Cleopatra, queen of weather de Nile

Don’t ask about the weather—please  

                                        by Robert LaFrance

          I’ve conducted a scientific poll, and the consensus is this: The summer of 2011 is the weirdest summer—weatherwise—that has ever been since Cleopatra roamed the Nile.

          Oh, I’m sure some of those guys in ancient Persia or in northern Saskatchewan will argue, and point to the year 27 b.c. or 1934, but they are out to lunch. And not an outdoor lunch, if they’re smart.

          Last week, around 10:00 am Tuesday I think it was, I was talking to a chap who checks every online weather forecast in western New Brunswick several times a day and he said this: “According to the satellite images covering all of eastern North America  from Bare Need, Newfoundland to Grungeville, West Virginia, there is not a cloud in the sky. There can be no rain here for at least two days. It’s not possible.”

My response was to take my umbrella out of the trunk of the Chrysler and keep it at hand. Four hours later it was what we used to call (in my days in the weather service) BINOVC—‘break in overcast’. Then it rained for over an hour. Four hours later it rained again, then again four hours after that.

          Just about every day this summer has featured (1) BINOVC, (2) rain, heavy and light, (3) blazing sunshine for a few minutes at a time, (4) strong winds, (5) bright sunshine for hours, with a gentle breeze, or (6) a thunderstorm. Any day that did not include 1-6 in various combinations was an unusual one; most days saw several examples of each. One often heard that old saying: “Don’t like the weather in New Brunswick? Wait a minute.”

          Not to belabour the subject, but not only is the weather around here more instantly changeable than any I’ve seen for decades, but it is also the most vicious. Here on our hill in Kincardine, Scotch Colony, we have gone entire summers without a thunderstorm, other than a few rumbles in the distance, but this year going two days without one would be like Don Cherry shutting up for ten minutes.

Six days ago we had a vicious storm that knocked out our power for twelve hours. This would be the 97^th of those this summer. Some people would sympathize, but it was okay…really. We had kerosene lamps, candles and flashlights. (Why, that’s almost like poetry!) We read novels by the light of Everyready, Duracell, and flame, and we were often entertained by the latest message from the power company.

          Since it appeared that only our Manse Hill Road and scattered houses on Kincardine Road had lost power, our electricity provider must have dropped us to the bottom of their list in lieu of those nearer their office where the trucks are kept. I could be wrong. Whatever the reason, it was 6:35 am before we could watch our favourite soap opera ‘The Secret Edge of Tomorrow’s Young and Restless Brighter Day at the General Hospital’.

          Not surprisingly, Nurse Dania and Dr. Sinclair were still in love but both still married, in case you need to know.

          Those messages from the power company were entertaining though, as I mentioned. I reported the power outage at 6:30 pm when they assured me that a truck was not only waiting with motor running, eager as hell to restore our power, but that they would send the CEO as well as the Premier before the sun went down.

          At 9:30 pm, the sun was a memory, and apparently the premier and CEO had been called away. I asked the power company’s very personable computer voice when he (she?) could expect to have my power restored and was told that ‘due to unexpected high call volumes’ it wouldn’t be fixed until sometime between 10:30 and 11:00 pm. Well, that wasn’t too bad; at least I could watch the Fox Soccer Report at 11:00. I wanted to know if Manchester United has beaten Chelsea.

          I was staggered when, at 11:05 pm, somewhat like the federal Liberals, we still had no power. This time my call to the power company was one of the more entertaining. I talked to a real person—as opposed to a computer voice—and asked him what had happened to the 10:30-11:00 assurance. Had it disappeared into the time/space matrix?

          No, the person said, that was only an estimate. Well, I continued, when did you send out the truck with eager technician? “We haven’t actually sent out a truck to your location,” he said. “There are other power outages…”

          So the secret is out. I, though still on their video screen, am nowhere near as important to the power company as I had imagined. Am I ever glad the company wasn’t sold to Quebec Hydro. This column would have to be sent to the newspaper via a wind-powered CPU, otherwise known as a carrier pigeon, until 2014, once the Quebeckers had read my June 2008 column’s comments about the late Rocket Richard, who in my opinion was little more than a talented thug.

