Let your fingers do the walking through the Wishbook of connection

then reach out and touch someone

Nova Scotia is a remarkable place, dear reader.

Did you know that we have over 13000 kilometres of coastline?

That’s a lot.

But in US Dollars, it’s only like sixty seven cents.

Here, one is never more than sixty kilometres from the ocean.

Communities were connected by the ocean, not by roads.

East Jeddore and West Jeddore are a mere 500 metres across the inlet but take about thirty five minutes to travel from one community to another by car.

My great grandfather lived as a fisherman, right on the coast. He lived in Clam Harbour and fished out of little harbour.

Back when my Nanny was young, back in the 30’s, there were only two cars on the eastern shore.

We lived pretty far out back then. In those days it took almost a day to get to the train station and another to make it into town on the Blueberry Express.

For the first half of my life, it still seemed remote.

Sure we could drive there in under an hour, so our Sunday trips out for dinner weren’t a burden. At the same time, life out there was pretty remote.

In the fall of 1990 my granddad died.

The following spring, I graduated from high school then moved in with my Nanny in Lake Charlotte. I had a job working for my uncle at the campground and a daily commute was not at all cost effective.

Back then any commute more than fifteen minutes was incredibly problematic.

My commute out there?

Well, I’d roll out of bed in my Nanny’s big yellow house, pig down some Cheerios, then roll down the hill to find my marching orders for the day at the campground office / store.

In terms of commuting, it was pretty convenient.

Back then though, I was eighteen years old. I cared about two things. Going to see bands play live and trying to get into girls pants - with the priority placed on naked slam dancing in the back of whatever vehicle my parents would lend me.

Though no naked slam dancing took place, I was a man of a singular focus and ambition back then.

The early nineties were unkind to Nova Scotia. Times were tight economically. My friends wanted jobs. Jobs were scarce. You could get fired from washing dishes for being fifteen minutes late more than once in a pay period.

Given the low wages and high insurance rates a the time, owning a car wasn’t an option. While living with my Nanny, I was pretty isolated.

Given how lucky I felt to have a job, I tolerated it.

Things were pretty boring when I wasn’t working.

Cable TV had yet to make it that far out the shore. We had two channels - ATV and CBC. That was it.

Another part of a vital mating ritual was stripped away from me as well. When home in town I’d spend endless hours filled with awkward silences on the phone with the apple of my imagination. My testes would turn five shades of blue and almost fall off before I got off… the phone.

You see dear reader, in Lake Charlotte, we were in the 845 area code. A phone call from anywhere in the area was considered long distance to town. Back then, a call to town cost twenty five cents a minute.

Twenty five cents a minute in 1991 dollars! Imagine that!

Though given how much people text these days and how little they use their phones for calls, I can imagine the real rate a lot of youth pay for their conversations is much higher.

Back then I worked for four dollars per hour. A sixteen minute phone call could eat up an hour of cleaning washrooms. If I had to pay for a proper courtship phone call, I’d likely have had to take out a personal loan.

It was a pretty lonely summer.

Sure, I was surrounded by a bunch of family but I had no peers. There was no one to talk to. And most importantly, there was no one to kiss who I did not share DNA with.

My only escape was my bike.

You see, dear reader, about ten kilometres down the road towards town, there was hope. At the war monument in Oyster Pond, the phone exchange changed from 845 to 889. John Siteman’s garage was just past the Oyster Pond monument.

And John Siteman’s garage had a pay phone.

So during a period of teen angst / relationship distress, I spent a lot of time on that payphone.

Getting dumped is never fun.

Riding a bike for an hour along a dangerous highway with no shoulder to pay a dime to cry for an hour while getting dumped is worse.

Worse than that though?

Riding another hour home in the rain.

But I did this.

Night after night, I’d ride to Siteman’s and beg and plead and cry.

Pretty pathetic eh?

Agreed. I must have had some attachment issues. Either way, rejection was not my cup of tea.

Once fully dumped, I didn’t have any reasons to ride into Siteman’s. It’s not like I could have began a new love affair from my Nanny’s big yellow house.

It was painful.

The only pretty ladies I could find were in the lingerie section of the Sears Christmas Wishbook.

(A note dear reader, after spending too much time with the Sears Christmas Wishbook, my biggest wish was that I could get the pages unstuck without ripping them)

We moved to town when the war started. Dad had to work in a factory to make supplies for the war effort. There were kids everywhere AND a rec hall. I sure was disappointed when Dad moved us all back here. But then? I met your grandfather. He was ten years older than me you know…

My Nanny loved living in her big yellow house on the hill.

And she also loved living in town.

She had peers.

Lately though, most of my Nanny’s peers have moved on. Her best friend was moved to a nursing home in New Brunswick. Most of the others though have shuffled off to take their place beside the lord - whatever that means.

So these last few years, my Nanny has been lonely.

Sure, phone calls aren’t long distance, so she hasn’t had to ride a bike into Siteman’s to make a call or two.

And she has cable Tee Vee to keep her company.

And my Aunts and Uncles would come over each day to see her.

But still, she lived there peerless and lonely. Her Tee Vee blaring to overcome her hearing she’s been confined to her eight hundred square foot house - sleeping and waking at weird hours.

Like a newborn, she’d wake in the middle of the night, eat a bit, go back to sleep for a while then repeat the process.

There wasn’t much to either pass the time nor mark it. Days were beginning to blur until finally, it became unsafe for her to be in her house alone again.

So now?

Now she’s back in town.

Now she has peers all around her and things to do.

She seems to be happy.

Or at least distracted.

Maybe that’s what we all want, in the end—a place where we’re not so alone, where someone’s close enough to hear us, even if it’s just through the walls of a nursing home.

Nova Scotia’s coastline is long, but the distance between hearts? Sometimes, that’s the shortest stretch of all.

And if you’re still stuck, just remember: the payphone is only a bike ride away.

When it comes to those you love?

Reach out and touch someone, you fools.