Vote for me on May 32nd (May 30)

For Blackfly Gazette May 30/18

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

Tattoos and Tilley are in the news

                        by Robert LaFrance

            I grew up in the benighted hamlet of Tilley, and, at the golden age of seventy, I agree that it is time that Tilley had a mayor and council. Plaster Rock has one although it has fewer potato farms than Tilley. Also, because I was born there in Tilley in 1948, I retain Tilley citizenship and will be eligible to vote in the upcoming (or up-chucking) municipal election.

            In addition to that, I am also eligible to RUN for office in the new municipality of GTA (Greater Tilley Area). Therefore, I am announcing today that in September my name will be on the ballot in the section headed “Mayor, GTA”.

            Just thought I’d let you know.

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

            It’s gotten to the point now where I feel as if I should go out and get a tattoo.

            Everybody I see on TV (except Donald Trump) has a tattoo and I feel that I should join the crowd. Even my dog Minnie is interested.

            When I was a kid about 90 years ago, grownups always cautioned us: “Don’t get a tattoo because you will get everything from Hepatitis D to Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever to gangrene to syphilis and your arms and legs will fall off or else crumble into powder as you’re walking down the street!”

            I guess people today didn’t get that memo. Retired soccer player David Beckham has approximately 467 tattoos in areas that are visible even when he bears a business suit, and I’m not going to request a viewing of the rest, although the very idea sets a tremble among many women.

            Also when I was a kid, the idea of a woman having a tattoo was something bizarre, but in later years there was a woman I met in Burlington, Ontario and who had tattoos on her legs. I asked if she had any more, in areas not usually visible, and when I regained consciousness she was gone. It taught me a lesson: Have my medical insurance card on my person at all times.

            It is against my nature and my will to do any kind of research, but I did ask a fellow named John Google what percentage of the population of North America has or have tattoos. I was staggered to learn that, according to John’s statistics, 21% of the population have tattoos of some sort. I think that falls into the category that describes the kinds of lies: “There are lies, damned lies and statistics”. Probably the ones who gathered that statistic were working as pollsters in the 2016 U.S. election and predicted Donald Trump would finish seventh in the Electoral College vote.

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

            It’s a few miles from Tilley, but the recent election in Venezuela was a landslide for the ruling party as was the latest election in Russia. In the South American country, the current president Nicolas Madura won by 90% or more because he had jailed two of the opposition leaders and his main opponent Henri Falcon, who collected a total of 1.8 million votes of about 7.5 million even as his party boycotted the election.

            Can NB Premier Brian Gallant be looking at this? It could be a win-win for this fall’s election. He could sling the leaders of the NDP and the Green Party in jail on some trumped-up (no pun intended) charge and then the Tory leader would surely boycott the election.

            But now I’m thinking: why in the world would an opposition leader think that boycotting an election is a good idea? What kind of LSD logic would he use? “Okay, we’ll punish that dictator by not voting. We’ll show him where the cat sat in the buckwheat”.

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

Everything is so mealy-mouthed today. “Harvesting” deer? Come on. When I was a youngster, we shot them. A special note: I didn’t shoot any, because I was – now this is an estimate – the worst shot in the tri-county area, and you can include any three counties in that designation.

Concurrent jail sentences? This means that if you are sentenced to six years in jail for shooting a moose, you can be sentenced concurrently – serving it at the same time – to six months for shooting a human. I have often wondered why shooting a moose draws more jail time than shooting a human but lately, something to do with age, I’ve given up.

Whoever came up with these phrases that butcher English so much should be given a ‘high colonic’ (enema) and sent on a 12-mile hike. Maybe by the time he gets back I will be able to figure out what an occasional chair does the rest of the time.
                                                     -end-

1st column for Blackfly Gazette (May 16)

For Blackfly Gazette May 16/18

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

No going to Mars for this puppy!

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Sitting in my easy chair and watching television after a 2-hour brawl with my garden, I am hearing an astronaut tell an interviewer that she would like to be among the first to travel to Mars.

            I recovered quickly enough to avoid dropping my mid-afternoon snack (two chicken drumsticks, a big bag of Storm Chips and a big piece of homemade bread with banana) but I was still flabbergasted – not to mention gobsmacked. Why would anyone in her right mind want to take a 7-month space journey with almost zero chance of returning? I phoned my friend the Perfessor.

            “Some people are crazy, Bob,” he said. “They will do anything to get their names in the newspaper. Quite often it’s for the wrong reason – a suicide bomber is an example of that – but the main thing is fame or even infamy.”

