Liberty Falls

You tell me why they called him Curly 'cause I'm sure I don’t know – anyhoo, me and ‘Curly’ decided that the Wild West was waiting on us and that was where we were headed.

He’d built the motor-home over a couple of winters when we’d been stuck ‘cause of the snow. It had really started out as something to make us all smile and jeez if it didn’t end up as an actual motor-home that you could drive and all.

The first time we took the darned thing out for a drive to see if the wheels would fall off, the cops stopped us twice. Second time they just said ‘you again’ and they left us alone after that.

We could get a distance of about fifty miles with a full tank of gas but sometimes we had to get out and push. We decided to call her the Corndog and she was christened with a well past its date bottle of cola.

So there was Curly, Corndog and me and we pointed the motor-home out in the direction of the setting sun.

It was sure cold at night and there was a lot of howling from the dogs on the prairies but apart from that, it was the smartest little home this side of the Smoky Mountains.

Curly drew a line with a pen that took us from where we were to where we were going – which happened to be Albuquerque. I wanted to go to El Paso but Curly won the game of cards and we were going where he had decided.

The big problem was that the line crossed mountains and rivers and places where roads didn’t necessarily go, but still an adventure is an adventure and that was what we were on.

We each took turns at driving, although Corndog was more likely to go where it wanted -  rather than you guiding the thing. The steering wheel was really just there as a suggestion than anything else.

The first time we stopped for more than a couple of hours was in the little village of Sudsville ( I kid you not). I asked the lady, who ran the grocery store, where they got the name of Sudsville, and she took a deep breath, making me move in to hear something spectacular and that was when she said ‘why don’t you outsiders just mind your own beeswax’.

Never did get to the bottom of it but we stayed there for two days, almost put down roots. And if it hadn’t been for Curly’s loud midnight snoring we might not have been run out of town and coulda been there to this day.

Still if it had been meant we would have known about it.

The next town was really a few houses and a café and it was called Liberty Falls. I have to tell you right here and now that I fell in love with the place the moment we drove old Corndog into the middle of town.

Liberty Falls is one of those places you read about and dream of finding and darn it, if we didn’t just run into the best place I have ever been.

Everyone was friendly and said ‘howdee’ and everyone wore a cowboy hat, and the men took their hats off for the ladies and said things like ‘mornin’ mam’ and the ladies all giggled and stuff.

After a spell of rain I saw one man from Liberty Falls take off his coat and spread it across a pool of water so that a lady wouldn’t get her feet wet. Just like in the movies. 

Talking of which - and this is where our story really starts - Curly suggested that we stayed for a while and I wasn’t one to say no. The problem was we needed a way to make some money and that was when Curly suggested that we turn Corndog into a small movie theatre.

If we put all our stuff outside we could get 6 seats in there and a white sheet as a screen and we could charge maybe 50 cents a pop.Our problem was where to get a projector and some movies and that was where the Mayor of Liberty Falls helped us out.

He was an old movie fan and his basement was full of real old movies and his Daddy had left a projector out in the barn. With a little bit of spit and polish we had our first movie showing on the last Friday of the month.

Problem was it proved to be too darn popular and they were queuing up outside the door.Curly said he’d wished he’d made them tickets 75 cents instead and I heard him shout ‘darn’.

But I gotta go and make the popcorn for them movie folks, so I'll write some more tomorrow. 

Take care from Curly, Corndog and Me.

One morning, I stretched my arms almost up to heaven with the biggest son-of-my-gun yawn this side of the delta. We had been showing movies late into the night and I was dog gone tired.  Anyhoo, as I’m stretching I look across and there’s Curly and the Mayor in what I’d call secret looking talks.

After he’d finished with the Mayor, he moseyed over to where me and Corndog were waiting, and Curly had the stupidest smile on his face (I mean more than usual).
“Spill ,” I said to him straight-like.
“What?” He says all innocent-like.
“What ya mean, ‘what’?  I mean what?”  I tells him firmly.

