Lester the drunk has his own bar code (May 18)

DIARY

Crossing the river sane? – not Aloyisius!

                        by Robert LaFrance

            My friend Flug (real name Richard LaFrance – no relation) got one of THOSE email messages last week. It was purportedly from his nephew Aloyisius who was in a jail along ‘the River Sane’ in Paris and needed $2658 to pay off the prosecutor. That was all well and good, as grampie used to say, but when the email arrived Aloyisius was sitting in Flug’s living room and eating cherry pie on a new formerly beige chesterfield. That reference to the River Sane was because the scam ‘artists’ spelled that Paris river (Seine) that way in the letter. It was a clue.

            An example of changing generations: In my day (I am now 68) when someone saw a car parked close to a building but as far out of sight as possible it was because a guy and his best girl were ‘parking’, but nowadays it is more likely to be someone trying to get a free Wi-Fi signal.

            Everyone tries to ignore Canada, and usually does a good job of it. The BBC recently reported that Sadiq Khan, the newly elected mayor of London, England, was “the only Muslim mayor of a major western city”. Surely Calgary, Alberta, and Mayor Naheed Kurban Nenshi would argue with that statement. By the way, Donald Trump has said that if he were president, his ban on Muslims travelling to the U.S. would “make an exception” of the London mayor. He didn’t mention Nenshi of course.

            Flug and I were having a good laugh last evening when Lester Habob, the town drunk (and that’s saying something!) staggered in to the club, followed by his chauffeur and valet. The mixologist Billy Bond (no relation to his cousin James) has given Lester his own bar code.

            Everywhere we go these days we hear announcements about the deer tick and the fact that it carries the Lyme Disease bacterium to us unsuspecting woods travellers. I hope none of us gets it. One feature of just about every report is the opinion that doctors are very reluctant to diagnose it. I don’t know if that’s true, but I hope not.

            Once again today I heard a Fredericton based politician, doing his best to close rural hospitals, say that because Ottawa, with a similar population, has only five general use hospitals, so our province should have the same. I looked it up on Google Maps and I’m pretty sure it’s farther from Grand Manan to Bas-Caraquet than it is from the Ottawa River to Sharel Drive where I used to live with a family from Lutes Mountain.

            Three days ago I went fishing in Bubie Brook near here. Because there are frequent bear sightings around here (similar to a Turkish bath – bare sightings, get it?) I took a can of bear repellent in my jacket pocket, my cellphone in my shirt pocket, and put my wallet securely in a pants pocket. It wasn’t until I climbed back up the bank near Burns Hall that I realized I no longer had any of the three. Calm down though; I found all three about six feet behind the car that I had parked near the hall. It was a good day; I even caught a fish. Flug had caught one the day before, just before he saw a bear. “Next time I take a roll of Delsey with me.” He declared.

            Down at the club we often hear some of the older members complaining about young people and their torn jeans, metal harpoons through nostrils, drooping pants and other affectations, including the wearing of baseball caps backwards while the sun beats down into their eyes. Last week I found out the reason for the backward baseball cap business. The wind was howling on this mountain and my cap blew off twice. Flug’s teenage nephew Swansea spent an hour raking the lawn outside (where else?) and not once did HIS cap blow off. The reason? That howling wind couldn’t get a hold on the cap’s visor because it was down along his neck. Perhaps we should listen to young people more often. They have some good ideas.

            We often hear about John James Audubon, the naturalist and artist who made thousands of paintings of birds, supposedly in the wild. He is considered a great guy by those who love nature, but I wonder how many people realize that before he painted those birds he shot them. The SPCA here in Canada probably doesn’t realize that this French guy who came to the U.S. in the early 1800s killed more birds than Donald Trump has said the word ‘huge’.

