Plastic Bags on Earth Day in Virgil; He had to Get Out of Tulsequah; Secretary Treasurer of the Tulsequah Local of the Miners Union; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Plastic Bags on Earth Day in Virgil
On Earth Day, April 22, the Virgil supermarket stopped providing free plastic bags.
Many customers had been bringing in ‘green’ bags and bins well before Earth Day, motivated I suspect by a mix of altruism and guilt. I don’t think the small charge that is now being made for plastic bags was a consideration.
It reminded me of my experience in the first supermarket in Leeds, England back in 1962 (the advertising for the new store called it an authentic American Supermarket). Until the supermarket opened, we customers read or gave our list of groceries to a clerk who scurried around to get our items------just as we had done in Canada before the advent of supermarkets---and placed them in the string bags we had brought with us.
We had had supermarkets in Canada for 15 years or so before we went to England, and we now found it frustrating to wait for a clerk to fill an order.
Soon after the Leeds supermarket opened, I filled my cart and went to the check out. After ringing up my order, the cashier asked if he could have my bags.
I said that I had assumed that the supermarket would be providing paper bags as they did in America (plastic bags came later).
“Supermarkets don’t provide bags in America”, he said.
“Yes, they do”, I replied.
He shook his head.
I thought about the quip we used to hear in Yorkshire about people from Lancashire: ‘You can always tell a lad from Lancashire but you can’t tell him much’.
And then I thought about pots and kettles.
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Looking back, Britain in the 1960s was in many ways closer to the goals of Earth Day than we are today (except for the terrible smogs caused by open coal fireplaces---which were in the process of being phased out).
For example:
Petrol was expensive and as a result cars were small and fuel efficient.
Electricity was costly so home owners used it sparingly.
For short trips, most people walked or bicycled.
Many people grew vegetables in their own gardens or on allotments provided by the city.
But the search for the so-called ‘good life’ in both Britain and North America created trends that have been leading us astray.
A few years ago, a friend from London, England and I were talking about these trends. We agreed that they had to change and each of us could see some promising signs.
I said that some people in Canada were now ridiculing huge SUVs by, for example, referring to them as Mall Terrain Vehicles.
He said that there was an astonishing number of SUVs in crowded London.
The locals referred to them, disparagingly, as Chelsea Tractors.
I loved it!
He had to Get out of Tulsequah
I never learned why Larry (not his real name) wanted to get out of Tulsequah.
But he sure wanted out.
Perhaps he had a really severe case of ‘cabin fever’ from being cooped up in an isolated mining camp in the north-western corner of British Columbia. Or he may have had problems with a wife or girlfriend back in Vancouver---problems that he wanted to get home to try to sort out.
He wasn’t saying.
He was a truck driver, in his late 20s, stocky with a fixed sullenness about him. Like the other workers in the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company (COMINCO) mine, he had signed a contract with the company to stay for a set period of time. In return, the Company paid for his fare from Vancouver to Tulsequah and would pay for his fare back to Vancouver.
The routing was complicated and the fare was not cheap. Workers recruited in Vancouver had to fly first to Seattle, catch a plane to Ketchikan, Alaska, then a seaplane to Juneau, Alaska and finally a bush plane to Tulsequah.
The Company was prepared to let him break the contract, but if he did, he would have to pay the full cost of both the fare to Tulsequah and the fare home.
It was June 1957 and I was on the second summer with Frontier College (see Posting #9, March 1, 2009) for stories about my first summer).
The Company decided that I should join Larry and the other truck drivers who were bringing newly-mined ore from half-way up a mountain---via a gravel road with many switchbacks---to a mill in the valley below. (The mill pulverized the ore and using various chemicals concentrated the ore for shipment by barge to Vancouver and then to a smelter.)
Once up the mountain, we backed in under a hopper that contained the ore rocks that had been dumped by mine railway cars.
Then we pulled a lever that opened a door in the hopper, allowing the ore to flow into the back of the truck. Once the truck was full we closed the hopper door and started the trip down the mountain.
The driving, which went on 24 hours a day, was mainly boring---up and down, up and down---but there were a couple of dangers that could make life interesting.
First, the hopper door could jam if a large piece of ore got trapped in it. There were long steel rods that we had to use to push or pry the rock out of the way. If the door couldn’t be closed, the ore just kept coming, and coming….
The second danger was on the way down the mountain. The driver had to find a way to keep the heavily-loaded truck from running away. The secret was to find the right balance of engine braking and air brakes to control the descent down the switchback road. If one used too much engine braking, by using too low a gear, the engine would overheat. If one chose too high a gear, the airbrakes would have to be used too much--- the pressure would fall and the brakes would eventually fail.
It wasn’t always easy to get the right balance. One night, my airbrake pressure got too low and I had to steer the truck into the bank on one of the switchbacks. I waited there until the pressure had come back up, then carried on down the mountain.
