POSTING # 23

Virgil Feels Impact of Financial and Economic Crisis; Finding a B&B Room with a Bathtub; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Virgil Feels Impact of Financial and Economic Crisis

The current problems have seemed a bit remote from a Virgil viewpoint. New houses are still being built and existing ones are selling.

Employment has been pretty good. A newspaper article worried about whether the Niagara Region would have enough trades people to handle all the construction projects underway or planned.

Restaurants are perhaps a little quieter than last year but there are still a good number of patrons.

But this week we learned that the local GM dealership, Niagara Motors, will be dropped by GM next year. (The owner of the dealership is still hoping to convince GM to change its mind.)

What will happen to the sales office, the car repair operation and the lot full of new vehicles if the business loses its GM franchise?

What will happen to all the jobs?

What will happen to the sponsorship of sports teams and of community events?

Suddenly the crisis is real---and a little scarier than people had been thinking.

Finding a B&B Room with a Bathtub

During our recent visit to Vermont, we remembered a visit years ago to a bed and breakfast in that state.

When I phoned for a reservation a woman with a pleasant English accent took our details. I asked for a room with a bathtub and she said they didn’t have an ensuite available but there was a bathroom, with a bath, across the hall from a very nice room. The bathroom would be used only by us.

That was fine and I gave her our credit card details.

The B&B was just what we had been hoping for---a large, elegant but rambling white Victorian clapboard house, right on the town square.

The owners, who had moved to Vermont from England to run a B&B, showed us our room. As we climbed the stairs we told them about our drive from Canada.

“Oh, you are from Canada,’ the wife said, and looked at her husband. “We hadn’t realized that.” She looked worried.

The room was roomy and very nicely furnished. I asked if we could see the bathroom. The couple took us down the hall a little and showed us a room with a sink, toilet, and shower stall.

I reminded them that we had specified a bathroom with a bath.

The couple looked at each other and finally the wife said, “Well, actually, we don’t rent rooms with bathtubs to Canadians…..”

Pat and I looked at them with disbelief as we tried to figure out the basis for this discrimination. OK, our currency looks like Monopoly money, and our hockey players loved to bash each other, and we, as a nation, drink too much beer.

But what did all that have to do with a bathtub?

Pat and I both came up blank and looked questioningly at the couple.

The husband said, “Well, you see, there was this couple from Montreal. When they checked out, the bathtub was coated with a layer of pink gunk. We tried every chemical and cleaner and nothing budged it. We finally had to have the tub re-surfaced.

“And we decided we wouldn’t rent bathrooms with tubs to Canadians any more.”

We explained that we ran a B&B in Canada, lots of Canadians had used our tubs and we had never run into a pink-tub problem.

We spent a few minutes trying to think what the pink substance could have been and how it could have coated the tub.

Could the Montreal woman have spilled nail polish into a tub of hot water? No, nail polish remover didn’t touch the stain.

Had the couple washed a red item of clothing in the tub and the dye ran. No, they had thought of that, and javel bleach hadn’t worked.

Finally, we gave up.

By that time the B&B couple had decided to relent. If we were part of the B&B owners’ fraternity, then, perhaps, we could be trusted.

We had a fine stay and made sure the tub was lovely and sparkling white when we left.

So, we are left with two unsolved mysteries. What caused the pink gunk? And, why did the B&B owners think that banning Canadians from tubs would prevent a recurrence?


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Years ago, when voice synthesizers were new, a couple in Ottawa bought a car that announced, as the car was starting, “Buckle your seat belts”.

Neighbourhood kids loved to hear the voice. They would beg the woman to start the car so they could hear Elmo (her name for the voice).

One of the little guys from up the street wanted to know where Elmo lived.

“Right in there”, the woman said, pointing to the dashboard.

The little fellow thought about that for a time.

Then he asked, “But how does he go to the bathroom?”


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See you next Sunday for Posting #24 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.