NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY
No one is smarter than a blackfly
by Robert LaFrance, Blackfly Gazette
Wouldn’t it
be great if companies with TV commercials were forced to tell the truth?
I am still
recovering from injuries incurred when I fell off a barstool as I was watching
an Air Canada commercial. The syrup-voiced announcer said “Air Canada’s first
priority is its passengers”.
The day
that Air Canada, Westjet, any insurance company, car dealership, bank or Donald
Trump decides that the customer or any other follower is their first priority
will be the day the sun rises in the west and Kraft starts putting vinegar in
its peanut butter.
At the age
of seventy, I have finally stopped searching for a company or any other entity
whose top priority is NOT to make all the money it can, as soon as it can, and
to hell with the customer.
True, there
are isolated pockets of resistance, as the phrase goes, where business people
such as Paul and Bev Clark were very generous to their community and
surrounding area, but as a rule companies don’t allow such largesse.
Sobey’s had
a Foodland grocery store in Perth-Andover and employed about thirty people, but
closed down that store and put them all out of work although the store was
making a profit. Somebody with a sharp pen in Truro, Montreal of somewhere –
probably someone who had never been in Perth-Andover – decided Foodland wasn’t
making enough profit. Zip zap and there go the jobs. Same thing with the
restaurant located at the Ultramar station. A Toronto bean-counter slashed that
without a pang of conscience.
A few
decades ago I used to stop every week at an Irving Convenience store in
Beechwood until I drove there one day only to find it had been bulldozed flat.
Rumour was that at the time Irving demanded a 3% profit from each of its
similar stores and the profit was only 2.8%. I wouldn’t know and my opinion
isn’t important anyway. Zip zap!
Rural New
Brunswick, indeed rural Canada, have been under attack for decades now and it
ain’t gonna change. By rural New Brunswick I mean any place smaller than
Edmundston. Downtown metropolitan Perth-Andover and Plaster Rock aren’t
even ‘urban’ in the government ‘mind’.
We can
quickly see how unimportant we are in the eyes of government by foolishly
deciding to get a civil servant on the phone. Tried that lately? By the time
you go though all the voicemail robots, you are exhausted and all you were able
to accomplish was to leave voice messages in six places you will never hear
from again. Governments, banks and others don’t want to talk to us.
Let’s accept that and move on.
******************
Last
evening I was working in my apple orchard when I found out, not for the first
time, that I was nowhere nearly as smart as a blackfly.
This may
not be a surprise to the average reader of this column, and yes I know none of
you is average. In fact I would say you are well above average. The point is
that any blackfly off the street is smarter than I am.
Wearing a
Tilley hat (makes sense because I was born in Tilley), I was out pruning trees
when it because clear that any blackfly with a moderate education knows enough
to wait until I have both hands occupied and can’t slap him or her down.
In one case
I was wielding some hand shears on my right and a pruning saw on my left when a
squadron of B-52s attacked from all directions. (B-52 refers to 5200
blackflies.) I fought bravely, not in the Victoria Cross manner but still I
tried hard; I was no match for them. I threw down my tools and started trying
to murderize as many as I could as I dashed to the house. Platoons of
mosquitoes arrived to join the blackflies. I did make it to the kitchen door
and inside, but not before a squad of mooseflies bit me in places and places I thought I had covered.
I dashed
into the downstairs bathroom and slammed the door; I could still hear the
buzzing out in the dining room. One moosefly the size of a space canary (so big
he could have worn a saddle) tried to get under the door but I despatched him
with a big box of Tide and a Swiffer.
If I
am around next year some things will have to change. I won’t have six gardens
that range in size from pool table dimensions to Olympic size pool, I will rig
up a shower that dispenses DEET-filled insecticide, I will spend more time
inside getting to know my television, and finally, I will get rid of the notion
that I am smarter than a blackfly because I ain’t.-end-
