Storytelling, Part 2

My love of storytelling comes from my parents, and rituals from my childhood.

Books, of course, are a given. I could probably dedicate an entire blog post to my love of books, but that’s for another day. I was reading at a young age (not a brag, I swear), so books have just sort of always been a part of my life. My mom is the one who gave me my love of books- she is always reading something! We used to have this ritual of buying snacks and sitting in bed reading late. I think the best anecdote to explain it would be the way she got me hooked on Harry Potter: I was reading the first book instead of cleaning my room, so she came and confiscated it from me. Later that night she gave it back. “You have to read this,” she urged, “it’s so good!” She had read the entire thing in the span of an afternoon, which was impressive to an eight year old. I think that moment really sums up our shared love of books.  

My dad wasn’t a huge reader, but he was a storyteller in his own right. He did read to my sister and I- I remember we used to have bath time (we were very small) and my dad would sit on the closed toilet and read my mom’s old illustrated copy of The Hobbit to us. It wasn’t the reading though; my dad likes to tell stories. Or, a better word- he likes to reminisce. All of my dad’s stories are about his childhood. He’s very precise with his stories. He can’t continue on with them until he’s listed every person he was with, first and last name, how old they were, where they were…as he gets older, it takes longer to tell his stories. He had a whole repertoire of favourites that we’d request- like the story of how he and his friends stole a rowboat and got in huge trouble. It was a classic. I might ask him to re-tell it for my Sunday post.

The real influence, though, came from our Saturday morning ritual. It’s very old school. We used to turn on our radio and tune in to the local CBC radio station we picked up from Windsor, Canada, across the lake. Saturday mornings at 10am was a program called “Vinyl Cafe” with a man named Stuart Mclean. 

I don’t know how we discovered this show. I think it was my dad- he used to have radio headphones for when he went running, and discovered a lot of programs that way. Vinyl Cafe was always there, much like my love of books. It was another ritual. No matter where we were- at home, in the car heading to the farmers market, or even when I was older and my dad was driving me across the state to choir camp, we’d stop what we were doing and tune in. It was our signal to get up on weekends- mom or dad would put it on the nearest radio and turn the volume up, and as soon as we heard the familiar guitar strains of the opening theme, we’d be up and running to listen. 

Stuart is the real reason I love telling stories. His shows had a format- the first part, he’d talk about either his travels across the country or his life, followed by letters from listeners, and then at the end, if the program hadn’t run too long, a story about Dave, a (mostly) fictional man who owned a record store called the Vinyl Cafe. When I was little, the Dave stories were the best part- Dave had a habit of getting himself into all manners of ridiculous trouble that my younger self enjoyed greatly. Like the story about the time he tried to cook a turkey and ended up taking it to a hotel, “Dave Cooks the Christmas Turkey”. We still listen to the recording of that one every year during the holiday season. 

Stuart is one of my favorite writers. He was gifted in the way of words, and saw the world with such a unique perspective. He had the ability to find the small, ordinary things, and make them into their own special story. I loved the stories he wrote, and the way he told them in his casual, lilting voice during his program. He painted pictures of Canada, the towns he visited, and the people he met in such a poetic and whimsical way, that I fell in love with the country across the river. I won’t lie, it’s one of the reasons I took a job here. And as I grew older, I appreciated the “Dave stories” more- they weren’t just about humor, but slices of life, people coping with things, and just living their lives. The little moments that matter.

The show stayed with me through the years. When I was in university and my dad was hospitalized, I found Vinyl Cafe as a podcast on iTunes, and brought my laptop to the hospital for my dad. We still managed to have our Saturday morning ritual. I had always meant to write to Stuart and tell him this story- I thought he’d appreciate it- but never got around to it. Unfortunately, Stuart passed in 2016. I don’t regret a lot, but I regret not writing to him. I regret not going to see one of his live shows while I had the chance. And of course I regret turning my back on writing for so long, but at least I can do something about that…

Like any family, ours had (and still has) its problems, but we also shared our moments of peace and bonding that resonated for me in the form of these storytelling rituals. Vinyl Cafe made me appreciate these little slices of life (both real and fictional) that have stuck with me through good and bad times. So Mom, Dad, Stuart – thank you for this gift.

So long for now.