Backpacks are lethal (Dec 24)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

Another bus trip to Montreal – and back

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            Where did the year 2019 go anyway? This is the mystery every year this time. No, wait, last year wasn’t the same. I just checked my digital files and what I said a year ago was: “Where did the year 2018 go anyway?” (I try to be accurate and am often a fanatic about it.)

            This time it is different though, because in a short time we will all have perfect vision. 2020, get it?

            A couple of weeks ago I realized I was getting way too much sleep and decided to go on a 9-hour bus trip to Montreal and visit my daughter and her family. If I remember right, she and her husband have a 16-month-old daughter, but that wasn’t the main reason I wanted to visit. There are silly people who think I even like my grand-daughter.

            As I write this, I have been back in Victoria County for almost a week. Eighteen hours on a bus, although, to be fair it was four different buses or busses if you prefer. I had a seat to myself in each case, thanks to my ingesting many cloves of raw garlic. I arrived in downtown Montreal just before the morning rush hour and jumped into a taxi that was waiting along the street. So far I haven’t used Uber although I have the app on my smartphone.

            The driver, who proved to be a Haitian who said he had emigrated from Iran (figure that one out!) twenty years ago, said that indeed he did go to Verdun where my daughter and family live and invited me to look at his company’s name in big letters on the dash. Verdun Taxi. That gave me a clue.

            Although Verdun, itself formerly a city and now a borough of Montreal, is quite a distance from downtown that seemed to be a construction zone, we were there in jig-time. My daughter and grand-daughter waved to me from their second floor apartment but wisely refrained from coming outside onto the metal balcony to help me bring in my three steamer trunks, five suitcases, and three kit bags. It was sure nice to see them. I am not referring to the luggage, and, by the way, I may have exaggerated the amount of that luggage. It was a small suitcase and a small kit bag. In my travels decades ago across and up and down Canada, I had learned how to pack.

            (Not to mention any names, but one person who lives in this very house often packs two suitcases for an overnight stay.)

            My grand-daughter, who often gets up for the day at 5:00 or 6:00 am, was a little shy at first, but within a few minutes she was on my knee as I read and sang “The Wheels on the Bus”. How she could be cheerful at that hour of the morning is beyond me. We had Cheerios and warmed up chicken stew for breakfast.

            Before I go any farther on the subject of my delightful visit, I will revisit the subject of luggage. A few minutes ago, I just finished up a letter to my recently elected Member of Parliament; the subject was deadly luggage.

            I refer to backpacks. I cannot think of a more deadly weapon than the backpack, unless it is the bagpipes as their carriers swing around wildly in crowds. (Curious about the similar spellings.)

            At the Riviere du Loup bus station, I watched half mesmerized as a young woman carrying a backpack spun around as someone called her name and struck a toddler alongside the head. Luckily the little chap was tougher than old shoe leather and soon bounced back to his feet, just in time to see the young woman’s boyfriend turn around quickly so he could race to the bus; the victim that time was an older gentleman. That would be me.

            During my eighteen or twenty hours on various buses I saw at least eight instances of backpack assault. Rarely did I hear an apologetic word and there’s never a cop around when you need one.

            The MP should get my letter any day now and I sure the anti-backpack legislation will be sitting in a House of Commons committee room by early January. A minority government should ensure quick passage if the Senators can be aroused from their post-holiday slumber.

            Back to my holiday, my grand-daughter made sure I never got bored. Whenever she saw me not busy, she grabbed a book and brought it over to me. By actual count, I read 3,442 books in four days. I sure hated that. We went shopping several times, went to the nearby park half a dozen times, went walking and just went. I sure hated to leave her but when I did depart she was sleeping, or I may not have been able to go.

            A few other comments about my trip not including a description of ‘taking a leak’ in a moving bus’s washroom:

            Although signs in the buses all said they had WiFi available, it was only half available on each of the four buses I rode on. My smartphone said ‘connected’ but it wouldn’t go anywhere. It wasn’t a big deal; YouTube is practically all Donald Trump anyway.

            You know how expensive things are in airports and train stations? Like $18 for a paperback novel and $9 for an anorexic’s sandwich? Guess what? Bus stations are in the same ballpark. At Riviere du Loup I wanted to buy four AAA batteries and found that the total cost was a mere $12.98. I told the cashier that was a bit “riche” for me.

            I mentioned that the whole city of Montreal seemed to be in a construction zone and there were flocks of panhandlers all around; on my return to home I noticed that it wasn’t the case in Victoria County. My favourite potholes were still in place and getting bigger and the only panhandlers were those who handled pans.

Mary Jane sales down (Dec 11)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

Eliminating the competition

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            As I write these beautifully constructed paragraphs, it is snowing like mad, as if try to make up for snow-less months like June and July. It’s a school storm day, so I am sure all educators are champing at the bit and wanting to get back in the classroom tomorrow in front of those fresh faces eager to learn English grammar and calculus.

            Or maybe not. I was just uptown to get a few groceries and saw several teachers in the food (or other) supply stores – one of each side of Andover – who didn’t look the least bit morose. Odd about that. I saw two carpenters who wouldn’t be able to continue shingling a roof in Aroostook because of the predicted storm and they looked as if they would rather be working than spending money on bread and cheese.

            It’s been an odd winter so far, and it’s not even officially winter which I think begins December 22. I looked it up, or tried to, on the provincial government website(s) but the InterWeb kept sending me in circles, a metaphor of government itself, so I never did find out when winter starts so I can get out my snow scoops and clean out the banks in front of the garage. I haven’t been able to get the cars out since that first storm in late August because I understand that it’s illegal to use a snow scoop until winter is officially here.

            I must look up that law on the government’s website.

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

            Not sure if anyone else has noticed, but while it may not be officially winter, it certainly is officially Christmas season, and with it, the season of Christmas music EVERYWHERE.

            My wife and I went Christmas shopping last week and have deemed that trip a huge success. We do not often, like never, cross the border into the U.S. of A., so we have been left to shop in the mere 10,000 stores in Grand Falls, Woodstock, Fredericton and all points on the compass. I can report that we have almost finished Christmas shopping except for buying gifts for each other, all cousins, inlaws and outlaws, aunts and uncles, our kids and grandchild. Other than that we’re all set.

