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Writer's pictureWade Bell

“The mind’s flirtation with the real” – Robert Hogg


Red bird nestled on a radio. Chair with broken black backs’ plastic leather cracking. Birthday cards. One from a dog named Beckham.


Telephone sleeping, dreaming of beaches, waits for a call from Puerto Vallarta. A table with notebooks. Bookcases full. Stereo off. Television off.


A road atlas of Iberia. A Canadian’s backpack stride on hot dusty paths. Port Bou, Dalí’s Cadaques, Margarita’s Costa Brava villa, The House of the Americans in Vulpellach. Ana Cris’ piso in the barrio of Gracia, Barcelona.


A slow boat’s tour of the coast. Valencia, Alicante. Lemon trees and orange trees. Malaga. Just east of Gibraltar, east of Cadiz, warmest waters ever.


West some. Slip north paralleling Portugal’s back yard. Bow to the universal memory of bombed Guernica.


Crossing the Pyrenees to France in an open-air railway carriage. Scenic. Cool at altitude. Perpignan and a print shop run by Spanish Anarchists.


Back into Spain by bus smuggling anti-Franco, anti-fascist pamphlets with intrepid Miriam, 1976. Barely breathing at passport control. They search backpacks but not bodies. The dangerous words an inner layer of clothing.


A maroon taper lit once the evening he heard Miriam died. That was years ago. Standing guard against forgetfulness it tells him of a cello silenced, brilliance snuffed out…



Introducing "Sunday Morning in the Beltline" by Wade Bell


We are thrilled to share an excerpt from a new short story, "Sunday Morning in the Beltline," by Wade Bell. The piece captures the essence of a quiet Sunday morning, evoking nostalgia and contemplation in equal measure.


Through Bell's poetic language, we are transported to a scene filled with eclectic objects and memories. A red bird perched on a radio, a chair with cracked plastic leather, birthday cards, and a phone waiting for a call from Puerto Vallarta. The story takes us deeper into the author's personal experiences, as we follow him on a bus smuggling anti-Franco, anti-fascist pamphlets and feel the tension of passing through passport control. "Sunday Morning in the Beltline" weaves together memories, travel, and emotion in a way that lingers long after reading.


If you're a fan of poetry and literature, we highly recommend checking out Wade Bell's "Sunday Morning in the Beltline." You can read the full story and more of Bell's work on The Typescript, where he regularly contributes pieces on arts and literature.







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Writer's pictureWade Bell

In his answers to the Proust Questionnaire, Wade tells Open Book about the brashest flowers, the toughest shade of orange and tiger nuts.


What is your dream of happiness?

Good love, good food, good fortune.


What is your idea of misery?

Enduring the end of a deeply-rooted love affair while undergoing chemotherapy.


Where would you like to live?

Where creativity is the currency and the air is warm.


What qualities do you admire most in a man?

Empathy.


What qualities do you admire most in a woman?

Empathy.


What is your chief characteristic?

Intuitive understanding.


What is your principal fault?

Hermiting.


What is your greatest extravagance?

Travel.


What faults in others are you most tolerant of?

Their foibles and fetishes.


What do you value most about your friends?

Their generosity of spirit.


What characteristic do you dislike most in others?

Narrow-mindedness.


What characteristic do you dislike most in yourself?

Chronic shyness.


What is your favourite virtue?

Kindliness.


What is your favourite occupation?

Learning.


What would you like to be?

A nineteen year old FI racing car driver.


What is your favourite colour?

Harley-Davidson motorcycle orange.


What is your favourite flower?

Big, brash, uninhibited Bird of Paradise. Also the dandelion, that bright, persistent outlaw.


What is your favourite bird?

Red-winged blackbird.


What historical figure do you admire the most?

Plato.


What character in history do you most dislike?

Any of the swollen-headed, heart-shriveled psychopathic slaughterers.


Who are your favourite prose authors?

Joyce, Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Hemingway, Orwell, Thomas Wolfe, the early Tom Wolfe, Duras, Bolaño, Monbiot.


Who are your favourite poets?

Chaucer, Donne, Marvell, Olson, Ondaatje, John Newlove, Bob Hogg.


