United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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Tar Shack Ghost Town Russian Foreign Policy The Nature of Man The Artful Hitch-hiker Ode to the Editor The Poetry of Pope Poartry City of Brotherly Love The Cosmopolitan Tacerations of a Lecture Winter Unification of Europe Two Poetic Masterpieces Romeo and Juliet Rebirth Page Fifteen

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The VOX Award for 1952-1953 has been awarded to ] DA V1D BLOSTEIN First Year, United College Page Fourteen

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By DAVID BLOSTEIN N OW look, kid, I’m responsible for you now an’ I don’t want you to get into any trouble. This tar ain’t candy y’know—y’can’t lick it off. And it’s hot, kid, it’s hot.” Old Weller turned back to his tar kilns, two mounds that had once been cylinders, now al¬ most conical with the black deposits around their bases. He picked up a two pound chunk of tar and lowered it slowly into one of the kilns. It melted and boiled before it could reach the bottom four feet below. Weller hobbled to a corner of the shack and was lost for a few minutes in the darkness. He came back with his arms full of kindling, scrap wood that the kid had brought in that morning, and put them down on the dirt floor in front of the kilns. The kid sat on an overturned pail near the opening of the tar-shack and looked at the tar boiling in the open kilns. He watched through the smoke-steam as Weller, shielding his eyes, tossed the kindling into the narrow opening at the bottom of one of the amorphous ovens. ‘‘Remember, kid,” Weller said, picking up a mucky tar pot by its three-foot handle, “this is the best job you can get, here, in these shops . . . don’t let anybody fool you.” His whole face, a folded lump of dough, was continually working. He dipped the tar pot into the kiln and poured the boiling contents into a large pail. “You ain’t so smart, y’know, goin’ back to school,” the old man continued, still filling the pail, “you should stick to this job — there’s a future in it. Look at me, now—never went past seventh grade, but look at me.” He spat into the kiln and the tar sizzled angrily. “Why, do you realize I’m the head of the tar shack, me, and nobody above me but the labour foreman, the superintendent of the car shop, and the presi¬ dent of the railway. I got the best job in the shops, I have.” The pail was filled, and Weller suddenly pointed a finger at the kid. “I’m the first one here every morning. Think of that. Forty-seven hundred and sixty-three men working in these shops and I’m the first one here every morning.” “Everyone knows it,” he added, testing the pail for weight. “Foreman, he says to me, nothin’ gets lifted from the tar shack when Weller’s around.” He picked up a scoop-pot. “Every morning, kid.” He spat again into the kiln. “Six o’clock. “Take that rod over by the door. No, not that one, the long one . . . That’s it. All right, put it under the handle of the pail. I’ll go in front. Now don’t lift it up too fast. Slow and straight up . . . that’s it . . . straight up. Now look, if the pail starts rockin’ don’t try to stop it. Just yell to me and run. That tar don’t know nothin’ about Emily Post. Now let’s go.” The kid didn’t take his eyes off the tar pail, where groups of bubbles floated slowly on the surface of the liquid, gently bumping each other, like friendly cannibals. He didn’t see how the winter sun’s ochre light blocked everything in the yard into shades of yellow and black. He didn’t notice the carpenters slopping sheep fat on reefer doors, and the passing paint crew with its spattered scaffold and stencil, and the three¬ wheeled cart loaded with scrap iron groping its way out of the car shop to be emptied on a flat¬ car. Weller and the kid entered track nine and the yellow disappeared, leaving only varying shades of grey to contrast with the black. The vague forms of men flitted between the black masses Page Sixteen