POSTING # 12

People, Places and Events: Renting a House in Baku; To Russia with Galoshes; Finding a Wife in Amman; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

People, Places and Events

Linda Gula , the Niagara-on-the-Lake Library’s Archivist, organizes periodic meetings of a local history group she calls, People, Places and Events.

Two weeks ago, Mike Tenszen, a journalist born in Welland, spoke about his “Forty Years of Fun” working for small and large Canadian newspapers (including the Niagara Falls Review, the St. Catharines Standard, the Toronto Star, the Toronto Sun and the Globe and Mail).

Mike had a fund of stories, including tales about train crashes, murder trials, royalty, and the Pope. I hope he will find time to put some of them on paper----although nominally retired, he is busy writing for a local magazine and authoring biographies of Niagara notables.

Mike is troubled about the effect on journalism of the disappearance of some newspapers and the severe staff cutbacks at others. Who will keep the politicians honest if there are no investigative journalists asking tough questions? Can TV and the Internet take the place of newspapers? Or will it be a case of a kind of Gresham’s Law in which bad journalism drives out good? There was much to think about.

Mike Tenszen’s presentation was just about perfect---it informed, stimulated and entertained.

Well done, Linda and Mike!


Renting a House in Baku

Talking about keeping politicians in line, reminds me of Azerbaijan. In 2002, I was manager of an aid project designed to try to reduce corruption in that nation’s public service (according to Transparency International’s respected index of perceived corruption, the nation with the worst score was Bangladesh at 102 while Azerbaijan’s was 95—Canada’s was 7 and the United States’ was 16).

I was looking for a house to rent in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, and had seen several. I went back for a second look at one of them and the owner took me through the various rooms once again. His English was pretty good (infinitely better than my Azeri!) but he sometimes had to stop and search for words.

As we toured the house, he pointed out the modern, Japanese, in-wall heater/air conditioners. He said they made the house comfortable in both winter and summer and added, “You can use as much electricity as you want. No problem”.

Thinking that he was just being polite, and knowing that electricity was expensive in Baku, I said that if we took the house my wife and I would be careful.

“No, no, use it, don’t worry”, he said.

I guess I looked skeptical and he said, “You an old man…” and he paused. Then he took a couple of minutes to explain that he didn’t mean ‘old’, ‘old’. He meant that I came from an older generation, and that I mightn’t understand how things worked today.

“Come with me’, he said and led me to a closet. As he opened the closet, I saw two electrical panels, side-by-side. He pointed to one panel and explained that its circuits didn’t consume much power, for example lights and TVs, and the electricity for this panel came THROUGH the meter. The circuits in the other panel were for the water heater, the heater/air conditioners and other units that consumed a lot of electricity, and the power for this panel BYPASSED the meter.

“So you see, you can use lots of electricity”, he said.

He also told us that if we took the house, we should not let the meter reader into the house. We should call him and he would come over and deal with the meter reader.

So, you go to a country on a mission to fight corruption and immediately run headfirst into someone cheating the system. Does one say ‘no’, or just go along with things? This was the first of many such ethical issues we had to face during our brief stay in Azerbaijan.

(As I mentioned in Posting # 5, December 21, 2008, I became ill before the project really got started and I had to leave Baku and the project.)

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo


The owner of the above house was well off by Baku standards and he had developed a relatively sophisticated way to keep his electricity costs low.

Poorer people had another solution. Power lines in most of the residential areas of Baku ran from house-to-house resting on short poles mounted on the flat roofs of homes. When there was a power interruption---a pretty frequent occurrence---some people would put ladders up the roof-top poles and tap into the line. There was always the risk, of course, that the power would come on while they were splicing the wires, but I was told that they worked quickly and there were few accidents.

To Russia with Galoshes

In the World Bank foreign aid contract with the Russian Government (1995-1997), the agreement stated that the Russians would give me, as the project manager, an office in the Federal Employment Service HQ in Moscow and would provide all the usual office equipment, including a fax machine. (See Posting # 8. February 22, 2009, for the story of how I ended up in Russia.)

A fax machine was delivered but it didn’t work. The Service’s repairman came, tested the machine and shook his head. He then said the word no Westerner working in Russia at the time wanted to hear, “Problema”.

He said he would try to fix it as soon as he could.

In that era before the transmission of documents via the Internet, a fax machine was really important for me to stay in touch with my base in Ottawa.

Two weeks went by and still no action. I told my office manager that I would have to complain to the head of the Employment Service, but the manager asked me to leave it to him.

He came back from a visit to the repair shop and said that the repairman had noticed my toe rubbers when he came to check the fax machine. He really liked them, there was nothing like them in Russia and he would love to have a pair.

The office manager suggested that if I promised to bring the repairman a pair of rubbers from Canada, he might be able to fix the fax machine.

The next day, the fax machine was fixed. I thanked the repairman, and looking at my rubbers, he said the words all Westerners in Russian wanted to hear, “Nyet problema”.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I brought back rubbers from my next trip to Canada, and the office manager delivered them to the repairman.

When he came back, he told me, “The repairman is really pleased with the galoshes”.

I told him that they were rubbers, not galoshes but he said that the Russians called them galoshes. Case closed.

The manager said with a smile that the word ‘galoshes’ was also slang for condoms.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

The office manager also told me that I had just had a practical lesson in the old Russian custom of ‘blat’. He said that a rough translation for blat is, ‘You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours’.

After that, whenever there was a ‘problema’ I asked for advice on an appropriate ‘blat’.


Finding a Wife in Amman

It is spring, and our thoughts are supposed to turn to love and marriage.

In February 2001, I was having my hair cut in a hotel barbershop in Amman--- I was working on an aid project, in the Kingdom of Jordan at the time,

The barber wanted to know what I thought of Jordan and I told him I was enjoying the people, the food and the historic sites very much. He replied that Jordan was OK but it was hard for men to get married. And then his story tumbled out.

He was 36 and had been saving his money for years but still didn’t have enough to get married. He said that a man needed between US $15,000-20,000 to get married. This was an astonishingly large amount, given the relatively low wages in Amman at that time.

He went on to break down the cost of getting married. First, he would have to give the young woman’s father $3,000 in gold. Then he would have to buy some expensive jewelry for his bride, and rent and furnish an apartment. He would also need a car. And then there was the cost of the wedding reception.

Even if his wife was working before the wedding, she would expect to stop work and get ready for children. His parents would help but there were many children and their help would have to be modest.

I thought at first that his story was a way of softening me up for a big tip but the friend who had recommended him confirmed the story.

I left him a good tip, anyway.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Prices of rental accommodation, cars and everything have risen greatly in Jordan since 2001.When I was back in 2006, there were signs that compromises were being worked out that allowed more people to get married. For example, some couples were living with one of the sets of parents in sub-divided space and some women were continuing to work after marriage.


oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

After my friend and I discussed the barber and his plight, my friend told me how he got married, some twenty-five years earlier.

He and his father were running a successful small business and he had been able to save enough money to get married.

His family passed word around that he was now interested in finding a bride. Families with daughters contacted my friend’s family and discussions were held. His father would make sure that the young woman’s dad was solvent and of good character while my friend’s mother would have a look at the prospective bride and see whether she was good enough for her son.

When the two families had agreed that a match seemed to make sense, it was time for the young people to meet. This was at a dinner with the two families. The young woman would wear a headscarf, a veil over her face with only her eyes showing, and a floor-length dress. As she ate, she would pull her veil out a little so she could transfer the food under the veil to her mouth.

After watching and listening to each other, the young people had to decide whether they liked each other enough to move to the next stage.

My friend said that it took several dinners like this for him to find someone whom he liked and who liked him.

Then there was another dinner with the two families and at the end, the young couple was allowed to go into a room by themselves. The girl removed the veil and my friend was able to see her face for the first time. Looking back at that moment he said, “It is good when it works up here,” pointing to his head, “But it is even better when it also works here,” thumping his chest.

He said that after twenty-five years he was still in love with his wife, and proud of the three daughters and the son they had produced.


ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

On a side note, my friend said that he was determined that his daughters should be happy in their marriages.

He wanted them to have husbands who could look after them, would treat them with respect, and would be good fathers. He didn’t want potentially good husbands to be deterred by the need to give him a large amount of gold. So he made it known to families of suitable young men that the only gold he expected would be in a small piece of jewelry that the young man would present to his daughter on their wedding day.

He said that the three daughters are now happily married and raising grandchildren.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

A Red-Headed Arab

Jordan is full of dazzling tourist sites from Petra, the city carved from stone, the Dead Sea, Mount Nebo, from which Moses looked down at the Promised Land, Aqaba on the Red Sea---the list goes on and on.

Unfortunately, the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq War and continuing problems in Lebanon and Palestine have persuaded many Western tourists to give Jordan a pass. I always try to persuade people that Jordan is safe and that if they are at all apprehensive they should take an organized tour.

In the spring of 2001, Pat and I were lucky to visit many of Jordan’s attractions, thanks to the help of some good friends.

During a trip to Jerash, which is often called Jordan’s Roman City, we were touring the amazing ruins (including a spectacular amphitheatre) when we saw a Jordanian mother with four children and an older woman, perhaps her mother, coming toward us. Three of the children looked Jordanian with dark hair and eyes. The fourth child, a boy of about 5, had freckles, bright red hair and blue eyes.

