Triskaidekaphobia (Jan 10/18)

A long-standing superstition

                        by Robert LaFrance

            My old Aunt July, born in the back woods of Moose Mountain (is there a front woods?) in 1926, just after the first World War, just before the not-so-great Depression hit, and just before Hitler started gearing up for try #2, is rather superstitious.

            If she finds she has 13 teaspoons in her silverware drawer, out goes the offending 13^th, as far out in the woods as she can throw it. That sometimes causes a problem, because Aunt July’s vision is not the best and she has been known to bounce silverware off the dog Boomer’s nose or, worse, has been known to throw away what she THOUGHT was the 13^th spoon, if you know what I mean. That’s when she calls me.

            FYI – The fear of the number thirteen is called triskaidekaphobia. I looked it up in an actual dictionary.

            The reason I mention auntie’s being a superstitious person is that on New Year’s Day she has the happiest lady in the Scotch Colony, because Edgar Stinson visited her. To go back a bit for an explanation, Aunt July believes that if ‘a tall dark man’ is the first one to visit her in the new year, she will have good luck all year. We all remember the year that Gary McNab, who is short and blond haired, arrived about 8:30 am January 1^st, and she wouldn’t let him in although he had driven all the way from Birch Ridge to deliver two dozen eggs. She wouldn’t let him pass the doorway and even produced a .410 shotgun to emphasize it.

            So this year, when Edgar stopped by at 9:43 am, she invited him in with Alacrity. That’s his Border Collie. To gauge just how pleased Aunt July was, I just have to mention that auntie has NEVER allowed a dog in her house. Ever.

            A further explanation: Edgar Stinson is actually a grey-haired gent, and, without his hair dye and his elevator shoes, is five foot three, counting his toque. This story COULD have turned out badly, but Edgar lives in Minto and left for there on January 2^nd after making a total of $450 being paid by relatives like me for visiting their elderly and superstitious living ancestors.

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

Seguing to another subject, the cold weather, I am impressed by the number of times I hear a radio or television announcer warn all of us to “dress in layers”. What in the name of Blue Northern Corncobs does that mean?

I thought about this for several seconds and came to the conclusion that these announcers must be a lot smarter than I am, but on the other hand: is there any way NOT to dress in layers?

First of all, let’s examine the meaning of the phrase. I looked to Doctor Google, a guy or gal I find on my computer and here’s what he/she says: “Layered clothing is a term describing a way of dressing using many garments that are worn on top of each other. Some of the layers have different, largely non-overlapping, functions. Using more or fewer layers, or replacing one layer but not others, allows for flexible clothing to match the needs of each situation.”

My sainted grandfather used to say: “I’ll just leave that with you, Bob.” That’s what I’ll do here. I always appreciated that Grampie never called me Bobby, although many (including my sister) still do. Bryce Bishop, proprietor of Mr. B’s restaurant in Perth-Andover, has another nickname for me, but you’ll have to ask him. This is a family newspaper.

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

Thinking about winter even more, I stumbled upon some information about the long-defunct (if you’ll excuse my language) Rhinoceros Party of which I was a member for almost seven years under the name of Tilley Dog.

It was a political party whose main platform promise was that it would never honour a campaign promise, clearly a group of folks at whose feet Donald Trump must have sat.

It promised to ban winter and, to lure Alberta voters, it promised to tear down the Rocky Mountains so Albertans could also enjoy Pacific Ocean sunsets. On the language issue, always a touchy political one, they were adamant about maintaining English and French as official languages across our nation, but wanted to add a third – illiteracy.

Rhinoceros Party president Jacques Ferron had a larger ambition than the rank-and-file (that’s me) of the party. He wanted to annex the United States and therefore raise the national average temperature, but if the party had still existed in 2016 – it had dissolved in 1993) he would have had another plan in mind. He would still have wanted to annex the United States, but his objective would have been to raise the collective IQ of the continental U.S. (while lowering ours).
                                                          -end-

No resolutions (Jan 3, 2018)

You misjudge my age – I’m 39

                        by Robert LaFrance

            About an hour and a half ago I was walking down our front driveway when I heard a metallic noise behind me. It was two brass monkeys, and were they ever in distress!

            It has truly been cold enough to freeze the ears, or whatever, off a brass monkey and I had the proof lying on my driveway.

            As an old Arctic hand, I should be able to handle the cold a lot more easily than I have been. I look out the window from my heat-pump heated living room and see very few examples of humanity out there.

            What’s going on anyway? I looked over meteorological records for the past ten years and in each of those years this time of year was, compared to now, like Puerto Rico except for the hurricane damage. I don’t want to wish my life away, but holy freud, when is April going to get here?

