WINGHAM, ON – CBC’s Vinyl Cafe host Stuart McLean spent nearly an hour explaining detailed and poetic directions to American tourists on how to get to the local museum in a small Ontario town.
“First, you need to take a right on Coldwater Road,” said the radio host with his distinctive tone and cadence to a couple visiting from Upstate New York. “The road bends back and forth like my first girlfriend’s red, crinkled hair in the summer heat. I was just fifteen when I met Molly Paterson while I worked cutting grass with an antiquated push mower that would jam all too easily. Those were simpler times back then when the neighbours waved to each other, sweet vanilla ice cream was only 5 cents a cone at Thompson and Son’s Corner Store and children roamed the neighbourhood carefree until their mothers herded them in for dinner.”
“But those simpler times were gone now that the sawmill closed down leaving the town half-empty with only a candle shoppe for tourists, a musty pub that served grilled cheese on Tuesdays and Mrs. Cooke’s antique store still trying to sell a variety of slightly tarnished silverware and an ancient cherry wood rocking chair that still sits in the corner standing the test of time. I was only eleven at the time when I first visited that store with my long-time school friend, Dave.”
Dave was never popular with the girls in his class, but that never stopped his passionate commitment to collecting rare stamps from the 1930s. He thought his stamp collecting habits were a tightly held secret…Except everyone knew about that secret. ”
McLean made a slight pause in his lyrical, detailed directions as one of the tourists looked at his watch.
“Next, take a left onto Front Street near the old high school where Dave and Morley first locked eyes after they accidentally touched hands reaching for the same plastic saltshaker in the school’s cafeteria. It took five years of dating before Dave realized that even Morley knew about the stamp collection; even about his most prized King Edward VIII stamp safely hidden in his mother’s attic.”
As the American tourists sped off, McLean was thanking the Township of Wingham, his long suffering story editor and the local North Huron Museum.
