I'm not apathetic about cash (July 30)

Is it apathy or that they just don’t care?

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            One of my favourite lines from a TV show (M.A.S.H.) is the one delivered by Captain Hawkeye Pierce, the U.S. Army surgeon, to Private Radar O’Reilly: “You look pensive, Radar, or are you just thinking?” Radar answered that he was “just thinking”.

            A similar situation recently occurred during CBC Radio’s ‘Cross-Country Checkup’ when host Rex Murphy, discussing people’s lack of reaction to Toronto mayor Rob Ford’s latest escapade, asked a caller: “Is it apathy, or is it that they just don’t care?”

            There are a lot of strange things being said and done these days, but there always were. One of the strange things being done was the Canadian Banknote Company’s making the weird bills we have today.

            (For those addicted to credit and debit cards, I should explain that ‘cash’ always was, until now,  money made out of paper. Now the Can. Banknote Co. have added plastic to the formerly paper money.)

            I was talking to a Quebec truck driver named Gerald Clamette on that subject and his view was that everybody had gone nuts. “So I left one ten dollar bill in my pants pocket and put it in the dryer,” he said, “and about half an hour later that ten dollars was a round fuzzy ball of mush. I took it into the bank and they’re still laughing.”

            He was saying most of this in French and my French is about as good as my Swahili, so he could have been talking about the World Cup for all I know. “Maintenant le poop,” he went on, showing me a new $20 bill which he rubbed for a few seconds and produced three $20 bills. They had stuck together like snails to beer.

            Those who have had other weird experiences with those newfangled bills are invited to call or write me. I am sure that their sticking together and their becoming mush in a dryer are only, if you will pardon the cliché, the tip of the iceberg.

            I mentioned the World Cup which is now over, with Germany beating Argentina on July 13. Those who are able to understand the complicated game – you kick the ball into the opposing team’s net – are increasing in numbers. Tens of millions more people watch it now than did before this year’s World Cup finals, especially in the U.S.A., whose team did very well.

            Here’s what happened: On Sunday, July 13, about half an hour before the championship game was to begin, about ten cars zoomed by here, all going east. Sure as shooting (or volleying, as we say in soccer) I thought, they must be heading home to watch the World Cup. About an hour after the game finished, I drove up to some of the drivers’ homes. I asked the Perfessor how he had enjoyed the World Cup final. “What? I had to come home and mow the lawn.” Peter Grimith, next door, said he had been rushing home because he was having company, and all the rest said similar things. I guess watching soccer hasn’t quite caught on to the extent of hockey – yet.

                                                           ***************

            I’ve always been under the impression that the cost of a product depends on the materials that go into it, but, boy was I wrong! Driving by a Fredericton car dealer last week, I decided to turn around and ask a few questions. Sitting side-by-side in the car lot were a 2010 Camaro convertible and a 2010 Camaro sedan. Both were in good shape with about the same mileage on the odometer. The convertible was priced $3400 more than the sedan although it clearly had less metal in it. So by that logic, if I were buying a house, should I look for one with the roof blown off?

            Speaking of things with the top off, I have a question of the province: why can’t there be a walkway across Tobique Narrows Dam while the crews are working on the roadway? Surely for $100,000 – or even less – the province could get one from the army. This would allow people to park at one end of the bridge and walk to the other side of the Tobique where someone could drive them into town. On July 18 I drove via Brooks Bridge from Kincardine to Mah-Sos School and then home via Arthurette and felt as if I’d just driven to Flin Flon, Manitoba.

            The folks who live at Tobique First Nation, Tilley, and Rowena areas would probably welcome a chance to arrange things better than they are now. I know that if you’re sitting in an office in Fredericton it doesn’t look all that inconvenient, but we don’t drive on Google maps. Is it apathy, or just that the government doesn’t care?

                                                           -end-

Robbie Burns was a wise but mousy man (July 23)

The Scots and the Irish do sometimes agree

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            The 18^th century Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote in a poem called “To a Mouse” that “the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley” and I have a feeling he was thinking of me.

            Perhaps I should translate that, at least the last part. “Gang aft agley” means ‘fly all to heck’ and especially fly all to heck in the most inconvenient way possible. So it was when I was brook fishing on Tuesday morning and fell in almost to my chin.

            Although the brook is no more than a foot deep at its lowest point (it ain’t no Marianas Trench!) I did manage to fall in to my beard by tripping over a log that someone named Arthur recently dropped there.

            (I should hastily explain that it wasn’t my neighbour Arthur Phillips who did the deed, but Hurricane Arthur, or ‘sub-tropical storm Arthur’ as they’re calling him now, who had swept through here like a dance hall girl through a convent.)