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

            On to another story, one of my favourites, and this was one I heard from my late father-in-law Lloyd Morton. The names have been changed to protect my bank account from lawsuits.

            One day in the 1940s or perhaps 1950s, Lloyd stopped at a house in Bon Accord and was chatting with a farmer named McJinson who told him that the day before he had harvested his oats and barley and ended up with 25 bags of oats and 10 bags of barley. “But,” said McJinson, “when you and I went to town yesterday somebody helped themself to 10 bags of oats. I think I know who it was too, but I am not going to mention the theft to anyone.” Lloyd swore (as much as he ever swore) not to say a word either.

            In early December there was a bit of a get-together at Burns Hall. Lloyd and McJinson were standing in a circle with two other farmers named Mondeer and Atkinson. They covered all sorts of subjects, and after a while they got talking about last fall’s harvest. “Did you ever find out who stole your oats?” said Mondeer.

            “I just did,” McJinson told him.

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

            I have mentioned before in these pages how much I admire the Perth Elks for all the many decades of community service it has done since the early 1950s when it was formed. I talked for hours over the years with the late Sewell Shaw who died last year just missing his 100^th birthday and if you want an example of someone with a prodigious memory, Sewell was he. Look on my Facebook page ‘Old Photos of Victoria County’ (over 4040 members) for lots more history of the village.

            Walking recently on the Perth (east) side of Perth-Andover, I took note as I have dozens of times before of the places where businesses flourished back then. About two decades ago Sewell did an interview with the late Vaughan DeMerchant about the village of Perth – as it was then called until 1966 when it merged with Andover – and what buildings were there.

            The majority of people now living in the area would not remember seeing a whole line of businesses located on the river bank as well as the other side of Perth Main Street and the back streets. “There were eleven grocery store on the Perth side of the river at one time,” Sewell told me once. Along that riverbank there was a newspaper printing shop, a Chinese restaurant, a drug store, two harness shops, two or three grocery stores – name something, no brothels please.

Our family used to come from Tilley to Perth on Saturday, either during the day or, less likely, in the early evening and shop for necessities. The only vehicle we had in the early 1950s was a 1952 International truck with a gravel hauling body that father used when working on Tobique Narrows Dam. One day he forgot to put it in gear and we all landed down in the river which was about a foot deep. I don’t know how we got out but here I am.

Amid all this sort of thing Perth Elks was going strong but I had never heard of it until I joined in 1978. Since then I’ve learned that the Elks gives thousand of dollars every year to needy people, like those who have just lost their home to fire, or who can’t afford to buy a hearing aid for their child. The meeting held about three weeks ago saw the club give $200 to the SVHS graduating class and lend their kitchen to the class for two fundraising meals. I was accidentally at both of them and stuffed my face.

The reason I mention all this is to say thanks to Perth Elks, a service club I have been a member of for many decades, although not since 1953. Come on! I’m only 39!
                                        -end-

Too many sinuses for Flug (Dec 27)

The proper way to hunt deer – with noise

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Last week’s column began with saying how spoiled we all are these days, and just hours after I sent it to the newspaper I heard a new word that aptly describes the condition – “affluenza”.

            Speaking of afflictions, I was over visiting my friend Flug just this morning and found that the old fellow had a bad cold.

            “My sinuses are about ready to explode, Bob,” he whined. “I was up all night-“

            “He snored from midnight to 4:00 am and then from 4:30 am to about half an hour ago,” sneered his wife Magda. “I slept in the basement with a stick of cinnamon in each ear.” I didn’t dare to ask why she did that.

            “I did wake up around four,” Flug went on, as if she hadn’t spoken, “and decided that a hot toddy would help me sleep. I poured some brandy in a glass, then some hot water and maple syrup, but found I had put in too much water, so I added more brandy and then more water. I almost filled that water glass before it was just right. I got back to sleep okay.”

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

            Observations:

            “So I was visiting my Aunt Lulu last week,” began my niece Megan. Are you finding that more and more each week, people are starting sentences with the word ‘so’ as if that follows from something else, but doesn’t?

            The Empire State Building, finished during the worst part of the 1930s Great Depression, is almost exactly the same height as the Hartland cover bridge is long. I found this bit of information hidden (with good reason) in my notebook, the one that I carry around in my shirt pocket. I don’t have the vaguest idea why I wrote this down, or why I thought you would be interested. So why are you reading this?

