Cutting stovewood is so much fun - not!

The hunters rend the woods asunder  

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            And so they go into the woods – grim-faced men intent on the hunt. They return a few hours later by the same route, but this time their trailer is full of stovewood cut in 16-inch sticks. When they get home, they will rent a wood-splitter and reduce the sizes until the ‘better half’ can lift the blocks into the wood heater while the male of the species sits back, reads the paper, and sips on a lemonade.

            I mentioned that their trailers are full of stovewood, but you will note that I mentioned nothing about the box of their pickup truck. No, no, NO! The wood might scratch the paint.

            You know you’re getting absolutely ancient when you can remember the time that ‘half-tons’ or pickup trucks were actually used to carry heavy loads. My last pickup truck (unless I win a lottery) was a 1974 GMC that I bought from Jim Dixon. Although it was six years old at the time and only cost me $1500 or so, I received a good warranty: “It’s a 30-30 warranty, Bob. Thirty minutes or thirty feet.”

            In fact that truck lasted me five or six years with little trouble, except for the time it caught fire up around Two Brooks or Blue Mountain Bend and I got out, all set to let it burn and collect the insurance, but a truck driver stopped and brought out his fire extinguisher. I told him to let it burn, but he said his religious beliefs wouldn’t allow that. Instead of getting $1500+ in insurance payment (that was when insurance companies actually paid legitimate claims without argument) I ended up with a $496 bill for replacing all the wiring, plus the towing bill. I hadn’t set the fire and felt properly aggrieved, but now I would look at it differently of course.

            Back to the subject of how pickup trucks have changed over the years: I mentioned that I had bought mine for $1500, but today that MIGHT buy the ashtray in a new Dodge Ram. I say again that another big difference is that back then we actually put things on the backs of pickups. Mine would hold half a cord of stovewood. Seen any new trucks these days with stovewood on the back? If it were ever to happen, the owner of that $45,000 heavy-duty limousine would have to buy a $2000 velvet cushion to protect the paint.

            Another thing about that 1974 GMC I used to own: It was the last vehicle I ever owned that I was able to repair. The alternator ‘went’ on it, and I actually took wrenches that I kept in a container called ‘a tool box’ and took off the alternator. A friend drove me to Walter Hurley’s garage in Andover where I got new brushes and had it rewound, whatever that might mean. I took it back to Birch Ridge where I was living at the time and put it back on the truck, tightening both the belts. It started right off.

            Picture doing that today to your 2011 Altima or Toyota. You would need three electronic technicians and a canary to help you do the job, as well as ‘an automotive technician’ and seven or eight psychologists to deal with all the emotional stress involved in replacing every sensor on Plant Earth. Contrast that with the way I took off the alternator on that 1974 GMC halfton. I reached in the old toolbox, picked out a half-inch open-ended wrench, unscrewed two bolts so I could loosen the belts, then I took out the alternator. Pretty complicated.

            The worst thing – or, as they say in Germany, the wurst thing – is that, when I was halfway through this column, a  fellow from Sisson Ridge came by and he was driving a pickup truck. It wasn’t one of those $45,000 vehicles that won’t hold ten sticks of wood, but one quite similar to my old GMC. The box on the back would hold sheets of 4’x8’ plywood, or half a cord of wood. I said to myself: “There goes my credibility!” I didn’t think there were any of those left. So, pretending I was trying to get rid of an annoying squirrel, I shot the driver of the pickup and parked the truck in the woods out back of Moose Mountain. I hope no one finds out.

            I suppose my point, if I have a point, is that people are paying an awful amount of money for vehicles that are of little use other than for going from Point A to Point B. I stood along the sidewalk in Perth-Andover one day last week and talked to a chap from Plaster rock. As we talked – and it wasn’t any more than seven or eight minutes – I estimated that the purchase prices of the vehicles, not counting tractor-trailers, that passed by would have exceeded half a million dollars. Enough to move five or six Perth-Andover houses to higher ground.

