October 23, 2003

During my stop in Vancouver last month, I visited the old railroad hotel where the Big Boss and I stayed on a long-ago trip. The Boss and I had been camping so long in the woods, the room clerk probably thought we were fur trappers or Eskimos fresh from fish drying camp.

Fashions swelled formal in the 1940s in places swinging crystal chandeliers and spreading white linen cloths for china cups. On the afternoon my friend and I had a drink at the Hotel Vancouver, however, the Big Boss and I would have been overdressed among the table of guests wearing dungarees and scuffed exercise shoes. Aerobic exercise gives folks license to dress a notch above a sheep shearer's costume.

To be free to go where I please on the road, I pack a dark sweater for a coat, a pair of serge pants, a somber tie, and a blue oxford shirt. In high-class joints enforcing a dress code, I address the Maitre D's with "indeed," or "I beg your pardon." My biggest success was the "Pump Room" in Chicago; my biggest failure was a dance hall in San Antonio, "The Roaring Twenties." Sure hurts the pride to be directed to the coat rack to be stylish enough to go in a Texas honky-tonk.

But it was the Vancouver Art Gallery across the street from the hotel that lured us downtown to catch the flavor of the country. (Canadians call art museums galleries.) Art museums don't depend on the sun. The shadows are drawn or painted on the work hanging on the walls. The stillness, the quietness of the halls, settles the strain of travel. (I am supposing you want to know why a herder goes to an art exhibit.) On a Sunday afternoon, the visitors are off work. Guards stand mute as figures on canvas. The front desk keeps time. Verities in the weather make not the slightest difference. Your poke is safe. Babies sleep in carriages; mothers find refuge in the colors.

Doesn't mean I am interested in or appreciate all art. After spending the summer at the ranch with my 20 year-old grandson, I am having a hard time keeping from seeing the world through his eyes. A personal matter, but a very serious one for a graybeard to overcome. I'd be standing in front of a huge, classical oil painting featuring cream-colored, red-lipped cherubs, aristocratic ladies in plumed black hats wearing gold sequined gowns, and find myself imagining that a subject winked. Worse, I might offer to help a strange lady dismount from a cab, or fight an urge to pull out chairs for strangers. Go ahead and laugh, but you won't laugh if one of your grandchildren turns into a sorcerer.

On the third floor of the gallery, a prominent Canadian artist, Emily Carr, was on exhibit. What I found was a quote of hers that might explain better why hombres packing brushes and easels paint. "Everything is waiting and still. Slowly things begin to move, to slip into their places. Groups and masses and lives tie together. Colors you have not noticed come out timidly and boldly. In and out, in and out your eye passes. Nothing is crowded; there is living space for all."

On a tip from a guide book, we spent one morning and part of an afternoon in Stanley Park at the Vancouver Public Aquarium. Our focus was on the Beluga whales. The aquarium has three adults and one calf. Braving mobs of kids and harried parents, we held a spot looking through glass watching the underwater antics of the huge white beasts. At times the whales' faces were a couple of feet from our vantage point. Hudson Bay and the strait off Nova Scotia offer lots of whale sightings, but never as close as these in captivity. (Yes, you guessed. The whales are going to have to be released in the wilds.)

Being among so many kids was like trying to sleep in the jungle full of hyena packs on a moonlit night. We gave ground before we hit a baby buggy axle, or stumbled on a rattle. Went upstairs just in time to see a giant octopus unroll into a mass of waving orange tentacles. Thanks to Walt Disney, people are terrified of octopuses. My Aunt Myrtle was a lot like Mr. Disney at making up fantasies. Aunt M had us so scared of tarantulas, we had a hard time coming within BB-gun range to kill one.

I am sure the Boss checked us in at the Hotel Vancouver. I know he bought us each a tweed suit to wear to dinner. I know it was my first time in a Chinatown. I just had to go at night. I was terrified, but then as now, wanted to bring a story back to Mertzon…

October 23, 2003