‘

Arresting anecdotes from North

John Moore
BOOK REVIEW

HAYWIRE. Jim Caplette.
Harbour Publishing. $14.95

emember the uncle or
ie randfather you always
_ ft &loved to hang out wit
-when you were a kid? The
one your parents reluctantly
gave permission for you to
visit after consultations in
“low voices in which the
phrase “bad influence”. was
whispered? The one all the
” “other adults in the family
-seemed embarrassed or
_ exasperated’ by and you
could never figure out why?

. In his garage or workshop,

- . stuffed-to the rafters with toots
and junk, you were a gate-crash-
ing Ali Baba in the cave of The

“ Forty Thieves and he was the
Mighty Djinn, the Genie who
could fix anything from toys to
tractors and make even more
wondrous things out of the left-

. over parts, ©
_ ‘From him-you learned to.cuss. -

* since he seldom curbed his lan-.
guage, and you'gat'a crash-
course in life from nis endless,

».. mostly unexpurgater! stories.
(Hence the “bad influence” rap.)
But he never patronized you.
“<The reminiscences of North

~, Vancouver writer Jim Caplette

Will transport you back to that

: (dusty old garage, scene of so

cMany projects, plots and pranks,

with every turn of the page. A
self-confessed “bullshitter” of the
old school, (Phd. HardKnacks
Academy), Caplette lit out from
the Saskatchewan dairy farm of
his youth in the summer of ‘41
for the West Coast. On a bicycle.

» Discovering railroads in. *

’ Calgary, he sensibly. flogged the
bike and hoboed the rest of the
way. At various times, he worked
for Burrard Dry Dock, the
Canadian Armed Forces,
Imperias Oil, and his own truck-

ing business in North Van.
“Career” is the only word he’s
never learned to spell, but then
he’s been too damn busy to have
one.

Now “sort of retired”, he can
sometimes be found sipping
chowder at the High Boots Cafe
al the Mosquito Creek Marina,
helping to build a fishboat to
donate to impoverished
Nicaraguan fishermen, when he’s
not playing trumpet guitar or tub-
bass in a bar or prowling his
workshop “fixing” or “inventing”
something. :

A child of the Great
Depression, (who said it was
“great”2) , he’s one of those guys
who cries at landfill sites as if
they wére funéral homes and

‘looks ata scrapyard the way a
woman with a vali credit card
looks at fdolt-Renfrew. He's been
so far ahead of his time on some
concepts, like récycling, as to be
misunderstood. He never throws
things away; not even rocks.

In ‘58, when they blew up
Ripple Rack, a truck dropped a
200 Ib. boulder in front the ser-
vice statiun on Dollarton Hwy.
where he’ invented the “self-
serve” concept 30 years too soon
by spencling most of his time in
the cafe a block away. He rolled
the rack onto the lot and posted
a sign: “Piece of Ripple Rock fell
at this site, April 5, 1958.”

The rock became quite a
tourist attraction, was kidnapped
several times by maniacal friends
and once chained to the frame of
a car in a pub parking-lot, finally
causing so much mischief
Caplette reluctantly buried it out
of harms way. Even when Pet
Rocks were the rage, he resisted
the temptation to dig it up. He

‘just gave his wife a new one. Il
weighed eight tons and none of
his like-minded friencls have
been able to pinch it from the
front yard.

A mix of stories, anecdotes,
tall tales and acerbic observa-
tions, Haywire is an autobiogra-
‘phy that puts to shame the pon-
derous and pretentious memoirs
of the “great” figures of contem-
porary Canadian history.
Caplette’s voice is the authentic
growl of a junkyard pitbull; the

“ voice of the Turtle who sees no
reason nol to race rabbits, the
voice of the little guy who won't
sit down and shut up, the voice
from the corner stool at the cof-
fee counter where you can still

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Enthroned in the most private
room of the house, Haywire is
something you can read while
you put the putative “Memoirs”
of Pierre E. Trudeau to a more
practical purpose in the spirit of
‘recycling’.

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