Just movin' in the rain (March 25)

DIARY

Making a move in 1984

                                                  by Robert LaFrance

          I don’t remember a winter when so many people were sick with the flu, bad colds, dysentery, sickle cell anemia, etc. but then I don’t remember much anyway.

          There’s always the danger of people travelling from our winter to some exotic place like St. Leonard or the Dominican Republic and spending their whole vacation kneeling before the white porcelain goddess, as my friend Flug says. (My cousin Frank calls it the big white telephone to Europe). “Don’t drink the water!” they are warned, but quite often no one warns them not to use the ice cubes either.

          Back to the point, I have done an unofficial (I didn’t get paid) poll and have found that 34% of the people vacationing in either Dominican Republic or Curacao came home sick and shaking, and 24% of those going to Mexico did the same.

          One fellow I know was evidently thinking of vacationing in the Middle East, specifically Iraq, but he didn’t realize that it gets cold over there too, in places. I keep hearing about Ice-Us.

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          On the ongoing subject of technology and that kind of arcane stuff, how many of us use texting to communicate? My cellphone is hardly ever cold.

          My subject is the item called ‘predictive text’ which is really only spell checking, something that should be deleted from the computers of those of us who can actually spell.

          Predictive text appeared on my first cellphone about a month after I bought it. I was trying to text my daughter in Alberta and typed, or ‘thumbed’ this: “Hope to see you around the middle of the month. Keep well.”

          Before I clicked ‘send’ I looked at what I had written and it seemed to be: “Hope two car youth around the mango of the earlobe. Keep wild.” My phone had decided that I didn’t really want to send what I had thumbed, silly me. I kept trying to send the message, using different words, and hoping my cellphone would allow me to send something reasonably close to what I wanted. The closest I came was: “Leafs sure to win the cup this year.”

          So how did I get out of this scrape? I hope you don’t tell the boys at the club, but I looked in the manual that came with the phone. What an idea! Within three hours I had found the way to send PT into the garbage can and send the message I wanted. Just in time too; knowing I would not predict that the Leafs could lead the Kincardine Atom League, my daughter was about to send the police to the house.

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          It’s that time of year again – income taxes. Brrr! It is time to gather up our T4s, T4As, and all those other official papers and receipts and take them to our taxidermists so THEY can make sense of them.

          The first time I filed an income tax return was back in the 1960s. I had been working on Vancouver Island at a place that eventually became Strathcona Provincial Park, near Campbell River. My T4 said that I had earned $1400 or so (can’t quite remember the exact figure for some reason) and the province of BC had taken out about $300 in tax.

          I filled out the return myself (really!) and a month later received every bit of that $300 in the mail. By that time I was back in Tilley, NB, and about to head for Ontario, so that heavy bread came in very handy. A certain brick building in Perth received part of that, but most of it went for bus fare as I headed for my next career.

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          More nostalgia time: We moved to this estate in the summer of 1984, in the middle of a rainstorm. My halfton and my brother Lawrence’s were full of furniture that he and my wife and I had loaded from our house in Birch Ridge and then covered with plastic.

          You think I’m going to say that the plastic blew off, but no, disaster took another form. In Lower Kintore, in the heavy rain, with my truck heavily laden with furniture, the left rear tire blew. I had a spare, UNDER the furniture. Say no more about that. I still don’t know where I found those curse words.

          Lawrence, going ahead, got to the house and waited, and waited, then unloaded his truck all by himself. This included a chesterfield and a fridge. When we finally got there the air was blue, as they say.

          An hour later, everything was moved into the house and one minute later the rain stopped. The air became blue again. My wife’s father, who would be our neighbour, came in, saw all our stuff piled in the kitchen and told us to either cry or come over to his house and stay the night. We did both.

                                                     -end- 

How to get murderized at home (March 18)

DIARY

What month is it anyway? Thursday?

                                                  by Robert LaFrance

          I would say that I am in deep trouble, or as George H.W. Bush used to say: “deep doo-doo”.

          It wasn’t my fault. The cake was just sitting there and I didn’t want to insult my wife’s cooking by walking by it, ignoring all her hard work.

          As they say in those cop shows, here’s how it came down: My wife’s mother would celebrate her 96^th birthday on March 8, but nobody mentioned a word about this to me. If they had, I would have known that the cake was for her birthday supper. Therefore, when my wife gets up this morning and sees that THREE pieces are missing, it has nothing to do with me, although I ate two of them.

          It’s her fault for not saying to me: “Bob, that cake is for my mother’s birthday, and whosoever touches it – even looks at it – will be in deep deep trouble.” At this point she would have – should have - brandished her new stainless steel rolling pin to emphasize her point.

          But no, that didn’t happen, so I am blameless.

          It’s past 8:00 am, so I don’t have long to go before I have to face the music, and I ain’t talking about Mozart. Here is how I got into this scrape: I came downstairs at about 7:05 with the intention of having porridge, or perhaps a couple of fried eggs, for breakfast. It was then I saw the cake, sitting quietly on the counter near the fridge. “What can this be?” I asked, my sensors picking up signs of sugar and lots of it.

