Newfie Vision Quest.

Photo: P199

Ronny Flames! You guys remember Ronny, we used to call him Stinky back then. The town was so small that everybody knew everybody else’s business. When the rich guy flushed his toilet, we all knew what he had for dinner. (Rich guys all live on hills.) I saw Ronny recently. He was walking down the highway with his suitcase. He thinks no one knows about the miniature crossbow in there. He’s probably going for squirrels and pigeons. He usually has a bag of popcorn or something for bait.

“You got to have a system,” according to Ronny.

We had to share our horse with the next town. The streetlights used to go dim when we plugged in an electric shaver. No one was from that town, officially—we all came from somewhere else.

Ronny, yeah, I counseled him at the Community Centre. Arrested juvenile development.

Mind of a fourteen-year-old, but it's okay, he likes older women—about sixteen.

Anal retentive with displaced Oedipus complex—careful how you say that, or the cruelty to animals people will be all over you—and hebephrenic tendencies, narcissistic rage, the whole schlemiel. I think he wanted a pension or something.

Turned him down, they did.

“You’re literate,” they said.

“Literate! Schmitterate!” That’s all I can say.

He got all them holes in his forehead learning to eat with a fork. Don’t know if you knew that.

Oh, yeah, and don’t ever trust the little bugger. He’s the kind of guy that removes the drawstring from your pajamas then pulls the fire alarm. I won’t say he was a gay baby…but you should have heard him howl when they pulled the pacifier out of his ass. They gave him the isolation room at the loonie bin. It was his workplace. None of the other employees could stand his incessant chatter.

I’d rather hear him speak than eat—we’ve all heard him eat, right? Ronny mixed up acid with Viagra one night. He and the girlfriend spent the evening making love on the ceiling (to hear him tell it.) The one time he mixed up the Viagra with the Ex-Lax the poor fellow didn’t know whether he was coming or going! The government gave him Viagra in jail and he got hooked. He finally kicked the habit by getting back on heroin.

One time this nuclear sub went missing, the Americans were going nuts with the aerial searches, stuff like that. Finally found the thing in Ronny’s backyard. He was trying to clean it, but I guess he couldn’t find a spot to get the knife in.

Buggered up his nets something fierce, so he said. The old man and the sea got nothing on Ronny, Hemingway got nothing on Old Ron. His mom was so fat they had to use a bookmark to find her navel. His old man whacked off in a flower pot, raised a bloomin’ idiot, that’s the opinion round here, anyways.

I warned Ronny about them immigrant girls, but no, he had the hots for this one.

Later, he, uh, privately admitted about the stubble on her upper lip.

“By t’under and Jesus!” he said. “I had the nasty feeling that I was grappling with one of me mates!” How in the hell would a man know something like that?

Ronny never listens. We never talk about it. He doesn’t want to be reminded.

Funny thing was, she chewed her arm off…

One night Ronny dreamed he was pinching himself.

“Okay…now what?” That’s what told me the next day.

He ceases to amaze us sometimes. A lot of people think if he had brains he could become dangerous…they think if brains were dynamite, he wouldn’t have enough to blow his nose. Now, he does have a head like a half-chewed caramel, and if I had a face like that I would drown myself in pretty short order. But, he’s not as dumb as be looks, he’s not as stupid as he pretends to be.

He’s got a real brain hidden in there. So brilliant you can’t argue with him. It’s hard to get a word in edgewise.

This one time he was at the track, watching three horses in the semi-private paddock they got there. The first horse says, ‘During my career I won forty per cent of the time,’ and the second horse says, ‘I won two hundred races in three years,’ and the third horse says, ‘I won three and half million for my master,’ and then all of a sudden an old dog laying there in the grass, he says, “When I was into racing in Florida, we used to…”

And all of a sudden Ronny bellows out, ‘Holy shit! A dog that can talk!’ Like he just caught on…what a dingbat. (That was the punch-line. One of the horses was supposed to say it. It just goes to show you, though.)

You got to love Ronny. He’s just like all of us, a maze of contradictions.

Either someone stole his Mojo, or his get up and go had a duty to escape.

He’s like a sooner dog walking with its ass catching up to his head. Haven't seen much of him lately.



Silje L. Bakke.

Maybe he’s on some kind of Newfie vision quest. He’ll stay out until he starts to have visions. When he threatened to run away from home as a child, his mom used to pack him a lunch, give him a hundred bucks, pin a note on his chest that said, ‘Vancouver,’ and shove him out the door.

Can’t say as I blame the poor woman. I would try it myself, but I don’t have the money to get him drunk enough. A two-four would do it. Oh, yeah, and a bus ticket. Lady, if I had that kind of cash I’d be in Vancouver myself.

Before you go, can you spare about nine bucks for a sandwich and a coffee?

Thank you, and you really are a beautiful person.