He looked exactly like our son David at that age and we started to laugh with delight.

The mother thought we were making fun of her son and, became visibly annoyed. (I understood, perhaps, a little of her reaction having been teased about how a person with my dark hair--- at that time---produced a redheaded child. You know the usual---milkman, postman etc. This was despite the fact that my wife, Pat, has red hair, as had my father.).

With the help of our guide we explained that we had a son who had looked exactly like her son, that rather than mocking him, we adored him and would, if we could, take him home with us.

Calming down, the mother explained that she had an aunt with red hair and she assumed that somewhere in the past, perhaps during the Crusades, red hair had entered her family’s genetic make-up. Perhaps a lusty Irish or Spanish knight!

We parted on very good terms.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe! Posting #13 will include stories from the time Pat and I rented a boat to cruise the Thames from London to Oxford, in an attempt to reprise Jerome K. Jerome’s journey in “Three Men in a Boat, Not to Mention a Dog”.

POSTING # 11

Post Office Parking Problems in Virgil; Making Barbie Dolls in Malaysia; What to do with a Gift Durian?; Washing Slip Covers in Ottawa; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Post Office Parking Problems in Virgil

Like most people in Virgil, we pick up our mail at the Post Office (I have seen only one neighbourhood set of mailboxes). The Post Office lobby, with rows of mailboxes, is open from 9 to 5, but the heaviest traffic is from 3---when the mail is sorted---to 5.

Some people can walk to the Post Office but many people drive, parking in front of the Post Office in a small rectangular parking lot. The lot is off a narrow lane, and has space for 6 cars.

The one entrance/exit is often congested as cars jostle to get in or out. In the lot itself there is more congestion as cars jockey to get in and out of the parking spots.

Our population is growing and I noticed they have added more boxes in the lobby, but have no new parking spots.

It can be frustrating (I overheard one woman in the lobby talking about “the parking rage out there”) and also potentially dangerous, especially to toddlers and seniors who are walking to or from the Post Office, as cars are backing up.

That’s the problem, now what are the solutions.

One is to have home delivery but that seems unlikely, given the cost.

Another is to put up neighbourhood boxes within walking distance of people’s homes (a good, green solution but again there are costs).

I like an ‘outside-the-box’ (or perhaps more accurately, an ‘outside-the-lobby’) solution.

I suggest we use some of Mr. Harper’s stimulus money to create Canada’s first-drive through post office. With a modest reconfiguration of the post office building and property, one could have a speaker post, like at Tim Hortons, where the person asks for the mail for box xxx and gives a PIN. Then the driver pulls up to a window and is handed the mail.

I wonder if the Post Office has a suggestion award program.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I wrote the above on Wednesday and on Friday our daughter and son-in-law came to visit. She went with me to get the mail and seeing the parking lot congestion said, “This is crazy, why don’t they put in a drive-through?”

And I thought I was being so creative!


Making Barbie Dolls in Malaysia

In 1991, I was in Malaysia studying the nation’s Employment Service in order to prepare and deliver a training course for senior managers on how to make the Service more effective. My project was part of Canada’s support for the Prime Minister of Malaysia’s 20/20 strategy, that Malaysians should have a western standard of living by 2020.

Accompanied by an official of the Service, I toured some local employment offices and looked at the help being offered to unemployed workers. Then, we visited a few employers to see what they liked or didn’t like about the Service.

One of the employers was Mattel, which had recently opened a factory in Malaysia to make Barbie Dolls. An American from the Human Resources department described how they had recruited several thousand workers, most of them young, Muslim women. With help from the Employment Service, they had toured small farming and fishing villages, met with elders in each community and told them of the arrangements the company would make to ensure that the young women would be protected.

The company had built dormitories for the workers, had a fleet of buses that would carry them to and from the factory, and had hired older women who would ensure the younger women would have no unsupervised contact with men on or off the job. The community elders explained all this to the fathers of young women and, in general, the fathers agreed to let their daughters work for Mattel.

The Human Resources persons asked if I would like a tour of the plant, and I nodded. We went down a corridor, he opened a door, and gestured for my guide and me to go ahead.

Suddenly, we were in a vast, brilliantly-lit hall facing many hundreds of women seated at small work stations. The women, who wore head scarves and long Islamic clothing (but no veils), looked up, stared at us for a few moments and then went back to their particular task in the making of Barbie dolls--- clicking arms and legs into the doll torsos, making outfits and accessories, dressing the dolls and putting them into boxes.

We moved on to a much smaller room where men were seated at work stations stitching hair into the rubberized Barbie heads, pushing a large needle, threaded with ‘hair’ through the scalp, and tying off the strands. I was told that the men were paid more than the women in the other room because their work was more skilled. I wasn’t sure that the women couldn’t have been taught to do the job but every culture has its own customs and mores.

Years later, I can still recall vividly the feeling of awe as I looked out at the row upon row of Muslim women making Barbie Dolls.

Part of the awe was sparked by the incongruity of Muslim women assembling dolls that reflected values so foreign to traditional Islam---for example, uncovered hair, skimpy clothing, and bare arms and legs.

And part of it was the enormity of the change in these women’s lives. They had been living with their families in small rural communities, helping their parents, learning how to be homemakers and waiting for an arranged marriage. And suddenly they agreed (there was no suggestion of any compulsion) to a new life that involved being away from their families, living in dormitories and working in an enormous factory.

I wonder if any studies have been done on the impact of that abrupt change on their lives. Did the women work for a few years and then return to their communities and marry? If not, what happened to them? Were husbands found for them near the factory, and if so, did the women continue working? Did they feel happy with their decision to take these jobs?

It would be good to know.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

By the way, the Mattel plant was a financial success and Mattel subsequently opened other plants in Malaysia.

Evidence of Malaysia’s progress toward its 20/20 strategy was the opening in 1998 of the twin Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, for a time the tallest buildings in the world (the CN Tower is the tallest structure).

Overall, although there have been some ups and downs, Malaysia has made considerable economic progress since 1991, helped, I hope, by a more effective Employment Service.



What to do with a Gift Durian?

On the weekend after my tour of the Mattel plant, one of the Malaysian officials and his wife took me on a delightful tour of Kuala Lumpur. He was about 30 and his wife, dressed in head scarf and long dress, was in her early 20s. She sat in the backseat during our tour.

On our way back to my hotel, the official stopped by a fruit stand and I got out and admired the papayas, mangoes and local bananas. The official pointed to a fruit about the size of a large coconut, covered with sharp spikes, and asked the clerk if we could have a taste. The clerk sliced the top off one and dug out a small sample for each of us. The flesh was sweetish and mild but the smell was nose-holdingly bad. My host said the fruit was a durian, and he bought two and put them in the trunk. From the money handed over, I could tell they were expensive.

I had heard about durians but never seen one. There was a sign at the entrance of my hotel saying that durians were not allowed in hotel rooms and when I asked someone what the sign meant, he said that durians were a local fruit with a strong smell that was almost impossible to get out of carpets, drapes and bedding. Here is the Wikipedia article on durians.

Malaysians tell me they love the smell of durians, just a little whiff is enough to get them salivating. For me, durians have a sweet, rotting-vegetation odour that is really unpleasant. It all depends, I guess, on what one grew up with.

As I re-read what I have just written, I’m afraid that I haven’t adequately described the smell of durians.I keep thinking about the old challenge: how do you describe the taste of chocolate to someone who has never tried it.

Perhaps instead of trying to describe the smell, I should try to give some idea of its power and pungency. Here, there seem to me to be some parallels with Limburger cheese. First, both have smells that many people find objectionable. (Apparently, the odour of Limburger comes from bacteria that are added to the rinses that keep the ripening cheese moist. The bacteria are similar to those that cause body odour, and therefore things like stinky work socks.) Second, the taste of the product is surprisingly mild, and even pleasant.

The problem is that most people today have never smelled Limburger cheese---they have just heard comedians make fun of it.

When I was growing up there was a cheese factory in Western Ontario that produced it, and wrapped it in foil with three large X’s on it, signifying, I suppose, that this was really powerful stuff.

After my father had been called out at night to investigate a traffic accident, my mother would often prepare a sandwich for him made of Limburger cheese, Spanish onion and honey. He loved those sandwiches!

But back to my tour of Kuala Lumpur, we got out of the car at the hotel and I told the official and his wife how much I had enjoyed the tour. The official reached into the trunk and bringing out one of the durians tried to hand it to me.

“You will enjoy this”, he said.

I thought, what do I do now? How do I reject the durian without insulting or embarrassing this young, very kind couple? I can’t take it into the hotel, even if I wanted to. I could take it and give it to the doorman, but it was expensive and the couple should have the enjoyment of it.

Finally, I thanked them but told them I could not accept it, that they should take it and enjoy it.

He kept insisting that I should take it.

Growing flustered, I tried to put an end to the to-ing and fro-ing by holding out my hand. He took it, we shook hands, I said again how much I appreciated their kindness and said we would see each other at the office on Monday.

And then I did a really dumb thing.

I reached out my hand to his wife. She paused for a moment and then took it.

