Patrice Fort was born and raised in a really small town that most people never heard of in Alberta. For those of you in the states, Alberta is a province, which is sort of like a state except that it is not a state. The Fort family slowly moved from the Plaines of Abraham near Quebec City and over the years kept moving west like the Mormons in search of a new town called Springfield. The Forts wound up in no place Alberta.
Fort, if you know the French language, means strong and Patrice was the epitome of a Cro-Magnon man of the modern age. Patrice was a hair over six feet tall and weighed 250 lbs. Patrice was a solid mass of muscle like a human pit-bull. At a young age, Patrice learned that his ice hockey skills were mediocre at best. Patrice was not fast and did not make the best decisions on the ice nor did he have the best shot. Patrice was able to fight and from the age of thirteen, Patrice never lost a fight.
The thing that scared people most about Patrice when they were faced with fighting him was that there was no anger or malice. It was just something he was born and bred to do and so he would pummel opponents who messed with the premier players on whatever team he happened to be playing on. It was during juniors that life suddenly changed for Patrice.
Patrice’s Quebec junior team had gone south to New York City to play in a tournament sponsored by some bank that no longer exists in the states. Patrice had never been to a city as large as New York and had never imagined so much humanity crammed into such a small space in a place like Manhattan. Patrice went into a Starbucks and ordered a tall hot chocolate and watched the unique people that walked down the sidewalk near Times Square. From the Starbucks window, for Patrice it was like watching a freak show at the circus. There were so many different types of people, in varying sizes and shapes. An older woman of about sixty years of age came up and spoke to Patrice in a way he had never heard before. Even though the woman was older, she was shapely and confident.
“Many years have come and gone man and you’re one of the last relics of the Neanderthal period, man. All swelled up with muscles and I suppose you never took one supplement… Man, dig that crazy tune.”
Herbie Hancock was playing Cantaloupe Island over the speakers in the Starbucks. The woman put her hand on Patrice’s large forearm and closed her eyes as the song played. Patrice looked at the strange woman and sort of dug the tune that softly played.
“People are always saying that this or that is the shit. I’m here to tell you that this is the true shit, man. You weren’t around when this shit was devised. People were swinging to Benny Goodman and then cats like Herbie came round and opened people’s eyes to music that could speak without words. 1964, we all thought the world would end, man. Kennedy killed and a cowboy with his hands on the nuclear button, man. Beatles came and what did they say? They said too much but listen to this here, man. I know you can feel it, cave man, baby… I bet you’re hung like a horse.”
It was the first time that Patrice had ever had sex with a woman and the woman was older than his own mother and twice as shapely. There were very few sags and lumps on the old Beatnik woman. They made love, if you want to call it that, several time over the course of an afternoon while listening to cool Jazz and hearing the woman read Beat Poetry by Ginsberg and Kerouac. Patrice left the small basement apartment in Manhattan and was never the same.
As the years went on, teammates came to understand that Patrice was a bit out there but they respected the difference. And wouldn’t respect a man who could kill them with his bare hands. On planes and trains, Patrice listened to Coltrane, Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk through earphones and wrote poetry.
What colour is blue when the sky is gray. Walk down the streets of Detroit like I came from Mars, come to visit bars full of coulorful coloured folk and they think they know me because the press wants to own me, ride me, pride me like a pony and it’s phony. Won’t eat gluten. I’m free like Putin who wants to keep Russia from anarchy after the fall of The Wall and Soviet dynamo. The Red Army Team came to town when I was young. Ate biscuits and drank coffee in a vast land. I followed the road from Alberta to everywhere, man. Everywhere is nowhere and yet I’m somewhere between where I should be and where I am. Sit in the shade sipping wine no words to this Monk tune that rolls through my mind. If the colour blue is true, I hold out hope for me and you… Coltrane, last train try in vain… Gonna sit outside in Portugal or Spain and write a few words on the balcony in the rain… Rinse and repeat that, Cat.
