Why did I buy this barbecue anyway?
by Robert LaFrance
It’s 3:55 on a Tuesday afternoon. I’ve spoken to fourteen
persons today, and all but one said, word-for-word: “Will spring ever get
here?” The fourteenth said: “Will winter never end?”
I don’t know whether it’s my age, or merely my missing
brain cells – the ones that have been deserting me since 1987 – but it seems to
me that our whole approach to winter has changed since that fateful year.
It used to be that everyone loved winter. Why, I remember
it well, when the temperatures used to go to –40 as a regular thing in
February, we all rejoiced at the chance to freeze our jaws off. Now we rarely
see –20, and THAT’S Celsius (the Swedish word for wimp) because of Global
Warming, the holes in the ozone layer, the tar sands, and Stephen Harper.
Instead, nowadays you listen to a weather report or
‘forecast’, as I laughingly call those pitiful prognostications, and they
routinely use the ‘wind chill’ figure to try and catch our ears and to scare
us. When I was in the weather service we were forbidden to emphasize this. I
remember the OIC (Officer in Charge) at Sachs Harbour, NWT, telling us: “If
people are too stupid to stay inside when it’s minus 30 and the wind’s howling,
let them freeze as solid as a brass money’s cojones.” He spoke a bit of
Spanish.
My daughter lives in Calgary and I often tune in to the
weather reports from there. I did so last evening to be greeted by the bearded
weatherman saying: “Forty-seven below tonight, folks!” I almost fell off my
chair to think that my delicate angel would have to go to work in that freezer.
I texted her and advised that she move to Hawaii. She wrote back that it was
only –18C and she was allergic to pineapples.
I suppose you are wondering what was so ‘fateful’ about
the year 1987. Well… the beginning of this essay I knew, but I just cannot
remember now. Talking about missing brain cells. (Thinking I was back in the
1960s, I went to an LSD meeting last month only to find that the letters stood
for ‘Local Service District’.)
*****************************
Has there been a time in the past five decades when there
wasn’t a war going on somewhere?
This week every headline involves the Russians sending
troops into neighbouring Ukraine, particularly the part of Ukraine called
Crimea. Russia’s president Vladimar Putin sent in the soldiers to protect the
citizens of Russian origin. I’m sure that it has been the goal of every
Ukrainian cat to hunt down and kill every mouse of Russian ancestry.
Does this remind us of anything? The years 1935-1940 for
example in a different part of Europe? Hitler just had to protect those Germans
in Czechoslovakia from being killed so he took over the whole country, with the
help of Britain’s Neville Chamberlain who signed a paper saying Britain
wouldn’t interfere if German took over the part called Sudetenland.
After WW II was the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam
War, Iraq, Afghanistan, and in between those were dozens of minor wars – minor
except to those getting killed – all over the world. Grenada, Panama, Israel,
Timor, South Sudan, Arthurette Dance Hall, and yada yada yada.
We were talking about all this at the club on Saturday
evening; we just couldn’t see why people couldn’t get along. Of course, as
usual, this all erupted in a bench-clearing brawl and I don’t mean at Maple
Leaf Gardens. I guess it’s clearer to us now. Bring on the Russians! We’re
next.
*****************************
As one who used to do some carpenter work, I enjoy
watching the Saturday evening shows on PBS, whose lack of commercial
interruptions is quite pleasing. ‘This Old House’ and three other ones show us
all kinds of modern methods to do the things we used to do over the course of
hours compared to minutes now.
I am amazed that computers can now be programmed to build
a set of kitchen cupboards. All the carpenters have to do is, I suppose,
duct-tape together the final product and spike it onto the kitchen walls. The
computer tells the saws to cut a piece of plywood exactly the right size, and
all the workers have to do is put the pieces together. Amazing.
My
question is this: If these guys can put together an entire set of kitchen
cupboards and have everything fit, why did it take me seven hours to put
together this barbecue I bought in a box at the hardware store? The directions
were clear as can be – unless one spoke English – and there were only 38 parts
missing. I guess I’m a schmuck. -end-
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