Trans

Tonight, I took a walk up past the house where I grew up. Wow, that sounds like a dusty, old sentence.

I grew up across the street and over a little hill from the Trans Canada Highway as it cuts it's way through Calgary. I remember the week they built the concrete acoustic retaining wall at the top of the hill. Us kids played with our little green plastic army guys in the giant (to a 6 year old) holes they bored in the ground for the posts. We built an elaborate network of bunkers for our men until the holes themselves became bunkers for each of us to hide out in. On the last day before they filled them in, we could see the workers coming, working their way towards our holes. I remember thinking they would never think of filling our bunkers with concrete after they see what we made them into....

Later, as a teenager, I would spend many nights sitting on top of that wall with friends. It's where I had my first "smoke", a dark brown cardboard Crispy Crunch tray with dried grass rolled into an unholy pesticide cocktail by my friend James. We would sit up there dreaming of all the places we would go on that highway once we got our licenses.