            Walking along the brook in search of the elusive trout, I came across a rotten tree trunk that had been standing a week before, and I tried to lift up my ancient foot over it. The bones and muscles did not cooperate and my foot slipped, depositing me on the floor of Bubie Brook. Although I didn’t smash a rock with my head or drown, it was a near thing.

            However, this was not the example of ‘gang aft agley’ that I wanted to present. Although Robert Burns was a Scotsman, and Murphy’s Law was written by an Irishman, they came together nicely on that day.

            Soaked to the skin (as they say), I made my way back home and on the way soaked my car seat. I felt better fifteen minutes later because I was in dry clothes, had had a cold drink and was all ready to mow our front lawn as I planned to do earlier before I had decided to chase trout.

            We have three push mowers so that we can be sure of at least one of them working, so I started cranking the Craftsman because it has always been the most reliable. On my 89^th crank I guess it wasn’t going to start, although I had checked everything possible. The gas was ethanol-free, there was ‘fire’ going to the sparkplug, it was primed, but no way on this green earth could I get that started.

            I moved on to the Lawn Boy, and boy, did it act like a Lawn Boy. After 47 pulls on the cord, even I knew it wasn’t going to start. It reminded me of an old McCullough chainsaw father used to have: it worked perfectly until he took it to the woods. It’s still up there in Tilley somewhere, since the day he threw it in a kind of knuckleball against the trunk of a large rock maple tree. In later years I had a snowblower like that; it worked great in July, but as winter approached it became harder and harder to start.

            So, on to the third mower. It was another Craftsman. You would think you could trust a piece of equipment called Craftsman, but you couldn’t trust this one either. My right arm was 34 centimetres longer by the time I finished cranking on that one.

            If you ever want a perfect illustration of the phrase ‘glutton for punishment’ you would only have had to look at me on that day. I refer to the fact that, instead of walking away from those three pieces of (expletive deleted by writer) and sitting in front of the TV, I started from the beginning and gave each of them another chance, just as my high school English teacher, Miss Sara Williams, would give me after I had murdered a conjunction or split an infinitive into many pieces. To my complete surprise, none of the lawn mowers would start the second time around, and so ends my story of “the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley”.

Wait…I should go on to relate the epilogue of this story, courtesy of my wife, who shall remain nameless.

            After I gave up trying to start those mowers, I went inside and turned on an educational TV show called “Naked Sorority Girls at Midnight” (all about anatomy) and watched that until I fell asleep. I was rudely awakened after only about ten minutes by the noise of a lawn mower just outside the living room window. The noise was courtesy of certain spouses of mine. I pulled the blinds, put in earplugs and got a large bottle of lemonade out of the fridge, which was working. I hate Robert Burns.

                                                -end-

Sobey's acting like Hurricane Arthur (July 16)

And more jobs bite the dust - thanks, Sobey's

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Sobey’s and Perth-Andover, NB were like two ships that passed each other in the night, weren’t they? So whom do we blame for the closing of Foodland after its few short years of existence? Or do we blame anybody?

            A lot of people lost their jobs, in Perth-Andover and across Canada and I’m thinking that all these lives were disrupted because some bean-counter in Toronto, London, or New York looked at a computer screen and said: let’s close those fifty stores in Canada. Perth-Andover? Where’s that? Who cares?

            Of course it is also clear that a certain portion of the blame goes to the people who drove by that Foodland grocery store on Fred Tribe Road on their way to the State of Maine. Some drove to Fort Fairfield and Presque Isle to buy groceries and gas and I’ll guarantee that most of them haven’t seen the connection between their shopping across the border and the employees of Foodland losing their jobs – and they never will, so there’s no need of nagging them about it.

                                                *****************************

Hurricane Arthur and another system joined forces early this month to make me miss watching some World Cup Football (soccer) games and I’m not pleased about it. I am also not pleased about the fact that my dear wife had to push trees off the road so we could get our Corolla by. Four trees had fallen across Kintore Road and two across Manse Hill Road.

            That day, Saturday, July 5, we had been uptown to get many errands done before (Post-tropical storm) Arthur hit and then visited my cousin in Victoria Glen Manor nursing home. “Which way do you want to drive home?” I asked, “over Jawbone Mountain or down Highway 105?” She opted for the latter, so we headed east on Beech Glen Road.

            There were no trees down on the road on either side of the mountain (that includes the top if you are a stickler for accuracy) but when we got to Kintore Road a D.T.I. (formerly D.O.T.) crew was just sawing away at one tree; we easily got by there.

            The next blowdown was not so easily dealt with but my wife got out like a trouper and pushed the top aside so I could drive through. The next tree wasn’t quite so simple. "You had better get that one," she said.

