Confessions of a Serial Interviewer by Steven Ra Ga

May 2004 – Vernon- I had just graduated high school a year before. I was older 18 going in 19 and I wanted to escape. My home life although great, clothes on my back, food in my belly, never missed a meal and a roof over my head was chaotic. My parents divorced when I was 16 and it was ugly and hard, my brothers and lived with my mom who worked and my older brother hated us. He was so violent all the time, thinking he was the man of the house he acted like an abusive father figure so I wanted out.

I eventually met a guy we will name Billy, and Billy was the friend of Derek a kid I grew up with. Derek sadly went insane years later after consuming drugs that brought on early set schizophrenia.

Billy was 1/16th indigenous and I felt it often brought out this wild nature in him when he drank.

We used to hang out a lot, grabbing burgers and beers at the local pub until one day he told me he was going to move to Vernon to live with his grandparents who were going to open a Laundromat and retire.

Billy was going to live with his Aunt, when I asked if I could come with him, effectively running away. He said sure and the next thing I knew one day I said “Mom, I am moving to Vernon, I can’t live here anymore I have to go.” My mom was super upset, she ran out and bought me a cell phone so I could stay connected, she would pay for the minutes. I didn’t want it really. I wanted to vanish and make it on my own life my parents did in the 70s and 80s.

But I took it and left.

While on the road I developed a love for Country Music, Billy loved country music.

When we got Vernon, I was shocked to learn Billy and I would be splitting a room at his aunts, we didn’t have to pay rent but we had to sleep on the floor.

My first job there was at McDonalds, as the overnight janitor. I don’t eat McDonalds now.

The job was pulling a graveyard shift, emptying freeze traps, cleaning the floor and changing the oil. It was tough because they were a 24/7 location so it wasn’t like anyone wasn’t there why you had to clean. I lasted about a month. I basically called in sick on night so I could go drinking, while I was out drinking Billy and I fell down a hill, I got a cactus stuck to my hand and had to go to the ER to get it removed. The next day I showed up to work and the employees wouldn’t let me in, they said I was fired and I guess I didn’t get the memo. The manager at the time I guess so how found out we were out and about not sick, and instead of politely and privately firing me, he told the whole staff not to let me in because I was fired.

After that I called up the store manager and convinced her to hire me back only to ghost them on the next day of work. When I was younger I was really vindictive. And lived by “an eye for an eye” mind set. Now I am calmer and get it.

After McDonald I found work at a Saw Mill that happened to be a therapeutic office for people with Adult Mentality Handicapped complications. This people were like children trapped in adult bodies, they were closely watched and given assembly line duties to make dunnage and laths (products for sorting wood and making pallets) my roll was to work along side them, chop wood and operate the large saw. It was okay work. Occasionally I would help dig a hole for a green house or sort glass. I made $600 per month and was paid $300 bi weekly. My money would go to beer and spinach dip that’s what I survived on.

Years later I discovered I have a gluten intolerance and a HOPs allergy which means I can’t drink beer, if I have even a sip of beer now I will shit my pants and become retarded with severe brain fog.

The Saw Mill job was okay, I was young so a bit foolish I recall one day I was tired and using a chip saw, I cut item after item. Then I tossed on a item of wood and slammed the chop saw down hard when I lifted the blade 3 of the fingers from my glove were cut off. I paused. Then I removed my glove to discover my fingers were still attached. I guess the glove I was wearing was too big and it saved me.

Another time my boss asked if I could sort the glass in the bins. There were these huge bins, one bin had white glass and the other bin had dark glass and someone had tossed dark glass in the bin with the white glass.

So I put my gloves on, my goggles and jumped into a giant bin of broken glass and began picking out all the dark glass in the blazing sun.

Another time they asked if I could help dig post holes for a green house. We had to use an auger but the soil is hard and filled with rocks. Having a zero protein diet I was fit but I was weak. I recall trying to dig and the auger got stuck then the machine bucked me off like a wild bronco I went flying haha… I used to burn so bad in that sun that my skin was dark, people often thought I was Mexican and working the farms around town.