                                  -end-

Beechwood Dam is responsible

Frank is feeling a bit gaggly-gaggly 

                                         by Robert LaFrance

 

            I got up this morning at seven o’clock and looked at the outside thermometer. Four degrees Celsius, which meant it was below freezing down in the valleys where the wind doesn’t hit. “Looks like it’s getting closer to that ‘W’ word,” I said ungrammatically to myself, and by ‘W’ I didn’t mean ‘wealth’ because I gave up on that idea long ago.

            “Oh no! And I forgot to reserve my cabin in Florida,” I continued to myself, and then remembered that I don’t go to Florida in the winters, but stick it out here in New Brunswick, unlike certain rats I know who leave this sinking ship every fall and come back in the spring. I’m not going to mention any names.

            A knock on the door. It was my friend Flug. “I’m worried about Frank,” he said, going to the fridge and getting out a lemonade. Apparently ‘the sun was over the yardarm’ as they say in yachting circles to mean it’s all right to imbibe alcoholic beverages. I looked at the clock; it was 7:26 am. The yardarm might need some adjusting and calibrating. I chose to sip on some hot tea and munch on a blueberry muffin I had bought at the farm market.

            “Frank gets like this every winter,” Flug continued, “sort of gaggly-gaggly. I know it’s still only September, but when he sees his first red-leafed maple tree he goes into a blue funk and then into his camper trailer where you can’t tempt him out even with yellow lemonade. Speaking of which, I’ll have another.”

            I had been fairly cheerful before Flug came in and mentioned winter; I quickly segued to my usual state – depression. Winter is a brutal time of year. Think about the minutes and maybe even hours of scooping out the front driveway, putting on extra clothes, being careful on the road (shocking!), and all the other inconveniences of that particular season. That’s for those of us who can’t go to Florida and lie around the pool, not to mention any names.

            “You’re good at lying,” said Flug, who must have been reading my thoughts. “You would do a good job of lying around the pool all winter. You could get a lawn chair and lie around on it, or you could just lie there and watch TV. Or you could just lie to everyone you see. No offence intended.”

            We talked about Frank for a while more, without coming to any conclusion as to what to do about his gaggly-gaggly manner. Personally, I was feeling a bit gaggly-gaggly myself, as I said. However, as I looked out at the trees that were taking on their autumn colours, it cheered me immensely. Well, a little bit. Such a beautiful time of year, only to be ruined by what comes afterward.

            “Look at the bright side,” I said to myself after Flug had left, taking a jar of lemonade with him in case he was struck down by an overpowering dehydration during the 3-minute walk to his house. “My house is not one of those located on the flood plain in Perth-Andover or Tobique First Nation,” I continued, as long as I seemed to be listening. “Just think about those 72 houses that should be moved, and should have been moved weeks and even months ago. When the first of March arrives next year, and the weather moves toward Chernobyl (meltdown) conditions, those people who were able to move back into their houses this year are going to start getting very nervous.

            On the other hand, while they are waiting for the ice and water to either stay or go, they can be entertained by various television and radio drama programs and even by live shows. Fairy tales are fun to watch and listen to as well. I heard last week at Mary’s Bake Shop where I was having some fish chowder that Walt Disney Corporation had wanted to do a movie on the fairy tale that Beechwood Dam and other St. John River dams upriver from Perth-Andover weren’t responsible in any way for any of the Perth-Andover floods.

            “They were interested,” said Dave, “but the executives looked at it and laughed so hard that they decided it was too fantastic, even for Disney.”

            I checked into it, and, sure enough, Disney had demurred on the project for that very reason. I called Menin Papula, VP in charge of Fantasy at Disney. “I looked at the dam, I looked at the river, I looked at Perth-Andover, and the idea that Beechwood Dam wasn’t at least partially responsible for the flooding was too much, even for a Disney fantasy,” he said.