Curly had been mighty frisky lately on account that he was courtin’ the sheriff’s daughter, by the name of Eileen (that was the daughter’s name not the sheriff’s). These days he had a grin on his face from sun up to last thing at night (I wouldn’t be surprised if Curly had said to me that we weren’t going any further cause he’d found the woman he wanted to marry, but he hadn’t said no such thing, as yet).

I twisted Curly’s ear to get some kinda answer from him and can I just tell you folks at home, not to follow my example, ‘cause twisting ears can lead to all sorts of problems  - it ain’t to be recommended. No way. My great grandmother twisted my great uncle’s ear and it fell off, or so the story goes in our family; ‘One-Eared Jacky’ he was known as, until the day he died (when a truck coming from his non-ear side flattened him good and proper  – never heard it, didn’t stand a chance). So don’t go messing with any ears, is all I’m saying.
“Okay, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell,” howled Curly and I let go of his ear. “The Mayor wants to know if we want a copy of ‘Gone With The Wind’. Says he arrested a kid a while back with all sorts of movies in his basement. And we can have it for nothing.”
“So what’s the catch?” I ask him ready to twist his ear again.

“No catch, apparently this is the original film and it’s six hours long. He suggested…”
“Who suggested?” I ask, kind of dubious, like.
“The Mayor……..,” and right there I could see the two of them had been cookin’ up somethin’ between themselves.
“You think, me and the Mayor have been cooking something up between us? Don’t you?”  Said Curly straight at me.
“No,” I lied. “I trust you.”
“Well we kinda did,” he confessed. “But it ain’t bad. He suggested that we show two hours a night of the movie. You know, in three parts. Folks who see the first bit will want to come back. So we charge them a buck a time, 75 cents for us and 25 cents for the Mayor. Three bucks to see the whole movie.”

Three bucks!“ I yelled, real high like.

So Curly says that folks don’t need to see it three nights in a row, that we could show parts 1,2 and 3 at different times over the next few weeks and people could pick and choose when they came to see the movie.
You’d think that would be simple enough, wouldn’t you? What the heck could go wrong?

Well let me state right here and now, that part one of Gone With The Wind was a triumph. Folks loved it. They were crying and laughing and crying and hollering and we showed it three times in the one night.
The problem started when we showed parts two and three. You see some folks saw the three parts real quick, where as others wanted to take their time and see it over a few weeks.

And that’s when the blackmailing started.
Apparently Jake Windsor got up in church on the first Sunday after he’d seen all three parts of the movie and swore to God, that if they didn’t give him the contents of the collection tray, he would tell the rest of the congregation the end of the movie – so help him God.
Well Pastor Fisher didn’t want to know the end and insisted the collection was turned over to Jake.
People in bars started demanding money with threats - that if they weren’t bought a beer they’d tell what happened in parts 2 or 3 (delete where applicable).
Anyhoo, the sheriff suggested that we show the whole movie every night until everyone in town and those out on the Lost Prairies had seen the whole movie, fair and square.

That seemed to work okay and we all got our money. Jake Windsor was sentenced to sit through the whole movie night after night until he got sick of it. Except he didn’t, he used to follow people to the washroom and then threaten them that if they didn’t give him a buck, he’d tell them the end.

Sometimes it’s hard to win with some folks.
Frankly my dear...…… :-)

thoughtcontrol ltd 2014

Me And Buzz And The Alien Abduction

He got the cops to call me instead of his Maw. She had said if he was arrested one more time that he would have to sleep in the town dump ‘cause she was washing her hands of him. Buzz knew she’d never do that but still - he didn’t want to take the chance, so I get woken by a call a 3.22 in the morning. I kid you not.

The cop at the desk looks at me as if I’m just as stupid as Buzz.

“He’s in the back and I think you know where to go.”

