The villain is television

Is there a GPS-laser surgery connection?

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Some people think it’s pretty funny to give a tourist incorrect directions. My friend Flug is not one of those, but his brother Wizlett is. Last week a nice couple who said they were travelling from North Bay, Ontario, to Halifax, Nova Scotia, stopped by his house to ask how they could again find the Trans Canada Highway. The had taken ‘the scenic route’ that included Lower Kintore and Mack Furman’s diamond-studded outhouse with the porch. Quite famous in parts of Ontario. Flug was out behind the house and pruning some prune bushes.

            “The Trans Canada Highway?” said Wizlett, as if repeating the name of an obscure animal from the jungles of Burkina Faso. “The Trans Canada Highway? Well, you can’t get there from here, but I think I can direct you to a road that will take you to a road that WILL get you there, in time.” He went on to send them on their way to Kedgwick, up by Campbellton. “Once you get there,” he concluded, “you can easily see how to get back onto the Trans Canada Highway.”

            Wizlett was having quite a chuckle as Flug arrived for a visit. The Ontario car was just pulling out of Wizlett’s driveway. Wizlett told his brother all about the hapless couple who were now on their way to north-eastern New Brunswick. “That’s pretty funny, Wiz,” he said. “By the way, the man looked as if he had red hair and a handlebar moustache. Remember we saw his photo on the Internet?”

            Memory and some light slowly dawned on Wizlett’s heavy features. Scheduled for laser eye surgery in Halifax in four days, he had Googled the website called http://www.eye-see-you.com. His surgeon was to be red-haired guy with a handlebar moustache. He would be back from his Ontario vacation on the 28^th, the website informed.

            “Well,” blustered Wizlett, “if he can’t find the Trans Canada Highway, I don’t want him working on my eyes.” Flug gave him the number of his, Flug’s, optometrist. Wizlett had been putting off his eye test because soon he wouldn’t need glasses. Now he would.

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            Still on the subject of talking to people, I was thinking yesterday – as I sipped a lemonade and watched a British football (soccer) game – it seems that every year we are getting further away from each other socially. Of course all that started in the 1950s when people began  buying televisions; up to that point people actually visited each other in their homes, went out to card parties, and saw each other in the post office and general store. After TV came along, they stayed home to watch Hockey Night in Canada and Milton Berle.

            In our case, living as we did in Tilley – north Tilley, on what is now called Churchland Road – we almost had the first TV in our neighbourhood. But no, it appeared across the road at Rose and Fraser’s place. Ours was to arrive a few months later when my brother, who was wealthy from his woods job at a dollar an hour, brought home a $525 Sylvania 21-inch TV. How he managed that I don’t know, but he did. It could be he has been making payments on it since 1961.

            Back to the TV across the road. Coincidentally, every Sunday evening our family would arrive at Rose and Fraser’s just before the Ed Sullivan show came on. Mum would bring some cookies and I would bring my cookie appetite. And those days, my friends, were the last days when people would routinely visit one another in their homes. Once every house acquired a television, there was very little visiting. Today some people refer to that nostalgically as ‘social interaction’.

            Which brings me to one of the latest devices apparently designed to curb ‘social interaction’. I refer back to the beginning of this column, when those two people stopped and asked Wizlett for directions. Rare as asking for directions has been, it’s now pretty much non-existent. The reason? The GPS, or Global Positioning System.

            Just think: if that couple had had one, Wizlett wouldn’t have had to cancel his laser eye surgery. Funny how things work. In this one case, a little less ‘social interaction’ would have been a good thing. Glasses aren’t so bad anyway. Without them, I’d have to drink lemonade out of the bottle.

The (baby) cart before the (wedding) horse

Cell phones were only in jails

                         by Robert LaFrance

            One book by Izaak Walton, the 17^th century English writer, is considered the ‘bible’ of fishing. “The Compleat Angler” tells the fisherman everything he should know about bringing supper in from the trout stream. Other books are considered ‘bibles’ in their own fields, and there are a lot of fields around. There are 800-page tomes about the many ways of building plywood cabinets, and there is the Bible itself, the world’s best-selling book that everyone owns but few read.

            Today I want to talk about the ‘bible’ of etiquette, or manners. Last week at a secondhand book sale I came across “Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette”.

            The later great humour writer Will Rogers used to say he was ‘just mangy with etiquette’ and I would say that description equally applies to me, at least the mangy part (according to certain relatives). When I started reading “Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette” it became clear just how mangy I really am. And you are too, if Ms. Vanderbilt is correct, so don’t look down your vulgar nose at me.

            Chapter one of the book describes just how a baby should be christened. After perusing this text, I was then aware of the mistakes we had made with our three kids and why they turned out so bad. Instead of phoning people to come to the church (this was the late 1980s and early 1990s and phones had just come to Kincardine) we should have sent short notes of invitation. The author even told us how to dress the boy or girl for the church ceremony.

