decisions to be made between Lager and Ale" we'd all scream in unison.
HP
I've never met these cats named Fish and French, but somehow I feel I know them. A testament to your storytelling. Will eagerly await the next post.
Post a Comment