                                        -end-   

"You disgust me"

Flug was married HOW MANY TIMES?

           by Robert LaFrance 

          Flug’s nephew Ergon came by as Flug and I were sitting on the porch and talking about that morning’s church sermon. Well, we were sitting on the porch anyway, and drinking lemonade, which is pretty much the same thing.

          “Hi ho chaps!” said Ergon, in an English accent. He had recently read a P.G. Wodehouse novel about Jeeves the butler and Bertie Wooster. “What goes on here?” We explained that what he saw was pretty much all there was.

In truth, he wasn’t there to sip on lemonade or even to casually visit. He wanted information. “Uncle Jerome,” he began, and so you finally find out my friend Flug’s real name, “since you have been married seventeen times, you must have some idea how women think. I have a question or two about a woman.”

          “First of all,” said Flug, “my name is not Jerome, at least not since 1956 when I was in grade one and my teacher called me Jerome. He only did it once, if you know what I mean. Second, the fact that I was married TWELVE times and divorced twelve times should warn you right away that I know about as much about women as I do about quantum physics. But since you’re one of my six favourite nephews, I will try and answer any questions you have.”

          Ergon said that he was still trying to figure out what Emolina Saggit had meant the previous evening when she accused him of talking about her. Flug asked him for the exact wording of her accusation.

          “Well, first I asked her for a date, and failing that, to go for a walk. It was then she said I had been talking about her. She glared at me and said: ‘You discussed me, Ergon,’ and then she spun around on her heel—as they say in British novels—and went back to her table.”

          Flug looked at me and I looked at Flug. “Another lemonade, bartender,” we said in unison. Once again we had proof that Ergon’s IQ was about that of a pasture salt lick. Flug said: “Did you ever think about writing down the words she told you, and wondering if there might be an alternate spelling to the one you’re thinking of, Ergon?”

          The rusty wheels were grinding in Ergon’s head; I could hear the sound and see the smoke. Finally, a light dawned. His face fell, as they say in North American novels. He sat down. “I think I’ll have a lemonade, Uncle Flug.”

          It’s so sad to see the mental result when close cousins marry.

                              ********************************

          I have pointed out before that these are interesting financial times. The rich people have been broke since 2008, the ones with jobs are now considered rich, and the poor people are still poor, but don’t feel quite as poor as they used to. The Squwater family who live down the lane, and whose average annual income is usually a minus quantity, are holding their heads high since the McConaldinis went bankrupt and had to sell their mansion on the hill.

          “We didn’t lose a dime in that 2008 financial meltdown,” commented Herbie Squwater as we both watched a soccer game at the club, “and whatever is happening now with the U.S.A. ‘credit crunch’ as they say, that doesn’t bother us a bit since we don’t have any and never did have any money. We have fallen feet first into the Social Safety Net.” Herbie hasn’t been able to work since 1981 when the tractor-trailer he was driving fell into a ravine sometimes known as the Grand Canyon. Doctors managed to put him back together but he says they had some parts left over that ‘impaired his motivation to work’.

          I have the same affliction, as you know.

          The times and the people are both ‘interesting’. I was aghast last Thursday to see a tourist bus come by Mrs. Androyd’s house and stop in her driveway where just about every middle-aged woman in the community was waiting. They got on the bus that soon sped away to the south, possibly to Minto or, by the looks of the luggage, to Fredericton airport. The fact that on the front of the bus was a sign that said ‘Fredericton Airport’ was also a clue.

          “What’s going on? Where are they going?” I enquired of Mrs. Androyd—the elder Mrs. Androyd, who was left at home. She is 99. She said they were all going to Ecuador, South America.

          “Mrs. Gannet read somewhere that people weigh one percent less at the equator, which is where Ecuador is—go figure—so, rather than eat less and exercise, they all decided to lose one percent of their body weight by going to Equador.

