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 4th. 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
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