Later, in my room, I re-played the incident and realized that by shaking her hand I had rendered her unclean (a man other than her husband had touched her). She would have to go home and cleanse herself through a ritual washing.

I apologized on Monday but I still feel badly about my gaff.

If I had a chance of a re-do, I would take the darn durian and give it to the doorman.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Sometime later, Pat and I were in London, England on holiday and we stopped in at Harrods’ Food Halls. We browsed through what must be the most comprehensive (and expensive) collection of foods on earth. On a whim, I asked a clerk in the fruit section if they ever had durian. He grew very apologetic and said, with a polished accent, that they didn’t stock them but they could get one for me in 24 hours.

Then he added, in a lowered voice, “We used to stock them, but they smelled up the Hall something awful.”

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

One last story about durians.

After my trips to Malaysia, I read a news story about a man who was sleeping under a durian tree in, I think, Thailand, He was killed when a durian fell on his head and the spikes punctured his skull.

Definitely, a fruit to be avoided!!


Washing Slip Covers in Ottawa

One day, when we lived in Ottawa, Pat dropped in on one of her best friends and was surprised to see that she was washing the living room slip covers---surprised because the slip covers weren’t that dirty and because the friend, although a fine mother, was not a ‘neat freak’.

“Why are you washing the slip covers?”, Pat asked.

“Because they are dirty.”

As Pat looked at her quizzically, the friend confessed, “Because I have to do the income tax.”

Since then whenever we procrastinate, we say that we are washing slip covers.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Some of Cassidy’s Quirks

We bought our first home in 1967 on a quiet crescent in Beacon Hill North, a new development on the eastern edge of Ottawa. A few years later, Cassidy, our blond American Cocker Spaniel, joined us.

Usually, Cass enjoyed going for a walk to do his business but sometimes he would resist. He would plant his front paws at a forty-five degree angle and no amount of leash tugging could get him to budge.

I could never figure out why he rebelled sometimes and not others. Was it that he didn’t really have to ‘go’? Or was it fear of MacDuff, a German-Shepherd-type of dog at the top of our crescent. MacDuff had a loud, deep and ferocious-sounding bark, and a tremendous sense of smell. If MacDuff was in his back yard, and a dog ventured anywhere onto the crescent, MacDuff would soon pick up the scent and start barking.

Whenever Cassidy heard MacDuff bark, his head and shoulders would sink. Sometimes, he would start to shake.

Whatever the reason for the refusal to go for a walk, the children knew they had to get him to do his business. Finally, they found that if they carried him up the street, he would willingly walk back. So they would carry him up to the top of the crescent, not far from where MacDuff lived. On the way back, Cass would stop on top of the same manhole cover each day, squat, and do his widdle. As he widdled, he would twist his head to the side so he could hear the liquid hitting the water in the bottom of the drain.

When he was finished, he would shake himself, stand up and trot proudly home.

Looking back on it, I wonder if Cass thought that widdling down the manhole cover was a safe way of showing his disdain for MacDuff.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I mentioned that Cass would ‘squat’ on the manhole cover. This was another of his quirks. He could cock his leg against a tree or fire hydrant but it was not a confident, steady cocking-of-the-leg. He tended to wobble a bit when he was on three legs and sometimes he had to rest his leg on the tree or fire hydrant to steady himself.

He generally preferred to squat.

This bothered the boys, “You are a boy-dog, Cass. You’re not supposed to squat.”

I guess we would say today, that Cass, who had not been ‘fixed’, was secure in his sexuality.

He would squat if he wanted.


oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe!

POSTING # 10

A Revolution in Bread Making; In the Toilet in Russia; A Gift From Russia; Calling a Moose; Buzzing the B&B; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


A Revolution in Bread Making

Although the Virgil area has several bakeries that turn out fine, made-from-scratch bread, I still like to bake bread from time-to-time---to experiment with different textures, tastes and flavours.

My breads are not bad, but I have never been able to make loaves with a deep, crunchy crust, despite many attempts. Bakeries get that kind of crust by adding moisture during the baking process, by injecting steam into the oven. Amateur bakers have suggested ways of replicating the steam by, for example, putting ice cubes into a very hot oven when the bread goes in or opening the oven door several times and spraying in water. The results are not bad, but no cigar.

Then, a few weeks ago I came across an article in the Buffalo News that promised not only crusty bread, but crusty bread with NO kneading. Now, as they say in financial affairs, if something sounds too good to be true, it is.

But, I tried a loaf and the bread was fantastic. And the family has been having the same success. One of our sons summed things up well, “It is ridiculously good and unbelievably easy”.

I think that the developers of the recipe deserve the culinary equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

But, I don’t want the Virgil area bakeries to become alarmed. We need you, even if we don’t knead our bread (sorry about that!).


In the Toilet in Russia

Talking about bread reminds me of an article I read when I was preparing for the Russian contract. The writer said that there was an old Russian proverb, “Eat bread and salt and speak the truth”. I dropped this proverb into a conversation with a Russian friend and he laughed and laughed, “There is no such proverb in Russian culture. It is just another piece of Western disinformation.”

The Russians love stories and I am sure that my friend regaled his chums with my gaff about the Russian proverb.

Later on, my friend told me a story about a friend of his, a conscientious and hardworking traffic engineer, who, in the 1980s, was engaged in trying to improve the flow of the cars and trucks in one of Russia’s largest cities.

One day, a senior Party Official called him in and asked to change the design of certain roads (we don’t know why--- perhaps his mistress wanted less noise on the streets outside her apartment).

The engineer objected forcefully that the requested changes would ruin an important part of his traffic system. The Party Official insisted, but the engineer resisted. Finally, the Party Official decided to get rid of the engineer and replace him with someone more flexible. He knew he couldn’t fire the engineer so he decided to force him to resign by humiliating him.

The Party Official announced that the engineer was being moved and henceforth would be responsible for the operation and maintenance of the dozens of squat public convenience buildings that were located on most of the major intersections in the city.

The engineer was indeed humiliated, and his first impulse was to resign. My friend talked to the engineer and told him not to be stupid. The Party Official might anger his superior and be shifted somewhere else, things like that happened all the time. The best thing was to swallow his pride, take the new job and just wait to see what happened.

What happened was that the Berlin Wall came down, the USSR was dissolved and Russia started on the road to a market economy. Western entrepreneurs flooded into the city hoping to establish their retail firms in the newly open country. They looked for street-level properties that could be converted into stores to sell sporting goods, clothing, electronics and other Western merchandise. But suitable spots were very scarce.

One of the entrepreneurs noticed the public convenience buildings. They were perfect--- ground level and situated on busy intersections. Soon the traffic engineer was inundated with calls about converting parts of the public conveniences to store-front space. The engineer negotiated deals on behalf of the city and the grateful entrepreneurs made sure that the engineer was generously rewarded for his cooperation.

It wasn’t long before the engineer had enough expressions of gratitude to build a huge dacha in the country, a dacha that was much larger and nicer than that of the Party Official with whom he had fought.


A Gift from Russia

Part of our Russian project involved bringing Russian officials to Canada to show them how our employment offices and systems worked. One of the visitors was the Director of a large regional employment operation whose job involved overseeing a large number of local offices, and collecting huge amounts of unemployment insurance premiums from hundreds of employers in his region. The premiums were used to pay benefits to thousands of unemployed workers.

The visit started in Ottawa, where we were living at the time. Pat and I invited the visitors to have dinner with us. Soon after they arrived, the Director and the other visitors asked if they could tour our home (it was the only Canadian home on the tour) and they went from basement to attic, asking dozens of questions about furnaces, bathrooms, appliances and so on.

After dinner, the Director gave Pat a gift, a large Palekh box with a mythological scene that had been hand painted by skilled artists. We were a little bowled over by the beautiful and very generous gift. (For more information on the fascinating story of Palekh boxes please click here.)

Some months later, we heard that the police had arrested the Director after searching his apartment and finding many thousands of dollars, a rifle and a revolver.

It is important to point out that in Russia at the time, police investigations were sometimes the result of political in-fighting between governmental rivals. It is possible that someone in the government was unhappy with the Director’s superior and instead of attacking him directly, attacked his subordinate.

On the other hand, it is possible that the police raid was legitimate, that the police had received information that the Director was involved in bribery or some other form of corruption, and that he was keeping the fruits of his criminal activity in his apartment.

In any event, the Director handled the police questions with the coolness that one would expect from a person who was able to survive and prosper in the Machiavellian politics of the old USSR

Concerning the money, the Director said it had been paid into the unemployment fund by employers and since the banks were unreliable (certainly true at the time) it was safer for him to keep the money in his apartment so that it would be available to pay the unemployed. And, since he had so much money in his house, he needed the firearms to protect it from thieves.

After some time in detention, he was released without charge.

We think of him every time we look at the gorgeous Palekh box, and wonder whether he paid for it with his own money or with money he shouldn’t have had.


Calling a Moose

Pat and I have been talking recently about the summer family reunion that takes place each year in July or August at the cottage our daughter and son in law bought in the Hastings Highlands near Bancroft.