The truth is, I did know where to go – over the years, me and Buzz both had cooling off time in the room at the back. It was never for anything serious but then that’s what happens in small towns, the cops throw you in the back room to keep you out of the road of your Maw and Paw.

Buzz’s face was deep purple, I mean deep grape purple by the time I got to the room and there was some cowboy counting: ‘1001..‘1002’...’1003’.... I need to tell you at this point that Buzz was hand-standing against the wall and he was betting with the other kids in the jail that he could stay up the longest.

“Another ten seconds and you’re the champion of Duchess County jail,” shouted the cowboy. Who would have thought then - that that would be the exact second when Buzz passed out? I mean he just lay there all dead to the world. I looked at the cowboy who looked at the other kids in the cell he’d been betting with.

“Act of God,” called the cowboy.

“What cha sayin’?” said the skinny little kid with bad skin.

“I’m sayin’, it’s an act of God.”

“And?” asked the mean kid with the tattoos. “And I want you to think real careful before you answer.”

 Then the mean kid punched his palm with his fist followed by a real evil smile. I always wondered were these kids born with evil mean smiles or did they practice hard at it?

Buzz was coming around to opening his eyes as the cowboy was handing back the green stuff to the other kids.

By the time Buzz could stand, the rest of the kids had been released. He stuck his arm around my neck and I carried him out of the cop store.

Buzz didn’t want to go home, not yet, leastways not until he got a story together that his Maw would believe. She was like the secret police or somethin’, I mean that woman could smell a lie at spittin’ distance with her eyes closed – and boy did Buzz’s Maw know how to spit. When she was younger, she’d been the Tri-county spittin’ Champion. There were cups on her smoking table and she was real proud of them.

Every birthday party whether she was asked or not, she would chew some baccy then spit the whole caboodle across the room into a vase which was always sat next to her Grandma’s urn.

The back wall had brown stains where she’d been practisin’. When she got the baccy in the vase she’d give a chuckle then spit the rest of her goo into the fire, and after it sizzled she’d declare it the best birthday party ever.

You can kinda see where Buzz got his craziness from.

But I’m floatin’ away from the story here – so where were we? Oh, yeh, so Buzz comes back to my place and I asks him:

“What was you in for this time?”

“It’s a long story,” he says to me. It always is.

So I sit down knowin’ I’m gonna regret askin’ but I can’t help myself but before I can ask him for more, he’s already started the story...

“You remember, Becky Weiss?” asks Buzz.

I think I do but I ain’t sure, so I just kinda shrug my shoulder.

“Yeh, you do. She was the red headed kid who claimed she’d been abducted by aliens.”

Then I remembered that Becky Weiss. She got pregnant at 15 and told everyone the father was a creature from Saturn who took her against her will in the middle of the night. When the kid was born it was the spittin’ image of Frank Dunbar from the farm down by the lake, I think her story kinda fell apart at that point.  

“She’s got 5 kids now, claims the man from Saturn visits her every full moon and every year she gets pregnant. Well I met her tonight and guess what, she was askin’ ‘bout you.”

“Me?” Jeez until five minutes ago I could even remember who Becky Weiss was.

“Yeh, she asked what had happened to my cute bud.”

The blood shot straight through the top of my head.

“She didn’t?”

“Did too. Anyhoo, that ain’t the story. When I first see her, she’s carrying some groceries and they spill over onto the sidewalk. So I stop and I help a lady in distress. Then I sees who it is, well I saw that tattoo of Jimmy Carter on the back of her neck first and I knew it was her.”

“Becky?” I said.

“Buzz? Is that really you?”

So Buzz tells me that he and Becky got quickly to talking ‘bout things and what had happened to her since her first alien abduction; nothing much, apparently, ‘cept for the other alien abductions. You gotta wonder if Becky was a prize in some lottery for aliens? I mean, these space creatures travel way across the Milky Way just to meet Becky Weiss?

Yep, it’s got me puzzlin’ as well, bro’. I ain’t questionin’ anythin’, just wonderin’ that’s all.

