How different from ‘the good old days’
by Robert LaFrance
Driving through
one of the built-up areas of Victoria County, I noticed a sign that read: “In
business at this spot since 2004”.
Wow. If we ever
want an illustration of how times have changed, that was probably it. This
store was (rightly) proud of being in business a whole eleven years, whereas
when I was a young gaffer growing up, as it were, in North Tilley, a new
business was considered one that has only been there twenty-five years. Some of
the businesses in Perth and Plaster Rock – we lived about halfway between the
two – had been there since the early 1900s and some even longer than that. A
business with only eleven years under its belt would be considered a
whippersnapper.
It’s all due to
globalization of course. And greed. In the 1970s, after all the flower children
had died and morphed into greedy business people, they discovered they could
move their factories from Montreal to Mexico and pay their workers there about
75% less. Of course studies today have shown that they didn’t make any more
money that way, and it was all a mistake, but it is a little late for all the
people who lost their jobs, their homes and their families.
Hey, wait a
minute! This is supposed to be a humour column.
Moving to
something a bit lighter, I wish to comment, with your permission, on doughnuts.
Your (and my)
mouth waters at the word, but curb that reaction for a few minutes and THEN
head for the fridge, because the doughnuts I refer to are found in the trunks
of our cars.
On Tuesday, when
I motored to Woodstock to visit my son who is a college student there, I
sauntered onto a car lot where there were lots of shiny objects that caught my
eye, much as a silver coin catches the eye of a monkey in a tree. Talking to a
car salesman who had almost persuaded me to buy a new $45,000 top-end car, I
was impressed that the vehicle could do everything but press my jeans.
“Okay, I’m sold,”
I told him. “But only if you can open the trunk and find a full-size spare
tire. If I’m paying that much, I want a full-size spare.”
“We can soon put
one in that very trunk,” he said, “and we’ll get you a top of the line Acme
all-season radial – AND give you a good deal on winter tires.”
“No, it has to be
in the trunk right now,” I insisted. “Open wide, as my dentist says.”
Needless to say,
when he, talking all the while, opened the trunk, there was a doughnut there.
He blamed the garage staff. There should have been one, and on heading to the
next car lot, I agreed.
What do you
suppose car company executives think about when they put those doughnuts in
cars? Of course we all know the reason: to save money. I thought about that a
lot (ten seconds). The bottom line, as they say when the clothesline gets blown
to the ground, is that they save less than $20 a car. Now that’s thinking, if
the definition of ‘thinking’ is ‘not thinking’.
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I do a lot of
reading, often hours an evening when my easy chair beckons and the snores
aren’t far away. Last evening it was about Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727), whom
I’ve heard referred to as “the inventor of gravity”.
Just a guess, but
I would say gravity was around several years before this guy showed up in
England.
We have all heard
the story of the apple falling on his head, but apparently that was one of
those urban legends, or just a lie. The closest any of his biographers would go
is that an apple fell near him, so he went in the house, got out his brain, and
came up with a formula showing how to calculate the force of gravity at a
certain point.
I don’t know
whether I should say this is not, but he proved that we weigh less at the top
of Mount Carleton than we do at Mister B’s in Andover. Within hours of this
column’s appearance, dozens of Weight-Watchers types will be heading for the
mountain. “Look! I’m down to a ton!” Too bad, the fish and chips at Mister B’s
are great.
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I will leave you
with an observation: Now that the cold weather’s here, people will probably be
moving to the U.S.A. (in spite of all those guns and anti-refugee sentiments)
because it’s warmer.
I am not
referring to Florida or the Carolinas. Caribou, Maine, is clearly much warmer
than Limestone Siding, NB. Last evening I was looking at an Environment Canada
(my former employer) weather report that said the present temperature here was
four below zero. I checked the Caribou weather station figures and it was +26.
I’m almost packed.
-end-
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