Brew

I am the only employee in the front of the store. This means I’m manning till and office. The store is almost dead. Jim shuffles in. He comes to the office counter, and his shaking hands produce a government cheque.

“I’d like to cash this.”

His voice is raspy and hoarse. He is wearing a dirty white shirt that has the top three buttons undone. He smells of B.O and rot

“Sure thing. Would you like to make a payment on your account?”

“I can’t. I’m heading out this afternoon on medical.”

“Ok. No Problem.”

We’re always supposed to ask people cashing government cheques if they’re going to put money on their grocery accounts. They usually do.

As I start to fiddle at the computer, Linda comes back from her break. I allow her to do the cheque cashing. She asks Jim the same question. He gives the same excuse.

I move back to the till. Jim takes his money and shuffles off down an aisle with a blue basket. He returns a few minutes later with his groceries. A bag of sugar, a carton of Crosby’s molasses, a bag of raisins, and five packets of yeast.

When anyone has liquor in town, they call it shot. The homemade beer they drink is simply called brew. It’s basically made in uncovered buckets. The ingredients are simple: water, yeast, sugar, and maybe raisins or molasses. Let it sit for a few days or a week, and drink it down. You can tell when someone has been drinking brew rather than booze because, as my boss put it, they smell like stale bathwater.

The other day we had a call to the store. It was a well-spoken woman on the other line.

“Hey, My plane isn’t flying out today because of the weather. Do you have any mouthwash or hairspray for sale at your store?”

In other words, she was stuck in town for another night and wanted to get drunk.

We only stock a non-alcoholic type of mouthwash. We only sell artificial vanilla extract. And we do not sell hairspray or Lysol in aerosol cans. That is just the way we operate up here.

Summer Hiatus

Nicole printed off some e-mails for me the other day. I must say it is nice to know people are thinking about me. There is no excuse for not writing in so long. Ok, there is. I’m in the freaking Northwest Territories. I work 12-hour days six days a week. I no longer have internet. I have a puppy to take care of. Pick one. But it is good to be back. I’ll try and make this a weekly event. Lord knows I have enough stories to relay.

What a long strange month it has been. Shortly after my last post, the store offered me the company house where Nick and Anna had been living. That same morning, Nicole was flying home to be with her grandmother, who was sick. For the fifth time in ten months, I packed up our stuff and moved it up the road.

Our new house is great. Our oil, electricity, water and basic phone are all paid for. What this house lacks in character, it more than makes up for in things like insulation, a working fridge, and a dryer to go with the washer. And the pool table in the basement is a nice addition as well.

I was on my own with Mackey the dog for three weeks. With the real manager back from his vacation, the hours suddenly got a lot longer. We worked a lot of fourteen hour days. A twelve hour day suddenly became a luxury.

One Saturday, I started work at 8. Around two o’clock, the freight plane came with about 200 cases of frozen food for the freezer. This shipment included everything from ice cream to frozen pizzas and TV dinners. We put most of it to bed by the store’s closing time of six. Then we worked another two hours trying to put more from our walk-in freezer out on the floor. At 8, I was loading up on groceries to come home. While grabbing some potato salad from the meat cooler, I noticed it was unusually warm. The digital thermometer read 22 degrees. I yelled for the boss. Two coolers had given out. We spent another hour and a half throwing meat and milk into carts and parking them in our walk-in coolers. Then we took a load of cardboard to the dump. Then we had to deliver a couch. As we were driving home from the delivery, the 10pm curfew siren sounded.

After a day like that, most people would go to bed with dollar signs dancing in their head. An emergency came up at work and suddenly you’re making time and a half. Not so for me. I’m on salary. You can’t just say “to hell with this” and go home when your employer is also your landlord. Yet I am strangely smitten with the grocery business. As my boss put it, “I never come into work and say ‘gee, I’ve got nothing to do today.’” There are always at least three things that need to be done. Customers are constantly asking you for one thing or another. If I get bored of paperwork, I can grab a cart and load it up with anything you can imagine to go out on the shelf. If it gets busy around supper, I go out on the till and talk with the customers. And at the end of the day, when I feel run off my feet, I can sit down and do some more paperwork.

I am already the acting grocery manager. It is my job to place most of the orders. If we run out of milk or bread, it is now my fault. There are a million little details to remember. When half the town left for vacation, I had to cut back orders. School will be starting soon, so I’ll have to increase my bread order, as well as snack foods. As the weather turns colder, I can start to change my produce order: less salads and berries, more apples, oranges, and things like squash and sweet potatoes. There are always prices to consider, and deals offered by suppliers.

There is a strange satisfaction that comes from keeping the shelves full. There is a secure feeling when you’re in the warehouse with seven feet of flour and sugar towering over either side of you. It reminds me of the fall, when the firewood is stacked. And fall is coming. They say it comes early here. Last night was the darkest I’d seen it in months. I had to stay up until midnight to see it, but it was pitch black, and cold too. We came to Tulita after the ice had broken in the river. We’ll soon see how idyllic this town is when it’s forty below.

