Extreme Vinyl Café by Stuart Mclean Page A

so cold they kept burning their fires. No one knew. And then people started to die. That’s how Charles died.”
    “My great -grandfather,” said Stephanie.
    “Great- great -grandfather,” said Dorothy. “He went to the hospital. He had to walk because you couldn’t see to drive. If you were driving, you had to have someone walking in front of you. The hospitals were full. They sent him home again. He turned blue. It’s true,” said Dorothy, “I was your age. I saw it.”
    “You were my age,” said Stephanie quietly. She was looking at Dorothy, but she was talking to herself.
    S tephanie flew home two days later. She sat in a window seat with a porcelain hedgehog in her lap. That night in the hotel bar, she’d asked Dorothy to put her name on the entire hedgehog collection. Dorothy had made her take one home.
    Stephanie stared out the window during the entire flight. She didn’t watch the movie or say a word to the man in the seat beside her. An uncommon melancholy had settled upon her, like a sorrow from long ago. It was the oddest feeling. As if there was something she was supposed to remember.
    About four hours into the flight, the pilot announced they were flying over Cape Breton. Stephanie was full of questions. Where would she be today if her great-grandmother hadn’t gone to Cape Breton? What if she had gone to Australia instead? Or South Africa? And Charles, who had turned blue and died of fog. She wished she could meet Charles. She felt if they could meet in the little bar in Durrants Hotel, he would tell her something important.
    She had never thought about the web of influences spun around her, the long line of connective tissue. The bigness of it all diminished her and filled her with a sense of wonder all at once. For the first time, she felt a connection and responsibility to other generations. Those who had been. Those yet coming.
    When the plane touched down, she handed her hedgehog to the man in the seat beside her. As they taxied toward the terminal, she pulled her sweater off and wrapped it carefullyaround the hedgehog and then gently tucked it into her knapsack.
    “It’s very old,” she said to the man beside her. “It used to belong to my great-aunt. Three times removed.”
    Dear Mr. McLean,
    My husband and I are having a tremendous blow-up right now, and we’ve decided that we need an arbitrator to sort things out. We were looking for someone with a keen critical ability, sound judgment and true wisdom. Unfortunately, we have not been able to find anyone like that. The other day, listening to your show on the radio, my husband piped up and said, “What about Stuart McLean? He seems like a guy with time on his hands.”
    So, we are coming to you with this question: When our time comes, should we be cremated or have a traditional burial?
    Awaiting your response,
Emily
    Dear Emily,
    Personally, I have no intention of passing away, so I haven’t given the matter of burials much thought. My friend Dave, however, has. Here’s his story.

DAVE’S FUNERAL
    B illy London called Dave at lunchtime. Any other Monday Dave might have missed his call, but not this Monday. This was a Monday in the middle of February, and it had been snowing all day. No one had been in his store for a couple of hours, because no one was out. And who could blame them? Dave wasn’t about to go out either.
    When Billy phoned, Dave was sitting in the comfy red chair by the cash register, his feet propped on a milk crate, a cup of soup balanced on the arm of the chair. He was multi-tasking, reading a music magazine from LA and listening to a new vinyl album—a tribute to Gordon Lightfoot and Neil Young recorded by a couple of young bands.
    When the phone rang he scooped it up and said, “Just a minute.” He reached over to the turntable and flipped up the tone arm; then he picked up the phone again.
    “Billy?” he said. “Long time. What’s up?”
    Billy got right to the point. He said, “Aunt Ginger died, on