                                       -end-

Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012

We’re all philosophers, aren’t we? 

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            My wife and I observe our 30^th wedding anniversary this month.

 

           You will notice I didn’t say ‘celebrate’. How I have suffered! From the day back in 1981 when she begged and pleaded with me to marry her and I remembered I had promised to work in Inuvik for the next five years and she called the company and said I had water on the brain (not far off there) and finally dragged me to the front of the church on September 25 the next year, it has not been wedded bliss.

            I have been picked on and victimized. For 23.5 hours a day I have suffered. And now I…

            PUT DOWN THAT ROLLING PIN!

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

            This is Bob’s friend Flug finishing up his column. He, er, had to go away for a few days. I have wanted to write one of his columns for years but for some reason he insists on writing them himself. He says: “If my name is on the column and I get big money for writing it; I have to write it.”

            Too bad this time, Bob. I’ll visit you in the horse-stable though, LOL, as they say on Facebook.

            Unlike Bob’s rather boring columns, I want to talk about something interesting. Just down the road from my house is a chap we call The Perfessor. I stopped by yesterday to say hello and, as usual, he was in the midst of reading philosophy, of which he had been a professor at UNB-Tilley for many decades until they finally dragged him out with a team of horses. Percherons I believe they were, unless a percheron is a fish. I can’t remember, especially since it’s Sunday morning and I have had a late night at the club.

            “You know,” he began, “our prime ministers were great philosophers. Now you take Pierre Trudeau; he was called a philosopher-king. And what about Jean Chretien? He had the cops deposit pepper spray in the faces of demonstrators in Vancouver and then, when they objected, he said he didn’t know a thing about it. The only pepper he used was on salads.”

            “I read all kinds of philosophy,” he  continued. “We’re all philosophers you know…”

            And so it went, with him expounding on the thoughts of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, and Hiram Kinney, the Seer of Tilley. After about an hour of this interesting talk – he kept my glass full of lemonade – I had to bid adieu and go about my business. “That’s a closet door,” he said as I started out. “The door to outside is over there…no, that way to the road, turn left for your house. It’s red brick.”

            So after I got home and had a slight nap until the next morning, I myself started reading philosophy. He had awakened an interest I hadn’t indulged since high school. Actually, it was after high school. In grade ten, my doctor found that I was allergic to books and studying, but then that cleared up.

            My favourite philosopher these days is Hobbes. Not Thomas Hobbes, the 17^th century English philosopher, but Hobbes the so-called stuffed tiger of the cartoon strip Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin is a rather annoying 6-year-old. The cartoons were written and drawn by Bill Watterson, who has a lot to answer for. Of course he doesn't draw them any more, because I like them.

            So Calvin is in the living room. He is holding a hammer and has already pounded a dozen nails into the coffee table and is about to pound another. He mother comes roaring into the room. “Calvin what are you doing to the coffee table?” she says. He looks at her, then at the hammer and nails and says: “Is that some kind of a trick question or what?” Now THAT’S philosophy. He is comparing the existential to the practical, the arcane to the obvious. What a guy. Hobbes is watching and doesn’t say a word. That’s his comment.

            Calvin asks Hobbes what he thinks happens to us when we die. Hobbes replies that guys play saxophone in an all-girl band in New Orleans. Calvin then implies that the answer shows that Hobbes believes in heaven. “Call it what you like,” answered Hobbes. In all my years (64.33) of reading and studying I have never heard the afterlife broken down like that into an uncomplicated model.

            Calvin asks Hobbes where babies come from. Hobbes takes a look at the back of Calvin’s shirt collar. “You come from Taiwan,” he answered. Anybody who has to perform a father-son or mother-daughter talk with a teenager would do well to remember this. It will save a lot of stress.

            Asked what a pronoun is, Hobbes answered that a pronoun is a noun that has lost its amateur status. I always wondered about that. My high school English teacher, the late Miss Sara Williams, would have appreciated that knowledge. She told us some silly stuff about a pronoun replacing a noun.     

