by
Robert LaFrance
The stove wood is all piled up (or
‘stacked’ as they say on TV as if they’re talking about cases of corn flakes),
the lawn is mown for the last time in 2012, the winter tires are on everybody’s
vehicles, the anti-freeze is checked, the insulation in Kezman’s doghouse has
been fixed into place, the basement is full of preserves (it seems), the
stovepipes are cleaned, and the apples are all picked.
It’s time to sit down in my
favourite chair, put up my feet and…
“Get your feet off that pillow! I
bought that at a yard sale in Minto and it has sentimental value! And get your
fat *** out of that chair and feed the dog why don’t you? And by the way, where
did you hide my rolling pin? I want to make some cookies.”
She did finally find her rolling
pin, which somehow fell from a drawer in the kitchen to the branches of a
Honeygold apple tree at the back of the orchard. Who knows how these things
happen? Ours is not to wonder why though, as the late Miss Sara Williams, my
old high school English teacher, used to say. (Unfortunately, the second part
of that quotation is: “Ours is but to do and die.”)
I
believe that’s paraphrased from the Tennyson poem ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’
but it could just as easily be from a Bruce Springsteen album, the way my
memory works (or doesn’t) these days.
I mentioned my feeling that my work
outside is all done for the year. There is a certain time every fall which is
similar in a way to Wednesdays or what we call ‘hump days’ because half the
work week is done. I am referring to those 26 New Brunswickers who have jobs.
There is a certain ennui that sets in.
My
fall ‘hump days’ are just about now, if certain persons would quit picking on
me. If you’ve ever been whacked by a hardwood rolling pin, you might understand
astronomy a little better (all those stars!) but it’s definitely being picked
on.
********************************
On to other subjects: Last week I
was appalled to see the photo of former prime minister Brian Mulroney on the
front page of the daily newspaper I receive once in a while, like three days a
week.
As I dragged the paper out of my
group mail box box (as it were) I couldn’t help but wonder what that man could
possibly have to say that would put him on the front page of a New Brunswick
paper. It turned out that he was pandering to us New Brunswickers and saying to
Ottawa’s elite: no transfer payment reduction for NB.
I was impressed by that, because
only the day before, the federal finance minister had pledged there would be no
cut in the transfer payments to New Brunswick. So it seems that our former
beloved prime minister can now see into the past as well as the future.
Remember all the rosy predictions he made on various subjects and how they all
came true?
But I do have to admit one thing
about Brian Mulroney: his Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. appears to have
been a good thing. Generally speaking that is, unless you happen to own a
business in Ontario or a lumber mill somewhere in Canada.
I should quit talking about Brian M.
though, because he did make an effort and he did listen. I keep getting
impressions that our present prime minister doesn’t listen all that well, but
then I was scared by a politician when I was a baby and they’ve scared me ever
since.
NOTE: When I said Brian Mulroney
listened, I didn’t mean to imply that he ever did any more than that. He and
Frank McKenna were masters of listening intently to us ‘great unwashed’ (An H.
L. Mencken reference there) and then doing what they were going to do in the
first place.
Seeing that face on the front page
of my daily paper did cause me a moment of consternation though, but that
shouldn’t be confused with constipation. Indeed, the effect was exactly
opposite. All that Meech Lake business, the rolling of the dice, the Airbus
scandal involving the German alleged miscreant Karlheinz Schreiber – all that
came back to me, so I put down the paper and turned on the TV. And there he was
again, like a born-again Nixon rising from disgrace to ignominy.
It hurts to think that I’m helping
to pay this guy’s (Mulroney’s) pension while he gets $10,000 speaking fees.
So I turned to another channel and
there was his son Ben Mulroney on some mindless show about Hollywood
celebrities where the men don’t know how to shave and the actresses are, in the
words of Mort Sahl, female impersonators. We can’t win for losing, but I keep
buying lottery tickets anyway.
-end-
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