“So we’re talking and there’s nothin’ else you understand, just talking,” says Buzz.

“I hear ya,” I say.

“Then there’s a knocking on the window of Becky’s place.”

“So what?” I ask.

“She says that it might be the alien comin’ a callin’. Now I don’t know about you but I ain’t one to be abducted by no alien.”

“So what did you do?”

Jeez this story was starting to get excitin’, ‘though I’d never tell Buzz that.

“Well I just punched the alien straight in the face, no whys or wherefores, you understand don’t cha?”

I nodded my head that I did but I don’t think I really did.

“So....,” and I knew I was gonna regret asking, “what happened next?”

Then Buzz got real upset and said that the alien had called the cops because of the fact that the spaceman had been hit straight in his antenna.

“I didn’t know aliens could call the cops,” I said, genuinely.

And apparently neither did Buzz.

Now here’s the thing, it was only years later when I was attending the funeral of Becky Andrews (once known as Becky Weiss) that I found out that some of the boys of the town used to dress up as aliens to have their own sweet way with Becky. You hear what I’m sayin’, don’t cha?

Just so’s you know, Buzz told his Maw he’d fallen asleep at my place and she seemed happy with that. 

thoughtcontrol ltd 2014

One Day When You Least Expect It

The stand-up and be glorious thing about it is:

You’ll never know when or how it happens,

Never know what affect you’ve had,

Or who you’ve saved.

It might be the smile to a passing stranger,

Who was on their way to shout at someone -

A someone who would have driven home in an anger,

And didn’t see the person they knocked over.

Or a face on a train,

The one who was going to get off at the next lonely station

And jump.

But you helped them with their coat, or hat, or bag,

And they saw a warmth in life again.

Perhaps you held the door open for a soul who then

Held the door open for a stranger, who changed their minds

About pulling the trigger.

One day, when you least expect it,

You will change the world,

And you will probably never, even know.

bobby stevenson 2014

The Songbird

Some hearts are born to do certain tasks, and so it was with the songbird. She had been brought into the universe to sing her song so that others could hear and benefit.

Not that the songbird ever noticed, for each morning she would fly to the top of the highest tree and sing her heart out – that was the way she had been made and so it was the most natural thing for her to do.

One cold winter’s day an old woman happened to pass the tree, when she was on her way back from the cemetery where she had placed flowers on her husband’s grave. She was tired, as we all get tired and so she sat below the highest tree for a rest. She closed her eyes and wished that they would stay closed for ever so that she could meet again with her love, but then it happened – she heard the songbird and the sweet music warmed her heart to the world once more. The old woman raised herself from her rest and decided she would try another day, for one never knew what was around the next corner.

The snows soon melted and the winter became the spring and still the songbird sang her tunes. One afternoon as the flowers were coming to life, a fearful lad from the next village was on his way to meet his love. He stopped below the tree to think about the love of his life and of all the things he wanted to say but was afraid. Then the songbird sang her song and the lad realized that the world was a world of once chances and that if he didn’t tell his love now, he may never get another. He skipped to his love’s house whistling the tune of the songbird and spilled his heart out.

A child from several mountains over was struck with an illness and the only doctor who could help the poor child lived over the tops of several mountains the other way.  So her father carried the child over mountain, down valley and over the next mountain until he was so crippled in pain he could not go on. By chance he happened to sit beneath the highest tree just as the songbird started to sing and as he rested, he realized if there was that much beauty in the world then he could carry his sick child the rest of the way to the doctor.

And so the songbird sang and sang and helped each and every one who passed the tree.

The next year when the warm winds came to the hills, the songbird gave birth to her own little songbird. She had waited all her life for such an event. She would fly into the forest and bring back food, singing her tunes and she knew that one day, her own little songbird would sing a tune of their own.

One day when the songbird was out looking for food, a wind came and blew so hard that the little nest and her baby were blown down from the highest tree.

