Author: wdfyfe

Before WD called himself a writer, he worked at a number of different jobs from stacking lumber to interior design. He studied English at UBC and creative writing at ASU where one of his teachers, Rita Dove, taught him the importance of the tale. He has written for radio, magazines and newspapers, but never television. He’s published both fiction and nonfiction in Great Britain and the US. He reads French passably and speaks enough Spanish to get from A to B and find the toilet. He has interviewed John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Margaret Drabble, Kenneth Branagh and enough other famous people to make him a hopeless name dropper. His not-so-secret passions are history and trivia, and he has never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit — although he did come 4th one drunken Quiz Night at the Uxbridge in Notting Hill. He lives on the Pacific Ocean, although, not close enough to see, so he spends his days looking at a computer screen. It’s a wonderful life and he has only one regret: he can’t type faster.

The Art of Travel

Unlike fine wine, my father travelled well.  He loved to go places; the man had road trip imprinted in his DNA.  To him, vacations were expeditions and despite carrying a bunch of kids with him, dad always managed to have a good time.  My father didn’t make the mistake that most people do when they go on vacation; he never stepped out of character.  Dad understood that the one inescapable fact about being a tourist is you are one.

There’s a common misconception that, in order to have a kick-ass vacation, tourists must somehow seamlessly disappear into the local culture – anything less is not worth the brag.  First of all, this is false; secondly, it’s impossible.  No matter what you do, when you finally hit the sightseeing streets of wherever you’re going — whether London, England or Rubberboot, Romania — everybody but you knows you’re a tourist.  You don’t even have to open your mouth.  Standing on the corner or sipping in a cafe, your clothes are different, your body language is odd, you smell funny and you’re carrying way too much stuff.  Actually, that’s the biggest giveaway.  People on vacation always haul all their goodies around with them.  You might not be wearing a Hawaiian shirt or have a cliché camera hanging around your neck, but if you’re dragging a bag the size of Wisconsin, everybody knows you’re not from around there.  (Ask any local thief.)

However, just because you’re a tourist doesn’t mean you can’t get past the typical tourist experience.  It’s a lot easier than spending your time trying to blend in.

First, lose the bag!  Unless you’re backpacking in Patagonia, you really don’t need all that stuff.  Most people who lug their crap from the Louvre to the Loire Valley never use half of it.  If you simply can’t live without two litres of bug spray, so be it, but expect to be a target for gypsies, tramps and thieves and to pay premium prices for anything that isn’t clearly marked.

Second, find a bar or cafe and go there at about the same time every day for a beverage (adult or otherwise.)  They’re great for planning your day in the morning or doing a post-mortem at night.   More importantly, since most tourists don’t do this, after about the third day, the owner or staff will take custody of you.  You will become their tourist.  They’ll take a personal interest in the good time you’re having in their town.  This works best in smaller places, but it happens everywhere.  Remember, the local folks can tell you more about where they live than twelve travel agents combined.  These are the people who know where the puppet shows are and who has the best fish.  They also have friends, aunts and cousins who sing in the local band or make jewelry or might be convinced to take you up-river.  Not to brag, but I’ve been invited to a French birthday party, got a personalized tour of the cliffs of Cornwall, sung “Hasta Siempre” on stage in Havana and danced with a for real Polynesian princess in a South Seas thunderstorm — all because I like a second cup of coffee in the morning.

Third, never comparison shop between home and away.  That’s what gives tourists a bad name.  Always remember you are just as exotic to the people you meet on vacation as they are to you.  I once got into a Franglais conversation with a guy in Paris about the amount of doggie do-do there was in the streets (at that time, there was plenty.)  He was absolutely fascinated that North Americans clean up after their dogs.  To him, it was the oddest thing for people to willingly pick up dog poop and take it home with them, and he asked me quite seriously if we did the same thing with cats.  I don’t think I had an answer for him.  My point is, when in Rome don’t start telling the Romans how they do business in Nebraska; it just sounds funny.

