A whole column on outhouses (May 27)

Maybe George Carlin was right

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            The late comedian George Carlin used to say: “When you find yourself talking about (mucous) maybe it’s time you went into another line of work.”

            Perhaps I should start thinking about becoming a brain surgeon or cartographer, because the leading subject of today’s column is outhouses.

            At this point most of those under the age of thirty are wondering just what the heck I’m talking about, but we old-timers certainly remember some cold February mornings when we had to decide whether to burst or to go outside to the outhouse to ‘do number two’ as one may delicately phrase it.

            The last time I ever had my own outhouse was in the late 1970s after I had returned from some years in the Northwest Territories and had built a cabin in Tilley. Since I didn’t have a well, and therefore no way to flush a toilet, the ‘facility’ was out back of my cabin. In the summer it didn’t seem too far way, but in February it was approximately seven miles.

            Ironically, although I was stationed in some wild and out-of-the-way places in NWT, each of the weather stations was equipped with a working well and sewerage system and it was only when I returned to civilization in New Brunswick that I found myself needing a ‘privy’ outside my living area.

            Some history on that privy AKA outhouse. My grandfather Muff LaFrance (1881-1976) built it in the 1960s out back of his little house where my cousin Tom lives today along Churchland Road in Tilley, but Grampy had died just a couple of months before I returned to NB and the outhouse was there. After digging a hole that would be my entire sewer system, I took the privy on the back of a pickup truck over to my cabin. I not only had an Eaton’s catalogue in it, but in a moment of pure braggadocio, I installed not only a Simpson-Sears catalogue, but a Sears Roebuck one from across the border. I wanted my guests to have the best and rub shoulders (and other parts) with some fine merchandise.

            The reader should be told now how it was that I got onto this subject which, I admit, is not that far off George Carlin’s criterion for changing careers.

            Reading a book entitled ‘Unstoppable, the Bathroom Reader’, I came across a section about privies, which are, when we think about it, bathrooms. At least the way we refer to bathrooms today; they don’t necessarily have to have a bathtub or shower even if they are called BATHrooms. As I think about it, I really wouldn’t want to take a bath in an outhouse.

            The article called our attention to an entirely new industry that has begun in the past sixty years or so. It’s called ‘privy digging’ and, disgusting as it may sound, we have to remember that the organic material deposited in the outhouse hole many decades ago is now compost and doesn’t stink at all. Indeed, to a gardener, it is like Chanel #5 perfume.

            Okay, a show of hands: how many people in this room – for example in the lounge of the Victoria Glen Manor where John Larsen is reading this column to some of the residents – how many have ever sat in an outhouse and felt the January winds on their lower regions? I described the location of mine near my cabin, but I have seen some that were practically in the middle of the lone prairie. A person thought long and hard before he or she went out into one of those.

            A thought just occurred to me: we hear so much nowadays about people trying to lose weight; I’m thinking that part of the reason we’re fat is that bathrooms these days are so nice and warm and comfortable. In the old days, a person deciding whether to have that last serving of baked beans and brown rolls might think twice because of that lonely building out back.

            The book I mentioned said that ‘privy digging’ started in the 1950s when people started collecting antique bottles and continues today when many treasures are found among the composted human waste. People would throw anything down there just to get rid of it.

            One final story, and this is not for those with weak stomachs. Those folks better stop reading now. I heard about Samuel (Not his real name) who, after drinking too much, had his head over the outhouse hole and lost both dentures. He went back in to sleep it off and a ‘friend’ fished them out. He set them on Samuel’s table without washing them. Samuel got up after a while and saw the teeth. I don’t dare to say what he did with them or I myself might have to “call Europe on the big white telephone” as the saying goes.

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Alternate brain accommodations (May 20)

DIARY

The latest grasp (or gasp) at economic straws

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Some things are as predictable as a dog chasing a squirrel. As soon as any election is over, or almost over, there will be a great outcry for ‘proportional representation’ which will be forgotten a week after the new premier or prime minister takes his or her office.

            So it is with ‘the undergound economy’ which we hear about and read about practically every day lately. When governments get desperate and politicians find that they may have to curtail or reduce their fact-finding missions to New Zealand and Bermuda, they get worried and start talking about this.

            “Government loses billions on undergound economy,” shouts one headline, and the reporter gives an ‘estimate’ of just how many billions are being lost. It’s called ‘taking your mind off the billions we’ve been wasting’.

