Boy, was I wrong about that flag!       

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            In last week’s column I asked the musical question: “Does Canada not exist in the winter?” because I couldn’t find a Canadian flag anywhere. Wrong. A few days after I wrote that column I was motoring in the great village of Florenceville-Bristol, that is the Florenceville part of it, and I decided to visit the Great Canadian Dollar Store in search of a flag.

            Guess what? They not only had the exact size I wanted, but several other sizes too, and the young lady working there called me ‘dear’, something I don’t get called at home. The closest I get to being called ‘dear’ here is being called the nether end of a certain farm animal – not a deer.

            Let’s see, what else is going on in our fair land? One man accused me of being Stephen Harper, and did so in front of the whole membership of the Club because it was darts-and-dinner night. He said that if it weren’t for the beard and the too-grey hair, I would look just like SH. (People use his initials now because it reminds them that he won’t talk to them or the media on any subject except the piano and the NDP.)

            Anyway, to skip to the bottom line, this guy who made the accusation told everyone at the club that he could prove I was actually Stephen Harper. “Tell me this,” he said triumphantly, “have you ever seen Bob and Stephen Harper at the same time, in a photo or otherwise?” To him this was the height of logic.

            “He must be Ed Edwards’s pet iguana too,” shouted Flug. “I’ve never seen them together either!”

            From nonsense to more nonsense, my friend Flug was stopped by the police last week and asked why he kept going over the yellow line. He said there was no reason for it except the lemonade he had drunk at the Club. There’s more to the story of course: Flug was walking at the time. La gendarme who flagged him down was Kincardine Police Const. Maryon Flumeneise, who has long had her eye out for Flug. She offered him a lift home and on the way she said: “If I charged you with impaired walking, what would you say to the judge when he asked you how you plead?”

            “I would say: Oh please, please, please, please don’t find me guilty! How’s that for pleading?”

            There’s been some reaction to my recent column of puns, but I have a big and ugly watchdog, so the comments don’t bother me a bit, although the drive-by shootings are getting a little tedious. Cst. Flumeneise is usually the one who answers the call and she’s always a little peeved that it isn’t Flug who invited her to his house. “I might do a little drive-by shooting myself if he doesn’t smarten up!” she roared gently.

            But back to the subject of puns, people are actually sending ME examples of their favourites even though I am the Pun King of western Kincardine. Eddie asked me why I should be careful not to insult a playing card. I said I didn’t know. “Because they travel in packs! Haw haw haw.”

            Even Cst. Flumeneise had to put in her (less than) two cents worth. “I was questioning a driver last evening,” she said, “and he admitted to drinking – the day before, and didn’t drive while he was imbibing (a good example for our youth and our oldth). He even held up an empty whiskey bottle and of course I had to say ‘something’s gone a rye!’”

            Even Glenn Harvard of Glenn’s Photos had to weigh in with all of his 28 years and 98 pounds on the subject of puns. By the way, he’s one of those people who still use film cameras because he feels the quality is better. “Yeah,” he said, which meant he was about to speak, “yeah, I had one older lady – at least 45 – who wasn’t happy with the photos I gave her, well, sold her, and she asked me if I really thought she looked that bad. Lady, I said, I can happily say the answer is in the negative.”

            After all that additional pun-ishment, I would like to leave readers with this statement by convicted felon Conrad Black who was being interviewed by a British reporter. Although Black has lost much of his fortune, he still has a hundred million or so, it is said. If you want to hear the words of an arrogant, uncaring and blind rich man, listen to this:

            The reporter asked him what he now thinks of his native country, Canada, which has let him back in. “It’s a more interesting country than it was and frankly, John, it’s not that hard to make money. It’s a treasure house and it only has 33 million people in it. There are almost no poor people.”

                                               -end-      

Flemming has brought back Mr. Dressup’s Tickle Trunk   

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            New Brunswick’s Health Minister Ted Flemming recently ‘hinted’ – the word used by some journalists – that there would be a new hospital built in Perth-Andover, and high on a hill above the flood zone. I saw the 9.5 minute (unedited) interview on the Internet and he also ‘hinted’ that surgery was not going to be an option for this new facility because ‘Waterville is just down the road’ and Hotel Dieu will flood again.

            Why do I see and hear the fine hand of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), that rather devious Italian politician? Why do I get the impression that he is saying: “Don’t be so upset about losing surgery now, because in the future there will be this fine new hospital overlooking all the sick people.” To be fair, he didn’t say that of course, or I would have pounced on the word ‘overlooking’ which is what we are all afraid of, being overlooked while the greater scheme of things drifts down the river. Oops, wrong analogy.

            Every time I hear one of those future-bright announcements, it reminds me of my favourite kids’ show host, Mr. Dressup. I used to watch that when my kids were growing up. One of his great stage props was his ‘Tickle Trunk’, where he found all sorts of costumes and masks designed to make things look different and better than they really were, if you get my drift.

            Let us be clear: the government(s) have tried to get rid of Hotel Dieu Hospital, and particularly its surgery, ever since Bernard Lord’s little band of minions decided to build a hospital in downtown metropolitan Waterville, where existed a ‘critical mass’ of cow patties. Whether this decision was made after a night of whisky sours and cannabis sativa, we will probably never know, but the kindest thing I can possibly say is that it was a mistake.

