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-