When the songbird returned to her tree, she saw her little one lying on the forest floor, eyes closed and no longer breathing.

That was when it happened, the songbird lost her song. She could no longer sing, there was nothing wrong with her just that her heart no longer wanted to - and so the forest became quiet.

When the old woman heard of the troubles of the songbird and how she had lost her song, she decided to visit the little bird. She sat with the songbird and caressed her and thanked her for all her songs.

Then a strange thing happened, the songbird let out one note – one pure and beautiful note. The old woman told the lad who was once fearful and he too visited the songbird, and thanked her for her tunes and suddenly the songbird sang another, different beautiful note.

And so it was that all the people who the songbird had helped came to visit, and each brought a musical note back to the songbird.

And although it took some time and perhaps the tunes were not as heartfelt as they once were, the songbird was able to sing again and the universe smiled. 

bobby stevenson 2014

The Glass Red Rose

                                                 photo from Dunrod Hill (gm7something.wordpress.com)

There was an old road, they called it ‘the Roman road’, which led there once upon a time. The farm, like the family, used to stand proud and shiny as it looked hopefully towards the loch. There’s nothing much of it left now, just a shell that keeps the wind and rain from the lonely hill-walker. But a long, long time ago, probably before you were born, something magic happened on that farm; something truly wonderful.

I suppose I should start by telling you about Sean. He was a lad who was always looking for adventure and excitement. Yet being much younger than his brothers, he found life on the farm a little lonely and so, after his chores, he would take to the hills with his imaginary pals and become the hero of the latest book he was reading.

If I recall correctly, the storm that started all this came on a dark Saturday afternoon in April. Sean would have been eight by then but like the rest of the family he knew the hills better than the back of their own hands. He had finished up his work on the farm for the day, had got washed and was ready to set out for another adventure as The Lone Ranger.

“Just you hold your horses,” said Annie, Sean’s mother. “Your father wants to speak to you.”

Those words usually meant that the school had reported to his parents that he hadn’t turned up again. Sean normally hid his books at the bottom of Dunrod Hill (but he was particular – he only went absent on those hot, sunny days) and then he’d spend the time jumping around the rocks at the top where he’d round up the bad guys. He’d pick up his stuff at the end of the day just about the time he should have been coming home from school. So what if he couldn’t add up? He loved the freedom and hated being in class.

His father, Alex, came in to the kitchen looking worried.

“We need everyone to help. One of the sheep is lost on the hill and we need to bring it in before the storm,” he said.

Each of the family was given an area, and since Dunrod was the Lone Ranger’s domain, naturally Sean was given that hill to search.

The climb up Dunrod was steep but there was an old wall on the left side which a person could grab on to. It didn’t help that the storm was bringing in the darkness quicker than expected. The wind had picked up too and so by the time that Sean reached the summit of Dunrod, it was taking all his strength just to walk.

He searched around the top of the hill and down a couple of the gullies but there was nothing. Then Sean thought he might try the small pond in the lost valley. The sheep never usually made it that far but as the Lone Ranger, Sean had caught a couple of cowpokes rustling down that way.

As he approached the pond, he could hear the bleating of a sheep and sure enough there was the lost animal, one leg stuck in-between two rocks at the edge of the pond. The wind and rain was burning Sean’s face but he managed to crawl down to the side of the water and pull the sheep’s leg free.

Somewhere out there, the storm had torn a large part of a tree away and sent it flying in the direction of Sean. So as he tried to stand, the tree hit the back of his head and knocked him flying into the pool. Sean was out cold and face down in the pond.

The man had been standing a little distance off and waiting for his moment. He walked over to the pond and pulled Sean from the pool. He laid the boy on his side and forced every last bit of water from his lungs. Sean coughed and spluttered and eventually fell into a sleep.

When Sean came to, he was lying on his side and a blazing fire was warming his face and body. The man sat at the other side of the fire, just smiling. Sean lifted his head.