Parenting

I've heard that becoming a parent changes a lot of things in a relationship. If having children is anything remotely like getting a puppy, I can tell you that the biggest change comes in your topics of conversation.

(yawn, stretching)

"Good morning."

"Mornin'"

"Did Mackey poop yet this morning?"

"Yep."

"Indoors or out?"

"Out."

"Good doggie! Good Mackey! She's mummie's girl. Yes she is! How was it?"

"Runny."

Pictures

It's pretty bad when you're too lazy to sit at a computer and upload some pictures. I've finally gotten around to uploading some. More will follow.

http://brodiet.googlepages.com/home

Say! Who's up for a drive to the dump?

So I'm sitting in my pajama pants, watching TV and drinking some whiskey at 11:30 on a Friday night. There's a knock at the door. I scramble for a shirt. It's Nick from work. He and his girlfriend, Anna, just went for a drive to the dump. Yes, that's about the only thing to do around midnight on a Friday night in Tulita. Anyway. Ever since I got here, all I've heard about is how you can see bears at the dump. Any time I've gone, it's been garbage. So I grab my camera and off we go.

There were actually three black bears, but the other two had just been scared off by the RCMP.

Here you can see the bear in his natural habitat, probably chowing down on the expired bologna I threw out the other day.

Speaking of food, Yesterday I had my first taste of takeout since leaving civilization. The town north of us, Norman Wells, has a Chinese restaurant. And yes, they deliver to Tulita. It's $40 to have your order sent down on North Wright Air. Yesterday was Anna's birthday, so she and Nick ordered out as a treat. And they invited us up for supper. As luck would have it, someone we know from town was also in The Wells (that's the local term for Norman Wells) and saw Nick's order on the counter. She offered to carry it down with her, and saved them the $40. It was still $120 for a diner for six. There were two kinds of stir fry,shrimp fried rice, chicken balls, ribs, and spring rolls. The food was cold by the time we finished work. We reheated it in the microwave.

One of the stirfries was a "seafood" stirfry. In amongst the broccoli and bok choi, we noticed a strange item. It was shaped like asparagus: long with diamond shaped marks.

"It's chewy. Like scallops."

"It's definitely seafood."

"Maybe some sort of sushi?"

Then Nicole, being a Newfoundlander, spoke up.

"I'm pretty sure it's squid."

I've never tried fresh squid, but I can tell you that reheated squid has a texture not unlike rubber.

On the way back from the dump, I snapped a picture of the sun setting up on the barrens. It was around midnight when I took this picture. The mountain on the left is Great Bear Rock.

Who says three's a crowd?

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Introducing, the newest member of our family:

Mackenzie (a.k.a. Macky or Mac) the dog.

Coming soon: the story of the first (sleepless) night.
But right now I have to go to work.

Helen, the Cleaning Lady

Helen is the cleaning lady at the store. She has lived in Tulita her entire life, and she speaks Slavey, the language of the locals. If her writing skills were better, Helen could make hundreds of dollars an hour as an interpreter. Instead she cleans toilets. She doesn't feel comfortable on the tills. The pace is a bit too fast for her. She mostly cleans, but also interprets for some of the elders. I'm often sent to bargain with her on the price of produce.

One of the elders is there beside Helen. The old woman is wearing a shawl and inspecting a cellophane box of raspberries. They're mouldy. Helen speaks up for her.

"She says these raspberries. They're no good."

"Yeah, I think they're past due. I should take them off the shelf. I'll go see if there's any new ones in the fridge."

I turn and start off at a fast pace. Although most of the locals aren't in a rush, they don't like to wait around for stockboys either.

"Nooooooo."

I stop. Helen's no's are long and slow. They go up in the middle and back down, like a kid protesting his bedtime. "NooOOO000OOOoooo."

Helen and the woman speak in Slavey for a moment.

"She says she'll pay you half price."

I look at the elder, and then at the berries. They're mouldy. The box is no bigger than the palm of your hand, and it costs $8 at full price. Even at $4, the store is ripping this poor woman off.

"Are you sure they're still good to eat Helen? I'll go find some better ones."

"NoooOOO0000OOOoooo."

This is the no of a mother with several kids. It's a scolding no. The look on her face says, "stand still for a moment and listen." She talks to the elder in Slavey again for a moment.

"Make it three dollars a box and she'll buy two."

"Ok. Deal."

The stony face of the old lady breaks into a smile. She says something to Helen in Slavey, and they both laugh. I stand by with the stupid grin of someone who doesn't get the joke. Helen refuses to translate for me. I go back to work. Customer service is my first priority. It says so on my vest.