Falling Backwards: A Memoir (20 page)

My gram, 1998. She loved a good joke and had the most wonderful laugh to go along with every punch line.

Me and my half-blind, half-deaf grandmother Richards.

Entertaining in the inaccurately named “coke machine room” of my high school.

Duray in Dad’s chair, having a cigarette during one of the rare times when he was at home in the late seventies.

With my grad date Stuart in 1980. I still had my awful perm but my mom took me to the hairdresser to blow it out for one night only.

It was a truly awful perm.

Me and Theresa on our first big trip abroad, 1980. Hawaii felt very far away from Springbank, Alberta.

I played my guitar on the beach in Hawaii, got sunburned and was sick for two days.

Patrick, me and Duray at Christmas in 1981. I was becoming fashionable by the looks of my hair—I cut the perm off!

A rare performance in our living room in 1981, after my grad debut.

Making myself useful around our property in 1982. I would have been just about to get my pacemaker.

Norman Earl, on his mystical, magical salmon trawler. I think I probably gutted five or six hundred fish a day. (Used with kind permission of Norman Earl’s family.)