Can I be silent for that long?
by Robert LaFrance
On
Saturday, March 16, Perth Elks, of whom I have been a proud member since 1978,
will be holding a Silent Auction followed by our St. Patrick’s dinner and,
while the dinner for members and guests is no problem for me (oink), the Silent
Auction has been on my mind.
You see, I
can’t remain silent for any longer than about four minutes and I didn’t want to
embarrass my brother and sister Elks.
While
thinking about this in the past few hours, I have been gathering up items to
donate to the auction whose aim is to raise money for various Elks projects for
the community. Sitting right here on my desk was a remote control computer
mouse still in its original package, a new voice recorder that I don’t need any
more now that I am no longer a reporter, and a stack of unrecorded DvDs.
“Why don’t
you donate your electric piano?” asked my wife, whose opinion of my musical
talents is subterranean to say the least.
“Why don’t
you donate your bagpipes?” I retorted and immediately regretted that, even
though the swelling has gone down somewhat.
I should
report that problem of my remaining silent has now been solved. A couple of my
Elks brothers and sisters informed me that the word “Silent” doesn’t mean that
I have to refrain from making any comments; it just refers to the style of the
auction itself. You write down your name and your on a piece of paper and the
item goes to the highest bidder – after he pays for it of course.
This was
the place that I was able to use my advanced age as a useful tool (which was
also what they called me). “You were here last year and you yapped the whole
time,” said Zelda M, “including at the dinner, so you weren’t confused about it
then. What are you talking about anyway?”
“I’m seventy
years old and am only asking for a little respect,” I said. “I forgot. Now I
remember. I bought a barbecue, a chair and a gold-plated roasting pan.”
“I believe
that was a Trac II razor,” she said, “and we all give you little respect.”
*****************
Other
observations:
Two weeks
ago my wife and I motored to the Bangor, Maine, area for a medical appointment
in the town of Albion, and the impression I was left with about Bangor was that
people sure drive fast there. We stayed in the Quality Inn on Hogan Road in the
city, and I want to say I am lucky to be still in one piece. There were six
lanes of traffic, no crosswalk in the area and I wanted to go to a Mexican
Restaurant on the other side of Hogan Road. Three times I dashed out,
only to hot-foot it back to relative safety until finally I saw an empty spot.
I just made it. None of them even slowed down. When I reached the opposite curb
I grabbed my mobile phone and called my wife, whom I could see in the motel
window, and told her to take a taxi.
Last week,
sitting on a public bus in this municipality of Kincardine, Scotch Colony, I
struck up a conversation with a stranger who said he hailed from New York City,
which I gathered was a rather large town somewhere in the USA, beyond Bangor.
We talked about various things, like how egg yolks are good for us now, and how
nice a country North Korea is. He said he had recently visited there and had
come home to face a lot of business problems. He was a tall man in his early
70s, with blond hair combed over a balding dome. I guessed his height at about
6’3” and his weight about 243 pounds. Seemed like a decent guy when he was
talking about egg yolks, but went off the rails a bit when the subject went to
politics, in which I have no interest. We said our goodbyes at the Lower
Kintore-Lawson Hill bus stop. “Good riddance!” said one of the other riders.
“We shoulda kicked him off the bus.” People sure are mean. Then I looked out
the bus to see the tall stranger riffling through a wallet, taking out cash and
throwing the wallet in the trash can. I felt my pocket. Empty.
*****************
I
accomplished three things last week: I bought some shampoo and learned how
useful were the plastic cards that weigh down my wallet all day.
Wait a
minute, that’s only two things.
Anyway, I
will outline the two things I did accomplish. On Thursday morning I found
myself trying to wash my luxuriant locks with some of that Sunlight soap, the
kind my Dad used to use on the hooves of our old ox Carling. (You thought I was
going to say Babe, didn’t you?)
Within
hours I found myself in a pharmacy and then two grocery stores and a
blacksmith’s stable – remember Carling – but it was not until I had gone into a
little corner store away out “back of Bath” as they say that I found actual
shampoo. Oh, I had found moisturizer, emollient, Goat Milk Body and Head Wash
and something called ‘Peau Sensible’ but no shampoo.
Going to
the counter to pay for this treasure, I hauled out my handful of plastic cards
but was told: “We don’t take those here. Cash till do.” What a day. If only I
hadn’t ridden that bus.
-end-
