etherfarm

Enough with the Amber Grains

Later

20:49 on Wednesday, July 21, 2004 • 6 responses

Earlier

Approaching Saskatoon, Candian Hwy 16 (also known as the Yellowhead) widens to four lanes from two. Imagine, after 12 of so hours of driving, looking to the left and seeing a teenager in the back seat of his parents’ car, holding to his window a piece of paper conainting the simple query:

Something in his eyes conveyed a sense of earnestness to his question, ambiguous as it was. I mouthed, “why what?”

He lowered the piece of paper for a moment then raised it again to the window. The previous message had been altered to read:

Apparently in Saskatchewan, parents don’t complement the “don’t be rowdy in the car” speech with the “don’t initiate written conversation with drivers of other vehicles” speech.

Not having time to mull over a response, I waved an upturned palm at the landscape surrounding us. With the same panache (or a close facsimile thereof) a model on The Price Is Right flaunts, say, a shiny, stainless steel Osterizer, I introduced to my interlocutor the infinitely expansive nothingness of Saskatchewan.

Instead of the oohs and ahhhs garnered by a gameshow hostess, though, my audience thought for a moment, took down his sign again, and offered the following scrawled response:

It may well be the case that since the days of explorers and pioneers there hasn’t been a better reason to traverse the 500 miles of wheat and canola between Winnipeg and Saskatoon than to have a teenager in the back of his parents’ Buick call you a fool—in writing no less—at 120km/hour.