Oh, my POOR achy breaky heart (Feb 24)

DIARY

February observations from here

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Last evening we all went to a retirement party for McGinty, who had just turned 78 and decided he had had enough of chainsaws for one lifetime. I would have said five or six lifetimes, but then I’m lazy as a cut cat.

            I mention McGinty as a point of contrast. He left school in grade seven and went to work in the woods – this was in 1951 – and, as far as I know, never took on another career, never took a vacation, and worked six days every week, barring severe storm (he remembers the tail-end of Hurricane Hazel going past), injury, weddings and funerals.

            McGinty was and still is one tough bird. When he retired last week he still had the Husqvarna chainsaw he bought in 1981 and he still had all its chains hanging in the barn. Because the chains wore out and he didn’t, this proves he was tougher than steel. “And slightly stubborn,” giggled his wife Ethel last evening after she had become a little tipsy on a half glass of Portugeuse wine that I had given her.

            While we were revelling last evening, the phone rang. McGinty answered it on the old wall dial phone. He talked for a while and we could see he was disappointed about something. After the call he came over to where a gaggle of us ne’er-do-wells were standing. “That was my grandson Amos,” he said. “I mean Nathan – he doesn’t like to be called by the old-fashioned name Amos – and he said he was sorry he couldn’t come up from Bristol for this party. He had to meet some business people. I was hoping he’d come up because the last time he was here was at Christmas for a few hours.”

            McGinty was probably thinking about the many thousands of dollars he had contributed toward Amos’s business degrees and thinking about the weekend a decade before when he had driven to Truro in a rainy gale for Amos’s wedding.

            On second thought, I doubt if McGinty was thinking that at all. He’s not that type of guy.

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

            What got me thinking about the contrast between McGinty and his grandson – whose income is in the $85,000 range thanks to his grandpa – was that this morning I heard on the radio the country song ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ by Billy Ray Cyrus.

            While this man is a competent singer and musician, he is not in the range of, say, the late  Ernest Tubb or Kidd Baker.

            Looking on Wikipedia, I found that Billy Ray Cyrus’s ‘net worth’ as the phrase goes, is about $25 million, and his daughter Miley makes that much in a month. You will notice I didn’t say EARNS. When I think of them or the omnipresent bunch of no-talent rappers getting rich, I think of great musicians who barely earn a living and can’t stop touring or the tax man would pay them a call.

           Or I think of McGinty and his ungrateful grandson. It don’t hardly seem fair, do it?

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

            Here’s a wild change of subject: Every time I sit down in front of my television I see yet another mention of automatic (driverless) cars. It is said that one of them could be sent on its way from Citadel Hill in Halifax and arrive safely at Stanley Park in Vancouver, but I would not want to be on the road while this is happening – four-lane, 2-lane, or woodland trail.

            Somebody, somewhere, thinks this is a good idea, but (this is going to shock you) people make mistakes. Look at the nearest Toronto Maple Leaf fan. Just kidding. My knowledge of hockey is almost nil, so I could hardly scoff at a team in the NHL. Besides, the Leafs are a great money machine. Who cares if they rarely score a touchdown?

            Back to the subject at hand before it gets away, I recall one sunny day in the fall of 1982. My wife had successfully begged and pleaded with me to marry her, and we were back in Kincardine after the honeymoon. We had stopped to visit her family as we were on our way to our estate in Birch Ridge.

            I was walking around and chanced to walk onto Manse Hill Road just as a small red Chev car came zooming up over the hill, almost ran over my foot, and turned into my in-laws’ driveway. (Magic!) I then noticed that no one was driving.

            I dashed in the driveway and there was the car, parked by my in-laws’ front door. How could this be? What miracle of technology made this possible? I went in the house to tell everyone the news, and almost got trampled by my wife’s Aunt, who was all of 4-foot-11 in heels if she had been in heels. In a hurry, she smiled, said hello and dashed out to her car. Sure enough, she could not be seen once she sat down. She peered out through the steering wheel – the bottom half – and zoomed away.

