A very good band (Aug 7)

Bob’s into Heavy Metal now

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            Saturday, July 20, found me in Woodstock, NB (as opposed to Woodstock, New York or Woodstock, Ontario) and doing something I never would have predicted in a million years, or at least 100,000. I was sitting in Woodstock, in a Dooryard Festival venue tent and listening to ‘heavy metal’ music.

            And enjoying it.

            One of the featured groups was a 4-member band called Monteith, and one of the featured musicians in that band was my son Kinley who is officially now ten times the guitar player I ever was. Not a fan of heavy metal music generally, I decided to go to the live show so that my son would realize I supported him in whatever he did. And Wow! I really enjoyed myself. The rest of the band – Dan Monteith, Shaun Monteith, and Chaddus Provost – were great too and made the show into something to be remembered.

            I especially enjoyed a DragonFire cover they did called “Through the Fire and Flames”. The guitar solos were not possible, but they did them.

            I think the band has a great future if that July 20 show is any indication. Very professional and very skilful! Based in Northampton, across the St. John River from Woodstock, they have performed in many places now, including Fredericton, Saint John (where they won a Battle of the Bands this year), FollyFest in Gagetown, Moncton, Listugij, PQ, Tracadie, and other places. Go for it guys!

                                                *****************

            In other observations from this area: As I write these immortal words, I am getting a bit hungry because my wife Darlene is in Montreal where she is visiting our daughter, son-in-law and a little girl named Violet Grace.

            My wife has been gone two days and I am hungry for some good food. The problem is that she was so eager to see our grand-daughter that she forgot to show me where the electric stove is located so I can’t cook something, and she only left me five dollars and some change in case I want to buy groceries or eat out. Barely enough for a bottle of beer plus tip.

            Before she left though, she did list the more-or-less edible items in the fridge so I wouldn’t starve to death on the kitchen floor. “There are some cooked new potatoes from last Tuesday, some beets, ice cubes, Lady Ashburnam pickles, rye bread you bought in April, and I think there’s some milk.” She sure looks after me.

            To bring a little truth into this story, I should mention that I was cooking 7-ingredient omelettes when she was going into grade one. I was just looking for sympathy.

                                                *****************

            My friend George staggered into the club last evening, although he has been more likely to stagger out. He was tired after staying with his son while his wife was away. (It must be catching.)

“I just finished watching a cartoon with my son,” he began, after ordering a tall cold beer. “The cartoon was about two mice called Pinky and the Brain. Brain says to Pinky, who for some reason has an English accent: "Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"

Pinky answers: "I think so Brain, but how are we going to get the Lady Gaga in a helicopter?” That more or less describes how things are around my house. I ask my son  how his day went. "Saturday afternoon I think.” comes the answer. I asked my youngest daughter what she plans to plant in her little garden and does she even want one, and she answers: "Chocolate, but is it tall enough?”

            Is it television, computers, our diets, nuclear testing, or is it just me when I say people rarely LISTEN to one another any more? What? Where was I anyway? What am I doing here? What is this thing with letters and numbers on the little keys?

             I know of a person who paid so little attention to his or her car that she put 35,000 kilometres on one oil change. I know a man who went out to get the mail and forgot his pants. (Not me.)

            It could be that there's so much information out there that every last one of us is suffering from overload. If we could just re-format our hard drives (clear out the old brains) back to a point where we could start learning again it would help our general well-being. Or not.

Talking to a farmer on the weekend, I may have gotten an idea. He was saying that some years he doesn't do anything with certain fields; this has the effect of rejuvenating them. It's called "lying fallow". Maybe that's what we all should do for a spell each year.

                                                *****************

            A final note: If any of my readers are carpenters I have some advice for them. I am not referring to the old saying ‘measure twice and cut once’ but another warning – don’t build a sawhorse unless you have a sawhorse in the first place to hold the boards and 2x4s you will use to make the sawhorse.            I bought some lumber last week to make a sawhorse but when I got it home I realized I needed a sawhorse to cut up the boards.
                                              end

Uplifting bra (July 24/19)

Mentioning the unmentionables

                                by Robert LaFrance

          I remember the days when the subject of women’s underwear wasn’t talked about in mixed company, but those days are gone the way of the Passenger Pigeon and the Great Auk.