            As usual, the Perfessor was spot on, as they say in Liverpool. I looked in the mirror and asked the guy there what he thought about the idea of my getting in a zillion dollar spacecraft and sitting with my bum on top of enough explosive material to obliterate Minto and Jemseg.

            “Don’t do it, Bob,” said my mirror. “You just turned seventy; don’t ruin it. If you want to be turned into space dust, that’s one thing, but the problem is you will be taking me with you and I have plans for this weekend.”

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

            Like many New Brunswickers, I went fiddleheading last weekend after the weather had been sunny for several days, meaning the ferns should be starting to show their faces (at least their heads).

            I drove down to a little brook near here – I am not telling where – and I found the same thing I had found the first times I went out in 2017, 2016 and other years: I had waited too long. Three-quarters of them had grown out. I picked for half an hour and seemed to be doing well – my cloth bag was doing nicely I thought – until I got home and found only 81 fiddleheads. The rest had escaped through a hole in the bottom of the bag.

            That was enough for supper though, although my (long-suffering) wife and I had to count every one to make sure it was all fair. Even then, she had 41 fiddleheads and I only had 40.

            Refusing to tell where a person finds fiddleheads is a long-time tradition. I grew up in Tilley, where people have been known to indulge in fistfights over their fiddlehead zones. On one occasion two of the St. Peter brothers and two LaFrance brothers chased each other through the poplar woods for an hour until they were all exhausted and forgot why they were mad at each other.

            After the recent flooding in the lower St. John River Valley, we the consumers were warned not to eat fiddleheads from that area and that was another example of the hidden costs of such a spring freshet. I know people in Maugerville who had sold thousands of dollars of fiddleheads every spring and this ban, or ‘suggestion’, must be costing them big-time.

The first brilliant thing that came to my mind was: “Geez, all people have to do is wash the fiddleheads and once they are boiled for twenty minutes all will be well” but for the first time in my life I was wrong. A government website listed the number of extra items that might have been in that backed-up water: sewerage, toxic sprays from farms and businesses near the river and any number of things I wouldn’t want to take home to meet my mother. As the Russians might say: “Nyet to that, tovarich!”

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

This spring I have ordered from no fewer than five seed companies, all located in eastern Canada; some of the companies have an interesting shipping policy.

One company, that shall go nameless, said there would be free shipping for any order over $30, a discount of 10% on all orders over $80 and a $25 bonus on all orders over $100.

I ordered $101 worth of garden seed, which, I assumed, meant that I would get that all for $68.40 once that 10% discount and the $25 bonus were taken off.

The company emailed me two days later to say I didn’t qualify for that $25 bonus because that took my total down to $76, which meant I also didn’t qualify for the 10% discount. Are you with me so far? I’m not sure I am.

                             -end-

Last column for Victoria Star (May 16)

We miss Richard Elliott

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Taking my daily constitutional walk this morning, I came across a total of 21 returnable items (Bud Lite is quite popular these days) in the ditches. This was during a walk of less that two kilometres.

            It goes to show us just how much alcohol beverages people imbibe and it goes to show how often people throw the empty vessels in the ditch as they head along home. All to the good though; usually when I’m out walking I carry a plastic grocery bag and eventually the money from those returnables ends up at the food bank to help pay their hydro bill.

            I also pick up empty coffee cups whose rims have been rolled up to no avail. No money from those, but a bit of knowledge thanks to a young woman from the Arthurette area. She said one day that she could tell how long it takes the average person to drink a cup of java by the number of those paper cups collected in one area just above Red Rapids. Taking that a step further, I estimate that one swallow of coffee lasts 1.32 kilometres.

            I think it’s now time to pause and say a sincere thank-you to the late Richard Elliott of Lower Kintore. He used to get up as early as 5:00 am, in any and all weather, and take his collection bag for many a long walk to collect bottles and cans. He died last fall and I will tell you that a lot of people miss him. He always had a good word to say and he was an amazing friend of the environment.

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

            This part of my column is an apology to all those acquaintances who think I am a stuck-up, self-important oaf.

            I blame auto makers. Practically every vehicle on the road comes equipped with tinted windows and windshield. They all look as if Aunt Ruby were driving. She was about four-foot-ten. I try and see who’s driving a certain car or truck so I can wave to them but it could be David Suzuki and Donald Trump in there. Imagine that.

            When I stopped by the Scotch Colony Club last evening, it was almost as if people were lined up to insult me, and I get enough of that at home. Picked on or what?

            “Well, there’s Mister Rich and Famous!” sneered Edgar Reinhold. “Couldn’t bring yourself to wave back when I waved to you uptown.”