Reporting for work one morning, I was told there would be no driving for a few days. Larry had had a problem during the night. He claimed that while he was loading his truck, the hopper door jammed. He said he hadn’t been able to dislodge the rock. The ore poured down on the truck, burying it. The truck was a write-off.
It was treated as an accident and when the mess was cleaned away Larry was given a new truck, a brand new Autocar, which had just arrived by barge from Vancouver. We were told that it cost $150,000 (that’s about $1.2 million in 2009 dollars!)
It was a beautiful looking truck, with a luxurious cab. It had 18 speeds and something I really liked, an RPM gauge. The ore trucks had to be double-clutched to shift gears and this was tough when one was going up or down the mountain. Unless one got the RPM just right there would be a damaging (and embarrassing) grinding of gears. The old trucks didn’t have an RPM gauge and one just had to develop a feel for the speed of the engine. With the Autocar, you just waited until the RPM gauge was in the green zone and every shift was perfect.
We were all envious of Larry’s new truck.
I hoped the Autocar would improve Larry’s disposition---which, perhaps, was the Company’s hope as well.
Two days later, as I was having breakfast in the cookhouse one of the other drivers asked if I had heard about Larry. He said that during the night Larry’s new truck had gone off the road as he was coming down the mountain. Larry claimed, apparently, that the brakes had failed. He was just able to get out of the truck before it crashed down into a deep gully.
It was another write-off.
As I started to look around the cookhouse for Larry, my friend said that I wouldn’t be able to find him. A bush plane had been called and Larry was on his way to meet it. The Company had decided that enough was enough.
Larry had finally got his wish--- he was on his way home.
Secretary Treasurer of the Tulsequah Local of the Miners Union
In July of 1957, the Company announced that it would be mothballing Tulsequah in September---until the price of base metals picked up. Everyone would be laid off except for two watchmen who would stay on-site.
One of the early layoffs was a fellow who was Secretary Treasurer of the Tulsequah local of the union. Knowing that I would be around until almost the end, some workers nominated me to be Secretary Treasurer.
Normally, I wouldn’t have thought twice about accepting. I was paying dues to the Union and had always been a supporter of unions. The problem was that it was the International Mine and Mill and Smelter Union, a union that had alleged links with the Communist Party or at least with Communist sympathizers.
In the end, I decided to accept the post.
After I took over the Secretary Treasurer’s role, one of the workers said that if I didn’t run off with the local’s bank account I would be first one who hadn’t.
I asked him if the police had ever recovered the funds. He said the union never called the police.
“We’ve all been in jail---we would never send anyone there.”
As September approached, I closed out the bank accounts and arranged for all the funds---every last penny--- to be sent to the Union’s regional office in Vancouver.
In agreeing to take on the job, I had not thought that in a couple of years the RCMP would be conducting security checks on me as I applied for entry into the Foreign Service. I had written the Foreign Service exams and had done well enough to be offered a job, subject to background checks.
I don’t know whether my brief stint with the union’s local executive ever came to the RCMP’s attention. If it did, it was obviously---and properly--- treated as something of no security significance.
Still, although I knew I had done nothing wrong I was a bit apprehensive until the Government confirmed the job offer----meaning that I had passed the security check.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
One evening during a holiday in France, we were driving in Paris trying to find our hotel and trying not to hit, or be hit, by aggressive Parisian drivers. Our child was in the backseat.
In the era before children’s car seats, our child wore a harness that was attached to the frame of the car. Believe or not, the harness was a state-of-the-art safety feature at that time, a safety feature that had not yet been adopted by most motorists. It allowed children to stand up and look out the windows but constrained them somewhat if there were a sudden stop or an accident.
As we navigated through the traffic, we heard a little voice from the backseat, “It’s gorgeous!”
A little later, a louder voice, “It’s gorgeous”.
At a traffic stop, we turned around and saw that our child was looking out the back window---at the Eiffel Tower.
And gorgeous, it was--- illuminated against the darkening sky!
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On the same trip, we had to use an elevator and we wondered how our child would react to its first elevator ride. We watched as the door shut and the elevator started to rise.
The child’s face grew puzzled, and then relaxed.
Looking up at us, the child said reassuringly, “Ride in a cupboard”.
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See you next Sunday for Posting #18 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or you can email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Posting #16
Crowds back in Niagara-on-the-Lake; Cash for the Russian Project; Carrying Cash to Russia and Keeping it Safe; Wrinkle Remover;
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Crowds back in Niagara-on-the-Lake
The Shaw Festival opened its 2009 season on Saturday, April 11.
Suddenly the town that had been snoozing since last fall came alive.
Parking spaces are scarce again. The sidewalks are crowded with ambling visitors.
And the restaurants are busy. For the last few months, we have been able to gossip leisurely with the servers but no longer. We went to one of our favourite places on April 11th and the server took our order and was off. When she brought our food, I said, “The people are back.”
Looking around the room, she smiled broadly, “Isn’t it great!”
Everyone has been wondering about the impact of the financial and economic problems on the Festival and the town.
