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-
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