Black Diamond

For the first time since I got to Calgary, I turned my face from the Rockies in the West and in late March went for a day trip with Laura around country Alberta to Black Diamond and Longview.

Black Diamond was named for it's primary industry, coal. Around southern Alberta there is no getting away from the Energy business. The snow in the fields had mostly melted, leaving a brown undulating lanscape that had not yet been revived by the Spring rains. It looked eerily like part of NSW, only the gum trees were lacking. However, if you look closely there are other differences, the sky has a different quality because of the sunshine, though bright does not have the same intensity as in Australia, there were divets of water near the roads and occasionally we would pass a pond still frozen over.

And then there were the "nodding donkeys". These are the oil pumps that stand in the fields all over Alberta, looking like giant, long-legged nodding creatures that nod their heads towards the ground as they pump for oil. They are also called "pump jacks".

I was excited about getting a chance to see some of what I secretly considered to be the "great west country". There are a lot of Hollywood films set in the "West" that have been shot in Calgary and surrounds, standing in for the Northern USA states of Montana, Colarado etc. Remember Legends of the Fall? Forget Brad Pitt's emotionally constipated rancher character. Look at the backdrop. That's Alberta.

Our main purpose in going to Black Diamond that day was to step back in time, but only as far as the birth of rock n' roll. Laura wanted to take me to lunch at Marv's Soda Shop, a place both my parents would love and I was amazed at.

Driving into Black Diamond was like driving into a 1950s western town. It had an impossibly wide main street and no traffic lights. I don't even think they had Give Way (Yield) signs. The town of Longview (which we went to later) has a saloon bar. Black Diamond has a petrol station. The saloon bar looked rough and had at least 30 motorcycles outside of it. The petrol station sold fireworks. I don't know which was more dangerous but the teenager in me wanted to find out.

Instead, Laura and I went into Marv's Soda Shop, a 1950's diner lovingly accurate in every detail and complete with a memorabillia and collector's area towards the back. Laura and I were lucky to find a table in one of the pink vinyl booths and I felt like I was in the soda shop scene in Grease, right before the Teen Angel comes on and sings "Beauty School Dropout". We ordered a malted milkshake for Laura and a root beer float for me and contemplated how we wanted our individual heart attacks. Being American, Laura ordered the peanut butter burger and I enjoyed watching her with a sort of strange fascination, wondering if she would burp up Elvis or artery disease at any moment.

I went for something equally unhealthy but less weird and by the time we left, I felt like I had eaten more than "an elegant sufficiency". Being a Saturday, the place was packed. The Christian biker gang was there, but sucking down their milkshakes with their partners and kids in their highly polished leathers. I wondered later whether their rougher bretheren down the road at the saloon were having as much fun, though their image may be cooler.

It's not everyday that you get serenaded during your lunch by a man with a bow tie and a handlebar moustache. Some of us are just born lucky. Marv, of Marv's Soda Shop is not just an entrepreneur, a collector and an authority on 2 decades of cultural history. He can also sing. Marv had his own CD of light rock and roll covers and even an original about his Soda Shop, cunningly named, "The Soda Shop Song". He got out his guitar in the middle of the lunch rush and played to the packed house for free.

It was the best lunch experience I've had since moving to Calgary.

As we left I noticed a beautiful life sized wooden carving of an Indian Chief on the main street. The great irony is that he is chained by the feet to a post to stop the local hoons from stealing or damaging him. But what a visitor sees is an Indian Chief on display in the main street of Black Diamond, in chains. It was funny, sad, tragic and political. It was the similar the day I went to instruct in a case in the High Court of Australia. I arrived early, was rained on and windblown and an old Aboriginal cleaner laughed at me through the glass of the great front door. He directed me to the side entrance on the other side of the building which was for lawyers. He had access to the front doors of the Highest Court of Australia anytime he wanted. But it was because he was cleaning them.

After our lunchtime gluttony Laura reminded me that I had promised Sheena, one of the girls from work that I would visit her father-in-law who ran the popular Black Diamond Bakery. We walked in and had I not been full to the brim of sugar, salt, carbohydrates and fat, I would have just stayed there and inhaled. As it was the smell of so much baked cinnamon and wheat that was overwhelming and having ascertained that the owner had gone home after the morning baking, we bought hot cross buns and got out of there ASAP.

It was then onwards to Longview- 20 mins down the road in Alberta Prairie Country and home to the best beef jerky in the world.