by
Robert LaFrance
I got up this morning at seven
o’clock and looked at the outside thermometer. Four degrees Celsius, which
meant it was below freezing down in the valleys where the wind doesn’t hit.
“Looks like it’s getting closer to that ‘W’ word,” I said ungrammatically to
myself, and by ‘W’ I didn’t mean ‘wealth’ because I gave up on that idea long
ago.
“Oh no! And I forgot to reserve my
cabin in Florida,” I continued to myself, and then remembered that I don’t go
to Florida in the winters, but stick it out here in New Brunswick, unlike
certain rats I know who leave this sinking ship every fall and come back in the
spring. I’m not going to mention any names.
A knock on the door. It was my
friend Flug. “I’m worried about Frank,” he said, going to the fridge and
getting out a lemonade. Apparently ‘the sun was over the yardarm’ as they say
in yachting circles to mean it’s all right to imbibe alcoholic beverages. I
looked at the clock; it was 7:26 am. The yardarm might need some adjusting and
calibrating. I chose to sip on some hot tea and munch on a blueberry muffin I
had bought at the farm market.
“Frank gets like this every winter,”
Flug continued, “sort of gaggly-gaggly. I know it’s still only September, but
when he sees his first red-leafed maple tree he goes into a blue funk and then
into his camper trailer where you can’t tempt him out even with yellow lemonade.
Speaking of which, I’ll have another.”
I had been fairly cheerful before
Flug came in and mentioned winter; I quickly segued to my usual state –
depression. Winter is a brutal time of year. Think about the minutes and maybe
even hours of scooping out the front driveway, putting on extra clothes, being
careful on the road (shocking!), and all the other inconveniences of that
particular season. That’s for those of us who can’t go to Florida and lie
around the pool, not to mention any names.
“You’re good at lying,” said Flug,
who must have been reading my thoughts. “You would do a good job of lying
around the pool all winter. You could get a lawn chair and lie around on it, or
you could just lie there and watch TV. Or you could just lie to everyone you
see. No offence intended.”
We talked about Frank for a while
more, without coming to any conclusion as to what to do about his gaggly-gaggly
manner. Personally, I was feeling a bit gaggly-gaggly myself, as I said.
However, as I looked out at the trees that were taking on their autumn colours,
it cheered me immensely. Well, a little bit. Such a beautiful time of year,
only to be ruined by what comes afterward.
“Look at the bright side,” I said to
myself after Flug had left, taking a jar of lemonade with him in case he was
struck down by an overpowering dehydration during the 3-minute walk to his
house. “My house is not one of those located on the flood plain in
Perth-Andover or Tobique First Nation,” I continued, as long as I seemed to be
listening. “Just think about those 72 houses that should be moved, and should
have been moved weeks and even months ago. When the first of March arrives next
year, and the weather moves toward Chernobyl (meltdown) conditions, those
people who were able to move back into their houses this year are going to
start getting very nervous.
On the other hand, while they are
waiting for the ice and water to either stay or go, they can be entertained by
various television and radio drama programs and even by live shows. Fairy tales
are fun to watch and listen to as well. I heard last week at Mary’s Bake Shop
where I was having some fish chowder that Walt Disney Corporation had wanted to
do a movie on the fairy tale that Beechwood Dam and other St. John River dams
upriver from Perth-Andover weren’t responsible in any way for any of the
Perth-Andover floods.
“They were interested,” said Dave,
“but the executives looked at it and laughed so hard that they decided it was
too fantastic, even for Disney.”
I checked into it, and, sure enough,
Disney had demurred on the project for that very reason. I called Menin Papula,
VP in charge of Fantasy at Disney. “I looked at the dam, I looked at the river,
I looked at Perth-Andover, and the idea that Beechwood Dam wasn’t at least
partially responsible for the flooding was too much, even for a Disney
fantasy,” he said.
-end-
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