            They’re about to make another one by getting rid of surgery in Perth-Andover because the area doesn’t have a ‘critical mass’ (to use the minister’s words) of surgical patients. Well, no kidding. When you refuse to let a second surgeon come to Hotel Dieu and you overwork the first one, that might happen. TV networks use the same method when getting rid of a show; keep changing its place on the schedule until no one can find it any more. Voila! No more critical mass.

            Were I able to see into the future, I would probably see the brand new 2-room Perth-Andover hospital high on the hill in Andover, and I could see nurses reaching into a Horizon Health Tickle Trunk and handing out band-aids. But then I’m cynical.

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

            On another subject that probably doesn’t involve politics, I have a question: Does Canada not exist in the winter?

Those of you who drive by our estate out here in the Colony of Scotch cannot help but notice that I proudly fly a Canadian flag on our front lawn. Trouble is, it’s getting a little threadbare and seedy and that is no fault of mine. I have been trying to buy a Canadian flag since the first of November.

No dollar store, no hardware store, no corner grocery, no black market entrepreneur, has a Canadian flag for sale. In one day last week, I visited three dollar stores (where I usually buy flags) and five other types of stores; not a Canadian flag to be had. I asked the cashier in each establishment: “How come you don’t got no Canadian flags for sale? Are we in Portugal or what?”

Pretty well all of them looked at me as if I were something they had just scraped off their shoe, and said, as if they were imparting information from the very Fountain of Logic: “Well, no, we don’t sell flags in the winter.” None of them saw anything bizarre about this, even after I asked: “Does Canada not exist in the winter? It must. I just saw it down the road.”

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

As the reader knows, high finance is one of my specialties, and I'm here to report that I have found an investment that we all can take advantage of and make a good profit without any risk.

Back in the 1970s I bought Clairtone stock at $4.67 and sold it two years later at $1.22, and the next month I bought Redstone Resources at $4.75 and sold it three years later at $1.60. We won’t even mention Nortel, but those days are gone. I have found a sure thing. Those who should know are reporting from all corners of the world that the Canadian dollar is all set to rise against other currencies.

How about if we all buy as many Canadian dollars as our bank accounts will handle and wait for the rise? It won’t be long before our ships come in and we’re vacationing in Minto. As long as its not Waterville, please.

                                    -end-

Do you know Noah Vail? No?

A garbage can full of pun-ishment  

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            You can’t say you haven’t been warned; I have said in two different columns this fall that I would soon write a column composed entirely of puns, the lowest form of humour.

I always like to see entrepreneurs come up with new ideas and then go ahead and produce an actual product for sale. Such was the case with Frank Naismith, a local guy who designed a big beer mug (not that anyone around here drinks alcoholic beverages) and put it on the market about two weeks before Hallowe’en, which is supposed to be kind of a scary time. What did he call his invention, you ask? It’s the Frank N. Stein.

            Castor DeMercé, who lives down the road and tries to be a carpenter, stopped by yesterday morning and we each had a  lemonade. The sun WAS over the yardarm because I had put the yardarm into the ditch for the day. Castor was saying that he had built in his garage two shelves for his power tools and they had both collapsed from the weight. Just before he arrived at my estate, he had put up yet another shelf and put the same heavy power tools on it. It was still there half an hour later. I asked him why he didn’t simply put less weight on it. “You gotta believe in your shelf,” he simply.

            My second cousin twice removed (to prison both times) Ernie said – not very originally – that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know and proceeded to prove it. He said when he had been in the slammer, the top dog in his cell block was named Bob Vail. He said that, like Conrad Black, Bob had gourmet meals sent in from the kitchen while the rest of the prison population, and indeed the people of Renous itself, had to be satisfied with sirloin or quiche. “The rest tried to get the good meals too,” Ernie said, “but it was to no avail. I was a good friend of Bob and got good meals too, which proves that the secret is to know a Vail.” If he had continued and mentioned our other cousin Noah Vale, I would have cheerfully killed him. And probably ended up in Renous myself.

            About a month ago my friend Flug decided that he would no longer eat store-bought eggs. He asked me where I got my eggs and I explained that, when one finds a source of ‘free-range’ hens’ eggs – the same as for fiddleheads – he does not divulge that source even if someone gently placed red-hot steel spikes under his fingernails and insulted his grandmother. So Flug, being Flug, decided he would buy a dozen laying hens and keep them in his garage. “One hen never does what the others do,” he complained, and I remembered a similar trouble when I had hens. There’s always one, I told him. I called them ‘henigades’.

            So Flug eventually got rid of the hens, which had laid six eggs in four weeks, and moved on to his next adventure in craziness. The day after he gave the hens away, I looked out my kitchen window and saw Flug going by on his old Schwinn bicycle and then fifteen minutes later I once more saw him going by – backwards this time. I hollered out and asked him why he was doing that and he said that he was ‘recycling’. I think Flug needs a hobby.