“You know,” she sighed, “there are times when I despair of my fellow human beings, but then I watch TV for a while. The people around here are evidently quite intelligent in comparison.” 

                                          -end-

Swimming with the sharks

Just being handsome and brilliant is enough

          by Robert LaFrance

          Someone asked me the other day—I think it was Tuesday afternoon—what it was like to be handsome and brilliant. I must admit I smirked a bit. Then he went on: “I’d like to meet somebody like that someday.”
          He was in his twenties, and pondering the slings and arrows of his future. He knew that he himself wasn’t handsome and brilliant, and wondered if it would have helped him in his chosen career, which, according to the things he had just said to me, is apparently suicide.

          I explained a few things to him: “When a person is in his twenties and thirties he seems to be swimming with the sharks—trying to get ahead in life, whether in school or on the job. He generally is able to keep the sharks from devouring him and so goes on to the next stage in his life—doing the family thing. Kids repel sharks, so he is safe for a time.

          “Then the person hits middle age—or it hits him. The kids, his body armour, are gone, but the sharks are back. This time the sharks are younger and stronger, but there are also the older, more experienced brawlers. They all want his job. The vicious creatures, jaws agape, are coming at him from all directions. Our hero should then hang on for dear life, until the glorious day of retirement comes along and he can sit back on his porch, sip lemonade, and watch the sharks devour each other.”

          Speaking of jaws agape, the young man was looking at me as if I had just floated in from the planet Xekon VIII. “I meant…I was just wondering if I should go on a diet,” he said. “I already know a lot of stuff, but if I looked athletic too, do you think the babes would come running?”

          “They certainly would,” I said. “Now, back to my shark analogy…” But by that time he was headed for the fitness centre.

          A few years ago I was a world-class soccer player—if the world includes only southern Kincardine, NB—but now I would do well to play checkers without hyperventilating. A cardiovascular zero. On television I see the world famous Brazilian footballer Pele, who is now is almost 71, and I wonder if I could outrun him even if I were beamed back to age 23 and he carried an anvil duct-taped to his back.

          The point of all this is that, while the old body deteriorates, it only stands to reason that the mind gets sharper and sharper, right? Right?

          Let me put it this way – no. The reason I know this is because I recently bought a 2010 model TV from my daughter and I tried to set it up to work with the 2010 VCR/DvD recorder I bought last year. The two manuals, in English—or what purported to be English—totalled 91 pages.

          I know my sense of humour is famous from Muniac to parts of upper Kilburn, NB, but it didn’t take me long to lose my S of H.  Hooking a few wires onto the TV and a few onto the recorder took 91 pages to explain and, as far as I am concerned, the manual never did explain it. After a total of at least four hours working on the problem, bringing in two other people for ideas, and consuming endless jars of "lemonade", I had set up a remote control to work with each, but never was able to make them recognize each other.

        It was something like a family reunion that was a little too ambitious as to invitations. “Hi, I’m your cousin Zeb from Zagreb. That’s in Croatia.” I guessed that might have been somewhere south of Fredericton.

          “Some assembly required.” That phrase no longer refers to the recently bought TV, or barbecue, or patio wine shelf. Where the ‘some assembly’ is required is in my ancient and nearly worn-out brain. Over the years I have put together TV and VCR as many as a dozen times, and never found it tremendously taxing to the old grey cells. “What is the difference here?” I asked myself, then immediately forgot the question.

         If we look long enough, I am sure we will find a moral to this story, but it isn’t likely. At one time my penmanship was good enough to gain the admiration of a calligrapher, at one time I could play soccer like Landon Donovan, and at one time I had plans to be either a concert pianist or a professional golfer, but the grey cells have deserted me in such numbers that it’s probably no use my continuing my online course to become a brain surgeon (unless I am allowed to operate on myself), so I think I’ll just go fishing.
                                                -end-

Don't mess with my Aunt Trixie

Calm down and have a lemonade

          by Robert LaFrance

          The word ‘seasoning’ seems to appear a lot in our everyday speech, but probably the last thing we would think about in connection with that word is the ‘seasoning’ of a black cast iron frying pan; this pretty much has to be done once every year or so, otherwise our delicious ham-cheese-olive omelet will stick to the pan instead of heading for our hips.