Of course, one robin doesn’t a spring make, but we hope that all this activity is a good omen.
Cash for the Russian Project
I knew that there would be many challenges in setting up 22 model employment offices across 8 time zones in Russia but I didn’t expect one of them to be finding the cash to pay the bills.
The problem wasn’t ‘money’, money. The project was generously funded, with more than enough money in the budget to pay all our costs. The challenge was in getting ‘cash’ money.
The basic problem was that Russia did not have a trustworthy banking system in the 1990s.
There WERE banks. In fact, each month, a brand new bank would spring up in Moscow with a respectable facade outside and lots of reassuring marble inside. They looked as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.
But, in two months or so, the bankers and the deposits would be sunning themselves in Dubai.
Because there were no reliable banks, all transactions in Russia in the 1990s had to be in cash---no cheques, credit cards, bank drafts, wired transfers or lines of credit.
And the cash had to be in US dollars.
Furthermore, the US bills had to be totally pristine, with absolutely no identifying marks. I had never paid any attention to markings on bills until I had to sort through stacks of bills to find some that would be acceptable in Russia. I was astonished at how many bills had been ‘defaced’---bills with scribbled numbers on them, staple holes, tears and even badly dog-eared corners.
Exactly why Russians insist on pristine bills is---as President Obama would say---beyond my pay grade. I suspect they are worried that someone may try to track financial transactions by using marked bills, perhaps the police (secret or otherwise), tax inspectors or even criminals. Whatever the reason, Russians wanted clean bills.
And that was that!
I found it was hard to convey the need for clean bills to Canadian bankers. When I tried to get the US$25,000 needed to open the project, I went to the foreign exchange department of a large charter bank in Ottawa.
The clerk listened to me and then said that there would be no problem. Any worn or torn bills were returned to Washington to be destroyed. To demonstrate, she pulled out a stack of US 100 bills. “\See, these bills are fine”.
I leafed through the bills. Pulling out several with handwritten numbers and small tears, I explained that they would not be accepted by the Russians.
“What’s wrong with those Russians? These are perfectly fine bills!”
I sighed and went to the Civil Service Co-op (now called the Alterna Bank). I knew that the Co-op didn’t usually handle large amounts of US dollars---just enough to provide members with a few hundred dollars for trips to the US---but the clerks were generally more helpful than their counterparts at the ‘real’ banks.
I found a wonderful clerk who actually listened to my plea, and understood.
“So, you want me to launder some money for you”, Deidre chuckled.
She told me she would request brand new bills, which would arrive in about a week.
When the money arrived, she and I went into a back room where she ran the bills through an automatic counter---twice. Worrying about me walking on the street with all that money, she found an anonymous looking envelope. “People will think it’s just mortgage documents”, she said.
Whenever we needed more money, Pat or I would call Deidre at the Co-op.
“How much laundered cash do you want this time?”, she would ask.
It is wonderful to find someone who knows what she is doing, and does it with a sense of humour!
Carrying Cash to Russia and Keeping it Safe
Once we had clean bills, Pat or I had to carry them to Russia. On my first trip to Russia, I carried US$25,000 (made up of 100s, 50s and 20s), in two bulging money belts.
Pat brought over US$10,000-15,000 each time she visited me.
(She once startled a friend who was seeing her off at the Ottawa Airport by asking her to keep an eye on her (Pat’s) carry-on case while she went for a magazine. “It has $15,000 in it.” Pat says the friend gasped, and then kept the bag squeezed between her legs until Pat came back.)
Once the cash was in Russia, I had to find a way to keep it safe.
My office manager said that Russians have a saying that locks keep out only honest people. He argued that small safes and filing cabinets with locks were useless---that would be the first place thieves would look. The secret was to find a place to hide the money where no one would think of looking.
Where could that be?
After mulling things over for a while, I came up with a solution. My furnished apartment had a small room with shelves of hundreds of double-banked Russian books. I hollowed out a large old book, stored the cash in it and placed the book on the third shelf behind a red book.
After I did this, I was worried that if anything happened to me, the money might never be found.
I couldn’t figure out how to tell Pat---who was back in Ottawa---what I had done with the money (I assumed---not unreasonably as things turned out---that emails and phone calls would be monitored and that the apartment would be bugged).
I decided that I just had to live with that worry, but one of the first things we did when Pat came to visit was to go for a walk in a nearby park so I could tell her where the money was stored.
Later on, whenever we needed some cash, we would write notes to each other and one of us would go to the stash.
All in all, the systems we developed to deal with cash worked well---no money was ever stolen. But there was a cost in worry and inconvenience. We kept reminding ourselves that this was a cost that all Russians had to bear, day in and day out.
They couldn’t get on a plane and in a few hours be back in a place where banks worked.
Wrinkle Remover
My first trip from Moscow to a proposed model employment office was on an overnight train. When we checked in, my interpreter and I found that we would be sharing a four-berth compartment with another Russian and a fellow from the newly-independent nation of Georgia.
