Bear Toonies and Loonies

To visit Grand Forks is like stepping by in time to the 1950's. A lovely main street with Christmas lights reflecting through prisms of glass and ice. Several folks sit around outside coffee shoppe tables, wearing warm wool scarfs, colourful hand knit hats and gloves, as winter armor against the cold. Paper cups steam, ribbons of espresso drift to delight the senses as afternoon fades into night.

Across the street a hippy dressed women steps into the theatre ticket booth. Three toonies, is the price to escape, as the big screen awaits hungry eyes. Two seven-year-old girls past fifty smile while grinding their roll-your-own cigarettes out in a thin tin ashtray. A light snow starts to fall, a few thumb sized flakes catch eyelashes as they dash under awning cover.

"Two please." says the oldest, "My treat."

Popcorn smells roll out as the door is held open. An out-stretched hand, a tattooed arm, heavy with charms and beaded bracelets, accepts the magic tickets. A glass case of sweet goodies in cadence call out.

"Pick me!" yells a box of mini Butterfingers.

"No me!" shrieks the dark coated Goobers in a nutty high pitched shrill.

Intensive is the clammier, a reeling mix of what to choose.

"A big bucket of popcorn please." says the younger.

"Extra butter" coos the silver looped-lip hippy, her spiked hair tipped in red.

"Oh Yes, of course," voice the two as one.

With a fist full of napkins, cradling a bucket of gold, the two walk through the inner theatre doors to be swooped away in an adventure of another world.