            What rotten parents we were!

            One of the many things I did find curious about the book was the fact that this christening information came in that first chapter, but it was chapter three before we learned the proper way of putting on a wedding ceremony. The cart arrived somewhat before the horse there!

            Ms. Vanderbilt even laid out the ground rules for an elopement. The couple about to whip off to Minto for a quick ceremony in front of a JP are advised to inform all their friends and relatives before they elope, or while they are motoring down the TCH. She mentioned stopping at a phone booth along the way, one assumes because the only cell phones around at that time were located in jails.

            Growing up in Tilley, NB, I of course know about etiquette. Mother would clout me if I smelled up the house, but then I would question why she had cooked beans. I pointed to Sir John A. Macdonald, who was famous for that, and often referred to that old saying: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flatulence”. However, she would just whack me again for impertinence as well as flatulence.

            As one who buys lottery tickets every week, I was especially interested in the etiquette section about how one deals with servants. Once I win the big one, a butler, a gardener, and a couple of scullery maids (whatever ‘scullery’ means) will be practically mandatory. In the book, Amy Vanderbilt outlined how to give servants their instructions for the day: “Notes sent down to servants should always be pleasant and clear. It may be necessary to leave a note of criticism from time to time, but it had better be tactfully phrased.”

            I supposed what she meant by that was that servants can buy lottery tickets too, and with a little bad luck or bad investments you could end up as your cook’s valet.

            There is also a way to refuse the offer of a dance. If a woman were to say: “What! Are you crazy? Go away. I wouldn’t dance with you if you had just won the lottery like the guy in the paragraph above” that wouldn’t go over so well. Instead a lady would say to a gentlemen, according to this book of etiquette: “No thank you, I don’t believe I’m free right now.” This sort of response to a request for a dance might bring a polite ‘thank you anyway’, but there are those who might react with a little less politeness, as in: “I didn’t expect you to be free, but I have a certain amount of cash with me in case I met someone of your ilk.” When he regained consciousness…

            Finally – and I have to wrap this up because Flug and the boys are waiting for me down at the club – I need to explain something vital. Ms. Vanderbilt laid down some rules for all of you out there who smoke cigars. Remember this was the early 1950s. “A chewed cigar end, only too apparent when the cigar is removed during the course of conversation, is enough to repel all but the most hardy females.” At this point the comment that is hovering on my lips and at my fingertips will not find its way into this column. Bill Clinton can take care of himself.
                                                                     -end-

Fact: Scorpions like democracies

Saga of the cynical mechanic

                        by Robert LaFrance

            That first snowstorm is always a shock, isn’t it? My friend Henri Henry from out back of Bath says he can smell Florida from where he is. Henri owns a garage.

            He said that people started phoning as soon as the forecast came up on the Weather Channel. After the weather person had given the weather report and then the forecast for every street corner in Toronto, she said: “And it looks like the Maritimes are going to have some snow too.” By the time the word ‘too’ emerged from between her capped teeth, Henri’s phone was ringing.

            “I figure I have made enough money now to get me to Richmond, Virginia,” he told me Saturday evening down at the club. All day Friday and all that day he had been putting on snowtread tires. “The thing is, most people had perfectly good all-season radials and they had no need to panic. Unfortunately, on short notice like that, I have to charge double. I also plan to stay open on the Sabbath, which I would say should get me to southern Georgia. By Monday evening I will have made enough money to get me into the Day’s Inn Motel in Kissimmee, Florida for a week.”

            Henri is very cynical, I find. I wish I’d thought of buying a garage instead of planting an orchard, long since abandoned as a money-making project. If I were still working at that, my profit MAY have gotten me to Fort Fairfield, Maine, or possibly Mars Hill.

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            Fall is supposed to be the time when you relax, sit back, and contemplate a winter of rest and watching reruns of shows that weren't good enough for you to watch when they were on the first time back in the 1960s, but now that they're ‘nostalgia’. All my stovewood is supposed to be piled and drying for winter, the house is supposed to be winterized (if that's a verb), winter clothes should have come out of the closet, so to speak, and all should be relaxed and ready for the season about to hit.

Did I leave you with the impression I had done all those winter preparations? Guess what?

               There are three cords of stovewood relaxing outside the shed window, the oil tank is gasping for a refill, and I have yet to put away a leaf rake or lawn mower. I did have good intentions about the wood, but you know what the road to hell is paved with. Other signs of the season: Baseball is over and the Cards won the “World” (Translation: U.S.) Series, the soccer players still playing all have goose bumps, and the avalanche of Christmas gadgets has begun falling on us.

            The mighty (bird) hunters are blasting away as if they were moving (on four-wheelers) toward Hanoi, halfton loads of stovewood go by here hourly, my apples are picked for the year – by the bears, who leave their calling cards - and I have put manure on my garden, as well as my column you are thinking.

            Fall is okay, it’s what comes next that I dread.

