Tag Archives: Coronation

JILL

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.

Saturday Night COOL

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. 

Kind Dogs & Kind Vets

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 […]

Wolf Walker

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.

Doug Paul, MD

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 […]

Iron Monsters & Memories

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 […]

Shab

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.

Bart

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.

Mr. Mills

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?”