When Frasier Came to Town

One otherwise-average Fri­day after­noon my friend Ari­anne called from the Safe­way two streets away. “Kelsey Gram­mer,” the famous actor from Frasier, “is coming!”

I’m not sure if this gives you any sense of how small my home­town is? It’s small enough that some­one famous can be spot­ted well before they pass the “Wel­come to Fort Frances” sign. It’s small enough that, by the time a notable per­son pulls up and actu­ally exits their vehi­cle, say to unas­sum­ingly col­lect a few gro­ceries for their quiet camp­ing get­away, a fer­vent crowd of locals can con­gre­gate, sur­rounded them and then gawk awk­wardly as they go about their business.

In my own defence, that day I thought I should leave him alone. I was cool and 15 years old at the time. No way was I going over there. For­get it. But, just in case, I thought it was only right that I men­tion it to my younger sis­ter Leah. What she did was up to her. And, if she needed me to go along with her, to make sure noth­ing hap­pened to her –well that was just me being a good brother. She did. And I did.

When we arrived, Ari­anne briefed us that Mr Gram­mar had already arrived and was at that very moment “in the veg­etable sec­tion, near the car­rots.” From there we watched him sur­vey the dairy sec­tion. He seemed dis­pleased about some­thing, the milk maybe. He asked my friend Tom Kel­strom, some­thing about the soy beans, but Tom didn’t know.

Respect­ing the man’s per­sonal space, my sis­ter and I, along with a few Safe­way staff mem­bers,  kept our dis­tance. We made sure to duck out of site when­ever Mr Gram­mar shot a peek in our direc­tion.  Above all, we were civ­i­lized enough to avoid eye con­tact at all times.

Some­how the train went off the tracks when he left the store. Some­how, rather than main­tain our safe dis­tance, a group of about 20 of us thought­lessly fol­lowed him and his fel­low campers to their car. We just stood there as he put his brown paper Safe­way bags into the trunk of his car, one after another, just like a nor­mal person.

And then, sud­denly, there was noth­ing else to do. And he couldn’t just leave like that. He knew it and we knew it. So, gen­er­ously, for­giv­ingly he turned to us and smiled at us. And then he looked right at me, stepped for­ward, raised up his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Kelsey.”

This was very unex­pected. “Hi there… I’m.… uh…Tim,” I said.

And then I stared at him some more.

And he smiled at us all again, a big, sparkly, famous-person smile. And then he got into his Mer­cedes, opened a pack of M&M’s and drove off.

Kelsey Gram­mar is quoted as say­ing, “It takes a very strange per­son to enjoy fame, with all the by-products that come with it. It’s not nec­es­sar­ily a thrill.” I can’t help but won­der what he might have been refer­ring to when he said that. I guess we’ll never know.

I always thought fame would be a won­der­ful thing, where every­one treats you nicely. I guess not every­one knows how to han­dle it, not every­one knows how to act nor­mal when there’s some­one famous around. Not every­one grew up in Fort Frances.