 The week before our long-planned tent camping expedition to the parking lot of Whitehorse’s Wal-Mart store, Jesse received a call from the CBC’s Elyn Jones. She’d just heard that Scott Fraser was already there, doing the same thing—though not in a tent.
Naturally, we wondered why any local, aside from someone trying to produce a silly radio segment, would do such a ridiculous thing. While we’re not entirely sure about Scott’s reasons, protest appears to be the motivation for a group that pitched a bunch of tents back in 2004.
“It showed how absurd it is to camp in a store parking lot,” camper / protestor Leigh Pieterse told the Whitehorse Star at the time.
He got that right.
Much to the group’s disappointment, it couldn’t seem to raise the attention, let alone ire, of the retail giant’s local staff. When Mark and Jesse first hatched their own plan to camp in Wal-Mart—it was on the drive from Haines Junction to Whitehorse on New Year’s Day—they had no idea they would succeed where their predecessors’ (whose efforts were unknown to them) had apparently failed.
Typically, the idea for this story wasn’t the result of a focused effort; it began with an off-the-cuff remark about “hiking the Chilkoot”—as in the Centre, not the trail. At that point, Smells Like Yukon was still a perfect unblemished ideal; we had yet to produce—or screw up—a single segment. The rough idea for “On Wal-Mart Time” was quickly tossed into the Future Considerations Bin where it remained until, with a bare minimum of further development, it was added to the proposed slate of spring segments presented to CBC Yukon’s A New Day producer Arnold Hedstrom in late March.
After producing the previous few segments well in advance, “On Wal-Mart Time” turned out to be a last-minute scramble reminiscent of our early segments. The broadcast was shifted back a week to accommodate the departure of Jesse’s wife, Jo, and Mark’s travel to Vancouver. In the end, Mark caught the late-night Air Jazz flight back to Whitehorse on Friday, May 18—the start of May Long Weekend—to participate in a do-or-die three-day production schedule. A flight delay meant that Mark wasn’t driving home from the airport—glancing over at the ghostly forms of giant white RVs in the Wal-Mart lot—until three in the morning. Nevertheless, he rose early to type up the story notes that he’d promised to send Jesse days earlier. When he called Jesse, left a message and didn’t hear back for a couple of hours, part of him wondered if Jesse had come to his senses.
Inevitably, Jesse called and soon he was on the road to Mark’s house with his portable barbecue and recording equipment. Meanwhile, Mark had pulled out his tent, cooler, canvas chairs and various other essential supplies.
When Jesse arrived, he didn’t look too happy. Mark didn’t need to ask why.
For months, we had no problem picturing ourselves pitching a tent in the Wal-Mart parking lot and anticipating the absurdity of the situation. It became far more difficult as the day approached. And now that it was immediately and undeniably upon us, the mission seemed horribly daunting for a couple of guys (but not a couple, damn it!) who merely masquerade as extroverts.
“I’ve been wondering if we could just call Arnold and tell him we couldn’t do it…” Jesse said.
“You don’t want to go?” Mark replied.
“No, not really,” Jesse replied. “I’m still not sure what the vision is for this.”
In many ways, Mark wished that Jesse would seize the initiative and pull the plug on the plan —that way, he wouldn’t have to. Instead, we began to talk about how the story might unfold and be structured for the radio segment. The truth is, we thought of all kinds of ways we could do the story without actually having to spend the night in the parking lot. The idea held little appeal for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the potential challenge of writing a script and editing the piece in short order after sleeping on an asphalt bed. (Assuming, of course, that we weren’t crushed under the wheels of a 40-foot RV in the middle of the night.) Encouraged by the possibility that our speedy eviction by Wal-Mart staff would solve all our problems, we got down to business.
Now, if you’d rather not know how contrived this segment really was, stop reading right here.
At this point, we decided to put off our arrival at Wal-Mart until as late in the afternoon as possible. In the meantime, we recorded clips of Jesse arriving at Mark’s house, loading and unloading gear, and even digging the pit toilet (which involved Mark bashing a shovel against the concrete walkway beside his house). While driving around Mark’s block, we then recorded the clips of our “road-trip” and arrival at the “campground.”
We arrived at Wal-Mart, for real, at about 3:00 p.m. As we surveyed our surroundings, the parking lot felt like a fishbowl. It was pretty busy and we hard a hard time imagining how—or where—we could discreetly pitch our tent.
So, we procrastinated.
