Lost lineman sends out SOS from Starbuck

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/02/2009 (6267 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I still remember my initial reaction when I was told I would be doing an "I love to read" appearance in my capacity as a Blue Bombers player in Starbuck last Friday.

"You mean I’m going to be reading to children in a Starbucks franchise?" I inquired incredulously.

"No Doug," lamented our special events co-ordinator, Kevin Guille, who has to put up with our spells of ignorance on an almost daily basis. "Starbuck is a town about 30 minutes outside of Winnipeg."

"Well do they have a Starbucks in Starbuck?," I quipped, wondering where in God’s name was I being sent to and what sort of adventure would befall me.

You see, every February, those footballers among you that enjoy testing our cold-weather-exposure limitations as year-round Manitoba residents partake in something called "I love to read month," where we visit different schools and try to impress upon youngsters the importance of reading.

More often than not, it is a fairly routine procedure where you drive to the school, don your Bomber jersey, select a few fine works of children’s literature with words you can pronounce, read to the kids, answer some questions and call it a day. That was my plan for my visit last Friday to the small school of Starbuck, in the small town of Starbuck. Yet, things went a little awry.

For starters, when I entered the address of the school in my truck’s navigation system it did not recognize the street address. In fact it did not even acknowledge that "Arena Boulevard" in Starbuck, Manitoba, even existed. It had the co-ordinates for the city, to be sure, but the school address was too much of a detail for even my satellite navigation system to pinpoint.

Not surprisingly then, I arrived in Starbuck and promptly missed the turn for the school — quite possibly because there was no sign. I realized my error as I began to leave the town limits and figured I would swing a simple U-turn to get myself back to where I was supposed to be.

As I discovered the hard way, the streets in Starbuck are flanked by large ditches that appear very inviting and drivable when filled with snow. So after burying my 4WD up to the door, I was now on foot and still without a triangulated location of my destination.

With cellphone in hand I called the one person I knew that lived in Starbuck — she works in the Bombers front office — and she relayed word to the school that I would be delayed.

Despite my four-minute mile pace (really) I didn’t even make it halfway to the school before a teacher who had been notified of my incompetence picked me up in her car and delivered me to the doorstep, only 10 minutes shy of my expected start time.

Then it was showtime. I read three children’s books to the first group of eager youngsters and was then shuffled to a filled gymnasium where I read passages of Chicken Soup for the Soul with the aid of my ill-fitting headset microphone. The students were attentive and well-mannered, yet had some unique requests during the question-and-answer period. With their prompting, I did some chin-ups on the uneven bars, a vertical leap demonstration at the basketball hoop, and autographed some shoes, tuques, and, get this — a surfboard — at the conclusion of the session.

Which brings me to conclude that my visit to Starbuck will go down as my most memorable and favourite visit in all the years I have been reading at schools. In my travels, small-town hospitality was a myth, a concept that people spoke of and alluded to, but something I had never experienced.

This time, not only was I picked up and delivered and treated like royalty, but during the course of my 90-minute visit, members of the Starbuck community found my truck, pulled it out of the ditch with a tractor and had it ready and waiting before I had even finished my presentation.

Starbucks or not, I can’t wait until the next time I get to visit a smaller-sized community that isn’t on my navigational map.

 

Doug Brown, always a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.