            The former Mayor of Montreal – yeah that mayor who worked hard to block the Canada East oil pipeline to the Maritimes – spent $40,000,000 of the city’s money on a light show splashed all over Jacques Cartier Bridge while taxpayers sort of thought feeding the hungry and things like that might have been a better idea. It was shocking therefore when a woman named Valérie Plante beat him in an election a few months ago and is now the new mayor. Voters have no sense of humour, do they?

            Do you own a Toyota Corolla car? Do you switch your headlights to low beam and find that people just don’t believe you’re serious, they ‘bright’ you? It happens quite often with me. I suppose it has something to do with the way I put my hand on the dimmer switch, or it could be that Toyota headlights are simply too bright, unlike the guy who bought ours.

            Something else I want to ask the all-knowing reader: when you hear a government or other official announcement that Canada’s inflation rate is one percent, are you a bit sceptical? Are you finding that the piece of equipment or other product you priced last year now costs 50% more? I think those who estimate the inflation rate are themselves living in another world. The only things whose prices are dropping are pieces of computer and other electronic equipment. When I bought my first cellphone it was $200 or so (in lieu of signing a contract) and now the price of what is now called a smartphone can be as high as $1000. No kidding. Oops! I just found one that costs more. The Mobiado Grand Touch EM Marble costs $3100. Just in my range – for a house.

            I have also made a few notes about occurrences during the recent deer hunting season. Wearing the brightest orange and phosphorescent clothing in eastern Canada, I took a walk on a woods road. Soon after I started, a ‘wheeler’ driver zoomed by, on his way to venison, he hoped. A minute later I heard a deep pounding noise. It was this ‘hunter’ sitting still and playing rock music on his boomer. I looked beyond him and saw, to my amazement, two deer emerge into a clearing. I could almost hear them saying to each other: “What the hell?”

            Our fairly new Governor-General Julie Payette was on the hot seat for a few minutes because she implied that she was dubious about ‘divine intervention’ and she scoffed at people who doubt that humans have caused climate change. As a scientist, she would have been an awful liar had she endorsed those two theories, and as an awful liar she wouldn’t have been eligible to run for political office until her term as G-G is done.

            Speaking of science, I am often baffled about some of those scientific terms, like ‘semi-conductor’. Is it a conductor or isn’t it? And where’s the rest of it? It almost sounds like a really short train conductor. It’s ‘problematic’ as they, when they mean ‘it’s a problem’.

            Well, it’s not my problem anyway.
                                                 -end-

I admit I am a wimp (Dec 20)

Toilet paper in arena parking lots

                        by Robert LaFrance

            I was a little embarrassed last evening when the guys at the club found out my new car had heated seats. The word ‘wimp’ was bandied about. I hope they don’t find out the car has a backup camera and heated outside rear-view mirrors.

            We certainly are spoiled these days.

            When I think of being spoiled, I remember, just barely, when I bought my first computer in October 1994. I never even turned on a computer at that time, but the newspaper editor of the day said I needed to write my column digitally so I could just take it to his office on a diskette. Remember those?

            So I sought the advice of a computer nerd and my willing victim was the late Bob Inman. He was so nerdy that he played an electronic keyboard way back then. So when I asked him for his help and advice, he said he’d go with me to the store called Computer: Wise in Caribou, Maine, where he bought all his electronic equipment. Reluctantly I agreed to get my computer there although I prefer to buy almost everything in Canada, where my taxes go to medical care and other Canadian efforts.

            (NOTE: Taxes paid in the state of Maine stay there, so next time you get a ‘free’ medical procedure in New Brunswick, and complain about waiting, remember those taxes you left in Maine.

            Enough of that rant and back to the purchase of my first computer. Bob and I drove over there and when I pulled out of the parking lot the trunk and back seat of my 1985 Oldsmobile was packed with boxes full of mysterious looking stuff.

            When we got here, Bob helped me bring the boxes up to my office and then said: “There! You shouldn’t have any trouble now; we’ve shown you what goes where.” I reached in my desk drawer, pulled out a .44 Magnum pistol for my right hand, and a .38 Remington Colt for my left hand.

            “Bob,” I said. “My wife is starting to cook some chicken stew and you WILL be here to sample it. Now let’s start opening these boxes.” Two hours later, I had made notes and recorded everything he’d said about my computer, and boy did I need that information over the next few months! Even today I still am baffled at some of the things my computers do, so I cannot say I am spoiled. However, those heated seats are very handy and I ain’t giving them up.

            On reflection, I should not have used the word ‘handy’ to describe those seats, because the hands are not the parts of the body that are toasted.