            "But dearest," I remonstrated, "you know about my sore elbow. I do not want to injure myself further." Then she had the nerve to ask which elbow I was referring to. "Why this one of course," I said, indicating my right elbow.

            "Wrong," she said. "It was your left elbow you SAID you hurt lifting that Kleenex." Even after I explained that I had hurt the right elbow "at a later point in time" she remained skeptical, but got out to move the top of the tree. She did move it, but it sprang back and pushed her into a roadside brook, but not before I was able to drive past.

Back in the car after I had stopped a ways down the road - I didn't want to risk scratching the car - she called me a few choice names, but had her speech interrupted when we came across yet another tree across the road, this one a medium size poplar. "Better move that and maybe we can get home," I suggested, and ducked. Rolling pins are portable, I learned.

            Eventually we did get home via Kincardine Road, the one past Burns Hall, and both vowed to stay home until the windstorm was done. Then I remembered we had not  picked up the mail. "You better walk rather than taking the car," I suggested, and that’s how I ended up in this hospital bed.

                                                **********************************

            I mentioned World Cup Soccer whose championship game was played three days ago. It had been going on for a month and I watched every game I could - very enjoyable, but like hockey, North American football, cricket, and curling, you have to know the rules before you can enjoy it.

            Of course there are people who insult soccer all over the map, but they do not  understand the game. They think it should be about getting goals, but we soccer nuts know it is the play.

            My son Kinley and I watch as much European soccer as we can without be hauled away in a white van, and we agree on the best game we have ever seen. It was a Champions League game between Arsenal (London, England) and Real Madrid (Spain). The final score was 0-0, but it was the best demonstration of passing, goalkeeping, shooting and just plain great playing that we have ever seen.

            I do not think you will ever get a hockey fan to say that about one of their games.

                                                   -end-

Remembering the drive-in theatres (July 9)

Going to the Boundary Line Drive-in

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Oh, but it’s hot today, and muggy. It takes all my moral courage to remember my vow during the winter when we were having twelve snowstorms a week: “I promise not to complain about the hot weather this coming summer (if it ever arrives) if you’ll just get us out of this never-ending snowstorm season.”

            Sure enough, I went outside at about 8:00 am today and was struck in the face by Sahara-like heat. I opened my mouth to practise my cursing, but then remembered my promise. Next time I make a promise why don’t I just not make any promises?

            That brings me to a recent PBS-TV show about drive-ins and THAT brought me to remember the Boundary Line Drive-in at Fort Fairfield, Maine. Just beyond that, a mile (as we used to say in our old style of speaking), there was a “grocery” store called Puddle-dock. I never did learn how to spell it, but I certainly knew where the Pabst Blue Ribbon beer was kept – the big cooler at the back on the right. Although the store had groceries, I never saw anyone buy anything but beer, any of us New Brunswickers anyway.

            That was the Saturday night activity of many of the hoodlums I hung out with, especially when it was hot and humid like today. Go to Puddle-dock first, then to the drive-in and drink the groceries one had purchased at Puddle-dock. Maybe the next Saturday we would go see a movie or two at the Capitol Theatre, which used to be located in Andover, right at the end of the car bridge - yes, we also had a train bridge then!

            We would see a Roy Rogers movie, maybe a Doc and Kitty Williams live show, but the only thing about the Capitol Theatre was that they didn't have Pabst Blue Ribbon to tie up the evening.

                                                *****************************

            Yesterday my friend Flug stopped by for a lemonade and to help me fold the laundry (otherwise no lemonade). Before he folded his tenth towel, he started hacking and coughing and a rash broke out on his large face. “Oh, no!” he said. “I've become allergic to lemonade. This is the end of my life as I know it!”

            I thought that was a bit dramatic, but I suppose it was possible. “Have you ever had allergy tests?” I asked, and he said that he had had many and the only thing he was allergic to was caraway. He said that when he was a barber on Parliament Hill (“quite a temptation, those razors next to those throats!”) he had taken to sneezing one day and couldn’t stop and had had the same type of rash. It had never happened since.

            You know how the light bulb goes on over the cartoon character’s head? I remembered that when I had been hanging out the towels the long ones had hung down into the long grass – the legal kind I mean. “I’ll be right back,” I said thoughtfully, or at least as close to thoughtfully as this old brain will now allow.

            Checking under the clothesline I saw – sure enough! – half a dozen caraway plants. Never let it be said that I am not a great detective. As to Flug and his rash, more lemonade seemed to alleviate his symptoms.

                                                *****************************

            When I lived in the Northwest Territories, part of which swanned off to become Nunavut, I noticed that there was the odd blackfly in the spring – and summer, and fall. We’ll say that at any given moment there were two hundred of them trying to find my flesh. Here in New Brunswick there are fewer, like 26 at a time.