Now to you and I, words strung together such as this meant little or nothing. A long stream of unconsciousness. Patrice was traded from Phoenix, to San Jose to Boston and then went to Nashville and landed in Detroit at minimum wage for the NHL. The Detroit Red Wings were a finesse team that really did not need a lug or a goon to go out and fight to protect the true hockey players of the team. The fighters were an outdated necessity from days gone by of clutch and grab hockey a la Philadelphia in the 1970’s. Detroit grabbed Patrice and never really played him until one day against Chicago, a heated rival who happened to be winning the game and taunted the Detroit team. The Detroit coach, Mike Babcock, nodded to Patrice, who on his first shift, beat up two Chicago players and mistakenly punched a referee. From that point on, Patrice had a home in the hearts of Detroit Red Wing fans.
Most people don’t know the story behind the finger snapping when Patrice takes the ice. To those from out of town or watching on Versus, it may sound like the theme from the Adams Family is being played. Before long, large groups of Beatnik poetry types who frequented Patrice’s café in the Detroit suburb of Hamtramck, began going to Detroit Red Wing games, wearing jerseys that had the name FORT on the back. Scruffy faced young men who appeared to be anti-sports, showed up wearing Red Wing jerseys, snapping their fingers violently whenever Patrice got on the ice or fought. Before long, everyone got in on the act. It was like throwing octopus on the ice.
After home games in Hamtramck on Jos Campau there is a Beatnik café where people drink and read poetry to Jazz. It is called, Beat Your Ass Café. It is nothing more than an old Polish watering hole that Patrice bought to host poetry readings and feature live Jazz. On the walls are pictures of some of Patrice’s best fights with the dates and names of opponents. Patrice usually appears after games and reads his latest poetry while young Jazz musicians play behind him and others. It is standing room only after Red Wing games. Dig that.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Sir, please step out of your vehicle
Any original six match up for me is more appealing than say seeing Phoenix against Tampa Bay. Although the players from both teams are excellent and worthy of playing at the highest rung, if you live in Tampa you should be swimming or jet-skiing and thanking god or Allah that you don’t live in Edmonton. Purely because of the weather, Edmonton is a fine place to live if you don’t mind being cold.
I bought a standing room ticket to see the Chicago Blackhawks play the Detroit Red Wings at Joe Louis. I parked near the Renaissance Center that sits on the river that separates Canada from the United States. I walked over with hoards of Wings fans that were wearing all the current stars and then a few throw backs like Probert and Lapointe: two guys who played on both the Red Wings and Blackhawks who are still loved in Detroit unlike Marian Hossa who comes off as a cup chasing carpetbagger.
I took my place against the wall in the 200 section near center ice and watched the Red Wings essentially give the game away in the first period. Twenty seven seconds into the game, while people were buying beer and urinating before the game really got going, Brent Seabrooks scored. Then somebody by the name of Ben Smith, who is probably no relation to any Smith you know, scored for Chicago next Brian Campbell and then finally, to really put a stake through the hearts of Red Wing fans, Marian Hossa scored a cherry picking goal. My thought was, “What the fuck is going on?”
There was a time when people feared playing in Detroit and lately everyone shows up to get a win. I saw the Red Wings play in early March in Los Angeles at the Staples Center and they destroyed the Kings. A few days later, the Kings came to Detroit to get a pay-me-back.
There is very little more annoying that seeing some fat bastard raising his beer in a Kane or Toews jersey except seeing Boston Red Sox fans in places like Seattle or Chicago Cubs fans anywhere at all. I had to listen to some fuck tell me how great Chicago was but that he was living near Ann Arbor. If I wanted to hear mindless jabber while watching the game, I could have brought a wife. Not necessarily mine but anyone’s who wouldn’t care to watch the game but really needed to talk and be heard. Finally the Chicagoan had to piss and disappeared into a line that was as long as what you might come to expect at a popular amusement park attraction. He might still be waiting.
The game ended, I walked over to Pegasus Restaurant in Greektown. I ate and had a couple of glasses of wine. I then went up to the casino and had a few vodka and cranberries and walked out of the building ahead for a change. Usually the Greeks clean me out. Fatigue got to me before they emptied my pockets.
