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 13th, 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 13th 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 1st, 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 2nd
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-
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