Who are your favourite heroes in fiction?

The ardent if confused narrator of The House of the Americans. And the anti-heroes: Macbeth, Bloom, Raskolnikov, Fritz from Fritz the Cat, even Bardamu from Journey to the End of the Night.


Who are your heroes in real life?

The healers of the body and the mind.


Who is your favourite painter?

Renoir, Utrillo, Emily Carr, John Kacere.


Who is your favourite musician?

Ana Cristina Werring-Millet, singer and guitarist, of Barcelona, Spain.


What is your favourite food?

Butter tarts.


What is your favourite drink?

Horchata de chufa (made from ground tiger nuts; I have no idea what tiger nuts are but I don’t think any animals suffer from my love of this drink.)


What are your favourite names?

Julia, Jennifer, Piper, Jesse, Abbey, Sarah, Zander, Emma, Cravath.


What is it you most dislike?

Murder by man or state thought of as a solution to anything. And Saran Wrap.


What natural talent would you most like to possess?

Musical ability.


How do you want to die?

With my eyes on something beautiful.


What is your current state of mind?

As usual, overwhelmed.


What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?

Surviving.


What is your motto?

Look, listen, write.

Also: The mind’s eye sees most clearly through a glaze.


Submitted to Open Book Toronto by Grace, June 5, 2012. View online here.

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Writer's pictureWade Bell

Updated: Apr 10, 2023


In high school in the nineteen-fifties I frequented the first A&W in Edmonton, maybe in Alberta.

Today it’s an antique. Then it sparkled.


Carhops, cool and good looking, expertly handled the heavily loaded trays while fending off carloads of testosterone time bombs masquerading as personable young men.


Hotrods, chariots errant zealously slaved over in Scona Comp’s automotive shop, and the stars of moonlit drag strips, paraded with outlaw-tinted glamour.


Your music blasting from somewhere, from everywhere. Tunes so bewitching that you were barely aware of a train whistling on a nearby track.


Bill Haley, Ivory Joe Hunter, Chuck Berry and Little Richard. Richie Valens, on top of the world with his mega hit, La Bamba, dead at seventeen. Buddy Holly, gone at twenty-two.


For romancing the beauty beside you on the comfortable bench seat there were the artfully smooth Everly Brothers, The Platters and Fats Domino.


For two sixteen-year-olds locked onto the pull of Saturday night, the A&W was the cool place on the South Side. Cocooned in its ambience, a thrilling pulse told you that you were at the beginning of a mercurial age.


It was true, you were. And it would be intoxicating.


Your parents were doing well thanks to the oil boom ushered in by the discoveries at Leduc, a few minutes down the road. They assumed you would take part in the prosperity. A geologist. A petroleum engineer.


But what they planned for you would not survive the tumult of the sweet and sour sixties with its evolutionary ideas and fresh attitudes.


A brand-new driver’s license in your wallet and money to spend on the girl glued to your side, you approached the drive-in with trepidation but also confidence.


You knew the place was built for you. You just had to chance upon an empty slot. You circled the building tailing a lowered Mercury with rear fender skirts, purring chromed exhausts, and a spare tire kit that made it seem as long as a freight car.


A spot opened. Carefully, slowly, you nosed into it. On your left was a metallic gold ‘32 deux coupe rag top, on your right a two-tone blue and white ’57 Chevy Bel Air, just off the production line and already a star for the ages.


A carhop hurried to your window.


Savory meat and abundant condiments merging in your mouth for the first time proved richly satisfying.

The syrupy sweet but peppery root beer in frosted mugs went perfectly with the burgers.


For me, though, the most desirable items on the menu were the milkshakes. A skinny kid always feeling half-starved, I might owe my life to A&W milkshakes.


Full, mellow and happy, you exited the drive-in’s ambience reluctantly. Now where? A drive-in movie or just roaming the highways and back roads, her shampooed hair fragrant on your shoulder?


Sweet options beneath a white ghost moon in the lingering northern light.


Two things were certain. One was that childhood was falling from us like a shed skin. The second was that we would be back at the A&Dub again and again all that short and fragile northern summer long.

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