“Just take your time, you’ve had a shock,” said the man.

“Who are you?” Asked Sean.

“Just a pal, who happened to be passing.”

Sean could see the man was wearing a uniform, probably an army one but not one he’d seen before. The light from the fire caught a glass red rose pinned to the man’s lapel. He must have been in his twenties, dark hair and had a pleasant face.

“When you’re warm enough and you’re ready, I’ll take you home,” said the man.

“What happened to the sheep?” Asked Sean.

“She’s safe, outside, don’t worry.”

And the funny thing is, Sean felt safe too.

Soon they were making their way down Dunrod Hill with the man holding tightly on to the sheep.

There were two farms at the bottom of the hill, Sean’s family’s and the MacIntyre’s.

“Which one?” Asked the man and Sean led the man and the sheep over to the left farm. It was dark as they approached Sean’s home and though they both struggled, they managed to place the sheep with the rest of the flock.

“Are you coming in?” Asked Sean to the man.

“Better not, I’m already late.”

“Fair enough.”

Sean noticed the man staring in through the kitchen window.

“What’s wrong?” Asked Sean.

“Nothing, just watching your mother and father. They seem like a happy family.”

Sean opened the door to the farmhouse and turned to ask the man again to come in, but he had disappeared into the night.

Sean’s mother gave him the biggest hug then scolded him for being gone for so long.

It was the following year that Sean’s mother died and Sean and his family helped each other get through their grief. Sean went to school less and less and eventually spent all of his time helping on the farm.

One winter a huge war started, and so Sean’s brothers went off to fight in foreign lands. The war lasted for several years and so came the day when Sean was to go off to fight as well. His father was going to miss him dearly, not only on the farm but in their closeness.

The morning that Sean left for the war in a far away land, his father had packed a haversack for the boy. He put in some bread and cheese for the boy to eat on his journey. The father kissed his youngest and wished him well. Sean never saw his father’s tears as he marched down the Roman road in to the town and on to war.

Not far outside Glasgow, Sean felt a little hungry and pulled out the food his father had given him. A letter also dropped out and Sean picked it up. It read:

‘My Darling Boy, you’ll never know how proud I am of you or how much I’ll miss you. When your mother left us, you were my little soldier who helped me. Now you’re going off to fight a war. I know your mother will be watching. Before she died, she asked me to give you this on the day you left home. I won it for her at the Fair in Greenock. It was my first gift to her. I miss her and all my family. I’ll miss you. Love, your father.’

Sean slipped the little trinket on to the palm of his hand. It was a little glass red rose.

He pinned it to his lapel.

bobby stevenson 2014 

Me and Buzz and Smilin'

Like I’m always tellin’ you, Buzz thought he was born with a tongue that had been stolen straight from the mouth of an angel and that nothin’ and no one could resist the stuff that floated out of that great big pie hole.

Except for Beccy Swizzle that is. Buzz could be havin’ one of those days when he could make a blind man smile and then he’d get to Beccy Swizzle and she was like a cold day in Minnesota.

“She ain’t got a heart, that one” said Buzz after his twentieth attempt to get Beccy smilin’.

“Maybe she ain’t got a brain, too,” he said, a little unkindly. 

I’m thinkin’ that if she didn’t have a brain she’d be doin’ nothin’ but smilin’, the way Farmer George’s boy does ever since he was kicked in the head from Daisy the bull. Yeh, you heard right, a bull named Daisy. No wonder he kicked people in the head. Anyhoo I’m getting’ all confused now, what was it we were talkin’ about? Oh, yeh, Buzz and Beccy and the smilin’.

I heard from Tommy Kinder, who’d heard it from Beccy’s Maw’s best friend, that Beccy came from a family of folks who were missin’ muscles in their faces.  You could tell them the saddest story that a man (or woman) could ever tell and that family would just look at you mean, like.