          Walking past one of Perth-Andover’s giant malls last Wednesday, I stopped to look at some merchandise when two women of my acquaintance came strolling by. “Yes, I have to buy the rayon uplift bras now because of – well, you know why – and I like the panties made of Chilean llama or alpaca fibre because they’re so comfortable and soft on my bum.”

          The other woman, whom we’ll call Glenas since that’s her name, agreed in part but not completely. “I don’t know. Rayon kind of irritates my nipples on hot days but I do like the Chilean fabrics, especially the panty hose except when I get goose bumps on cooler days.”

          Was my blush showing? I grew up in a time when the word ‘panties’ was enough to make strong men leave the scene, unless the woman talking about panties was suggesting some sort of liaison, as Grampy might have said: “out behind a stump”.

          Anyway, mentioning the unmentionable has become less scary over the years because of frequent use so now I can actually go to town and not pass out from embarrassment. However, yesterday’s incident at a local takeout made it difficult. One woman was shouting to another clear across the parking lot about the brand of panties and bra she should be able to buy at a certain clothing store. When that conversation was finished, everyone knew, along with knowing how good the french fries were, what were the best and brightest underwear.

                                           *****************

          I know I rail on about potholes and bad roads that, to be fair, are in the minority, but at last I have some good news. One of Victoria County’s roads has received an award.

          The so-called Fort Road, or Highway 190 west of Andover, was voted by drivers last week to be the most annoying road in western Victoria County. The Carlingford based Committee for Pothole Sanity has been looking for the Minister of Transportation in order to pin a medal on him or her, but that official has so far managed to elude capture.

          Driving west from Columbus Street on the Fort Road, one is amazed at the extent of almost impassable road he comes across, especially as far as the point where the eastbound Trans Canada Highway exit meets Fort Road. This is made even worse because the TCH overpass creates a great big shadow in which potholes and other lethal areas can hide and wait for unsuspecting drivers.

          I am sure that sooner or later Edval Susinence, the president of the Committee for Pothole Sanity, will catch up with the government minister in charge of road fiascos and this paper will print the ensuing photo of the presentation. On the other hand, if DTI were to fix that holey road, the committee may be persuaded to keep their trophy.

          ADDENDUM: This columnist has just received word from a government source that the road in question may never be fixed because the province has applied to have that section of highway named an Historical Site so that it would be illegal to change anything.

          We will recall how the Andover Courthouse received such a designation and no government employee was ever again allowed in the building. We have to respect our history even if it results in broken tire rod ends, struts, ball joints and springs.

                                           ******************

          As I look out from my easy chair on the porch, I see what seems like dozens of pickup trucks with trailers going by every day. They are each going on a dangerous mission – collecting firewood for the upcoming cooler season we refer to as winter.

          Every morning and afternoon – until the temperature gets unbearable – my porch is surrounded by the roar of chainsaw and 4-wheelers that collect the stovewood after the intrepid woodsmen have sawn down the trees and cut them into 16-inch pieces.

          Then comes a phenomenon that I am always impressed by: quite often the big powerful trucks are empty but are hauling trailers crammed to the gills with wood. I couldn’t figure this out until one day Glenn Flannery stopped when he saw he standing near my garage and explained.

          “Nobody wants to scratch up his truck,” said Glenn. “That’s why we buy trailers. Who cares of they get scratched? I didn’t pay $64,000 for my heavy-duty truck just so it gets all scratched up.”

          I knew there to be a good reason.

                                           *******************

          Watching a TV show last week, I heard the word ‘enema’ which I thought was a thing of the past, but I guess medical folks still use that particular tool.

          Always thinking about the old days, I remember when my brother, sister and I were growing up we got our share of that procedure. Our mother was a retired Registered Nurse but still practised a bit of her profession after she moved to Tilley about 1938. She would bind wounds, set broken bones and treat illnesses of local residents but most of her medical work involved giving enemas to people, especially us kids, who even hinted they/we were constipated. It was a scary time. We weren’t a bit afraid of Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles, but when mother said maybe we needed an enema we scattered.