Finally, but most importantly, if you’re not a jerk in your home town don’t become one on vacation.  Remember the average shopkeeper in Dakar is no different from the one in Detroit.  They both have their own set of problems.  Yes, definitely complain if you’re getting scammed, but otherwise go with what you got.  Keep in mind that you were the one who chose to travel in the broil of August.  You were the one who overloaded the luggage, flew economy to save money and picked the bed and breakfast with the bathroom down the hall.  If your feet are sore, get off them.  If the pastry tastes like glue, it probably is.  And try as they might, the tour guide can’t make the whales jump, no matter what the brochure says.  Believe me — and I have it on good authority from my dad — if you don’t act like an obnoxious tourist, you won’t be treated like one, and you’ll have way better stories to brag about when you get home.

May Day: A Contemporary View

I’m old enough to remember when May Day smelled of wool socks and carried a hammer.  The marchers wore clean clothes back then, carried red banners and were awkwardly polite.  Around the world, Brezhnev strutted his missiles and Castro raged volumes into the bright Caribbean sun.  In those days, “The Internationale” still had those goofy lyrics.  Yes, I’m older than Billy Bragg, but once, he and I and maybe a hundred other people, stood stock-still and sang his new version of that old song.  Most of them had clenched fists.  This was in the way-back time when communism still had a future and not just an imaginary past.

Those of us who grew up in the cause de jour 60s remember when communism went from industrial worker in a soft cloth hat and baggy pants to celebrity outlaw in camo-green and black beret.  Somewhere between the Gulf of Tonkin and the Tet Offensive, communism became cool again.  Academics sprouted beards and spouted doctrine.   Marx and Lenin fought it out with Trotsky and Mao in college pubs and coffee shops.  Workers marched, and students told them why.  Those were heady days: late night basement meetings and manifestos.  Old, boot-faced men who had worked on the Dnieper dam or fought in Spain spoke in mildewed halls.  Grey-haired girls who had given their youth to the movement went first into the police barricades.  “They won’t hit me; I’m a grandmother!”  But they did.  And all the young, smooth-faced converts were eager to worship their newfound economic religion.  They were all together then.  Yet, with all the talk and more talk, the workers of the world never did unite under anything more than their national flags.  Communism was cool, but it wasn’t very effective.

May Day was special, though.  Ideological differences were put aside, and for one brief, shining moment, the workers did march shoulder to shoulder — their grievances with each other forgotten in the face of a common enemy.  Normally they ended up at the old Cambie pub or the Drake for a pint after the speeches were done.  Doctrine be damned: walking was thirsty work.  These were the folks who took the early bus, ate their lunch out of metal kits and bought sturdy shoes at the Army and Navy store.  Office staff and salespeople might get a three-day Labour Day long weekend in September, but May the First was the sore shoulder workers’ day, and they kept in sacred.

May Day, like much of the Western communist movement, came out of a combination of American action and European philosophy.  It commemorates the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1886.  During a labour demonstration, everything went horribly wrong when somebody (who has remained nameless to this day) tossed a bomb at the police.  The cops opened fire.  Several people were killed, and there have been serious accusations ever since.  Three years later, at the Second International in Paris, the French delegation read a letter from Samuel Gompers.  (Sam was the head honcho of the newly formed American Federation of Labor.)  It outlined American Labour’s plans to organize rallies and marches for the third anniversary of the massacre.  The French proposed that on May 1st, European workers march in solidarity with their American brothers (sisters didn’t really count yet.)  The motion was passed, and organized labour has been taking to the streets on the first day of May ever since.  Actually, May Day is an official holiday in over 80 countries.

In the 21st century, May Day, like communism, has fallen on hard times.  There are still the big rallies in all the European capitals.   But Moscow doesn’t pull out all the stops in the march through Red Square anymore, and Castro is too sick to do anything but write letters to the editor.  God only knows what the workers will be forced to do in Pyongyang, and whatever Beijing comes up with … well… that’s just false advertising, isn’t it?