            The country music group The Rebels was in town last weekend and one part of their act was a song about Christmas when five men dressed as Santa Claus – one for each of the boys - were to have come out on stage and to do a little dance number. Trouble was, the Santa who was supposed to come out and dance beside Sidney J. had a flat tire on the way to the theatre and didn’t make it. Sidney J. was – one might say – a Rebel without a Claus.

            Everyone in the small community of Pandora is laughing because a fellow named Scott Ginger tried to murder Jayden Hislip’s grandmother for her cash. Everyone but Scott knew better than to annoy Mrs. Grindon. If Scott had asked anyone, he would have learned that she was the wrong one to attack. The reason he wasn’t successful was that she was a trained MI6 operative and knows 46 ways to kill a human and that includes Scott. Why did he do that, you ask? Apparently what happened was that Scott was ‘over-served’ as people say when they have drunk too much, and when someone used the word ‘kilogram’ he decided to try it. He will be out of the hospital by Christmas – of 2013.

                                       -end-

Column for Nov 28/12

Working to pay Brian Mulroney’s pension   

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            The stove wood is all piled up (or ‘stacked’ as they say on TV as if they’re talking about cases of corn flakes), the lawn is mown for the last time in 2012, the winter tires are on everybody’s vehicles, the anti-freeze is checked, the insulation in Kezman’s doghouse has been fixed into place, the basement is full of preserves (it seems), the stovepipes are cleaned, and the apples are all picked.

            It’s time to sit down in my favourite chair, put up my feet and…

            “Get your feet off that pillow! I bought that at a yard sale in Minto and it has sentimental value! And get your fat *** out of that chair and feed the dog why don’t you? And by the way, where did you hide my rolling pin? I want to make some cookies.”

            She did finally find her rolling pin, which somehow fell from a drawer in the kitchen to the branches of a Honeygold apple tree at the back of the orchard. Who knows how these things happen? Ours is not to wonder why though, as the late Miss Sara Williams, my old high school English teacher, used to say. (Unfortunately, the second part of that quotation is: “Ours is but to do and die.”)

I believe that’s paraphrased from the Tennyson poem ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ but it could just as easily be from a Bruce Springsteen album, the way my memory works (or doesn’t) these days.

            I mentioned my feeling that my work outside is all done for the year. There is a certain time every fall which is similar in a way to Wednesdays or what we call ‘hump days’ because half the work week is done. I am referring to those 26 New Brunswickers who have jobs. There is a certain ennui that sets in.

My fall ‘hump days’ are just about now, if certain persons would quit picking on me. If you’ve ever been whacked by a hardwood rolling pin, you might understand astronomy a little better (all those stars!) but it’s definitely being picked on.

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

            On to other subjects: Last week I was appalled to see the photo of former prime minister Brian Mulroney on the front page of the daily newspaper I receive once in a while, like three days a week.

            As I dragged the paper out of my group mail box box (as it were) I couldn’t help but wonder what that man could possibly have to say that would put him on the front page of a New Brunswick paper. It turned out that he was pandering to us New Brunswickers and saying to Ottawa’s elite: no transfer payment reduction for NB.

            I was impressed by that, because only the day before, the federal finance minister had pledged there would be no cut in the transfer payments to New Brunswick. So it seems that our former beloved prime minister can now see into the past as well as the future. Remember all the rosy predictions he made on various subjects and how they all came true?

            But I do have to admit one thing about Brian Mulroney: his Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. appears to have been a good thing. Generally speaking that is, unless you happen to own a business in Ontario or a lumber mill somewhere in Canada.

            I should quit talking about Brian M. though, because he did make an effort and he did listen. I keep getting impressions that our present prime minister doesn’t listen all that well, but then I was scared by a politician when I was a baby and they’ve scared me ever since.

            NOTE: When I said Brian Mulroney listened, I didn’t mean to imply that he ever did any more than that. He and Frank McKenna were masters of listening intently to us ‘great unwashed’ (An H. L. Mencken reference there) and then doing what they were going to do in the first place.

            Seeing that face on the front page of my daily paper did cause me a moment of consternation though, but that shouldn’t be confused with constipation. Indeed, the effect was exactly opposite. All that Meech Lake business, the rolling of the dice, the Airbus scandal involving the German alleged miscreant Karlheinz Schreiber – all that came back to me, so I put down the paper and turned on the TV. And there he was again, like a born-again Nixon rising from disgrace to ignominy.

            It hurts to think that I’m helping to pay this guy’s (Mulroney’s) pension while he gets $10,000 speaking fees.

            So I turned to another channel and there was his son Ben Mulroney on some mindless show about Hollywood celebrities where the men don’t know how to shave and the actresses are, in the words of Mort Sahl, female impersonators. We can’t win for losing, but I keep buying lottery tickets anyway.           

                                              -end-

Cantcha just wait a few days more?

The longest journey begins

with but a single step      

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            Some companies and stores just couldn’t wait until after Remembrance Day, or as they call it in the U.S., Veterans’ Day, before they started their Christmas advertising. Would a few days really make that much difference?

            I asked this question of the boys at the club and the answers I received ranged from the professorial to the downright blasphemous.