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

            Another area of life in which I am not spoiled – in spite of my many comments about TV – is in entertainment. Quite a lot of my entertainment comes from reading, an activity that doesn’t seem to be done any more by people under thirty.

            A few days ago I was sitting in my car and waiting for a hockey game to start so I could take photos, and young (27) friend knocked on the glass. With the electronic magic and not an actual roller, I put down the window.

            “What are you doing?” he asked. I looked at the book I was holding, something by either Margaret Atwood or Mark Twain (it’s hard to tell them apart) and I informed the gent that it was a book. “I read Kindle books,” he said, “when I read books.”

            I asked him what book he was reading these days and he said ‘Warren Peace’ which he said he thought was about rabbits. I asked if the book was set in Russia and he said he thought so, although Napoleon had been mentioned several times and he hadn’t come across any rabbits yet.

            It was great talking to him, because I could feel smug about my vast collection of books, read and unread. The point is, young people – and that’s everybody younger than I – don’t read books any more. By the way, the book ‘War and Peace’ is about a lot of war and not much about peace. At least I think it is. I don’t know anybody who has read it all the way through.

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

            I want to tell you about an adventure I had recently had in Plaster Rock. I was walking into the Tobique-Plex civic centre when I had to blow my nose. (I know, too much information.) I hauled a red handkerchief out of my pocket and unfolded it in the wind, not noticing a nearby trailer with a load of bulls.

            One bull saw the waving red handkerchief and decided he would cause a scene. Smashing out the tailgate of the trailer, he headed in my direction. I did escape, but I am telling this story for a reason, to ask this: Would arena people everywhere please place Delsey dispensers in the parking lot after this?
                                          -end-

Claxton, my favourite spider (Dec 13)

An elastic for Christmas

                        by Robert LaFrance

            In last week’s column I ranted about whatever bad points I could think of about Christmas. I was sure there weren’t any good points, but, because I was in a rotten mood, I took a drive up around Kilburn and its suburbs. There I saw that Christmas had its good points after all.

            At the upper end of Kilburn was the cheerfully decorated house of Elizabeth and Leroy Davenport and I couldn’t help but smile at all the coloured lights and how they obviously do not say “Bah humbug!” when December comes along. It lifted my gloomy mood unto the hills (of Kincardine) and flang (flung?) it into the poplar woods.

            Last evening my wife and I drove by there and she uttered a sexist remark. “Elizabeth sure goes all out on Christmas decorating, doesn’t she? Beautiful!” She just assumed that it must have been a woman who did all that and I resent it very much, as would Leroy if he had heard it. He has by now. Last year I took a big hand in decorating around our house. I plugged in a set of outdoor Christmas lights, if I recall.

            Looking in the notebook that I always carry around in my shirt pocket, I didn’t find much about Christmas. It took me a while to figure out this shorthand: “Henbutt”. At first I asked myself now what could that mean? It came to me after a while. I was admiring the courage – or total lack of stomach queasy-ism of the first person to eat the egg of a hen or other bird. Consider where it comes out. The same with the first person to try cow’s milk.

            Speaking of doing things for the first time, I recently read in a novel that the ancient Greeks had been the ones who invented curiosity. Can that be true? Of course I couldn’t let that go by without doing my investigative reporter gig. I went to Mister Know-It-All (Google) and it turns out that the Greeks did invent curiosity. Before the Greeks showed up in Athens and its environs, other civilizations just tended to accept the way things were. Go ahead, admit it - before I mentioned this just now, you didn’t think about it either. You weren’t a bit curious, were you?

            Like just about everybody I know, yours truly is almost always confused about what foods are good for me and don’t cause all kinds of dread diseases. Did that poutine I just finished have Omega 3, Probiotics, gluten, fibre, protein or any of the 4000 things that will either cause my ears to fall off or make me well? Or was it a sure cure as envisioned by the Internet site known as FoodSucker.com? When I was a kid going to a one-room school in Tilley the teacher made us eat cod liver oil tablets every day. She said it would make us good looking. We all objected, but apparently it worked, at least in my case.

            When my kids were just that, kids, I used to enjoy telling them bedtime stories. The stories always featured the same characters, two girls - coincidentally the same ages as my daughters – and a large rabbit who wore yellow sneakers and caused trouble in my orchard. Later on a character was Claxton, a rough-voiced spider who only had one sentence in his verbal repertoire: “Git outta here!” The reason I mention this is that yesterday when I was burning a pile of brush in my orchard I came across a very old and tattered yellow sneaker. Just one. I wonder if those stories I thought I had made up could all have been true? I told my elder daughter about this when she called last evening and she said: “Better sit down, Papa and relax for a while. And no more brandy in your gingerbread cookies.”