I drove north on interstate 75 and then east on 696. I exited on Van Dyke in the Detroit suburb of Warren and headed north in the left lane. Most of the streets in and around Detroit are like expressways. They are designed to get you moving and keep moving. The speed limit was 45 mph and I was probably going close to 55 mph when someone coming out of a fast food restaurant on the opposite side of the street, cut in front of me going 5mph. I wanted to turn my car into a monster truck and flatten the stupid, thoughtless, selfish driver who cut me off. This driver forced me to slam on my breaks just so he could hurry home with his fast food at 1am in the morning.
I didn’t have the ability to turn my car into a monster truck or a steam roller and so I decided to pass the guy on the left and then jam on my breaks, forcing him to stop abruptly the way he made me kill the life of my breaks just so that I would not run into him. Just as I passed the selfish driver and cut back into the lane while breaking, I could see flashing lights in all of my mirrors.
The car I was driving had not been entirely killed by my son and daughter but did appear to have lived through a demolition derby or two. If I were a racial profiling cop stopping a beat up Pontiac with no hub caps and dents all over the car, I would guess the driver was released from prison, about to go to prison, carrying open liquor or drugs, a thief, a drug addict, a young black man or a young white man who resembled Kid Rock. He came up to get my license and insurance card and flashed a light in my face. What he saw was a middle aged white guy in a Detroit Red Wings knit hat and a Red Wings t shirt. I wanted to tell him that the beat up Pontiac was my beater car that I drove to downtown Detroit so that nobody would suspect that I have a dime to my name or anything of value within the car that would warrant breaking the windows. It is a perfect automobile to park and walk away from within the city of Detroit without worrying. I wasn’t given the chance to explain that my two teenage children learned how to drive in the car and although it looks like hell, it keeps me from having to use my Dodge Magnum in the winter. None of that mattered to him. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that he was assuming I was an angry old drunk in a beat up car. The conversation went as follows.
Officer- What just happened over there?
Me- You had to have seen the guy pull out from across the street and cut me off.
Officer- I saw that and that was stupid. What you did was illegal and a bit stupid too.
Me- You’re right. I let my anger get away from me.
Officer- You let your anger get away from you because your angry? Maybe cause you were drinking? Where were you tonight? How many drinks did you have?
Since leaving the game, I had four drinks in two hours. Most likely 15% alcohol in the Merlot with dinner and 40% alcohol in the Vodka/cranberry and enough to be considered impaired. My breath was probably flammable. I considered lying to the officer about drinking but then realized he probably smelled something and so I claimed to have one drink at dinner after the game. The officer then invited me to step behind my vehicle with lights flashing and a Mag-light in my face. He asked me to bend one leg and raise the other and count “one Mississippi, two Mississippi” until he told me to stop.
My thought was that even without a drink, I wasn’t sure if I had the balance and strength to not tip over or sway. I took a deep breath and gave myself a pep talk before commencing the test to determine if I was going to drive away or be taken in cuffs to jail.
“I fucking told you years ago about getting out of your car and fighting people in traffic, giving people the finger and cutting them off. You’re driving a shit box car that looks like something you stole from a junk yard and you cut into the left lane to show an asshole that you can be a bigger asshole if forced. Great fucking decision. Now the four to five days a week of ice hockey, squats once a week in the gym, bike riding, elliptical and treadmill running you do whilst watching NHL hockey games in your basement, all these things make really strong thighs. You have strong thighs. Bend your fucking leg and support your total weight without swaying or falling or you will fucking be in jail tonight with someone that probably killed, raped, stole or had drugs in their possession. It will cost you thousands to clear your name, you’ll lose your license, you’ll make the local Warren papers, and you help pay some lawyers college tuition for their child and you’ll need to have some device installed in your car that you need to blow into before it will allow you to drive. Your family will think you’re a bust out at Easter and your boss will wonder what kind of a loser gets a DUI after going to a hockey game, a restaurant and casino. I have total faith in you and know you can do this. Don’t think about the fact that you can feel your heart through your chest and that it is up to 120 beats a minute. You are buzzed but not speaking Portuguese yet. Fucking concentrate and knock this bitch out of the box… Okay, I’ll be in the car if you need me. I can’t bear to watch this.”