So if this was true, then Buzz didn’t have a snowball’s chance of making Beccy or anyone with that blood, smile. And yeh, you can guess I never told Buzz that little bit of the story. I just bet him 5 bits that he couldn’t do it.

“You see if I don’t make her smile,” he said, real honest and mad, straight to my face.

I hate to take a man’s five bits but a bet’s a bet. Except I knew Buzz would never have the five bits to give me. Even if he did, his Maw would steal it out of his britches before he was awake. 

That was the kinda Maw that she was.

Buzz felt that he needed to warm up to compete with Beccy and her sour face; the way one of those runners does in competitions. So Buzz would start the day smiling, and that included at school when he got into trouble from Miss Hoster for smilin’ when she was tellin’ the class all about her cat and how it had been hit by Old Creeky McGuire’s tractor.

He smiled even when he was eatin’ and I reckons, you should get some sort of medal to be able to do that stuff. Buzz is real talented in ways I ain’t sure if God meant him to be.

Anyhoo, Saturday morning and the dead faced Swizzle family are out and about goin’ here and there but you’d bet that they’d just come from a funeral or were goin’ to one.

Buzz stands right in the middle of the sidewalk and grins the biggest grin he’s ever grinned at the Swizzles. Boy, I didn’t know anyone’s mouth could go that wide (apart from the wide-mouthed-frog we got in our back yard).

You can see from the look on Beccy’s paw’s face that he ain’t too happy with Buzz threatin’ his kinsfolk with a stupid grin, and so Beccy’s paw steps forward to ask Buzz to move. But Buzz thinks that the paw is goin’ to hit him and steps back off the sidewalk, and tumbles face down into some horse manure.

Well, I ain’t so sure that the Swizzles do have a muscle problem in their faces,‘cause the way they laughed, you would have thought they were gonna burst.

And Buzz, well he wasn’t smilin’ anymore but I did give him his five bits, ‘cause he sure earned it. 

bobby stevenson 2014

Goodlands

Everyone knows where Goodlands is.

It’s not too far from where you’ve been and not too close to where you’re going. It’s the kinda place where you find what you’re looking for, one way or another.

And so it was on that Saturday, “Jalopy Saturday” as the Sheriff called it. “Always frightening those damned horses, what with all their tooting, and smoking and noise of those infernal combustible engines.”

Saturday was one of those days when The Big Man upstairs had painted the sky an azure blue from one horizon to the other.

“Hey, it feels good to be alive,” said folks to each other. Well not in so many words but in their looks and smiles, each knew what the other meant.

As you perambulated up the boardwalk, waving to friends and neighbours, you could smell the cooking and baking coming from Mrs Lent’s open window. It sure did make the nose feel that it had a reason for living on those kind of days. That was followed by the sweet sound of musical tunes which lifted the spirit, coming from the old Bakelite radio that sat in Mrs Well’s front room. I tell you that radio always smelled as if it was just about to burst into flames. It never did, because things like that just didn’t happen in Goodlands.

Saturday was the day that the pastor made his weekly trip to the bakery on the corner of Cherry Street and Chew Avenue. I’m thinking that calling Chew an avenue, was a name too far for the founding fathers, ‘cause it barely stretched from here to there.

For some peculiar reason of which I have no understanding, everyone in Goodlands would go to their front door on a fine Saturday morning and wish the pastor all the best on his trip to Sankie’s Bakery. Then, when he’d filled his arms with enough bread to feed a biblical crowd, he’d turn around and walk back up to the church with all the folks still standing at their front doors wishing the pastor well with his meal.

If you didn’t know Goodlands, you’d probably think they’d all gone Johnny Sidebar (he was the man who really discovered electricity but fried his brains before he had a chance to tell the world and ran out of Goodlands and into the Birkmire Desert. He was never, ever seen again). Although some folks tell of lonely howling that can be heard on Moonboys road on a quiet night.

Like they good folks say, you don’t have to be crazy to live here, but it really does help.