            Suppose you had a bushel of apples still quite good after a winter in the root cellar and you knew a guy in the Grand Falls area who sells hens’ eggs. You make a trade. According to the government, if you were a real Canadian, you should estimate the value of these products and report it to the government so they could sting you for HST.

            Note: The government dismissed the idea of road tolls and a raise in HST as being “too easy”.

            My theory on these folks in government who believe that should happen is: “Oh look! Pigs flying over!” Another theory I have is that all these fact-finding missions to warm areas (in winter) should be taxed as well, and the cheque sent to me.

            I have a feeling that this would happen about the same day that I am named the Senator from Tilley, New Brunswick. Oh wait. I don’t live in Tilley, not since I was a teenager, so I couldn’t claim to be a citizen of that hamlet any more.

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

            Following is a list of short subjects that I have noted over the past few months:

            Watching an ATV newscast last week, I saw a story about a family who had to move out of their house because of mould or some other scourge. The reporter said they had to move to ‘alternate accommodations’, which, if I understand it correctly, means  ‘somewhere else’. We get so used to this puffed-up language that we don’t even notice it any more.

            My cellphone is a big help to me and I usually carry it, and I usually carry it turned on. This is a fairly common thing among those of my gender, but the other gender (I have learned this from observation, not prejudice) tends to also carry their cell phones, but they’re either turned off or buried under the detritus in their purses. I should mention that ten minutes after I typed this, Flug dropped by. He was carrying his cellphone and it was turned off. I can’t seem to win today.

            Not to pick on government too much, but it’s SO EASY. Employment figures for New Brunswick came out shortly after the first of May and we heard the welcome news that our province’s unemployment rate had dropped 0.2% in the month of April. So things are really picking up, right? The next revelation was that the reason for this was that an extra large number of young people had gone out west in a search for work. A pat on the head for NB, and then a slap in the face.

            So much of the modern electronic equipment is designed with the idea that we are all idiots. Recently I rode in a car whose doors lock automatically a minute after it gets on the road. That’s all right; we have the same feature on our Corolla and all I do is push the button to unlock all the doors. However, this other car I referred to had an additional feature; whenever I unlocked the car door, it would lock itself back up within a minute. Am I being unreasonable here? I really don’t want to be locked in a car at the whim of Toyota or Mazda, and I don’t like a car to override my wishes like that.

            Ah, the rites and rituals of spring. One of mine is to go have some fish and chips at Tilley Takeout which I did on May 8^th. Having been born in Tilley, a mile up the road from TTO, I have to go there each spring and have those fish and chips. We are blessed in this area with a plethora of great takeouts and I can’t name them all; it’s just that a Tilleyiker has to go back now and then to refresh his soul. Up to now, few people realized that a takeout can sell soul food.

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Flug puts in two cents worth (May 13)

DIARY

Periodontal (Per-idiot?) disease in dogs?

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            I usually write my column on Saturdays, but this time I would be away in Halifax to watch my son Kinley receive his Youth Minister diploma from the Atlantic School of Theology. (I’m rather proud of my boy, but don’t tell him that. I’ve told him for all these years that I would have preferred if we had acquired a puppy in 1992.)

Therefore, because I would be away I asked my friend Flug (Richard LaFrance, no relation) if he would mind writing it. No question of pay though. I knew it wouldn’t be worth much.

“Would I?” he spurted. “I’ve been wanting to replace you for years!”

“But Flug,” I said. “You’re not – ”

It was too late; he was on his way to his laptop. Brunswick News was in for a shock.

            *************************

Good day, former readers of Bob LaFrance’s alleged humour column. You finally caught a break. My name is Richard LaFrance, no relation thank God, former Parliament Hill barber and fork lift driver in Onion, Saskatchewan. I am here to put a little humour into your lives. You’ve waited long enough.

Let’s start out with telephone surveys, not to be confused with telemarketers. I lie to them, every time. Therefore I realize, as you do, that telephone polls aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Only an hour ago, someone from the Conservative Party of Canada called and asked me what I thought about the Tories’ phoney TV commercials referring to their so-called Action Plan.

Of course I could recognize Justin Trudeau’s voice and I quickly told him what I thought of him. “Your father would spin in his grave if he saw the way you lie every day,” I said. “Sure, he lied too, but in a different way. And, if you can’t out-lie Stephen Harper you don’t deserve to be prime minister.”

The caller persisted though, and wanted to know what I thought about the Tories spending $750 million on political advertising while denying it was political advertising. I stood pat, although I was sitting at the time and my name is not Pat.