In North America, May Day has always been more about organized labour than labour itself.  Union members come out to listen to their nabobs try their best to resurrect the 19th century, when the battle lines were clearly drawn.  However, it’s getting harder and harder for union leaders to convince the rest of us that organized labour is in a life-and-death struggle with capitalist greed.  These days, union dues buy sports franchises, and pension plans fund hotels and tourist destinations.  Organized labour carry stock portfolios worthy of JP Morgan Chase and BNP Paribas.

May Day has come a long way from the Haymarket in Chicago, and so has communism.  Both were born as a downtrodden backlash against the Industrial Revolution; both rose to become an emblematic certainty of a better future, and both are fading away as their usefulness declines.  A few people will still march tomorrow, but they will be carrying Smart phones, not lunch buckets.  Their brand-name jeans will be made in Asia and when it’s over they’ll drive away in Toyotas and Hyundais.   It isn’t Animal Farm yet, but it’s getting pretty close.

Scars: Part 1

“Scars” is a short story originally published in QWF Magazine a few years ago.  I’ve decided to cut it into bite-sized pieces and post it here to start a new series called Fiction Fridays.  It will run in five parts.  Enjoy!

The three scars were long and deep, cut into the floor in another century and now smooth and round with age.  Idly she pushed her sandal off and followed the lines with her toes.  They ran parallel and started close, spread slightly for an inch or two and then shallowed and died.  Her toes splayed as they moved through the lines, and, near the end, had to spread to follow the form.  The grooves were wide enough to hold her comfortably and she lingered there in their ruts.

The drinks were tall and sweaty.  Their sides dripped and ran, their white water puddles made high top pearls on the dark wooden table.  It was only the other two customers that kept her from licking the sides of her glass.

They had walked all morning through the lower town.  It had been cool and touristy, with people from the market laughing and performing for them.  They had bought fruit, the huge fresh kind that only comes in the tropics, and tried stupidly to get the woman to wash it for them.  Then they had started up the long steep streets that led to the old town.  The morning faded, and the fierce heat afternoon found them wandering over the stones of the last century.  It made them stop to argue about washing the fruit which she ate anyway.  It was rich and pulpy and the sticky juice ran down her face and her arms, leaving dirty streaks.  And his tone was, “You’ll be sorry!”  But she didn’t care because the juice was cool and she was thirsty, more thirsty than she had ever been.  And there was more, the deep purple colors hanging in the string bag he carried.  But she didn’t ask; he was angry anyway.  And they continued up away from the sea and into the hot afternoon.

And now she was cradled in the scars underneath the table, feeling them with her large middle toe, stroking the rounded sides and pausing in their length.  It was cooler here, not much, but the thick dark walls and the deep shadows helped.  And the afternoon which had covered them and collected in streaks where their clothing fit was waning, moving across the white sky, too late now to stalk them.  But they were still quiet from the climb, their hair lank at the back of their necks, their clothes dry stained and their muscles languored and tired.  So they sat, idling their drinks; he, reading the thumb-worn brochure from the counter and she, smoothing caresses out of three ancient scars.

She turned her drink in her hand, feeling the cool wet of it on the ends of her fingers and leaned forward and sucked at the straw, filling her mouth with the frothy liquid.  He looked up.

“Don’t drink so fast on an empty stomach.  In this heat you’ll get sick.” he said.

She swallowed.  She remembered hearing that from her father once but she thought he had been talking about horses.

“This was a slave market,” he said matter-of-factly.

Her toes stopped in the middle scar and she pulled her foot back under her chair.

“See?” he said, pointing the brochure at her, “A slave market.”

She looked away across the thick sill, out into the gravel afternoon.  The pebbles crunched under the tall heels of a woman walking just out of sight.  She felt her through the soft of her footfalls that moved with a practiced space in sound and speed.

“High heels, on the gravel, in this weather?” she thought.

To be continued…