A Zen State of Mind

I got to thinking about how everyone found my book purchases to be odd. That suprised me. I assumed that everyone would like the same stuff I liked. And then I got to thinking that most people wouldn't give a shit about the Dakota in New York, or feel a kindred spirit with a building they have never seen. And it got me thinking about the 3 or 4 buildings that always have been weird little spaces that I have spent way too much time thinking about. And I am going to tell you about them. They are not necessarily interesting stories, especially the first one, but they all represent how one physical space is related to other spaces, and how memories of a certain place are tied to other memories, and on and on. So this first one, an obsession with an office building located in downtown Chilliwack, B.C., in the 1970s, is what I am telling you about tonight.

The Zen Building is/was (I say was because I wasn’t sure when I visited a few years ago if it is still indeed there – if so, it’s had a significant facelift) set amidst other commercial buildings on one of the main thoroughfares of town. Located in the middle of the block, the building was a newer addition to the older downtown core. Ok, try to picture it – if you were standing in front of it, you would see a business on your left, another one on your right, both with floor to ceiling windows, and straight ahead you would see a walkway that takes you to the back of the building and to the back alley. It was a straight, open walkway, so people used it to cross from the main street to the back alley (which linked to other streets). So, this walkway/walk-thru made it unique. So if you started to walk straight ahead down the walkway, or hall, or whatever you would call it, there would be another business on your left, another one on your right, and then an elevator to go upstairs (there were two floors on top of the building that were various office spaces), and then another business on each side of the hall, and then finally two more businesses, one on each side, of the back, just like the front. The only businesses that were in there were, in the front, the Bank of Nova Scotia on the right, the Donut Shop on the left, and in the back, a photographer place, and I can’t think of what else – usually, over half the place was empty.

Well anyway, now that the long description is over, so what, you say – well, the building itself didn’t really mean anything to me. True, I was in it every Saturday, as it was a few buildings down from the movie theater and every Saturday, on our way to the Saturday Matinee, we’d cut through the building. Saturdays were always a busy day for me as a kid. Me and my next door neighbor, “Ruby”, would walk downtown (sometimes we’d get a ride, but more often would walk, through the pouring rain), and we’d go to the Royal Hotel for fries and gravy. Some years, we would bowl, on our team The Eagles (named after the band – everyone else had bowling names, but we weren’t that smart), so we’d go to the Royal after bowling, but regardless, we’d end up there for Saturday lunch. The Royal Hotel was a cool old building that for some reason has always been on the verge of falling into decrepitness, but never does. The café had a beer parlor off of it, and we would sit in the old booths and always order fries and gravy and a pop. I can’t remember what it came to – usually $1.35 or something like that I think. But they were the best fries and gravy on the planet. You usually didn’t get much, just a saucer of steak fries covered with opulent looking gravy, and we’d smother them with salt and pepper. I can still taste them. Of course, since there was never quite enough gravy, you would usually end up with one or two fries uneaten, because you know how dry steak fries can be – too dry to swallow sometimes. Once in a while, if I was feeling flush, I would also order a bowl of soup, which was always just Campbell’s out of the can. But it was good, you know?

Anyway, we’d eat there, and then we’d run across to “the shop”, the hair place Ruby’s mom owned. It was one of those old lady hair places, and I can still remember spending HOURS in there, waiting for a ride home on Saturdays, after we were done our movie. I can still smell the sour odor of perm, and see all the bottles of color sitting there, brown bottles with different shades on the labels. We’d sit in the back, where there was a table, a counter, some liquor, and usually a few hair dressers sitting there smoking. The bathroom was small and had a shelf with each hairdresser’s supply of sanitary protection. Everyone used something different, and I learned a lot whenever I sat in there reading the boxes. I remember seeing an OB tampon and trying to figure THAT thing out, since I barely understood the ones WITH applicators.

Anyway, after stopping in at the shop, we’d run the few blocks to the theater, cutting through the Zen building. As we always had to be the first in line at the theater, why, I don’t know, but probably to ensure we had our pick of seats, we would be there at least a ½ hour before the ticket booth opened. So, we’d spend our $1.50 on admission, and then go in and order our movie food from the pretty cashier. Oh man, she was beautiful. I think her name was Julie. She had feathered hair, lots of blue eye shadow, and straight, white teeth. She was about 16, and I thought she looked like a million bucks in her blue Famous Players smock. So, I would play it cool and order Swamp Water, a mixing of the Coke, Sprite, and Orange pop, and thought I was cooler than shit because I was speaking in a lingo that only the two of us understood. You see, swamp water wasn’t on the menu, but she knew what I wanted. I would also get a popcorn and perhaps twizzlers or Goodies, if I could afford it. So off Ruby and I would go, sometimes joined by Steven, sometimes by Delilah, sometimes by Bob, or sometimes by Vicki, but mostly just the two of us, like some old married couple, and rush to front row centre. We would sit through any movie that came, whether we liked it or not. I remember Star Trek the Movie coming out and we didn’t understand one single thing, not a one. Yet the next week, it was held over, and we sat through it again. It was torture. Yet, the second showing was still a good time, as I remember being in the bathroom and some kid pooped his pants and it was a big ordeal, so there was something we could talk about through the movie. We sat through so many movies, good and bad, on those Saturdays. I remember seeing all the biggies of the day – the PG version of Saturday Night Fever, which really lost something and didn’t make much sense to me until I saw the R rated version, Grease, where I think we went something like 6 weeks in a row (which I absolutely hate now), Meatballs, Roadie (starring Meat Loaf), the Roller Derby/Roller Boogie movies, Little Darlings, all the Disney stuff, the Herbie movies, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, the list goes on.

