The good old days when times were bad
by Robert LaFrance
How
times have changed from ‘the good old days’!
Imagine
yourself walking through the woods in 1975, seeing a beautiful (but legal)
mushroom and stopping to take a photo of it with your phone, then telephoning
your spouse to ask when supper would be ready. Then you send her, him or it the
photo you just took.
(Note:
I say ‘mile’ because kilometres and the metric system hadn’t been invented yet.
That was accomplished in 1977 by a guy named Joe Celsius, out Minto way.)
Today, in
the year 2018, we probably wouldn’t have been walking through the woods
anywhere near that mushroom in the first place, for fear of deer ticks and
terrible beasts we had been warned about on Facebook. We now carry a smartphone
and bear spray at all times. Danger lurks more than one hundred feet from the
house.
Tim
Horton’s and other fast-food drive-thrus have been around a long time and I
often think that people go through those more out of habit than for a logical
reason. In Andover last week I was standing and observing the progress on the
new pot building when a chap driving a 1989 Gremlin stopped and dove into a box
of Tim-Bits after spilling coffee on himself. He seemed to be agitated.
“You seem
to be agitated,” I said.
“You
would be too if you took half an hour to go through a drive-thru that’s
supposed to make things more convenient,” he retorted, hands shaking from
apparent lack of sustenance. A couple more Tim-Bits in rapid succession and he
seemed to be okay, or at least better.
“Why
didn’t you just go into the restaurant itself?” I asked, knowing it was a dumb
question but feeling as if I should ask it. Anybody will tell you I am a
curious person and, as the phrase from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ goes, getting
curiouser and curiouser.
“Listen
pal,” he said as he paused for 1.5 seconds. “Did you ever get caught in a
drive-thru line?” I had to admit that I had never been in such an entity or
conundrum. “It’s like a giant vise, squeezing, squeezing the life out of you –
all for a coffee and some little doughnuts.”
At this
point I edged away, and kept edging until I was standing in line at the grocery
store. Of course my line made more sense; I was buying Twinkies and chocolate
milk for a snack instead of caffeine and unhealthy doughnuts.
Another
difference between then and now is that people do so blasted much walking. It
seems as if every day dozens of people invade the walking trails, either those
inside arenas or outdoors, and you can’t discourage them. There are even people
from Tilley, the place where I was born
and allegedly grew up, who go down to Perth-Andover or up to Plaster Rock and
take advantage of the walking trails inside the River Valley Civic Centre or
the TobiquePlex as if they don’t have roads in Tilley.
My late
grandfather, Muff LaFrance (1881-1976) never failed to comment when he saw
women strolling down the road. “Women walking means it’s going to rain.” he
would say – every time, and I would listen patiently every time because he gave
me money for hauling his drinking water from the spring and I didn’t want this
revenue stream (so to speak) to dry up.
What if
he were around today and saw all the women out walking? “Gonna be a monsoon I
guess.”
Still on
the subject of how things have changed, I am always amazed to see someone who I
know has good tap water in his or her house hauling out a bottle of
commercially bottled water, which, it has been proven, is no better than tap
water. What a bunch of great sales people it must have taken to persuade people
of this.
Another
multibillion-dollar industry nowadays is the pet food one. I had no idea when I
was a kid that we were abusing our dog Rover by giving him meat and bread
scraps. What a con job by that gaggle of sales people!
*****************
I am not
the first to say this, but around here during deer hunting season (deer,
partridge and wood), it’s like a shooting gallery.
Our
estate is on Manse Hill, at the southern end of the Scotch (I like bourbon
myself) Colony and we get the warlike explosions all day, and, if I am going to
tell the complete truth, all night. Although, as they say on 1960s TV detective
shows, it could be a car backfiring. Born in 1948, I have heard approximately
six cars backfire in my life. The only thing close to that sound has been the
Chili Night aftermath at the camp.
The
Colony is a busy spot during the fall of any year. Pickup trucks – with and
without trailers – go by here heading toward Bon Accord a dozen at a time and
come back laden with stovewood, moose and deer. I always hope they don’t get
confused: “Martha, throw another moose roast into the furnace, willya?”-end-
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