Byron
Paris was ‘a Ford man’
by
Robert LaFrance
It’s not seen so much now, but when
I was somewhat younger (like 50 years),
men tended to prefer one type of car, or one car company, over all the
rest. For example, my cousin, the late Byron Paris, was “a Ford man”.
(This is not to be confused with a
certain Toronto mayor who did not run in the recent election there.)
I refer to guys who were almost all
mechanics and to whom a GM, or a Ford or a Chrysler could do not wrong, no
matter how many times it stopped along the road. To Byron Paris, a Ford was
king and that was the name of that tune.
One day I stopped at his house along
the Currie Road and he got to talking about his recent trip to Moncton. “You
wouldn’t think it,” he said, pointing at his 5-year-old Ford (of course), “but
that car takes almost no gas. I filled it at Lila Goodine’s store and drove to
Moncton, went around there all day, even over to Riverview, and then came home.
I had not fuelled up and when I got back here I had to drain out two gallons of
gas.”
There are those who might not have
believed that story, but I certainly did, because he drove the schoolbus I rode
on. Rule: One should try to never annoy the cook or the bus driver.
Speaking of the bad idea of ‘annoying the cook’ that
reminds me of the time when I was working on a weather station in the Northwest
Territories. We had about a dozen people there and we generally got along well
until this chap name Ted, from Winnipeg, arrived to replace our friend Ben,
from Amherst.
Well, Ted was one of those guys who just don’t
listen. We tried to tell him. “Ted, don’t rile the cook because he’s got an
awful temper. The results could be disaster – YOUR disaster!”
And what did Ted do? His first meal at the weather
station, he riled the cook, Ray, from Calgary. Ted had been reading some
cartoons that a pilot had left there the day before, and Fate decided it should
be that the last cartoon he read before going up to stand in line and get his
supper was ‘The Wizard of Id’ where the long-serving dungeon prisoner said to
the jailer who was supposed to bring his supper: “Hey, where’s my swill?”
You have already guessed what Ted said to Ray. Ted
was ordered out of the kitchen area and told never to come back. For the next
two weeks Ted only ate what food the rest of us weathermen brought him. Finally
we got him to apologize to Ray and he was put on parole with the condition that
he shut his mouth except for stuffing swill – er, I mean, food - into it.
I know I lie more than the average Persian rug, but
this story was 100% truth. Remember that. Never rile the cook. I can tell you
from rolling pin experience that it is just as true today – actually yesterday
– than it was in 1974.
*****************************
Just thinking: After World War II it must have been
really hard for the children of war criminals to get a job. I remember one day
Grampy told me about a guy with an accent who had stopped by his house in
Tilley and asked him for a job. He said he would work with horses, cut wood,
fix equipment, anything, just so he could get three squares a day. “I said
sure, you can help me cut wood,” Grampy said, “and you know he was such a good
worker and I had to work so hard to keep up with him that it was three days
before I thought to ask him his name. He said it was Jim Hitler and then he
threw down his axe and said he supposed I would send him away now.
“I said I should, the way he had treated my axe, but
I didn’t care what his name was.” And then Grampy asked him why he didn’t just
change his name. He said he had never thought of it. “Not too bright, but he
really could lay down the rock maples.”
The bottom line of this story is that Jim Hitler
changed his name to Jim Duffy. “I never heard directly from him again after he
moved on,” Grampy told me, “but I found out later than he went over to PEI and
later had a son who was named to the Senate. Quite a success I guess. Just goes
to show you.”
-end-
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