Freedom

After I loaded up the breadmaker with the ingredients for a buckwheat loaf that will help get me through a grey day or two next week the Hammer and I took off to let Sonja enjoy the house without us. Besides exercizing my energetic dog I had to pick up groceries. I love food, it goes good with beer, hockey and the B.C. Lions' encounter with the Saskatchewan Rough Riders on Sunday.

I picked up vegetables from a local farmer while the Hammer watched the car. Farm fresh vegetables look like summer in November. A guy in a snazz Lions' jacket and his wife were there shopping too. Like me he is going to watch the game from the comfort of his home. There is a crowd of upwards of 50,000 expected. The guy in the jacket said, "And they deserve it after what they have done this year."

Dope City folk have whined for years about our enclosed football stadium but they will be enjoying the comforts of the indoors on Sunday. Hopefully they have lots of beer sellers ready to go on game day. If they do not I will hear about it from the guys at work who have tickets. The lack of beer sellers at big games in the past has forced them back into the old outdoor stadium tradition of packing a flask into the game. And the dope they will be smoking will keep them high from the time they leave the street until the final whistle past the Saskatchewan graveyard.

As I bought my vegetables I chatted with the owner about the rain. It's always back to the rain. It is fucking miserable around here in November with the low black sky punching you in the head, the wind punching your body and the loud rain kicking your beer-fucked kidneys. In the parking lot a young gal waiting for her mom inside the market chatted with me about the Hammer as I tilted into the wind. "How much do you have to feed that thing?" she wondered. She had one of those tongue piercings a man cannot help thinking about. From the vegetable market I drove the Hammer to one of our favourite walking places. In the mountains above us slash fires burned. The orange flames lit up the mountain side like B.C. Lions in full uniform.

My cheeks were cold and numb by the time we returned to crank up the heat in the car. We had one more stop for beer and then it was home to watch the Leafs kick Frog ass and Don Cherry remind us there are Canadians in Afghanistan (and probably secretly elsewhere) killing and being killed. If only they were truly killing and dying for Freedom.