            One of the stores we have avoided so far is the biggest one – by far – of them all. I refer to that place usually called ‘Online’ – or the Internet. I tried that once and ended up buying a 1956 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. However, a credit check by the seller revealed that I didn’t have enough money to buy the car’s ashtray – if Rolls Royces even have ashtrays.

            The police and I are in discussion about the whole matter. It may be resolved by (great word!) spring.

            Back to Christmas shopping, I have many objections to the whole idea, including Black Friday and Pale Thursday, but my most serious one is about the so-called music that wafts through every store except, curiously, Cannabis NB, not that I have been there. I hear reports.

            I can only assume that the stores have all conferred about the music and have hired one or more consultants (who must have been former Chilean secret police alumni  or Komodo Dragons) to pick out the music. On Monday morning we were in the store called Rossi’s and the so-called music almost drove me screaming and mumbling – if it’s possible to do both at the some time - out into the parking lot. It was a mixture of rap, a punctured accordion’s squeak, and the backfiring of an old Farmall tractor as it hauls a manure spreader. I didn’t like it, in case you didn’t get that.

            The other stores were much better, but I wrapped a huge scarf around my head and so my ears were able pick up only a dull roar. It wasn’t Heaven but slightly farther away from Hell.

            Going back for a moment to the subject of Cannabis NB, I saw on last evening’s CBC-TV news that the police had closed down several illegal cannabis outlets and executed the managers and owners. One thought occurred to me right away. We have been hearing for many weeks that Cannabis NB has finished in the red its first two years of operation and the government wants to sell it, but my question would be – and is – this: didn’t it occur to anyone before that one way a business makes money is by eliminating the competition?

            Therefore, wouldn’t the obvious course of action be to close down all illegal cannabis shops? The government had the means to do this all along, so why did it take two years to figure it out?

            Stupid question, wasn’t it?

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

            I will close this brilliantly written column with a tribute to one segment of our society that doesn’t get a lot of praise. I refer to teenage girls who go to school, do homework, play sports and put up with whatever they must.

            Here’s why. Around noon hour in Andover I see them walking along the street and wearing their stylish jeans with all hell torn out of them so that, even on the coldest days, the girls’ bare flesh is exposed to Canada’s winter weather. Sitting near Nissens’ Market inside my idling Toyota one day last week, I was warm and cosy when a bevy of these girls walked by. They weren’t even shivering although it was –5ºC outside, with a significant breeze.

            A few metres behind was a group of boys the same age. They were bundled in hoodies and other clothes that weren’t torn to shreds. They looked cold.

            Teenage girls, I salute you! You’re a lot tougher than I am!
                                              end

Fermented cranberries (Nov 27)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

Always follow these two rules of life

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            There was only one guy I would listen to when I was a teenager and that was my grandfather Nelson (Muff) LaFrance (1881-1976) of Tilley.

            My Aunt Ella would tell me that fried eggs were no good for me and I would add two more to the frying pan; my brother Lawrence (once the best guitar player in New Brunswick and now living chord-less in a nursing home) would tell me I should play A  Minor as I accompanied at a certain spot in a fiddle tune and I would play C Sharp even louder than I had been; my school bus driver Byron Paris would tell me to go sit down and I would stand on my tiptoes, but when Grampy suggested something I would say “Yessir!”

            He had two major themes in his life – to try and exist on an old age pension of $28 a month, and to try and get along with others. While lots of other people had themes, he actually followed his.

            As to the first one, he had an iron-clad rule that made certain that $28 a month would keep him and his dog Bill in style: never, NEVER go into a grocery store and shop while you’re hungry. Go in when your stomach is bulging from a recent meal and you wouldn’t be able to tamp down a speck of icing sugar.

            “Bread? No need to have bread until Friday. Sugar? I’m sweet enough – too sweet. Milk? I will venture down to Goodines’ dairy farm just as Donnie is starting to milk his Jerseys.” I always wondered why Donnie Goodine never questioned why Grampy happened to arrive then every afternoon and with a small tin cup.

            Before you ask, and not meaning any slander toward our friends over there, Grampy did not have one drop of Scottish DNA.

            Now for the second of his major life rules: ‘If you see a chance to keep your mouth shut, take it.’

            I don’t think I have ever met anyone who was better at keeping his mouth shut than Grampy. Tell him a secret and it was in concrete, never to emerge again from his mouth. So, if he were around today, and an acquaintance passed on to him a piece of juicy gossip, the man or woman mentioned in the story would not be likely to hear all about it at Tim’s the next morning.

            Lucky for me, and believe it or not, I have inherited Grampy’s attitude about keeping confidential information just that. In three and a half decades as a newspaper reporter, editor, columnist and radio reporter, I can safely say I never betrayed a confidence. On the other hand, maybe it’s just that I am so old I can’t remember anybody’s secrets anyway.

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

            For a while there last week, I thought bears were stupid, eating the sour cranberries and leaving the tasty apples on the ground, but they quickly demonstrated which of us was a little short in the cranial area.

            (In case there’s any doubt, I was the loser in that IQ encounter.)

            I looked out the kitchen window to see two deer eating apples off the orchard floor. I think they (the apples not the deer) were Empires, one of my later varieties. Or they could have been Colletts, a sweet variety.

            There had already been a couple of frosts, but apples can take that as long as the Polar Vortex hasn’t arrived for the winter. Meanwhile, ten metres away, about a dozen highbush cranberry bushes were groaning under the weight of a thousand red berries and the deer were ignoring the whole thing.

            But the bears weren’t. A mother bear and two cubs were chowing down on the cranberries, and continued chowing down for at least twenty minutes until they saw my face in the window. By this time the deer departed, so to speak, and the bears started in the direction of the woods. One of the cubs immediately ran head-on into a pear tree and fell headlong onto a small pile of brush.

