Our house is older than the city of Calgary (Aug. 7/13 column)

Some facts, or, at worst, ideas

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

             My daughter was recently visiting us from Calgary and was reading a book about all the things there are to see and do when she returns to that Alberta metropolis - if she can scrape together some money. As you know, there’s not much of that in Alberta. Looking at Chapter 4, she suddenly stopped reading and asked me when our own house here in Kincardine was built.

According to the information I have (from two history books of the Scotch Colony) our estate was started in 1886 and completed in 1991. I guess they had trouble installing some of the high-tech electronic equipment. She looked back at the book and said: “Hmmmm…you know this house is actually older than the City of Calgary? It was incorporated in 1893.” It’s a young province all right. It doesn’t seem long ago that it was just a prairie cow town where I lived in the Salvation Army hostel for two weeks, but it was 1967. Centuries ago.

            Speaking of deer, I visited Fredericton on July 27 and when I got home I walked around this estate, a wander that included my back garden that is located 91.4 metres from the house, out in the orchard. The first thing I noticed was that the string beans looked a little weird.

            “The beans really grew fast while I was gone a whole nine hours,” I thought to myself (which is my favourite way to think). Then I looked for the four beet plants I had been looking forward to devouring sometime in the next month. Three of them were gone and one was suffering Post Traumatic Quivering (PTQ). The thick row of head lettuce was also damaged. I had been deered.

            It’s just a small garden, so the deer that had visited had tramped pretty well everywhere. Anybody with half an eye and an elbow (I cleaned up that phrase for the paper) would have seen that first thing. What to do, what to do so that I could save what was left? Then I remembered the time back in the 1980s when I had a problem with deer coming in my orchard on a path from the next property. The answer then, as it was on July 27, was to hang a small net bag containing human hair. Deer won’t go near that.

            The only problem is, when my neighbour, Louee Witson, wakes up from his deep sleep, what is he going to think when he finds his shoulder-length hair is a little more jagged than it was when he sat down? Serves him right for falling asleep in a lawn chair right out in the open like that.

            People occasionally tell me that I think too much, and I think I agree. However, once in a while I come up with an original idea that arrived because my lines of thought are on a completely different plane (higher or lower?) from everybody else’s. Here’s my latest revelation: while I was sipping on a lemonade at the club’s outdoor lounge, someone mentioned that it was starting to cloud over.

            Have you thought about what you’re saying?” I said. “You’re saying the sky is clouding over, when in fact the sky is clouding UNDER, right? When it’s all cloudy we can’t see the sky, which is ABOVE the clouds.” This will shock you, but no one seemed that concerned about this. In fact, they seemed militantly unconcerned.

            A federal cabinet minister was on television yesterday afternoon and going over the fabulous accomplishments of his government since one S. Harper had formed that government a few decades ago. Or perhaps it just seems that way. So last evening – this was just after my cloud revelations – when we were all watching this performance on the club’s ancient TV, the Perfessor cleared his throat and said ponderously: “ You know, memory is closer to imagination than reality.” There was a silence while we drank this in, so to speak, and then someone got up and turned the TV over to the soccer game from Brazil.

            While the average stoat has more Scottish blood in his or her veins than I do, I still am looking forward to this month’s 140^th anniversary of the Scotch Colony celebrations here in Kincardine. The Fitzgerald Family music show on July 16 was the first event of the celebrations and it was just about the best show I’ve ever seen in Burns Hall, and there will be lots of things going on Aug. 23-25. They have even put together a history/cook book for the event and many dozens have been sold already, probably because I wrote one piece in it…or not. Other than my story, it’s a very entertaining book.

            A final note for this week: I bought a new shaving mirror, even though some people look at my ‘beard’ and think I don’t shave. Anyway, this mirror has a feature I insisted upon. At the bottom is the sentence: “bearded persons in this mirror are much handsomer than they appear”. It’s an ego thing.          

