Will sudden wealth spoil Bob? (Number 2)March 3/21 By Robert LaFrance I mentioned in my column two weeks ago that after my wife found a 10-share Microsoft certificate (from 1984) in our attic I was now able to make ends meet. Its real value was something like $887 million, so now I could afford to put new tires on my 1984 Gremlin. Anyway, we are now rich, except for that phone call I just received from the Canada Revenue Agency. It seems that I owe them $879 million. Still, I’m richer than I was three weeks ago. Surely we can struggle along on $8 million. In spite of this extra cash in the kitchen cookie jar, I am envious of those New Brunswickers who are now receiving minimum wage for their paycheques. They just received an increase of FIVE CENTS AN HOUR. In a major announcement ten days ago, Premier Higgs (Salary about $150,000 a year) said that the government had hiked the minimum wage a whole nickel an hour, and there was dancing in the streets of Tilley, I will tell you. What the heck are the workers going to do with all that extra money? Many possibilities come to mind. A new Rolls Royce, with digitally operated ashtrays, and possibly a paving job on the driveway or maybe going out for supper at a takeout? But wait, don’t you think that we New Brunswickers are getting a little spoiled? ********************* Yesterday morning about 7:10 I was awakened from a satisfying nap - and a dream about Diana Rigg – by the insistent blast of my bedside telephone. By the time I had found the phone and pushed the right (wrong) button, the voice at the other end turned out to be someone very worried about my credit rating. It seems that somebody or something had ‘breached’ my Mastercard and I was about to lose millions to Nigerian criminal gangs. Don’t criminals ever sleep? It took quite a while to get the cobwebs cleared out of my head, but finally I woke up enough to say thank you for their concern. “By the way,” I said, “I don’t own a Mastercard, “but I appreciate your taking the trouble to look out for me this way. Now if you would kindly give me your phone number and name I will announce this in my newspaper so everyone can have the opportunity I have had. At 7:10 am.” Click. In other news from around the county, the village and around the world: A certain Donald J. Trump is now back in the good graces of…some people anyway, but there’s still a bit of a minor problem with something like 27 criminal charges including fomenting a riot, interfering with the Georgia election results, money laundering for the Russians and even ripping off various cities and towns for various reasons. I think he just might be a crook, but then I thought that about Richard Nixon too. It was funny the other evening at the club in Lower Kintore where the Perfessor commented that Trump was “a cheap con man”. Many of us disagreed with the Perfessor on that score, because however much a con man and a grifter Donald Trump was, has been and is, he is not a cheap one. One recent New York Times story estimated that Trump made $1.6 billion profit while he was president. That ain’t cheap. Still on the subject of money, profits etc, I should mention that last week while I was typing, a small delivery truck arrived at my driveway to deliver some courtesy airplane tickets to me. Large (and I have been overeating lately) Microsoft shareholders are supposed to get five free tickets a year for international travel, and they’d been holding them for me. Of course many of the tickets were for airlines now gone bankrupt, but there were lots left. Online, I chose a luxury flight from Montreal to Singapore, where my daughter and her husband used to live and it wasn’t long before I was on my way. Hitch-hiking to Montreal was a problem in February, but I put my thumb right up on bust and was there in 12 hours. I am typing this from Hong Kong where the Chinese government is being bureaucratic. In fact I spent a few hours in jail before I got through to the authorities that I was a millionaire. ********************* Back in Canada after a nice visit to Singapore, I am finding that Victoria County, New Brunswick is experiencing spring. Wanna know how I can tell? Driving from our estate in Kincardine to Perth-Andover, I was surprised – astonished – to see a D.O.T. crew leaning on their shovels along Muniac Road. One guy was spraying orange paint on the road, which was odd because there was still ice and even some snow on that road. I stopped and rolled down the window of my Gremlin (funny what a millionaire will drive). “What’s going on?” I asked a bevy of workers. They looked at each other before answering, as if to get security clearances, but nobody seemed to know the answer. “I think it’s some kind of code,” said a broad-shouldered chap wearing a green helmet (part of the government’s new Green attitude). “I never did know. We used to have a Bulgarian backhoe driver and he knew, but he moved to Inuvik. Nobody else knows, even the guy doing the spraying.” My old friend, the late Bernam Morrell, used to wield a spray paint can with the best of them, but he would never tell me. “I’m the best banjo player in Four Falls,” he used to say, “but I can’t tell civilians what that government code means. Let’s just say it’s got nothing to do with banjo playing.”