            Concerned, the mama bear ran toward her kid and on the way collided with my Beacon apple tree, whose trunk diameter was twice as big as a can of French’s tomatoes. The apple tree won that contest and continued to stand upright, something the bear wasn’t able to accomplish for almost a minute. By this time the first cub, followed by her sibling, was almost to the woods. Eventually all three of them, using zigzag routes, were out of sight.

            By that time I was brave enough to go outside and walk over to the cranberry bushes. “Sour, but certainly well fermented,” I remarked to myself after tasting a few. It was then I realized that those three bears were drunk. Imagine! Those cubs! I resolved to have a talk with the mother bear as soon as her hangover abated.

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

            I am writing this on Tuesday, November 22^nd, fifty-six years after the day that John F. Kennedy met his maker in Dallas. I admired JFK when he was alive and continue to admire his brilliance and political acumen. We knew he couldn’t keep his hands off women and so what? Look what’s in that same office today – look and compare. No, never mind, there’s no comparison.

                                              end

Clyde is colour-blind (Nov 13)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

A ‘true’ story of frozen partridge

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            It’s deer hunting season now, which means this quiet community now resembles the 1916 Battle of the Somme when German troops in their trenches and we allies in our trenches kept taking pot shots at each other.

            It took place in the second half of that year and when it was over one million soldiers were killed or wounded for no particular reason except stupidity and lack of empathy by the generals who sent the youngsters on to their deaths.

            I said the 2019 hunting season here in the Scotch Colony resembles the Battle of the Somme, but not quite so many corpses (all deer and partridge so far) have been hauled back to the field hospitals.

            Working out in my orchard a week ago, I was startled by three quick shots that seemed to be VERY close. I left my Cortland, Novamac and 65 other varieties out there on their own and dashed for the safety of my basement. I never did find out – for sure –   the source of those shots, but made a November resolution: stay in the basement until hunting season was over.

            After three or four days, when my basement cupboards were nearly bare, I had to use the bathroom and finally emerged. Going outside, I heard a shot almost right away. Or what sounded like a shot. It turned out to be the owner of the cottage across Manse Hill Road pounding nails – spikes – into his doorstep.

            Then I heard two shots from the woods nearby, but they didn’t sound like shots. They weren’t. It was an ancient Gremlin ‘muscle car’ going by and backfiring whenever the driver let his (her, its) foot off the gas. It was then I decided to stop being afraid of every sound just because it was hunting season.

            Except for this one: “Bob, fill the woodbox and cook my breakfast – NOW!” That’s a scarier sound than any gunshot.

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

            Although I don’t hunt because I’m too lazy, I do find that hunting season has its good points. It’s the only season of the year when anybody calls me bright. Last year, in a counter-intuitive move, my wife increased my life insurance coverage to ninety-nine  thousand dollars and the same day she bought me a new and vivid orange hunting jacket. I have heard of other wives doing a similar insurance thing and then buying their husband a nice warm jacket just the colour of a deer. Husbands were dropping like flies for a while until the ones remaining ones caught on to the ruse.

            Coming to the point, I was saying that hunting season does have its good points. When I wear my orange jacket people often remark that I am “certainly bright today”. It never happens in other seasons.

            Walking along a woods road last week, taking my life in my feet, I met up with Clyde Farthing, who came very close to shooting me. Clyde is colour-blind. I asked him why he was hunting down in these parts although he lives up toward Arthurette. “Your wife phoned me a couple of hours ago,” he said, “and suggested I should try here because people have seen half a dozen deer on this road.” What a coincidence; she told me I would be safe on that road because hunters have given up going there.

            You know, $99,000 is quite a bit of money.

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

            Getting off the subject of hunting for a spell, I have now joined the No Screens Club. No smartphone, no TV, no tablet, no iPod, not even any screens on the windows for a total of 24 hours. I started 22 hours ago.

            “You look a little pale,” my Aunt Maud said to me when I handed her Agatha Christie books to her. “Come on in and sit down, relax with a mint julep while you and I watch The Secret Edge of Tomorrow’s General Hospital Storm, my favourite soap opera.”

            Of course I took to my heels immediately because I could hear her television from the yard where we were talking and I had two hours left to go. That was only a guess because I didn’t even know what time it was; my smartphone was back home and I don’t wear a watch.

            Well, I am here to report that I was screen-less for the full 24 hours – in fact almost 25 hours because I didn’t get back home until the full time plus an hour had elapsed. Now I suppose you want to know why in the world I would do such a crazy thing. I don’t have even a vague idea, can’t remember why I went berserk like that. It could have been because my cousin Vinnie had gone into the ditch along the Gulch Road (Highway 109) while he was texting a clam chowder recipe to his cousin Georgia. I doubt if that was the reason though; I never liked Vinnie.

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

            I will close this column with a wonderful story I heard recently in a certain bake shop and luncheonette in Perth. I can’t remember all the details and won’t give the name, but let’s say that a chap named Arthur was driving along near Two Brooks, above Plaster Rock when he stopped along the road to hunt partridge. Within a few minutes he saw six of them, apparently asleep, sitting on a rock, each of them with claws in cracks. He raised his shotgun and then realized their claws were frozen into the rocks. “I can’t shoot them like that,” he said to himself. “That’s not sporting.”

            So he drove home, picked up a battery powered hair dryer, came back and thawed out their feet whereupon they quickly flew away. I believed every word of that story.
                                    end

Cliff wasn't smoking (Oct 30)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

No more politics please!

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            Am I glad the federal election campaign is over, you ask?

            In a word: indubitably. I will mention one weird occurrence that took place during those forty days and then leave the subject; there is enough politics taking place in the USA to suffice.

            Here’s that one weird occurrence: In the final week of the campaign I read in a sub-headline of the Telegraph-Journal newspaper that Tory leader Andrew Scheer had made a devastating accusation against Liberal leader Justin Trudeau.

            Refering to some climate change statement, Scheer said: “Mr. Trudeau is just playing politics.”

            What a brute! Let me get this straight: During a federal election campaign one of the candidates accused another of playing politics. Imagine. Next thing we know the Tory leader will be accusing a surgeon of ‘being medical’.

