Alex Carrick’s Blog

Gerry Westerfield was the kind of 25- to 30-year-old who disappears into the background. He grew his mat-black hair long, cultivated a beard and was perpetually attired in denim. He’d studied computer science at Sir Wilfred Laurier University but hadn’t quite earned his degree. There was no question he was a savant when it came to computer languages and programming. It was just that attendance in class was never as interesting as time spent in the coffee shop with friends. He was also kind to old ladies, polite to strangers and a lover of music.

When presented with the opportunity of working on rock concerts at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, he jumped at the chance. No, he wasn’t a backup singer or dancer or anything like that. He was hired as a stage hand to fill the void created when one of his friends left “roadie” employment under orders from his new wife. There were a couple of ways in which Gerry was uniquely qualified for the job and they would play roles in re-shaping the rest of his life. For one thing, he was impervious to decibels of sound that would have stunned almost anyone else.

It was late in the year 2010. The Christmas season was upon the land. The cold was keeping more and more people indoors and cell phone and Internet traffic was multiplying in leaps and bounds, both to keep friends and family in touch with each other and to accomplish year-end business chores before the traditional break for the holiday season. However, in retrospect, most professional analysts place the blame for what happened next on school concerts.

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Pedro Martinez had entered the United States illegally. There was no denying the fact. He was part of a group of 20 individuals brought over in the false back of an 18-wheeler from Mexico in early spring two years ago. To pay for the privilege, he made a cash contribution to his wife’s distant cousin, Jose Ortega, who was running a human smuggling operation on the American side of the border. Plus he was committed to handing over to Jose a certain proportion of his meagre wages from his new job every week. This was acceptable to Pedro.

He had been hired to do strenuous manual labor in the shipping department of a northeastern industrial concern. Pittsburgh Printing & Publishing Inc. (PPP) was happy with his work and Pedro was content enough with his lot in life, sending remittances home to Ciudad Juarez on a regular basis. Nevertheless, he had just been told to report to human resources. That’s where he was sitting now, alone and worried, but he was hopeful Jose would be able to help him, through his connections with the company. After all, Jose had always come through before.

But there was a problem. The authorities were increasingly cracking down on firms that used workers of dubious origin. It was a matter of the electorate becoming fed up with paying for the health care and other social welfare benefits of individuals who may or may not be forwarding taxes. Plus there was the popular rallying cry of saving American jobs for American workers. Never mind that those jobs were of the kind few American workers would ever consider as acceptable anymore. Jose knew his whole operation was in jeopardy. However, he was confident his benefactor within the company, Samuel Strongarm, would be able to protect him.

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Little Jimmy Flotsam, aged 10 and living in Tampa, had never known Christmas. The current year was 2025 and in 2015 Santa Claus and his wife had wrapped things up at the North Pole and skipped town, so to speak. In a sadly mimicking blow, Jimmy’s father abandoned his family when his only child was three. Jimmy was left to ponder the delights of a family Christmas only through books and old movies. But all of that changed in the most recent December.

Jimmy’s mother, Heather, struggling to raise her son as a single parent, managed to claw her way up the ranks at the network that owned one of the major local television stations. She became a regional researcher for the nationally syndicated show that asked, “Where are they now?” Recently, she had lucked upon a story that would make headlines around the nation.

She discovered that Santa Claus and his wife were living in the Eternal Springs retirement home in the panhandle region of northern Florida. They were known to the rest of the residents as simply Christopher and Noelle Beard. She discovered this amazing fact by way of a tipster who noticed that Mr. Beard bore a striking resemblance to one Kris Kringle. Everybody had been wondering what happened to Santa Claus since his disappearance many years before.

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It’s a terror nearly as elemental as the fear of dying. It can bring strong men to their knees and turn the smartest of women into incoherent babblers. Maybe you already know where I’m headed. It’s public speaking and there’s nothing else quite like its scary prospect. Many people would rather go through a spinal tap than have to address an audience. I know the feeling. It’s been part of my job throughout my adult life and not once have I ever been completely relaxed.

Do it often enough and it does get a little easier. When I was starting out in my career, I would begin to get anxious weeks before a speaking engagement. Only in the last several years has my period of anxiety been reduced to a couple of days ahead of time, followed by a night of sleeplessness afterwards. It’s easy to get so wound up it’s impossible to find tranquility.

