He asked to see Bella's backside (Sept 6)

DIARY

To err is human, to forgive divine

                        by Robert LaFrance

            If you drive by our house, you will see a new stovewood pile, or I should say three piles or tiers of beech, birch and maple, but you will not marvel at their neatness.

            I don’t know whether it is non-conformism, contrariness, or myopia, but I am not capable of piling wood – or ‘stacking logs’ as some people say – in a nice neat row. Most people do. I drive by their homes and see that their woodpiles are neat as two pins and a canary, then I wonder how they can be so neat.

            Two days ago I stopped at such a home because the husband was standing there, apparently admiring the pile. “Hi ho, old boy,” I said. “Tell me this: how can you get your woodpiles so neat? I know you will tell me the truth because if you don’t I will have to make public some of your activities when we lived in Hamilton.”

            “You don’t have to threaten me, Bob,” he remonstrated. “Here, I will show you.” We walked out behind the woodpile and what a mess it was on that side! Jagged piling or what? “There’s the secret,” he smirked. “You make sure the front side – that the public sees – is smooth as a baby’s butt and never mind the side nobody looks at.”

            So the next time you see a really nice ‘stack of logs’ stop and ask to see the part away from the road. However, learn this lesson from my friend Flug: ask the husband,  not the wife.

            He stopped at George and Bella LeFond’s place on Tuesday and, George being away, asked if he could see her backside. When he regained consciousness…

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            More information gleaned from my travels around Victoria County and even the far-flung places of Carleton and Madawaska counties.

            Gregoire Allamand, who lives just outside St. Andre – about 40 kilometres outside, in Four Falls – is always railing about rich people and whining because he isn’t rich. The last time he dropped a hint about his ‘net worth’ (as people say when they’re talking about money) he had almost $450,000 in RRSPs and $325,000 in Microsoft preferred stock. Yet he watches for sales on no-name tomato soup and buys 2-day-old bread at half price. Complaining about some rich guy, he said: “You can tell what God thinks of money,” he said. “Look at the people he gives it to.” Looking at the box of old bread in the back seat of his car, I thought: “How very, very true.”

            The Dollar Store phenomenon has been one of the major merchandising stories of the past two decades, but here’s a question: isn’t EVERY store a dollar store?

            We’ve all been so amused at Donald Trump’s antics that most of us have forgotten about Mike Duffy. Now he has decided to sue the federal government and us taxpayers for $7.8 million for, among other things, ‘loss of reputation’. At last, Canadian journalists (that’s me) will have something ridiculous to write about other than that tank full of buffoons on the other side of the border.

            Around this time every year I remember the birthday of Dave Nasagalawak, an Inuit trapper whom I knew when I worked at the Sachs Harbour, NWT, weather station. He was probably the only Sachs Harbour (Banks Island) resident ever featured on the front page of Time Magazine, the U.S. edition. This was in 1976 when his photo appeared with the information that he had trapped white foxes whose skins were worth $100,000, a vast amount of money for anyone, but especially for a guy who lived in a little house looking out at the Beaufort Sea. I asked him one day how he felt, being famous. He said: “They didn’t even get the amount right. It was only $95,000.”

            I don’t exactly live in a small town, but in what might be called a ‘hamlet’. There’s no town council, no mayor, no department of transportation and no municipal building. However, the family and I do our shopping in the village of Perth-Andover and more-or-less identify with that village. My friend Zeke, who does live in Perth-Andover, refers to the situation as “the cachet of small town living”. People in vast metropolitan areas like Woodstock can go to a takeout and the employee announces over a loudspeaker “large fries and onion rings” whereas at takeouts in Perth-Andover they holler out the side door: “Zeke, come and get your grub before I feed it to the dogs!”

            Some signs I would like to see:

At a music concert in India: “This evening - Haydn Sikh”...At the door of a legislative committee meeting about mining policies: "Pit bull in progress"…At the entrance of a fitness camp owned by a very rich family named Getty: “Come and enjoy a week at Spa Getty”…In front of a bike repair shop: “Recycling our specialty”…In front of a cow stable that has just installed a new air circulation system to alleviate the stink: “To air is human, to forgive bovine".
                                  -end-