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

            Do we know anyone who has won big on a lottery? Other than Justin Trudeau, I would have to say that only Big Dave Manwell from Lower Kintore has been the only significant lottery winner.

            In mid-October, Dave stopped at the Irving and bought an Atlantic Lottery ticket and also got the previous week’s ticket checked. Although he didn’t win anything on that ticket, he kept it after the clerk reminded him he should check the ‘second chance’ number on the Internet at 2Chance.ca.

            He had checked other tickets for that second chance but never had been able to get the website to recognize anything to do with his ticket. It kept bouncing back. This had happened 56 times, but as I say he kept his ticket and set his determined jaw. He would try again.

            A half hour later he was sitting in front of his computer and looking at “The Interweb” as the TV show Corner Gas called it. And you know what? The website accepted his numbers for the first time and actually sent back a message that he was registered and now had a chance to win a thousand dollars or a free trip to Nigeria where he would be the guest of Prince Zalu of Momdanus.

            It just goes to show you. Show you what? I don’t know, but it goes to show you.

            Changing the subject slightly, let’s talk about cigars. I was standing on the corner near Perth Library when a 1976 Gremlin stopped at the stop sign – a shocking occurrence I know. The driver was a little old lady and she was smoking a cigar that was the size of a Great Dane’s tail.

            For a few seconds I thought she was vaping, but no it was that cigar. She continued on down East Riverside Drive in an atom bomb sized mushroom cloud. It was quite the thing to see that old Gremlin practically disappear in a cloud of cigar smoke.

            It all got me thinking, as unlikely as that may sound. I used to smoke too. After years of telling my smoking friends (so to speak) that it was a filthy habit, I started puffing away on an Export A – to make a bit of poetry out of stupidity – when I was sixteen years old and continued until I was twenty-five and living in Vancouver.

            During those nine years I smoked one cigar, a full-sized Cuban type of cylinder, and dearly wished I had never smoked that. My mouth tasted like a mixture of soot and fermented lamb poop for at least a week, until the Export A’s finally took over again.

            What is it about people who find smoking a cigar is a marvellous treat? I have never figured that one out. Same thing with smoking a pipe. I used to occasionally fill my pipe (a present from my grandfather) with Sail tobacco and always had someone nearby say that it was a wonderful smell, but I was on the other side and found that taste akin to that of snail spit mixed with lemon juice.

            Still on the subject of smoking, I should relate the tale of why I gave up on those Export A’s. I was living in the St. Francis Hotel at the foot of Seymour Street in downtown Vancouver when the inspiration to quit smoking struck me.

            There were three of us smokers who spent a lot of time sitting in the lobby and smoking. Ninety-year-old Oscar Evoy, eighty year old Cliff Gordon and I. The saga began on the morning of February 6, 1973. I came down from my room 215 to see Mr. Gordon sitting on his usual soft chair near the elevator.

            He wasn’t smoking! I had known him about 13 months and I had never come downstairs to find him without a cigarette in his hand. I was alarmed. He was not a young man. Any abrupt change in behaviour could have meant a stroke or some other sort of attack, or he may have been approached by a hooker.

            No, that last one was unlikely; he had never been interested in fishing, he had said.

            “Mr. Gordon,” I said as I hauled an Export A out of my pack and offered him one. He shook his head. “Are you all right? Why aren’t you smoking?”

            “I’ve quit the filthy habit,” he said. “I’m going to live what’s left with clean lungs and a pure heart.” I was dubious about the clean lungs, but all in favour of his pure heart. I threw my full cigarette pack in the waste can and from that day to this I have never smoked a cigarette or any other tobacco product.

            Just to complete this tale: On February 10, 1973, four days later, I came down from my room to find Cliff Gordon puffing away on an Export A. I called him a name and it wasn’t a reference to clean lungs, but ever since then I have thanked him 1000 times. 

                                 -end-   

Never trust a GPS (Oct 16)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

Giving advice to caterpillars

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we decide to live in Canada year-round rather than be rich and spend the winter in Costa Rica or the sunshine coast of Portugal.

            Of course all coasts of Portugal are sunshine coasts, but you know what I mean. I got up this morning and glanced at the thermometer to see that it read ten degrees. Brrrrrrr! Then I remembered about that metric system thing and realized that ten degrees in this new (since 1975) system represents fifty degrees on the real scale. I felt warmer already.

            Of course shaky feelings about the weather are even more upsetting when I realize we’re in the middle of an election campaign, an event that leads one to remember that it was a Trudeau who drove us into the metric system. It’s hard to separate those two occurrences – taking away our beloved Imperial system of measure, and that name that will soon appear on the federal ballot.

            Moving on to another subject, we in the Scotch Colony are mourning the loss of one of our dearest friends – Gailen Haymaker. We were sitting around the club last evening and remembering Gailen who served on several committees of the club. He was on the Rum Committee, the Vodka Committee, the Red Wine Committee and the Snow Removal Committee. There may have been more; it was hard to pin him down.

            “He was a good old boy,” commented the Perfessor, and the rest of us echoed that thought. Colin Hardesty said that Gailen was “one in ten million”, which overstated the population of the colony, the county and even the province, and Glenn Gannon said that Gailen “would be missed, especially by people whose rifles don’t have telescopic sights”. That was his idea of a joke.

            Here’s what happened to put us all in the position of missing Gailen Haymaker: You may have misled yourself into thinking that Gailen is dead, but no indeed, he is not, although he may as well be; he’s in Flin Flon, Manitoba.

            Blame it all on his GPS, an instrument he has relied on for years to get him from the Colony to far-flung corners of Canada. Twelve days ago we said our goodbyes at the club as he started off toward his Uncle George’s split-level log house in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

            You might ask yourself how Gailen, aiming for Thunder Bay, could possibly end up in Flin Flon, one of the dreariest communities in Manitoba and I can tell you right away – GPS.

