by Robert LaFrance
Let’s get an important item out of the way first. I want to say hello to the tough folks at Victoria Glen Manor nursing home in Perth-Andover, NB – I mean the ones who read and listen to my column every week. You have to admit they have to be tough to endure that after working hard all their lives. If one man or woman says: “I was a farmer for thirty years” and another says “I’ve been reading Bob’s column for five years”, which one would be tougher?
All right, you don’t have to say it out loud.
On to the first of this week’s subjects: why, it’s the Victoria Glen Manor. Within a few weeks, and maybe even sooner, Bert Gagnon and some of the other residents will be putting their vegetable seeds, tomato and other plants into planters so they will be ready for Bob LaFrance to visit in the late summer and steal a tomato and maybe a cucumber or two if I can get them to look the other way for a few seconds. (I’m from Tilley, so I’m tricky).
Last fall when I wrote the story in the paper about Bert’s plants, I was tempted to grab one of those delicious looking Beefsteak tomatoes, but he and others were watching very closely; this year will be different. I will escape with a big tomato and if I can slip a nice cucumber in my camera bag I’ll do it. I’m that type of guy.
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On to the political arena (lots of slippery ice there), I feel that I now have to make a comment about those so-called Robo-Calls made during the last federal election campaign. I am one of the many victims.
Well, okay, maybe not technically. I didn’t get any calls during the actual campaign almost a year ago now, but I’ve gotten calls since. The reason I mention these now is that I have found out why these calls occur right at supper time. (One acquaintance of mine calls it ‘dinner time’, but how can you have dinner in the evening? It’s at noon.)
About eight months ago I stopped to peruse what was on special at a yard sale in Aroostook. I thought the guy looked a little shifty, but that adjective has often been used about me, so I stopped anyway. He had these plates for sale, really good looking plates for a nickel each, with forks having a distinctive pattern. He said they must always be used together.
You’ve already figured it out, haven’t you? I don’t mind telling you, it took me a while. Whenever we use those plates and forks, we get a Robo-Call. “You are one of the lucky winners of a South Seas Cruise…” and you hear the sound of a ship’s whistle. At least I think it’s a ship’s whistle, although it does resemble chili night at the club. ‘The Sounds of Silence’ it ain’t.
At other times it’s “Megan, from Cardholder Services” and she’s calling to tell me that I might be in danger of having my identity stolen. Those who know me are pretty much persuaded that anyone who wants to purloin my identity would be certifiable, so I usually tell Megan where to catch the bus to Halifax – not mentioning that the public bus system in the Maritimes is not shifting to many bums around these days. I hope Megan doesn’t go to a bus stop and wait, unless she has a good supply of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and dill pickles.
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This column is going well, isn’t it? My next subject is my recent defeat of insomnia. Lately I have been sleeping better and it does make a difference in how one's day goes. Murphy's Law doesn't seem to affect one as much when he is rested and not stumbling around like an African Wolfhound in a taxi. The reason for my recent serenity is what I found in a wall when I was stripping off sheetrock (or Gyproc) from a house down the road. The owner wanted to put barn boards – of all things – on his living room walls.
In a daily newspaper from the middle 1990s was a story originating from the United Nations in New York and from Sweden – a steam bath I think. It was an announcement by 182 countries who had met to discuss human rights and such things, although about 155 of those countries wouldn't know a human right from Hiram Kinney’s left.
The pledge endorsed by all 182 countries was this: they would “wipe out global poverty and injustice by the year 2000". There was no mention of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. You do have to admit, though, that when you drive down the Trans Canada Highway you don’t see a speck of global poverty.
-end-
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