            New Brunswick has a public debt in the range of $13 billion but I was staggered yesterday – well, mildly surprised – to learn that the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico has a debt of $70 billion. Wow! It’s about the size of Tilley, not including Lerwick. Come on New Brunswickers, let’s start spending!
                                                        -end-

A bungalow and Rolls for my birthday (May 11)

DIARY

Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday, dear Bob

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Today, May 11, 2016, is the 68^th anniversary of my birthday. At least I think it is. Willie Nelson, the famous pot-smoker and singer, celebrated his 83^rd on the last day of April, but then said his actual birthday was on the 29^th. His parents had been a bit casual in registering his birth, I suspect for the same reason Willie is so casual about things.

            So, like Willie, but for a different reason, none of us really knows when our big day is. It’s only what we’ve been told.

            On to more important subjects, I am rejoicing this morning because I found an heirloom. Last fall I was doing various kinds of work in my orchard – picking apples, eating apples, looking at apples, and eating some more apples – and I lost the jackknife that had been my father’s for half a century or more and whose ownership passed to me on January 5, 1999.

            Of course I didn’t know at the time that I had dropped it; otherwise I would have reached down to the ground and picked it up. That evening when I sat down to watch a TV show – probably something religious, like Grantchester – I realized my knife was missing.

            Next morning I searched all over eastern Canada, but to no avail (to know a veil?) so I had to settle for another knife drawn from a kitchen drawer. All winter I struggled to cut things, including fingers, with the substitute knife, but it wasn’t the same.

            Then this morning I found my dad’s knife and it was a great birthday present. Now I have to pretend to like my wife’s gift to me as much as I like the return of the jackknife. Most husbands would be pleased to get a 1964 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud III for their birthdays, but I like my knife.

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

            Some people here in Victoria County, New Brunswick are quite amazed at the prices of houses these days. It used to be that for a house to sell for $100,000 or more there had to be a millionaire involved – Lord Beaverbrook for example – but now a bungalow in Perth-Andover goes for that.

            “Well, I’ll tell you what,” as my friend Flug often begins his conversations, especially at Club Lemonade. What I’ll tell is that you could buy fifteen houses – decent, comfortable ‘single-family dwellings’ as they say, for the same price you could buy ONE similar house in Vancouver. True. A bungalow in Vancouver goes for about $1.78 million.

            Television news reporters say that both Vancouver and Toronto have housing markets that are ‘overheated’. No kidding.

            As with most things concerning old codgers like me, I think back to the old days. In January, 1972, I left my job in Burlington, Ontario and headed out west to make my fortune, or at least find a better pub than the ones in my neighbourhood, and fetched up at the St. Francis Hotel right across the road from the CPR station which is still there even if the hotel isn’t. My daughter was there last year and took photos of my old digs. It’s a new  office building now.

            My point is this: Houses didn’t cost $1.78 million the day I arrived there, nor when I left in September of 1973. People don’t believe me when I tell them I paid $15 a week – A WEEK! – for a small room in that hotel which was a decent clean place. Just at a guess, if someone had made an offer in 1972 for the entire 4-storey St. Francis Hotel, it might have been in the $500,000 range. Has the whole world gone crazy, or just Vancouver?

            I was 24 years old at the time, the same age my son is now, and it pains me to think that young people today probably will never experience Vancouver as it was then. Today it’s all plate glass and hockey riots.

            People also won’t believe that I ate gourmet meals for less than $2. I got this hint from an Australian guy who figured he owed me money. He and a friend had arrived in Vancouver from Melbourne the week before, had gone to the welfare office for a cheque, and immediately got knocked out and rolled at a Davie Street hooker palace. I ‘lent’ them enough money to eat at the Vancouver Vocational School.