            Something happened to that instrument around Aroostook (similar to what might befall newly elected politicians) that threw all its calculations for a tailspin. He first noticed something was out of whack around Elliott Lake, Ontario and then Agawa Bay, where an arrow and a sign told him he was looking at Lake Superior, a name that I’ve often thought was somewhat pretentious.

            A couple of tanks of gas later, his GPS informed him that he was in a place called Winnipeg, Manitoba, which he felt was a little out of his range if he wanted to land his Gremlin at Thunder Bay, Ontario. That’s a different province isn’t it?

            He kept going though, because his GPS was saying “go west young” and Gailen had never been strong of geography. Later – much later - that day he came to a sign that said “41 kilometres to Saskatchewan” and he entered a town called Flin Flon.

            “It should be called ‘pollution’ he muttered, as he looked around the area and found his eyes stinging from the sulfur dioxide and mercury tricentrate – although he didn’t know their names at that point.

            Gailen stopped at a garage. “How far to Thunder Bay?” he asked a woman who was changing a tire on an elderly Gremlin.

            She pointed in the direction he had come from: “About ten or fifteen hours back there,” she said. “Where you from, anyway?”

            “Cargill, Minnesota,” he said, thinking of the embarrassment he was saving all of us back home. “Going to a wedding.”

            “Let me guess,” she said. “You followed the directions of your GPS. You’re the fourth one this week. You’re from Victoria County New Brunswick, aren’t you?” He admitted it, just as, a month before, I had had to make the same admission to a Maine border patrol officer near Fort Kent. I had been heading for Fredericton from the Colony.

            To sum up, let me leave you with this lesson: NEVER trust a GPS unless you like driving.

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

            Now we will go on to a more important topic – road caterpillars.

            I do a lot of walking along the roads – which makes a lot of sense when you think about it – and some things I see a lot of are caterpillars crawling from one side of the road to the other. Usually.

            On Sunday morning I counted them. In a distance of about two kilometres I spied 14 of those fuzzy beasts making their way along the chipsealed Manse Hill Road. Six of them were going from south to north, six of them were crawling from north to south, one of them was going up the road (east) and one was going right down the road (west).

            If I could have handed out some advice to the ones going parallel to the road, I would have said you ain’t never gonna get there, but caterpillars are famous for not paying any attention to humans unless the human is driving an SUV.

            I should mention that in twelve of the cases I picked up the beast and threw it across the road, but in the two east-west cases I let them be. You can’t tell a caterpillar anything because it won’t listen.

Boardwalk ripped up (Oct 2)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

Maybe a long, long shopping mall for Perth

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            I am all atwitter about the upcoming federal election due to take place in just less than three weeks. I really am. Now let’s move on to other subjects, ones that do not include the Washington, DC, con man.

            We in New Brunswick are finally getting rain, but it seems to have arrived either too early or too late. Too early for the farmers who would like to get their crops out of the ground and too late to provide the rest of us with some great garden crops.

            Getting away from our gardens and farmers’ fields, I will now send my annual ‘best wishes’ to the folks working at Alert, Nunavut, who are about to say goodbye to the sun until March 4^th. I was working there from May 1974 to May 1975 in the weather service and went through that sunless period.

            Being deprived of Vitamin D for all those months brings down the spirits but I do have to admit that I cheated when in early January I hitched a ride over to Thule, Greenland with an RCAF C-130 Hercules fuel run and saw the sun for a couple of hours when we got up to our allotted altitude of 25,000 feet. It wasn’t enough.

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

            Back here in New Brunswick in 2019, I am pleased to say that I have had a wonderful apple crop this year. The bears seem to love the Alexanders. I can tell by the ‘sign’ they leave here and elsewhere in my orchard. To use Grampy’s phrase, some of the piles are so impressive that “two big men couldn’t shake hands” over them. I never asked why two men of any size would want to shake hands over a pile of #2.

            Now that it’s this time of the year – potato harvest – people of my age group (old)  keep saying crazy things like “I enjoyed those days, working in the fields, earning money and not having to go to school”. That last part was referring to what we used to call ‘potato break’, a 3-week hiatus when students of all ages reluctantly took a school holiday. Later it was reduced to two weeks when many potato farmers bought harvesters and later still it was eliminated.

            Here’s the part that continues to baffle me: most of the reasoning for dropping potato break was that it ‘was not educationally sound’. At that time we had what were called Christmas exams; once they were written that was the end of that part of the school year, but later on schools went to ‘semestering’ with exams in January. So then the students had to re-learn everything they had learned before Christmas. As I said I don’t get it, but there are a lot of things I don’t get, like that girl I met in 1973 in Surrey, BC.

            This part of the year is also the time when those of us with wood heat have to do some chainsaw work to keep our houses warm in the months to come. Two days ago I finally decided to saw up a beech tree my neighbour Larry had hauled up into my orchard. My Husqvarna was singing a nice tune and it wasn’t long before I had the tree cut up in 15- and 16-inch pieces for our kitchen cookstove. It was quite a warm day, so I took off my heavy safety pants just before I opened the kitchen door to go in for my lunch.

            The trouble is, before I went into the shed and the house, I didn’t look down by the garage. If I had, I would have seen the tan-coloured 2017 Ford Fiesta driven by Glenda, the older of the two Sagma sisters. Glenda and her sister Diane were in there talking to my wife and sipping on some tea while they solicited a donation for the Heart Fund.

            Picture the scene: two elderly ladies of delicate constitution sitting at the kitchen table when in through the shed doorway comes a certain Robert A. LaFrance attired only in some sweat-soaked boxer shorts. I would say those ladies were, at the least, nonplussed, and at the most, coronary. Good thing they were collecting for the Heart Fund because it looked as if all donations would be necessary – and soon.

            The last time I was in Perth-Andover, I noticed that the boardwalk on the Perth side was being ripped up. I was working for another newspaper when the boardwalk was being installed many years ago and remembered this week that it had cost $300,000 or so, more than I made in a week.

            When I saw this wanton destruction I could have driven across the river – actually across the bridge – to the village office and asked them there what was going on, but I have always been allergic to research. Better, I thought to myself (my favourite way), to speculate as to what is going to take place.