“Deer hunting season is over November 17^th,” said Bernie. “If I was hunting white-tailed deer on November 19 and a ranger came along, would he say: ‘oh, a couple of days shouldn’t make much difference’? Of course it makes a difference. During those few days, a store – a BIG store if you know who I mean – could sell many thousands of dollars worth of merchandise just because people – females – wanted to buy their Christmas presents early.”

“That’s a bunch of &%$#*&,” pointed out Leroi in his polite way. “No offence Bernie, but you don’t know your aspect from a hole in the cold hard ground.”

And so it went, with the only one gaining anything – certainly not knowledge – was Clyde the bartender and his employers, our club. So we all felt good, contributing to the well-being of our Scotch Colony Bar and Grill. If anyone were to ask my opinion on the matter, I would have said (as I implied in the first paragraph) that a few more days wouldn’t make or break any store, and the thanks they received from their customers would return to them in spades, as the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 11:1-2. or was it John chapter two?

            Whichever one it was, what happened was that the old guys cast their bread upon the water and it turned into wine. No, that’s not right: they cast their bread (rice, in other words) upon the water and it returned to them after a while. Either that of the water turned into wine and then…never mind.

 

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

            On to another subject: This is the month when we of a certain age remember where we were when John F. Kennedy was killed. I was fifteen years old at the time and in grade two and my classmate Judy Inman came in to the classroom and said: “President Kennedy has been assassinated!”

            People a lot younger than I, and people a lot older than I, don’t realize today what this meant to people my age. JFK represented hope, a change from the stodgy values of the 1950s when the main thing one could ever hope for was a bungalow, 2.3 kids who mostly stayed out of jail, and a job that lasted. I guess we got out of that routine quickly enough. We who grew up in the Sixties were happy with a tent and a cell phone. That is, a phone in or near our jail cell after we got arrested for protesting whatever the government was doing that day.

 

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

            Don’t you just love November? It’s the time of year when that first ‘common cold’ hits with a vengeance, and, as we know from Romans, Chapter 12, that vengeance stuff belongs to you-know-who. As I write, my son and I here in New Brunswick and my daughter in Calgary all have some version of a cold or flu. Here in the Picture Province, our colds have lasted about a month now and by my calculations and history, they each have 11 days to go.

            Other than the early Christmas shopping that I mentioned earlier, I have everything bought for the big day on Dec. 25. Because of my gender and its obvious handicaps, I will not buy any presents until Dec. 23 at the earliest, but this year I may wait until Dec. 27 or so. What bargains! And you can buy a Christmas tree for about 98 cents then. It’s like buying a turkey two days after Thanksgiving; the grocery store owners meet you in the parking lot and practically force you to take the turkeys at a dollar each. Oh, I love capitalism!

            I and a gang of high-end (they were sitting on stools) community economists were talking about what needs to be done for the present New Brunswick ‘economy’. Harold F. said that governments cutting jobs is exactly the wrong thing to do because they’re just ruining the rural areas.

 

            Then I said we should cut down on our buying of Christmas presents, which of course was just wrong because that hurts the stores. The consensus? About 1:14 am we decided that drinking more lemonade and spending all our money on ‘foolishment’ was just the answer. Next morning I made my first purchase – aspirin. You gotta start somewhere.        

                                         -END-

Dealing with those suppertime phone calls

Another sensible way to deal with telemarketers       

 

                                                       by Robert LaFrance

 

            There lives in this neighbourhood a lady who is in her ninth decade and who is the most feared person in Canada, at least in the minds of telemarketers.

            Her name is…well, let’s not say what her name is, because telemarketers aren’t the only ones who fear her. If she glared at me, I would run to the next county, then catch a plane to Timbuktu.

            One poor telemarketer – I think it was Megan from Cardholder Services – recently called Bertha (not her real name). It so happened I was there getting her husband to sharpen two axes and a bucksaw. The phone rang.

 

            She sighed and said: “I’ll answer it, Fred. If it’s that nice man pretending to be a bank inspector again, I will have to have another talk with him.” The week before, one of those fraudsters called her and by the time she got through with him, he promised to turn himself in at the nearest RCMP detachment – as long as she stopped talking.

            “It’s Megan, of Cardholder Services,” said Bertha, holding her hand over her phone. “I’ll just talk to her a few minutes.” At that moment I began a fairly significant prayer for Megan’s immortal soul.

            “Well hello Megan,” said Bertha, “and what can I do for you this evening? I believe my husband usually answers when you call four or five times a week but he’s busy. What’s that? You say your company had detected a problem with my credit card and computer interface? What can you mean by that? Oh, you say you don’t want to waste my time with a lot of explanations?

            “That’s all right, Megan. You go ahead and waste my time. I would like to know what problems I have. An older person – I’m in my eighties you know – an older person has to be careful. You’re not a bank inspector too by any chance are you? Oh, you’re not? That’s too bad. The last one said I had too much money in my account and should draw some out so he could check if it was counterfeit. That was good news.”

            After a few minutes, Bertha put the phone on ‘speaker’ so I could hear what was being said.

