A Journey to Spirit #3: The “Buss Stop”

Every summer when I was a child was spent with my grandparents in Qualicum Beach, a small, quaint town on the East Coast of Vancouver Island in Canada. Their magical log home, missing square corners and fancy furnishings, was named ‘The Buss Stop’ …by me. This is why.

His name was Bill Buss, Billy or Boo.  After many games of Peek-a-Boo as a young child I guess I was the one credited with nicknaming him Boo.  And it stuck.  Boo, my mother’s father was half Squamish Native who was born in the Kincaid farming house at the mouth of the Qualicum River in 1898, or at least that’s the year he claimed as his own.  No one knew for sure, and Boo wasn’t exactly the statistician of the family.  His craft was more along the line of Entertainer of the Year.

After he married Daisy in 1920, they set up camp by the river while Boo logged a piece of property just up the hill.  That quaint old house, two rooms to begin with, grew by another four as the years passed and kids were born, three of blood and two others who dropped in one day and never left.  I recall when the plumbing came indoors.  I loved the shower with its huge shower head that made the water sound like rainfall on the painted cement floor. I can still hear this sound in my head. I remember washing my hair with real rain water collected at the edge of the porch and heated on the flat-iron stove.

In the morning, before the crack of dawn, I could hear Boo tiptoeing across the kitchen floor to fire up the wood inside the stove.  The heat of the stove would warm the air and the water for when the rest of us were rising from our comfy beds.  Inside a small closet in the kitchen lived a silver-painted tank that would bubble and moan once the stove heated the water to boiling.  In the winter, someone would have a shower, or Daisy would run the hot water tap for a bit to relieve the pressure.  In the summer, we’d turn off the stove after the water was hot and cook outside or not at all.

Boo taught me many things. When I was a child we would sit in the vegetable garden together picking weeds, planting or eating freshly-pulled carrots the colour of a brilliant orange sunset and so sweet on the tongue. One summer day, with the smell of dried earth tickling my nose and the sound of a bee buzzing back and forth from flower to flower, he told me about his pet snake.  You must understand, I never knew if I could believe what he said, as he was always playing tricks on folks.   Sure enough, that day he spoke a name across the copper garden and a minute later this little garter snake came up to lie in his hand.  I remember saying, as I looked into Boo’s face with wonder, “Snakes don’t have ears.”

He planted fruit trees to share with the deer…so they wouldn’t eat his garden vegetables.  And he never wasted anything.  All around the old log cabin, you could see his creative uses for things most people threw away: tires, their edges cut into diamonds and turned inside out were perfect flower beds, even the parts of the tire he would cut away would be used for knee pads for the garden work, strips of the inner tube working as the fiber to hold them on. These flower beds would be painted white with the leftover paint from the kitchen.  Two tobacco cans screwed to the side of the old log house would hold up the hose but open up the lid and I always found various nozzles and washers.

The Island Highway ran right out front and hardly a day would go by that someone didn’t drop in to visit. Family and friends were plenty and always welcome, and many times the old house would be filled to overflowing with the sound of voices and laughter.  The old house still sits on the hill, the earth reclaiming her now…one conversation, one laugh at a time.

And so one day, I had a sign made for my favourite place, and it hangs from the old porch to this day:  The Buss Stop.  It seemed perfect because just like a bus stop, there were always people coming and going and thankful for their rest along the way.

I realize far more than ever before all the many things I learned there, not by preaching, but as if by osmosis. The native blood continues to fill me up to this day with gentle and ancient wisdom like a soft wind that tosses my mind and reminds my heart how interconnected everything and everyone is.  And I must say; I have discovered Boo’s gifts to be a sort of salvation…as he taught me of the earth and her treasures in a humble and mysterious way.  Here was a man who charmed the best of them.  And Daisy… well, she was always the garden that set his stage.

…to be continued

Photo Credits

Photos by Faye Thornton – All Rights Reserved

Recent Faye Thornton Articles:

• A Journey To Spirit #24: Divine Messages
• A Journey to Spirit #23: The Big C
• A Journey to Spirit #22: And Now It Was Done
• A Journey to Spirit # 21: And So It Began…
• A Journey to Spirit #20: Breathless Heart