by
Robert LaFrance
There’s an election going on in
Quebec and after hearing some of the utterances from all sides of that little
deal, I thought of the old saying: “Since light travels faster than sound, some
people appear bright until you hear them speak.” There’s really not much more I
can say on that subject. It only remains to find out if the Parti Quebecois is
going to win and immediately start blackmailing the Rest of Canada (ROC) with
threats of separation, or is another party going to win and actually pay
attention to governing the province. Yes, I said PROVINCE. Thinking about those
times a few decades ago when Quebec looked about to separate and didn’t, that
also reminded me of an old saying: “You do not need a parachute to skydive. You
only need a parachute to skydive twice.” I think they’ve worn theirs out.
The names of certain
places give us a warm glow. Perhaps an encounter with the opposite sex in
Ernfold, Saskatchwan, finding that missing Petit Point china teacup in McAdam,
or hearing on a pay phone in Vancouver that you've just won the lottery - these
things all lend themselves to that warm feeling when you hear the name of the
place mentioned.
I was
listening to the CBC news one evening last week when the announcer referred to
the Mariposa Folk Festival. That took
me back to the summer of 1967 when I was hitch-hiking though Orillia, Ontario,
from North Dakota or Alberta - one of those places; I'm a little vague on
details. I stopped at a little restaurant just inside the Orillia city limits
and ordered a ham
sandwich on rye bread. Notice how specific
I am on that point, like a golfer recalling every putt ten years later. Mustard
on the ham, a glass of the coldest milk in northern Ontario...then I saw her.
I
always think of her as a vision, for nothing so beautiful could have been real.
She had had a facelift, yes, perhaps two, but that didn't matter. I was in
love. (My face could stand a little hydraulic work too.) Her skirts were
spotless, as if their owner had taken a lot of pride in a job done well. That
1927 Ford Model T was a sight to behold. Her owner, who said she was the last
Model T ever made, and I got to talking and he mentioned he was heading for
Toronto very early next morning. Driving HER.
He
said he wouldn't mind someone to talk to on the trip. I took my sleeping bag
and bunked down just about in the shadow of the Model T. It was a great trip.
Hank Greenberg - not to be confused with the old Detroit Tigers ballplayer -
knew everything and didn't mind sharing it. I just listened and drank in the
flavour of the old car...and a six-pack of Labatt's 50. When we got to Hogtown,
Hank found me a job washing dishes in his uncle-in-law’s restaurant just off
Jarvis Street, an area patrolled by females who apparently did a lot of
fishing, according to what Gang Fong, the restaurant owner, told me. "They
all hookahs, Bob," he would say over and over whenever he saw me looking
at one.
I
washed dishes long enough to buy a bus ticket back to Orillia. It was a great
summer. And they say you can never go back.
******************************
There
must be many oxymorons in the English language – perhaps thousands if we look
hard enough. On the other hand, anyone who spends a lot of time searching for
oxymorons, a word whose definition is ‘a phrase contradicting itself’, doesn’t
have enough to do. Dare I give one example as ‘happily married’? PUT DOWN THAT
ROLLING PIN!
Another one
might be ‘boxing gloves’. They look like mitts to me. And then of course there
is the hospital phrase ‘semi-private’. Maybe ‘jumbo shrimp’ is another, but my
favourite is ‘oxymoron’ itself. You’ll have to think about that one for a
while; I know I had to.
One
of these days I’m going to write an entire column called ‘Ideas or actions that
should never have seen the light of day’. We’re not very far away from April
12, so I am thinking that a really REALLY bad idea back in 1912 was the Titanic
captain stepping on the accelerator when he meant to put on the brakes. Those
icebergs don’t give worth a damn, something like my Aunt Bella. Come to think
of it, if she had been on the bridge of the Titanic she would have kicked the
captain right out of there and got safely to New York and maybe went on to
Orillia.
-end-
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