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            Every week I read - via the Internet - a certain British magazine that rarely fails to have a whole whack of interesting items such as this: "A woman who picked up a bunch of bananas in Birmingham was stung by a scorpion".

            Could this sort of thing happen here? I'm advising all food consumers in Victoria County to avoid picking up bunches of bananas. We must take all precautions to avoid scorpion stings, on our constant guard. But who can blame the little critters for wanting a change in scenery? It’s a fact that scorpions like democracies.

            Still talking about wild creatures, mating season takes its toll on raccoons, skunks, moose, deer, and rabbits, does it not? The roads are littered with their remains. As they say on the Red Green Show, these animals have already been grilled, so they don't even need to be cooked. Ask any of the ravens feasting out there on the highway. Last Tuesday I drove to Woodstock for the annual Earthworm Festival and as I drove near the community called Connell I noted the corpses of: A raccoon, a skunk, a rabbit, a cat, a rabbit, a skunk, a raccoon and a pheasant. It is brutal in Carleton County.   

                                                      -end-   

The police tend to be skeptical (sceptical?)

A whack on the head with a shovel handle

                     by Robert LaFrance

          Since this column is called my diary, I should mention that on the evening of Sunday, October 23^rd, 2011, I watched Red Green at the Playhouse in Fredericton. It was his live show called ‘Wit and Wisdom’ but I can’t say I learned anything new because I already know it all. That’s what mother used to say just before she whacked me with a shovel handle. When I regained consciousness I knew I had been talking when I should have been listening. However, after that I couldn’t listen much anyway because of the ringing in my ears. The doctor called it tinnitus, but I knew its true medical name was ‘Shovel Handle’ (spadapus whackus in Latin).

          After the show, Red Green came out to the lobby to sign autographs, but it wasn’t Red Green at all. It was a shy, quiet, scholarly gentleman named Steve Smith, who plays Red Green. Instead of using Red Green’s voice, he spoke to fans in Steve Smith’s voice. I felt as if I had been defrauded. Here was this quiet voice coming out of Red Green’s mouth. Red Green, the rough-voiced head of Possum Lodge.

          I wish actors would quit doing that. Oh, I understand that maybe the next day, or sitting in civilian clothes in a restaurant that same evening, he would use Steve Smith’s voice because, at that point he would be Steve Smith, but as long as he wears the Red Green getup he should keep that persona. But that’s just me.

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          I’m going out this afternoon, as soon as I mow the lawn for the last time before the snow flies (he said optimistically) and buy some green paint. That should ‘improve my image’ as they say. Apparently all anyone has to do these days to get that old image polished up is to ‘go green’.

          I am waiting for the moment when asbestos purveyors finally clue in to this phenomenon. Over the past few months I have seen advertisements for items that are now ‘green’, but rarely is there any information on what has changed. Surely raw sewerage, asbestos, flu viruses, toxic chemicals and George W. Bush are next with this treatment.

          Last week I watched a bit of a World (?) Series baseball game between the Texas Rangers and the St. Louis Cardinals and what did I see behind the backstop but that former president of the United States, the one almost single-handedly responsible for the sick U.S. economy and the tens of thousands of deaths in Iraq. He was having a great time, sitting with former Major League pitcher Nolan Ryan. Soldiers returning home in coffins from Iraq didn’t seem to bother him in the least. He must have turned green, an operation that takes BAD and turns it into GOOD overnight.

          Look up and down the aisles of your favourite grocery store and you will see product after product that has the green label, showing that (for example) Product A, which last week was cited toxic to all human life, is now ‘green’ because in their packages they use 15% recycled materials. Wow!

          I know, I’m just too cynical.

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          My dog Kezman has what I would call ‘a gustatory flamboyance’ if you know what I mean. I wish I did, but I’m not D.C. Butterfield who has a vocabulary the size of Conrad Black’s ego. What I mean by that phrase is that Kezman eats and drinks some very strange things, even for a dog.

          He prefers white wine, but one day last week after his supper (stuffed anchovy hearts with a peanut butter sauce, etc.) he got more than his share of red wine – a Merlot if I’m not mistaken. I had decided to bottle an order of the red wine since I was down to my last 498 bottles, and, getting the siphon straightened around at the beginning, I had about a litre of it overflow into a big bowl.

          I wasn’t paying much attention—like none—so you can imagine what happened when I dozed off while watching Jeopardy. It turned out that the only one in jeopardy was Kezman, whose nose took him over to that big bowl as it sat minding its own business on the kitchen floor.

          You know how some people get belligerent when they drink? When I woke up and went into the kitchen Kezman was ready for a Tilley scrap so, being from Tilley, I ran, and didn’t stop until I got to the Carleton county line. I’m telling you this just so you’ll know why I was buck naked and up a tree at 4:00 am down at Muniac Picnic site. The police were a little sceptical, but they tend to be, don’t they?

                                    -end-