Five

I cannot remember what I listened to on the radio when I was five. I was living in Motherfucking, Alberta at the time though so I would say it was a country-western station, broadcasting from a town with nothing to those of us living in towns like I lived in with less than nothing, or the CBC.

Our family had a Zenith radio my parents kept on top of the fridge so none of us kids would break it. We broke everything so that was a wise move. In the basement was the hi-fi which no female or anyone under the age of 21 was allowed to touch. "When you can read the manual you can touch the hi-fi," was the 11th Commandment in the Hockey house. That is how men kept most women from driving - you had to read and understand the shop manual for the car from cover to cover or else you would probably pour gasoline in the washer fluid reservoir. My dad played the same old Newf sea shanties and Elvis songs on the scratchiest records you could imagine on the hi-fi. He was one hip motherfucker. We were lucky to have a hi-fi in those days. We only had one because dad knew how to build one from scratch.

Don Messer and Tommy Hunter were the Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra of Canada in those days. We were a proud hillbilly country back then. Proud and pissed. One day Tommy Hunter, Canada's Country Gentleman, came to the town and played a concert. The townsfolk lined the fresh washed mile of pavement that separated our town from our nearest neighbours, hundreds of miles by gravel road away, and cheered when Tommy rolled into town just like us Canadians cheered in Ottawa when Obama visited us for some of that Communist advice we are always eager to give. There has never been a day in small town Alberta to surpass the day Tommy Hunter came to town.

Living in Alberta had some kind of evil influence on me. Maybe that is why I still listen to country western music.