July 7, midnight

The weather is sweltering, humid, and that midnight quietness you can only hear on the prairies. No sound of crickets yet. I don't know who to call or whether I should rent a room somewhere. I look in the book to see if by some weird twist of fate my brother is listed. He is! What the fuck is going on with this world?

"Hello Joe? This is Charles, Chuck...Do you remember me?" I have to go by the name of Chuck because that is all they have ever known me by. Whenever I travel across the country I have to try to remember how people know me, from what time period in my life when I had a different name...Chuck, Charles, Charlie, Chas, Chazz, Luke, etc.

"Chuckie, of course, where the fuck are you?"

"I'm at the bus depot"

"Well, git your ass over here. I live three blocks away. Bring some beer while yer at it..."

We talk, and gossip and drink for the rest of the night catching up on old news and rehashing some old ones. Another night without any sleep.

July 8

The first person I meet in downtown Regina is the last person I wanted to meet. Noreen looks as every bit beautiful as I had remembered her. I was kinda hoping that she would have gotten fat and oily with huge pink curlers in her hair, with a smoke dangling out of her mouth. But No. She was wearing a dark flowery summer dress and her dimples were as sharp as razor blades. Unfortunately, I was at my worst. My hair scraggly and greasy. My chin was bristly. I hadn't a shower in 72 hours. And I hadn't bothered washing my clothes thinking I would wash everything that afternoon and could change into something clean. I was a mess.

I have always loved Noreen. I thought I had gotten over her but when I saw her again my heart broke over and over and I wished things could be the same as they were ten years ago when we were in University. I realize now that she had meant more to be than I had to her. I must be a fleeting ghost in her life, a minor inconvenience more annoying than a fly caught in the window at night. I think I will always love Noreen. And she will never know.

Garth the Fitch, my bestfriend of all time, only lives a few blocks away. In the morning I wander over to his place hoping that he hasn't moved away. I lost his phone number years ago and he is never listed so there might be a chance that he no longer lives there. But of course he does...

He immediately runs out to buy some beer. At the liquor board store, he also buys shooters which come in tiny plastic beaker glasses. The skies suddenly turned black and threatening in mere seconds. You can see the dark clouds swirling around ready to form twisters. Garth and I race back to his place and watch the skies from his backyard. He is betting on twister touching down any second. I remember twisters from my childhood and re-live the fear I felt then. The fear of twisters is the scariest feeling in the whole world.

But the twisters don't touch down and the torrential rain floods the city streets in minutes, a thick heavy rain that hurts to walk in.

July 9, 2 a.m.

I am at an old old friend's house who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons... He has me mixing up a pound of hash-oil in a big tupperware bowl cutting it down to make more profit out of the mix. He recieves it fresh and pure. But his mix won't be the last time it will be cut down.

I am fascinated by this dark side of life, mixing dope, breaking the law. I always have been. Although I am no stranger to illicit activities, I do try to avoid them as much as I can. There are times when it is inevitable. Mixing dope, like an illegal card game is a part of life. It happens.

July 10

I go over to Garth's place rather late in the morning. He is busy cooking up moose meat sausages for breakfast and invites me in. We quickly decide to go fishing and load up a lawn mower to drop off at his friend's place along the way and drive to Fort Qu'appelle and fish for perch at Long Lake. This is the life. There is nothing more enjoyable than fishing along the banks of a shady river under Saskatchewan skies in the middle of summer. Garth is an avid fishermen. We both are but Garth has had the advantage of knowing all the great fishing spots. It is the benefit of staying in one place your entire life. An alien experience for the likes of me.

Garth has to work nights. After our wee fishing expedition he drops me off at "Moms". Mom isn't my real mom. But she is still Mom. Everyone calls her Mom and I've known her my entire life. I give her my Perch and Walleye that I have caught.

July 11

I wake to severe storm warnings on the radio, and later this is up-dated to tornado warnings for the Weyburn/Estevan area in South East Saskatchewan. Not a good thing because I have arranged for a ride to the Whitebear Pow-wow. Steve shrugs it off and loads the car with our tents and sleeping bags and grub. The skies over Regina are blue and clear.

Twisters are at their liveliest between 2 pm and 10 pm. As we drove southeast on highway 33 to Stoughton we realized it was getting late in the afternoon and we were driving into a severe thunderstorm, in fact, right into the southwest flank of the thunderstorm where all tornadoes are born. Steve, however, was determined to get to the Pow-wow.

He drove further into the midst of the storm. Hail pelted the windshields, and fierce winds rocked the car. The hail got bigger; the wind stronger. Before we reached Stoughton-where we would head east on highway 13 to Carlyle- we were surrounded by blackness with only a pale thin shimmer of blue along the western horizon. Suddenly, the hail stopped, the winds died down. We knew we were in a bad spot when we stopped the car to inspect the skies. The clouds were swirling madly with cyclonic activity. I've seen this before and I knew it was time to leave. Steve readily agreed.

Steve spotted nipples forming in the clouds. (We don't know the scientific term). This is the first sign of a tornado forming. A twister is actually borne from the ground and rises upwards like a rotating sleeve to meet this 'nipple'. A true tornado is a tiny thin vortex. A big tornado is a gang of these little twisters swirling together. Sometimes, you will see multiples of these formations which are then called a family.

We saw several twisters form and disappear in a span of five minutes, all of them many miles apart, and all appeared too small to do any damage.

July 12

Didn't make it to the pow-wow after all. The 10:30 local news report on television reported wind damage in southeast Saskatchewan. Strangely, the weather office denied any tornadoes touching down despite several, maybe hundreds, of sightings. Damage was severe: barns overturned, tractors and combines thrown miles away, irrigation systems twisted, and thousands of acres of crops ruined.

to be continued...in...
WEEK TWO