“Ten Mississippi, eleven Mississippi, twelve Mississippi…”
I wondered how many Mississippi I would need to count to until I could relax and put my leg down. The officer was staring me dead in the eye as I counted, curled my left toes under and did all I could to be a Pink Flamingo with arms out like an airplane and my right leg up like the Karate Kid. I could feel the sweat trickling down my spine and my left leg shaking out of fear and fatigue. I was up to thirty Mississippi.
“Alright, you can put your leg down. Put your feet together and follow my finger.”
The officer moved his finger from left to right and right to left and then decided to ask me some questions. It was no longer officer to potentially DUI candidate. It was now man to man.
“Is something going on in your life that would make you do that?”
“No, I was just so surprised that someone’s judgment was so poor that they thought going from standing still to cutting in front of a car traveling at nearly fifty miles an hour, was a sane decision. It was a poor decision on my part but I’d like to have had a few minutes with that guy alone. If I were in line for the bathroom at Joe Louis and someone cut in front of me like that, I would have faced washed him in the toilet but it happened in automobiles. That and the Wings lost to Chicago again and I had some random asshole from Chicago talking to me the whole game about his triplets, some dude who makes French bread in Chicago, visiting Denmark and so much more. The only time he stopped talking was to cheer for Blackhawk goals. It was a rough night. I only made it worse.”
The cop then told me to get back into my car. I was prepared for a ticket for illegal lane usage since I passed the drunk test. A minute later, he returned with my license and my insurance card. No ticket, no DUI. He had one last piece of advice for me before cutting me loose.
“Just keep in mind that we have eleven cups and they have three. We will be in the playoffs for the twentieth time consecutively and they will need an act of god to not get bumped at this point… Have a good night. Go Wings.”
I yelled back to him a thank you and received a welcome. As I drove the speed limit towards my bed, I was so appreciative that I was going to bed instead of jail. I was thankful that he asked me to balance on one leg instead of touching my nose or walking a line or counting backwards in Dutch or whatever else they ask drunken people to do before taking them to a holding pen. I needed two sleeping pills before I could sleep as I was wound up and wired. I turned on highlights from around the NHL and MLB and tried to relax. A commercial came on of some suave looking attorney in a suit who offered to get me out of a DUI for a very affordable price, I turned off the television and drifted off replaying the whole event. I felt like the luckiest guy in Warren at that moment. And I was.
The NHL season has concluded today. The Chicago Blackhawks had to sit around television sets and root for the Minnesota Wild instead of living it up at a bar. The Wild were triumphant and the Stars were stymied in their former home town. Dallas gets to go golfing and Chicago gets to prove to Vancouver and fans everywhere that they are still the Stanley Cup champions. It should be an exciting eight weeks of excellent hockey.
I bought a standing room ticket to see the Chicago Blackhawks play the Detroit Red Wings at Joe Louis. I parked near the Renaissance Center that sits on the river that separates Canada from the United States. I walked over with hoards of Wings fans that were wearing all the current stars and then a few throw backs like Probert and Lapointe: two guys who played on both the Red Wings and Blackhawks who are still loved in Detroit unlike Marian Hossa who comes off as a cup chasing carpetbagger.
I took my place against the wall in the 200 section near center ice and watched the Red Wings essentially give the game away in the first period. Twenty seven seconds into the game, while people were buying beer and urinating before the game really got going, Brent Seabrooks scored. Then somebody by the name of Ben Smith, who is probably no relation to any Smith you know, scored for Chicago next Brian Campbell and then finally, to really put a stake through the hearts of Red Wing fans, Marian Hossa scored a cherry picking goal. My thought was, “What the fuck is going on?”