          “Never wash a cast iron frying pan in soap and water!” admonished Aunt Trixie (former exotic dancer in Red Deer, Alberta, hence the exotic name) when I visited her last Thursday afternoon. “Just as sure as Pierre Trudeau was one of my boyfriends, the next time you scramble eggs, they will stick to the pan and you will need a small charge of gelignite. About 75 grams per pan I would think.” She was a commando during the big war.

          “You have to season your frying pan and then swear on the Bible, Koran, etc. that you will never again wash it in soap and water,” she went on, and so I did, although I had to go to Edmundston for a Koran.

          Here’s how she told me to do it: “Remove any excess crud and scales (what does she think I cook in there?) from the pan. Heat up the oven to your ‘self-cleaning’ temperature and put the frying pan in for two and a half hours. The heat makes the bumps and stuff flake off. After that there should be a fine layer of rust on the pan. Remove this with fine steel wool and hot water and you can even use mild hand soap for this – but NOT strong dishwashing soap. Rinse it well.

          “Coat the inside of the pan with vegetable oil or shortening and put it in a 250-degree oven for thirty minutes. Remove the pan from the oven, wipe off the excess oil, and return it to the oven for another 30 minutes. Then turn the oven off--”

          “Don’t you mean ‘turn off the oven’, auntie? That’s a misplaced modifier the way you said it.”

          “All that seasoning draws the oil into the pan,” she continued when I had regained consciousness, “and when you cook using oil, it will be drawn in too, so your eggs won’t stick to the pan any more.” She glared at me. “UNLESS you wash the cast iron frying pan in water and dish soap. That will take the oil out of the metal. I have a whole set of Griswold frying pans and I have never washed them in soap and water. Remember that or I will break your fingers, one at a time.”

          NOTE: During WWII she was in the SOE, or Special Operations Executive. Those were those guys and gals who parachuted into occupied territory—mostly France. I feel sorry for those poor Nazis who had to deal with Auntie. On the other hand, she probably didn’t make them suffer as much as she does me. Where there’s a will…

                                                                      **********************

          My friend Flug (who avoids Auntie like the bubonic plague) was sitting on his deck and sipping on a Picaroons Dooryard lemonade when I dropped by after seasoning my largest frying pan. When I told him about visiting Auntie, he shuddered and took a big drink. “She scares me,” he admitted. “I never saw anyone who was so sure that violence solves everything. Except maybe Chuck Norris.”

          “Well, she was a professional wrestler,” I said, “and a commando, and a bodyguard to John Diefenbaker.”

          “One more mark against her,” he said. “Anyway, what do you think of my lawn? I just finished mowing. I find to get up in the morning and go out to mow the lawn is great exercise. Keeps the old blood coursing through the veins—and I suppose arteries too. I don’t know a lot about botany, or is it ichtheology? Anyway I feel invigorated after all that exercise.”

          “Flug,” I said, “you have a riding mower with a 32-inch cut. Your lawn is the size of my pool table.”

          “Still, it’s the idea of going out in the bright and shining morning—yeah, I’ve been reading Robert Browning—and getting things done,” he protested. “Just walking out in the garage and starting the mower (I know it’s an electric start) and getting out in the sun—that’s something.”

          I had to agree it was something. I looked over at my acre of lawn and thought about my sputtering Craftsman push mower that I had bought in 1991 from an Armenian rug salesman in Minto. “Got any more of those lemonade, Flug?”