Now let’s go on to where I got the name Flug. As I said, my Christian name is Richard, if that’s not too politically incorrect. Born in Tilley, NB, in 1948, I pretty well had to have a Christian name because there weren’t a lot of Buddhists living along Churchland Road. There I go again! Should I have said Synagogue-land or Mosque-land Road?

Back to the origin of the name, Bob LaFrance had something to do with it – what a surprise. About 1958 a bunch of us boys were playing baseball across the road from Murray and Minnie Paris’s house and I hit a ground ball to Mack Paris, who threw the ball to first baseman Clinton St. Peter. That ball, delivered with lots of speed, took me right in a sensitive area and I went down face-first to the ground, ploughing up enough topsoil to plant a bed of green peppers.

Ah, how I could use the language then! “*&^%$#@*&^%$!” I moaned at a high volume. One of the words I uttered started with the letter ‘F’, which brought Minnie out to find out who was ‘hors de combat’ as we used to say in France. “It’s okay, Minnie,” Bob said. “He’s just saying ‘Flug Flug Flug!’ He thought his face was a plough.”

After I recovered and Minnie had gone back to prepare a baked bean supper with rolls for all of us, I said to Bob: “Flug indeed.” Only I didn’t say ‘Flug’. From that day on, I was Flug and no longer Richard (no relation).

For my penultimate (let Bob top that word!) paragraph, and I am sure that by this time you agree that I would be a much better choice to write this column, I want to mention the Royal Bank of Canada profit in the last quarter of 2014. It was $1.3 BILLION, a record even for them. Instead of lowering bank fees and charges, they added more, like a $5 fee for paying your mortgage. There were dozens of them. You want a definition of the word ‘greed’? It’s spelled B-A-N-K-S. Then there’s Mike Duffy, who is in a league of his own.

Last, I read on an Internet website that your dog is in danger of getting gum disease, but you can steer that off by taking giving your vet $600-plus so he, she or it can clean the dog’s teeth and give it some free medicine for $200-$300 more. Funny, I’ve had more than a dozen dogs and not one had gum disease. I let them eat bones and hard dogfood to keep their teeth in good shape. People sure are sucked in.

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A decroded piece of zap (May 6)

DIARY

Rex Murphy was right for once

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            On Thursday, April 23, on the CBC-TV news program The National, Rex Murphy, who is a veteran common tater, made some comments clearly aimed at Senator (or not) Mike Duffy and I found myself agreeing with them.

            He implied that the Mike Duffy trial was irrelevant because it was merely about points of law not about character or conscience.

            “In the context of the Senate,” Murphy asked, “where is character?” Referring to Duffy, Wallin, Brazeau and other senators, who super-padded their already generous expense accounts, he said that anybody of conscience and character “would not maim his moral dignity to take advantage of (the loose rules).” Meaning: even though the cookie jar was wide open and no one was looking, good guys would walk by without grabbing one. These senators took a hundred cookies each because they could.

            If the Senate can’t legally be abolished, why can’t we merely chop their power to that of the Dogcatcher of Kenora and reduce their salaries and expense accounts to the level of a McDonald’s busboy’s paycheque? Problem solved.

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

            On a somewhat less edgy subject, but maybe not, once I think about it, I want to comment on a recent TV commercial for a product called Rogers Ignite.

            The opening scene of that commercial shows a father (one assumes, or possibly a pizza delivery guy with privileges) entering the living room where two or three kids are lying on the floor and playing with their iPads, iPods, iPhones, iChips and iCokes. He steps over them and comes across more people doing similar things with electronic miracles. He passes by all these people, none of whom greet him in any way.

            He goes upstairs where his wife (or not, see above) is lying in bed and watching an online show on her laptop. I refer to a small computer, not the actual top of her lap. He crawls into bed and, although she is by no means hard on the eyes, he settles down to exhibit great joy at being able to do watch TV in bed.

            So, to sum up, this working man comes home to his family, none of whom acknowledge his existence, and crawls into bed with a woman of no mean standard, and is happy as a clam to be watching a movie on a laptop computer. Rogers Ignite. Be sure to buy that. Great for family togetherness.

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

            I am not sure if you agree, but I write these words as part of a humour column. Some might say “attempted humour column” and other would say “a decroded piece of (a word that rhymes with ‘zap’)” but the point is, I try.

            Over the years I have not felt any particular pressure to maintain my high standards of humour (retch) in my private life, but I think some people feel I need to be funny all the time.

            A few weeks ago I made a joke in a store, in a town far, far away, and the person came back with: “You told that one last week,” or words to that effect. The same thing happened a day later in another town far, far away. I mentioned to someone that my wife would hit me with a rolling pin if I acted in a certain way. “You said that last week,” was the response.

