NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY
Lancing a boil is not enough
by Robert LaFrance
I was a bit
bemused when, last summer (I think it was) the government paved highway 105
from Tobique Narrows Dam down toward Perth, including that area that floods every
spring. They didn’t raise the road so it wouldn’t flood, they merely paved the
road.
“Quit
complaining, Bob,” said my friend Scanlon, “now, every spring, the water from
the river has a nice smooth road to submerge, which means the road closure will
probably take up less time. See, the floodwater goes back more quickly over
that smooth road.”
“You’re
perfectly right, Scanlon,” I said. “I was being silly, wasn’t I? Expecting
logic and sense from the government.” The reader will notice that I didn’t say
‘common’ sense.
That brings
my alleged mind back to the 1980s when my Aunt Ella and I used to motor every
Friday over to Fort Fairfield, Maine, for lunch at Lenny’s Restaurant. One
Friday the road through the area very imaginatively named Borderview had just
been paved. It was like driving over a pool table.
Exactly one
week later, Auntie and I were once again driving through Borderview and on the
way to Lennie’s. It was like driving on a woods road because in the past week a
company or their government had dug over a dozen trenches across the road to
accommodate sewer and water pipes.
Someday I
am going to ask a retired Fort Fairfield town worker to explain just what took
place there. Didn’t those people – the paving crews and the sewer and water
crews – ever talk to each other?
******************
Everybody
around here – in southern Victoria County including Tilley and Leonard Colony –
was really excited when we all heard and saw on the news that scientists and
computer mavens had gotten a photo of a black hole in space, a mere fifty
million light years away. And what was in the photo? A black hole.
With all
due respect to scientists and others who had worked on the project for years, I
wonder how this knowledge will benefit me and my kids and cousins? I thought
about it a while and then decided to go to that black hole to find out for
myself. I figure if I start early Thursday morning I will arrive in the year
29003K-Gronk. Since it is a black hole though, I probably won’t be able to
report my findings unless the Internet signals out here improve.
I don’t
know whether anyone else has noticed, but it has rained quite a bit lately.
Down in Fredericton and below, it seems that all of southwestern New Brunswick
is completely under water, but of course that is an exaggeration. Parts of Lincoln
and even Maugerville are visible if the light is right.
As a former
meteorological technician, I am asked for an explanation for this deluge, but
other than climate change and clear-cutting – with heavy emphasis on CLEAR-CUTTING
since it’s like exchanging a sponge for a piece of plastic – I can’t give them
an answer. Did I mention clear-cutting?
My reason
for bringing up the subject of rain is a far more important one than merely driving a thousand people out of
their homes; I want to know the answer for this question: After a rain, why do
thousands of earthworms try to cross paved roads? The easy answer is ‘to get to
the other side’ but there must be a better reason for that because…well, there
has to be. Google is no help. Apparently it either doesn’t rain where Google
lives or there aren’t any paved roads.
I’ve been
toying with the idea of starting an Ann Landers type of column, one that gives
advice to those who are having problems with their marriages (you know what I
mean), their cooking or their relatives who keep borrowing cannabis to make
brownies. That last problem would be the easiest to solve – buy a pound of
oregano at the dollar store and lend some of that to said relatives, or,
failing that, give them a Perth-Andover street map. NOTE: It’s quite handy for
those who partake of cannabis because within a few metres of the Cannabis NB
store is a Tim Horton’s in case the munchies show up.
Okay,
here’s an example of another type of Ann Landers advice. A husband writes me to
ask the secret of a happy marriage and I reply: “Obey and shut up. Do not ever
give an opinion because it will be wrong.”
******************
The recent
news that Perth-Andover’s Hotel Dieu hospital was going to lose, perhaps
only temporarily, six of 22 beds, got me remembering back about 15 years ago,
with the government contemplating building a new hospital in Waterville. I
looked up a column I had written at the time. I hereby paraphrase:
“Now it's just a process, probably a long process, of deciding if we
want either a new hospital in Woodstock or a significant renovation to the one
that's there.
“It
won't be easy. Some of those cement heads (at Horizon Health) still can't
understand that we don't want one big hospital near Hartland unless our hospital stays open - as a hospital, not a place where you can just go
and get a boil lanced and that only in the daytime. If you’re lucky.”-END-
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