            They had found that the student cooks there were eager to have someone – anyone – try their creations, so the Aussies and I would go there at supper time and have Coq au vin or stuffed pork tenderloin for $1.25 plus coffee and dessert. A great life. I wouldn’t advise trying it today. There’s probably some government regulation that says no one may eat that food because the chefs are not licensed.
                                            -end-

A short trip to CrazyLand (May 4)

DIARY

The flush really doesn’t care about gender

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Many people, when they heard that Prince had died, sent condolences to Queen Elizabeth II, who was a little baffled since all her princes were tucked in for the night and accounted for. Except Harry. She never knows what he’s up to. A few hours later one of the kitchen staff informed her that Prince was an American rock star from Minnesota.

            Music superstars have taken quite a hit lately. Merle Haggard, David Bowie and of course Prince have gone on their ways; one can’t help thinking it must have been with a certain sigh of relief to go when they saw the likes of Donald Trump lining up to lead the nation.

            I think the problem is that Americans don’t have enough to do, whether because the company they used to work for has been shipped off to Korea, because they’re rich or simply because they’re stupid. (Believe it or not, some Canadians aren’t too swift either.)

            But back to insulting the U.S.A. Their latest dumb-ass campaign has something to do with the fact that LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people might be allowed to use the same washrooms as God-fearing ‘Amurricans’.

            Seriously. This has become a political issue. Should someone who has changed gender be allowed in the washrooms of their new gender? I’m not kidding. Facebook has lit up with this issue and many states are mulling laws about it.

            Here are a few sentences from a CBC News report: “Transgender bathroom access has become a hot political topic in the U.S…. North Carolina just passed a law stipulating that anyone using a public bathroom must use the bathroom assigned to the gender appearing on his or her birth certificate.”

            Prince is in Heaven and saying: “Whew! Dodged that one.”

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

            Back to reality from that short trip to CrazyLand, I notice that Canadian municipalities and provinces are lining up to get a piece of the $125 billion infrastructure money the federal government is doling out over the next few years in accordance with the Liberals’ election promises.

            New Brunswick will get the lion’s share of course…sorry. That was wrong, but I grew up in the Sixties and keep getting these flashbacks. What I meant to say is that New Brunswick will get the fruitfly’s share, while the usual suspects – Quebec and Ontario – have already lined up at the trough. Once they’re appeased, there might be a dollop for the rest of us.

            It reminds me of the Henderan family of southeast Tilley where I grew up. I used to visit there sometimes to try and gather up enough players for a softball game, and they always seemed to be fighting about food. Mrs. Henderan would bake six loaves of bread and before that had cooled off she had to start another batch. In that case, I was Justin Trudeau – but much better looking – as I watched them wrangle.

            It looks as if New Brunswick might get $90 million of this infrastructure money, so I can look forward to driving on smooth roads in the near future. Two days ago I drove to Woodstock from our estate in Kincardine and found once again that old jokes are often the most accurate.

            Remember the one about the comedian describing a very bad road? The only time it got smooth was when he left it and drove along the ditch. I ask you to drive (slowly) along Highway 105 from the Victoria-Carleton county line to Bath. Although 3,499 potholes have been repaired (well, filled) the road is VERY rough. At several points I drove on the shoulder of the road where it was much smoother.

            Keep in mind that this is the ‘Scenic Route’ in a province that is promoting tourism. It is, in fact, scenic, because there are car engines, parts of pickup trucks, and demolished RVs all along the way.

            I am told from official sources that one third of that 14.7 km stretch of road will be replaced with new asphalt, etc. this summer, but the remaining two-thirds will have to wait until 2017 and 2018 to have the full treatment. Meanwhile, we drive on the shoulder and nearby fields.

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

            Because of the sunny, though cold, weather, I have been setting some plants out in my garden and sheltering them under plastic. I was in the midst of that operation just this morning when my friend and neighbour Flug showed up for some lemonade, as is his habit in the morning. And afternoon, and evening.

            He took a peek under the plastic. “Whoa!” He shrank back. “You’re not allowed to grow that until Justin Trudeau makes it legal.”