            “I didn’t see you,” I sputtered. “I can’t tell who anyone is behind those tinted windows.”

            To make this sad story somewhat shorter, let me say that I endured even more of that abuse until, four hours later, I left in a huff. Actually it was a 2009 Toyota Yaris but I wasn’t driving. My wife had arrived to pick me up, although the club is only half a kilometre from my front porch, where I slept that night.

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

            One of these days I’m going to write another book (My “Fishladder Gazette” is still enjoying good sales) but this one will be a self-help volume. Common sense solutions to everyday problems.

            Here’s one that we have all experienced. You lose something – say a flashlight, a watch or an umbrella – and after days of scanning the world you give up. “It’ll turn up,” people will say. “Stop thinking about it and you will remember where you hid it so it wouldn’t get lost.”

            This happened with me. I lost a digital voice recorder somewhere in my orchard, I thought, and mounted a massive search effort, as they say on TV. I retraced my steps back to June 2002; that yielded nothing but blackfly bites and a bear scare. I turned over every item of anything inside the house and garage – no luck.

            Finally, ten days after I lost the DVR, I bought another one - $68 including tax. I told the clerk I had lost mine and she sneered: “It’ll be there waiting for you when you get home.”

            “Not a chance,” I retorted, stung by her tone. “It may as well be in Kabul or Ernfold, Saskatchewan. It ain’t gonna turn up.”

            At this point the reader is saying to himself or herself: “I can see what’s coming; he’s going to arrive home and find that recorder in some obvious place.”

            Wrong. I walked outside to my car and noticed something shiny sticking out behind my driver’s seat. The word ‘Olympus’ was soon visible. My first instinct was to go back into that smug store and demand my money back, but I have too much character for that. (Not necessarily GOOD character.)
             And now I say goodbye to my faithful Victoria Star readers after 16 years of this column and faithful work for the Victoria County Record and later Victoria Star newspapers. I have been informed that my column is no longer needed, but don't despair because it will now appear in the Blackfly Gazette of Perth-Andover and this blog will continue.
                                                            -end-

A great big fat lie (May 9)

Point the bear spray can AWAY from yourself!

                        by Robert LaFrance

            I was walking along Manse Hill Road Monday evening and enjoying the fading sunshine when a large, large brown coloured black bear ambled across the road about fifty metres in front of me. (Only black bears are found in New Brunswick.)

            Springing into action, I tugged at the can of bear spray that I had jammed into my pants pocket. Within a minute I had torn the pocket enough (not that I was nervous!) to get out the can. By this time the large mammal (ursus americanus) had noticed me. I stood stock-still except for the trembling.

            Job one was to take off the plastic piece on top of the can so I could spray. I did that in a trice and, as the bear trotted briskly toward me, I took a look at the fine print on the can that had cost me $30 and was guaranteed to drive off anything smaller than an elephant.

            My reading glasses were back at the house; I knew I wouldn’t have time to dash back there and get them, so it looked as if I would have to ‘ad lib’, and luckily I knew what ‘ad lib’ meant because I studied Latin in high school. Teacher: Mrs. Maybelle Titus. I remembered one day in her class when I…but then I also remembered there was a huge  brown black bear bearing down on me, so to speak.

            As the bear grew closer – in more ways than one – I also remembered that my eyeglasses were bifocals, so I really could read those directions. Should I shake the can? Alas, I didn’t have time to finish reading when the bear was almost in my face and clearly wanting to remove that face. I lifted up the can and sprayed – full force.

            Did that stuff ever sting! I howled in pain. The only other sound I heard was the bear grunting. I dropped the can and continued howling, at an even higher volume. Why wasn’t the bear attacking?

            It took at least half a minute for me to be able to see again and when I could – remember, I wouldn’t lie to you – I swear that bear was standing there and laughing. After watching me go through all that crying and howling, he, or possibly she (I didn’t look) turned around and went back into the woods.

            When I got back to the house my wife looked at my red and tear-filled face and said with her usual sympathy and empathy: “Hurry up and wash; supper’s almost ready.”

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

            If all goes well, and I have no reason to think it will, I will be seventy years old on Friday, May 11. I have set up a distribution warehouse in Perth-Andover, one in Plaster Rock and one in Grand Falls for the hundreds (thousands?) of birthday gifts that will surely be coming from all the faithful readers of my column.

            I have already been notified that my 1971 Silver Cloud Rolls Royce is on its way by train from Nebraska. The billionaire financier Warren Buffet emailed me last week that he was so pleased with my column over the years that he wanted to show his appreciation. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I would have preferred a newer car, like a 2018 Camry or even a 2005 Buick LeSabre (the last year for my favourite car) in mint condition.

