The Silk Hat Toppers

Those who have already purchased Tesseracts 22 will have noticed that my story, "If There's a Goal," is dedicated to the memory of the Silk Hat Toppers hockey team of the early 1950s. Here they are:

Photo from a family collection; photographer unknown. For that matter, the date is unknown as well: early 1950s?

There are a couple of things to note about this outfit, one pretty obvious and the other perhaps less so. First, though they wear consistent jerseys, the rest of their uniforms are, well, hardly uniform. The pants and stockings come from the various local athletic organizations the members previously played for. (See below.)

The second is that everyone in the photo is a Skeet. This team consisted entirely of my father and his seven brothers; the team sponsor (at the far left) was their father, my grandfather. Those were the days, when a family of ten children (my dad had two sisters in addition to all those brothers) wasn't unusual.

They were also the days when it was easy and affordable for any Fine Upstanding Canadian Boy to play hockey. My grandparents were far from well off, but somehow their sons all managed to play hockey, in both ad hoc and organized fashion. Contrast with today, when families are literally taking out loans in order to put their kids into some form of organized hockey (ad hoc being pretty much nonexistent any longer).

The Silk Hat was a restaurant my grandfather operated just south of downtown Calgary. Dates aren't known for certain anymore: Grandpa Sid was a sort of serial restaurateur in the years between 1946 (when he was discharged from the Canadian Army) and 1960; the Silk Hat was in the middle of the period, so likely ca. 1949-1953. Below is an earlier photo of my father and his brothers. They are standing on the frozen Elbow River, on the bank of which the family house was built.

More Skeet family hockey: again, photographer is unknown but could be Sidney Skeet.

This photo, the existence of which came as a surprise to me about a week ago, was probably taken in the winter of 1946-47 (or possibly 1947-48). The "winter" part is obvious: they're standing on a frozen river, duh. The year is a bit more of a guess: my father thinks he was about 14 years old at the time (he's fourth from the left, above), and he turned 14 in the summer of 1947. But his eldest brother is absent, which argues the winter of '46-47, when Lionel was still in the army. Four of the brothers are wearing the jerseys of the Calgary Buffaloes Hockey Association, which operated boys' teams at a number of levels (former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed was an alumnus, as were a number of NHL players).

Seeing these photos makes me regret not having made a greater effort to gather the memories of my father's generation while they were still fresh. Of the young gentlemen in the photos above, only three are still alive.

High Risk 7.5

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[Concluding chapter seven]

Lily Cross had lived in an actress’s boarding house near the intersection of Taft and Franklin. If it had ever been a good neighborhood, it wasn’t anymore. But the house was apparently well-suited for would-be actresses: it was, Desiree informed Casey, about a half-hour’s walk from the Gower-Sunset area, the heart of Hollywood’s Poverty Row.

The house’s owner, Mrs. Elaine Carpenter, was by her accent yet another mid-westerner. Casey was beginning to wonder if anyone in Hollywood didn’t come from Iowa or Kansas. Mrs. Carpenter greeted Casey and Desiree at her front door with the suspicious expression that seemed to automatically come with the role of landlady; Casey remembered Mrs. Decker in Santa Monica wearing pretty much the same expression.

High Risk 7.4

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[Continuing chapter seven]

“I can let you look at that,” the clerk said. “But I can’t let you take it away. Mr. Neal says he’s going to need it again.”

“We wouldn’t dream of interfering with Mr. Neal,” Desiree said. “In fact, we’re trying to help him.”

“I’m sure,” the clerk said. Damn, thought Casey. Everyone in this city is a cynic.

Casey and Desiree sat down at a table as far from the clerk as they could get. Casey couldn’t suppress a sigh of disappointment: Lily Cross’s file was not going to be of much use if its size was any indication. The number of documents it contained was pathetically small: her contract, dated October 18, 1929; a filled-in biographical form, to which was appended a small sheet of preliminary notes from someone in the publicity department, itemizing things to change or suppress; a collection of photos, showing a beautiful young woman with pale-colored hair styled in a wave that made her look sophisticated and much older than eighteen; and a series of reports. Casey remembered the laughing young woman who’d briefly blessed Conrad Hart’s little party.

High Risk 7.3

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[Continuing chapter seven]

With no other flying on the schedule, and little that could be shifted into the gap left by the broken valve, Casey ended up spending the rest of the day working as an overpaid mechanic. He helped Mitch drain the petrol and oil from the Tommy—a job that made him more than a little nervous, pilots having a healthy respect for even a potential fire. His sore ribs wouldn’t let him push the Tommy back into the hangar, or remove the damaged rotary from its mounting—Tillman and Hamilton were dragooned into doing that—but Hogan charged him with helping Mitch go over the wreckage of the other Tommy, analyzing the engine and their chances of either repairing or getting a working valve from it.

When Desiree turned up at the hangar in late afternoon, Mitch rolled his eyes and groaned. “First Eve Adams,” he said to Casey. “Now Desiree Farrell. What have you got that I haven’t got?”

“The answer to that question,” Desiree said, “would take more time than remains before Judgment Day. Come on, Casey. Clean yourself up and let’s get going.”