                                                                             -end-

Back to the rotary dial phones! (Feb. 17 column)

DIARY

The U.S. political system is bonkers!

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Several decades ago (pre-Ronald Reagan) I decided that, rather than continue to scoff and sneer at the U.S. political system, I would study it carefully. Surely something that looked so weird couldn’t really be that bad. Could it?

            It was, and is.

            Even after considerable study and perusal all those years ago and more recently - the Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire primaries, and all the other contests that take place the length and breadth of that country – I could not find any sense to any of it, except that the candidate with the most money wins his or her party’s nod.

            Again this year I borrowed books from the library, looked for explanations on Google and talked to people who should know, and I still have no idea how Americans came to the conclusion that this weird sytem results in the best candidates being chosen.

            It’s a country that urges its citizens to buy all the handguns they can afford, a country that elects judges, a country that periodically comes within minutes of shutting itself down over partisan political disputes, a country that seems to be content with some people making a billion dollars a month and others being unable to afford health care and/or living in cardboard boxes in darkened alleys. Why should I expect their political system system to make sense?

            I await an explanation from ANYONE as to what their Electoral College is; clearly it isn’t a college and it’s hardly electoral. A state with 50 EC seats goes to one side or the other – every vote. If the Democrats won 50.0001% of the popular vote they would win the state, period. This is taking the concept of ‘first past the post’ to the stratosphere.

            They even have enshrined in their constitution that they have the right to bare arms, winter or summer. If we had that law in Canada I would still wear a sweater in February.

            Only in the United States of America could a demagogue like Donald Trump emerge from the manure pile that is the Repulican Party, AKA the GOP or Grand Old Party. If a Canadian politician said the things Trump has been saying, he or she would have to take the last train to Sable Island and stay there until after the election. And now he has won the New Hampshire primary. Go figure.

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

            Now, to relax away from U.S. politics, I will outline a few items from this part of New Brunswick, including some comments by Scotch Colony community leaders like Johnny Fixtura, a retired British soccer player who recently bought Hendersons’ pig farm in Lower Kintore. I stopped by to welcome him to the community and, like many an Englishman, was cheerful and optimistic. He showed me his pen that was full of some very loud pigs that, he said, would soon be converted to cash. I asked him how he could stand the noise that threatened my eardrums and my equilibrium. “Why, that’s my squeal of fortune, old chap!” he laughed.

            We continued to his root cellar where the smell of apples was almost overpowering. “They’re just about ready to be made into apple sauce and pies,” he said, “and my wife is ready, willing, and able.” I looked over at Mrs. Fixtura, who seemed to be reluctant, unenthusiastic, and incapable. However, Johnny continued beaming, much like Captain Kirk used to do. “These apples are my ‘fruit accompli’,” he said. It was clear that he had a fatal attraction to puns.

            His kids were hardly better. He invited me in the house for a lemonade and his two kids, Nigel and Kingfish, were arguing over one smartphone which apparently they shared. “Take your hands off my apps!” shouted Nigel.

            Speaking of electronic devices, remember back a few decades when there was a whole whack of aerial spraying against the spruce budworm? Do we also see on TV that down in Brazil people are spraying all kinds of toxic chemicals to try and get rid of mosquitos that might be carrying the Zika virus?

            I think the time has come to mount a spraying campaign against electronic devices. You got your iPhone, iPad, Android, etc. etc. etc. and there’s another one of them invented every six hours. This proliferation (are we up to iPhone 351 yet?) can’t be good for the environment, so  what choice do we have but to spray?

            Then there are the programs and systems that can be ‘accessed’ on these devices. There’s Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, MySpace, MyButt, and so on and so on. Get out the toxic spray canisters and let’s go back to dial telephones that are attached to the wall. So much more efficient.

                                                                                      -end-

Quitting the old tobacco in 1973 (Feb 10 column)

DIARY

Time to take a shower, Bob!