As soon as we heard the fourth person was a Georgian, the interpreter dragged me into the corridor, outside our compartment. He hissed that we had to be very careful with the Georgian.
“They are all thugs”, my interpreter said, “Don’t tell him anything, and above all don’t show him any money”. (I had US$2000 as backup funds in a money belt plus more money in my billfold.)
I learned that there were centuries of bad feelings between the Russians and the Georgians (bad feelings that continue to today, witness the recent border fighting).
As we got ready for bed, I found that the clasp on my suitcase had jammed. The interpreter and I took turns trying to free the clasp but with no luck.
The Georgian, who had been watching us, pulled a 9 inch hunting knife from his suitcase and offered to use it to pry the clasp open. Just then, the clasp came free.
Looking at me, the interpreter nodded almost imperceptibly toward the Georgian, as much as to say, “Didn’t I tell you?”
When I went to the washroom at the end of the corridor to brush my teeth, I put my passport in my money belt with the $2000. Usually, I took the money belt off at night but not that night!
I didn’t sleep much. I felt I had to keep an eye on the Georgian and his knife. And the lumpy money belt prodded me every time I rolled over.
To make matters worse, the train was too hot. Now, the heating in Russian trains is something like the jibe about the army having two sizes: too small and too big. The train that night was definitely too hot. On top of that, I am a ‘hot’ sleeper, in other words, I perspire a lot at night.
In the morning the money belt was damp, very damp.
We had breakfast with the Georgian fellow and he seemed fine, after all---a businessman trying to sell Georgian wines. (I have no idea what he was doing with the hunting knife---perhaps it was protection against Russian thugs.)
We were met at the train station by local employment officials and our visit went well.
The return trip was uneventful.
When I got back to the Moscow apartment, I pulled out the $2000. The bills had dried by that time but were badly wrinkled. No Russian would have accepted them.
That evening, I sent the family an SOS email telling them about the wrinkled bills and asking for suggestions. Daughter Jennifer replied immediately saying that when she was studying fashion design the students often had a problem with wrinkled patterns. A professor taught them how to iron the patterns, using paper above and below and a low-medium setting (no steam!).
I spent a few hours ironing bills on the kitchen table. It was amazing---the wrinkles just disappeared.
The next day, on my way to work, I used one of the ironed bills and it survived the usual thorough screening by a shop keeper.
The next time Pat saw Deidre at the Co-op, she told her that we were no longer just laundering money, we were also ironing it.
Deidre laughed and shook her head as though to say, ‘What will these crazy people be up to next?’
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Cassidy in Quebec
This is still another story about Cassidy, our golden cocker spaniel (I am afraid of boring people with stories about Cass----I promise I will give the old fellow a rest for a few postings).
In 1976, the whole family, Cass included, moved to Quebec City for a year.
One of our neighbours, Pierre, (not his real name) fell in love with Cass and his tricks.
One of the tricks was the old standard, ‘shake hands’. Pierre decided to try the trick in French. He said to Cass, “Donne-moi ta patte”. Cass paused for a moment, then seeing Pierre’s outstretched hand, reached out his paw. Pierre was ecstatic. “He speaks French!”
Now a cynic could say that the outstretched hand was a pretty big hint---that it wasn’t much of a stretch for Cass to figure out that he was expected to hold out his paw.
But after Pierre had played the game several times for his family and friends, Cassidy did indeed learn that “Donne-moi ta patte” meant ‘shake hands’. He would lift his paw even without an outstretched hand.
Pierre had less luck with another trick. Cass hated baths and we would tease him by saying “Have a bath Cass”. He would growl and shake his floppy ears.
When Pierre tried the French for that, Cass just stared at him. There were no cues, no signals and Cass was stumped.
Pierre tried a different tack. He tried to repeat what we said but with his strong accent it came out something like, “Hab a bat Cass”
We wondered what Cass would do.
Cass stared at him for a couple of seconds and then the light came on. Cass growled in the most satisfying way.
Pierre was delighted.
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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe! Posting #17 will include some stories about a summer I spent in a mining camp at Tulsequah, British Columbia. If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or you can email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Crowds back in Niagara-on-the-Lake
The Shaw Festival opened its 2009 season on Saturday, April 11.
Suddenly the town that had been snoozing since last fall came alive.
Parking spaces are scarce again. The sidewalks are crowded with ambling visitors.
And the restaurants are busy. For the last few months, we have been able to gossip leisurely with the servers but no longer. We went to one of our favourite places on April 11th and the server took our order and was off. When she brought our food, I said, “The people are back.”
Looking around the room, she smiled broadly, “Isn’t it great!”
Everyone has been wondering about the impact of the financial and economic problems on the Festival and the town.
Of course, one robin doesn’t a spring make, but we hope that all this activity is a good omen.
Cash for the Russian Project
I knew that there would be many challenges in setting up 22 model employment offices across 8 time zones in Russia but I didn’t expect one of them to be finding the cash to pay the bills.