High Risk 7.2

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[Continuing chapter seven]

“How are your ribs this morning?” Hogan asked. He, Casey, and Mitch stood on the port side of the second of the disposable Tommies. A murmur of voices, punctuated by occasional shouts and the odd screech from Jerry Straebo, told Casey that the actors and crew were already at work.

“You want the truth? Still a bit sore.” Casey nudged the tire nearest him. “I think I can do this, though.” I hope I can.

High Risk 7.1

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CHAPTER SEVEN

“Is it morning yet?” Casey had only found the diner because Desiree had sent a cab to pick him up at the hotel and bring him here.

“Technically, yes,” Desiree said, waving him to the both she occupied. She gestured to the counterman. “Another ham and eggs here. And coffee. A bucket of it, by his look.”

“Didn’t sleep too well,” Casey said as he approached. “Must be because I’m not used to decent beds.”

“You’ll love my place, then.” For the first time Casey realized that Desiree wasn’t alone in the booth. Then her companion turned to face him.

“Cunningham?” Casey said. “You’re Desiree’s friend?”

“I know, I know. It’s a penance,” Cunningham said. “Somehow, though, I still manage to be able to show my face at the Writer’s Club.”

“And where is it written that I can’t be friends with a writer?” Desiree grinned. “Oh, right. It’s in my contract. In fact, it’s boilerplate in every actor’s contract. No hobnobbing with the lower classes. Oh, well. What Jerry doesn’t know about my personal life won’t hurt him.”

“Speaking of personal lives and Jerry, “ Casey said, “do you think he’s the violent type, Cunningham?”

“He sure has a temper,” Cunningham said.

“I once saw him take a swing at a newspaperman,” Desiree said. “But that’s pretty much a rite of passage for men in this town.”

“So he’s not normally the sort to react violently. Yet last night he charged me like a bull, just because I joked that he’d be a better suspect in this murder than me.”

“I have to admit,” said Desiree, “that I was surprised by that.”

“You don’t really think that he did it, do you?” Cunningham asked.

“I’m just starting to ask questions,” Casey said. “I’m not ready to start thinking yet.”

“You should be a studio head,” Desiree said. “They never start thinking.”

“That’d be the life, all right,” said Cunningham. “Instead of which I have to go back to the studio and chain myself to a typewriter. Jerry’s been screaming for more scenes. I have to say, Casey, that stuff you gave me Saturday night is just swell.”

Casey groaned, but Desiree interrupted. “And we have to get out to Glendale Airport. Jerry lost a whole day yesterday, so he’s going to work us to death today, at least as long as there’s light. What are you doing today, Casey?”

“Nothing much,” he said. “Crashing a plane is pretty much it.”

“You’re kidding,” Cunningham said. “I’d love to see that. Maybe I can get away after all. What time?”

“We’re going to take the whole morning getting ready,” Casey said. “It’ll be noon at least before we do it.”

“How does this crash compare with the one you did Saturday” Desiree asked.

“It looks much worse. But I’ve got a pretty good idea of how to do it, and Mitch assures me that I might even survive. If I’m lucky.”

“It’s good that you can joke about it,” she said.

“I wasn’t joking.”

“Shut up and let’s get going. Jeff, if you don’t come out to Glendale, I’ll see that what’s left of Casey gets dropped off at your place when we finish up tonight.” Desiree put some coins on the counter, and Casey followed her out to her roadster for another break-neck drive through the countryside around Hollywood.

Next     Prologue    Chapter One    Chapter Two    Chapter Three    Chapter Four    Chapter Five
Chapter Six

Mother of God! Is This the End of Sucrophile?

Well, yeah. Pretty much so. For the time being, anyway.

There are two reasons for this (well, perhaps two and a half). First: I've run out of old reviews to re-post. This feature was set up in the first place because some friends wanted me to publish the kiddyrot cereal reviews I wrote back in the early '90s, when I was trying to persuade CBC Radio that there was something passably amusing in the concept of cereal reviews.

(The half-reason is that while I have an enormous archive of old kiddyrot cereal boxes I have no memory at all of what the products themselves were like. Buzz Lightyear Cereal? A complete mystery. I could make shit up, I suppose, but that's not what we're like here at the Institute.)

The second reason is that eating this stuff just isn't good for you. I'm having enough trouble persuading friends to take the boxes of new product I've reviewed this year as it is, and that's just four boxes. Were I mad enough to try to continue doing this once a week, I'd likely be condemning my social circle to an early, grotesquely sugary, grave.

Don't despair, though, cereal fans. There are enough people out there who want to encourage me in my folly that Sucrophile may well make the occasional appearance even if it no longer shows up in your grocery aisle on a weekly basis.

High Risk 6.5

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[Concluding chapter six]

As she poured the drink, Casey stopped by a book-shelf. The library was full of volumes, and there were more here. It had been a long time since he’d had the luxury of reading good books. He picked up Xenophon’s The Anabasis, but the pages were still uncut. He checked some of the other books on the shelf. They were in the same condition. Why have books if you’re not going to read them? he asked himself. He thought about McMahon, and wondered what kind of a life the man had led that would make him want to build up this façade to suggest a different sort of person. Was everyone in Hollywood like that?

Was Desiree Farrell?

“Is Desiree Farrell your real name?” he asked her.