In my own small way, I have come to understand why professional entertainers need to find equilibrium by artificial means. The highs and lows are too severe. I have managed to get my most extreme anxiety down to about one hour before I am called to the podium. I prefer to be outside the room until the very last moment. But often that is not possible. The hosts of whatever event one has been invited to often expect their guest to mix with the delegates. Believe me, the last thing one wants to do is insult someone who will be sitting in the audience in a heartbeat.  

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We were all in the backyard to witness an execution – my grandmother, parents, sister and brother. Standing around the fire pit, nana lit the kindling. Then she placed the painting on the pyre. Almost immediately, the canvas was consumed by flames. The more substantial frame took longer. It was a sad moment for all of us, but a necessary part of our grieving process.

Grandpa Fred died the month before. It’d been a lengthy illness and we were all prepared, as much as one ever can be, for his passing. The painting had been one of his prime talking points for as long as I had known him and to burn it seemed like a sacrilege. But nana was adamant.

Three feet by two feet, it had hung on my grandparents’ living room wall above the fireplace forever. It was not a particularly good painting in a technical sense. The brush strokes were frantic, the perspective was slightly off and the composition didn’t come fully to life. But it was the subject matter that counted.

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Frank had learned how to control his dreams. He’d never experienced nightmares before. That’s why the past several months were so disturbing for him.

His power over dreams first came when he was a little boy. He saw a magazine photo of Michelangelo’s famous scene on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome’s Vatican. It depicted Adam, from Genesis, receiving the electric shock of life with an outstretched finger. Ever since, Frank used that mental image to adjust his dreams in any way he liked.

Whenever dream sequences seemed to be taking a darker turn, he taught himself to employ a simple trick. He would snap his imaginings back to a dark country lane at midnight. High in the heavens, between a lacy veil of branches, a full overstuffed moon would hang bright and shiny.

From out of the horizon on Frank’s left, a giant finger would reach across the sky and push the moon’s bulbous presence. That action would be the equivalent of hitting a reset button. The former awkwardness would immediately vanish and Frank would be transported to a different place, to enjoy ethereal good times once again.

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The devil and God were having lunch at the Zeus and Apollo restaurant on The Danforth in Toronto. The devil was partial to Greek food and, while God preferred Middle Eastern fare, He was content to let the devil have his way.

The two didn’t like each other much. But God didn’t see how He could expect humans to reach a rapprochement with each other if He couldn’t sit down and break bread, or in this case pita and hummus, with His enemy.

Besides, bi-monthly, they had to go over the tally of departed souls to see who was being claimed by each side.

About the time the saganaki arrived and the waiter was setting fire to the ouzo, the devil started to discuss the file of one Carl Stark. Carl had been a scientist by education and training in his workaday life, but an inventor by choice and affection in his spare time.

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Life had been sweet on the planet Lollipop. Barney Bracken, a young fortyish married man with children, was living his life according to five simple rules: 1) don’t become addicted to alcohol; 2) don’t become addicted to mood-altering drugs; 3) have a decent job that pays a good living; 4) cultivate true friends; and 5) do whatever it takes to keep your family speaking to you.

Over the past year, he had been introduced to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. There were other social media sites, but these were his favourites. At first, they made his life even better.

He loved composing short amusing messages to send out to the world. Something like, “The Chimney Repair and Wildlife Removal company showed up at our party and we don’t have a fireplace. Anybody got bail money?”

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There are three nations that have survived the recession quite well, thank you very much, due to their raw material riches – Australia, Brazil and Canada. It would seem to be a natural progression for these three countries to come together in a new economic bloc to be known as the ABC nations.

Canada and Brazil have oil. Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal. All three have nickel. From Billiton, Vale and Rio Tinto in metals and Bombardier and Embraer in regional jets, there are many commonalities in mining and industrial enterprises.

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I have a story I know needs to be handled with delicacy. Thank goodness “finesse” is one of my middle names. The media often give coverage to some hapless and usually incompetent bad guy who robs a liquor store. However, this time it was the liquor store that robbed me and I’m not happy about it. Nor am I a bad guy. Or at least, that’s what I would like to think.

This is as good a time as any to introduce a spoiler alert. Not in the sense that I am going to give away a surprise ending. But rather that I am about to reveal a side of myself that you may find shocking, disturbing or, at the very least, sadly disappointing. Or maybe you’ll see me as a hero, standing up for the little guy. No, even I don’t think that’s likely.

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