            Ooops. I had better pay more attention. It reminded me of the time, years ago, when a police car pulled into my driveway to ask directions and pointed to some plants near the garage. “What’s that?” she said. I said it was tansy, which my friend Louie had said it was. It took me and my lawyer a while to talk my way out of that one.
                                           -end-

Love those group mailboxes! (April 27)

DIARY

Not a ‘reality’ show, but a reality show

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Unlike my previous columns, that have been the model of organization and orderliness, this will be, in the words of my friend and cousin Mack P., “just like a madman’s spit”. I’m not sure he actually says ‘spit’.

            Two days ago I received my first seed catalogue in the mail and in the envelope was a notice that said, in effect: “you haven’t bought any seed from us for two years and you had better smarten up”.

            Since I have an efficient filing system (luck plus good vision) I was only half an hour finding my 2015 order form with the notation ‘sent April 27, 2015’ and some other notes that indicated my carrots had had a bumper crop, but my cauliflower yield was ‘dismal’.

            Half an hour later I had driven the 27 kilometres down to the group mailbox and had dropped in a letter complete with a lecture on THEIR record-keeping. In a separate package, I included a small jar of the jelly I had made last fall from plants bought from the company.

            This has been a historic month because I had tilled my garden twice before April 27^th. We’ve been here since 1984, but I am sure my garden has never been tilled even once before that date. A local mechanical expert came and got my tiller around April 20 and had it sleek and purring before the 25^th, and a few days later he fixed up my Husqvarna chainsaw (bought from my brother in 1982), so I was all ready to go. The sawdust was flying that same day, and the tiller was soon doing its duty.

            I should insert a note here about that 27-km drive to the group mailbox. That is a slight exaggeration as you might have guessed. It’s just that the whole idea of group mailboxes in this rural area is quite annoying, particularly since our own mailbox had been located about 25 metres from our doorstep. “Oh no, mustn’t have that,” said an Ottawa Canada Post bureaucrat back in 1991 or whenever it was. “Let’s call most of the rural mailboxes too dangerous and make them go to group boxes.” Of course they’re not dangerous, with cars stopped along the road and other vehicles zooming by. Bureaucrats!

               On to the subject of radio interviews (we were talking about that, weren’t we?) I am always amused when the interviewer is talking to someone speaking another language with a translator standing by. Just this morning CBC radio host Anna Maria Tremonti was interviewing an Arabic-speaking guy from Jordan. Her question was a few seconds long, the translator put it into Arabic, taking five seconds. The man’s answer took the same amount of time.

            Then came the translation. My best estimate was 45 seconds. How this man’s 5-second answer in Arabic became a 45-second one in English was a mystery to me. Then Anna Maria asked: “Is your family still in Syria?” The translator asked this question in Arabic; it took 40 seconds. My question: Is it time CBC hired a translator to translate from the translator just in case the first translator is branching out on his own translation?

            One of the current ‘talking points’ in New Brunswick is the provincial government’s suggestion that taxpayer dollars should go to shore up (so to speak) a shipyard in Bas-Caraquet to the tune of $38 million. Immediately a big sign appeared at the edge of my consciousness: “Have we forgotten about Atcon?” In that fiasco NB taxpayers lost somewhere between $50 million and $80 million and investigations are still going on.

            Many people enjoy going to the movies, but we rarely do, preferring to watch Jeopardy, Murdoch Mysteries, Grantchester, Downton Abbey and suchlike. Whatever people prefer of the shows I mentioned, it does cost money, so it’s not often that one gets to watch a free and very entertaining show from his or her own front porch.

            On Tuesday, April 19, my wife and I, armed with coffee and croissants, sat on lawn chairs on our front porch and watched the free show unfold. It was great fun.

            I refer to the trimming of trees and branches near the power lines across the road from our estate. Workers of a company called Northwest Tree Trimming Inc. reached our area at about 11:00 am and proceeded to clear dozens of evergreen branches and cut trees starting three or four metres above the hydro. When we weren’t worried that the guys going way up high were going to get electrocuted, we were marveling at how skilful they were. In and out between the lines, looking down at the world, man were they good at their jobs!