          Just then a quiet knock on the door and my former friend Flug came in. By this time I had lifted the top off the cake dish and Flug’s eyes widened. “I haven’t had my breakfast yet,” he hinted as he went over to the cupboard to get a saucer. The cake, a lemonish looking mélange (not to be confused with lemonade) was enough to make the mouth water.

          So we settled down to devour some of that mélange, two pieces for me and one for Flug. After we had eaten this, Flug looked over behind the cake and said in rather a hushed voice: “Bob, aren’t those birthday candles over there?” I said it certainly looked like it. The awful truth was arriving. Knees a-tremble, I went over to the calendar where the words were written on March 8: “Mum’s 96^th birthday.”

          Flug asked me why I looked so (expletive deleted). I told him. He looked at his wristwatch. “Bob, I have to go home and wash my hair, so I’ll see you later.” And he was gone. You may read up above in this column and see that I described Flug as a ‘former’ friend. I don’t need to explain.

          I’m writing this on March 8. As I wait for doom to come down those stairs, I am reflecting on all the good years. I suppose my question should be: “Shall I ask for a cigarette and a blindfold before my execution?” After she comes down, it won’t matter any more to me.

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Today as I write this part of my column (to be posthumously revised and edited – by someone else I fear - for the March 18 Victoria Star) we are also dealing with the change to Daylight Saving Time, which means the clocks go forward an hour and we ‘lose’ an hour’s sleep.

          I have heard a thousand times how DST came to be and no matter how many explanations I hear it sounds like a big con job. “They” want to fool us into thinking that spring has sprung when it fact today is the same as yesterday was.

          “Spring ahead and fall back” sounds good, but what does it all mean? By losing an hour’s sleep in March, do we really get to till our gardens any sooner? It was first enacted in Canada during the First World War for reasons that escape me. If somebody wanted to get working an hour earlier, then why didn’t they just get up earlier? I guess it just shows that I’m never going to president of Microsoft.

               In my research on the subject, I found that during WWII Britons set ahead their clocks two hours and called it Double Summer Time. Interesting, but it didn’t explain why I ‘lost’ an hour’s sleep this morning.

          In Canada, it's up to each province to decide whether to use daylight time, and not all do, like most of Saskatchewan. I now plan to lobby NB Premier Gallant to have this Daylight Saving Time expunged from the books of New Brunswick. When you’re my age, it’s already hard enough to figure out what time it is, indeed, what DAY it is.

                                                  -end- 

The Minnesota Goodbye - March 11

DIARY

It’s no use worrying about gas prices

                                                  by Robert LaFrance

          I have a whole pre-spring litany of rants, raves and gripes about the world in general, and aren’t you lucky? You get to hear some of them.

          How about the ‘gas guru’ who is on TV and radio every Wednesday to tell us that the price of gas at the pumps is going up or down? Do I really need to hear this? When my Gremlin needs gasoline, I go to the pumps and fill it; when I figure I’m spending too much money on gas, I drive less if possible. I know people who listen for that pronouncement every week and if they hear the price is about to go up two cents a litre, they dash for town 20 kilometres away and fill up, even if they have to use a plunger to jam the gas into the tank.

          Does any of that pump-watching make any sense at all? I don’t know. As the monkey said when he left ‘a mess’ behind the chesterfield: “That remains to be seen.”

          A few columns ago (that’s how things are measured in my world) I wrote about the several Storms of the Century and wondered how there could be more than one Storm of the Century in the same century. In the same vein, I am now wondering how many Last Frontiers there can be.

          Those of my generation were told that space was the Last Frontier, and then that name shifted to The Genome Project, DNA, etc. Last evening I looked in the TV guide and found a show called ‘Alaska: the Last Frontier’. I suppose this is yet another example of American hyperbole, like ‘World’ Series, but still I am wondering when we will truly see The Last Frontier. How about Young People Finding Work That Doesn’t Involve Paper Hats?

          While on the subject of television, I have been a watcher of the PBS show This Old House for decades and am finding that it sure has changed.

          Bob Villa was the host when the show first took to the air, and the whole premise of the show was taking an old but solid house and fixing what was wrong at a reasonable cost. Now the show is a haven for Yuppies and Volvo owners who spend $20,000 because they don’t like the window trim. Perhaps they should spend a little more on curtains so they don’t have to look out at homeless people going by.

               Dozing in my easy chair while listening to radio on my iPod Touch, I fancied that I heard the phrase “a conference on porn affairs”. Like a government about to commission a study, I sprang into action. Turned out it was a conference on foreign affairs. It was a little embarrassing when I arrived at the conference centre wearing only shorts and a smile. I guess from now on I had better emulate Frank Drebben (Of the Naked Gun series of movies): “Like a midget at a urinal, I had better be on my toes.” 

          Tiny, a 279 pound gent who lives down by the Kincardine Golf Club and Lounge, is one of these folks who tend to freeze houses for a living. He stopped by last evening.