          It doesn’t do to rush into things. Look at Highway 105, between Kilburn and Perth, Tilley and Perth. A new road has been needed since 1999. Ho-hum. A quick thought: I may ask Auntie to pay the government a visit.
                                      -end-

My math might be slightly askew

Much ado about nothing

– a mere $55,000,000,000,000

          by Robert LaFrance

          As we speak, our country, that we call Canada and Quebeckers call ‘them’, has a public debt of $563 billion, while the Congress of the United States of America and the president are wrestling with their national debt of about $55 TRILLION. We don’t seem to be panicking about ours, but they sure are in a tizzy about theirs, which is ten times ours, just as their population is. For weeks we have been hearing news reports that, if the Republicans or Democrats over there don’t soon agree on spending cuts and tax increases, the U.S. will ‘officially’ be in default of its loans.

          I’ve been in default of many things in my 63 years, but in 1968, when I hadn’t made a student loan payment for a year, bank officials sent me a long and eloquent letter that used the words ‘default’ and ‘jail’ several times. Six months later I was still 'in default', but also still out of jail, so maybe there’s hope for the U.S. of A. to stay out of the crowbar hotel a while longer.

The bright side is that six months after my second ominous notice that loan enforcers (A pair of menacing professors? Two elderly bank tellers?) would soon be paying me a visit, I had the whole $1400 paid off. I had found a job--driving a van and delivering laundered baby diapers in Hamilton, Ontario. Back then, the word 'laundered' didn't mean quite the same as it does today.

          If President Obama and enough influential Congressmen read this column—and I’m sure they will as usual—I hope they read the following: I have two solutions to their dilemma.

          They should pay attention to the fact that I had found a job. And no, I didn’t invade Iraq because my daddy hadn’t taken out its dictator and I wanted to be Cowboy #1 in the family. Besides delivering cleansed diapers, I was working in a factory in Burlington, Ontario and saving every cent I could for paying off that loan.

          I’m not suggesting that the president of the U.S. send the wife and kids out to work at Canadian Canners; there’s the problem getting work permits and all that. I am saying that the U.S. should invade another country; that always stimulates their economy, and this time they should invade a country which is agriculturally based, so that as soon as the troops get in there with their Coke machines and get the local citizens calmed down, the soldiers can start working on farms instead of patrolling the streets of hellholes like Baghdad where friend and enemy are interchangeable.

          Which country should they invade, you ask? Quite obvious I would have thought—the Netherlands. The Dutch people are hard working, peaceful, intelligent and without a religious fanatic every two metres. I am thinking that they work very hard on their farms and could use the help. No shooting please, and don’t wear your uniforms to the invasion. Just think, within months those U.S. soldiers would be trained in farming and could go back to the Bronx and Watts, the ‘Combat Zone’ in Boston (where the late Richard Hatfield often wandered), or Idaho and show them how to farm. Maybe build some dikes in Death Valley. Then, when the first ones were trained, another invasion by the U.S. would train more soldiers to farm, and so on. The overworked Dutch farmers could sit back and relax once the U.S. soldiers were trained, and the U.S. would finally invade a country where the people appreciated the help. Instead of hearing news reports about the ‘prosecution’ of the war costing the U.S. economy five billion dollars a day, we would hear that, like their Los Angeles Olympics, the U.S. would finally make money on what was once a cash sewer.

          Now let us go on to the second solution to the U.S. problem of debt. Their television news readers always emphasize the word TRILLION when they talk about it, but is it really a trillion? Here in North America, we refer to a trillion as a thousand billion dollars; that’s a number one followed by twelve zeroes, but in Europe a trillion is a one followed by eighteen zeroes.

          You see my point? Overnight, the U.S. debt becomes $55 BILLION instead of $55 trillion and, as a wonderful bonus for us above the 49^th parallel, we would then owe just over half a billion dollars. Of course I could be wrong.

          On a side note, I found it interesting when I looked up Canada’s Debt Clock on the Internet (http://www.davemanuel.com/canada-debt-clock.php) and saw that the ones who run the website had felt it important to inform us they were calculating this in Canadian dollars. What else would the Canadian debt be recorded in? Rupees?

                                               -end-