but I think she had tears in her eyes — go figure!
Soon Eddy and I were flying down the highway past Langley, Aldergrove, Chilliwack, and Hope, which was known as the gateway to the Cariboo Gold Rush Trail, the road thousands of hopeful miners took during the late nineteenth century.
“So I guess Golden got its name because it had lots of gold, right?” I said to Eddy.
“Nope. Had nothing to with gold. Do you want to hear the story?”
I nodded.
“Well, first off, I’ll go back a bit. The area’s been home to the Kootenay people for thousands of years. Then the first European to discover the place in 1807 was explorer and geographer David Thompson. With help from the First Nations people, he mapped out the first trade route for the North West Company. Then fifty years later those same people helped James Hector find a route for the new Canadian Pacific Railway through the Rocky Mountains. That’s when the place got its first name — Kicking Horse Plains.”
I was imagining a herd of broncos with their hind legs bucking into the air. “Because there were wild horses roaming the area?”
“No, that’s not why. As the story goes, one morning when the group was getting ready to move out, Hector’s horse kicked him in the head. It must have been a doozy, because he was unconscious for days. In fact, his Kootenay guides thought he was dead and were placing him in his grave when he fortunately regained consciousness.”
“And that’s how the place became known as Kicking Horse Plains,” I finished for her in my storybook voice. “So do I get to count this as a history lesson? Aunt Margaret’s got me keeping a work diary of all the things I learn.” Eddy covered her mouth, but I could tell she was snickering. “It’s not funny, Eddy. I doubt you’d be laughing if you had to keep a running record of every ‘educational opportunity’ that came up. Man, Aunt Margaret is such a —”
“Now be nice, Peggy. She’s just trying to help.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll be nice, but then you have to finish the story about how the town got its name.”
“Well, the first settlement appeared around 1882 as the CPR was being built. The area became the base camp for the workers and survey crew. They called it The Cache, which means ‘storage place.’ The Cache crew had some friendly rivalry going on with another railway crew to the east who named their camp Silver City. Not to be outdone, the residents of The Cache renamed the place Golden City. That was a pretty fancy name for a town of tents and crude shacks, which I guess is why they eventually dropped the word city.” Eddy rolled her eyes and whistled. “But there sure wasn’t much golden about the place at the start. It was a rough little town, notorious for violence and crime. They had robberies, rum-running, bar brawls, lots of gunplay that ended badly, and even murder.”
As we sped along the highway, we soon left behind the familiar scene of tall cedars, maples turning orange and red, and the still-warm air of late September by the coast. Instead there were rocky slopes dotted with scruffy little pines and sagebrush, and a definite crispy coolness in the air. I could feel we were gaining altitude by the way my ears plugged up. And other clues that we were getting higher were all the warning signs we passed that said things like CHAIN-UP AREA AHEAD and BRIDGES MAY BE ICY. I was peering down one steep, rocky bank to the churning Coquihalla River below when we zipped passed a warning sign that read: AVALANCHE AREA — DO NOT STOP. My stomach lurched, and I decided I’d better stop looking down if I wanted to keep my breakfast.
When we turned a sharp bend in the highway, a loud honking came from behind us. Eddy accidently veered toward the steep embankment.
“Eddy, watch out!” I screeched. She managed to pull the truck back just as a silver car zipped past full of teenagers.
“Drive the speed limit or get off the road, you old bat!” a passenger yelled out as they raced by.
“Learn to drive!” shouted another.
At that moment I felt like a thermometer with the red-hot mercury quickly rising. It was guys like him that made things tough for all teenagers. “Idiots!” I cursed. I waited for Eddy to agree, but she held her steady gaze on the road. A short while later we pulled into Sparrow’s Gas Station.
“It’s time we stretched our legs, Peggy. I’ll fill the gas tank while you wash the windows.”
I picked up the squeegee to start scrubbing at the splattered insects stuck to the windshield. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of the same silver sports car parked in front of the store. The driver and his friends were standing beside it drinking Slurpees. Eddy saw them, too, and walked over. I thought, Good. Eddy’s going to blast them.
“Hi there, boys. That car sure is something.”
The blond driver eyed her up and down carefully. He looked as if he was thinking the same thing I was. “Yeah, 1975 Gran Torino.”
“You don’t say? Well, I just need to tell you that …”
Here it comes, I thought. She’s going to let them have it.
“It’s a beautiful car, and I’m pretty sure if my grandson were here he’d be begging for a ride.”
What! She wasn’t blasting the kid at all — just complimenting him.
The boy’s eyes softened, and he smiled. “You know, it’s the same car they drove in the Starsky and Hutch TV show. Except, of course, it’s not the same colour.” He was gushing with pride now.
“That’s impressive. It’s the kind of car you’ll want to keep forever.”
The boy nodded.
“C’mon, Nathan,” said the kid riding shotgun. I gotta get home.”
The blond boy turned to Eddy. “Well, see ya.”
“Right, see you,” Eddy said. “And drive carefully, Nathan. You don’t want anything to happen to that car of yours.” Eddy turned and went inside to pay for her gas.
The boy waved and said something like “Have a nice day, ma’am.”
“Eddy, that’s the kid who almost pushed us off the road,” I said when she got into the car. “Why didn’t you tell him off?”
“I could’ve done that. And then he’d just have given some smart-aleck response and tore off full of emotion. That would only have made matters worse, Peggy. I wanted to diffuse the situation. I want those boys to get home safely.”
“Well, they’re jerks, if you ask me.”
“Might look like that. But I’ll bet when they get home for dinner tonight they’ll kiss their mothers, wash up the dishes afterward, and then go up to their rooms with their little league baseball trophies and stamp collections and do homework.”
Eddy and I drove on through tunnels and along steep river embankments and passed fields covered in alfalfa. We also went through lots of little towns in less time than it took to blink an eye. But tiny as they were, every one of them had a little cemetery enclosed by a white picket fence.
Soon the droning of the pavement and the gentle jostling of the truck lulled me to sleep. I dozed on and off for hours, dreaming about horseshoes wedged inside skulls, scruffy miners duking it out, and oddly enough, plums and stinky diapers. But the dream that woke me up with the boiling mercury again was the one in which a silver Gran Torino spun its wheels across burials in Golden’s cemetery.
“Eddy, I heard it was a teenager who was caught vandalizing historic sites and digging up graves in Golden. That’s gotta rile you up, right?” Who wouldn’t agree the kid was some kind of low-life who lived under a rock?
“The world is made up of billions of people who all have different personalities, experiences, and opinions, Peggy. And I suppose there’s got to be just as many reasons why some are driven to destructive behaviour.”
“C’mon, Eddy, what kind of an answer is