            Lady Gaga said she was sending me enough 2x4s to build myself a pool hall, and several other celebrities will be sending gifts. Bill Gates sent me a certificate saying he would be building a public library in my name in Ernfold, Saskatchewan. “You already have great public libraries in Victoria County, or I would have built one there,” he wrote.

            It is rather amazing that I am almost seventy. In those seven decades I have come  close to joining my ancestors about a dozen times. My brother, now living at Victoria Glen Manor nursing home, saved my life twice, rescuing me from in front of vehicles driven by drunks, I and several friends were in a car that spun out on an icy mountain road on Vancouver Island in 1967, in 1973 I came within inches of walking under a falling concrete pillar as workers tore down the old Eaton’s building at Seymour and Cordova.

            Then there was the time 1975 when I was flying in a Lockheed L10-11 and landing in Montreal after doing an aerial ice survey of James Bay when the plane’s instrument landing system packed it in during foggy weather. Somehow we made it. There are many more examples of close calls and yes, I know, the real one could happen any second, maybe before this column is even printed.

            Note: That bear story might possibly be a result of enhanced truth, or a lie, but the last part of the column is true, oh so true.

                                                     -end-               

Unhealthy food PLUS coffee

Rejoice! The takeouts are open now

                        by Robert LaFrance

            It is that time of year when those of us (not me of course!) who enjoy eating at takeouts or fast-food places can indulge in grease-filled gourmet treats that are terribly bad for us.

            My friend Flug is one such person. He has been known to sit in his car (a 1986 Gremlin) at a takeout for an hour as he waits for it to open for the day or, in this case, open for the Spring.

            I happened to be driving by Bernie’s Takeout on Sunday afternoon when I spotted Flug’s Gremlin sitting there in front of a snowbank that Mother Nature, or Bernie, must have forgotten to clear out.

            He looked at his watch. “Only seventeen more minutes before I get to order my first takeout poutine of 2018,” he grinned. “Only one thing better than poutine, and that’s rap music.”

            I gave him my opinion of those items, both of which rank on my scale of one-to-10 as somewhere in the low minus quantities. I would say poutine, grease disguised as food, would be around –3, and rap – which I refuse to call music – would be –238, give or take.

            Flug was happy anyway, even if I was unimpressed. Just then Bernie’s daughter Ballerin came to the takeout window, nine minutes before official opening time. She knew Flug was a valued customer. He ordered poutine and more poutine as a side dish.

            “What will you have, Mister Newspaper Columnist?” she said.

            “No poutine, I’ll tell you that,” I said. “But I will have a bacon double cheeseburger just to be polite.”

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

            Not to get too nostalgic here, but as I think back to the ‘good old days’ after I had joined the work force and could actually pay for my own food, I used to drink coffee. This was before we all learned that coffee, like poutine, was not the best thing to put into our bodies.

            Whatever its health drawbacks, one thing I remember about coffee is that there was only one breed of it – coffee. Later on decaffeinated coffee appeared on the screen, but it still was only coffee.

            Last evening I stopped at a restaurant and asked for a cup of java, as they say. I hadn’t drunk coffee for years, but I thought I would have a cup. Boy, was I living in the past. “What kind of coffee do you want?” asked the waitress, who looked about fifteen and in violation of various child labour laws.

            “Errrr…just coffee,” I said, “in a cup.” She looked at me as if I had just failed a grade one math test.

“Well, do you want a double upside down Keurig, expresso (she meant espresso), Mocha, auto drip, or…” From there she went on to list a bewildering array of coffee brands and styles in cup sizes from demi-tasse to 45-gallon drum. And then she went on to outline the array of sweeteners and creamers; this took her two minutes at least.

            “Couldn’t I just get a cup of coffee with a bit of cream, no sugar?” She looked confused, as if I had asked her to design a Saturn rocket system from scratch.

            “I have to go see the manager,” she asserted. The manager proved to be an old guy of about twenty-four. He also asserted. He said if I didn’t clear out he would call Security. I wondered what he would call them and how long it would take for them to arrive. Perhaps ‘Security’ was that pimply kid flipping burgers on the grill.

            I did manage to avoid ‘Security’, by leaving. My first stop after that was a grocery store where I bought a small jar of instant coffee, the kind that mother used to buy back in the 1960s. Everything is so complicated now that none of us knows what is going on. Poutine is alleged to be food and rap is alleged to be music rather than the sometimes nasty poetry-to-a-beat that it really is.

