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 1st.
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-
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