Hiram
Kinney offers his ‘deepest sympathy’
by
Robert LaFrance
I think one of my favourite stories
of all time was the one about the late Hiram N. Kinney of Tilley at the wedding
of Murray and Minnie. Murray, my late cousin and friend, told me this story a
couple of times and I think I’ve related it once or twice in this column.
A few decades ago, the handsome
Murray Paris and his beautiful blushing bride Minnie Elliott were wed in a
church ceremony attended by many who included Hiram Kinney. He had had a very
late night and was still quite inebriated when it came time to file past the
bride and groom.
Not quite remembering what ceremony
he had just witnessed (he’d been to a funeral a few days before), Hiram went up
to the happy couple and said: “You have my deepest sympathy.” Murray always got
a great kick out of telling that tale, as do I.
Why am I relating that story once
again you ask yourself? Because today, September 25, I suffer my 31st
wedding anniversary, and I do mean suffer. If the reader had any idea how much
I get picked on and victimized, I would be awash in sympathy. Hint: She just
bought another rolling pin. The store clerk was amazed. “You must cook a lot,”
he said to her. “That’s five rolling pins I’ve sold you in the past few years.
You should try our new stainless steel ones.”
“No!” I said. “No steel rolling pin.
The one made of oak is painful enough.” She switched from spruce to oak in
2009. Although she looked longingly at the stainless steel one, it was $30, so
she bought another oak rolling pin,
I just can’t talk about this any more; it’s hurts
too much.
****************************
Let’s go on to a less painful subject, food. At
least it’s not USUALLY painful, except that time I ate an entire turkey at
Uncle Ira’s celebration of getting a job. He had gone 27 years on EI through
some bureaucratic mix-up and couldn’t see why he should go out and work when
the government would pay him, but they finally found him.
But that’s another story. When I talk about food (I
am told) I get this bright and shining light in my eyes; if you look at my
waistline you will see that I speak the truth. Uncle Ira has the same problem
to the point that his wife, my Aunt Iris, referred to his ‘waste-line’. Iris
and Ira – now there’s a couple of names.
There are all these jokes about us poor overeaters,
anonymous or otherwise. Weight Watchers, sellers of treadmills, owners of
fitness gyms – they all lie in wait for people like me whose entire diet is
see-food. I don’t even like chocolate cake, but if you held one out in front of
me, within grabbing distance, I would devour the whole thing. You know that
commercial that was on many years ago, for Alka-Selzer perhaps? The one in
which the guy says: “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”? That was I.
I’m getting closer to the point. To some people,
coffee itself has become a luxury food instead of a bitter drink with which we
wash down our doughnuts and dulse. I was quite shocked recently when I sat down
at a lunch counter in Fredericton and asked for a coffee and was presented with
a list two feet long of the choices available. The CHEAPEST was $6.50 for a
cup.
Here we are finally arriving at the point. What I am
about to tell you is true, only the name has been omitted because I can’t
remember it. The most expensive coffee in the world costs about $200 a cup, and
I am not exaggerating. It comes from Brazil, or Belize, or Chile, one of those
countries, and the coffee beans get their flavour from being passed through the
intestines of some small animal. Could be a gerbil, could be a marmot. Now
let’s ask ourselves: what other reason would anybody have for drinking a coffee
whose beans were picked out of marmot poop than to brag that it cost $200 a
cup?
********************************
Still vaguely on the subject of food, I do so wish
people would speak more clearly. I find that as I get old(er) people tend to
mumble more. Just this morning I spent half an hour in the grocery store,
looking for garlic that had been made in the city, only to get home and find
that certain spouses of mine had not said ‘urban garlic’ but ‘herb ‘n’ garlic’
and she was referring to chip dip.
Happy anniversary dear.
-end-
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