            “Would you explain what the problem is dear?” she asked sweetly. Megan seemed to gain a little confidence by the grandmotherly tone and started explaining. “We have found there’s a problem with your computer, and – “

            “What problem is that, Megan? By the way, I have a niece named Megan you know. She’s studying to be a nurse in Halifax – or is it Saint John? I can never get those two straight. Anyway, my niece Megan is studying to be a nurse because she wants to help people you know. She wasn’t always like that; she used to tease her little brother something awful. Why I remember the day…”

            Bertha went on like this for some time and every once in a while, poor helpless, hapless, outnumbered Megan of Cardholder Services would try to get a word in, but the flurry of words coming from the other direction was constant.

            “And then there’s my third cousin Arnold,” Bertha was saying. “He tried planting a garden one year – that’s the year he was out of work for eight months after losing his job at the potato processing plant. No, it was almost nine months, because his wife Ellen had the baby just as he started working for the fertilizer company…Oh, I’m so sorry Megan. You were mentioning about my computer?”

            There was a pause, perhaps a pause of shock at this invitation to actually speak. “Well, Mrs., er, Bertha, I just wanted to say that we have found that your computer might have a problem that might make it susceptible to a virus and our software would fix the problem and would keep your credit cards safe too.”

            “And what would it do? Would it kill this virus? Because one thing both Fred and I are very careful of are viruses and things like that. I remember his cousin Vincent over in Renous – he lives there in a barracks building with a lot of other men – Vincent caught a virus from stepping on a rusty nail - ”

            “Oh no Bertha! It’s not that kind of a virus. This is a virus that affects your computer and you can lose all your data. By the way, what kind of computer do you have? What brand is it? So we can send you the right software you know.”

            “Computer?” said Bertha. “I don’t own a computer. Or a credit card either. We wouldn’t have either one of them in the house, what with those viruses and things hanging on to them. I told Fred only last week when he said we should have a credit card…Hello? Megan? Hello?”

                                     -end-

Communication is better today

Snail mail (1967) vs. email (2012)    

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            “Can it be that it was so simple then, or has time rewritten every line? If we had the chance to do it all again, would we? Could we?”

            Those are lines sung by Barbra Streisand in the movie ‘The Way We Were’. Every day, as I grow more and more ancient, I wonder about that. Would we do the same things we did back then, like in 2008 or even earlier? (That’s as far back as my memory goes and even then it’s spotty.)

            ‘The good old days’ is not a phrase I use often. After all, what would I do without email, the Internet, and those spring-loaded dog collars that are the only way I can possibly keep hold of the giant mongrel Kezman who lives here?

            The reason I started thinking along these lines was that I was recently talking to a hockey coach who said he had several young players and several who will graduate next June. He said it was a good mixture of the young and the old.

 “The old?” I thought to myself (which is my favourite way). “So age seventeen is old now?” I continued talking to myself, which they say is a sign you have money in the bank, which I do. Tonnes of it.

 

So I talked to a few students around that age about whether they felt old at their age.

            “Well, yeah,” said one. “I read in a book – on the Internet, Wikipedia actually – that sometimes even young people felt like ‘elder statesmen’. I’ve been a student for a dozen years now, which is a long time to be in one job. People nowadays have eight or ten careers in their lives because things are changing so fast. A computer program that was brand new five years ago is like ancient history now, like as old as you are.”

            He didn’t really say that last part. I put that in just to add some conflict to this otherwise uninspiring column.

            To him, the Beatles are part of ancient history as well, as are the Soviet Union, Brian Mulroney, and common sense – all gone before he was born. To me, ancient history is the 1950s when we children expected to be nuked any minute, World War II and certainly World War I, the days without computers in every house, and people who could remember the 19^th century.

            Probably the biggest change of all is today’s instant communication. It’s amazing. A university student in Vancouver can send a text message to his dad at 2:00 pm and say he desperately needs money for a vital set of books (beer) and the dad can email or otherwise electronically transfer that money to him by 2:05 pm.

Here’s what it was like when I was attempting to attend post-secondary school in the late 1960s:

            Attending UNB Fredericton, I needed fifty dollars for two geology books. I had three cents in my bank account and my father had no phone. I phoned the neighbours who had just had installed the first phone on our road in Tilley and asked them to get father to mail me $50 in cash.

 

          Four days later no money. I phoned the neighbours again (Don’t ask me how I, with three cents, managed two long-distance calls from phone booths – remember them? - because it wasn't strictly ethical) and they said he didn’t have my mailing address, so he had to drive to Woodland, Maine (near Caribou) to ask my aunt for the address. She wasn’t home, so he drove to Grand Falls to see my other aunt who gave him the address.

            He had sent the money four days earlier. Right after I had hung up that second phone call, I went to the mailbox of my rooming house. Sure enough, my face lit up to find an envelope with the return address Tilley on it. Good old Dad! I knew he would come through.

 

             I quickly tore it open to find nothing but a single sheet of writing paper. “Dear son, I had five 10-dollar bills ready to put in this envelope and then by mistake I sealed it. I am very sorry and will try and send it by next weekend if I can find your address again. When I put it on the envelope, it was the only place I wrote it down. I’ll have to drive to Grand Falls again to get it, but I don’t have any money for gas right now.