            Were they going to replace those aged board and planks with newer versions, or was the village of Perth-Andover going to put something completely different in that newly excavated space?

            I decided this needed severe thought, assisted by an order of fish and chips from Carolyn’s Takeout whose tables are strategically located across the street from the former boardwalk. With the aid of catsup, vinegar and tartar sauce, I put on my thinking cap.

            Maybe the village will plant grass there and have a LONG lawn bowling course, maybe a LONG miniature golf course, maybe a series of tables and chairs, or long-distance bass fishing seats, or maybe the longest narrowest shopping mall in Canada. Let’s wait and see.

                                  end

Travelling man (Sept 18)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

A bus trip from Montreal

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            After spending all too few glorious days visiting my grand-daughter in Montreal (I believe her parents were there too), I jumped on a bus that, ten hours later, deposited me in front of Squeaky’s in Perth-Andover. I had been missing my grand-daughter for about ten hours.

            Before I told you something about the trip I want to give you a good reason why the rest of us don’t live in cities.

            It was about 7:15 am on that Tuesday when I was sitting in my bus with another five dozen people and we saw, off to our left, something that made us all sigh in relief that we weren’t there.

            Ten lanes of city-bound traffic were stopped solid. We watched and watched and couldn’t see it budge an inch, or even a centimetre. Meanwhile we were zipping along at 100+ km/hr as we headed for, in my case certainly, rural Canada. Ten lanes of traffic back there. I didn’t know there were that many cars in Quebec.

            I will mention more about my trip later on, but first this anecdote: as our bus neared Perth-Andover, I received a text message from my wife, who was to pick me up at Squeaky’s which is the Maritime Bus Lines pickup point. “I might be a few minutes late,” she wrote. “They’re paving Fred Tribe Road and the flagmen and women have us backed up for a long way, maybe 15 vehicles. It’s a gridlock here.” My mind went back to those ten lanes of traffic going into Montreal.

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

            It was a great visit to Montreal, at least for me. My daughter and son-in-law may have wanted me to git after two hours, but I hung on and kept Violet Grace entertained with trips around the streets of Verdun in her stroller. I mean, she was in the stroller and I was pushing it. We often allowed one or more of her parents to come along so they could pay for everything.

            There is a playground near to their apartment that is on 5^th Avenue near LaSalle;  Violet sure loved visiting there and trying out all the equipment. I mean ALL the equipment. Picture this 71-year-old grandfather trying to keep up with the 13-month-old girl who zoomed from the slide to the swing to the see-saw to The Thing. I call it that because neither I nor anyone else had any idea what it was called, but, for some reason, it was Violet’s favourite.

            Then of course there was a whole lot of sand on the ground. At a guess I would say that the city has to bring in a truckload of fine sand once a month because all the many kids who played in were taking it home on their clothes and flesh, some even putting it in their mouths. Not to mention any names.

            Alas, my vacation from retirement was over all too soon, and on September 10^th I set my alarm for 5:30 am and quietly went out to the street at 5:45. The taxi driver pulled up to the door right on time and my journey back to New Brunswick had begun. This guy drove like a taxi driver too, if you know what I mean. I noticed that the city speed limit was 50 km/hr but my driver added a zero to that. We were zooming down Ontario Street (Is a name like that even legal in Quebec?) when I stuck my head out to see that we were going 495 km/hr. I put my head back down and prayed some more, to whatever gods I could think of.

            We went through what seemed like half a dozen tunnels with the taxi driver doing a continuous narration. If I understood correctly, the Lafontaine Tunnel was going to be replaced with a new one within a few years. I said that was nice, could he keep his eyes on the road please? At 495 km/hr one could only imagine how much would be left of old Bob LaFrance if we hit something more determined than we were.

            Once out of the tunnel(s) I could see some famous Montreal landmarks, the Molson Building, Maple Leaf Gardens, construction cranes. I mentioned these to the taxi driver and he said Maple Leaf Gardens is not called that any more, and besides is in Toronto. The Montreal Canadiens play at the Bell Centre, right near the building where my son-in-law works. You learn something every day.

            By the way, the taxi driver didn’t actually say that my son-in-law works near the Bell Centre; I supplied that information. However, he knew everything else.

            I mentioned that the taxi I was in was crossing Verdun and downtown Montreal rather quickly, now here’s a question for you: On the Trans Canada Highway, the part that goes past Perth-Andover, the speed limit is 110 km/hr, but in the quickly-moving city of Montreal and the quickly-moving province of Quebec, the speed limit on the TCH is only 100 km/hr. Go figure.

            I wonder how fast my Montreal taxi driver would drive on the New Brunswick Trans Canada Highway? I can picture him crossing the provincial border above Edmundston: “Yahoo! Now I can open this thing up!”

            In Ste. Foy, where the Quebec City bus station is located, all the lunch counter signs were in French of course. I told the guy I wanted two (I was hungry) boites aux letters. “You just asked for two mailboxes, sir,” he said. “Sure you don’t mean croque-matin?” Apparently I did, because they were delicious.

            Aside from the joy of seeing Violet Grace, those were a few of the high spots of my trip to another country, Quebec. I am home in Kincardine and after I finish writing this column I plan to go split some wood for the winter of 2020-2021 and then have a cold beer, perhaps a Molson or whatever that’s called now.
                                                  -end-

Cooking on the barbie (Sept 4)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

A love affair from Melbourne to NB

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            Sitting on my front porch two days ago, I was surprised to see my former friend Hartley Cucumber driving his Gremlin up our front driveway. It was the same Gremlin he bought new in 1978, the last year of its production, under the theory that a car that ugly must be mechanically sound. Apparently he was right.

            (I say ‘former friend’ not because we’ve been enemies all these years but because I haven’t seen him since 1981 when I moved from Tilley to Birch Ridge.)

            “And there you are sitting by your barbie the same as you were when I last saw you,” he commented, once he had negotiated his exit from the ancient vehicle. After greetings and his explaining that a ‘barbie’ was a barbecue, we got caught up on old times, of which we didn’t have many.