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

            Notes: One beautiful day last week when I was uptown to get some lemonade and other supplies, like food, I commented to half a dozen people about the nice weather. In every case their reply was: “Yeah, but it’s going to rain tomorrow morning.” Every time. Are we ever Canadians! I say ‘we’ because I was thinking the same thing whenever I mentioned it.

            Corporate advertising is always amusing because they lie so much. One airline’s commercial asserted that its top priority was its passengers. By the time I had stopped laughing, another commercial had come on. A car company was saying that any one of us could lease their luxury vehicle – about $46,000 – for a mere $401 a month for three years, with a $6000 down payment. Looking further into the situation, I found that I really could lease it for that amount, but if I wanted tires on and an engine in the car it would be slightly more.
                                                -end-

Pearson Airport near Perth-Andover?

We prefer Canada the way it is

                        by Robert LaFrance

Although Canada is by far the best country in the world and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, I must admit that U.S. politics is or are more interesting.

            And that is a good thing to be sure. The Americans are living in “interesting times” as the ancient Chinese curse puts it, and interesting times are not something we should wish for here in Canada. Let them keep their guns and their Donald Trump and his followers, who seem to get more hysterical every day.

            Those 300 million-plus people who live over there must wake up each morning and turn on their televisions with a certain sense of dread, or in some cases, thrill of anticipation.

            Has President Trump, who has lowered the standards of political discourse to the bottom, been impeached yet? If so, will he be found guilty? (A lot of people think ‘impeached’ means driven from office but it just means going to trial.) Have FBI agents raided his office as they looked for naked playboy models? Has the Fox News channel decided to hire actual journalists instead of their fascist news hosts?

            Anyway, I am glad that it’s Americans and not Canadians who have to deal with that sewer called the White House. During the War of 1812 the British burned down that building, and I think it’s time to give them another call.

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

            I’m sitting in my easy chair in the living room and looking at a housefly committing suicide on the windowsill. Not exciting as sports go, but better than nothing.

            It’s raining and it’s cold, typical late April weather. My sister in Welland, Ontario emailed me that this weather was on its way but I didn’t believe her. She knew because she had just said goodbye to a 2-day bout of freezing rain, ice pellets and stuff like that. Planes hadn’t flown out of Toronto’s Pearson Airport for hours. I pictured 400 planes sitting on the runways and waiting to take off, with hundreds more circling the city in the vain hope of landing someday.

            We received several emails from a woman who was flying into Pearson from Europe and couldn’t land because of the vile weather. She was on the plane that circled around Toronto for more than an hour and finally went east to land in Ottawa whose weather wasn’t quite so bad, but then in Ottawa there’s always a chance she would see a politician.

            (A side note: For lo these many years I had thought that Pearson Airport had been named after a family from Craig’s Flat, NB, but it turned out to have been named for Lester B. Pearson, Canada’s prime minister in the early 1960s. He was famous for being boring. It was not ‘interesting times’.)

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

            Going to town this morning, I saw seven deer munching away at dead grass in the partially bare field along Manse Hill Road. They looked happy. Imagine my surprise when one of them, a big doe, walked right onto the road in front of me and looked me in the eye.

            “Why don’t you get out of that metal monstrosity and join us for lunch?” she seemed to be saying. “Those stories about our carrying deer ticks that cause Lyme Disease are propaganda put out by our enemies the raccoons.”

            All kidding aside, now that someone near and dear to me has Lyme Disease, I am finding out more and more about that dread condition that is caused by deer tick bites. Until my wife was diagnosed with Lyme Disease, I didn’t put a whole lot of thought into the subject, because it affected other people, right?

            I was recently surprised to learn that the little insects are active right now, once there is any bare ground showing up. As of today there is a lot of bare ground. I hope everyone learns as much as possible about Lyme Disease and follows suggestions of those who know what precautions to take.

            Avoid the woods and high grass areas if possible. If you do go into those areas wear a long-sleeve shirt, long pants and tuck your pants into your socks or boots. Light-coloured clothing is also a good idea because it allows you to spot ticks more easily. Use insect repellent that contains 20 to 30 percent of the chemical DEET.

Check yourself for ticks after you’ve spent time outdoors. The longer the tick is attached, the higher the risk for contracting Lyme disease. Wash work clothes in hot water and then put them into a hot dryer to kill any ticks present.

The symptoms of Lyme Disease include a rash often called a “bullseye” because of the way it has with red or purple rings, fever, body aches, flu-like symptoms, fatigue, headaches and arthritis-like joint pain. Lots more information is available from Lyme NB (www.LymeNB.ca).
                                               -end-