The problem wasn’t ‘money’, money. The project was generously funded, with more than enough money in the budget to pay all our costs. The challenge was in getting ‘cash’ money.
The basic problem was that Russia did not have a trustworthy banking system in the 1990s.
There WERE banks. In fact, each month, a brand new bank would spring up in Moscow with a respectable facade outside and lots of reassuring marble inside. They looked as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.
But, in two months or so, the bankers and the deposits would be sunning themselves in Dubai.
Because there were no reliable banks, all transactions in Russia in the 1990s had to be in cash---no cheques, credit cards, bank drafts, wired transfers or lines of credit.
And the cash had to be in US dollars.
Furthermore, the US bills had to be totally pristine, with absolutely no identifying marks. I had never paid any attention to markings on bills until I had to sort through stacks of bills to find some that would be acceptable in Russia. I was astonished at how many bills had been ‘defaced’---bills with scribbled numbers on them, staple holes, tears and even badly dog-eared corners.
Exactly why Russians insist on pristine bills is---as President Obama would say---beyond my pay grade. I suspect they are worried that someone may try to track financial transactions by using marked bills, perhaps the police (secret or otherwise), tax inspectors or even criminals. Whatever the reason, Russians wanted clean bills.
And that was that!
I found it was hard to convey the need for clean bills to Canadian bankers. When I tried to get the US$25,000 needed to open the project, I went to the foreign exchange department of a large charter bank in Ottawa.
The clerk listened to me and then said that there would be no problem. Any worn or torn bills were returned to Washington to be destroyed. To demonstrate, she pulled out a stack of US 100 bills. “\See, these bills are fine”.
I leafed through the bills. Pulling out several with handwritten numbers and small tears, I explained that they would not be accepted by the Russians.
“What’s wrong with those Russians? These are perfectly fine bills!”
I sighed and went to the Civil Service Co-op (now called the Alterna Bank). I knew that the Co-op didn’t usually handle large amounts of US dollars---just enough to provide members with a few hundred dollars for trips to the US---but the clerks were generally more helpful than their counterparts at the ‘real’ banks.
I found a wonderful clerk who actually listened to my plea, and understood.
“So, you want me to launder some money for you”, Deidre chuckled.
She told me she would request brand new bills, which would arrive in about a week.
When the money arrived, she and I went into a back room where she ran the bills through an automatic counter---twice. Worrying about me walking on the street with all that money, she found an anonymous looking envelope. “People will think it’s just mortgage documents”, she said.
Whenever we needed more money, Pat or I would call Deidre at the Co-op.
“How much laundered cash do you want this time?”, she would ask.
It is wonderful to find someone who knows what she is doing, and does it with a sense of humour!
Carrying Cash to Russia and Keeping it Safe
Once we had clean bills, Pat or I had to carry them to Russia. On my first trip to Russia, I carried US$25,000 (made up of 100s, 50s and 20s), in two bulging money belts.
Pat brought over US$10,000-15,000 each time she visited me.
(She once startled a friend who was seeing her off at the Ottawa Airport by asking her to keep an eye on her (Pat’s) carry-on case while she went for a magazine. “It has $15,000 in it.” Pat says the friend gasped, and then kept the bag squeezed between her legs until Pat came back.)
Once the cash was in Russia, I had to find a way to keep it safe.
My office manager said that Russians have a saying that locks keep out only honest people. He argued that small safes and filing cabinets with locks were useless---that would be the first place thieves would look. The secret was to find a place to hide the money where no one would think of looking.
Where could that be?
After mulling things over for a while, I came up with a solution. My furnished apartment had a small room with shelves of hundreds of double-banked Russian books. I hollowed out a large old book, stored the cash in it and placed the book on the third shelf behind a red book.
After I did this, I was worried that if anything happened to me, the money might never be found.
I couldn’t figure out how to tell Pat---who was back in Ottawa---what I had done with the money (I assumed---not unreasonably as things turned out---that emails and phone calls would be monitored and that the apartment would be bugged).
I decided that I just had to live with that worry, but one of the first things we did when Pat came to visit was to go for a walk in a nearby park so I could tell her where the money was stored.
Later on, whenever we needed some cash, we would write notes to each other and one of us would go to the stash.
All in all, the systems we developed to deal with cash worked well---no money was ever stolen. But there was a cost in worry and inconvenience. We kept reminding ourselves that this was a cost that all Russians had to bear, day in and day out.
They couldn’t get on a plane and in a few hours be back in a place where banks worked.
Wrinkle Remover
My first trip from Moscow to a proposed model employment office was on an overnight train. When we checked in, my interpreter and I found that we would be sharing a four-berth compartment with another Russian and a fellow from the newly-independent nation of Georgia.
As soon as we heard the fourth person was a Georgian, the interpreter dragged me into the corridor, outside our compartment. He hissed that we had to be very careful with the Georgian.