            Still on that subject of bedtime stories, one of my stories was about my own childhood and was perfectly true – as true as any of my stories ever are. When I was about nine, I was hoping and praying, even being a well-behaved boy (now you know it’s a lie) for a croquet set, but we were desperately poor, so poor we couldn’t afford to give our chauffeur a holiday bonus. My story to the girls was that my entire haul that Christmas was an elastic, one of those that wrapped up a bundle of toothpicks or something. That was it. The girls laughed so hard they both fell out of bed.

               I should mention that when our son came along he didn’t enjoy my stories and I’ve always hated him for that. Not much of a kid, but anyway, I’ll always remember the girls falling out of bed because their father had only received an elastic for Christmas.
                                                         -end-

Old fashioned parlour (Dec 6)

Christmas too commercial? Shocking!

                        by Robert LaFrance

           

            Two days and two hours ago, a middle aged husband and wife said, almost in unison, to me: “Christmas is getting too commercial now; it’s not fun anymore.”

            I was tempted to say: “And have you heard about the invention of these newfangled things called cake mixes, power steering,  and computers?”

            As one who is standing on the edge of the shifting sand dune of old age, I cannot remember a time when Christmas was anything but too commercial. If you want to watch  a movie such as “Miracle on 34^th Street” or “It’s a Wonderful Life” and think they represent reality, I have some news for you: they are the product of optimists and optimists are usually wrong. “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is more like reality, at least until he has a change of heart.

            Picture a Christmas season that saw people devoting their time and their fortunes to helping people; picture a family that shuns a Christmas tree and all those presents stacked and piled under it; picture the stores not resorting to sales gimmicks like Black Friday, and picture the whole holiday season as merely a time to visit friends and relatives.

            Whew! I’m all worn out after picturing all that.

            I remember one JULY day in 1973, when I was sitting around a hotel in Vancouver, that I looked up at the television that was playing a Christmas commercial. That was not an aberration, because from that day until December 25^th, there was a fog of Christmas commercials every hour. “God rest ye, Merry gentlemen” came on the air every half hour amid the jingling bells. That was the earliest year I remember the holiday season starting.

            How about those jewellery TV commercials? It is enough to make one retch. The soft focus film, the quiet music, and persuasive words that imply that you (the male) are a no-good useless piece of elephant dung if you don’t go out and buy your loved one a $758 ring.

            Gee, I wish I weren’t so cynical. Bah humbug.

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

            On to other subjects and away from my December melancholy, I have noticed that different things get lost in different seasons. In the summer, indeed all year long but mostly in the summer even when most laundry is hung outside on the line, socks get lost. I have a cardboard box the size of a Volkswaggen Jetta and it is chock full of socks that, like Flug, have no mates. (His 17^th wife Dora went back to Ontario on Tuesday.)

            Where do socks go, one at a time? Are they like the light inside the fridge? We don’t know where it goes once we close the door. It’s been a mystery for years where socks disappear to, once they are near a dryer or a clothesline. Logic says that they slip down behind the dryer or fly off the clothesline into the grass, but I’ve looked. They just disappear.

            Now that we’re in December, I am finding that mittens have joined the lost socks club. I own four pairs of mittens and so far I have lost one mitten out of each of three pairs. As I go outside, I sometimes wear a green mitten on one hand and a blue one on the other. “A fashion faux pas” as my daughter says.

            I have looked in our vehicles, in the shed, in the garage, on the roof, in the porch and on the ground and have not been able to find any of the lost mittens – or socks. The matching pair I do have left is under lock and key. When I took them in to our safety deposit box, the bank cashier raised her left eyebrow, but diplomatically held her tongue.

            After a lot of thought, I have decided that both the lost socks and lost mitten syndromes are somehow connected to the recent Remembrance Day (although it should be all year) activities when each of us loses five or six poppies each November. It is said that the national Royal Canadian Legion president, Leonard Findglad, lives in a giant Manitoba mansion paid for with poppy money. (Kidding.)

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

            One final subject, since I have been thinking and want that to continue, a question I have often pondered is: why do people entertain other people in their kitchens instead of in their parlours (old word but good) and living rooms?

            The obvious reason, and one giving only part of the answer, is that persons of a certain gender do not want riffraff tracking dirt over their pristine living room carpets, rugs or hardwood floors. In the old days, the only time visitors got past the doorway of the kitchen was when they filed into the parlour to view the remains, so to speak.

            I have finally figured it out – the reason guests stay in the kitchen. Flug gave me the answer: “It’s where the food is, stupid."

                                                         -end-