Shove It

Unlike nightclubbers in delightful Dope City, the good people of the Cariboo still remember how to have a good civil brawl without pulling guns out on one another. Oh, they pull out the guns every now and then, but not with the casual violence of a Friday afternoon rush hour.

Shortly after midnight at the dance last night the combatants began eyeing one another up. ATV and snowmobile cowboys all, they have been beating the fuck out of one another for years in the schoolyard then the bar. They eyed one another up hoping to choose someone even drunker than themselves to pay for their well going dry this past summer.

A couple guys just about 80 years old started it. "What the fuck are you looking at you old cocksucker?" The two of them were slow as the Canuck's third line but they had style, the style of old time boxers. As Sonja and I watched she pulled me towards one of the splintered old hall's walls just as the Gunsmoke brawl got up a head of beer powered steam. Pretty soon you could have charged admission as the indoor punch-ups spilled into the skating rink of a parking lot and a few ladies joined in the slug festival.

Next thing you knew everybody was really in the mood to party. Some of the booze fighters had their wounds tended with gauze and yet more alcohol while others hit the dance floor proud of their new scars as the Canadian Army in Afghanistan is of a day without suffering casualties.

Nobody got shot. The little community newspaper will report a thousand dollars was raised for charity. The body shop in town will make another few thousand from the drivers who had one too many one too manies before they roared away into the night on their Blizzaks.

Pretty soon I am going to be wishing I could stay up here in the House instead of driving back to face fear in the streets and the enduring Curse of the Canuck Millionaires. It is the same thing I wish for every time I escape the city. When the sawmill I work at inevitably closes down I will be singing Take Dope City and Shove It as I drive to the land where it is not just the guys at the pub who know my name.