The kids and grandkids stay at the cottage, while Pat and I stay at a nearby bed and breakfast called Jewel on the Hill (link to http://www.jewelonthehill.com/)

Ten or so years ago, a Toronto couple, Linda and Larry, decided to move to the country and start a B&B. They built a 4000 plus square foot log house on a hill with a spectacular view of the Hastings Highlands. Unfortunately, Larry died a couple of years ago, but Linda is carrying on the B&B, and very successfully.

A few years before his death, Larry was returning from a moose hunting expedition in Northern Ontario and, driving through Algonquin Park, saw a bus and its passengers beside a small lake. He decided to stop in case the bus had broken down.

As he pulled over, he realized that it was a busload of tourists from Asia, watching a big bull moose, with a fine set of antlers, standing in the lake about 200 meters away. The passengers were taking photos and Larry thought it might be good if he could bring the moose a little closer.

He got his moose call from the back of the truck and putting the three foot cone of curled birch bark to his lips began to imitate a cow moose in heat. The bull moose’s head came up instantly and he stared at the bus. Larry made the call of a cow moose again and the bull moose, after a moment or two of reflection, started lumbering toward the bus.

The tourists were delighted and snapped more pictures as the moose came closer. Larry had assumed it would stop but it didn’t and then he became alarmed about the damage a frustrated moose (and its antlers) might do to the tourists or the bus.

Thinking quickly, Larry put the moose call to his lips again and this time imitated the sound of what he hoped would be perceived as a big, big bull moose. The moose out in the lake stopped dead, thought for a while and then trotted off.

The tourists, not realizing they had been in any danger, congregated around Larry and asked to see the birch bark moose call. One man came forward and asked, “How much, you want”, pointing at the call. “A hundred dollar?”

Larry shook his head.

The tourist persisted, “Hundred and fifty? Two hundred?”

Larry finally convinced the tourist that the call wasn’t for sale.

The smiling tourists, chatting about their experience, got back on the bus, while Larry wiped his brow and headed for home.


Buzzing the B&B

Last year when we were staying at Jewel on the Hill, Linda told us that the previous year a large plane had flown over the B&B at tree-level, frightening guests, rattling china, and scaring a deer that was nibbling on some apples at the back of the house.

Then a few weeks later the house was buzzed again. Running onto the deck, Linda saw that it was a military aircraft.

Linda decided she would have to complain to someone but she wasn’t sure to whom, and since she was busy with B&B guests, let it slide.

One day, a young couple arrived at the B&B and asked for details about renting a room. Linda asked them how they had found her B&B. (Jewel is at the end of a winding, half mile lane that in turn is off a narrow, logging road. Linda tells us that guests often get lost even when they phone ahead for directions.)

The young man said that he was in the Canadian Air Force, based in Trenton, and training to go to Afghanistan. He was part of a crew that had been practicing low-level flying of the kind they would have to do in Afghanistan. He had had a good look at the B&B from the air and decided that it looked like the perfect place for a weekend getaway for him and his wife before he shipped out for Afghanistan.

Linda made sure their weekend was special, and in return, the young man persuaded his colleagues to choose another area for their low-level flights.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Robins of Virgil

On Wednesday this week, I saw my first robins, a male and female, and wondered if they were the ones who had caused us so much trouble last year, just after we had bought our house in Virgil.

We bought the house at the end of February but didn’t move in until the contractor had finished the basement for us. We did, however, drive over from Grimsby two or three times a week to drop off things we didn’t want to trust to the movers.

On an early visit we found a robin’s nest on the ledge of the transom above the front door. They say that birds don’t foul their nest but that doesn’t mean they don’t foul everything around it. There were ugly white streaks on the freshly painted front door, and a mess on the floor of the porch.

Luckily there were no eggs in the nest, so I removed it, cleaned things up and assumed that the birds would go elsewhere.

A few days later, there was a half-finished nest in exactly the same spot.

I cut a piece of 2X4, nailed a couple of small blocks to it and placed it over the half-finished nest.

Two days later there was another half-finished nest, on the 2X4 exactly above the one under the board. (It looked like the start of a condo nest.)

Our contractor suggested starting over, removing the nests, attaching some balloons and ribbons to the 2X4 and placing it above the door.

We did that, with the robins watching us from a nearby lawn, and then sat in the car on the street and waited to see what would happen. The male robin cocked his head and looked at the transom and quickly looked away. A few seconds later, he looked again, as though to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. After a few minutes, he flew close to the transom but fluttered away when the balloons moved in the breeze.

We went back to Grimsby, thinking that we had triumphed.

We HAD triumphed---for a week, until the air had seeped out of the balloons. We arrived to find the 2X4 on the porch floor and the beginnings of a new nest above the door.

We have no idea how the robins managed to push the 2X4 off the ledge. Virgil robins are clearly something special.

I went down to Penners, Virgil’s hardware store extraordinaire, and pleaded with a clerk to help me. He suggested using a strip of plywood with projecting nails that carpet layers use for the edges of wall-to-wall carpeting. I anchored it above the door with some duct tape.

And that did the trick.

And I just want the Virgil robins to know that if, during the winter in Florida, they figured out a way of building a nest on top of all those sharp nails, I have a Plan B.

A son in Toronto and his neighbours had trouble with pigeons last year and bought strips of steel with long, embedded metal prongs. I have a set ready to install.



Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe!

POSTING # 9

Funds for the Shaw Festival; Old Money; Starting with a Bang; A Brave Man; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Funds for the Shaw Festival

The Shaw Festival raises about three-quarters of its budget from ticket sales, gets a small amount from governments and depends on donors for the rest.

The Festival is looking at ways of increasing donor contributions, perhaps because they expect that ticket sales will be down this year, given the economic situation, As part of this effort, the Festival is developing a questionnaire to be sent to people who have bought tickets in the past trying to find out if they might be prepared to join the donor program. I was asked to be part of a focus group this week to review the draft questionnaire---something I enjoyed doing.

I was impressed with the sophistication of the communications program the Festival has developed. In addition to the usual methods of reaching the public, it is making good use of emails, has developed a FaceBook page and is considering joining the Twitter phenomenon.

I was thinking about the speed of changes in digital social networking and remembered a story our son, Andrew, told a few years ago about an incoming class at his university. FaceBook had just started to take off, mainly among high school students, and many of the first year students had their own FaceBook pages. The second year students, on the other hand, were still using MySpace, and our son overhead one of them asking a first year student, “What’s this FaceBook?” (It must have been hard for a ‘sophisticated’ second-year student to seek help from a lowly frosh!)


Old Money

Talking about raising money, reminds me of a queer story I heard while I was working in Amman, Jordan in 2001.

I was living in a hotel and had a deal with a taxi driver to take me to and from my office each day.

In addition to Arabic, he spoke English and Spanish (he and his father had lived for some years in Venezuela). These languages plus his outgoing personality meant he was often sought out by hotel front desk staff whenever they had to find a taxi driver for a special guest.

On the way back to my hotel one evening, he told me that a Spanish-speaking visitor from Latin America asked him to spend the day going to money changers in Amman. He said he was looking for cheap currency from nations (he didn’t care which) whose currency had been devalued, or whose currency had been replaced by new bills and the old ones had only limited or no convertibility. The key thing was that the bills had to be cheap. He asked if the taxi driver could interpret for him.


At first, the money changers thought the visitor was crazy, but when they realized he was serious they reached into the bottom of their safes for bills they had thought they would never get rid of. The visitor would finger the bills and then hold them in his hand as though he was mentally weighing them. He would nod or shake his head as the taxi driver haggled with the money changers.

After each stop, the visitor stuffed the bills into a large suitcase. They found lots of cheap bills and by the end of the day the visitor was beaming.

As he dropped the visitor at his hotel, the taxi driver asked him what he was going to do with the old bills. Was he a currency collector, or what?

The visitor shook his head. He had an uncle in Latin America who was a counterfeiter and was having trouble getting high quality paper for his fake bills. Apparently, anti-counterfeiting agents in the U.S. had managed to curtail the supply of the high quality paper needed by counterfeiters.

The uncle had found a small, clandestine paper maker who could shred the old bills and produce high quality paper. Having cleaned out Amman, the visitor was off to try his luck in another city in the Middle East.

Starting with a Bang

I worked with Frontier College as a labourer-teacher during my three summers while at Queen’s. The College is a charitable organization that used to send university students to work during the day alongside labourers in mines, bush camps or railway maintenance gangs and to teach, counsel or otherwise offer help to the labourers at night.

My first summer was at a bush camp run by the Great Lakes Paper Company, north of what is now Thunder Bay, on the Dog River.

When I arrived in mid-May, the river drive had just started and all the logs cut and stacked on frozen ponds upstream during the winter began, as the ice melted, to float down to the camp. At the camp, the logs would be loaded onto trucks---there is more about this in the next story.

Another fellow, Olaf, and I were sent to one of the many rapids on the Dog River, our job was to make sure that any logs that got jammed between the rocks in the rapids were pulled out quickly before they could create a ‘jackpot’---the loggers’ name for a jumble of logs. Sometimes a small jackpot could be cleared by pulling out a key log but if it became too big, dynamite had to be used.

One day, Olaf and I had had a good lunch of the sandwiches, pie and cheese we had picked up that morning in the cookhouse. We were lying on the bank enjoying the sun, watching the logs go through the rapids. We didn’t have much to do, the water was high and the logs were easily clearing the rapids. The last thing I can remember is that we were chatting about what we would do on the weekend.