            “Wait a minute,” he continued. “I just found five 10-dollar bills in my pocket!” Just about then I was in despair, but since I had just gotten paid $60 for working part-time in a small grocery store, I decided to use that money instead of the cash good old Dad would have sent if he hadn’t sealed the envelope already.

 

             Since the Riverview Arms tavern (long since demolished) was a good spot to buy secondhand books, I decided to go there for a while. I woke up a week later in Campbell River, BC.

                                       -end-      

Finally got rid of that turkey!

Right down to the turkey’s lips and elbows  

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            There! Finally! (Columnist licks his chops.) I have finally eaten the last possible morsel of that Thanksgiving turkey, and you know what? I also finally figured out one of the things we are being thankful for – not having to eat turkey again until Christmas.

            Last year I listed the many dozens of mealtime treats that can be made from leftover turkey, and I won’t bore the faithful and long-suffering reader with those, other than perhaps Turkey Tarragon Pickle Pudding, but this year I want to extol the virtues of the fabulous avian treat we call turkey.

            It has nothing to do with the country Turkey of course; it wouldn’t be English if it were logical. It was domesticated by the Aztecs in Mexico. Too bad they hadn’t refused it an exit visa.

            From a book of definitions collected by a chap named Frank Muir I quote: “The turkey has practically no taste except a dry, fibrous flavour reminiscent of a mixture of warmed-up Plaster of Paris and horsehair. The texture is like wet sawdust and the whole vast feathered swindle has the piquancy of a boiled mattress.” – William Connor, the late British newspaper columnist.

            That pretty much covers the turkey.

            We have a lot of traditions - like Thanksgiving turkey – that could easily be put aside. While driving on the right side of the road may not be one of them, certainly Valentine’s Day could be placed in the dustbin (as the British say) along with other British holdouts like Boxing Day. When I was a kid my neighbour Big Sully used to always come down and beat me up on December 26. Finally my mother dropped him with a right cross to the chin and explained that the ‘boxing’ part of Boxing Day referred to putting unwanted Christmas presents in boxes and taking them to ‘the poor’. I Tilley in the 1950s, that would have included just about everyone except Hiram Kinney’s dog, who lived well.

            Talking about the needy brings me to the Good Samaritan Food Bank. It recently had its fall food drive and did all right, including getting some good donations of money, but it always needs more. They also accept returnable empty bottles and cans that they can take in for money.

            Here’s what the Good Samaritan Food Bank almost always needs: canned meats, baby food, pasta sauce, canned milk, oatmeal and childrens’ items like small juice boxes and snack bars. And bring in those returnables. Those people who run the food bank are amazing; let’s not disappoint them. The food bank is located along the Aroostook Road in Andover, just downriver from McAsphalt.

            In what must be some kind of a record, the food bank has been broken into four times in the past year. I’m trying to picture the type of person who would break into a place to steal food when all they have to do is walk in the front door and ask for it.

            The rest of column will be devoted to less important items, but still those that are part of our everyday lives. For example, how many of you readers know the meaning and the origin of the word ‘smithereens’? Well, I’ll tell you. It means ‘bits and pieces’ and it was evidently coined by an IRA explosives specialist in County Donegal (the home of some of my ancestors). Watching a building explode due to one of his bombs in 1921, he said to his wife: “Begorrah! That jalopy is now smithereens, my girl!”

Among the items I bought on my latest trip to a grocery store was a cut of ‘cured ham’. It seems that for the past few weeks if I’ve heard nothing but news stories about the XL meat plant in Brooks, Alberta, where the wonderful bacterium eColi was found. My question is, why haven’t we heard about whatever used to be wrong with the ham I just bought? If it’s cured, then what was it cured of? Consumers need to know these things.

Last week I saw a hummingbird, probably the last one of the fall before they head south to Kissimmee, Florida. No wait! That’s my sister! The point is, they were about to head south for the winter. Usually when you see one hummingbird, another comes along soon to fight with the first.

Sure enough, about a minute later I saw a second hummingbird who immediately attacked the first one. That’s all they seem to do – fight. I wish I could explain to them that if they didn’t waste all that energy fighting they would probably be the size of eagles. Why do they act like married couples?

                                    -end-

Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012

Everybody should order ‘chicken chests’        

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            That first snow. What a thrill!

            I am writing this on a Sunday morning, a few hours after I awoke to see the ground covered in white stuff that was neither baking soda nor flour. Those reading the words ‘What a thrill!’ will recognize sarcasm, irony, and all that good stuff.

Why me? Why does winter have to happen to me of all people? I’ve tried to be a good person. I give to the food bank (food, returnables, donations) and I don’t beat my dog unless he deserves it.

On to other things: I was thrilled recently when I read the newspaper headline “Scottish to vote for independence in 2014”. As one who has seen (and heard) a certain amount of Scottish culture and one who has often heard the opinion that Scotland is the finest place in Earth, I was surprised to learn it wasn’t already independent.

After all this time, none of the people in this household who claim Scottish ancestry (not me) have ever mentioned the fact that Scotland is part of Great – or formerly great – Britain. I think they have believed all these years that Scotland was a country anyway, and the Scots the greatest race. The kiltophiles of this world must think the 2014 vote is quite irrelevant.

