"That remains to be seen" - monkey (June 1)

DIARY

The criminal potholes of Tobique First Nation

                        by Robert LaFrance

            We hear all the time about superlatives referring to sports and many other endeavours – the fastest runner, the best cook, the tallest giraffe – but for the residents of and visitors to Tobique First Nation ‘the worst roads’ is not a description they would like written about their community.

            On May 19 I drove up to Mah-sos School to watch a ballhockey game – a very entertaining one – and drove onto the main street. Hoping for some kind of relief from the bone-jarring potholes, I turned right onto New Street.

            It was like jumping from an ice floe onto the deck of the Titanic one second before she hit the iceberg.

            It had been early May when I saw on Facebook a video that someone had taken  with a camera mounted on the dash of his or her vehicle during a drive through TFN. I was appalled, but not flabbergasted, because potholes are everywhere. There was no sound on the video, so the full effect didn’t come through. On May 19 the full effect did come through the metal, rubber, plastic and glass of my 2014 Toyota Corolla. That stuff sure got rearranged.

            Those roads could only be described as ‘criminal’. That human beings should be obliged to drive on them to go to work, go to town or go and visit relatives is a crime.

            Not one to present a problem and not suggest a solution, I offer this:  Whoever is in charge of those and other criminally potholed roads – probably someone in Edmundston - should be duct-taped to the tailgate of a 1991 Ford pickup truck with broken springs and shocks, and driven back and forth on those roads at the legal speed limit. I guarantee that, after fifteen minutes, that road supervisor, engineer, crew boss or whoever – provincial or federal - decides these things will conclude that his, her or its ‘PRIORITY NUMBER ONE’ has suddenly become filling potholes at Tobique First Nation.

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            Other major news and revelations:

            Ethel Mannerson, a War Bride who came from England with her husband Roy in 1946, was telling me about some ‘online’ problem she was having. I was surprised to learn that she, age 91, was learning computer stuff. I told her that I was quite impressed since many people much younger had been defeated by Bill Gatesism. “What are you talking about?” she said – one might even use the word ‘sneered’. “When I said ‘online’ I was talking about my clothesline.”

            The great singer Willie Nelson, at the age of 83, just put out a new DvD (can we still call them albums?) entitled “Willie Nelson Sings George Gershwin”. Of course Gershwin is best known for composing music for Broadway musicals and that doesn’t sound like Willie at all, but he managed to carry it off, as he does anything else. I swear, Willie could make great music playing and singing along with an aardvark’s grunt.

            Once in a while, when I want to have my brain scrambled even worse than usual, I think about the commercial items that are ‘vital’ today and which we used to live without. Bottled water comes to mind, dog and cat food, cosmetics – both men’s and women’s, the song ‘Achy Breaky Heart’, seat warmers, and…you get the idea. The trouble is, it is easy enough to say let’s eliminate these things, but if people just quit buying, the world economy would collapse. Pet food sales are in the multi-billions and employ many people who buy houses, cars and bottled water even though the water right out of the tap is just as good.

            The pop singer Beyoncé has recently come out with what is known as a ‘visual album’ (Didn’t we used to call them videos?) named ‘Lemonade’. I have been in contact with her lawyers about the obvious copyright infringement. In other words, she has clearly been reading my column and chose that album name directly from my writing. I’m willing to settle out of court though, because MY legal team consists of Big George, the bartender at the club. He used to watch ‘Perry Mason’ and other TV shows about lawyers and says he is ‘eminently qualified’, whatever that might mean.

            I unexpectedly saw my friend Flug last week at a concert that was being held in a field by Elmo Taggart’s barn and he was looking quite agitated. “Bob, I feel like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs,” he said. It turned out he was worried about his income tax return which, as fiction, ranked up there with ‘Phantom of the Opera’. “I’ll be going to jail,” he said, “if they discover I don’t own a cottage on PEI.”

            “Relax, Flug, and have a lemonade,” I advised. “As the monkey said after he left a pile of (waste) behind the chesterfield, that remains to be seen.”
                                                   -end-