“They are all thugs”, my interpreter said, “Don’t tell him anything, and above all don’t show him any money”. (I had US$2000 as backup funds in a money belt plus more money in my billfold.)
I learned that there were centuries of bad feelings between the Russians and the Georgians (bad feelings that continue to today, witness the recent border fighting).
As we got ready for bed, I found that the clasp on my suitcase had jammed. The interpreter and I took turns trying to free the clasp but with no luck.
The Georgian, who had been watching us, pulled a 9 inch hunting knife from his suitcase and offered to use it to pry the clasp open. Just then, the clasp came free.
Looking at me, the interpreter nodded almost imperceptibly toward the Georgian, as much as to say, “Didn’t I tell you?”
When I went to the washroom at the end of the corridor to brush my teeth, I put my passport in my money belt with the $2000. Usually, I took the money belt off at night but not that night!
I didn’t sleep much. I felt I had to keep an eye on the Georgian and his knife. And the lumpy money belt prodded me every time I rolled over.
To make matters worse, the train was too hot. Now, the heating in Russian trains is something like the jibe about the army having two sizes: too small and too big. The train that night was definitely too hot. On top of that, I am a ‘hot’ sleeper, in other words, I perspire a lot at night.
In the morning the money belt was damp, very damp.
We had breakfast with the Georgian fellow and he seemed fine, after all---a businessman trying to sell Georgian wines. (I have no idea what he was doing with the hunting knife---perhaps it was protection against Russian thugs.)
We were met at the train station by local employment officials and our visit went well.
The return trip was uneventful.
When I got back to the Moscow apartment, I pulled out the $2000. The bills had dried by that time but were badly wrinkled. No Russian would have accepted them.
That evening, I sent the family an SOS email telling them about the wrinkled bills and asking for suggestions. Daughter Jennifer replied immediately saying that when she was studying fashion design the students often had a problem with wrinkled patterns. A professor taught them how to iron the patterns, using paper above and below and a low-medium setting (no steam!).
I spent a few hours ironing bills on the kitchen table. It was amazing---the wrinkles just disappeared.
The next day, on my way to work, I used one of the ironed bills and it survived the usual thorough screening by a shop keeper.
The next time Pat saw Deidre at the Co-op, she told her that we were no longer just laundering money, we were also ironing it.
Deidre laughed and shook her head as though to say, ‘What will these crazy people be up to next?’
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Cassidy in Quebec
This is still another story about Cassidy, our golden cocker spaniel (I am afraid of boring people with stories about Cass----I promise I will give the old fellow a rest for a few postings).
In 1976, the whole family, Cass included, moved to Quebec City for a year.
One of our neighbours, Pierre, (not his real name) fell in love with Cass and his tricks.
One of the tricks was the old standard, ‘shake hands’. Pierre decided to try the trick in French. He said to Cass, “Donne-moi ta patte”. Cass paused for a moment, then seeing Pierre’s outstretched hand, reached out his paw. Pierre was ecstatic. “He speaks French!”
Now a cynic could say that the outstretched hand was a pretty big hint---that it wasn’t much of a stretch for Cass to figure out that he was expected to hold out his paw.
But after Pierre had played the game several times for his family and friends, Cassidy did indeed learn that “Donne-moi ta patte” meant ‘shake hands’. He would lift his paw even without an outstretched hand.
Pierre had less luck with another trick. Cass hated baths and we would tease him by saying “Have a bath Cass”. He would growl and shake his floppy ears.
When Pierre tried the French for that, Cass just stared at him. There were no cues, no signals and Cass was stumped.
Pierre tried a different tack. He tried to repeat what we said but with his strong accent it came out something like, “Hab a bat Cass”
We wondered what Cass would do.
Cass stared at him for a couple of seconds and then the light came on. Cass growled in the most satisfying way.
Pierre was delighted.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe! Posting #17 will include some stories about a summer I spent in a mining camp at Tulsequah, British Columbia. If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or you can email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
POSTING # 15
Return of the Robins of Virgil?; Enrolling at Queens; Padre Laverty; Moving out of Residence; The High Cost of Alcohol; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Return of the Robins of Virgil?
In Posting # 10 (March 8, 2009), I told about our battles last year with robins who were determined to build a nest above our front door. After many attempts to discourage them, we finally succeeded with a strip of plywood with projecting nails---the kind used by carpet layers for wall-to-wall carpets---duct-taped to the ledge above our door.
The nail strip is still there, but we have been apprehensive. Would the robins figure out a way of building a nest on top of the nails?
This week, a male landed on the ledge, to scout out the situation. He looked in at us through the transom window, looked at the nails, thought for a while and then flew off.
A short time later, a female robin landed on the ledge. We assume that her mate had told her, “Yes, we can”.
We could see that she loved the location. Sitting on a nest, hatching eggs must be pretty boring stuff but from a nest on our ledge, she could watch both us and the activities on the street and sidewalk. And be safe from cats, crows and other pests.