            One major reason for that was that he had emigrated to Melbourne, Australia in 1978 and within ten years was a millionaire – in those days considered rich – and decided to write back home to New Brunswick and ask the love of his life to join him in Australia.

            Within two weeks that love was travelling the streets of Melbourne and, in spite of its ugliness, was drawing ‘oohs’ and ‘aws’ from pedestrians and other humans. You will have guessed by now that the love of his life was not a woman, but his 1978 Gremlin that had resided in a barn in Tilley all the while Hartley was making his bundle.

            “Esmie is a beauty, ain’t she cobber?” he said to me, and I had no polite choices to use as an answer.

            “It’s a historical marvel,” I said. “Did you get it brought over to Canada on a ship?”

            “Oh no,” he was appalled. “Esmerelda went to Melbourne by ship in 1990, but it took years for her to forgive me for her seasickness. This time I leased a Boeing 747 freight plane and rode with her all the way from Melbun to Halifax. We’ll never be separated again. I tried three or maybe it was four – marriages to actual women but they didn’t work out. Now I’m going to settle down in Canada and just drive Esmerelda around.”

            And there, my friends, is the story of a fanatic. We ‘got caught up’ on what’s been going on in Victoria County, NB, since 1981 and wished each other farewell after a long hiatus. “I just have to stop in Perth at the post office and then head up Tobique for a bit of a rest,” he said as he and Esmerelda were about to back out of the driveway.

            About two hours later my friend the Perfessor came by and the first words out of his mouth were: “Too bad about that Gremlin that got demolished in town. A tractor-trailer driver, coming down Route 105 because the Florenceville bridge was closed, got confused and ran right over the top of that Gremlin while it was parked near Beech Glen Road.”

            I didn’t tell the Perfessor about Hartley and the love of his life but I felt bad about the Gremlin. It was flattened, according to the Perfessor, to about the size of a TimBit.

            But I didn’t reckon with the determination of a fanatical millionaire. Exactly one month later a 1978 Gremlin with a fresh paint job pulled into our driveway. Hartley, beaming like Donald Trump after a successful trip to Mcdonalds and the bathroom, got out and said: “Esmerelda is back!”

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

            After that exhausting story of Esmerelda and her prince, I will now turn the subjects of this column to various pieces about life in Victoria County, NB.

            Back when I was growing up, or trying to grow up, in the 1950s (I was born in 1948) our family would always attend the South Tilley Fair to see the many agricultural exhibits, to play games, meet neighbours and go to the Saturday night dance in the hall that burned a few decades ago.

            As many readers of this column know, about eight years ago I started a Facebook page called ‘Old Photos of Victoria County’ and today it has about 4600 members. There are thousands of photos, but very very few of the South Tilley Fair events. I wish people reading this column would take a look at their old photos and see if they have any they would submit.

            I have had the same problem, only worse, with getting photos and stories about the old Silver Slipper dance hall, now a private residence, that is located in lower Perth. It used to have a large silver slipper (Coincidence? I think not) on the peak of its roof. I think the Hafford family used to own it at one time and one of them still has that slipper somewhere.

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

            Years ago a man named Raymond Sisson of upper Arthurette was known to some as The Burdock Man and for good reason. He would drive around the county and either cut all the burdocks he saw along the road or go see the landowner and ask him or her to get out there with shears or dynamite and get rid of the pesky plants.

            The first time he stopped here I scoffed a bit until I realized he was serious. Then I saw he had a large clump of burdocks in the back of his vehicle. I could tell he hadn’t cut them because their roots are very sweet (which they are) but to help beautify New Brunswick. Raymond, now gone, was going a good thing although most people didn’t realize it.

                                                end

Perth-Andover Rap II (Aug 21)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

Power outages are fun, aren’t they?

                                    by Robert LaFrance

“Due to unexpected high call volumes, our representatives are serving other customers. Please remain on the line,” said the confident voice after I phoned the 1-800 number.

I asked myself: Who are these ‘other customers’ and how to I get on that list? Maybe then I could have my choice of background music. I could hire my 89-year-old  nephew Jed to do squirrel imitations. The generator next door sounded better. Maybe they’re giving poor musicians a start.

I woke up at ten to eight Sunday morning and felt that something was wrong, and it was. My neighbour’s generator was on. I went out to check on the chickens but remembered I don’t have any.

It took so long (54 minutes more) that I was playing a computer game on my ‘laptop when a ‘representative’ called. I said I didn’t have time to bother with him or her, who was a tired sounding Jennifer – or Shirley, or perhaps Fred. He or she said: “Crew on site’. Power on before 9:30.” I didn’t have the heart to make a fuss. It wasn’t her/his fault anyway.

            My takeaway from all this? Let’s have a fundraising supper at Perth Elks or Burns Hall so NB Power can rent some real music. This guy Mozart and his pal Don Messer would be an improvement.

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

            The big chill is looming

When I say ‘the big chill is looming’ am I talking about winter and the ‘S’ word, or am I talking about the federal election sort of planned for October, or am I talking about Donald Trump?

            Who knows, but since I’ve been throwing stovewood into our shed for the past week, I am going to go with the first one.

            I used to actually like winter, believe it or not, but then the police confiscated my cannibis sativa crop and I immediately wished I could win a lottery and spend the period December 1^st to April 15^th in a warmer climate, like Welland, Ontario.

            My sister lives there in the winters and in Tilley in the summers. No wonder she does prefer Welland in the winter, because they get hardly any snow, the temperature rarely drops below the freezing point and local churches sell homemade peroghys (a kind of potato pancake). Also, two of the local pizzerias are tied for making the best pizzas in Canada. When I lived in Hamilton back in the late Sixties and early Seventies a place called Capri Pizza was on top, but that was then.

            I mentioned Welland’s getting ‘hardly any snow’, that’s true, but about sixty kilometres away is the city of Buffalo, NY, where a 60-cm snowfall is considered a light dusting. During a given snowstorm Buffalo might get 50 cm and Welland might get a trace of snow from the same storm. That situation arises because of what meteorologists call ‘lake effect’ snow from nearby Lake Erie.

