A spouse with good teeth

Some of the high school grads seemed young

by Robert LaFrance

"Dear Mister LaFrance,

Thank you so much for all your hard work in writing your informative and entertaining column. I intend to read one very soon. (Signed) Your Aunt Marilla.”

So much for my adoring public. I decided to go fishing. The summer has now officially started, I am told. I am also told that the days are getting shorter on their inexorable drive toward snowdrifts. I wasn’t depressed before.

My gardens are burgeoning, the animals are burrowing, the moose are bellowing, the sheets on the line are billowing, the nearby brook is babbling, the badgers are badgering, the bread is baking, the businesses are bankrupting, the boys are belching, the bruisers are bench-pressing, and my brain is biodegrading as I try and come up with information to make a reasonable column for my faithful and long-suffering readers.

Last week I attended the SVHS graduation and noted that quite a few of the graduates seem somewhat young, like eighteen or so. Quite a few of them looked like deer caught in the headlights, but many are facing the years ahead with aplomb and even fervour, whatever that might mean. (I read it on a Canadian Living recipe for chili.)

Man, was I scared on my own graduation night, in 1965. I had just turned seventeen and had about as much idea of what I wanted to do with my life as an aardvark has knowledge of macramé. Probably far less if the truth were known. Deer in the headlights indeed.

And now I look back on those 46 years since I graduated and ask myself if I would have done anything different if I had a chance to do it again. Not a whole lot, except I should have found a way to learn French even if it meant going to Quebec City and taking a job as a ‘regardant de ciel’ (sky watching technician). We call it ‘bum’.

Those were the days, my friend. The Sixties in Quebec. They say if you remember the Sixties then you weren’t there—and I don’t, therefore I was—but I am sure it must have been a great time to be young in Quebec. The Quiet Revolution was at the top of its form back then, and it was anything but quiet. THAT’S where I should have been.

Instead I found myself in the spring of 1967 on Vancouver Island and cutting bushes with a dull axe. A bunch of us gangsters from here and from various parts of Ontario—and one guy from India, go figure—were working to make a park, now called Strathcona Park, just out from Campbell River. There were five of us there from Victoria County, NB, and four of us got fired for having axe-throwing contests on company time.

I know what you’re thinking: I was one of the miscreants, but this time the Great God of Tooth Decay (Merlin) saved me. I was home that day in our trailer and waiting for a dentist to arrive and take out an aching tooth when the rest of the NB boys came in and said they were heading for Calgary. At the prospect of hitting the road, my tooth healed itself, and away we headed. I sold an old Kay guitar for $20 to an RCMP officer in Campbell River and with that nest egg I headed east, sort of. Other than by jet, there weren’t no east from Vancouver and Vancouver Island if you’re going to Alberta, so we headed north up the Fraser canyon—two groups of hitchhikers.

          I won’t bore you any more with details of that trip, except that we slept in a few all-night laundromats between Vancouver and Calgary. We did finally get back to Victoria County, NB, only to head back west within weeks, at least as far as Ontario.

          Those 2011 graduates probably won’t follow my path. Not unless they are completely bonkers. On the other hand, they have cellphones, iPods, iPhones, and a host of other devices to call home and get Mum or Dad to transfer a few hundred into their account so they can put up bail, buy a plane ticket, or eat another meal or two. I shudder to remember that, on my second trip west where I lived in Vancouver almost two years, I had zero backup. I’m not even sure Dad had a phone at that time.

          This is going to shock everyone I know, but times have changed. High school graduates today, while being no more assured of success that we were in 1965, will be facing the same challenges as we did – find a spouse with good teeth and a good-paying job with a medical plan.

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