She gingerly tried the turn-around maneuver that robins use to shape straw and mud into a nest. We could almost hear her wince as she ran into a nail. After thinking about things for a while, she flew off.
We hope she told her hubby that if he wants a nest on the ledge, he can build it himself.
Enrolling at Queens
My wife Pat and I are preparing for our respective 50th university reunions to be held next month. Pat’s is at Smith College in Northampton Massachusetts (she started university at Trinity College, University of Toronto, went on an exchange to Smith for her third year, and decided to stay there and graduate) while mine is at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Here are some stories about Queen’s---there will be tales about Smith in a later posting.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
In September 1955, after making French fries for the summer in Port Stanley (see Posting #8, February 22, 2009), my brother Jim drove me to Kingston to register at Queen’s.
I was more than a little terrified. It wasn’t the prospect of living away from home---I had spent all my high school summers away---but the thought of being at a university. Coming from a small town and a small town high school, I wondered whether I could cope with the courses, professors, essays and examinations.
(Over the last few years, I’ve been leading tours of foreign employment officials to Canadian universities and I’ve been enormously impressed---as have the visitors---with the orientation programs now offered new students---including trips to the campus several months before enrollment. I wish they had had something like that in my day.)
Jim helped me carry my stuff to my room in the newly-finished McNeil House Residence and made sure I was settled in before he took off for the long trip to his home in Guelph.
Jim and his wife, Fannie, encouraged and supported me in so many ways during my years at Queen’s. I will always be grateful to them!
Padre Laverty
As I adjusted to life at Queen’s, I gradually figured out who did what---the Principal, the Deans, the Departmental Chairs, and the professors in various shades: full, associate, assistant, and lowly lecturers.
But I had trouble understanding the role of Padre Laverty.
The formal duties of the Padre, who was in his early 40’s, dark hair, with some gray, a mustache and a military bearing, seemed to include conducting a church service on Sunday mornings in Grant Hall and providing prayers and invocations at official functions.
But he appeared to me to spend most of his time wandering around the campus, chatting with students. Later on, I realized that he was trying to ensure that the 2800 full-time students had a successful stay at Queen’s.
In a sense, he was trying to provide the advice and assistance that today’s well-staffed and trained Student Services departments offer.
By himself.
To establish a rapport with students, he tried to memorize the surnames and home towns of all the 2800 on campus.
Walking along the street, he would sort through his mental index cards and greet a student, “Well Jones, how are things in Gananoque?” Or, “Well Smith, how are things in Guelph?”
You just had to look at a student’s face to know that the greeting meant a great deal. The student wasn’t just a file in the Registrar’s office, he or she was SOMEONE.
Unfortunately, the good Padre had trouble with my name and home town. We had met at one of the home gatherings that he and his gracious wife, Frances, held for new students. As the books on memory recommend, the Padre had made sure he used my name (Hunter) and hometown (Arthur) a couple of times during the gathering.
However, when we ran into each other a few weeks later on the street, his greeting came out:
“Well Arthur, how are things in Hunter?”
I explained that I was Hunter from Arthur. He looked embarrassed and a little surprised that his system had let him down.
Whenever we met later on, I could see his eyes moving from side to side as he tried to figure out which name came first.
To tell the truth, I still felt good---during that first year at Queen’s---to know that two bits of information about me were stored away in his head, even if he sometimes mixed them up.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Later on, I got involved in student government and met the Padre fairly often at different events. (By that time he had sorted out Hunter and Arthur.)
During a break in one of the events, he leaned over and whispered, “We are going to have to keep an eye on (the name of a student). I’m afraid he’s a bit of a bounder.”
I looked at him with surprise. I knew the student but he didn’t strike me as a threat to the virtue of the Queen’s coeds. He was bright, self-confident and more affluent than most of us---judging by his clothes---but he didn’t fit the image I had built up of the serial seducer.
That person was usually a jock, especially a football player, from a Toronto high school (can I make it clear that I am NOT saying that all football players from Toronto high schools fell into that category!)
I said I would keep my eyes open. When I checked with friends, they all had the same reaction as I had had---they didn’t see that student as a seducer.
But none of us dismissed the Padre’s concern. We had grown to respect his intelligence network---he knew what was going on around campus. There were things that showed up on his radar that just didn’t appear on ours. (For example, we could never figure out how he managed to include dating couples in his get-to-know-you gatherings. How did he know who was dating whom?)
Fifty years later, I am still wondering whether the student he identified was one of the most successful and secret seducers ever? Or was the Padre wrong?
I will be making discreet inquiries next month, at our class reunion.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
As I was writing the above story, Pat and I tried to recall what these Don Juans were called in our day---we certainly didn’t use ‘bounder’. Pat remembers Smith Students warning each other about fellows who were ‘operators’, or, even worse, ‘smooth operators’. Smithies also had the expression, “He has laid everything but the Atlantic Cable.”