               I’ll take that show any time ahead of any ‘reality’ show because it was a reality show.
                                           -end-

Of course I saw the geese! (April 20)

DIARY

More big news from April Fools Day

                        by Robert LaFrance

            On Friday, April 1^st, I looked up to see a gaggle of Canada Geese flying north and making a helluva lot of noise. I was tempted to notify the authorities and then I remembered that the return of the Canada Geese was something to be cherished and awaited with joy. Instead of dialling 911, I smiled and went over to see my friend Flug, who lives next door. He looked at me with some scepticism.

            “Of course you saw Canada Geese,” he sneered. “Are you sure they weren’t pigs flying over?” I said I was quite sure they weren’t pigs because they were wild geese. Two different species. “You’re not gonna get me like that on April 1^st,” he said, and it didn’t matter what I said, he wouldn’t believe me. Just then, a flock of pigs flew over. True story.

            On Wednesday of that same week, I was talking to some people who was going that evening to eat at a certain Chinese restaurant over in Maine, because the Canadian money was at par. I commented that, just down the street in Perth-Andover, was Kim Restaurant and it also serves Chinese food, and also has Canadian money at par – every day. I doubt if I persuaded anybody. The U.S. is such an exotic country, isn’t it, and the imminent danger of getting shot at any moment added to the allure. I wouldn’t know. I don’t go there.

            Coincidently, on the same subject of spending money across the border, that same day I was talking to a couple who had recently spent two and a half weeks in Kissimmee, Florida. The day after their return, the husband had an attack of something or other (not to be too accurate) and spent four days in hospital. I was tempted to open my big fat mouth and point out that the money to pay for these health services came from taxes in New Brunswick and that Florida had not sent any tax money our way, but I’m just too nice to say such a thing. Why do they think American taxes are so much lower than ours?

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

            Today has been quite a sad day, at least for some, those who own snowmobiles.

            It has not been a good winter for those folks. I think Victoria, BC, had more snow than we did around here, and we live on a mountain.

            4:07 pm – A halfton (or whatever those behemoths are called nowadays) just went by here. It was hauling a trailer that contained four snowmobiles that I would have guessed hadn’t been out of the pasture since the one big snowstorm in early April. In one 20-hour period, whatever that is in metric, a total of 32 centimetres of very wet and heavy snow fell here at our estate, so the Skidoo guys and gals must have had a grand time.

            Not so, said the Sidney Millageon who was driving the next halfton to go by. He stopped and told me this: “It was so wet we couldn’t get anywhere,” he nearly cried. “Just think, I spent almost twenty thousand dollars on these sleds and I’ve had it out – maybe – five hours all winter. It is to weep.” (He likes W. H. Auden poetry.)

            Not long after that, another particle of the long calvalcade of retreating snowmobilers came by. It was my third cousin-once-removed Swampy. “I never even took my sled off the trailer all winter,” Swampy said. “Whenever there was a forecast of snow a bunch of us would head for our camps out here and wait. We usually just sat around and drank beer.” As if drinking beer were an easy job.

            I’m joking about it, but I think snowmobiling is a great sport; I hope they have a better winter next time.

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

            In late 1939, after Britain and we declared war on Germany because they had invaded Poland, and before Germany began the Blitz – bombing military and civilian targets in England – it was called The Phony War. This was because nothing was going on except ‘sabre-rattling’. I’m think we’re in a similar period right now.

            My gardens are too wet to till, the ground is too cold to plant seeds or transplant, and I am too wimpy to spend a lot of time away from the TV. This is the Phony War. Another reason I don’t want to do anything is that my Internet works great. Just think if, in 1940, when the Phony War ended, Hitler’s computer crashed and he couldn’t get a technician in until 1941, when the Americans joined the war.