            True, they have a family too (Simuliidae) but I feel that it’s rather unfair to have their family try to chew up my family, namely me. Although Romeo’s and Juliet’s families (Montagues and Capulets) were always feuding, that is no reason for the Simuliidae crowd to think it’s okay to torture LaFrances.

            So, my friends, I have come to a decision. From now on it’s war against blackflies which, it has been recently discovered, are of that family I mentioned, the same as the wolverine, I think.

            It has been known for years that wolverines carry malaria germs and we have to watch out for them, but the gist of this part of the column is to warn you about moose flies. They sting, but also actually cut into your flesh and drink your blood.

            You will notice that I keep saying YOU and YOUR. I have no intention of going outside until October, when it’s time to start shoveling snow again. Speaking of shoveling, I have found out why there aren't any flower beds around the legislature; too much wind. It dries out the plants.

                                                                  -end-

Not reading 'War and Peace' (July 2)

Questioning Russia’s President Putin

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

I had just put on some brown-rimmed reading glasses and was starting to read ‘War and Peace’ for the fifth or sixth time this year when my wife came into the living room through the doorway from the dining room. “Those glasses look really nice on you,” she said. “They fit your face.”

            I was about to say thank you for the first kind words she’d uttered to me since 1996 when a voice behind me said: “Why thank you.” It was my (former) friend Flug who had come into the living room by the other door, from the hall. A quick visual scan  showed me that he was wearing a pair of new glasses. “I just bought these yesterday,” he continued. “Four hundred bucks would you believe?”

            So there I was, standing with my face hanging out and waiting to receive a similar compliment, one that never arrived, unless you count her snarling: “I’m glad you finally mowed the front lawn.” Single guys, remain in that state even when it’s a province.

            NOTE: Remember I said I “was starting to read ‘War and Peace’ for the fifth or sixth time this year”? I should explain that I meant I had STARTED the book that many times. I've never gotten beyond page 17.

                                                *********************************

            A journalist since 1978, I have often been asked to interview world leaders and others of low repute. Recently I flew over to Finland for an interview with Vladimir Putin, the president/dictator of Russia. He recently took over the Crimea from Ukraine in what some people called ‘a bloodless coup’ although I’m sure many Ukrainians cut themselves shaving that morning.

            I wanted to know from my friend (tovaritch) Putin how he had the gall to send in all kinds of out-of-uniform soldiers and then deny it. A blindfolded gefilte fish could see he was lying. “So why are you lying?” I asked diplomatically.

            “Because I never learned to tell the truth,” he said, taking a healthy – or actually unhealthy – sip of his Polish vodka. “I was big man in the KGB before Soviet Union broke up, so what would I know about truth? And speakink of truth, your man Stephen Harper is about the worst liar…”

            Not wanting to jeopardize my chances of being named to the Senate in the near future, I steered him off that subject as soon as I could. It was probably about half an hour later that I asked him what he thought about governments that allowed bad roads to go unrepaired. “If you are seeing the Trans-Siberian highway from Irkutsk to Lake Baikal,” he said, “you would never complain again about the roads in New Brunswick. Our roads are so-o-o bad…”

How bad are they, Vladimir?” I asked.

He replied: “They are so bad that when I fly over them I get seasick. And that bring me to the subject of your Premier David Alward. Did you know he is a paid-up member of the Tory Party?” Let’s just say the interview went downhill from there.

                                               *****************************

            “You must be one a them pink Communists!” shouted one patron of the Argosy Club of Richmann, Maine. “Why don’t you go back to Commie-Land where you belong?”

            The raised voice and subsequent ejection came about because The Perfessor (Richard LaFrance from here) had professed that professional hockey left him cold and bored and that football (soccer) was the only real game. The patron, an American who felt that everyone had a right to his own opinion as long as it agreed with his, was outraged that anyone would prefer soccer over hockey. “We fought the Nazis so people like you wouldn’t come over here and pre-vert the American way of life!” he boomed.

            This was during the Stanley Cup Playoffs and the Montreal Canadiens won that game and the series over the Boston Bruins. During the game someone was jeering the ‘Canadian’ team – as if the ‘American’ team was better. That was when The Perfessor piped up and said: “Gents, you should know that the Canadiens have 56% Canadian players and the Bruins 62% Canadian players. Just for your information.”

            Of course there had to be one more loudmouth there to cause trouble in this border bar. He, a Canadian, was bad-mouthing Americans in their own country (not a good idea) and came up with this rhyme, which has been edited. “Here’s to the Great American Eagle. He (did #1) in France and (did #2) in Spain, and wiped his (nether regions) on the State of Maine!” The bouncer escorted him out fairly quickly.

            Geez, the company I keep.

                                                       -end-