The Hard Eight
The eight is crowded. I’m traveling northbound from Mill Woods Town Ctr. I’ve got a seat but there a few standing. We wind through Lakewood transit center and eventually meander up to Millgate – the Thalidomide child of the Edmonton Transit System. It’s placed in a commercial / light industrial area overlooking the Whitemud Freeway. At the best of times it’s bleak – doubly so today with the grayscale sky and falling snow. The platform is rammed to the nuts. 3:00 home from schoolers, after work plowers, kid buggy pushers all around. Driver’s got a rolled blue lid watchcap, looks comfortable behind the wheel, slackarm turns and wide berths, gruff demeanor, no shit taker. After the load we’re drop-shot full, not a foot space for anyone. Pulls out of dock and rounds up 86th street north, past the lunch-only Chinese food place, the gear shop, the drilling company, oil tools, downhole tools, stainless tools, rock tools, lotsa tools. We pass the Ferrier transit barn and switch drivers – lunches removed, jackets exchanged.
Up past my Timmy’s on Argyll and 86th – the one in which I once downed six double doubles in succession (still my record); the one where my wife and I enjoy the occasional icecapp and cruller, we know the staff, they miss us when we don’t come in. Round the bend at 83rd north, screaming up the road and giving the once-legendary Polar Pub a nod on the way. Poured myself out of there on more than a few occasions back in the darkcore drinking days. Past the war-era bungalows and old brick schools. I take ‘er up to Bonnie Doon and she’s still shitass busy. I push my way through the stinky teenagers and disembark. Bus kicks some sludge to the sidewalk in front of me. Home, cap on. It’s cold on the face.