Wolfe Island Festival
by Justin Ridgeway
I Came into town on a long cool highway drive east on the 401, fields running by out my rolled down window, billboards growing up out of the ground, weeds rusting away at their base. I have my arm leaning alongside my door panel, the stereo loud enough to be heard above the slipstream wind and I am making good time. If I can pull it off I’ll make the next ferry.
Driving across Division St. I pass chain restaurants and gas stations before coming into the run down post-war housing at the core of Kingston. In the downtown I briefly merge with the shops of an English High St. and the Saturday afternoon tourists, catching up with Hwy. 2 at the waterfront.
At the dock, I pull up into a space in the line-up. I count the cars ahead of me; it’s going to be close I put a two-four in the back of my truck, but keep a six of tall boys up front, in the cab. I sit back, turn the stereo on and peel back the tab of a Lakeport Pilsener, recline the seat and ease back. This is how a weekend on Wolfe Island has got to begin.
The cars start their engines and move forward. I am the last vehicle to make it on board. outside.
I am from Toronto, Canada’s capital, where stress and strife are so fixed in the quotodien that dilemma becomes the ritual: nothing comes easy – we don’t make it that way I get out of the truck , make for the back of the boat and lean on the railing, one foot up on the ramp. There’s the heavy grime of hydraulic oil , grease, and the copper taste of lake water and I rest my weight on my elbows and watch the wake of the boat playing out the distance from land.
A Saturday afternoon and there’s too many people to count . I drive through the thick of the crowd, the cases of beer rattling in the back with my tools. There are a lot of Torontonians here for the festival. They are the ones in the army surplus scribing text messages on their Blackberry’s. Jake grew up here. He refers to them as urban soldiers. Aaron’s truck is parked where he said it would be. He and Jake and the others are sitting under a tree. I open another Lakeport and walk on over.
“How was the drive?” Jake asks.
“Not so bad. Bit of traffic round Ajax,”
“Grab a beer”, Aaron says, “They’re in the back of my truck.”
It’s a hot day, but the lake air is cool and fresh as water beneath the shade of the tree. We sit, drinking beers, talking about work; work has been good . Busy, but good.
Aaron takes off; he has a girl to catch up with. Jake and I head back to my truck, maybe a little bit solemn – both of our girls live south of the border.
“Have another?” he asks.
“Sure thing.” I lower the tailgate of my truck.
We can hear the music from inside the tent
“Who’s playing now?” Jake asks.
I take a look at the itinerary. “ Born Ruffian s I think.”
“They sound good.”
“Yep, not to bad. A bunch of kids from down Toronto way.”
People are coming and going, meandering up the street towards the gate; going to where they need to be like it’s a party in someone’s backyard.
We sit on the tailgate listening to the music, swinging our legs in restless speech, kicking our feet in the gravel which smokes into dust. It hasn’t rained in sometime.
“Hello,” a woman’s voice calls out. It is soft and honest, confident and refined as only a country girls voice can be. It’s Sarah Harmer’s voice, and it is the voice of a girl from Burlington, Ontario.
“Weeping Tile must be on,” Jake says.
“We should probably go on in.”
There is no waiting in line, no security and no frisking. I don’t need to pay because the wrist band that I got from the Slayer show last night is the exact same as the one here.
The stage is set up deep in the outfield of the Marysville Public School baseball diamond. There’s a limestone screening track running around it and as we walk the shuffling of our feet sends up a haze. As Jake and I walk through, I remember the field parties and town fairs of our high school youth.
“We need beer tix,” Jake says.
“Yeah, a few.”
It ’s a good deal. Five beers for twenty bucks. Good beer too.
After a little while things begin to blur.