One of these days, I warn you, I am going to do a pun column. It will consist of a mealtime condiment and gushing praise (a salt and flattery) and things like that. I will look at every little crook and nanny for inspiration. Anyway, perhaps I’ll do that later. I like to sit and think about puns in my lonely cabin, but I can’t do that any more because the cabin has a lean on it, according to the bank, (and how would they know?) and I might fall out.

Occasionally, against my better judgment, I read a book set in Victorian England, meaning the latter half of the nineteenth century when the ever-smiling Queen Victoria was on the throne. “We are not amused,” was her favourite phrase. The reason I don’t often like to read about this period of history is that it is so silly – unlike our age of endless serious discussion. Nobody in those days acknowledged any parts of their bodies; their legs were referred to as ‘limbs’ as if they themselves were a tree. After I read the book I refer to I went out for a restaurant meal and ordered ‘chicken chests, please’.

As if I hadn’t been depressed enough about the fall’s first snow, Flug came over to visit this morning. He went to the fridge first thing and took out a lemonade. “Late night,” he explained, before he drank it all in one visit to the bottle, then grabbed another. “Isn’t it great about the snow?” he asked, and grabbed another lemonade before I kicked him halfway to my cabin with a lean on it. If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s people who are cheerful in the morning or make welcoming comments in the direction of winter.

Have you been watching the news coverage of the Charbonneau hearings in Montreal? Quite fascinating - owners of construction companies being called before the hearings and testifying that they had to pay the Mafia and politicians three or four percent of any government contract. It was right on film, these guys handing out envelopes of cash to organized crime folks. Four envelopes stuffed with cash, one for the Mafia, and three for the politicians. One news reporter was saying tonight that Quebec was ‘corrupt’. No kidding. However, one good thing did come out of all this - one tired old phrase will now have to go in the waste-basket: “Under the table payments”. The video clearly showed that the payments were right on top of the table.

I wanted to contact the Guinness Book of World Records 2014. As of last evening at 6:37, I had been called 329 times in two days by telemarketers, most of them being “Megan, with Cardholder Services”. Another one I’ve gotten a few thousand times before is the one with the ship’s whistle at the beginning. The idea is that I have just won a Caribbean cruise and I should send money to secure my stateroom.

I said I ‘wanted’ to call the Guinness people, but I have changed my mind. Megan is just so cheerful and happy sounding and just wants to help me out with my credit card problems, even though I don’t have any that I know of. Unless…what aren’t they telling me? Maybe the next time Megan calls I had better find out. 

                                                    -end-         

It was a very good year for whining

Emerging from the whine cellar        

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            Time to quit whining about winter coming. Let’s get on with complaining about other things!

            It was interesting to hear Environment and Local Government Minister Bruce Fitch say, after he’d made his government’s long-delayed relocation announcement, that the people of Perth-Andover are ‘partially to blame’ for the fact that only some of the flooded houses will be moved this fall. He said there should have been a lot more than twenty lots ready.

            I could be wrong (I often am) but I’m quite sure that everybody in and around the village and others who were listening to and watching the news realized that there wasn’t much point getting lots ready if the government decided to do everything BUT move houses. If I were a land developer in Perth-Andover, would I really want to spend many tens of thousands of dollars to develop lots only to find that the government had decided to put all their money on ‘mitigation’?

            It was his own government that caused the problem, but then, isn’t it always?

I found it odd that in neither government announcement was the flooding of Muniac Road mentioned. During the flood, most of those on the Perth side of the river could leave the village via Jawbone Mountain, but in order to get to Waterville hospital, they had to go up to Arthurette, over to the St. John River, cross Brooks Bridge (if possible) or go up to Grand Falls and downriver on the Trans Canada Highway. If they could have gone via Muniac it was just a matter of driving down through Bath etc. and crossing the river at Hartland. Too simple?

            Well! That was a good start on the complaining, wasn’t it?

            On to sibling matters, I see that it’s time to start hating my sister again. It won’t be long – a month or two -  before the snowy swirling winds of Kincardine are all around me and she sends an email letter from Florida: “It’s 82 degrees here today with a nice breeze. We took a walk around the lake…” You want to know the definition of hate? Call me on that day. I will not only define the word, but will add some adjectives, free of charge.

            While I’m in the whine cellar, I should mention one of the most annoying things about working with a computer. I have a feature on my computer’s operating system that tells me when I plug in earphones. This fabulously helpful sign pops up and says: “You have just plugged a device into your audio jack.”

            Really?

            It’s nice to be informed about this sort of thing. Just think, if a burglar or my Aunt Marion somehow sneaked up to my office while I was typing and they plugged in my earphones, I would know immediately and could call the police during one of their frequent patrols through the Scotch Colony. I daresay that Stephen Harper’s Omnibus Crime Bill (Safe Streets and Communities Act), passed in March, has something to say about these hoodlums plugging ‘devices’ into the audio jack of my computer.

            Those who read this column but don’t use a computer don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, but here’s a comparison: You are sitting in your living room and a dump truck backs onto the lawn just outside, then dumps a load of topsoil there. This is a load that you have ordered. The driver comes in and says: “I just dumped a load of topsoil onto your lawn.” Oh, really?

