Description - In this humourous story, a young man with a summer-job adventure describes the Saturday night at the Minawassi Hotel that became a legend in Northern Ontario.
Excerpt- I was there when the legend started, so I know the truth.It was the kind of place you drink your beer straight from the bottle ‘cause the glasses look clean but you aren’t really sure.
I was working for the summer on a track maintenance crew on the CPR main line north of Superior. Scenic country if you’re into that kind of thing, but towns are few and far between. Every Monday morning, an engine pulled our little work train from whatever town we were at for the weekend to a siding somewhere in the middle of nowhere and dumped us for the week. One box car with tools, one flat car with ties, four bunk cars, and a sidecar, one of those little putt-putt jobs for getting us back and forth to the worksite. Then Saturday, the engine returned to haul us to a different town for a Saturday night out and Sunday to recover. Then we started over again somewhere else Monday.
I don’t know how the regular guys stood it. It was hard enough for me and the other two students. But at least for us it was only for a couple of months and we liked to read or something. The other guys though, it was from when the frost went out of the ground in April to freeze-up in December. And all of them could read a paycheque, but beyond that I have my doubts.