            Is a dentist expected to pull teeth all day and all night? Does a truck driver get criticized if he isn’t behind the wheel 24/7? I am not quite sure why I have to be hilarious all day, merely because I write a humour column. I don’t write a script for every visit to a grocery store, although sometimes when I visit a dentist I need a laugh.

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

            One final notes about the odd jobs that we use words for. Last evening as I sipped on some lemonade and sat in my favourite chair in the living room, I read that nobody knows who ‘founded’ the community of Tilley (although I think it was my great-grandfather Olivier LaFrance dit Pinel). Then a friend from Ontario, on his way to PEI,  phoned me and said that he had ‘found’ Tilley and was actually at the house where I was born.

            Funny how the words ‘founded’ and ‘found’ are not identical in meaning. When my ancestors arrived in Tilley in the nineteenth century from the Bois Francs area of Quebec (near Drummondville today) they had to ‘find’ Tilley because their GPSes were a bit primitive and road signs on their Trans Canada Highway were rather obscure. “Terra incognita” it said on their maps. So when they ‘found’ Tilley and if they were the first settlers, that means they ‘founded’ Tilley. It’s too much for me.

                                                         -end-

Ice studies upon studies (April 29 column)

DIARY

Let’s study the studies of the ice studies

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            The ice had hardly started to move when the road on the Abner Paul Flat (as I call it after my late friend) above Perth was flooded and closed, as it seems to have been every year since the Bats left the Mosul Valley Caves of Iraq in the year 1229 a.d.

            I have never been able to understand why the government cannot raise that four or five hundred foot stretch of Highway so that it does not flood every year, but I can only guess that it is because all the available money has been spent on studies, ‘monitoring’, and installing all kinds of electronic equipment to predict when that stretch of road is going to flood each year. I am baffled as to why that road hasn’t been raised to avoid inconveniencing the thousands of people who want and need to use it.

            Geez, all they have to do is ask me or anyone from Tobique First Nation, Tilley, Rowena, or Timbuktu and we would all say: “First thing!” and then demand our consulting fee.

            Another example of a section of road that badly needs raising is the Muniac Road where it meets Highway 105. When a short stretch of it was covered with water in March  2012, medical emergencies going from Perth to Waterville hospital had a long way to go. Even if they were driving one a them new Porch cars, that’s quite a drive.

            As to raising the level of Muniac Road, I suggested that to two cabinet ministers and two MLAs and they all looked at me blankly and then nodded wisely. Lights out, nobody home. The cabinet ministers (I could tell) were barely aware that Victoria County existed and the bureaucrats with them were fairly certain it did not.

            However, we who live in southern Victoria County would be glad to tell them where these roads are and even to take them there. The only way these people are going to understand is if they’re taken right to the scene. For example, if we had a vanload of cabinet ministers and bureaucrats and were sitting in the parking lot at Hotel Dieu of St. Joseph hospital in Perth-Andover and we said to them: “Okay, let’s pretend this is an emergency; we have to take patients by ambulance to Waterville hospital.

            “We can’t go south on highway 105 because the water is across the road just below Perth and we can’t cross the bridge because it’s been closed. Abner Paul Flat has been under water since 1981. Question: How do we get to Waterville hospital? Yes, Johnny, in the back? What’s your answer?”

            “We could go over Jawbone Mountain (as it’s called) and go south on Kintore Road, come out at Highway 105 in Muniac, then to Waterville.”

            “Johnny, that’s excellent! You are a rare bird in government. Have you actually travelled that road?” Johnny said he had travelled it. All around him were these puzzled faces. “Now,” the van driver (me) says, “let’s pretend we have a patient who needs to go to Waterville ASAP.”

            So we go the way Johnny has suggested. That is, until we get to the end of Muniac Road which is covered with a metre or two of water. The patient is still okay but his mind is now concentrated more than it was before. As the English writer Dr. Samuel Johnson once said: “Nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of being hanged”. Same with dying in an ambulance. It’s not that bad yet, but getting there. Even the cabinet ministers and bureaucrats are starting to understand. A miracle, but miracles happen.

(Remember, this is all play-acting.)