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The more things change... (July 31/13 column)

There I was in my stained polo shirt

                                                             by Robert LaFrance

 

            A recent column used the theme ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’. Somebody and I were recently talking about how people don’t visit people any more – that is, they don’t ‘drop in’ and say hello for half an hour. We must phone first and arrange an appointment which is then recorded in triplicate.

            It occurred to me that four or five decades ago people didn’t do those impromptu visits any more than they do now, but it was for a different reason. They had the cows to plough, the garden to wash, and the manure to spread on the barn floor – farm jobs like that. People didn’t have time to visit, but they would see each other downtown or at the Saturday night dance; the only real socializing took place at things like wedding receptions and barn raisings.

            That’s another thing (of many) that I have never understood; why did barns ever need to be raised? Seems to me they’re quite high enough as it is.

            Back to the reasons that people don’t visit these days. For a long time it was television, but with the advent of the VCR, we can tape shows and watch them when we get back home, so that’s not the reason now. Wanna know the reason? Here it is: People are run by their animals. “Oh, my, no, we can’t leave little Fifi home all alone; she would be lonely and it could affect (impact?) her psychologically. Goodness me.”

            It’s true. These days people use their pets as a wonderful excuse not to do anything, like visiting somebody in hospital or nursing home. They can’t leave Fifi home where she’d be lonely, they can’t leave her in the car while they go into the hospital, and they won’t visit people who don’t want their cringing yapping lapdogs inside their house. (Our dog stays outside where a dog should be.)

            Don’t get me started on cats.

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            I had to go to a wedding reception last Saturday and as usual I was dressed to the threes. I like to ‘put on the dog’ for those types of events where someone could be taking photos.

            “I think the expression is ‘dressed to the nines’, Bob,” said my friend Flug, who is a retired Parliament Hill barber. “If you are all spiffed up and looking good, you are dressed to the nines.”

            “Flug,” I said not quite patiently, “you have known me for at least a hundred years. Have I ever, once, been what you would call dressed to the nines?” He looked over at me in my stained polo short (did I ever play polo?) and pants that were tailor-made, but not for me. My shoes would have made an Adidas janitor retch and my socks were, as usual, mismatched, one blue and one green. My niece would have called me ‘a global fashion faux pas’, and that ain’t nothing good.

            After that perusal, he said that he had by that time understood my point; I had been dressed well for me, but no more than ‘to the threes’. That brought on a discussion of being in fashion, something that’s only occurred to me once in my life. Back in the 1990s, teenagers started appearing in public while they (the teenagers, not the public) were wearing jeans that were almost torn to shreds. I would see a 16-year-old whose parents’ annual income was in the $150,000 range dress as if he had just ‘rode the rails’ from Moncton and fell onto the tracks a few times.

            Looking down at my own clothes, I would then look back at that teenager and think: “Bob! You’re finally in style!” But that was only for a short time. When they started wearing baseball caps backward, I gave up and bought a pair of pants without rips and tears. Like barn raising, the idea of wearing the cap visor at the back didn’t make a lot of sense. Bell-bottom pants and hip-hop are two more phenomena that fit that category. When people look back, they will say: “What was I thinking?”

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            Merchandizing and capitalism in general have always fascinated me. The Kincardine Hardware Store that operates out back of the club had a massive field day (so to speak) during this summer’s heat wave. Man, was that hot for a while! Not complaining though.

            In one day the KHS sold 19 air conditioners and continued to sell a dozen a day over that heat wave. Ernie Edze, who runs the store, said he had gotten a good buy on them because they had been ‘damaged in shipment’. A friend of his drives for the AC company and had a little mishap just down the road. Didn’t hurt the van, but 90 air conditioners were scratched.

            Anyway, the point is that Ernie sold 189 AC units, and two weeks later when the weather turned much colder, he sold 94 wood heaters. They had also been damaged in shipment. Go figure.