Suddenly, there was an enormous bang. Olaf and I jumped up.

“What the hell was that?”. Olaf shouted.

As we looked around, our foreman came ambling down the trail by the rapids.

“Oh, you’re awake now!”

He told us that he had come upon his two sleeping workers, gone back to his truck, got a large, empty glass jug, a stick of dynamite and a fuse. Above the rapids, he had stuck the fuse in the dynamite, lit it, put it in the jug and pushed the jug into the river. The jug cleared the rapids and exploded not far from where we were snoozing.

We learned our lesson, no more naps.


A Brave Man

The river drive was finished, and the logs were all floating in the river by the camp, collected in large booms. On the shore of the river was a jackladder, a wooden structure that sloped into the river with two huge endless chains about eight feet apart that were studded every two feet with nine inch teeth. Logs were fed onto the chains and pulled out of the water, up the jackladder and dropped into trucks for the trip to the pulp and paper mill in Thunder Bay.

I was told to work on the jackladder with a fellow named Fred. We stood on a low bridge in front of the jackladder with our backs to each other. I faced the river and using a pike pole---a long pole with a steel spike and hook in the end---pulled the logs from the boom and passed them under the bridge to Fred who fed them onto the chains.

It was important that the logs went onto the ladder straight across. If a log went on crooked it could injure the men at the top of the jackladder who had to guide the falling logs into the truck parked beneath the jackladder.

Although Fred was very skilled at loading the jackladder, he was no longer young---he was in his late 50s or early 60s----and overweight. I sensed that he found it hard to pull and poke the logs so I found ways of feeding the logs to him so that he just had to do what he was good at----arranging them carefully on the jackladder.

I wondered once or twice about his weight, or, more precisely, how it was distributed. His stomach was large but so were his hips and bottom. He was tall and carried the weight well but from his chest down to his legs he was almost egg-shaped.

We worked well together, and it was satisfying to have the fellows at the top of the jackladder tell us that they missed us when we went on break and others took over.

One day, Fred asked me if I would like to help him pick some Saskatoon berries after dinner. He and his wife were going to make jelly that weekend. As we picked the berries, Fred began talking about his life.

He been in the army in World War I and was badly wounded during a battle in France. He said that in addition to wounds to his legs and back, he had lost his manhood.

After being discharged from the army, he was full of anger, anger that he couldn’t realize his dream of marrying, settling down and having a family, a dream that had kept him going through the mud and horrors of the trenches in France.

He said he had travelled all over Canada and the States through the 1920s and into the 1930s, drinking, fighting and generally getting into trouble.

And then in the midst of the Depression, he had returned home to the Thunder Bay area and met a widow with three children. She was having a tough time raising the children on her own and he offered to help support her.

They liked each other and although the woman knew he could never be a husband in the full sense, they decided to get married. Everyone in the community knew, of course, about the loss of his manhood and when he applied for a marriage license he was told that because he could not consummate his marriage he must have the permission of the Premier of Ontario---Mitch Hepburn, at the time.

He got angry as he was telling me this, his face getting red. It was unfair that he had given so much for his country and now he had to be put through the indignity of begging (his word) for permission to marry.

Calming down a bit, he said the whole thing was made worse because of his hatred for ‘that SOB, Mitch Hepburn’. (Hepburn was a Liberal and Fred was a Conservative).

Permission finally came and he and the widow were married. He said that they had now been together for twenty years. The children had done well at school and were now on their own. And he and his wife were going to make Saskatoon jelly that weekend.

What a brave, tough, good man!



Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Later on, I told Fred a story that I had heard during my summer at Mackies in Port Stanley (see Posting #8).

Mitch Hepburn lived on a farm not far from Port Stanley---he grew onions when he was not being a politician.

One busy Saturday night during the 1930s, an Ontario Provincial Policeman came into Mackies and told the owner that he had the Premier of Ontario in the parking lot and the Premier wanted to see him right away. The owner had never been fond of ‘that onion farmer’ and Premier or not, the restaurant was busy. The owner also knew that Mitch Hepburn liked his booze and he wondered if it was alcohol that was prompting the visit. He asked the policeman to tell the Premier that he was really busy, and that perhaps they could meet another day.

The policeman pleaded with him, “Can’t you help me out. The Premier is not going to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

The owner sighed and followed the policeman out to the parking lot. The policeman pulled open the back door of the car and the Premier of Ontario rolled onto the ground, sound asleep and stone drunk.

The policeman lifted Hepburn back into the car and shut the door.

“Sorry”, he apologized, “I’m just his driver.” And he drove off.

Fred enjoyed that story.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


When we were touring Britain with the children in the summer of 1979 (see Posting #8) we stayed one night in the Cotswold’s in an Elizabethan mansion that had been converted into an inn.

The owners had obviously spent a good deal of money converting the heritage property into an upscale inn.

The boys’ bedroom had a bidet in the ensuite bathroom, a piece of bathroom equipment that was new to them. One of the boys (I’m not saying which one) decided he would try the bidet. It was the type with a jet in the bottom of the bowl and the user had to adjust both the height of the jet and the temperature of the water---delicate operations, both.

Finally, our son was satisfied that he had things adjusted just right and he straddled the bidet and began to wash his nether regions. Pleased with himself, he shouted to his brother through the closed bathroom door that he should try it---it was great.

Just then, someone in another part of the inn flushed a toilet and the water in the jet turned scalding hot.

The next day, our son was nursing his tender nethers and muttering something about “instant vasectomies”. He is now a father so we can assume that the blast of hot water had no lasting effect.



Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe!

POSTING # 8

Pruning the Vines; Big Question by a Jordanian Official; Walking to Port Stanley at Night; Can You Be in Moscow by Friday?; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Pruning the Vines

Last December, on a drive through the vineyard country around Virgil, we noticed a car pulled off the road, as far as a snow bank would allow. It was there the next day and the following day. Pat and I debated about calling the police and reporting what seemed to be an abandoned car.

The fourth day, the car was still there but this time we looked down the row of vines and saw a person, bundled up in a skidoo outfit, pruning the vines, in the wind and snow.

As spring approaches, the pace of pruning is picking up and sometimes there are three or four people working in the cold.

It reminded me of the time when I was in a doctor’s office in Ottawa and met a colleague from my Immigration days. Both of us had retired and we chatted about what we were doing. His last overseas posting had been at the Canadian Embassy in Washington and having fallen in love with the Virginia countryside, he had bought a farm. He was now planting a vineyard.

“That’s why I’m here,” he said, flexing his arms with a grimace “Tendonitis in both elbows. Planting vines is tougher than it looks!”

You have to admire the people who work so hard that we may have wine.


Big Question by a Jordanian Official

During this week’s Obama visit to Canada, I was thinking about what a different image the new president projects of the U.S than that projected by George W. Bush.

Three years ago, I was standing on Table Rock above Niagara Falls with a group of 8 employment officials from the Kingdom of Jordan. I had organized and was leading the visitors on a two week tour to study employment programs in Ontario and Quebec. The tour was drawing to an end.

One of the Jordanians, a particularly thoughtful person, came over to me and, pointing across the River to the people clustered on the American Falls observation deck, asked, “What are the Americans like? Are they like you Canadians?”

My first thought was how sad it was that we couldn’t just nip across the border and give the visitors some first hand experience of Americans in America. We could let them gather some impressions that they could put against the stereotypes that all media---in the Middle East and here---perpetuate. In a world of visa restrictions, that was just not possible.

I thought I knew what was in his mind. This was their first visit to North America, and they had told us they wondered how they would be received---eight Arabs, including two women in head scarves--- especially after 9/11.

The tour had gone well. The visitors were eager to learn and they followed the various presentations carefully, asking challenging questions. The Canadian experts, stimulated by this show of interest, responded wonderfully, discussing policies and programs that had worked and those that hadn’t. The experts loaded the visitors down with documents, software, and computer links. Usually I had to cut off discussion so we could get to our next appointment.

I was proud of the kindness and generosity of the Canadian experts. They never preached about the greatness of their work, they just shared. The visitors told me again and again how impressed they were with the Canadians they were meeting.

Scattered through the tour were visits to some tourist sites, a chance to relax and take some pictures. After visits to employment experts in Montreal, we took time out to visit St. Joseph’s Oratory on Mount-Royal. The group took pictures of the Oratory and of the magnificent view across the St. Lawrence.

Then, one of the group asked if they could go into the Oratory, where a mass was underway. I was uneasy---religion is, of course, so sensitive. Might someone back in Jordan object that I had ‘taken’ these Muslims into a Christian church?

I spoke to the leader of the group and told him about the request and my concern that a visit to a mass might be misunderstood. His response was, if they want to go, let them go.

With that, we all, including the leader, trooped quietly into the back of one of the Oratory’s large chapels. One of the chapel officials smiled and nodded a ‘welcome’ to us. After some minutes, watching a priest conduct the mass, one of the group asked if they could sit down. They slid into a pew and watched quietly and intently as the parishioners kneeled, prayed, and responded as the priest led them through the liturgy. Finally, I whispered that we had to move on to our next appointment.