Billy had a friend in Vernon named Sam, he was half Japanese and built like a sumo wrestler, a heart of gold but as smart as a sack of potato’s.

One time after work Billy, Sam and I went out for a night with some girls, we were out by some old farmers field where the grass was tall. It was dark and we were drinking. Sam decided he would be funny and jump into the tall grass several times, sadly he didn’t see the barbed wire and slashed his face open just missing his eye like in the movie 300, we were back at the hospital getting stitches.

While I lived out there we would often drive to Kelowna to part or Vancouver.

I worked that job until I returned back to Calgary to go to college, my parents had made a trip out to Vernon to find me at 140lbs at 6’4” they weren’t impressed and offered to pay for school if I came back. I had enough of the adventures and returned home. To start a new chapter.

While working at the Saw Mill there was a guy who had a severe case of facial turrets, his job was too collect the wood coming out of the Rip Saw in a manner that allow other people on the belt to make the wood come together for a pile.

One day the boss asked if I could work across from him (I am pretty certain I am going to hell for this) while working across from this guy I had to watch his facial expressions change dramatically every second. Eventually out of curiosity and exhaustion I started to mimic his facial expression’s, I felt like it brought the man comfort and that I wasn’t making fun of him but out of curiosity I was mirroring him for a bit of mutual fun.

While working at the Saw Mill another duty of ours was preventing fights. These people with child brains and adult bodies often had super strength. I think because they lacked impulse control their bodies became full of muscle. I recall one afternoon one guy knocked another guy out cold, it was like watching chimps at a zoo fight and a lonely zoo keeper struggling to keep them back as they made all kinds of strange noises.

Vernon was a wild place. I bought my 1st car for $200 it was a 1978 slant 6 boat of a car. We loved there during the hype of the Calgary Flames playoffs and painted the car to match the flames, Vernon is a Vancouver Canucks kinda town, we would drive all over the town with that. The engine was held together with mostly duct tape. When you turned the day time lights off the car would shut off and not turn back on without a boost.

One night at 7/11 this happened and we had to pay some homeless people pocket change to help us push it for several kilometres home.

The car eventually died when Billy tried to drive it back to Calgary, he had to hitch hike his ass back to the apartment.

I was kind of sad to say good bye when it came time, the management was ready to promote me to a higher role and more pay but I needed to go back to my home city and try something different.

Years later I ran into Billy, he told me a wacky story about what happened after I left. Allegedly, Billy and Sam found work at a summer camp as grounds keepers. They got fired but decided that evening they would come back to the camp office and rob it. I guess there was a safe in the office filled with money. A couple of outlaws the two were.

The story goes like this; that evening Sam and Billy returned. Sam was the Muscle and Billy was the brains, between the two them they had still half a brain. Billy try’s to unlock the office door but his key doesn’t work, seemed the owners changed the locks that day, so Billy tells Sam to bust in. Sam smashes the window out, and rolls his fat ass in, once inside he picks up the safe and hurdles it out the window, then climbs out, they carry the safe into Billy’s truck and drives off into the night. Except at this point all the noise they made starts attracting attention from the neighbourhood close by.

Billy and Sam drive off only to get stuck in the mud. Billy then goes back to the office and steals a company truck, he then uses said truck to ram his own truck trying to free it from the mud. I am sure you can imagine the sound of that at 2am.

Billy ultimately gets the work truck stuck too, in the mud. By this point the sun is on its way up. Billy says to Sam “Go home, I think we are fucked.” Sam goes home. Billy walks home, has a shower, eats some food, and changes his clothing, he then walks back to the scene of the crime where the cops were and turns himself in. Sam is caught not long after.

Tweedle-dumb and Tweedle-dee get sentenced to community service and weekend jail for a year. Basically every weekend they have to lock themselves in the local drunk tank as punishment.

Apparently Billy turned his life around and Sam got married and had a kid.

Well, back to applying we go…