First, we went into Wal-Mart to record clips of us entering the store—the idea being that the sounds of the doors, carts and cash registers would provide the segment’s listeners with the first conclusive sign or at least proof that we weren’t in any ordinary Yukon campground. Our next stop was the Canadian Tire store, where we made some lame efforts to record clips of ourselves walking through the camping section, having a discussion that would somehow advance the plot. At this point, we were pretty sure that neither of us was cut out for acting or improv comedy—but that didn’t stop us from trying the same schtick a few minutes later in the M&M Meat Shop. Somewhere during this time, we must have hit a low, briefly wondering if there might be a different story we could knock off in what remained of the long weekend.
On the way back to the car, we encountered the sign that explained the rules for RVing in the Wal-Mart—no mention of a tenting policy—and became more suspicious that our tent would be pitched on thin ice, so to speak. On the upside, we formulated a good plan to position ourselves in a sheltered little curb island at the back of the lot, clearly visible to the traffic on Quartz Road but hidden from the store’s direct view.
After a brief trip back to Mark’s for something or other (a stall tactic?), we returned emboldened. Jesse, especially, was determined to get ‘er done. We found our spot, positioned the vehicle and erected the tent under the grey sky. Despite some challenges with the inelastic poles from Mark’s 15-year old tent (the perfect expendable piece of junk for a Wal-Mart parking lot!), the camp was up in no time flat. No sooner had we parked our butts in our canvas chairs, beer mugs in hand, than an English couple from a recently arrived motorhome made a beeline to our campsite. They looked very happy to see us.
“I’d like the take your picture,” the man said. “And afterwards, I’ll tell you why.”
As it turns out, they were traveling North America in a giant RV that had been shipped across the Atlantic. They explained that Wal-Mart England’s policy on RV camping isn’t as libertarian as the policy of its kissin’ cousin in the US of A. Their plan was to post our photo on some sort of English “caravaning” website in order to bolster their lobbying efforts.
It was nice to know that weren’t just a pair of idiots, but agents of change. Suddenly, we were actually have a pretty good time. The sun began to shine, the beer went down easily, there was no sign of an authoritarian crackdown on our site, and we actually started to think that spending the night wouldn’t be so bad. That’s when we made a run for a frisbee and enough beer to last for the long haul. We even called up a couple of friends to invite them to stop by for a nightcap!
When we returned, we quickly resumed our positions in our canvas chairs and started to think about what delights Wal-Mart’s frozen food aisle might present for our barbecuing pleasure. We also dropped the tailgate of Jesse’s vehicle to obscure the Yukon license plate and hopefully lend us a bit of legitimacy (our official story, if anyone asked, was that we were Yukoners visiting from Dawson City). This precaution seemed timely when we spotted our first blue-vested Wal-Mart “parking ranger” a few minutes later. After spending a ridiculous amount of time tying his shoe against a concrete lamppost foundation, he collected a wayward shopping cart (which Mark had made Jesse promise to push him around in later that night) and meandered back in the direction of the store. To our relief, he didn’t seem interested in us at all.
We were pretty settled in when a female manager appeared about a half-hour later, her informant trailing somewhat sheepishly behind her and pointing to us—as if we needed to be singled out among all those other tent campers in the parking lot. She was quite nice about it, although the word “police” was mentioned at one point. Apparently, she didn’t notice Jesse’s Canada Winter Games sweatshirt, or the Yukon license plates, because she recommended some other places we could stay, including the Robert Service Campground. Maybe she was just humouring us.
Disappointed, and yet relieved that we’d get to spend the night in our own beds, we had the camp torn down in short order. On our way out, we stopped to get another clip from an employee at Starbucks. And since we suddenly had nothing to do that night, we went to the nearby Movie Gallery video store and rented an RV with Robin Williams in it.
While we were in the video store, we decided to see what kind of clip we might get from the sole employee, a young college student. As usual, we encountered some initial suspicions. She wanted to know what were going to ask about; for the sake of spontaneity, we didn’t want to tell her until we were actually recording. We were making progress with a promise to erase the clip if she didn’t want us to use it, but some annoying customer who wanted to rent a video interrupted the negotiation. Eventually, she put her reservations aside and gave us the perfect earful. Sadly, she'd never heard of our show. Or Sounds Like Canada. Or, possibly, any program in the history of CBC Radio or TV.
By the end of the following day (after a great night's sleep), the script had gone through three drafts and Jesse, now feeling under the weather, was ready to edit the piece on Monday morning. This process went much quicker than he anticipated. And, for the first time ever, he confessed “I’m actually pretty happy with this one!”
(Posted May 23, 2007)
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