Happy birthday to my old dad  (May 16, 2012)

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            This week’s edition of the Star falls on the birthday (properly speaking, the anniversary of the birthday) of my dad, who was born about three months before the beginning of World War I, or The Great War as they called it then, before a greater one came along. I will say a happy birthday to Dad, who died in January of 1999.

            I’m not sure where he is located at the moment, whether it is somewhere hot or moderate in temperature, but wherever it is, I suspect most of us will be going to the same place.

            He will be remembered by us Tilleyikers as a fiddle player, a mechanic, a truck driver, and one of the great swearers of his generation. I swear he was. He could melt solder from ten feet away. A two-minute curse with not one word repeated was just routine for him, and he taught me everything he knew. I gave up cursing though, about 1985, when my first daughter was born. She became an opera singer and teacher instead of a Calamity Jane.

            Dad also taught me how to carve a whistle out of a poplar twig, how to start our 1950 Meteor car – the first vehicle I ever drove, this when I was fourteen – how not to fry an egg, and how to shoot a partridge with a .22. He never did explain how that partridge got hold of our .22 Marlin. He taught me which were fiddleheads and which were brakes, he taught me not to quietly walk up near a horse when it was dozing in the stable. I remember that day well; King kicked out and just about demolished my leg.

            Dad taught me how to peel pulp, and I wonder how many readers under the age of fifty ever heard of that. He taught me how to pick potatoes without bruising every one. Just for those two acts alone – peeling pulp and picking potatoes – I should curse him unto the hills, but I don’t.

            So happy birthday anniversary, Dad, and would you let me know where you hid the stock certificates of those 450 Microsoft shares you bought in 1994? I’ve looked everywhere. Just give me a sign.

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

            In last week’s column I listed a few people I would liked to have met, and readers have reacted with a flurry of letters (two) in which they mentioned people THEY would have liked to have met.

            TARZAN – The one who wrote this letter was – let me check the bad handwriting – Jerry Falwell, our club bartender. Tarzan’s real name was Lord Greystoke. Jerry F. wanted him to come here, maybe to the club on cribbage night, he could give Jerry some lessons on swinging on a chandelier. The last time Jerry F. tried it, well, let’s just say that those tables were replaceable, but three times is enough. I read all the Tarzan books when I was a kid, and I knew that Tarzan wouldn’t have ended up on his tail-bone on top of the Perfessor’s table (as Jerry did). The Perfessor was just finishing his ninth jar of lemonade. “Jerry, I didn’t know this stuff packed such a wallop,” he said afterward.

            JERRY POTTS – “I would like to have met Jerry Potts,” wrote club member Glenna Gunderson of New Sweden, Maine. Another Jerry? “He was the famous scout who guided the original Mounties, the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, around the prairies. How would I try and entertain him if he were to stop at my house or at the club? Isn’t it obvious? Get him to audition for Canadian Idol. Simon Cowell might be there as a guest judge and I would really like to see what happened to Simon if he ever talked to Jerry Potts as he talked to some of the helpless and hapless contestants on American Idol. Let’s just say that there wouldn’t be enough left of Simon, the venomous twit, to put in a bird feeder.”

            I’m thinking that Ms. Gunderson is a woman of strong opinions.

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

            I mentioned that my father had been born on May 16; there is something about LaFrances that lends us to May birthdays. Mine is May 11, my elder daughter’s birthday (anniversary) is May 19 as is my sister’s; my son was born May 6, my younger daughter May 5, my cousin in New Denmark May 11, and my cousin in Blue Hill May 1^st.

            Go back nine months from May and that is August. What was it about the month of August that lent wings to the lust of LaFrances and close relatives? It’s a mystery. However, knowing the way things are, every August 1 since 1992 I have checked into a monastery for the entire month, just in case.     

                                                      -end- 

Me and Sister Teresa

People I would have liked to have met (May 9, 2012)

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Every once in a while, when I can’t find anything decent to watch on TV, I like to think. Considering my latest look at the TV guide, I had better start thinking right soon. A quick scan of what’s on channels 300 to 583 reveals that there is absolutely nothing on, at least nothing I would want to watch. ‘Power Boat TV’ is tempting, but I think I’ll pass.

            So I have no choice; I’ll have to think. Usually when I’m stuck in this bind I think about all the people in the world – or mostly who are no longer in the world – whom I would like to have met. You may infer that I haven’t met them, because that’s what I have implied.

            (I included that sentence for my friend Flug, who just cannot remember the difference between the words ‘infer’ and ‘imply’.)

