Condition Other Than Normal: Finding Peace In a World Gone Mad. Gary Tetterington
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in another way. Maybe today, her and her pimp run an exclusive cathouse or 2, somewhere across this great land Canada. Credit cards and cash certainly. No cheques accepted. Who can tell? Not I.
There were no drugs to be had in camp. “No dope – No hope,” said some of the men. I agreed with that stalwart assortment of desperadoes in Y.K. in ’76.
A poker game was hastily convened and the marks were invited and after a night of wild stake and wager, destiny decreed I should make the flight to Edmonton. Not only did I have all the hard line cash in my pocket, I had the cook’s return ticket as well.
There I was, the same morning, a mite delirious to be sure, standing shakily in front of a female ticket agent by the name of Darci, looking mean and babbling incoherently about how I had to make Edmonton for a conference and pretending to be somebody else. The girl never understood my jabber and gab and it was a damn good thing she never saw my eyes. I was wearing mirrors at the time and only a supreme effort let me see thru the glass and the hot crystal tears that burned so badly.
Had the girl have realized and recognized my near – terminal condition for what it was, the D.T.’s along with a cross – assortment of various neurotic disorders, well, she would have alerted security, which would have advised the coppers and if they would have let me on the plane, an emergency would have been created en route, the plane would have been diverted to an unassuming and unimportant airport and I would have been dragged off, scratchin’ and bitin’, to be dealt with, in some backwoods community that still believed in the rope.
Honestly though, the young girl had only wanted to be rid of me. I was an embarrassment and I was upsetting the respectable passengers. Hell, I needn’t have uttered a word, just that an uncontrollable rapture had come over me, to say something in relation to her normalcy and at having to deal with normal people, a circumstance which will never be part of my inner world and which I will only ever humorously be part of.
Y.K. Airlines let me board the plane but I was branded and the stewardess, Alex, refused to serve me alcohol of any persuasion. She wouldn’t even talk to me. I endured that flight south to Edmonton.
From my many years of prowling the streets of Edmonton, I had come to know an array and assembly of unsavory characters, many of whom would have been considered outlaws, as most of them had lived their lives in close covenant with the laws of Canada. Therefore, it was a simple matter to do a hare footed scramble thru back streets and byways, score and after 2 beer in the Royal Hotel, I was set and back on that same steel bird and going north, 4 hrs. later. My flight bag was crammed and jammed with a kaleidoscope of colorful hops and hopes and my sudden appearance back at camp was cause for much delight and jubilation and I was a magic man in 1976. I’ll roll some more.
How long did this madness go on? How long did I work that tomb and coffin? Maybe 2 mos. It has never taken me long to revert to my true calling, of being a heretic dissident or a maverick extremist.
One startling morning, deep in the mine, I had the good fortune to injure myself, in a non-life threatening kind of way. The shift – boss had sent me down a lonely drift, to dispose of a box of old and sweating powder and you folks know how flighty and fickle that item can be. Inadvertently, I stroked a wee bit of nitro into my right eye. Instant manic pain! I gave out an animal screech and fell over backward! The boss came a – runnin’! And escorted me out of the mine and back to surface.
At first telling, the big boss man refused to believe my story but I tell you true, the pain was excruciating and overriding any booze and drugs I may have had in my system at the time. It was a sorely distressful experience and occurrence. I was sent home.
The top of the following day and braced by a pint of low – cost whiskey, I told the man, in bold and fearless tones, that I would not be going underground that gloomy morning. For strange and unspoken reasons, he was still not convinced I wasn’t a treacherous and lying dog. The bastard. But the boss men brought their heads together and came up with the brilliant idea of giving me a broom to work with and that plan and purpose went over real well with me.
I was to keep the dry clean. The dry was the area on surface where the miners went to shower and change before and after each shift.
Puttered and muttered for an hour. Then I yelled out, “fuck it!” flung the broom into an open corner and went reeling off in the direction of the camp and the cook and the bottle of excellent vodka he owed me.
As I was leaving the cookhouse, stinko and shot, the safety man came along in his ranger – scout and tried to persuade me of the prudence of catching a ride into town with him, to see a doctor. I refused. I said no.
As it was, a searing ailment and misery was smashing and crashing and tearing thru my head and I would have shouted solemn testimony, of how a large and homicidal black rat was inside my head, chewing its way past the convolutions of the cerebral cortex, into the cerebral hemisphere, thru the thalamus, on its merry and merciless way via the cerebellum, towards the midbrain and there to establish residency, the result of which would have made me a vegetable for the rest of my harrowing life. I felt it easily possible for my right eye to explode, ‘blam!’ red and purple and blue veins and blood, ‘splat!’ directly onto the safetyman’s white shirt.
I was having trouble maintaining. I was teetering and teetering and having difficulty balancing and I nearly fell on my face. I waved my ½ empty bottle of vodka back and forth and up and down and gurgled and gagged and explained about having my own doctor, right then and there, in that bottle. “Not to worry about this freewheelin’, good – timin’ young man, thank – you very much.”
All is well.
G.B.T.
Stanton – The Party.
So much for bad foolishness. The morning after found me in Stanton Y.K. Hospital. There I was, perched high atop one of those stainless and sterile tables, like a prize and curious bird, while the good doctor was on the move, frantic and fraught and quite possibly wired. The man was fast enough to have passed as a strange mixture of speed and steroids. Not my problem.
Somehow, the man was able and managed to dispense a fair sized dollop of fiery anesthetic into my right eye. Immediate relief! I could breathe again and that confrontation was over. Then the silly bugger took to ranting and raving on about how 5 yrs. ago it was common for people suffering the same affliction to go blind and I should be more careful down in the mine and I was a fool for drinking so much and I had best change my ways. ‘Wonderful advice,’ thought I
See, I may have appeared a bit coarse, for wearing shiny blue jeans and having a 3-day beard and reeking of stale booze. Still half – lit as a matter of fact and looking like the ace of spades. So, the boorish little fellow hadn’t much use for me but that also was not my problem.
Anyway, I nodded indifferently. Hell, I believed but for the most part I largely ignored his tirade and instead could only wonder why the people in control of potions, the magical kinds which take the pain away, didn’t stock and sell them in large bottles, in the government liquor store, directly next to the rye whiskey. Those specific and special remedies and restorations sure would come in handy, those mornings I’d come awake beetle – eyed and bleary. Five days convalescence.
Hospitals are places of reverence to me and stations of respect. Even back in ’76, I had been thru enough of them to regard them with thoughtful appreciation. Broken bones and stitches mainly, a brief and hostile spell or 2 brought on by alcohol poisoning, once or twice a trumped – up case of pure loneliness, now and then an unpleasant vehicular accident, which had necessitated an uncomfortable operation, every 5 yrs. or so, all in all, a spectacular and sensational list of injuries. Today my face bears an uncanny resemblance to a baseball that has been whacked over the wall too many times. Today my mug will put a big man off or at least give him reason to pause and think before trying and testing me.
When you are down and out and walking the streets of a deserted city, a sojourn in a hospital isn’t such a bad notion. I would suggest and endorse and recommend the concept. As long as a man isn’t truly sick, an intermittent stay in a hospital is usually therapeutic and curative. To release