Calgary, Summer of 1983

It was, I suppose, the trip of a lifetime. My dad had lost his job in Memphis, and had taken a job with a commercial music firm and studio called Full Sail Audio in a most unlikely place- Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He had been up there for a couple of months as I recall, and when the summer came around, he sent for my mother and me to join him. So we flew from Memphis to Las Vegas, and then to Calgary. It was July, 1983, and the first thing I recall was how downright chilly it was when we arrived. But I soon fell in love with Calgary and its surroundings. Many days I would hang around the studio, getting to know Toby, the golden retriever who was something of a company mascot, and the musicians and employees, including Trent the intern, Tommy McKillip, who was a talented jazz saxophonist as well as a bass player, Phil, whose instrument I forget in the ravages of time. I played on recordings, wrote a commercial jingle for a country radio station, and generally had a ball. This was the summer I fell in love with Donald Fagen. Bands like The Nylons and A Flock Of Seagulls were on the radio, but I was more into jazz. One warm afternoon, Dad took me down to a big festival space in downtown Calgary where Tommy McKillip was playing sax with a jazz band. People were sitting out on the grass, and I recall that Tommy had on an African dashiki, and to 16-year-old me, he was the epitome of cool. When I wasn't at the studio, or hanging around the house we were keeping for a vacationing family, we were driving around the outskirts of Calgary exploring, or heading over to Banff, Lake Louise, Airdrie, or the Summer Village of Chestemere Lake. Money was tight, but occasionally we would go to a place called Phil's for hamburgers that were among the best I had ever eaten. After all, Alberta was cattle country, and beef was plentiful. On one occasion, the people Dad worked for invited us to their house for a dinner party, around a Pacific Salmon steak that was nearly the length of the table. It had been smoked and cooked with bacon, and was amazingly delicious indeed. As the summer moved toward its inevitable end, I found myself hoping that perhaps we could stay in Calgary. Dad had the immigrant status to live and work in Canada indefinitely, and the Canadian government actually paid families a monthly stipend to send their children to public school, or so we were told. I had started a lawn-mowing service, and with my typical knack for over-enthusiasm and excess had named it Southern Alberta Lawncare Systems, rather than just putting signs up saying I would mow yards for cash. I made a fair amount of money at that. But soon Dad decided that Mom and I should return to our house in Bartlett and that I should enroll in school there. I was sad about it, but Dad decided to drive us back rather than flying. The result was adding a number of states to the list of those I had visited, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Kansas. We were of course in something of a hurry, but we did stop at Yellowstone National Park and saw Old Faithful. I ended up enrolling at Bartlett High School in August of 1983, and Dad returned to Canada. But by December, he had decided that there were problems on the horizon at Full Sail, and he had returned to Memphis as well.