Once the movie would be done, we’d head off back to the shop, usually in the rain, and cut through the Zen Building again Since the movie would be done by 4 at the latest, and since we’d have to wait until the shop closed at 6 to get a ride home, we would dilly-dally, sometimes stopping in at the used book store to sneak looks at the dirty magazines, and we’d walk through the Zen Building, peering into the donut shop, or looking at the pictures in the photo gallery. And really, the Building wasn’t a thought to us. We’d been upstairs once before, when we were with Ruby’s mom and went to her accountant’s office upstairs on the second floor (which was so cool, because the elevator was locked on weekends, so we were proud to say we had been in the elevator in that building). But really, the building was just a convenient walk-through, a short-cut, and a brief respite from getting soaked by the cold winter rain. But other than the novelty of being a shortcut, it left no more impression than the other buildings we visited on Saturdays – the Royal, the theater, the shop, the bookstore, or the other stores on the way back to the shop.

Indeed, other places left more of an immediate impression. On the way to the shop, we’d often stop in at the Grass Roots Health Food Store on Yale Avenue. There were many health food stores there, but Grass Roots was the best. It was where my sister and her husband would go and buy their Kelp, Alfalfa tablets, vitamin C, vitamin A, and so on. The woman who owned it was quite a character – this hippie who would dispense all of this advice for her snake oils, and people would eat it up. I don’t know why people did. She had a tattoo on her leg, which in those days was suspect, and smoked, which was strange for a health food store owner. I loved going there and we’d often buy a licorice root to chew on. They were kept in a canister of fluid, sort of reminiscent of the way the combs were kept in the blue Barbicide in the shop, and we’d get these sticks and think we were so cool, sucking on wood sticks, and would be all “this is the REAL licorice.” Yeah, we knew how to have fun. I remember wishing I could afford to buy all of these Celestial Seasonings teas. I used to buy some once in a while, when I was feeling flush, and I really liked the orange spice, and red zinger, and the mint. I also used to think banana chips were cool, and carob too. So it was always a good diversion to hit Grass Roots whenever we could.

So, as you can see, the Zen Building wasn't a Taj Mahal or anything like that. I was just another Saturday stop. Or at least, it was just a Saturday stop until the damn thing was found to be structurally unsound and immediately ordered to be evacuated. I suppose it wasn't as dire as it sounded to me, but all I know is that Ruby came running over to my house one night to tell me that the Zen Building was closed down because it could collapse at any moment. Sure enough, next time we went downtown, the damn thing was completely empty. The Donut Shop, the only one in town, was empty. Really, it was no loss, because their donuts were really cakey, and fried on old tasting oil, so while it was always so exciting to go there, it was nevertheless and inevitable let down. But the Donut Shop was gone, the bank was gone, the photo place was gone, and the walkway was closed at each end with plywood. If you were tall, you could look over the wood and see in, but being children, we could only see in via the glass walls in the donut place and the bank, which also gave us a little insight into the walkway. Thus began my obsession with the building. I think it was the excitement that it might collapse, being a grand catastrophe that we had never seen. I think I owe it all to being a child raised on fears of quicksand, killer bees, spiders taking over the earth, etc. This building had the makings of a made for tv movie starring Eve Plumb, the spunky teen girl trapped in the collapsed building, fighting through the rubble to freedom. So I would clip articles in the paper whenever the Zen Building was mentioned, and would peer into it faithfully whenever I was downtown. Ruby and I would always wonder when it would open again. We couldn't wait to look danger in the eye and walk through the walkway again. However, lest we sound like Hart to Hart, we were little chickenshits. I will always remember us peering into the windows of the donut shop after the movie one Saturday. The lock on the door looked a little funny, and we both just started reefing on the door like we had to get our trapped friend, Eve Plumb, out of there before the place fell on her. So there we are, both just yanking the handle of the door like crazy, peering into this dark, stark room, with ceiling tiles removed, missing drywall, pipes exposed, etc., and I suddenly felt awash with fear like never before. Strangely, Ruby felt it at the same time because suddenly, while pulling on the door, we both slowly turned out heads, looked at each other, and then ran like fucking lightning. I think we went half a block before we stopped, and then we laughed forever. I don't know how long the building was closed, but i am sure it must have been a good year or so before it was open. We watched as men came in and worked on it, and when the walkway was finally opened, I remember the creepy feeling of walking through it, being terrified the place would fall down on my head. Something tells me the place was closed down one more time, but my memory fails me. However, if I could, I would go down there and look through the old newspapers on microfilm like they do in the movies, and read up on the whole thing. I'd love to do that. Yes, I am weird. But this building was a big adventure to me, and I will never forget it. I still don't know what was structurally wrong with the building, but it must have been something terrible for them to close it that fast. So my friends, if you are still with me, this is one of the buildings that left an imprint on my life.
Next I will post on the Arlington in Edmonton, the old house here in Prince Albert, and the Dakota in New York, and explain my fascination with them. I know you probably don't care, but it's my blog, so deal. But the cool thing is realizing how all the other events and memories are all somehow tied into this old building - it's like six degrees of separation.
So that, my friends, is the first building - the stories get better, but I think the Zen started the weird connection I have to certain physical spaces. And now you know the rest of the story....