            One day I suggested that she could be called ‘The Enema of the People’ but said it too loudly and mother thought I must be constipated.
                                               -end-

Toys for large lads (July 10)

Let’s have more flood studies in P-A!

                                by Robert LaFrance

          I received an email Monday morning from my cousin who lives near Caledonia, Ontario and of course it mentioned the weather. “It’s been 37ºC here for five days,” she moaned, and I thought: “Ha! Am I glad I moved out of Ontario in 1972!”

          Because, you see, I am sure that it is Global Warming that’s causing all the problems worldwide, and Victoria County, New Brunswick has managed to keep itself off the Global Warming Scale, which works a lot like the Richter Scale does for earthquakes.

          That is, I thought that until this morning when I woke up and noticed that my outdoor thermometer registered 32ºC – at 6:51 am. By 10:00 am it was 34ºC and by noon it was 36.5ºC. I was standing on the brink of Ontario disaster.

          Somebody Important was looking after me though; the temperature didn’t cross that magic 37 line and I was saved from a heat stroke. Meanwhile I checked the Caledonia weather report and found it was only 29ºC up there. “That’s on its way here,” I sighed. See, things work out.

                                           ******************

          This column will mostly be about small insignificant things – well not that small. On the way to Upper Kintore yesterday morning I stopped to say hi to my old friend Toad (Leroy Canford) who was mowing his front lawn while riding a 300 horsepower riding John Deere 3201S mower.

          Just to put that into perspective, if I had one of those, I could mow my 3-acre orchard in about fifteen minutes. Toad’s front lawn (he doesn’t have a back lawn) might be as much as a tenth of an acre, or 0.00034 hectares. He had started mowing when I pulled into his driveway and by the time I walked to his front step he was putting his John Deere etc. into his shed that also held four Husqvarna chain saws of various sizes, a bush hog (or Mott as some people call them), a heavy-duty chipper and two weed-eaters sitting behind a brush saw. Toad’s lot is exactly one acre in size.

          You have no doubt gotten my point by this time: come on guys, do you really need all those ‘toys for big boys’?

          While I am indulging in my bi-weekly rant, I should mention that we New Brunswickers seem to have a bit of a problem with signage, as the word goes. Surely the word ‘signs’ will do the trick, but I don’t want to be a rebel.

          I refer to the fact that organizations put out signs of upcoming events but never seem to plan for the days after the event is over. One recent day I saw a prominent sign along the riverbank uptown and noticed that the event mentioned had taken place nearly two weeks earlier.

          One of these days I expect to see a sign reading something like this: “Springtime 1958 big yard sale – war surplus. Re-elect Louis St. Laurent. No Dief for us!”

          One thing I am pleased to announce this month is that a pothole in Muniac has now been repaired. Many people from Kincardine, where I live, Bon Accord, Lower Kintore and parts of Muniac itself travel to town by that road which is probably one of the more interesting ones around, pothole-wise.

          The particular pothole I refer to is (WAS) located about halfway between Highway 105, the river road, and the intersection of Muniac Road, Kincardine Road, Kintore Road and Manse Hill Road. It appeared there in the road in early March and at first it was only a few inches across. Then a combination of truck and other vehicle traffic and snowploughs gradually expanded and deepened it until a Greyhound bus driver would cringe at the sight. It seemed to stay the same size until – miracles galore! – a D.O.T. crew finally got instructions from Edmundston to fix it.

          This they did, on June 28^th, and it was a great day for us all. The celebrations lasted far into the night, as the saying goes, although we were all snug in our beds – or somebody’s beds – by 10:00 pm.

          A few months ago the provincial government announced, in their roundabout way, that a new bridge for Perth-Andover was no longer on the code red, blue or purple priority list. In spite of the fact that the village and all those who live in or near it tremble in fear starting in February every year as they dread another major (or minor) flood, the government bureaucrats who wouldn’t be able to locate Perth-Andover on a map of Victoria County have decided to let us take a chance.

          Here’s one suggestion: All those functionaries who made that decision should be forced to live on the Perth side starting March 1^st and not be allowed to leave until flood danger has past. On the other hand, before making this move the government would have to conduct half a dozen studies to bury in the Centennial Building vaults.