            “Now what?” I asked them. Getting no answer, I turned around the van and headed north. Fifteen minutes later we reached Highway 109 at Forest Glen and could  see the Tobique going by. A right-hand turn and then to Arthurette. Then do I go left to Peoples Road or right to the Anderson Road? I choose the first. We go through South Tilley, Lerwick and Tilley, and eventually we get to Medford.As we go up we see that Brooks Bridge is closed, so it’s on to Grand Falls, quite a way upriver. There we get onto the Trans Canada Highway and make our way south to Waterville hospital. “That didn’t take long did it?” I say to the late patient. “An hour and a half?” His life support system had conked out at Portage.

            Listen, government. All that driving from Muniac to Arthurette, etc. could have been avoided if only a 300-foot stretch of Muniac Road had been raised ten feet. Perhaps the government could do a few studies on this, monitor the situation, and put in some more electronic gadgets. Or they could dump some gravel.

                                                       -end-

Shoulda been shot at the stake (April 22)

Flug got his ‘S’ frozen off

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            I like it when other writers do my work for me. I just finished reading a biography of our late Premier Richard Hatfield and have now started reading the David Halberstam book ‘The Best and the Brightest’, about all those brilliant men who got the U.S. into the Vietnam War.

            I say ‘men’ because they were almost 100% males and even included President John F. Kennedy, who was severely against the war but found himself being slowly dragged into it.

            How Richard Hatfield got dragged into this column was because of a description by Halberstam of Robert MacNamara, the U.S. Defence Minister in the mid-1960s. Here’s the description: “He was intelligent, forceful, courageous, decent – everything in fact, but wise.” Thinking of the Bricklin and the Diplomat Motel scandals, plus the marijuana in his suitcase, I’d say the description was spot on.

            Mike Duffy’s parents were also unwise. Next subject.

            There’s been a lot of water under the fridge since the Bricklin and all that stuff, but has anything really changed? As I write these immortal words, the ice still hasn’t gone out of the river at Perth-Andover and people are sweating profusely. Dave Eagan’s berm around Victoria Villa special care home represents, as far as I can see, the only constructive reply to the 2012 flood and request to future floods. The rest of the province seem to think that ‘monitoring’ the water levels is all that can be done.

            When I think of the word ‘flood’ in connection with Perth-Andover, I remember the April 11, 1993 flood. Doing spot news (as they say, but mine was more like spotty) for CJCJ Radio in Woodstock, I recorded a news report from Larlee Creek. I’m not sure if it was broadcaster Dave Rogers or station manager Rick McGuire, but whichever one it was, here’s what I said to him for broadcast in half an hour: “It looks as if this year Perth-Andover is going to be spared a repeat of the devastating 1987 flood. The river level below Perth here at Larlee Creek is quickly dropping and residents are breathing a sigh of relief…”

            Other than all those clichés, there was another item wrong with that radio report heard by thousands; it was totally wrong, dude. Half an hour after the news item went on the air, the village, the police, EMO, the fire department and others started evacuating people from their homes.

            I don’t remember if I included that news report on my freelance invoice, but if I did, I should have been shot at the stake, as my friend Betty used to say.

            Like many others, I say to myself several times a year: “Now I’ve heard everything!” It appears, as of Wednesday, April 15, that I was wrong. On The Current, Anna Maria Tremonti’s weekday morning radio show on CBC, she described the situation of a an Italian man whose body was diseased and pretty much finished and said that an Italian doctor planned to perform a head transplant on this guy, cutting off his head and transplanting it onto a donor’s healthy body. One assumes that the donor had been shot in the head by a South Carolina police officer on a normal shift.

            The operation would take 36 hours and involve 100 doctors; apparently the chief surgeon would carefully examine the recipient’s head, and might I suggest that his own might be able to use a look-see as well?

            Federal and provincial government bureaucrats and elected officials often make mistakes and we forgive them for that, but we don’t hear so much about the municipal people making what were called (in the Meech Lake era) ‘egregious errors’. However, whoever schedules ice time in the Moncton the Colliseum is in deep trouble to the tune of $125,000. He or she scheduled two important playoff games for the same evening, and one had to be moved to Fredericton – teams, players and even ticket holders.

            The QMJHL team Moncton Wildcats had to move their April 17 playoff game  because of this airline-type overbooking. The only reason I can think of is that the Moncton city bureaucrat thought that one of the two playoff series would be all over by that date.

            Speaking of ice, my friend Flug is just getting warm again after his February 3-week vacation in Novosibirsk, Siberia. He saw an ad on the Internet for a vacation package whose total cost was $900 – food, travel, and lodging. The trouble was, Flug thought the ad read ‘Iberian holiday!’ He had missed the ‘S’. As we well-read people know, the Iberian peninsula contains Spain and Portugal, and Siberia contains, well, cold.
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