Kitchens

A couple weekends back was a birthday weekend. My youngest turned eight, and my Sister in law turned… more than eight. We tend to clump them together; it turns out that it’s less likely we’ll gather on a standard grownup birthday anymore; the milestone ones, certainly, but the rest, no. Except, of course, my Lovely Wife - she has a Holiday Birthday; there’s always a party.

Historically, during things like this, I gravitate toward the kitchen.

I’ve always felt most comfortable in a kitchen. Doesn’t really matter whose it is, either. It probably started in the late 70s after we moved to the Sticks.

Interestingly, the Kitchen as the social gathering point was not the case in my ancestral home, growing up. No; our kitchen table was most commonly buried a foot deep in Papers, boxes, knitting, Kitchen gadgets, Placemats, flotsam, and junk – and if you could sit two people on the outside corner to eat – at a table for six – you were pretty lucky.

It was also in the same corner as the Dogs’ dishes, and subsequently where the dogs commonly slept… up until Mom had enough in the mid 80s and they became Outside Dogs.

Relax. We built them a most excellent accommodation, lined with straw, big enough for 2 large… and still let them in when it got cold. But I digress.

And stacks upon stacks of frikkin newsprint. This was before both Internet-based news sources, and a decent recycling program, so paper was kind of a problem. Dad liked to hang on to some at least; made great kindling.

It got cleared off every now and again; a couple times a year for holiday meals; otherwise for other major productions. Like bottling.

We kept bottles – beer, mostly, but liquor, too - like we kept newsprint – the difference was the bottles were worth something (well… there were a few years where we didn’t have a depot in the Sticks… that was interesting) and we actually had a use for them.

One of the Harbingers of the Christmas season in the Sticks was Mom would pull out a number of bottles – a large number - and start washing them.

The Liquor bottles she would set aside; they were for Kahlúa. The Stubby beer bottles, though – those were for RootBeer.

A single batch of Rootbeer would produce 5 dozen bottles. That made sixteen rootbeers for each of the four kids – but that never worked out quite right. We looked forward to the rootbeer every year, but, if memory serves, it was very often flat, and really not all that tasty… or, occasionally, Rootbeer like. But it was one of the absolute unshakable joys of the approach of Christmas when I was a kid. Eventually, I took over the production of it. I think I was 16.

I love Rootbeer. But I haven’t made it since. 

I mentioned Mom set aside liquor bottles for Kahlúa.  Evidently, Kahlúa is made with Rum – But I remember Mom starting with an awful lot of Rye. It would end up several gallons of sweet coffee liqueur, tho – most of which was slated to be consumed at the nigh-Infamous Black Russians for the Road Party.
 
Aaaaand once again at the risk of mortally offending the BCTF, I’ll leave that one for another time. Suffice to say that those events also were iconic childhood harbingers of the Christmas season for me... and was the annual event that rooted me in my love for Kitchens; during it, I effectively owned the kitchen at our house from the time I was 13. 

It was also usually the only opportunity we got to pig out on Bugles.

Other times of year the empties went toward Dad’s efforts at home brewed beer. He had a large number of specialized one-litre stoppered bottles, and a lot of really good brewing equipment. It didn’t seem to help much. I don’t know why. 

I thought recently that it might be fun to try brewing my own beer. Unfortunately I thought this out loud… and my Lovely Wife kindly suggested that it was a fairly unhealthy decision.

Evidently she heard about Dad’s beer.

Wingin' It

"When have any of our plans ever actually worked? We plan, we get there, all hell breaks loose!"
~ Harry Potter to Hermione Granger, upon her insisting they needed to plan...

Right with ya, there, Harry. Somewhere between Befuddlement and being Somebody Else's Rock, I gave up planning a long time ago.

It wasn't always that way, of course. My jaded acceptance of the Universe as a force for adaptive chaos took a little time to build up.

Dad taught me to drive.

The interesting thing is that professional Driving Instructors will roll their eyes at this as it is commonly stated that this is a sure method of passing bad driving habits from one generation to another.

Not so. I have completely different bad driving habits than Dad did.

Specifically, Dad had a tendency to be more interested on what was on the sides (and, occasionally, behind us) of the road than where he was headed - coupled with an alarming proclivity for steering in the direction he was looking.

Now picture that on a dirt road tacked to a mountainside, with a thousand-foot-drop on one side, and you see why learning to drive was fairly important to my survival development.

I have subsequently taught at least three different people how to drive. Two of them reversed into an obstacle while I was in the car with them... But I digress.

One day, the summer I finally passed my own driver's exam...

Yes, Finally. It turns out that all my practice driving before the first attempt had been on highways or dirt - and then they test your ability to navigate a town. Oops. Try parallel parking a 74 Chev Blazer. There's a LOT of hood in the way.

My second attempt went after several weeks practice within the limits of the District of The Sticks - and while my examiner passed along one or two great truths, his only substantive comment was that I drive a bit too fast because I know what I'm doing.

I'm fairly certain my Lovely Wife won't believe that - but I have, as is my wont, digressed.

One Day, Uncle Joker and Auntie Chef came to visit. Dad took them, and Mom, on a guided tour of Line Creek.

Now, My Aunt an Uncle were - and still are, by most accounts - reasonably sensible folk. They had traveled halfway around the Universe in a little 4-sleeper MotorHome forever - in fact I'm pretty sure they still have the same one. Uncle Joker was a Millwright in his day, and a pretty good one; He'd been know to thoroughly disassemble his children's vehicles and re-machine the pistons. Stuff like that. Auntie Chef is Dad's younger sister.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions on that.

So I'm not exactly sure what the intent of that tour around the mining roads waaaay north of the Sticks was about - but I suspect fishing may have had a hand in it. That's the only reason Dad and I ever went up Line Creek.

There is a spot you have to ford the river. Now that's not as big a deal as it sounds like, It's only about fifty feet across at the ford, because it shallows out quite a bit - say fifty centimeters - that's about 20 inches deep for our American friends.

Uncle Joker was driving - It was his truck, after all. He had a mid 70's Chev Blazer alot like Dad's - the one I drove  - with a couple of seriously distinct differences.

One was that it was, comparatively, immaculate. Mind you, that's not saying much; anyone who saw the Rusted Hulk I was driving in my seventeenth year was likely astounded by my evident bravery, the fact that I had not yet gone deaf, and that actual parts were not actively falling off the thing.

The other seriously critical difference was that Uncle Joker's CB Radio handle was Two-by-Four... because his Blazer was a low-slung Two-wheel Drive.

I had had no idea you could have a truck without ground clearance.

I mean seriously. What's the point in that?

And off they went. I stayed home and hung out with my cousin, Mr. Melancholy. Yes, he kinda was even then.

Early that afternoon, the phone rang. It was someone calling from Elkford, relaying a message they received via CB Radio that 2X4 was stranded up Line Creek, in the ford.

Heh. A Chevy stuck in a Ford. Heh. Never thought of that before.

I dunno how many links were in the chain that got that message to me, but given 1984 technology, it was pretty impressive. I leaped into action.

I put our tow chain in the truck, and asked Cousin Mel if he was up for a rescue. He decided, why not, the paint he'd been watching had all dried anyway, so we jump in my battered warrior of a 4 Wheel Drive, and roll out.

"Uh oh," I said.
"What?" answers Mel; perhaps mildly alarmed at the possibility of actually seeing the road through the floorboards at some point - which of course would be an improvement, given the opacity of the cracks in the windshield.
"You happen to have any cash on you?"
"No, Why?"
"Uh... Nothing. We'll wing it." I decided, eying the fuel gauge and doing some math.

I had learned a couple weeks prior that, when you are driving, passengers are best not to have all the information you have - and that an easily understood, workable falsehood is better than a complex, incomprehensible truth.

And that's definitely a story for another time.

I had Cousin Mel running the portable brick CB Radio Dad had picked up for group travel - especially with Uncle Crazy Legs. They liked channel 37, so I had Mel set it to that.

The ford at line creek was about 60 km up the Valley from the Sticks. The last third of that is on dirt, so it takes a while. I knew we wouldn't be able to raise them on the radio until the last 10 km or so, so I'd told the guy on the phone I was on my way, and trusted the chain to get the message back.

To be honest, I was half expecting to meet them coming out, having already been rescued by passers by.

No such luck. Worse, I wasn't 100% on how to get there and took a left on a dirt road where I should have gone right. By that time, we had radio contact.

"Blue RustBucket, this is 2X4, come back"

I thought it was fairly uncharitable for Dad to be slighting his rescue vehicle in such a manner, but I kept it to myself.

After a short discussion about my current suspected location versus theirs - and my almost hearing Dad roll his eyes over the Radio - we were turned around and headed right when I decided I'd let him in on the other little situation I had.

You know; 20 miles from anywhere, needle somewhat below E, lost in the bush...

That time I couldn't hear his eyes rolling over the stream of commentary into the CB airwaves. That was Okay, as Cousin Mel did it himself so that I wouldn't miss out. I did remind Dad about FCC regulations about broadcast language, although my timing probably wasn't great.

Interestingly enough, we found them still perched halfway through Line Creek. I prudently shut down the truck until absolutely necessary, and we assessed and chained up the 2X4.

Mom and Auntie Chef had been stuck in the back seat of the 2X4 watching the carpet soak beneath their feet for about three hours, and were pretty glad when my old Wreck fired up and pulled the other truck handily out of the drink, in spite of Dad calling it Dirty Names.

Dad handed me a credit card as we looked over to see a Cutthroat trout flopping around on the shore - It had nestled into the wheel well of the 2X4, certain it was going to be a permanent fixture in the ford.

"Go fill up. We'll follow you - just in case," he said, flipping the fish back into the creek.

I kinda felt like consequences had suspended themselves in my favour in order for me to complete the mission. What a SuperPower that was!

Maybe, I decided it was a worthwhile exercise to manage on wits and observations alone. keeps you sharp. I even stopped wearing a watch about 25 years ago.

I swear, smart phones and GPS units are gonna make us all dumb.

Dad, of course, was much more impressed with the truck catching a fish.

Since then things have proven to just work themselves out their own way anyway, no matter what I plan. So usually, I don't.

Well, that's not exactly accurate. I do plan - but I only plan for the unexpected. At the very least I have Maps and a half tank of gas.

And a Credit Card.

Peaches

It's a rare day when I leave a place once, and once only.

Very often I get to the threshold of too far to turn back when I realise I've forgotten something reasonably critical; you know - wallets, keys, Children, clothing, stuff like that - and, thus, return to collect said forgotten item.

It's likely that this after-the-last-minute remembering is a learned behaviour from long association with befuddlement - mine now... but first, my Dad's.

Dad's befuddlement was insidious because at no time did he seem befuddled. He cruised through the chaos with an air of supreme confidence and je voulais faire cela such that the unsuspecting kid did not see the hardship coming - right up until he'd utter the infamous "No Sweat for a big operation like this" curse.

Fortunately, hardships make for great memories.

I may have mentioned that Dad liked to camp.

Well, actually, Dad liked to hunt and fish - and remove himself from the stressors of civilization - which pretty much amounts to the same thing; so, in order to accomodate those preferences with the maximum efficiency... Dad camped.

And it was good, because we camped with him. Most of the time time we took Mom, but sometimes we left her at home to her devices - but only when she had done something especially deserving of that rare treat.

Another rare treat Mom was especially deserving of was a tent trailer. Dad bought it from a friend of his in the Old Country early one summer, after a particularly odious camping trip to Kaslo, on the shores of the Mighty - and, ultimately, Unfathomable - Kootenay Lake.

It rained that trip. Rather a lot. I was about six, and I distinctly recall the bread floating out of the canvas cabin tent that was swamped in about five inches of water.  Mother Packed me and my little sister over to Gramma Jay's Camper - sturdily housed on the back of a 1962 Chev Pickup truck - and gamely said nothing to Gramma and my older sister calmly drinking tea and playing cribbage in the dry warmth. Her eyes bulged a little when Gramma indicated it hadn't occurred to her it was raining that hard - but I, as is my custom, digress.

 Mom had emphatically stated that she was interested in sleeping in a moldy canvas tent Never Again. So dad bout the trailer in an effort to woo her back to the campground.

Admittedly, it wasn't much of a tent trailer, but that was the beauty of the thing. It was beds, storage, and a table, arranged 20 inches off the ground with a reasonably water-resistant roof - which is really all Mom wanted. She set to its organisation, even including little lists taped to the underside of the bed lockers describing what the proper contents should be for a standard trip.

It was also small enough that Dad could easily maneuver it around without using a car. As it took him several years to master reversing a short hitch trailer, this was a Good Thing.

We dragged that trailer everywhere.

One Labour Day weekend, after Mom had given up camping for the season, Dad decided my brother and I should join him in a trek up to the Lussier River for one last Fish before school set in for the winter.

Dad made a list of the things we ought to pack, and we set to work. The nice thing about the tent trailer was that its standard load-out saved half the packing time.

Friday afternoon right after school we hook up the tent trailer and roar off. It's a drive - 45 minutes south, and then an hour north, half on paved roads, half not. That's typical of south eastern B.C. - a 200 km drive gets you 45km as the crow flies.

We were at our usual location on the bank of the river, down in a draw basically under the road and bridge before dark. We set camp in a hurry; Dad wanted to cook dinner. That's when we made the discovery.

The tent trailer was great as it stored almost everything you would need camping.

You know - except when Mom has, unusually, already commenced cleaning it out for the winter.

The critical issue was Pots. and Cutlery.

Cutlery was okay. Dad and I had our schrade knives, and we could use those to whittle forks and spoons for the three of us. I defy, however, even the most seasoned mountaineer, survivalist, man-vs-wild aficionado or Queen Scout to whittle an effective Cooking pot.

And this is where I learned that It Ain't Over until you have exhausted all the possibilities.

Dad found a big tin of canned peaches. The can opener was in the cutlery box back home, though.

Ever open a tin can with a folding knife? It works alright if the blade locks, like these, fortunately, did. Terrible for the blade, though.

We ate dessert first, and then used that can to cook our meals in for the next two days, and had a stellar fishing weekend.

To this day, when the Avoidable Sideways Slide happens in my own endeavors, when I just plain screw up by forgetting something critical and my learned after-the-last-minute-remembering magic fails me... well.

I'll just wing it. I'll think of something.

I prefer to do this with just a touch of panache and  je voulais faire cela - it's fun to watch my Beautiful Wife's eyes roll like that.

The trailer hitch broke on the way down the mountain. Dad had to chain the thing to the truck, and I hung out the back window watching it to ensure it didn't jump off. Ate exhaust fumes until I was car sick. I think the hitch ball had lost its nut, but I don't recall.

That would be typical. Dad was aggressively unlucky about vehicle maintenance - acerbated by burgeoning indifference - and the tent trailer, and the K5 Blazer took the brunt of it when I was a kid.

But those... those are stories for another day.

A Well-Aimed Rock

Gramma Jay gave me a St. Christopher medallion near the end of 1983. It's hung from the rear-view mirror of every vehicle I've commonly driven since.

I'm not one given to idolatry, but she gave it to me for a specific reason. It serves as my reminder to look around when everything appears to be going sideways on me.

It is probably coincidence that every vehicle save one it's hung in has managed to avoid accidents - and that one exception should have been much, much worse, but there we are.

Dad and I were out hunting.

My audience will note that, very commonly, my discussion of bizarre turns of events in my formative years usually start with "Dad and I were out hunting."

It was nearing the end of October in the Sticks, and the weather started out its usual autumn-in-the-mountains craptastic; it had dusted snow overnight and turned to rain in the morning. Pretty good for the Moose Dad wanted to fill his tag for. We were somewhere down the Corbin road at first light, and took an extended walk through the gathering slush in a good place he had scouted.

Not unusually, the local Moose population had other ideas, and left an enormous number of tracks to taunt us - immediately around Dad's old K5 Blazer.

It was mid morning, and we mounted up and headed home, keeping an eye to the treeline on either side of the road. Any game we saw would still be fair, but Dad knew I had a prior commitment I wanted to keep if I could - the remote possibility of dressing out a large animal notwithstanding.

There was a truck some distance behind us. Suddenly it peeled off the dirt road, and disgorged its hunters to the west side.

Dad looked over at me and said few choice words about luck when we heard the shots. Neither of us had seen a thing when we went by. "Wasn't to be, today, I guess," he said, shrugging it off. "Let's get you to your game."

By 11 am, at home, I had showered and was ready to make the 45 minute hike up to the Heights. "I can give you a ride if you want," Dad offered.

This was unusual. I mean, if it was on the way to somewhere he needed to be, sure, but commonly I would just walk. It occurred to me he just wanted to go for the drive. "Sure," I said. "It'll make me pretty early, but that's fine. Thanks! Let's go."

At the time, I had a winter coat with the cool new feature of zip-off sleeves - which I most commonly wore sleeveless. I'd checked the weather and it was improving pleasantly; I'd be fine in the vest. To this day I don't know why I put the sleeves back on the thing. For a car ride, no less.

And off we went.

They were still building the Highway 43 bypass, so to drive to the Heights - the new subdivision in the Sticks - was a twenty minute tour through the old townsite, past a couple trailer courts, and over the ancient one-lane trestle.

It was always a nice drive, later I would tour around there in Dad's car in summer evenings - unbeknownst to him, of course, just for the pleasure of it.. But I digress.

People were out. There were a couple of kids fishing under the trestle bridge, a girl sitting on the north slope with a couple dogs overlooking Matevic Road; just enjoying an afternoon where the weather had settled down. Dad turned up Matevic Road.

That led to a more established set of acreages up in the hills - and was not where I was intending to go. I surmised he thought I going to a different friend's place; his parents had bought a house up there a few years earlier. That was fine, as I still had more than enough time before my appointment. I had Dad drop me at a cut line that led from the road up to the subdivision - an easy walk.

And I arrived to find my appointment canceled. The guy was a couple houses up the street, working for a neighbor. He'd called - but missed me by about five minutes. He invited me to stay - but I declined; I didn't care to interfere with his job for the day. He said I should call for a ride - I said it was fine; the walk would be quite comfortable since I put the sleeves on my coat.

I headed back down that cut, and decided to drop in on that friend a half-klick up the road.

I stood there on his doorstep and looked at the doorbell for maybe five minutes, debating whether I should press it. I finally decided not to, mostly on the grounds that I just didn't want to impose without calling ahead.

I gave the whole day to that point up as a bad job, and decided to at least enjoy the walk home over the CPR tracks... which technically was illegal and moderately unsafe due to the train bridge, and trespassing to boot - but also not something I hadn't already done a hundred or so times. Me and every other Kid in the Sticks.

I headed back to the ancient one-lane trestle. It came majestically into view as I cleared the trees by the freezing-cold Elk River on Matevic Road.

The girl with the dogs had left - but the two kids were still under the bridge. They weren't fishing any more; one had slid up to his waist into the river. The other was trying very hard - with no success - to pull his hypothermic friend out.

Could have rung a doorbell.
Could have stuck around for a while.
Could have been dropped at the right door - and then got a ride home.
Could have got a phonecall.
Could have left the sleeves off the coat.
Could have passed up the ride.
Could have been dressing out a deer by the road.
Could have waited in the Blazer.

I learned in that instant to never begrudge a manifestation of Infinite Improbability - just Roll With It.

Next time you find yourself somewhere you - by rights - should never have ended up, and you're cursing your rotten luck - have a look around.

Maybe there's something you're supposed to do.

Maybe - this time - Ananke's Well-Aimed Rock is you.

Lessons

I taught myself to ski when I was 17 years old.

You tell people that you grew up in the mountains in British Columbia, and they make assumptions. Truth is, I've been skiing maybe a half-dozen times in my life, and I'm not very good at it.

All my contemporaries growing up in the Sticks skied, or played hockey, or whatever. I never did. I always presumed it was because the gear was too expensive. For one reason or another, we grew up poor-middle-class, but that's a story for another time.

We could actually skate on the street most days in winter. The snow was usually compacted to the point of ice, and the plows didn't scrape it down so as not to rip up the gravel shoulders of the streets. The Municipality installed gutters on the streets in the early 80s, and that signaled the End of That.

At the time, not skiing and not skating didn't really bother me. Well, that's not true; the not skating kind of did. I had Dad's old hand-me-down skates and they obviously fit me horrendously badly. I tried going skating on my own a handful of times in the Sticks... but those stupid skates had nothing for ankle support, and were more a detriment than anything else.

At least I always thought they were Dad's; they may have been my brother's once - that would certainly make sense. Suffice to say they were very old, and a little too big.

I suspect that a good skate swap for kids - like we have practically everywhere now in North America - would have really done well for me. It's one thing to build a bike out of spare parts... but there isn't much you can do for skating.

Looking back, I know for a fact that if I really wanted skates, I would have got them. But, as stated - I didn't care enough.

We've been taking the little kids out to Brimacombe for skiing lessons on Saturdays.

This is something I'd never did as a kid - organized lessons in a sport - except for swimming lessons at the wading pool at Kin park when I was five. I rather like the fact that we are able to provide things for our children that I never had... but then I think about it.

I spent winter weekends icefishing. And snowshoeing. And hunting. Snowmobiling. Sledding. Shooting. We played shinny on frozen ponds with rough-cut hockey equipment that dad made on the fly. Meals involving roasting home-made elk sausage on willow sticks over the open fire (yes, lit with One Match). Winter drives to explore. Camping occasionally.

Whatever my childhood lacked in financing sporting lessons - my Dad more than made up for in time and effort. Nobody could ever complain about that.

The result of that breadth of experience, courtesy of Dad, is that I've done - and am comfortable doing - things that make some of my Contemporaries go all bulgy-eyed. Butchering an elk on the kitchen table and making sausage comes immediately to mind - but I digress.

So I taught myself to skate on rollerblades at 27. I bought good ones. I still have them. Funny thing - the difference between Ice Skating and Rollerblading is Hills. I believe I still have the scars...

But when I was 17, I went on a school skiing trip to Fernie. As I indicated, it was my very first crack at skiing. It turns out they teach kids what they called "snowplowing" - nowadays they tell kids it's a pizza.

I never did that. Couldn't for some (knees) reason. I went straight to the proper turning method by watching people who knew what they were doing - and mimicking them.

Of course the down side is when you're a novice, they set your bindings to come off the boot really easily so you don't hurt yourself - even if you are roughly gorilla-shaped. They don't expect you to turn properly. I sheared my skis right off my feet a couple times before I figured that out.

I'm hoping that in a year or two my eight-year-old will be a better skier than me. It's not much of a stretch.

Maybe he'll teach me how to ski backward. In the mean time, the Saturdays out have been excellent.

Winter Pursuits

A couple weekends ago, my brother-in-law, Ardy, and I took the kids out tobogganing.

As it was the first time in about 22 months that we had enough snow, it was kind of a big deal. The kids in question are his 7 1/2 year old daughter and my 7 3/4 year old son, who are more like brother and sister than any kids exactly three months apart could reasonably be.

We've been raising them like that. It's one of the reasons we moved out here.

We roasted down a nice bowl hill for 90 minutes in different configurations of pairs to much shrieking laughter, and almost no complaining about cold or climbs. Somebody had a campfire going off to one side - out of the way - at the bottom of the bowl. It smelled marvelous.

I can recall a couple times Dad took us out like that - but the tobogganing was usually ancillary to the trip. Trips out usually involved ski-doos, dogs, campfires, snowshoes, and - more often than not - frozen stretches of water, with tree limbs cut into hockey sticks and pucks. In later years there would be backpacks, bush cabins, and mulled wine, but these are stories for another time.

You only sat around for a winter weekend in The Sticks if it was actively raining. Which - In Winter, in the Sticks - was pretty much never.

It was a glorious afternoon - and all Ardy's idea. So I told him about Twister.

Serious tobogganing in the Sticks didn't require a car; everything in the place was walking distance, even for a pre-adolescent.

It's remembrances like this that make me feel like I grew up in a different dimension. We no longer let our children cross the street alone at an age where we were out of sight of the house from dawn till dusk... but I digress.

You had pretty much had three standard options for sledding when you lived in lower Sticks. The hill behind the row houses was okay, and it was really close, but it was a short rise at only sixty or so vertical feet... and the slope was fairly terrifying at between 70 and 80 degrees. It was also a standard path for a lot of kids to go to school... so very often it was either worn to dirt, or chopped-up and refrozen ice - which rattles your teeth while sledding.

The water tower was better - across Highway three at the top of the hill, and it was a good 150 vertical feet - but still 70 to 80 degrees vertical. It was so steep that snow very often didn't stay on it all that deep, and it was popular enough that the tracks would be worn to the dirt.

The speed you could reach on it would also flay your skin in cold weather.

By far, the best hill around was Twister.

It was an old cut road that wound its way down from Old Highway 3, and opened up to a small meadow at the base of the causeway that was built up to support New Highway 3. The climb was something like 200 vertical feet, but since it was originally a road it was cut into the slope with S turns and switchbacks to minimise the slope. It took a good 15 to 20 minutes to walk up from the bottom.

The result? Add a little snow and you had 3 minutes of steep-banked wide-track bob-sled-inspiring greatness that was populated every snowy weekend available.

And seriously - the more kids, the better. Lots of them would bring inner tubes from the mine trucks  - once punctured, they couldn't be used on the trucks any more, but patch them and fill them up, and you can seat up to five 10 year olds on one.

The season after my brother first took me to Twister, Santa delivered a pair of plastic formed sleds. They were basically a rectangular tub with a catamaran shaped front slope, and a seat pressed into the form. They were also the fastest sleds on the hill the next 4 years running.

We were lightning. In one of those interceptors you could let the tubes go first, and get around the top corner, and you'd still pass them before you were half way down. One of the best places to pass was above an innertube on the outside of a turn embankment. If your timing was bad, the tube would bounce you right out of the gully into the trees. Which of course was all of the fun.

The hill was like riding down a drainpipe.

Somebody built a golf course on the end stretch of Old Highway 3 in the mid 80s. A couple years later, someone noticed guys on dirtbikes were using the Twister cut road to get on to the 9th hole of the golf course, and tearing up the fairways.

Several huge roadblocks of deadfall were constructed across the path of the cut road at various intervals almost immediately after that.

And a Legend passed into the mists of memory.

When Lawn Chairs Attack!

Dad had a long-standing, near-legendary problem with folding lawn chairs.

Wait, What? Lawn Chairs?

Yep.

Looks innocuous enough, doesn't it? Woven polyester/plastic slats, 1mm thick rolled aluminum molded into 2.5 cm diameter formed piping, riveted together in a fashion ostensibly designed to provide hours - years - of support as you are entertained in the Great-Out-of-Doors.

But there's one thing the packing label won't tell you. It hints at it nowadays - but doesn't come out and say it directly.

Turns out Dad started to expand a bit once he hit 30. He always, in his own writing, would refer to himself as Slim Hunter - as, in his late teens and early 20s, he was certainly beanpole-esque at a long 193 cm and barely scratching 97 kilos.

For those of you for whom Metric is so much gobbledygook,  that works out to 6'4" and just a touch over 210 pounds.

And by 30 - getting larger. Interestingly, his limbs remained lean and very strong. Unfortunately that meant that all his weight gain for the next 30 years was in his chest and gut. He managed it by remaining active, Hiking, Running, Hunting, and eventually Cycling. I think he probably got back down to 105 kilos from cycling by the time he was 55 - but still had the legs and arms of a leaner man... so still seemed bulky.

Yes, I know Dad always swore he was 6'5". He also always wore cowboy boots. It's easy to add an inch to your height when nobody can see the top of  your head.

At any rate, I was looking Dad in the eye by the time I was 20 years old - and I've never made it past 193cm.

Let's just say that Dad was pretty freakin' large and leave it there.

I don't remember where we were the first time it happened - but I wasn't very old. Probably around 8. That would make Dad 38, and in the worst of his paunch development. He was in a lawn chair, as shown above.

On Grass. On the tiniest slope backward, and to the right. The conditions, as they say, were perfect.

The lawn chair, sensing that Dad was at ease, and therefore vulnerable, suddenly, maliciously and without warning threw him to the ground and clamped its ravenous jaws upon his buttock in an effort to eat him whole.

Dad, never one to be ignominiously eaten by mere furniture, fought back.

This did not appear to be the case from the vantage of the casual viewer, of course. The scene was more reminiscent of an upside-down turtle trying to get clear of a set of bagpipes - and it sounded imaginably similar, too.

After a few minutes of flailing around and some mildish cursing, Dad rolled to his feet, victorious, the mangled carcass of the lawn chair laying in crushed defeat before him. He escaped with only scratches, amidst much tittering from various onlookers.

I said that was the First Time. There were a few others; details mostly the same until the last one which actually drew blood in an attempt to relieve Dad of his kidneys. He liked to show people the scar.

But that was that. Mom found a different brand of lawn chair in Better Homes for Ogres and went shopping, coming back from the Outdoor Shop in the next town... which was in the next province... with four sturdy, thick-rolled, thin tube, very, very sturdily (and therefore, tame) framed chairs.

Which had canvas seats. Nice striped ones.

The canvas on the chairs suffered Dad and weather for a single season, and then promptly split on the first trip the next spring. Dad,  his backside on the ground, arms akimbo and feet dangling, sputtering and cursing somewhat less mildly, fought his way loose form the Very Very Sturdy Frame, and left it where it fell in its disgrace, laying on its side.

Mom looked at the chair. Then back to her spring edition of Ogre Living. Then back at the chair. This went on for some time as Dad, still sputtering, used his chainsaw to cut a stump to sit on.

Well - I presume it was him sputtering... it may have been the chainsaw. The pitch was similar.

Mom eventually put down the magazine with a shrug, picked up the now-denuded lawn chair frame, her bag of macramé cord, and a fresh glass of Sangria from her Camping wine box, and went to work.

Mom macraméd. And Knitted. Pretty much if it had to do with knotting up fibers, she built stuff out of it. We all had really warm sweaters. Nice ones. We had furniture, planters and wall hangings littering our house in The Sticks.

Speaking of knotting things - she also used to cut our hair. But that's, as I like to say, a story for another time.

She also liked to take a box or two of Sangria on camping trips. She says it helped drown out all the sputtering.

At any rate, over several days she built a seat and back out of the macramé cord, weaving and knotting and creating pleasant patterns in tan, cream and green. I suspect it was of her own design, I can't be sure and she can't recall. Eventually, over that summer, she had re-upholstered all four of those chairs.

And they were brilliant. They lasted forever. And superbly comfortable. But there was a drawback... and it was why they were superbly comfortable.

Macramé cord tends to stretch. A few seasons of Dad sitting on them, and the chairs were like little hammocks slung in an upright frame. You get in, and if you're under a certain height... your feet no longer touch the ground.

But you're comfortable. Especially when the backs got bent a little further back from use so your chin wasn't crammed into your chest. It's impossible to get out of the chair without help, but it's okay... you're comfortable.

Just don't decide you need to pee.

One thing though - you couldn't manage a plate in them. Your knees were usually about chest high. Balancing a plate on that was not going to happen.

I haven't sat in one of those chairs in 15 years. Now lawn chairs are geodesic arrangements of piping covered in ballistic nylon - no way you're getting through that. But I said they come with a warning.

Maximum weight 225 lbs.

Dad would love that.

As such, I'm very careful sitting in them. I'm pretty sure that tag means that if you're less than that, you aren't a worthy meal.

The other day when I was thinking about this, I thought, "no way..." and then Googled Macramé Lawn Chairs. Yep, They exist. She could have made a fortune. But probably not.

I'm pretty sure I saw a Macramé Lawn Chair peeking around from a dark corner in the basement of Mom's house when we packed it up last June.

Wouldn't surprise me. It was probably pretty hungry.