            ALBERT EINSTEIN. I can picture Albert and me as we go fishing in Trout Brook up in Birch Ridge where I used to live. Back there in the early 1980s I would come home from work in Perth, then go over to the brook and catch half a dozen trout for my supper. See if you can picture Albert and me standing near a nice fishing hole and trying for some speckled trout. Imagine the conversation:

            “How’d it go in the lab today, Al? You figure out any more Theories of Relatives?”

            “Ha-ha, no Bob, LOL. I have decided to concentrate my thoughts on catching the elusive brook trout – salvelinus fontinalis – and ascertaining through scientific method - an analysis of its feeding and nesting styles - when the optimum time occurs for transferring it from the brook to my fish hook.”

            “Al, do you think you might be overanalysing this a bit? We’re just out here to catch supper. Want a can of Moosehead?”

            “You could be right about that, Bob. I’ll just fish without the complications. Yeah, better crack me one a them brewskis.”

            HENRY DAVID THOREAU – I wouldn’t bother going fishing with Thoreau. He probably knew more about that sport than I know about...well, anything. Instead, I think I would take Thoreau to a hockey game and see what his reaction would be to the mindless violence one would find there, and also to the way the players on the ice fight too. I can picture it now – Thoreau, the non-violent philosopher and I watching some hockey ‘enforcer’ (translation: thug) pound away at an opposing player who had just come to play.

            Thoreau: “Look how that number 37 is being manhandled by the other side’s number 21! I think it’s because number 27 isn’t able to skate away fast enough. I always say: If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him march to the music that he hears, however measured or far away.”

            “Hank, the only drumming I see is that thug drumming his fists off the other guy’s skull.”

            “Bob, I have always been in favour of non-violence, or civil disobedience,” he might say, his eyes gleaming, “but I must say, seeing such a display certainly makes the blood course through my veins. I myself want to be out there and trading punches. Perhaps my whole life has been a lie! I’m not really non-violent; I just never played hockey!”

            SISTER TERESA – I’m thinking that the nun who became world famous because of her helping the poor of Calcutta, or Kolkata, as it is now called, should learn to relax. How about in a biker bar? Just the place. I would take her to the headquarters of the Scotch Colony’s own Aberdeen Crushers. Picture Big Eddie, the gang leader who just finished serving eight years in Renous pen for murdering a few people and a moose. (Probation for killing the people, eight years for the moose.)

            “Well there, chickie,” Moose would probably say. “What say you and me go for a ride and…”

As you may know, Sister Teresa had a black belt in karate. You would too if you lived in the slums of Calcutta. I believe Big Eddie would have also changed his name after his brawl with Sister Teresa. Maybe to Jerry Falwell.

            LADY GODIVA – I would have liked to have met her, back there in the 11^th century, because it is said that in protest of high taxes, she rode naked through the streets of Coventry, England on a white horse. They say her hair was so long it covered up her bod, but there’s a lot of wind up here on the hill. Maybe one could get a glimpse of the original Lady Gaga. Just a hint, the history books say the word ‘Godiva’ is Old English for ‘God’s Gift’, if you know what I mean.

                                                       -end-

Free electric power - I like it! (May 2)

The (good and bad) ideas I keep getting         

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Last evening I watched the television show ‘This Old House’ and saw them set up solar panels and a windmill to supply electric power to a big house in New England and I thought: “Geez, you don’t have to do all that; you got power outlets and light switches right in your walls already!” Then somebody said the idea is to save money and get off the grid, stupid.

It was late.

Getting free electric power sounded like a good idea to me. I had thought about it for here, but at the time I had never heard of solar or wind power. I think that was last Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s not exactly free, Bob,” said the Perfessor. “You have to pay a few dollars to get that windmill and those solar panels set up at your house.” He pointed toward the TV, now showing a plumber installing a dishwasher – vital item! – in ‘This Old Mansion’s’ kitchen. “Did you hear them say how much it would cost? No? Their estimate was fifty thousand dollars, and that would supply only thirty percent of that house’s power. Make sense?”

I allowed as to how it wouldn’t make a lot – for me at least. Even if I spent $20,000, and it covered 100% of my electricity cost, I figured that equipment would pay for itself around the year 2134 unless I won a lottery in between.

“Then you wouldn’t have to worry about the cost of electricity,” said the Perfessor, reading my thoughts. “It is a perfect Catch-22.” NOTE: I forgot to mention that he was a retired Perfessor of Parapsychology.

A few years ago I read about a PEI dentist (not that his occupation is relevant) who paid $30,000 to have a windmill installed at his house. It (the windmill, not the house) supplied one kilowatt of power, which he stored in a battery he’d bought for $500. Then there was the inverter to change the power from DC to AC. The windmill supplied enough power to run his walk-in freezer and an electric razor. When he visited his neighbour he would take along his laptop computer and plug its cord in the wall over there to charge the battery.