          I am talking about people who, when they have been visiting somewhere, open the door as they leave and then start a conversation, leaving it open as they carry on a 5-minute discourse. Meanwhile, I am standing there with my teeth chattering as if I had a mouth full of ill-fitting dentures and facing hurricane force winds.

          On the radio show ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ the narrator, Garrison Keillor, calls what Tiny does “the Minnesota Goodbye”.

          So what can we do about this problem and why is it occurring? Answering the second question, I am thinking that people, once they get all their winter coats etc. on, must be thinking: “If I have to go out into the cold, why don’t I make these people freeze a little?” As to what to do about it, one method I have used for years is to say: “Either go out or stay in, preferably go out!”

          Joking. I’m too polite. Of course, once they read this, the problem may be solved because they’ll never visit here again. They will know who they are. My friend Flug (Richard LaFrance, no relation) says that when someone starts a conversation while the door is wide open, he rushes over and warns them about the porcupines that lurk in the shed near that door. He dashes out and closes the door behind him, then comes back in a minute later to report all is clear, but they had better dash.

                                  -end- 

That big emerald broach - March 4th

DIARY

Quebec – bastion of Confederation

                                                  by Robert LaFrance

          On the subject of government efficiency (no comment required about that phrase) I refer the reader to the many newspaper and other media headlines this winter - that we in New Brunswick pay about 20 cents more per litre for heating oil than people do in other Atlantic provinces. After hearing this for two months, the government sprang into action and commissioned a study.

          Don’t we love studies? It gives those in power a chance to hire political cronies at $500 a day plus expenses and spend some of their allotted office money on impressive looking reports.

          This specific study on the cost of heating oil confirmed that New Brunswickers do indeed pay 20 cents more per litre. (They could have asked me and Flug.) Then the government made a daring recommendation – do another study. They announced that it would be at least a year before the study was complete and the price of heating oil went down. Maybe.

          This reminds me of a certain federal government study in the mid-1990s when half a dozen assistant assistant deputy ministers from the Maritimes travelled to Ottawa once a week, staying in hotels three days a week for six months. They wrote a 500-page report with two possible plans of action on what the government should do about shipping problems in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The minister said thanks for the report, which strongly urged that Canada do Option A rather than B. Then the bureaucrats headed back to their jobs in the Maritimes.

          Three days later, they were somewhat surprised to read that the federal government had trashed their recommendations and had chosen Option B, which they had strongly opposed.

          The reason? Politics. Mustn’t offend Quebec, that bastion of Confederation. Remember, this was the mid-1990s, during one of those ‘neverendums’.          

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

This news just came in from Ottawa and Washington, DC: the two governments have just passed a law banning the sale or purchase of jewellery “because it’s silly, useless and wasteful”.

          I was lying in bed at the time, and half-asleep, but I leapt up to grab  all my jewellery to protect it from the Diamond Police. (In fact, I dreamed it all, but I didn’t just say that.) I was halfway to my jewellery box when I remembered I didn’t have a jewellery box because I don’t have any jewellery.

          Apparently I’m an anomaly (although I’ve been called other things). Most people own and wear a plethora of rings, bracelets, necklaces, pendants, broaches and similar items. I know one chap who owns a $5000 watch that has to be taken in every five years for servicing at a cost of $500. There are those who might say he’s the one getting serviced, but who am I to say? My own back yard is enough to take care of.

          The reason I arrived at the subject of jewellery was that my Aunt Minerva stopped by for a one-day visit in January and just yesterday left on the Kincardine train for points south. She likes to be back in Gagetown for the spring maple sugar season and salmon run; just thinking about those two events and fiddlehead time is enough to get me drooling, not a good thing to do when one is leaning over a $289 computer keyboard.

          Aunt Minerva likes jewellery. She owns enough of that stuff to finance a small skirmish – like World War II – and I can’t help bugging her about it, although, as you know, I’m usually very tolerant.

          “Auntie,” I said over the lentil soup at supper, “why don’t you sell that big emerald broach – no, not that one, the other one, two broaches to the left – and give the money to the food bank?”

          I miss-timed that question. Lentil soup flew across the table and sprayed the cat, or at least a photo of a cat since I don’t allow them in the house, and we all got a misty feeling. “What! Get rid of my favourite broach? Czar Nicholas III gave that to me in Greece in 1951 and it’s a treasure.”

          “Auntie,” I remonstrated. “You bought that at a yard sale in Wapske, for fifty cents. Why don’t you sell it and add a few hundred more dollars to help out the food bank…and by the way, the last Czar was Nicholas II.”

          Since I was being glared at, I decided it was a good time to visit my athletic club and get some exercise. When I got back from the bar a few hours later Aunt Minerva was quiet, as in asleep, and the broach was absent from her lapel. “She called up the food bank and wanted to donate the broach,” said my wife. “For some reason they said they would rather have food or the cash she could sell the broach for. Little did they know. They might have bought a can of no-name lentil soup.”

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