As we got onto the bus, I could see that they were trying to digest what they had just seen---their first visit to a Christian church---and the quiet but warm welcome they had received.

Thinking back over these experiences, as we stood by the Falls, I tried to formulate an answer to the question, “Are Americans like you Canadians?”

Finally, I said that on a national level some of our values were different and these differences were reflected in approaches to social, economic and international policies that were not always the same---for example universal health care, or the Iraq war.

But, on an individual basis, he would have trouble telling us apart.

He thanked me and wandered off, deep in thought.

I wasn’t---and am not---very happy with my reply.

The Koreans have a proverb: “It is better to see once than hear a hundred times”. To tell someone what Americans are like doesn’t have the same impact as seeing them in their own country.

It is terribly sad that tightened non-immigrant visa requirements---as necessary as they may be---make it hard for people from the Middle East to see for themselves what Americans are like.


Walking to Port Stanley at Night

At 2 A.M., in June 1955, I was trudging along the road from St. Thomas to Port Stanley, on Lake Erie.

“At least it’s not raining,” I told myself.

Unless I could hitch a ride---not likely in the middle of the night---I had another 10 miles or so to go.

A few weeks earlier, things seemed to be going well. I had graduated from high school, been accepted by Queen’s University at Kingston and had a conditional offer of a summer job at a brewery in Kitchener-Waterloo---a job that would help finance my first year at Queen’s.

Then I got a letter from the brewery saying that there was a hitch but they would let me know as soon as possible whether I could have a job. I waited for a week and then decided that I could end up waiting all summer. I decided I would hitch-hike to the tobacco-growing area of south-western Ontario. I had been told that work on tobacco farms was plentiful and reasonably well-paid, although hard.

Motorists were ready to pick up hitch-hikers in those days and I was soon in Tillsonburg, the heart of the tobacco country. At the local National Employment Service office, an official interrupted a card game with colleagues to tell me that I was too late for the ‘suckering’ (plucking tobacco blossoms to prevent seeds from forming) and too early for the picking.

The official had me fill out a long employment registration form, then told me there were no jobs available, and went back to playing cards with his colleagues. I was angry at the off-hand way he had treated me. (Years later, I became responsible for the operation of local employment offices and started something called Revitalization of the Employment Service, a program designed to improve the service to job-seekers. But that’s another story.)

I hitched a ride to Port Dover, nearly got a job on a fishing boat and then moved on to Port Stanley and found a job making chips (French fries) at a long-established, family-owned restaurant called Mackies, on the boardwalk by the beach. Mackies was famous for a tasty orange drink. and for its chips, which it served with a delicious home-made sauce that was a cross between ketchup and chili sauce.

The base pay wasn’t great and the hours were long but there was a bonus at the end of the week, if sales had been good (not in the same league as Wall Street bonuses, however!!) and there was a cottage where the staff could stay rent-free. Life was good and I was putting money away for the coming year.

One evening I decided to take the London and Port Stanley electric railway (referred to by the locals as the L. & P.S, which someone told me meant Late & Poor Service, or Lost & Presumed Sunk) to London to see a play at the Grand Theatre.

The play was a French farce with lots of sudden entrances and exits.

It was fun---and also long.

And, I missed the last train to Port Stanley.

I took a city bus to the outskirts of London and then started hitch-hiking. One ride took me to St. Thomas and then another to a few miles south of the city, dropping me off in the middle of the country, with fields on both sides of me.

I waited for a while but no cars came and I decided I had no choice but to walk home. As I walked, I came to a long cast-iron fence on my left with some large buildings behind, all in darkness.

Then I heard a vehicle, and turning around, stuck out my thumb. A pickup truck slowed down, then speeded up and I started walking again. Then the truck stopped and backed up to me.

“Where are you going?”, a man asked.

I told him Port Stanley and explained I had missed the last L&PS train in London.

“Get in. I’m not going into Port Stanley but I’ll drop you on the outskirts.”

As I climbed into the truck, he said, “Don’t ever try to hitch a ride here.”

I looked at him blankly, and he pointed to a sign that his headlights were picking up, “Hospital area. Do Not Pick Up Hitch-Hikers.”

“That’s the St. Thomas Mental Hospital, over there, behind the fence. They have a lot of criminally insane patients in there.”

We had a good chat and he took me right to my cottage.

As I got out of the truck, I thanked him for taking a chance that I wasn’t a criminally insane patient on the run. He just chuckled, and took off.


Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
I didn’t plan to include jokes in the blog but here is a favourite that seems appropriate:
A man driving past a mental hospital heard a bang and realized that his right front tire had gone flat. Muttering to himself, he got out, jacked up the car, removed the hub cap, unscrewed the lug nuts and put them in the upside-down hub cap.
As he started back to get the spare tire, he noticed that a patient was studying him from the other side of an iron fence. Upset at being watched, the driver accidentally kicked the hub cap and the lug nuts went down a drain.
He cursed and said, “Now what do I do?”
“It’s easy”, said the patient, in a quiet voice, “Take one nut off each of the other wheels and use them to put on the spare tire. That will get you to a garage.
“That’s great”, the driver said with relief, “How did you know that?”
“Look,” the patient replied, “I’m crazy, not stupid.”

Can You Be in Moscow by Friday?

People who are about to retire sometimes want to know how one gets a consulting contract. I tell them about the obvious things one should do, such as sending out CVs, and building a network of friends and contacts.

But then I tell them that sometimes the unpredictable happens, and tell them this story about how I got my contract in Russia.

I had been retired for three years, had done some short-term consulting and was part-way through a book I was trying to write about a trip Pat and I had taken on the Thames River, retracing the route taken by Jerome K. Jerome in his Three Men in a Boat, Not to Mention a Dog.

On a Monday, two weeks before Christmas in 1994, I was talking to an electrician at our home in Ottawa describing some work we wanted him to do. The phone rang and Pat came in to say that Chris (from my old department, Human Resources and Skill Development) wanted to talk to me ‘urgently’. I asked her if she could tell him that I was tied up but would call him soon. She came back and said Chris insisted on talking to me right away.

I picked up the phone and without saying hello, Chris said, “John, can you be in Moscow by Friday?”

“Well, my passport is valid, but can you get me a visa before Friday?’

“The visa’s no problem. Here’s the deal.” He went on to explain that the World Bank had invited Canada to bid on a large, two-year project, which the Bank would be funding, to set up model employment centres across Russia. My old department had been invited to participate in the bid and it had to find a person with employment service operational experience to join a team of three people who would go to Moscow, study the situation and prepare the bid. It would be two or three weeks work, at most.

As Chris had predicted, the visa came through and I left Ottawa on Friday with the team leader and another expert. We spent several days visiting existing local offices around Moscow and talking to Russian officials about the proposal.

The Russians wanted a western employment service to create 20 model employment centres scattered through eight time zones from Moscow, through Siberia, to the Pacific. We agreed that the project made sense, that the time-frame of two years was about right and that Canada and my old department had the resources to do the job, if our bid were accepted (the U.S. and Australian governments were also submitting bids).

But, it was clear that the project would be a difficult one given the lamentable state of the existing employment centres, the huge distances involved, the shaky state of the Russian transportation system and the general economic upheaval as Russia adjusted to a market economy. And then there was, of course, winter in Siberia.

The three of us sat down in our hotel to draft the Canadian proposal, my role being to write the sections on operational details. The World Bank had set out project requirements quite clearly and things went smoothly until I came to a requirement that we had not discussed, that the winning country had to appoint one of its experts to be an on-site project manager, based in Moscow.

Thinking of the problems of travel, weather, and economic dislocation, I turned to the team leader and asked, “Who in the heck are you going to get to be the on-site manager?”

The team leader looked at me, paused, and said, “I was kind of hoping you would take it on.”

“But”, I sputtered, “We are running a Bed and Breakfast, and I’m doing some writing…”

“You don’t have to make a decision now, talk to your wife, think it over and let us know.”

Pat and I talked it over and discussed it with the family. In the end, we all agreed that I should take it on, if Canada won, which it did.

And, that’s how one contract came to be.


Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


We toured Britain by car when the boys were in their mid-teens and our daughter was about 8. To help them pass the time between castles, cathedrals, restaurants and hotels, we bought them a tape recorder. They used it sometimes to record their impressions of things they had seen. When they got bored, they would do things like sticking it out the car window and saying, “That’s what the wind sounds like in Durham (or Nottingham…).”

At the end of a hectic day, we arrived in Oxford, all of us anxious to get out of the car and stretch. Disregarding signs that encouraged drivers to park on the outskirts and take a bus downtown, we carried on to our hotel, in the centre of the city, where we had booked rooms and a parking spot.

We found the hotel without much trouble but although we could see it, we couldn’t figure out how to drive to it, what with one-way streets, and barriers, designed I suppose to keep cars out of the centre. Round and round we went looking for an alley or side street that would let us drive up to the hotel.

There was a fairly animated discussion between the driver and the navigator about whose fault it was that we couldn’t get to the hotel. You know the kind of marital give and take: “If you would just drive a little slower”, and ‘’’If you would just give a little more warning about turns”, etc. etc.

Finally we stopped a cyclist, an Oxford student, and told her our problem.