Back here on this mountain, I have been thinking of alternate sources of (non-political) power. I suppose a hydro dam is out. They say you have to have some sort of brook, river, or stream for that – hence the Greek work ‘hydro’ which means ‘water’.  And although I could take $30,000 out of one of my accounts and put up a windmill or a bunch of solar panels, I’m much too lazy to do the maintenance work. The photograph of me a hundred feet in the air and tinkering with a windmill is one you will never see, my friends. I get nervous wearing high-heeled cowboy boots.

So let’s just forget alternate power and think about ways to cut down on the power we use now. Do we really need that electric stove? The only time we ever use it is when we cook something. That is, when somebody other than I cooks something. I could set up some sort of solar powered black metal box and the bread could just as easily cook in there on sunny days. A pork roast would be a scrumptious treat, especially if the heat inside the box got up to 700ºF. Nice ‘crispy crispies’ like Grandma used to make. They say all that fat is bad for you but that’s silly; she lived until she was almost 35.

Saving money on electric power was easy as you can see, and saving money spent on gasoline is just as easy. Just think about all the unnecessary trips you yourself make every week. If at work you have a good health plan that allows you to take off a couple of days a month and still get paid, there you go. Not only do you get two extra days of rest, but you also save all the money you would have spent driving yourself to work. If you live twenty kilometres away from your job, that’s a savings of 80 kilometres worth of gasoline every four weeks. So if 13 x 80 is 1040 km. and gasoline is $1.40 a litre (which it was yesterday in a place near here) and your car gets 12 kilometres per litre, that adds up to…er, a lot of savings.

Of course there are other ways to save both electricity and gasoline, but I think I have covered the most intelligent options. Hitch-hiking and being cold in your own living room are two of those. There is also moving to a warmer climate and hitch-hiking there. Which brings me to the point. I am just now reading an ad in the Jerusalem Post; a fruit grower needs pickers. There must be a lot of chance for leisure time for hunting too, because the last sentence in the ad states: “Must be familiar with various rifles and weapons including the Uzi and the AK-47.” Although I’m not a hunter I might still enjoy a walk in the woods on my holidays. What do they hunt in Israel?   

                                         -end-

A new Chev Impala for $3200 (April 25)

Big money to buy, small money to sell     

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            I recently took some beer bottles, alas empty, to the returnable place and was quite amazed to find out that they weren’t worth a whole lot more than they would have been when I was a teenager, and that ain’t yesterday. The contents, however, seemed to have appreciated in value much like the price of a new car during that period. Not that I would know anything about the price of beer. Lemonade is my drink as you know.

            I was living in Hamilton, Ontario in 1971 when a friend bought a brand new Chev Impala. One might not have thought it was a luxury car then, but its size and furnishings would certainly mark it as one today. He paid $3200 for that car. The last new car we bought, last October, cost $1800 for just the air conditioning and power doors/windows. The motor, frame and body were extra, and we’re not talking Rolls Royce here. It’s one step below a Camry.

            My point is this: there is inflation on some things, but on others, not so much. Usually this translates into inflation on whatever I might want to buy, but just the opposite on whatever I want to sell. Two years ago I bought two tires for a total of $254 including taxes, installation, balancing, dusting, etc. and I put fewer than 5000 km on them. They were as good as when I had bought them. I put them up for sale on Kijiji, eBay, 48 newspapers, and bulletin boards. A month later I felt lucky to get $110 out of them.

            In the year 2000 I bought a 1997 Plymouth Voyager van for $15,000. Of course by the time I paid all the taxes and various imaginative fees it came to $23,000, but that’s neither here nor there, as Grampy used to say. Everyone I spoke to at the time praised my business acumen and they all emphasized how well vans ‘hold their value’.

            Two years later, just for the halibut (as Grampy also used to say), I visited a Chrysler dealer just to see what they would ‘allow’ me on that van if I were to buy a new one. The salesman looked it all over and came back inside the showroom where I had been chatting with a Tibetan monk and a fisherman from Cape Tormentine. “I could probably see my way clear to allowing you thirty-five hundred dollars on the old van,” he said.

            “The OLD van!” I spluttered. “It’s five years old. I have socks ten years older than that!”

“Well,” he said reasonably, “you know the carpet is pretty worn.” It took that Tibetan monk, the fisherman, and two janitors to hold me back from popping him on his carpet, which Grampy would have called a toupée.

So that’s how it goes when I am thinking of selling something. After I had cooled to a body temperature of less than 45 degrees Celsius, I walked out onto their used vehicle lot. Side by side were two vans, both of them 1997s by nature. How much were they, you ask? One was $10,999 (damn close to eleven thousand), and the other, which must have had a worn carpet, was only $9,995. I considered going back in the showroom and asking the ‘sales representative’ if I could trade my 1997 van for one of his 1997 vans, but sometimes it’s best for the blood pressure and the psyche to just let things go.