There was a time when people feared playing in Detroit and lately everyone shows up to get a win. I saw the Red Wings play in early March in Los Angeles at the Staples Center and they destroyed the Kings. A few days later, the Kings came to Detroit to get a pay-me-back.
There is very little more annoying that seeing some fat bastard raising his beer in a Kane or Toews jersey except seeing Boston Red Sox fans in places like Seattle or Chicago Cubs fans anywhere at all. I had to listen to some fuck tell me how great Chicago was but that he was living near Ann Arbor. If I wanted to hear mindless jabber while watching the game, I could have brought a wife. Not necessarily mine but anyone’s who wouldn’t care to watch the game but really needed to talk and be heard. Finally the Chicagoan had to piss and disappeared into a line that was as long as what you might come to expect at a popular amusement park attraction. He might still be waiting.
The game ended, I walked over to Pegasus Restaurant in Greektown. I ate and had a couple of glasses of wine. I then went up to the casino and had a few vodka and cranberries and walked out of the building ahead for a change. Usually the Greeks clean me out. Fatigue got to me before they emptied my pockets.
I drove north on interstate 75 and then east on 696. I exited on Van Dyke in the Detroit suburb of Warren and headed north in the left lane. Most of the streets in and around Detroit are like expressways. They are designed to get you moving and keep moving. The speed limit was 45 mph and I was probably going close to 55 mph when someone coming out of a fast food restaurant on the opposite side of the street, cut in front of me going 5mph. I wanted to turn my car into a monster truck and flatten the stupid, thoughtless, selfish driver who cut me off. This driver forced me to slam on my breaks just so he could hurry home with his fast food at 1am in the morning.
I didn’t have the ability to turn my car into a monster truck or a steam roller and so I decided to pass the guy on the left and then jam on my breaks, forcing him to stop abruptly the way he made me kill the life of my breaks just so that I would not run into him. Just as I passed the selfish driver and cut back into the lane while breaking, I could see flashing lights in all of my mirrors.
The car I was driving had not been entirely killed by my son and daughter but did appear to have lived through a demolition derby or two. If I were a racial profiling cop stopping a beat up Pontiac with no hub caps and dents all over the car, I would guess the driver was released from prison, about to go to prison, carrying open liquor or drugs, a thief, a drug addict, a young black man or a young white man who resembled Kid Rock. He came up to get my license and insurance card and flashed a light in my face. What he saw was a middle aged white guy in a Detroit Red Wings knit hat and a Red Wings t shirt. I wanted to tell him that the beat up Pontiac was my beater car that I drove to downtown Detroit so that nobody would suspect that I have a dime to my name or anything of value within the car that would warrant breaking the windows. It is a perfect automobile to park and walk away from within the city of Detroit without worrying. I wasn’t given the chance to explain that my two teenage children learned how to drive in the car and although it looks like hell, it keeps me from having to use my Dodge Magnum in the winter. None of that mattered to him. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that he was assuming I was an angry old drunk in a beat up car. The conversation went as follows.
Officer- What just happened over there?
Me- You had to have seen the guy pull out from across the street and cut me off.
Officer- I saw that and that was stupid. What you did was illegal and a bit stupid too.
Me- You’re right. I let my anger get away from me.
Officer- You let your anger get away from you because your angry? Maybe cause you were drinking? Where were you tonight? How many drinks did you have?
Since leaving the game, I had four drinks in two hours. Most likely 15% alcohol in the Merlot with dinner and 40% alcohol in the Vodka/cranberry and enough to be considered impaired. My breath was probably flammable. I considered lying to the officer about drinking but then realized he probably smelled something and so I claimed to have one drink at dinner after the game. The officer then invited me to step behind my vehicle with lights flashing and a Mag-light in my face. He asked me to bend one leg and raise the other and count “one Mississippi, two Mississippi” until he told me to stop.
My thought was that even without a drink, I wasn’t sure if I had the balance and strength to not tip over or sway. I took a deep breath and gave myself a pep talk before commencing the test to determine if I was going to drive away or be taken in cuffs to jail.