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Is it hiccups or hiccoughs? (July 24 column)

Oh, the joy of hiccoughs/hiccups

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Hiccoughing is bad enough without this unending debate about how the word is spelled. Most people get hiccoughs at one time or another in their careers, but it’s surprising how many people also suffer from bouts of hiccups. Often it’s the same people. For clarity I shall use both spellings in random order.

            I was talking to Flug the other day and, as an experiment, I asked him what he knew about rocket science. “Well, nothing, not a blamed thing,” he said.

“What do you know about how an iPad works?” I continued, and again not a blamed thing, he had to admit. “How about fixing chainsaws?” I persisted. “Or the right grub to feed a canary? How to find your way around Montreal? What makes a baseball curve? How do you make a profit on the stock market?” He didn’t know any of that stuff; but wait: what about this question:  “How do you cure hiccoughs?”

            “Of course I know how to cure them,” he said. EVERYBODY knows how to cure hiccups. “You just have someone sneak up behind you and set off a firecracker, or you lean over and drink from a water glass while it’s tilting over. Or take a big drink of warm ginger ale and hold your breath for fifteen seconds. Never fails.”

            “Flug, you are exceptionally full of male cow manure. You know very well there’s no cure for hiccoughs – or hiccups if you prefer – but you, like everybody else, swear you know a foolproof method.”

            It’s true. My Uncle Ernie would swear on three bibles and a Popular Mechanics book that all you have to do is hold your breath for a minute and when you regained consciousness your hiccups etc. would be gone. A man in Saskatoon said the cure was to put your head underwater and breathe deeply. Have friends nearby.

            It’s like the common cold. Ever met anyone who didn’t have a sure-fire method of beating it? Few profess to be able to PREVENT the common cold, but some people will swear that once you get it, zinc lozenges dissolved in battery acid and Gillett’s Lye will take away the symptoms. I hasten to add, this is not for drinking but for rubbing on the feet once it stops fizzing. If your feet fizz later, you’re on your own.

            People rub camomile lotion on their throats, drink 28 glasses of water in an hour, sniff camphor, put mustard plasters on their chests, and pray to Zeus while eating horseradish, but they’re only kidding themselves. I happen to know that drinking large amounts of lemonade over a period of a week usually cures the common cold, but then I always get hiccoughs afterward.

            Sort of on the same subject, I should go up a few paragraphs and refer to the phrase ‘rocket science’. I have used it before, and one week that I did have it in my column, My Aunt Rutherford (Ruth for short although she’s 6’2”) phoned to say that her daughter who owned a textile factory near Dollard Des Ormeaux, PQ, had invented a new way to stitch triangles of cloth onto men’s pants, or trousers if you wish. What did this have to do with my column, you wonder?

            “I guess you could call her a pocket scientist,” said Aunt Ruth. You can see where I get it.

Getting quickly back to hiccups, the reason I brought up (no pun intended) the subject was that I was recently reading about a guy from Iowa who had hiccoughed for 68 years. How could one go through 430 million hiccoughs – that’s what the encyclopedia says – and not have it damage some of life’s experiences? I know what you’re thinking about, but my mind was considering the acts of threading a needle, putting one of those little pins in a watch bracelet, or brain surgery. “There, got the medulla almost in place behind the earlobe, and – HIC! Ooops. Don’t step in that, nurse Smith.”

The next time you hear someone say he or she knows a sure-fire cure for hiccups, call for the paddy wagon and send that person away, because there ain’t no cure short of a bullet between the eyes. By the way, as if ‘hiccough’ and ‘hiccup’ are not enough, the medical name for hiccups is ‘synchronous diaphragmatic flutter (SDF)’, or ‘singultus’.

As I was reading all about the subject, I noticed that there was another phrase that seemed to fit those who swore up, down, and crosswise that they knew a cure for hiccups. It’s ‘myoclonic jerk’, which turns out to be hiccoughs, or, as they say in the explanation, ‘an involuntary contraction of the diaphram’.

So there you have it, there ain’t no cure for hiccups and certainly not for hiccoughs, but it helps to stay away from  myoclonic jerks.