Old Sheriff James was out on his porch, rocking and rolling on his chair, shaking his head at the way the jalopies were careering around town.

“Never had such stupidity in my day,” he’d sigh. “A man knew where he was with a horse.”

Now don’t get me wrong with the picture I’m painting here. The sheriff was a good man, sure enough. He was just coming to the end of his time on this earth and new-fangled stuff always looks out of focus to each of us who have lived high on the hog in earlier times. We all have our season, and the sheriff’s was nudging up against winter. His leaves were falling from his tree and he knew there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Sure it was sad in its way, but everyone had to make way for what was to come, and life made sure that happened by making folks uncomfortable in the newness of things.

The ‘old days’ wasn’t really a place, it was a way of thinking, of doing, a place where everyone thought that manners and morals had been better. Things weren’t really getting worse in Goodlands, just different.

No one, and I mean no one, came to this town and wished they hadn’t. It had a sap in its veins and it was a sap that oozed happiness and sunshine.

You see there are some folks who think that such places don’t really exist, but they do I tell you. Everything you see in a town has been a dream once in a head, and if you can dream nicely, then Goodlands is what occurs.

Now I don’t want you to say to me that I’ve been sitting too long out in the sun, ‘cause I ain’t. I think that if you’re passing one day, you need to come to Goodlands and have a look at the pastor or the sheriff and you’ll say, hey, kid you were right. This is the happiest town this side of the mirror.

I said that everyone gets what they need in Goodlands, but that don’t mean, it’s what they want. You can come to Goodlands and get advice that you weren’t keen on hearing. No sir, but it will be a truth that you needed to hear. Something that puts you on a straight path for the rest of your journey.

That was the funny thing about Goodlands, no one remembered just why they came to the town in the first place but they were all pleased that they had.

Now I ain’t saying the place was magical or anything, far be it for me to be the crazy one but there were little miracles that popped up here and there, enough to make you go – ‘well, I’ll be………’.

‘Cause that was the thing, no one came to a bad end in Goodlands. There was no hospital and the doctor used to spend most of his days playing cards with the sheriff. People only left Goodlands in two ways; either they had decided that they were in the right mind to move on to somewhere else, or they just got plum tired and decided it was time to close their eyes.

Seriously. Old Man Peters, last June watched the pastor and his bread for one last time, then just said, “I’m ready” and closed his eyes. The doctor, who was holding a straight flush, came over said, “yep, he’s gone,” and then went back to his cards. Now, he wasn’t being mean or anything, he just knew that Old Man Peters had chosen that time as his end time and that he was ready to leave.

Sometimes your eyes just get tired of seeing everything and everyone and when you’re tired of Goodlands, (as a wise man once said), you’re tired of living.  

The big miracle on that Jalopy Saturday was when little Susie Cartwwright wandered away from her mother and walked on to Main Street. Desmond, the painter, couldn’t see her and would have probably knocked little Susie into a million pieces with his bright red jalopy - but like I say, no one dies in Goodlands, not unless they want to.

It was like this, as the pastor was wandering back up the street with his arms full of the warmest, freshest bread, he saw the danger that little Susie was in and threw a stick of that French type bread. It hit Desmond right between the eyes and stopped him in his tracks. Little Susie’s mother, grabbed that little girl by the hand and pulled her back on to the boardwalk.

Susie’s mother thanked the pastor but as he says, “It’s all part of the plan, Mam, all part of the plan.”

And you know what, he just might be right.

On those warm, endless summer evenings, just as the sun is turning blood orange and the insects are starting to sing, you can stand in the middle of the street and look up at all the open windows. Friends shouting to friends in apartments across from each other.

“How’s life Mabel?”

“Why, just deevine, thanks for asking, Melanie.”

Music and smells, and arguments, and love, all flowing out of the windows into the street and making you feel warm, somehow. But why take my word for it, why don’t you come down some night and listen?

bobby stevenson 2014