“I fucking told you years ago about getting out of your car and fighting people in traffic, giving people the finger and cutting them off. You’re driving a shit box car that looks like something you stole from a junk yard and you cut into the left lane to show an asshole that you can be a bigger asshole if forced. Great fucking decision. Now the four to five days a week of ice hockey, squats once a week in the gym, bike riding, elliptical and treadmill running you do whilst watching NHL hockey games in your basement, all these things make really strong thighs. You have strong thighs. Bend your fucking leg and support your total weight without swaying or falling or you will fucking be in jail tonight with someone that probably killed, raped, stole or had drugs in their possession. It will cost you thousands to clear your name, you’ll lose your license, you’ll make the local Warren papers, and you help pay some lawyers college tuition for their child and you’ll need to have some device installed in your car that you need to blow into before it will allow you to drive. Your family will think you’re a bust out at Easter and your boss will wonder what kind of a loser gets a DUI after going to a hockey game, a restaurant and casino. I have total faith in you and know you can do this. Don’t think about the fact that you can feel your heart through your chest and that it is up to 120 beats a minute. You are buzzed but not speaking Portuguese yet. Fucking concentrate and knock this bitch out of the box… Okay, I’ll be in the car if you need me. I can’t bear to watch this.”
“Ten Mississippi, eleven Mississippi, twelve Mississippi…”
I wondered how many Mississippi I would need to count to until I could relax and put my leg down. The officer was staring me dead in the eye as I counted, curled my left toes under and did all I could to be a Pink Flamingo with arms out like an airplane and my right leg up like the Karate Kid. I could feel the sweat trickling down my spine and my left leg shaking out of fear and fatigue. I was up to thirty Mississippi.
“Alright, you can put your leg down. Put your feet together and follow my finger.”
The officer moved his finger from left to right and right to left and then decided to ask me some questions. It was no longer officer to potentially DUI candidate. It was now man to man.
“Is something going on in your life that would make you do that?”
“No, I was just so surprised that someone’s judgment was so poor that they thought going from standing still to cutting in front of a car traveling at nearly fifty miles an hour, was a sane decision. It was a poor decision on my part but I’d like to have had a few minutes with that guy alone. If I were in line for the bathroom at Joe Louis and someone cut in front of me like that, I would have faced washed him in the toilet but it happened in automobiles. That and the Wings lost to Chicago again and I had some random asshole from Chicago talking to me the whole game about his triplets, some dude who makes French bread in Chicago, visiting Denmark and so much more. The only time he stopped talking was to cheer for Blackhawk goals. It was a rough night. I only made it worse.”
The cop then told me to get back into my car. I was prepared for a ticket for illegal lane usage since I passed the drunk test. A minute later, he returned with my license and my insurance card. No ticket, no DUI. He had one last piece of advice for me before cutting me loose.
“Just keep in mind that we have eleven cups and they have three. We will be in the playoffs for the twentieth time consecutively and they will need an act of god to not get bumped at this point… Have a good night. Go Wings.”
I yelled back to him a thank you and received a welcome. As I drove the speed limit towards my bed, I was so appreciative that I was going to bed instead of jail. I was thankful that he asked me to balance on one leg instead of touching my nose or walking a line or counting backwards in Dutch or whatever else they ask drunken people to do before taking them to a holding pen. I needed two sleeping pills before I could sleep as I was wound up and wired. I turned on highlights from around the NHL and MLB and tried to relax. A commercial came on of some suave looking attorney in a suit who offered to get me out of a DUI for a very affordable price, I turned off the television and drifted off replaying the whole event. I felt like the luckiest guy in Warren at that moment. And I was.
The NHL season has concluded today. The Chicago Blackhawks had to sit around television sets and root for the Minnesota Wild instead of living it up at a bar. The Wild were triumphant and the Stars were stymied in their former home town. Dallas gets to go golfing and Chicago gets to prove to Vancouver and fans everywhere that they are still the Stanley Cup champions. It should be an exciting eight weeks of excellent hockey.
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