            I’m happy that many takeouts are now open so the cholesterol levels will soon be peaking, but what I appreciate most about summer is when the flagmen and women, directing drivers by the sites, point to the lane where we’re supposed to drive as if we can’t figure it out.
                             -end-

Enjoying the livestock sales (April 13)

DIARY

Where were you when I needed you?

                        by Robert LaFrance

            On April Fool’s Day, April 1^st, also known as Poisson d’Avril, I saw my first robin of the year 2016. This should have been a sign of spring, or, as I call it, SPRING, but it wasn’t. I stepped off the porch, tripped over an ice-filled bucket, and fell on my face on the ice-hard front lawn.

            My question was: where in the blue noodle heckfire was SPRING when I needed it? Why hadn’t it been on site to thaw that lawn so it didn’t hurt my face so much?

            As I lay there dazed – yes, even more than usual – on the lawn, that robin looked over at me and, I swear this is true, sneered at my clumsiness. If he (or she) could have spoken, it would have said: “If you’re wondering why I haven’t shown up sooner, it was because Donald Trump wouldn’t let me by.” This is rather silly because I have it from a reliable source that Donald Trump doesn’t care if the robins are in Peru, Edmundston, or (the bilingual ones) in Quebec City.

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

            It was nostalgia time again this morning. I drove by the former Co-op auction barns in Florenceville and remembered the days when I was in my early teens and used to come down there every Monday morning to sit and munch hot dogs while watching the livestock auction. I would go down there with Murray Paris, who often bought calves or piglets to raise during the summer. It was a great and interesting experience, especially the day when the lone livestock handler had to control three or four bulls and heifers that were being sold. One day he was gored slightly by a bull’s horn and he beat the animal over the head with a shovel handle. Not fun to look at. A farmer from Centreville quickly put in a high bid on the bull, probably to stop the abuse.

            When I was around 40 years old, I was back at that same auction barn and watching the sale of farm animals while one or more of my own kids munched hotdogs. They really enjoyed going there in the days before they had to go to school and be picked on by their teachers – including their mother.

            A great bonus by that time was the barbecue set up outside the auction floor by Kalman Gere, a 70-year-old Hungarian guy (but born in Croatia) from Prince William. His bratwurst were…my mouth is watering as I write about them. I can’t go on.

            Sadly, there is no regular livestock sale there any more, and Kalman doesn’t cook that bratwurst there any more. He died in November of 2014.

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

            Recently there have been quite a few headlines in my daily newspaper about the growing of marijuana once the federal government makes it legal, and there has been the expected uproar from certain segments of society who would object to air if they could find a semi-lucid way of expressing it.

            Here is my opinion – jump on it, NB. Some of the objections are out there because some don’t want the province to invest in what could be a big industry within a few years. Take a look at Colorado. If I read their spreadsheet correctly, that state collects somewhere around $70 million a year in taxes, permits and other charges. And WE are talking about a mere $500 million provincial deficit? Get smoking, everyone!

            (Note: One of the people objecting to New Brunswick’s taking in revenue from legalized marijuana – while ignoring all the income from liquor and beer sales – said last week during a TV interview that NB should “take the high road”. I’m not kidding; he said to take the HIGH road.)

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

            My friend Flug has a friend named James Hutchison, from up around Plaster Rock way. That’s all right. I’m not saying it isn’t, but the only trouble is that in the court news in a Fredericton newspaper last week, they named a James Hutchison who had been arrested for  robbing a corner store, damaging a house in the ritzy part of town by throwing a brick through the window, stealing a car and assaulting a police officer.

             I mean, this is all okay in a way – we all have to have a crime spree now and then – but the James Hutchison who lives near Plaster Rock isn’t the same James Hutchison as the crime spree guy in Fredericton. So our James has been going around, practically door-to-door, and letting people know that he is a law-abiding citizen and wouldn’t say “Scat!” to a cat.

            All this instant communication these days can sure cause problems.
                                                -end-

Oh, for a hand grenade! (April 6)

DIARY

What happened to the 13^th floor and Windows 9?

