Listen Up

 

Wednesday, June 30, 2021, has been proclaimed A Day to Listen. On this day, no matter what their regular format, radio stations across Canada are committed to broadcast stories of courage and survival from our Indigenous peoples. It’s time. We need to hear about their experience as much as they need to tell us about it, for only through sharing the burden of truth can we progress together in healing and reconciliation.

In the era of music streaming and custom playlists, this is where radio proves it’s still relevant. Having worked in the industry for a short time back when, I understand how multiple stations are able to broadcast content simultaneously—assuming that’s what they mean to do. Could be that local stations will air local stories, though it seems less likely given the quick turnaround time from proclamation to air date. I rather suspect the content will be housed in a mothership location and accessed through the miracle of modern technology ... much more modern than the tech I worked with in the early 1990s!

Gone are the days when the DJ had any control over what got played. The music is still a factor, but now it’s part of a formula aimed at a particular demographic to attract the most advertisers. I wonder how Wednesday will play out, sponsor-wise. I’d hesitate to sell commercial time on such a day, as goofball ads for hot tubs or pizza parlours would clash like mad with the serious intent of the programming.

What’s important is that we tune in on the 30th, at least for part of the day. Listen to some of the stories and learn something we didn’t know before, that might help us to understand more about what really happened in our shadowed past so we can build a brighter future. I’m all for it. I’ll be listening.

Will you?

Auto Biography V

“Blue Silver”

       “Only you would spend more money to buy a car that’s older than the one youʼre giving up.”

“But, Dad, it’s a ’66 Mustang!”

 

I mean, really. I was 26 years old, I was working fulltime. Thunder was packing it in ... and it was a ’66 Mustang!

My brother-in-law co-signed for me and the deed was done. I got behind the wheel to take her off the lot and the salesman said to me, “Don’t let your boyfriend drive.”

Who needs a boyfriend? I thought, gleefully. I have a ’66 Mustang! A creampuff V6 automatic with 66,000 miles on the odometer (this was in 1987), that came to me by way of a divorce where the wife tried to kill her ex-husband by selling his baby.

She was absolutely ripe for the name “Blue Silver”, taken from Duran Duran’s song The Chauffer, which features the phrase “sing blue silver”.

When I was laid off from my fulltime government job, Silver took me up and down Vancouver Island in search of radio work, then over the Malahat and back during the summer when I landed a weekend shift at the Duncan station. Finally, I nailed the graveyard shift at an AM station in Victoria. For a year, Blue Silver stood out all night on Douglas Street and was only towed once—I am convinced because she was a classic Mustang and the tow asshole couldn’t stand that she wasn’t his.

My wee sister cheekily called her a “character vehicle” – with good reason.

The carburetor iced up in winter. At 6:00 every morning after my on-air shift, I had to run the engine curbside until the temperature needle reached halfway up the dial or she would stall at a traffic light; if the traffic lights were with us, we could cruise 12 blocks without stopping and charge up Hwy 17 to home just as Ter was getting up to go to work.

The driver’s door clunked each time it was opened. I lubed the hinges with vegetable oil, to no avail.

Our happiest speed was 70 miles per hour, when I could lift my foot from the gas and the far rear wheel would squeal like a delirious hamster galloping for its life.

I got my first and only speeding ticket in that car, peeling off the highway and racing through a residential area on a mission to collect Duran Duran concert tickets from the mall outlet. The cop gave me points and I think there was a fine, but I was in a hurry to get where I was going so didn’t pay that much attention.

The AM radio was usually tuned to a classic rock station in Vancouver that featured “Beatle breaks” every weekday at 11:00 a.m. Classic tunes seemed more fitting with Silver’s style, but there were other, more current, musical moments to be had. Ter chauffeured me home from the dentist after I had survived some horrifying procedure and couldnʼt sit up let alone handle the wheel – Bruce Springsteenʼs new song was released on that day and I swear to this one that it’s called “Burger in the Skyˮ. I was on the road at Thanksgiving when DD’s new single, I Don’t Want Your Love, premiered and I damn near drove off the road at how good the song was. And once my Christmas present stereo was installed, I sang Make Love Like a Man with Def Leppard when their “Adrenalize” album was released in 1992.

Good times.

Alas, the car of my dreams fell into my lap at the wrong time in my life. A year after I got the graveyard gig, the station went automated from midnight to 6:00 a.m., so there went my radio career. I wound up on social assistance and Silver wound up on the street when Ter bought her first car in 1990. Newer and therefore more reliable, the Camaro got the driveway and Silver was housed elsewhere, changing locations whenever the vandals found her. A front tire was stabbed. A Halloween pumpkin pitched overnight struck and dented her rear quarter. Keys were dug along her near side. And one day, when the continually-clunking driver’s door opened, a god-awful POING! preceded the spring shooting skyward from between the hinges. That door swung free forever after, so turning your back on it guaranteed a shove in the butt.

And then the steering began to go.

I couldn’t afford to keep Silver safe from vandals or safe to drive. My dad – he who had advised me to “get off the moon” when I surprised him with my proud purchase – generously put up the cash to get the work done, but the end was nigh.

Ter and I moved to a costlier flat downtown. Keeping Silver was now completely impractical. I was only working half-time. I had nowhere to park her, no money to maintain her, and once in town, nowhere to drive her. Five years after I bought her, she was sold to a unit supervisor with the BC Ambulance Service for half of what I paid. I handed over the keys, got into Ter’s Camaro, and dared not look back.

In hindsight, I adored my Pony, but I didnʼt fully appreciate the jewel in my possession. If I had, I would have made one decision differently with an eye to keeping her … but even then, success was no given. Character vehicles are expensive when you have a full time paycheque to spend on them. It happened as it was meant to, but the single nameable regret in my life is letting Blue Silver go.

For my birthday that year, Ter gifted me with an 8X10 photo of my parents and me taken in happier times with the Mustang as a prop. I opened the package, burst into tears and cried, “I love this picture! Silver is in it!”

 

 

Mum, Dad, Ru and Blue Silver 1990