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Last Thursday I went in to Mary’s Bake Shop in Perth and sat down to have a breakfast of ham, egg and cheese muffin and some great coffee.

            I sat at the ‘executive table’ with six or seven other folks, mostly men, and of course the subject at hand quickly went to mechanic work – in other words, fixing stuff.

Right away one guy started talking about motorcycles, all about taking out the widget or camshaft and replacing them with parts from a 1946 Alpha Romeo, a junked vehicle he had found in Iowa in 1999. Then they talked about ‘closing the gap’ and doing things like ‘checking the timing’ and finding out why the motor ‘missed’ when Texaco gasoline was used. I couldn’t figure out how they could go places with their motorcycle if it were missing, but I sat there nodding as if I had a clue what the hell they were talking about.

After a while someone noticed me sitting there looking wise and nodding. It was up to me to contribute to the conversation. “I bought a futon once,” I said, “and it came in a box. I was expected to put it together.”

The fellow who had just related the story of installing five Harley Davidson engines in one morning and still having time to restore a 1932 Model T before lunch said: “So how long did it take for you to put it together?”

“I, er, had to wash my hair that morning,” I said, “and my wife put it together.” Did I detect looks of scorn from these mechanical types, or was it merely that they all got indigestion at the same time?

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

Now I shall go to some questions on various subjects, important subjects, like:

I read about and see on TV that people take (someone else’s) keys and ‘make impressions’ on a bar of soap or a wad of clay and I always ask myself  what do they do next? Sometimes I take a key into a local shop to get duplicates made and when I get it home it doesn’t work even though they used the latest computer assisted equipment. Am I expected to believe that somebody can make an impression in a bar of soap and then go make a key from this, one that actually works?

Three times this week I have heard the phrase “very unique”. My question is: how can something be more unique than unique? It is something like the phrase “vitally important”. If something is vital, it’s already as important as it can get. Of course I have railed on for years against “hot water heater”. If your water is already hot, why does it need heating?

As we speak, New Brunswick’s Public Utilities Board is looking at our power rates and have decided that we residential customers are paying far too little for our hydro. Gazing over at our latest bill from NB Power, I wonder what the PUB would consider a fairer rate? Include our house, dog and cat? Of course if we all slept in the garage the power bill would be reduced. We're getting there.

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

We got a bit of rain on February 2 and that got me thinking about the days many decades ago when I lived (with half a dozen other sterling chaps) on Stinson Street, in the lower level part of Hamilton, Ontario, and worked on Hamilton Mountain.

I had no vehicle and could barely afford beer. If I had taken the bus to work it would have taken an hour, but not far away from the apartment were the Wentworth Steps, 245 of them that I could climb in 15 minutes, rain or shine.

The problem was what we now call BO. Going up the steps was quick but sweaty work. I worked at the Toronto-Dominion Bank on Concession Street where the accountant was a guy named Harry Schofield, a Scotsman. After about a week of my arriving there all sweaty and becoming riper as the day went on, he called me into his office.

He got right to the point. “You stink.” I said that, as far as I knew, I was posting figures correctly to the accounts and was efficient in dealing with customers. I was trying hard to…blah, blah, blah.

“I’m not talking about your work,” he said, “although I’ve seen better. I asked you in here to see if you ever take a shower, fall down in a mud puddle – anything to deal with the odour that comes from your person.”

I was flabberjimmied and gobsmacked. I had had no idea that I was so olfactorily toxic. It all turned out well though. A week later I quit and took a job downtown in a Bank of Commerce and took rooms, including a shower, two blocks away on Main Street. Problem solved.

Now a quick note of congratulation to myself. On this day, Feb. 10, 1973, I quit smoking after nine years.

                                                    -end-

Occam's Razor and stuff like that (Feb. 3)

DIARY

The curious incident at the car wash

                        by Robert LaFrance

             Poor Leroy Finklestein. He took his 1989 Gremlin in to the self-serve car wash and didn’t get out for three days. His wife was starting to wonder, and, of course, hoping he wouldn’t return at all because theirs is a marriage of inconvenience.