“No trouble at all”, she said and went over to a hinged barrier arm that was blocking us, and lifting it up, waved us through.

We decided she would do well in life.

After dinner, the kids brought out the tape recorder and began to play the animated discussion, which they had taped in full.

Embarrassment!

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe!

POSTING # 7:

Three Major Issues Facing Niagara-on-the-Lake, Including Virgil; Some Highlights from Hilton Head; Starting a Nuclear Reactor in the United Kingdom; Will They Miss the Boat?; Word Problems; Wish I Had Had a Camera; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Three Major Issues Facing Niagara-on-the-Lake, Including Virgil


You move to a new area---as we have done---and want to be a good citizen with considered opinions on the key issues concerning the residents of your new community.

That’s the ideal, but it is not always easy to live up to it.

There are three issues dividing the community at the moment and the two weekly newspapers are full of editorials, articles and letters about them. We are having a tough time figuring out which arguments are valid and which are just special pleading.

Here are the issues (they may well remind you of issues you have faced or are facing in your own communities):

1. Whether the Niagara District Secondary School, located in Niagara-on-the-Lake, should be closed and the students bused to St. Catharines. (The School Board favours this but many parents are objecting while other parents are quietly transferring their children to St. Catharines’ high schools where, it is claimed, the standards may be higher.)
2. Whether the new, state-of-the-art, centre-of-excellence Niagara hospital should be built in the western end of St. Catharines or in a more southerly municipality, closer to patients from places such as Fort Erie and Port Colborne.
3. Whether Project Niagara should be allowed to go ahead. The National Arts Centre and the Toronto Symphony Orchestras are proposing to launch in 2012 (the bicentenary of the start of the war of 1812) a 17 week international musical festival outdoors in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Promoters say that this Tanglewood North, on the shore of Lake Ontario with the Toronto skyline as a backdrop will bring in millions of dollars and many new jobs but some people wonder what the increased number of people and cars would do to the character of the town. (I wonder if the first program will include the 1812 Overture---just asking.)


Some Highlights from Hilton Head

The economic crisis has begun to have an impact on even the affluent residents of Hilton Head (HH).

A retired professional who moved to HH from the north 14 years ago and has been going annually to Africa as a volunteer at his own expense told us that he will have to stop doing that. His savings are dwindling away as the stock market tanks.

An article in the local paper told retired couples how to adjust to reduced income by, for example, having pot luck dinners with friends instead of going out to eat, by shopping at thrift stores and by using coupons.

The restaurants are fighting back with more early bird specials and the clothing stores are offering some amazing buys (we went down with 3 suitcases and had to buy a 4th for the trip home. (While we were buying our suitcase---at a thrift store---a man was getting help carrying a huge carpet out to his car. The store clerk asked whether his car would hold the carpet and the man replied that he was sure it would, it was a Cadillac Escalade.)

The County Sheriff had a press briefing on increasing crime, even in ‘gated’ communities. “Criminals are criminals, thugs are thugs but in hard times good people sometimes do bad things.” He encouraged people to lock their cars and homes. (Not far from our condo, a thief entered an unlocked 2008 Range Rover, and took a handbag worth $2000, which contained $400 in cash and a cell phone.)


Starting a Nuclear Reactor in the United Kingdom

Listening to pundits challenging the Obama economists to tell them exactly how and when the stimulus package and bank bail out will work reminds me of a story a friend tells.

As a nuclear physicist working on one of Britain’s first nuclear power stations, he helped load the reactor with uranium rods and whatever else is needed to make a reactor work (I am really out of my depth here). Outsiders kept asking him and the other physicists when the reactor would start to work. The answer was that they couldn’t release that information, implying that the experts knew exactly when the reactor would start but couldn’t tell because of security concerns.

In fact, the experts had no idea when the reactor would begin. It would start when it was ready.

To while away the time, the physicists set up a secret office pool in which they guessed not just the hour and minute, but the day, the reactor would come alive! The reactor eventually did come alive and as far as I know is still functioning.

I feel sorry for Obama’s economists. Even though the laws of physics may not allow one to predict exactly when a reactor will start, they explain much more than the ‘laws’ of economics. How does one predict the impact that human emotions such as greed, fear, distrust, envy, anger or confidence will have on an economy?

Perhaps we should just let the economists get on with their tough and absolutely critical task.

Will They Miss the Boat?

Talking about Britain, Pat and I finished our London posting in 1966 and prepared to return to Canada by sea with our two sons, one three years old and the other 9 months. Friends, another couple from the Canadian High Commission, were travelling on the same ship with two girls about the same age as our boys. (In those days, it was cheaper to travel by sea than air and the government allowed only deputy ministers to fly.)

The four of us and the children were sitting in a waiting room at dockside in Liverpool, having already checked in the baggage that wouldn’t be required during the voyage. We were waiting for officials from British Immigration and the shipping company to arrive to check our passports and tickets. I reached into my briefcase to check, for the umpteenth time, that I had the passports and tickets.

My colleague watched me and then blurted out, “Oh my god!”

He said he had put his family’s passports and tickets in a suitcase that he had checked as not required during the voyage, and which by now was almost certainly in the hold of the ship.

His wife’s face turned white and the four children, sensing a huge problem, started to cry.

In my work at the High Commission, I had developed friendships with people in both British Immigration and the shipping company and I was frantically trying to think whom I could contact to get permission for our friends to board without their documents. In an era before cell phones, I was having trouble figuring out how to reach the right people before boarding started.

Suddenly, my friend said, “I’ve got an idea.”, and took off.

The officials opened the boarding gates but we, of course, waited with our friend’s wife and her children.

Thirty minutes passed and still no sign of my colleague. Most of the passengers had boarded and tension was mounting.

Then, my friend arrived, waving the documents and we went through the various checks.

Later, in a bar on the ship, our friend told us how he had got the documents.

He had gone down to the dock with the idea of somehow getting into the hold. As he studied the situation he saw that workers carrying bags into the hold wore cloth caps with a large metal badge with a number. As they went up the gangway, a Customs inspector wrote down the number of their badge and admitted them to the ship.

Our friend found a worker waiting to carry some bags onto the ship, took him aside and offered him ten pounds (a very good amount at that time) to borrow his hat. The fellow agreed and our friend left his suit coat and tie with the worker, put on the cap, picked up the bags and went up the gangway. The inspector checked his badge and waved him on.

Once in the hold, he discovered that the luggage was being stored in different sections by alphabet. He located his section, found his bag and took out his documents.

We raised our glasses in praise of his quick thinking!

Word Problems

When I was young, Dad once asked me to go into the house and get the kodak. I had no idea what he was talking about but Mom prompted, “The camera”.

As I went to get the camera, I thought it was a shame that older people couldn’t keep up with the language. No one I knew called a camera a kodak (when Dad was young all the cameras were made by Kodak).

Of course, now the shoe is on the other foot, as we say.

I’m the one who is not keeping up with the changing meaning of words.

For example, I was at the car service centre recently and wanted the technician (I know they are no longer called mechanics) to adjust the head lights because people were flipping their high beams at me. I told the service adviser that people were ‘flashing me’, and I thought I saw a hint of a grin on her face.

When I came back for the car, she said, “We’ve fixed the lights, Mr. Hunter. No one is going to flash you now.”

This time, there was a definite grin, and I finally twigged.

Another example, this week Pat and I were eating at Bob Evans in Niagara Falls NY. I decided that I would have just one bun instead of the usual two they provide and would have a piece of their excellent banana bread instead. As soon as I said the word ‘bun’ to the server I knew I was in trouble. As quickly as I could, I uttered ‘roll’ but it wasn’t quick enough to stop her face going rapidly from puzzlement to amusement.

Travelling to different countries can also, of course, create word problems.

When we lived in England, I wanted to get some sour cream for the baked potatoes we were having with dinner. I went to the dairy counter at the largest department store in Leeds.

“Do you have sour cream?”

“What do you want?”, the clerk said and, with some belligerence, added, “All our cream is fresh.”

I explained about baked potatoes, and after a pause, she said, “Oh, you mean SOURED cream.”

A young friend visiting Canada from the U.S. also had a problem with words. She was studying at one of the libraries at the University of Toronto and asked a woman at the Information Desk for a ‘rest room’.

The woman looked very concerned and said. “Oh dear, it’s not ideal but we have a small room with a cot that we use when we feel ill. You are welcome to use it.”

After some discussion, our friend was directed to a ‘washroom’.

Wish I Had Had a Camera

In a mall this week, I saw a couple of men who were preparing to demonstrate one of those ShamWow-type absorbent cloths that you see on TV. They had spilled some water on the floor and one of the men was cleaning it up with PAPER TOWELS. Wouldn’t that have been great on YouTube?

Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Our one and only burglary (touch wood) happened at our home in the Glebe in Ottawa. Pat had been away for an hour in mid-morning picking up a friend. As she came up the porch steps, she saw that the front door was ajar. Alarmed, she pushed open the door and saw coats strewn on the floor.

Without thinking that the burglars might still be in the house, Pat screamed, “Cassidy, what has happened to Cassidy?” and raced for the kitchen.

And there was Cass, crouched on the floor, gnawing on a turkey drumstick thoughtfully provided by the thugs from our fridge.