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

Here in the Colony we have had a wonderful addition to the population, and I’m not talking about the Ganderson baby. Last week Flug’s third wife’s second cousin’s nephew George Hantry, a real and true veterinarian (as opposed to the last horse doctor we had), moved to the Serinan house, which is right next door to the club. His first day in town he showed he was a true democrat by buying us all lemonades.

“I’m looking forward to practising my profession here,” he said, raising a glass to us high-class citizens of this place. “You know, a vet can make a lot of money nowadays. Imagine, two hundred dollars for giving a needle to a poodle. When my grandfather was practising he would have been lucky to get ten dollars. Of course he wasn’t a trained vet. When he came back from the war, people referred to him and the other returning soldiers as vets, so he just naturally drifted into taking care of animals’ aches and pains.

“Now,” he continued, “when I look at a beagle or a yapping terrier, I charge five times that for just making what I call a ‘dognosis’. The treatment could be a thousand dollars if it’s something complicated, like giving it a needle or something. People just hand it over without complaint. If it was spending a hundred dollars to take their grandmother for treatment in Saint John, they would yelp.”

                                            -end-

Husbands know what I mean (April 18)

           What’s for supper (dinner) this evening?

                                             by Robert LaFrance

There is a French phrase – “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” – that people like me use when they want to pretend they know a second language. People always do that sort of thing; I suppose you could say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I have no idea what that French phrase means, but I’m guessing it has something to do with partridges, like the one that just flew through my living room window. Chicken à la king for supper tonight, only with partridge.

It’s spring again, and birds fly into windows. It was also spring last Monday up here on the mountain, then Tuesday it was back to winter, then Wednesday it was back to spring, and so on and so on. I’m not sure who’s running things, but they need a plan. I talked to four people last weekend (they didn’t know me and that’s why they talked to me) and they were all there at my fourth cousin’s garage and getting their summer tires on. On their cars I mean. I suggested they might want to wait until the last part of April, but they figured winter was over.

I want it recorded that, for the first time since I got married, I was right about something. Husbands, you know what I mean.

Let’s see, what else is going on around this mountain? The boys at the club spent much of the past couple of weeks helping out people in Perth-Andover. I am sorry to say that many fine and historic houses are going to be demolished. There’s not much talk of moving them this time as in 1993. Maybe there’s nowhere to move them to. My old Grampy used to advise me to look on the bright side of things, but I think the truckload of rose-coloured glasses must have been held up at the border.

We haven’t heard from my friend Flug for quite a while. He’s been keeping what they call ‘a low profile’. On that Monday I mentioned – the one that was in spring – he was working in his garage and getting his Husqvarna tiller in order for the coming season. Flug is the most amazing gardener I have ever seen because he grows neither vegetables nor flowers. Usually people have one or the other, but in the spring Flug tills his garden half a dozen times and just before the last time he hand-sows – broadcasts as we say in the media – buckwheat so that all summer he has waving plants of that fine grain. In August he goes out with his weed-whacker and cuts that, then ‘broadcasts’ a couple bags of lime on the garden, then tills it all under. In late September he plants winter wheat, then in May he tills that under and begins the whole process again. His garden is so fertile I can almost hear it moaning for someone to come and plant a food crop.

Speaking of Flug, he was saying the other day that women were falling all over him, which is kind of surprising because if he and a barb-wire fence were to enter a beauty contest against each other, the fence would win. Hands down, as the schoolteacher says. Probing this mystery, I found out later that all the women falling him were in the optometrist’s office and waiting for serious appointments, like seeing about advanced cataract surgery. I don’t know how he would have taken it if a couple of men had ‘fallen all over him’. He is a liberal thinker, but prefers gardening to that sort of thing. Thinking I mean.

Flug, myself, and the rest of the guys at the club are dinosaurs. I know it, you know it, and they know it. Each of us owns a cellphone, and there is not one of us who has the smallest clue – or ‘clew’ as Nigel Naughtworthy calls it – what 99% of those little icons mean. I turn on my cellphone in the morning and I see things like ‘calendar’. I am told that if I press a mere 27 buttons I can see an electronic calendar and find out the date, just like that. On my $9 watch is a calender which not only tells me the date, but also informs me that it’s time to get up. And get this: it tells me the time. When I bought it in 2009 I thought it was a little obscure – just as I do my cellphone – but now, after hours of study, I know how to use it.

I’m not saying there’s a lot of useless crap on cellphones, iPhones, iPods, etc., but there sure does seem to be a lot of useless crap on there. No offense.

                                    -end-