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Flatulence is a good thing (July 17 column)

Imitation is the sincerest form of flatulence

 

                                                           by Robert LaFrance

 

            My friend Flug attended a barbecue last Saturday evening, uptown, and could not resist the baked beans – four large plateloads. The next morning, he got up and went to church.

            All right so far. Nothing wrong with going to a barbecue, and nothing wrong with going to church. However, the problem was that Flug had just sat down on his pew (a fateful word) when the previous evening’s supper started bubbling and gurgling inside him; it was then he knew trouble was coming. Fracking is controversial at the best of times, but in church it assumes a greater influence, by far.

            “If I only hadn’t had that fourth plateful of beans,” he said, as the people on either side of him edged away. Apparently they had also noted that the word ‘pew’ was an unfortunate name for a church seat.

            The minister, a gentleman who hailed from Tabusintac or Black’s Harbour – one a them places – was getting on in years and had learned diplomacy over those years. As much as he wanted to wrinkle his nose every time he heard an eruption from the west side of the congregation, he did not. He was turning the other cheek, as was Flug.

            Rev. Samuales got through Hymn # 287 – “Harvesting the beans” and even #401 - “Open the windows of God’s House” but when he came to #49 - “My senses tell of past trials” he had to wrinkle said nose, just a little bit. His olfactory senses were in good working order, and Flug’s digestion was too. By this time Flug was sitting all by himself in the exact centre of the centre pew. The rest of the congregation were jammed at the front and sides; it was as if Flug had set out to prove the poet wrong, the one who said “No man is an island”. I think it was John Donne, but it could have been Alan Ginsburg or Ogden Nash for all I know.

            The sermon that day was about gluttony, and Flug, who by this time was bright red from embarrassment and also from  his attempts to suppress his flatulence, was the island in the stream, but generally speaking he was refraining from any audible emissions. That is, until Rev. Samuales got to the point where he admonished everyone that it was better to lie down with a cobra than to overeat. Although he didn’t mention beans, we all – and especially Flug – got the message. At that point Flug seemed to relax – bad move, so to speak - it was as if a 1967 Camaro with double overhead cams and two Thrush mufflers suddenly came to life in a closed room.

            There followed a veritable stampede for the door, and it was led by Rev. Samuales, cursing like a longshoreman.  Although he was 76 and had had two hip replacments since 2011, he ran like a young deer, a gazelle ready to trample the younger members of the flock should they get between him and fresh air. Mrs. Gandon with her walker was right behind him, followed by the Eerteex sisters and their chauffeur. Although in his leisure time that chauffeur was a star striker on the Perth United soccer team, he didn’t stand a chance against the determined efforts of those pensioners.

            Meanwhile Flug, relieved of much pressure, was just sitting there in and on his pew. In support of my old friend, I hadn’t joined the rush to the door and the resulting carnage when they all reached the narrow cement step at the same time. My nostrils had been pretty well ruined back in 1969 anyway, when I had stopped my motorcycle at a place in upstate New York to see what all the fuss was about. It was a very smoky farm near a town called Woodstock where a rock happening was…well, happening. Three days later, the haze of acrid smoke had ruined the cilia, trillia and flesh of my nostrils so that Flug’s little emanations were barely noticed.

            “I guess I was over-served in the beans department,” he said as we walked home through the fumes. “I mustn’t be such a glutton next time. Three platefuls will be enough. I hope no one tries to imitate me next time there’s a barbecue.”

            “Flug, Flug, Flug,” I said, repeating his name so he was fairly certain that it was he being addressed. “Flug, you weren’t over-served. You over-served yourself – transitive verb. You’re a glutton, the same as I am. You imitated me. However, I feel certain that sometime in the next week you will be getting an envelope in the mail. It will contain a bill. Not a good kind of bill, like currency, but a bill for fumigating that poor church. It was built in 1878 and has had a quiet life, but it doesn’t deserve what it went through today.”  

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