Pat leaned over to cuddle him and simultaneously tried to pull away the drumstick because, of course, poultry bones can get stuck in a dog’s throat.

Cass growled at her.

Later on, when he had got over the loss of the drumstick, Cass came up to Pat, wagged his tail and sat down, as though he wanted to tell her about the nice people who had come to visit while she was away.

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe!

POSTING # 6: The Ice Wine Harvest; Mince Tarts in Hilton Head; Canadians Celebrating the U.S Presidential Inauguration; Arrogant Bankers; Short Stuff

The Ice Wine Harvest

While we were on holiday and enjoying the sun in South Carolina, we did take time--- now and then---to worry about the ice wine harvest back in the Virgil area. (I know this may seem hard to believe but you’re just going to have to trust us.)

Picking ice wine grapes is a tricky business. As you know, they stay on the vines after the normal grapes are picked, waiting until they have frozen and thawed enough times to bring the sugar and acid content up to the desired levels. When the berries become brown they are ready to harvest but the actual picking has to wait until some night when the temperature is -10C or colder.

Some vineyards had picked their grapes during a cold spell in December but other vineyard managers felt the grapes weren’t quite ready and gambled on a cold spell in January.

The gamble paid off. The second week of January was ideal for picking and the 2008 crop is now safely in fermentation vats.

I hear that the yield was large and the winemakers expect that 2008 will prove to be a very good year for ice wine.

I like to think that our worrying helped.



Mince Tarts in Hilton Head

In the Posting #5, I mentioned that we were taking mincemeat with us so I could have my 12 tarts between Christmas and New Years. Our plan, you will recall, was to buy frozen tart shells and fill them with good Canadian mincemeat.

But, there were no tart shells to be had in Hilton Head! And we weren’t about to try to make pastry dough in a skimpily-equipped vacation kitchen.

Happily, Mrs. Smith came to our rescue. One supermarket had two frozen mincemeat pies made by Mrs. Smith. Pat used her skills in geometry and quilting to calculate, with great precision, slices of pie that would be exactly equal to a normal tart.

According to Pat’s calculations, I have had the equivalent of at least 14 tarts.

We feel well prepared for 2009.

Canadians Celebrating the U.S Presidential Inauguration


After cheering, holding our breath, biting our nails etc. for Obama last fall, it didn’t seem right just to sit in our rented condo and watch the inauguration on television. It was a time to be with others. But, how to do that?

Then we saw an advertisement announcing an inauguration lunch at a local restaurant, Dye’s Gullah Fixin’s, that we had visited the week before. (The Gullah are descendants of blacks who settled along the coast of North and South Carolina after the Civil War. Dye offers some wonderful dishes from her Gullah ancestors including light, rich corn bread served with home-made sugar cane syrup, fried oysters, and peach dump---sliced peaches are ‘dumped’ into a baking dish with batter.)

The lunch was sponsored by the Beaufort County Democratic Club South of the Broad (the Broad is a river that divides Beaufort County between the city of Beaufort in the north and Hilton Head in the south). We sent an email to the organizer (to be honest, we were a little economical with the truth and didn’t say we were Canadians just in case…). He replied saying he had reserved tickets for us but warned the restaurant would be crowded.

We got there early and found space at a table with two other couples, from Pittsburgh. We shook hands, “Hi, I’m John and this is my wife Pat.”

One of the women said, “You’re Canadians.”

Pat looked at her, “How did you know? We haven’t said, ‘Out’ ‘About’ or ‘Eh’?”

“It’s your accent.”

Pat explained that we weren’t going to say we were Canadians for fear they would think we were crashing their party.

“Oh, you’re very welcome.” (And, indeed, we couldn’t have been treated more warmly.)

We learned later that the woman who ‘outed’ us attends the Shaw Festival with her husband every May and October. She certainly knows her Canadian accents!

The restaurant filled quickly and the organizer kept wandering around, wringing his hands, and saying, “I hope the Fire Marshall doesn’t drop in.”

We noticed there was a reporter with a notebook interviewing three women at a table behind us. Here is part of her article as it appeared in the Island Packet on the day after the inauguration. The reporter captured very well the mood and emotions of the party.


Julie Cordray of Sun City Hilton Head is black and grew up in South Carolina during the civil rights era.
Ina Takashima of Hilton Head Island is a Japanese-American who was incarcerated with her parents in an internment camp during World War II.
Lena Epps Brooker is a Native American who grew up in a part of North Carolina that had three-way segregation separating whites, blacks and "Indians."
“For the three women who sat among a larger group of friends, Obama's swearing-in was the culmination of lifelong hopes -- hopes their parents told them to hold onto from the time they were girls -- that one day a racial minority would win the White House.
"My parents told me that change would come, that barriers would come down," Brooker said. "Today, it did."
"Minorities are in board rooms and running businesses," she continued. "This is the last barrier. It's been reached. What my parents told me about -- it's here."
Cordray said she felt a "sense of completeness" as Obama took the oath. "It empowered all of us," the Georgetown native said.
Takashima still had tears running down her face 10 minutes after the new president finished his inaugural speech.
"This means the world to me," she said. "After suffering prejudice and hatred in my life, this day has finally come."
The three women weren't the only ones moved by the historic inauguration.
Obama supporters at Tuesday's gathering watched the event on two televisions placed on opposite sides of the small Gullah restaurant. One was propped up on a yellow ladder, a microphone perched next to it to amplify the sound. Beneath the television hung a poster with an image of Obama's face and the word "hope."
People stood and wept and cheered during the swearing in and after the inaugural speech. They sang the national anthem along with the United States Navy Band Sea Chanters as though the Hilton Head gathering was actually taking place at the Capitol.

It seemed to me that the whites, although pleased with the election of the first African-American, were rejoicing primarily because the Bush years were over and because the Obama victory promised more responsible national and international policies.

For the non-whites, the inauguration meant all of that but something else. They were celebrating the beginning of a new era, an era that promised greater fairness in the pursuit of the happiness promised nearly 250 years ago in the Declaration of Independence.

A remarkable day.

A remarkable nation!

Arrogant Bankers

The media are full these days of stories about Wall Street Bankers, their greed, conceit and, often, plain stupidity.
It remind me of a story that a friend tells of a run-in she had a few years ago with her banker. She lives in a small U.S. town and was having a contractor replace her sidewalk, steps and patio. When he had finished he gave her a bill for the price they had agreed upon---$7000---and asked if she could give it to him in cash (I hope neither she nor he is ever offered a job in Washington that requires them to reveal all their tax histories!).
Our friend went to her bank, was greeted by name by the teller and gave her a withdrawal slip for the $7000.
The teller started when she saw the amount, “I’m sorry but I can’t give you that much cash”.
“Why not? There’s enough money to cover it.”
“I just can’t.”
“But it’s my money.”
“I better let you see the manager.”
Our friend, keeping her cool remarkably well, sat down in front of the manager’s desk. He engaged in some small talk about her family and then said, “Now tell me dear, what are you going to do with this money?”
Our friend told us that she considered and rejected several options in the second or two after the banker’s question. Should she tell him the truth? Should she tell him it was none of his business? Should she tell him that his question was insulting and demeaning?
In the end, she leaned forward and whispered in a confidential tone, “Well, you know what young lovers are like.”
The banker had the decency to turn red. He quickly initialed the withdrawal slip and passed our friend back to the teller.

Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Last month, coming back from a stroll by the ocean, Pat and I were crossing the narrow wooden ramp over the dunes and met a couple with two Prince Charles Spaniels. The man was about 20 feet ahead of his wife, being pulled along by a lovely dog, with a tennis ball in its mouth. The dog paused to sniff Pat, keeping the ball in its mouth. Pat leaned over, let the dog smell her hand, and then ruffled his fur and told him what a fine dog he was.

Suddenly, the dog with the woman began to bark furiously. The woman tried to shush it but finally had to pick it up. We left the man and walked to the woman and the still-barking dog.

The woman frowned at us and said accusingly, “You touched her sister.”

We didn’t know what to say.

Then the dog stopped barking and leaned over to sniff us. After the hand-sniffing ritual, we told her what a beautiful dog she was and played with her ears. If she had been a cat, she would have been purring.

The women, a little friendlier now, told us that her dog couldn’t stand anyone paying attention to her sister.

Apparently, sibling rivalry is not just a human condition.

We asked if her dog also liked to play fetch on the beach.

“No, she can’t be bothered. She just chases the birds.”

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Years ago when the children were young, we went for a swim at an ocean beach that was new to us. The waves were fairly high and I wasn’t sure whether there might be an undertow. The two boys knew about swimming in the ocean but they were getting quite far out. I thought it would be a good idea to give them a warning.

“Watch for an undertow”, I shouted.

Our daughter (who was younger than the boys, didn’t have any ocean experience and had no idea what an undertow was) stopped what she was doing. She decided that it would be a good idea to repeat the warning (she had a fine set of lungs and as is normal with youngest children she loved a chance to tell her older siblings what to do). She let out two good shouts, repeating what she thought she had heard.

Then she turned to me, with a growing look of horror, “What’s an undertoad, Dad?’

(I still wonder what kind of ugly, threatening reptile her imagination had conjured up.)

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo



See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe!