jaron | February 10, 2024
Mac’s pool hall had no ventilation, but the winds of gossip that would have charmed Dickens. Mac teased me about being a virgin. He knew I was in love with Jill. And so was every other guy in our village. And they were anything but virgins.
jaron | February 10, 2024
Remember Saturday Night Fever? That was set in Brooklyn and made John Travolata an overnight icon around the world. Before that we had Saturday Night Cool in the small town of Coronation where I grew up. I tore tickets for free popcorn and was allowed to see all the movies there. I decided that someday I would go to Hollywood and become a writer.
jaron | December 21, 2023
As he drove down Main Street Jill undid the wrapping, and both girls squealed with delight. “It’s all the way from Paris,” said Irene. Kort checked his rearview mirror, keeping one eye on Jill. I had an eye on Kort.
jaron | April 11, 2021
Animals are smarter than you think. In the 1950s I lived in a village in Canada. Population: 950 people. Stray dogs: four or five. A veterinarian who spoke broken English rented a house. He turned a back room into his office/clinic. If kids with no cash had a “pet” dog or cat or even a […]
jaron | February 23, 2021
Now I’m almost as old as Oliver was. Between naps I think of The Royal Crown Hotel lobby and meeting the Norweigan 70 years ago in Coronation — under ice blue skies that made your eyes ache, and outside the first snowfall, so white it would persuade you that the whole universe was pure.
jaron | February 18, 2021
When I was going to school in Coronation, “uncle” Doug stayed at our home during goose hunting season. He knew and loved Coronation. By the way, Dr. Paul was the guy who put together Alberta Health Care. It was the best in Canada, maybe the world … until the insurance companies got their meathooks into […]
jaron | July 6, 2020
In the 1950s my mother and I traveled by bus and train to the States to stay with her parents each summer. A few months later my father arrived in Lake Andes, South Dakota to drive us back to our home in Canada. We stopped for root beer floats and foot-long hot dogs and saw […]
jaron | April 16, 2015
I am not sure where he came from or how he learned to do what he did but he was one of the most bizarre characters who ever settled in our village.
He was an electrician …
… who resembled a Sumo wrestler with a French name, and how he learned about electricity I don’t know.
jaron | April 16, 2015
They say nothing ever happened in Coronation but I heard stories about the Gent from Geneva, who in the late 1940s, arrived in Alberta. This guy, I think his name was Franz, had seen a travelogue of Western Canada. Its majestic Rocky Mountains gave Franz the idea that moving to Alberta was like living in Switzerland….
jaron | April 16, 2015
They say nothing happened in Coronation but they must have been out of town one Saturday night in 1960. The evening started out dull, not much to do but watch a movie at The Avalon, the town’s only theater, or maybe wander over to the Chinese cafe and have a cold Coke and a warm piece of pie. Then eat it slowly and wonder what would become of you.
jaron | April 16, 2015
They say nothing happens in Coronation.
They are certainly not goose hunters.
Coronation is on the fly path of millions of geese that migrate between the Arctic and Mexico each year. There were a lot when I lived there in the 50s.
jaron | April 16, 2015
A dentist charged me $650 for a gold crown the other day.
I thought of my father. It’s curious what links men to their fathers. Usually it’s hockey or baseball or camping.
With Dad and me it was teeth.
My father was a dentist in Edmonton
jaron | April 14, 2015
They say nothing happens in Coronation.
I proved the fallacy of this in Part l. Part 2 concludes this amazing story that had its roots in Coronation.
As you will recall I promised to explain how George, a boyhood acquaintance with an enormous head, became the subject of a bizarre investigation by the Royal Canadian
jaron | April 14, 2015
Freddie and Winnie produced two children. A boy, George, was born with a gigantic head. He was a hydrocephalic. The kids branded him Humpty Dumpty.
jaron | April 14, 2015
They say nothing ever happened in Coronation but few people ever sat in on Mr. Mills’ fifth grade class, my home room teacher.
Mr. Mills, would look out the second-story window of our red brick schoolhouse as a car sped by and ask, “I wonder what that driver is going to do with his extra two minutes?”
jaron | April 14, 2015
Coronation was the result of a sexual act.
Edward VII exercised his connubial rights with Alexandra of Denmark on or about September 4th of 1864.
George V of England popped out of his mummy’s belly in June of the following year.
jaron | April 14, 2015
They say nothing happens in Coronation. I have news for you.
Many things that have just happened in the world, happened decades ago in Coronation.
For example, yesterday I read about a couple of wolf boys with a traveling circus.
jaron | November 21, 2014
They say nothing happened in Coronation. Maybe. But maybe that was before our little family arrived.
I was born in 1942 in a Calgary parking lot. Well, in those days it was the General Hospital.
jaron | November 21, 2014
It took four men to carry it down our basement. My father plugged in our new freezer and opened the cavernous contraption. “I’ve heard,” said Dad, “that kids have gotten into things like this, closed the lid and perished.”