            I sure got reaction to last week’s column that listed many (about .0004%) of the things I hate. People phoned and emailed in defence of wind chimes, and even though I didn’t mention cats, they defended them too. I will not despair though; of the 261 letters I received, almost one percent agreed with me on at least one of the points. That’s progress. In 2007 I wrote an anti-cat column and received 1,432 letters, all against. It’s probably time to write a pro-cat column, and I will. As soon as I find something good to say about cats.

 

            Going back to the second paragraph of this column, I should say that the citizens of Perth-Andover, especially flood victims of course, are happy that the government has finally made the relocation announcement. It was a long time coming, as I mentioned, but the point is, the relocations can now get started. When I and a few thousand others complained that it took too long – much too long – to get the thing going, I thought about a sentence that the French writer and philosopher Voltaire attributed to King Louis XIV. Like the NB government, when he did something good he was still criticized: "Every time I fill a vacant place I make a hundred malcontents and one ingrate."
                                                -end-

Hating on Oct. 10, 2012

All the things I love to hate      

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            Wind chimes. Squirrels (rats with good PR). Painting anything. Tail-gaters, especially on 4-lane highways. Insects in my apples. Flat tires. U.S. election campaigns. Microsoft. Cell phone companies. Any figure of authority. George W. Bush. The very indecisive Reversing Falls. Procrastinating. The use of the words ‘bacteria’, ‘media’ and ‘data’ as singular. Bureaucrap. Diets. Careless parking which can lead to car-less parking. And I ain’t fond of bad grammar.

            Designer beards. A few years ago they would have simply been called ‘unkempt’. How about ‘concurrent jail sentences’? Ever heard of anything so dumb?

            I can’t think of any people I hate, but I sure hate a lot of THINGS. And the number seems to be increasing every day. I don’t hate Facebook, but it is a bad thing sometimes, such as when a young friend of mine learned of her best friend’s death on Facebook, only an hour after at happened.

            I think I hate some of the oxymorons – as well as the morons – of everyday life. How about ‘common sense’? Did you ever hear of anything that fit the description of oxymoron any better? I can only assume that the phrase was invented before the age of television, when several people did have some sense. I don’t have that problem myself.

            Back to things I hate, I hate to see a new car scratched – mine or someone else’s – especially when it’s just through stupidity. About five years ago a certain RCMP officer parked what was clearly a brand new cruiser at the post office parking lot in Perth, and somebody in an old beater drove in and parked about a foot away, swung open the door and laid open a big gash in the cruiser’s door. The officer came out just then, saw what had happened, and charged the guy right then and there. I would have helped set up a gallows on the spot and offered to find the lumber, but she said no, ‘due process’ would have to suffice.

            Just about a week after we bought our 2009 Corolla, I parked it in a grocery store parking lot. It was a BIG parking lot in Fredericton, and I parked in the back corner of it, as far from the other cars as I could get. I was in the store no more than six and a half minutes, but when I came out, there was a pickup truck on one side of my car, and a van on the other. They were close, and there wasn’t another vehicle within fifty feet. Lots of room, but the drivers felt they needed the companionship I guess. It was a miracle though; there wasn’t a scratch on my Toyota. However, as I was driving home, a truck threw back a rock and smashed out a headlight. Murphy lived, then as now.

            I can’t say as I hate them, but it quite annoying at times when organizations don’t take down their signs after advertising an event. When I am in stunned mode (often) I am just as likely to make plans for overeating at a potluck supper that took place the week before. Don’t laugh; it’s more sad than funny. Last year, thinking a bean and salad supper was scheduled for a certain afternoon, I drove 20 km only to find it was the previous Sunday.

            Billionaires and mere millionaires who, in truth, are not as financially solvent as I am: Suppose, for argument’s sake, I owe $71,325.23 to my credit card company, I am still better off ‘on the bottom line’ than someone like Donald Trump who, it is said, has assets of $145 billion and debts of $195 billion. So how come he’s driving a Rolls Royce, or being chauffeured in one, and I have a slightly less expensive Japanese sedan? Why does he eat caviar and I am overjoyed to have brook trout?

            Bottled water. It’s been proven over and over again that bottled water has just as many bacteria (that’s more than one bacterium) and minerals as the water coming out of taps, but people spend hundreds of dollars a year and waste a lot of plastic in buying bottled water. The companies who sell it have persuaded people that their product is ‘safe as houses’ as they say in Britain of all places, and all they needed was a group of 100 million people or so who bought that guff. I once paid $1.73 for a half-litre bottle of water and proceeded to give my head a shake. Dangerous, but effective.

 

               But most of all, I think I hate to have people be sceptical when I tell them something. I never lie as you know. Even when I found a wonderful money-making opportunity over the Internet, people just laughed when I told them. I am going to be a wealthy man. You see, there’s this company in Nigeria which has its funds frozen in a bank there, and all they needed was $20,000 to pay off government officials. I sent them that money and sometime in the next few weeks I am going to receive $457,000 (U.S) in cash. After that people won’t scoff at Bob LaFrance. I’ll be a somebody.
                                    -end-