            So that’s why this year I decided to emigrate, at least for a while to that great nation to the south – Mexico. You didn’t think I’d consider inhabiting the same country as the disaster known as Donald Trump, did you? On the other hand, he might get up one morning and tweet that he was about to take over Canada for ‘national security’ reasons. Don’t count him out. Trump is too incompetent to be Minister of Garden Vegetables in the Canary Islands.

            As I have said before in this column, our late Prime Minister Pierre Eliot Trudeau compared living next to the USA to a mouse’s being in bed with an elephant (we’re the mouse), but now it’s like a mouse living next door to a horse’s ass.

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

            I was browsing around the Internet and Facebook last week when I came across a video called Perth-Andover Rap II, which turned out to be a follow-up or sequel to, logically enough, Perth-Andover Rap I.

            It was wonderful! Those youngsters, led by Perth-Andover Baptist Church Pastor Michael Fredericks, did a great rap video about the village of Perth-Andover and it was GREAT! I won’t say any more about it right now or I might spoil it for you, but I highly recommend it.

            Sadly, after I watched this video I heard that Pastor Fredericks had been transferred to Truro, Nova Scotia. I don’t know whether this transfer was his idea or the church’s, but this area will certainly miss his creativity and talent. I interviewed him several times on various subjects and always found him bright, articulate and helpful – and patient when he saw I got it wrong in the paper.

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

            I am getting the impression that that blackflies are bad this year, but I also said that in 2018, 2017, 2016, etc.

            “This is the worst summer ever for blackflies,” commented Sid, as he paused in his lawn mowing. I continued walking along Kintore Road and came across Shirley and Ed McMahan, who both commented: “This is the worst summer ever for blackflies.” Farther down the road, or up the road, whichever it was, Ron Gladmiun said: “This is the worst summer ever for blackflies.” The Jackson twins, Diane and David, stopped their 4-wheeler for a minute to say: “This is the worst summer ever for blackflies.”

            The Perfessor agreed with them all. He had just ordered a 45-gallon drum of fly dope.

                                                 end

A very good band (Aug 7)

Bob’s into Heavy Metal now

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            Saturday, July 20, found me in Woodstock, NB (as opposed to Woodstock, New York or Woodstock, Ontario) and doing something I never would have predicted in a million years, or at least 100,000. I was sitting in Woodstock, in a Dooryard Festival venue tent and listening to ‘heavy metal’ music.

            And enjoying it.

            One of the featured groups was a 4-member band called Monteith, and one of the featured musicians in that band was my son Kinley who is officially now ten times the guitar player I ever was. Not a fan of heavy metal music generally, I decided to go to the live show so that my son would realize I supported him in whatever he did. And Wow! I really enjoyed myself. The rest of the band – Dan Monteith, Shaun Monteith, and Chaddus Provost – were great too and made the show into something to be remembered.

            I especially enjoyed a DragonFire cover they did called “Through the Fire and Flames”. The guitar solos were not possible, but they did them.

            I think the band has a great future if that July 20 show is any indication. Very professional and very skilful! Based in Northampton, across the St. John River from Woodstock, they have performed in many places now, including Fredericton, Saint John (where they won a Battle of the Bands this year), FollyFest in Gagetown, Moncton, Listugij, PQ, Tracadie, and other places. Go for it guys!

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

            In other observations from this area: As I write these immortal words, I am getting a bit hungry because my wife Darlene is in Montreal where she is visiting our daughter, son-in-law and a little girl named Violet Grace.

            My wife has been gone two days and I am hungry for some good food. The problem is that she was so eager to see our grand-daughter that she forgot to show me where the electric stove is located so I can’t cook something, and she only left me five dollars and some change in case I want to buy groceries or eat out. Barely enough for a bottle of beer plus tip.

            Before she left though, she did list the more-or-less edible items in the fridge so I wouldn’t starve to death on the kitchen floor. “There are some cooked new potatoes from last Tuesday, some beets, ice cubes, Lady Ashburnam pickles, rye bread you bought in April, and I think there’s some milk.” She sure looks after me.

            To bring a little truth into this story, I should mention that I was cooking 7-ingredient omelettes when she was going into grade one. I was just looking for sympathy.

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

            My friend George staggered into the club last evening, although he has been more likely to stagger out. He was tired after staying with his son while his wife was away. (It must be catching.)

“I just finished watching a cartoon with my son,” he began, after ordering a tall cold beer. “The cartoon was about two mice called Pinky and the Brain. Brain says to Pinky, who for some reason has an English accent: "Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"

Pinky answers: "I think so Brain, but how are we going to get the Lady Gaga in a helicopter?” That more or less describes how things are around my house. I ask my son  how his day went. "Saturday afternoon I think.” comes the answer. I asked my youngest daughter what she plans to plant in her little garden and does she even want one, and she answers: "Chocolate, but is it tall enough?”

            Is it television, computers, our diets, nuclear testing, or is it just me when I say people rarely LISTEN to one another any more? What? Where was I anyway? What am I doing here? What is this thing with letters and numbers on the little keys?

             I know of a person who paid so little attention to his or her car that she put 35,000 kilometres on one oil change. I know a man who went out to get the mail and forgot his pants. (Not me.)

            It could be that there's so much information out there that every last one of us is suffering from overload. If we could just re-format our hard drives (clear out the old brains) back to a point where we could start learning again it would help our general well-being. Or not.

Talking to a farmer on the weekend, I may have gotten an idea. He was saying that some years he doesn't do anything with certain fields; this has the effect of rejuvenating them. It's called "lying fallow". Maybe that's what we all should do for a spell each year.

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

            A final note: If any of my readers are carpenters I have some advice for them. I am not referring to the old saying ‘measure twice and cut once’ but another warning – don’t build a sawhorse unless you have a sawhorse in the first place to hold the boards and 2x4s you will use to make the sawhorse.            I bought some lumber last week to make a sawhorse but when I got it home I realized I needed a sawhorse to cut up the boards.
                                              end