March 17, 1997

Yukon Earl on a roll

By EARL McRAE
Ottawa Sun

Earl Interactive
John Roos from Mayo, Que., asks Earl: "I played for the Dawson City Generals. These guys are serious about hockey, but it's secondary to their pursuit of fun -- which they'll go through any amount of hardship to have. This ain't no ordinary hockey team and Yukoners are different -- right Earl?" Earl responds: "Yukoners different? Any people who would make snow angels without their clothes on at 40 below are definitely different!"
If you have a question for Earl or the Nuggets, fax us at 739-7687.

Earl Interactive

   John Roos from Mayo, Que., asks Earl:
  "I played for the Dawson City Generals. These guys are serious about hockey, but it's secondary to their pursuit of fun -- which they'll go through any amount of hardship to have. This ain't no ordinary hockey team and Yukoners are different -- right Earl?"
  Earl responds: "Yukoners different? Any people who would make snow angels without their clothes on at 40 below are definitely different!"

If you have a question for Earl or the Nuggets, fax us at 739-7687.

  RIDING THE RAILS -- Strange things happened to me beneath the midnight sun, and stranger things are happening to me on the Nuggets Special.
  The porters are giving me very funny looks.
  I can't blame them.
  I seem to be suffering from Post-Yukon Breakdown.
  What I find myself doing is waking up in my compartment in the middle of the night as we hurtle past swaying bare-bulb lights above small-town railway platforms -- ding, ding, DING, DING, ding, ding -- and screeching out choo choo songs at the top of my lungs in a voice that's a combination Merle Haggard and Bob Dylan on a bad day.
  "Train, Tra-a-a-a-in! Sixteen COACHES long," I howled honoring Elvis at 2:34 a.m. this morning.
  "Listen to the RUMBLE; the rumble and the roar," I wailed in homage of the Wabash Cannonball at 3:06 a.m.
  "Throw mamma from the train, a kiss, a kiss," I yowled at 4:27 a.m. in tribute to Patti Page.
  "Oh, they gave him his orders in Monroe,Virginia; set steam, WE'RE WAY BEHIND TIME," I bawled at 5:25 a.m. as a testimonial to Johnny Cash.
  This is serious and embarrassing, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.
  I keep expecting a pounding at my door telling me: "SHADDUP, YOU %$#@& SPAYED CAT!"
  I've tried singing something nice, like from, say, The Sound Of Music, but nothing comes out but choo choo songs.
  I just don't get it.
  Struggling my way across the Yukon, I wasn't serenading everybody with the world's greatest snowmobile songs.
  Or snowshoe songs.
  Or dog sled songs.
  On the ferryboat south, I didn't awake in the night with Slow Boat To China.
  Or Shrimp Boats Are Acoming.
  I did find myself close one night to Meatloaf's Bat Out Of Hell, but it did pass.
  As I write this, we were due to pull into Edmonton for a half-hour stop last night.
  I hope I'm not sleeping in my compartment.
  It's when I'm in my compartment sleeping that, for inexplicable reasons, I suddenly awake in song.
  I do not need to be hauled from the train and deposited in the nuthouse for violating the city's noise bylaws through yet another rendition of Mystery Train in the key of Z.
  I am trying to concentrate my mind on other things, hoping this affliction will go away. My virgin beard and mustache, for example.
  I'm thinking a lot about my new beard and mustache. I'm not sure what to make of it.
  I don't know whether it makes me a candidate for People magazine's World's Sexiest Man, or a candidate for America's Most Wanted.
  I was going to shave it off when I got to Vancouver, but the Nuggets talked me out of it.
  "No one will ever believe you went through hell and survived if you get off the train in Ottawa clean shaven," said Nugget John Flynn.
  He was right.
  I can't get off the train looking like that Spanish puffball Julio Iglesias.
  It's extremely important I come off that train looking like Grizzly (geez, I hate saying that word) Adams.
  It already bothers me greatly that my life-threatening frost-bitten nose and chin scrape have healed.
  I needed those war wounds for show and tell back on the home front.
  "Oh, my hero, my hero," I envisioned Muffin, my wife, sobbing as I fell into her arms.
  "Let me kiss them better," she'd say.
  Doc Parsons says not to worry my deranged head.
  "As we're pulling into Ottawa, we'll give you a cane, a kick in the shins to make you limp, and I'll put a few dozen stitches in your face," he offers.
  Believe me, I'm thinking about it.
  Talk to ya soon, I'm going to bed.
  Anybody know the words to The Rock Island Line?