                        by Robert LaFrance

            My friend Flug came over for a visit yesterday afternoon and while he was here his friend Gwen Hickman drove by, saw him standing there talking to me, and stopped. “That’s Gwen,” he said, just before she got out of her car. “I told her how funny your column is so she should buy the paper and read it.”

            Gwen, a formidable looking woman of about 55, made her way up my driveway. “Are you Robert LaFrance?” she asked. When I admitted I was, she said: “I thought you would be funnier. Flug said you were funny. You’re not funny.”

            I was gobsmacked and flabbergasted at her rudeness and also by her accuracy. You could even say I was amazed, dumbstruck, bamboozled, astonished, shocked, agape, and bowled over. Why this person felt she had to stop and tell me this, I had no idea. Five minutes later, after a few more gratuitous and egregious comments that did not endear her to me any more than I already was, she jumped into her Gremlin and sped off back toward Presque Isle, Maine. I had not uttered a word.

            It reminded me of the evening back about 1998 when the Wednesday Evening Fiddlers (I was a member at the time) journeyed to a Mars Hill, Maine, nursing home to play – free – for the residents. We had played a few tunes when an old lady emerged from the audience, walked up to our leader, Garold Hanscom, and said: “We had a group here last week that was a lot better than you are.” Satisfied that she had gotten her message across (it was quite audible across the room), she went back to her chair.

            Garold handled it with a lot more aplomb than I would have. He just smiled and called for us to play another tune. I believe it was “Wishing for a hand grenade!” or something like that.

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

            I have been trying to decide whether long words should be banned from the English language and those who use them executed, or long words should be praised for their stamina. After all, words like triskaidekaphobia add a certain something when one uses them in public. The usual reaction from others is: “What a pretentious horse’s aspect!”

            As we all know, that jaw-dropping word means ‘fear of the number 13’; I’ve always marvelled at the fact that it has 17 letters, but I suppose that does make sense.

            And then there’s a word that Winston Churchill (who knew a thing or two about words) used often – paraprosdokians. It refers to a sentence that starts out sensible and falls into a funny ditch. One example I found was uttered by the late actor-comedian Will Rogers in the 1930s: “I don't belong to an organized political party. I'm a Democrat.” Another late comedian, Mitch Hedberg, used to say this: “I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long.”

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

            A few more observations:

            I’m always amazed at some of the things that we Maritimers and especially New Brunswickers say. My cousin Jerry down the road was talking about something he’d done that had ‘unintended consequences’. He found himself in worse shape than before. “I mayazwella hit my head against a wall,” he lamented. He was of course saying “I may as well have…”

            Recently looking over some of the names of government departments, both federal and provincial, I was amazed at the weighty handles some of them have. One example might be the Department (or Ministry) of Social Development, Mid-level Education, Hydro Poles (Anglophone), Delicacy of Restaurant Food, and Storm Surges. Whew! Can one minister handle all that? I called, and the minister, one Cherlean Antigonish, was on a fact-finding mission to Bermuda and had been since November.

            It seems that there’s an anagram-crazy person living in this community. The club bartender, Willie Wiezel, put up on the Lower Kintore arena’s sign “Hockey game Tuesday”, and the crazy one took the same letters and rearranged them to say: “Haystack yum gee doe”. That caused a certain amount of confusion, I will tell you. Seemed clear enough to me.

            Where, oh where, has Mike Duffy gone? Flug and I have been frantic for news of the big guy because we want to ask him who was paying for his lawyer. Since Mike couldn’t afford to pay back that $90,000 to the Senate (is that still there?), how could he possibly pay for that lawyer who would, I am sure, charge $1000 for opening his own car door.