             But he did return. On Monday morning the owner of the car wash, Aloyisius Finklestein (no relation), opened up the door to find his shop awash in Gremlin parts; crouching in the middle was Leroy, whose seat belt had rusted and fused so that he couldn’t get it unbuckled.

             After all that, Leroy’s only regret was that he had lost his favourite car. Well, not exactly LOST, but certainly lost in the sense that the remaining parts can now fit in a laptop case. As to the cause of the problem with the car wash, it was a computer sensor that had shorted out against an LED circuit board. Leroy’s cheques (from the carwash and the insurance company) came to a total of $43.12 and that included $25 in lost wages from his employer, and the $10 valuation of his Gremlin.

             He took his complaint to his lawyer, who, when he found out the ‘car’ was a Gremlin, said he had come out lucky. He then sent Leroy a bill for $140.

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

             I spend a lot of time thinking about softwood logs of which I see truckloads going in opposite directions.

             Reading that previous sentence, you no doubt thought that I have ‘taken leave of my senses’ as the phrase goes, but it’s an important issue we must address before next Thursday, or possibly the weekend.

         I was standing near Perth Library yesterday morning and I was watching the logging trucks go by. There was some space along the boardwalk across the street from the two buildings that once were drug stores and the driver pulled over to stop. Of course I had to go bother him.

            It was Clyde Rivers, originally from Clyde River, NS. “Explain something for me, willya Clyde?” I asked, offering him a cigarette, which was a little strange right there because neither one of us smokes. He declined and inclined under the trailer to look at some problem or other.

            When he returned 20 minutes later (I am a rather persistent reporter) I said to him: “Could you explain how it makes economic sense to take a huge load of softwood logs from the Plaster Rock area to Edmundston, when on the way you will meet truckloads of softwood logs coming from the Edmundston area?”

            “It makes sense,” he said carefully, “because every week I get my paycheque. Didn’t you ever hear of Occam’s Razor?”

             I looked it up. It is a concept developed in the 1300s by a guy named William of Occam in England: If you have two explanations for something, choose the simpler one. Rather than looking at the economics of softwood logs, look at Clyde and his bank account.

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

            Speaking of banks, I wish that I had bought stock shares of the Royal Bank of Canada, indeed of any of the chartered banks who, no matter if our economy is tanking (as they say, referring to an oil tanker I suppose) the banks always come out smelling like some very expensive roses.

            RBC, as the bank now calls itself in an effort to hide from its laid-off workers, made a profit of $10 BILLION last year. That is 15% more than the entire Gross Domestic Product of the African country of Niger.

             In 2014 the bank had made some great headlines – from journalists’ points of view, not theirs – when they announced that year’s huge profits ($9 billion plus) and within a month announced they would be laying off workers and replacing them with ‘out-sourced’ ones, from other countries. That wasn’t the kicker though. The workers being laid off were asked to train the new workers who would be replacing them at 60% the salaries.

             The bank quickly backed off that little plan for the sake of public relations, but that didn’t faze the higher-ups in the RBC. (See, I’m doing it too!) Shortly after they announced the $10 billion profit for 2015, executives said they needed this profit to deal with “problems caused by the slump in oil prices”. Poor guys. They went on to say they were eliminating 528 positions, ‘mostly’ through retirements and attrition. ‘Mostly’ can be 50.1%.

             In the interest of journalistic integrity, it’s time for me to confess that I worked for the Royal Bank of Canada from 1967 to 1969. Just think, if I had stuck with it I could have been one of those people announcing layoffs and lying about the real reason - G-R-E-E-D.

  I would have done it too. Like Clyde, I shave with Ocam’s Razor.                                                                                           -end-            

Stacking up Olive the cat (Jan. 27)

DIARY

Well, would you look at that? Spring already!

                        by Robert LaFrance

            This winter business is getting to me. I’m glad it’s nearly over.

