it was 20 years ago today. Black Friday. The official day is July 31st but the day would have been today. I was 34 years old. Probably as old as my online friend J is right now. I was living over there on 156th street in my little studio apartment. God, Wayne Gretzky was still an Oiler at that time. The day started out like any other. I got up at 7:30am had a shower and a coffee and crossed the street to catch my #10 bus as it was called then. I was out there at 8am. I needed to be in at 8:30am. We had been having a few days of hot weather up to this point. This is when Joe had his little café in the basement of the Boardwalk. It was called Joes and he used to let us have lunch on a tab. I ate a lot of double cheese burgers and fries from there. Some weeks I’d owe him about $200 bucks until he cut us off. Ahem.

The day began like any other. It was slow. I think I had a couple of orders. To go out and I received a few as well. I’ve got the day recorded in my diary but my 1987 diary is packed away, I dug out the old diary in hand written pages. I made an entry for July 30th on that Thursday but in light of the Tornado and all the other craziness going on for that Friday I didn’t get a chance to record anything until Saturday. But I was so embroiled in Chris and Rob and their relationship a lot of that stuff 20 years ago just went right by me. I made a few passing references to the Tornado later called “Black Friday.” I’ve even got a photo of me taken February 1987. If I had a scanner I’d print one up. What I do remember about that day is I was at work at the time the Tornado. I recall at coffee break on 5th floor of Cobogo warehouse when I was working with the Army and Navy Department store watching the rain from the opened window. It was really raining and coming down hard. I recall going up to the roof holding my arms out crying “Odin!” or something, thinking it all a novelty. I didn’t know at the time a Tornado touched down on the Southside industrial park working its way just North of here. When we left for the day I took the Stony Plain Road route home and the weather was calm but as I was waiting for my bus (An F3 Tornado had touched down in the Evergreen trailer court killing 15 people.) I didn’t know then what was going on. On the commute home I still didn’t know what was happening. I went down to pay my rent and Wendy the caretaker said that a Tornado had touched down somewhere North East Edmonton. We watched the clouds roll by from her 2nd floor apartment. She was worried for her husband John. Some of the clouds were tinged with green. This was about 5pm. Most of the damage was caused as the Tornado went through refinery row killing 12 people there earlier. It wasn’t until I watched the news at 6pm the devastation of the event hit home. That’s when I got a phone call from mom and dad worried for their son. The day was nuts.

Anyway, today is just another working day. I’m just going into work and go through the motions. we’re back doing ticket campaigns for Comedy Fest. What a bunch of crap. JT let us do a bit of charity taps earlier this week. I haven’t had a bank bonus since early June and if all we’re going to do is just ticket campaigns the opportunity to get bank bonus declines because it’s date sensitive. The customer knows the date of the show won’t be until (in this case) Sept so they don’t need to send their money in until that time. We send the tickets out in advance and the customer pays for them later.

To me “Black Friday” will always be the last Friday in July, never mind if whether the date is on a Tuesday or a Saturday. (I’m still left shaking my head over that intercom incident earlier.) Black Friday (in my mind anyway) was 20 years ago this afternoon. It’s just that event brings back a lot of memories. I don’t know even if this apartment building was around but I’m pretty sure it was built in the mid 1970’s.

I asked Mo who turned me on to Ares Galaxy AG-(they need a credit card) one of the guys at work if he wouldn’t mind downloading “Product” for me. The Buzzcocks anthology. I’d rather have the physical Cd but having the tracks on my SD media card works just as well. I can transfer them over if I decide to get the Ipod at the end of the year. Right now, I’m not spending any money until the rent is paid up for August. But if Mo can’t or won’t or for some other reason get the Anthology downloaded for me, then I’ll get a Money Mart prepaid credit card next week and download AG and download the music from there and what ever else I need. If I get the Ipod in the new year (I’ll get the 80 Gb version.) I don’t think I can count on Mo to do this for me so I won’t hold my breath. I said I’d front him a $10 spot for his efforts. Like I said, I’m not going to hold my breath waiting. But at the same time I don’t want to wait 2 months to get the Cd from special order when I can get it in a few minutes for about the same price. The credit card itself is going to cost me $20 bucks. I’ll pre load it for $30. So that’s $50. But like I said, I’m not spending any money until after the rent is paid. If Mo can get me the music before then, fine. If not after the rent is paid, I’ll say forget it and down load AG and get it myself next week, which most likely I’ll end up doing anyway.

At 4pm I’m out of here and it’s off into the office. Maybe Rob will post the bank report. We’ll see what happens. After that it’s coming strait home. I was thinking about heading out to Chapters but I don’t know now. I already bought my book for the week.

That’s all for now.

e. Jim