                                                  -end-

Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012

Neologism – the coining of a new word 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            It has been a long time since I coined a new word, like never, and I am rather proud of the work I did last week. I’m not sure if this family newspaper will print it, but I can assure you it is a legitimate neologism, or newly coined word. Remember a few decades ago when you first heard the word ‘cyberspace’? That was a neologism.

            How do I know that this word has never been used before you ask? I looked it up on Google. There’s another neologism (not mine) – I ‘googled’ it. Nothing came up when I typed the word in Google. Therefore it doesn’t exist. That’s the way it is in 2012.

            What is the word, you ask in an exasperated tone? Well, it’s one you should have thought of. Before I tell you what the new word is, I will tell you how I arrived at the historic moment when I coined it. I had been trying for what seemed like hours (because it was) to get some information from a government website. It doesn’t matter whether it was a provincial, federal, Chinese or North Patagonian website.

            I kept getting phrases like ‘at this point in time’ and ‘governmental prerogatives’ and when I phoned any number listed I got voicemail (the civil servant’s best friend) which usually put me onto a loop I couldn’t escape because it would lead me back to where I started. Finally, I walked outside and swore for a while, then pondered the irony that I was paying tax dollars for people who were causing my blood pressure to rise.

            “This is a bunch of BUREAUCRAP!” I hollered at my dog Kezman, who wagged his tail – indeed, his whole body – in agreement. And so, a new word was born. I hereby copyright and patent it.

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

            The release of the Perth-Andover and Tobique First Nation Flood Mitigation Study Final Report was a study in balloon deflation. A lot of people actually believed the report would solve their dilemma, as in recommend the moving of their houses, but it really only gave relocations as ONE of the options which the provincial government will now study. They will study the study, as it were. Quite a coincidence, since P-A Mayor Ritchie has been saying right along that this study is just an excuse for more studies.

            Is this an example of the new word I mentioned in the first paragraph? Probably not, since there are quite a few specifics in the report. Its authors suggested that 72 houses in the village may need to be moved, at $100,000 each if the cost of serviced lots is included, and of course it has to be. I’m not sure where they came up with the figure of $100,000 but maybe it’s a matter of buying a diamond ring at Tiffany’s of Paris or at Wal-Mart of Minto Crossing. Same ring, but with some cost added in the upscale version. Maybe the $100,000 cost estimate in the report included a year’s limousine service for the home’s owners.

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

            I see on the streets of town many happy faces now that school has started. I’m sure you picked up on the fact that, since school has started, those faces along the streets of town don’t belong to school age children, but to their long-suffering nannies, parole officers, street sweepers, and baby-sitters who – at last! – are now free to pursue whatever may be left of their lives after a summer of stress management.

            Fall is the season of happy teachers too, because they are now doing what they love, teaching fresh-faced youngsters eager to learn and getting the positive feedback from those young minds who are fast absorbing the mental training so happily imparted by their instructors who, if anyone even asked, would be delighted to do their job for nothing, just for the sheer joy of it.

            How’s that for irony heavy enough to be attracted by a very small magnet?

            Now that school has started, so is pun season. One trigonometry teacher I know, someone who tries every day to explain the difference between the words sine, cosine, tangent, and pumpkin, told me that only that afternoon she had confiscated an elastic band that had been used for zapping people with spitballs. “It was a weapon of math disruption,” she said smugly.

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

            Back to that flood report: I have been reading it over and over again in the hope of my vision improving. Obviously I couldn’t have seen what looked like a total exoneration of Beechwood Dam and other dams in the flooding of Perth-Andover. It was even said in a light-hearted, humorous way: “Dam operations are not a significant contributing factor to ice jam formation.”

            Now I understand; a man-made structure that stretches across the river and stops water and ice from going downstream wouldn’t have any effect on flooding. It’s all so clear now.

                                                 -end-