DIARY
The
future of nostalgia looks good
by
Robert LaFrance
In
1940 Thomas Wolfe (not to be confused with Tom Wolfe) published a novel called
“You can’t go home again”; it was immediately banned in Germany, so it must
have been good. He didn’t care though, since he was dead by that time.
Author
John Steinbeck’s book ‘Travels with Charley’ contains this comment: “You can’t
go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of
memory.” Of course we can go home again, and I prove it at least once a month
by going to Tilley and taking a look at the house where I was born on May 11,
1948.
Even
if I weren’t actually able to visit the old homestead – where my sister and
brother-in-law now live part of the year – I can go there any time in my
alleged mind. Over there is the barn where I hid the pup who later became my
dog Rover; over there is the garden spot where I regularly fed corn to the raccoons, not voluntarily; at the edge
of the woods is the spot where my cabin used to stand, and lots of other
memories hang around the place. The big hay field across the road where I slung
(slanged?) square hay bales onto a trailer.
This
morning I was thinking about the time I learned from the Perley brothers how to
build a log cabin. My father, Fred LaFrance, was working for Aubrey and Ivan
Perley, yarding logs and doing some sawing so Uncle Percy’s truck could take
the logs to the mill in Rowena. I often was out in the woods and talking to
Aubrey and Ivan about things, and one day they offered to show me how to build
a log cabin.
I
was about twelve at the time, full of p*ss and vinegar, as Ivan used to say,
and I like to think I was actually some help as they built their cabin right at
the edge of a little stream where I would catch trout for our dinners.
Eventually the cabin was built, and they christened it with quarts of Moosehead
pale ale. This did not involve smashing a bottle of that amber liquid against
the hull of the cabin, but at time it was close.
There
is a lot more to this story, but I ain’t saying another word. I had nothing to
do with shooting that moose. It would have been illegal for me – but not for
them – to do that. I will say it tasted good served with potatoes baked in the
coals of their fire as we took a break from working on the cabin.
*************************
I
feel as if I should be commenting on the big news stories of the day – Donald
Trump, the murders in Nice, France, terrorism in various countries, the
attempted military coup in Turkey, but you are safe; I am not going to.
Instead,
let’s talk about Australian accents. As one who watches several TV shows made
in that country (Miss Fisher Mysteries, Dr. Blake Mysteries, etc.), I have come
to the conclusion that many Australian speakers are ‘word rasslers’.
Take
the word ‘so’. One would think there wouldn’t be much anyone could do to that
word, but one show I watched last evening had a character saying the word ‘so’
and I am sure he pronounced it using at least three syllables.
**************************
If
it weren’t so serious, the Donald Trump phenomenon would be hilarious, or
Hillary-us because apparently she is the cause of the world’s problems. Melania
Trump, Donald Trump’s latest wife, read a speech that had large chunks directly
plagiarized from a 2008 speech by Michelle Obama, the current president’s wife.
The irony of this is strong enough to excite an electromagnet. But the funny
part was afterward, when Trump’s minions tried to explain it away. One said
Michelle Obama “didn’t invent the English language”, another one said that 93%
was okay, just that 7% was plagiarized, and a third said that Hilary Clinton
caused all the kerfuffle. He didn’t explain how Ms. Clinton forced Melania
Obama to plagiarize. As I keep saying, it’s a weird country.
Talk about coincidence: Three weeks
ago I found an old pool cue at a yard sale and shelled out fifty cents for it
to use as a walking stick – looking very British, old chap, what? I was
strolling along Kintore road day before yesterday when a Toyota Lexus stopped,
then a head peered out. Immediately I recognized Cliff Thorburn, former North
American and British snooker champion, whom I had met when I lived in Campbell
River, BC, about a hundred years ago. I told him how to get to Plaster Rock and
then he noticed the pool cue. “Could I look it that?” he said. Turns out it was
the cue (proven by his initials scratched in the wood) with which he had won
the Los Angeles Billiards title in 1981. He offered me $100 U.S. on the spot,
but I live in the Scotch Colony. We settled on $250.-end-
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