            I mentioned triskaidekaphobia. Did you know that many owners of high-rise apartment buildings will not call the 13^th floor by that name? There is a 12^th floor, and the next one up is the 14^th floor. True story. You could look it up. And now our favourite (not) computer operating system, Windows, has gone from Windows 8 to Windows 10. What gives?
                                                          -end-

Are the Maritimes ignored? (March 30)

DIARY

Update on my cooking disaster

                        by Robert LaFrance

            I do some cooking (in spite of the lies I wrote here two weeks ago) and often experiment with new recipes. Indeed, I often create new recipes and they are often triumphs, like Blended Whipped Cream and Dill Pickles with a chocolate sauce.

            However, this report is not about one of my successes. The following is meant as a warning to those who, like me, tend to experiment with new recipes. My advice: don’t try this at home.

            I was standing around the kitchen Monday morning and thinking what I should make for breakfast – something tasty and nutritious. I must have discarded those two notions and decided to make scrambled eggs with some new kind of flavour, one I hadn’t tried before.

            I scrambled a couple of eggs in a bowl, added a bit of shredded cheddar, put in a little skim milk, pepper (I don’t add salt to much), and then spied some chip or cracker dip in the fridge.

            It was labelled Hummus with Red Peppers. It first I thought it said ‘humus’, which is part of garden topsoil (decayed compost), but then saw the other ‘m’. Two teaspoons of that would spice up those eggs, I reasoned.

            Spiced it up all right. I should have added humus. I don’t think I ever tasted anything so absolutely vile, putrid and gross. It will be weeks before I dare to experiment again.                                                               **************************

            We as Eastern Canada folk often have our area overlooked by the powers that be (Ottawa, Toronto) and it does get a little tiresome all right.

            Listening to the CBC Radio morning show ‘Q’ last week, I was impressed by how easy it is to make a whole area disappear, even one as big as the four Atlantic provinces of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

            The host Shad was talking to a Vancouver musician who was saying he and his group had decided to play a gig in every night club along the highway “across Canada from Vancouver all the way to the other side – Toronto”. Shad didn’t point out the fact that several people live between Toronto and the Atlantic coast.

            A show of hands – do you ever get tired of hearing about places like Thunder Bay, Calgary, Winnipeg and Mississauga and finding the Maritimes pretty much ignored? I say we owe blues singer-guitarist Matt Andersen a big thank-you for putting us back on the map. He’s great.

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

            My ‘electronic device’ problems continue even as my cooking skills deteriorate. Late last year I bought a smartphone – as long-suffering readers of this column will know – and a few months later I bought a larger version of a smartphone. They called it a tablet.

            It is said that Moses wrote the Ten Commandments on a tablet, but I think I am safe in saying that Moe would have still been struggling if his tablet worked like mine. It’s a Samsung something-or-other and there’s a problem with this Android device.

            Some people are oversensitive, but this blasted device is about six degrees beyond that, maybe ultra-over-sensitive. I blink my eye from across the room and it changes to another show. It has a nice big screen and, if it would only work right, I could watch Johnny Carson reruns as if I were sitting in front of a TV. Come to think of it though, after all these years of televisions getting bigger and bigger – Flug owns a 99” flat-screen one – doesn’t it seem a little odd that people like me, as if there were such an animal, are now watching shows on screens the size of TV screens in the 1950s?

            Before I leave the subject, I must report that Apple has put three new generations of iPhones on the market in the past nine hours.

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

            This is not exactly local news, but most have now heard that former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford died on March 22. That news was probably sad for his family and friends – and he had lots – but I marvel at the hypocrisy of various politicians and others who spoke about his passing. For a while there, I thought the discoverers of insulin were the ones being described, or perhaps Moses himself.

            While Ford was mayor and sucking back the crack and imbibing all sorts of other materials, not one person in ten had a good word to say about him. Once he left office, most breathed sighs of relief and he disappeared from the news until a desperate Stephen Harper decided to have Rob Ford at a rally in Harper’s honour.

            I suppose we all should be used to hypocrisy; we hear it every day.
                                            -end-