            Beginning in 1973, I am guessing that the total cost of all flood studies would not only build a new bridge but would move everyone well up out of danger.
                                                           -end-

EKG or ECG? (June 26)

New bird: the red-faced Marton

                                by Robert LaFrance

          There was one particularly red face down at the club last evening. Plebe Marton, the retired Corvair mechanic, slunk in to Happy Hour about twenty minutes late because he had embarrassed himself earlier in the evening by ‘taking a leak’ while two  respectable women were sitting in a parked car right behind him.

          At the time I was inside the meeting hall and about to come outside after a community get-together called to talk about the dreadful state of garbage pickup, or perhaps it was unsightly premises.

          Whatever it was about, I left about 7:30 pm and just as I was stepping outside I heard a scream that might have curdled anyone’s blood. It was Etherine Henderson who was fleeing the scene where Plebe Marton had just embarrassed himself. She was followed closely by her mother Marion, a church elder.

          Here’s how it all ‘came down’: Plebe had been in the meeting too, but left at the earliest possible moment because he had drunk two bottles of water and was just about to be ‘caught short’ as my late Aunt Ella Adams would have said. He went outside and quickly stepped over by some lilac bushes to relieve himself.

          However, he neglected to check the cars nearby because he figured everyone was still in the meeting hall. That was a mistake, an example of what might be termed ‘unintended consequences’. This was to become obvious to him about thirty seconds too late, when Etherine let out her first scream. She and Marion had been waiting outside in their car for Marion’s niece Glenna, who was attending to complain about whatever the meeting had been about.

          All we guys gave Plebe our sympathy to be sure. “It’s happened to me,” commented Will Barber, the assistant bartender. We all agreed and we especially understood why Will would sympathize. He doesn’t have a healthy rosebush around his place because of the number of times he has decorated them with “Number one”. Indeed, one day a travelling wasp stung him as he was completing one of those operations. Another red face because that area swelled up (not in a good way) and by the time he got to the ER it was causing him a lot of discomfort.

          Life sure is complicated.

                                           *****************

          A short note here on potholes. Although it’s almost July and we are well into summer, many of the spring potholes are hanging in there, and I want to make clear I am not blaming the people who actually do the work, but let’s call it a government policy that began in the 1990s. That is Policy 1995(R)3:34 in the Official Pothole Manual.

          “Workers shall not be allowed to fix potholes until D.O.T. received at least 155 complaints from the public and the total of vehicle repairs equals or surpasses $250,000.” One retired civil servant I happen to know from when we both worked in Paris (Ontario) said that he had worked for Ontario D.O.T. for thirty-two years when the Paris garage received a directive from Toronto. He couldn’t remember the policy number, but the gist of it was that D.O.T. workers were no longer allowed to stop and fix a pothole, to just dump a pail of tar in it, but must now report it to the local office for action. Or, I should say, “action”.

          What happened then was that Paris D.O.T. office workers would fill out a form and mail it to Toronto, whose functionaries would then make out a work order and send it to Paris. The Paris office would then contact the actual workers who would fill the offending pothole that was, by that time, a week or ten days older and bigger.

          I want the reader to know that the Plebe Marton story was a total lie, composed for entertainment’s sake, but I swear the Ontario D.O.T. story is true, unless my cousin was lying. I don’t think he was; it sounds too real.

                                           ******************

          My friend Glenn was visiting last evening and said he had to go in the next morning for a routine EKG, his yearly checkup.

          “Why do you call it an EKG and not an ECG?” I asked.

          He answered with unassailable logic: “Because that’s what it is.” I asked him to explain why the word electrocardiogram would be abbreviated to EKG when there’s no letter K in the word, except in German. He blustered for a while and then settled for the old standby: “Dr. Phil (or Judge Jean or somebody with a title) said it on TV just yesterday.” Then he went to say that anybody who would say ECG also thinks that the last letter of the alphabet is pronounced zed.

          “Those are American affectations,” I said, just as if I knew what I was talking about. Then I looked up electrocardiogram on Google, the fountain of all knowledge, and showed Glenn. “People say EKG because they hear it on TV,” said Mister Google, “and the last letter of the alphabet is pronounced zee in the U.S. only.”

                                                       -end-

            Really. It said that.