Free The Vinyl Café Notebooks by Stuart Mclean Page B

Leap Year is to embrace that other February holiday—Groundhog Day. I’m pretty sure I saw my shadow. I’m going back to bed. Wake me in March.
    24 February 2008

SNOWMAN
    My favourite moment of the winter past was the afternoon we stumbled upon the snowman on Howland Avenue. It was the biggest snowman I have ever seen. It had a base bigger than a Volkswagen and took up most of the front lawn where it stood.
    Intrigued, I knocked on the front door and introduced myself to the man who answered. His name was John Keefer. John told me he had built his snowman on a Friday night in February. He says he was just “inspired by the moment.” The air was warm that night, he said, or as warm as it had been all winter, and the snow on his front lawn was piled as high as he’d ever seen it. And it was perfect packing snow. John started building his snowman before dinner. He went out after he finished eating to finish the job.
    John said he worked in the dark, knowing that his two-yearold daughter, Elsie, would wake up Saturday morning to a snowman as big as a buffalo.
    When he finished, John rooted through his recycling box and found a face for his snowman. He used a bright green cap from a detergent bottle as a nose and a yellow plastic peanut butter lid for the mouth. He fashioned red eyes with lids from two pickle jars.
    He said the temperature dropped that night and turned the snow as hard and strong as cement, making his snowman a fixture in the neighbourhood. All through February, local kids came to play with it, adults brought their friends, teenagers dropped by just to hang out.
    After a few days, a handful of pennies appeared in the trench that surrounded the snowman. By the end of the first week there was nearly a dollar of change in the trench.
    John says he isn’t sure what the money was about. I like to think each penny came with a wish, maybe for an early spring, or for a warm summer.
    I never know what to do with my pennies. But scattering them around a snowman and wishing for warm weather does not seem like such a foolish thing to do in the middle of February—seems like a particularly Canadian thing to, so this summer we’ll be saving as many as we can, and we will keep them for the dark days of next winter when we are really going need a wish or two.
    22 March 2004



BOY, BIKE, CHAIR
    I was on my way to the grocery store when I spotted him. A boy, about eleven years old I guessed, riding his bike up the middle of the street. He was riding awkwardly, weaving from side to side, as he was holding on to the handlebars with one hand and to an office chair with the other. The chair, which was black and was also on wheels, had clearly seen better days.
    “That looks like hard work,” I said.
    “Yup,” said the boy, not unhappy someone had noticed.
    Then he stopped pedalling and stood, astride his bike, pleased, it occurred to me, to have an excuse to rest for the moment. Resting is not something eleven-year-old boys do intuitively. I was happy to provide the excuse.
    “You taking that home?” I asked.
    The boy nodded.
    “Nice day for it,” I said.
    I tried to keep my questions non-threatening. I was, after all, a stranger. I assumed he had been warned about talking to people like me.
    “My name’s Stuart,” I said
    “My name’s Matt,” he said.
    Then he said, “When I get home I am going to tie a rope to this chair and pull it behind my bike, and my friend is going to ride in it. Then we are going to switch.”
    He smiled proudly.
    I smiled back, imagining all sorts of horrible things: the chair careening around in traffic, the rope breaking, cuts, bruises, broken bones.
    I almost said, “Be careful.” I restrained the impulse. He presumably had parents to tell him that. And to warn him about talking to people like me.
    “Sounds great,” I said. Then because I couldn’t think of anything else to say, I shrugged, and said, “I gotta go.”
    “Me too,” he said.
    I stood there for a moment and