            I know we’re not even out of January yet, but the days are getting longer all the time and I’m beginning to smell the crocuses on the lawn…under the snow. While it’s true that, as I write, it’s –19ºC, I don’t pay any attention to that; spring is just around the corner.

            “Have another drink of lemonade, Bob!” roared my friend Flug as he read these sentences over my shoulder and sipped on a lemonade of his own, meaning formerly mine until he had grabbed it from the fridge.

            Unlike Flug, I have always been an optimist, cheerful and hopeful at all times, and I just have to ignore the slings and arrows of those who tend to look at the bad side of things. Just before Stephen Harper got sent to the wilds of Calgary on October 19, Flug thought he (Harper, not Flug himself) would be re-elected. Indeed, on October 18, he was packing a grip for somewhere quiet, like Libya, to get away from what he expected would be another four years of Harper.

            The reader is wondering why I am predicting that our winter is almost over. Of course it is because Prime Minister (“Just not ready!”) Justin Trudeau spent some time in St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, NB, and predicted sunny ways and sunny days ahead. Of course anyone as optomistic as I am took those words to mean that we can start putting away the snowblowers.

            There’s also a certain element of superstition in the equation. The Perfessor, who lives in Lower Kintore, has a cat named Olive who has never been wrong in predicting the change of the seasons. Last evening at the club we were discussing how this feline miracle was able to be so accurate, which she always has been.

            “I’ll stack Olive the Cat up against any prognosticator on earth,” intoned Billy Catt, the bartender and lemonade purveyor. That made Jack Monmouth leap up in protest.

            “I don’t know why you keep yapping about ‘all of the cat,’” he said. “How else could he predict the weather if he wasn’t all there?” That led to some silent (Jack weighs 310 lbs)  speculation about whether Jack was all there. We have known for years that he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but now we’re thinking he may not be a knife at all.

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

            In a couple of days it’s going to be Robbie Burns Night here in Kincardine, and everybody’s excited about the prospect of hearing me – in a kilt – sing “My Love is Like a Red Red Hose” - 

            “I believe that’s supposed to be a red red ROSE,” complained Flug, who was working on his fourth lemonade since he arrived here for breakfast. His wife had refused to cook his, under the rather thin excuse that she’s the President of IBM and is busy.

            “In any case, Flug,” I said patiently, “I shall be there and will be singing a solo for the audience to enjoy…”

            “You’re not on the program, Bob, because I saw it,” he argued. And so it went, until finally I had to admit I was not going to sing a solo and would not be wearing my LaFrance Tartan kilt. Burns Night is Friday, Jan. 29, at 7:30 – storm date a day later – and Sunday afternoon, Jan. 31 at 2:30 pm.

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

            Yesterday Flug’s nephew Siddhartha stopped by the Colony to say hello to his favourite uncle and ‘borrow’ some money, although he said he was doing well as a valued ‘Associate Under-Manager’ at the Volkswagen dealer in east Hamilton.

            Flug made some hot chocolate at his estate and since I was visiting I had some tea. Have you ever tasted Flug’s hot chocolate? Sid sipped away at it until Flug passed over some cash and then the hot chocolate got shoved aside, much like ordinary Canadians from 2006 to 2015. Sorry,  I can’t help making political references. Like oxygen, politics is with me always.

            Later, Sid was complaining about his landlady’s habit of pasting up signs in her boarding house which, coincidentally, is three houses away from the one I used to infest.

            Among Mrs. O’Reilly’s literary gems were: “Always put the soap in the soap dish”, “Men, put up the flush cover when you pea!”, “Close this window”, and “No loud music – ever”.

            Did I mention that Sid was looking for another rooming house? That’s why he wanted the money from Flug, who is always a soft touch. Sid went on to say that he had put up a sign of his own: “Landladies are to be seen and not heard, and they must refrain from putting up stupid signs”. Somehow she guessed it had been Sid who had put up that sign. I suppose his signature was a giveaway. Anyway, he’s toast at 127 Main Street.

                                    -end-