At Queen’s, I remember people referring to someone as ‘a skin man’---graphic but a bit crude.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
I was delighted to learn some years ago that Queen’s had honoured the work of the two Lavertys, Marshall and Frances, by creating the Laverty Bursary to provide support to third or fourth year students in any faculty or discipline.
A fine tribute to a fine couple.
Moving out of Residence
In the 1950s, Queen’s turfed male students out of residence after two years to make way for incoming frosh.
Four of us decided to rent a small house but ended up renting roughly half of a large house. We had the downstairs (living room, dining room---which had three beds---and a large kitchen. We also had a small bedroom on the second floor.
There were two other tenants in the house: a retired Alcan worker who spent an astonishing amount of money on liquor; and a not-yet-retired Alcan worker who worked nights.
Finally, the landlady---who was a ‘Mrs.’ but with no husband in sight---had a large bedroom on the second floor. She was in her late forties, managed a store downtown and left the house each morning well-dressed, coiffed and made-up.
Like all successful Kingston landladies, she had perfected a ‘look-students-don’t-mess-with-me’ voice when talking to her young tenants. She could be cold and tough.
We had been in the house for a few weeks when she asked one morning if she could talk to us. We steeled ourselves for a blast about something or other.
Instead, she said she wanted a favour. She had a friend coming to see her that evening and she wondered if we could entertain him while she changed after her day at the store. She handed over a bottle of rye, and said her friend’s name was Frank.
Frank rang the doorbell at 7.30 pm. We told him that Mrs. XX was tied up but would he like to join us in the living room for a rye and coke. And then we tried to think of things to talk about. We soon exhausted the weather, where we were from and what we were studying. He clearly didn’t want to talk about himself---about all we got was that he was in Kingston on business.
The silences were getting longer and more painful. Then, the landlady came to the top of the stairs. Dressed in a frilly dressing gown, with her hair untied, she said in a sultry voice that we had never heard, “Oh, there you are Frank. Why don’t you come up?’
And as an afterthought, she added, “Could you bring the rye with you?”
Every few weeks we were asked to entertain a different friend.
Kingston landladies were---and perhaps still are---interesting, fascinating, memorable …(my thesaurus fails me) people.
The High Cost of Alcohol
I am not sure whether there is a statute of limitations for offenses under the Ontario and Federal liquor laws so I am going to have to be a little vague about the details of the next story. I hope you will understand.
There is a story that one of several students who had rented a house had a friend who liked to stay with him on weekends, especially during the football season. The visitor was a friendly and personable guy and the students enjoyed his visits.
But there were two problems---he liked to drink and he was always broke.
He would go through whatever beer or rye the students had been able to afford out of their tight budgets.
What to do?
One of the room-mates---with some knowledge of chemistry---suggested that they make some alcohol and put it in a vodka bottle. The visitor would never know the difference.
Gallon jugs were obtained and filled with water, yeast and various ingredients. The jugs fermented merrily, hidden under a blanket in a corner of the kitchen.
The story is that after the fermentation had ended, the brew was poured into a large pressure cooker, a coil of copper tubing was connected to the spout on top of the cooker, and the tube was circled down through a basin of ice water. After some heating of the fermented mix, a little stream of clear liquid emerged from the end of the copper tube.
“We have to test it”, someone said.
A match was brought close to a tablespoon of the liquid. It burned with a satisfying blue flame.
At his next visit, the friend complimented the students on their fine taste in vodka---as he poured a generous quantity into some orange juice.
I am told that the students felt great satisfaction from having solved a problem.
If only---they thought---essays and exams could be mastered so easily.
NOTE: I have to say that this story may well be apocryphal. It is hard to imagine that Queen’s students would ignore the country’s liquor laws in such a blatant fashion. I also have to say that there are real dangers in distilling spirits, dangers that range from explosions to the production of toxic liquids. Today’s Queen’s students should stick to the good old LCBO.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Another story about, Cassidy, our golden cocker spaniel.
We had a tradition when the children were young of having popcorn during the television program ‘All in the Family’.
Cass adored popcorn. He would be lying on the floor of the television room asleep but as soon as he heard the opening bars of the program’s theme song, his head would come up and he would do a count of who was in the room. If anyone were missing he would go on what we called his ‘Paul Revere’s ride’---up to the third floor, down to the ground floor and the basement rounding up his people.
We would all watch the opening segment of the program, and then someone--- accompanied by Cass---would go to the kitchen and make the popcorn.
Bowls of the warm popcorn would be passed around. Cass sat close to whomever he thought was the softest touch. He would get a handful of popcorn, wolf it down and then wait for another handful. If the wait became too long, he would gently scratch the person’s arm with his paw---don’t forget the dog.
After ‘All in the Family’ went off the air, we still made popcorn but Cass had lost his trigger, his Pavlovian stimulus.
He soon found another.
He would listen for the heavy popcorn pot being taken from the cupboard in the kitchen. Once he heard that sound, his head would pop up. With his ears cocked, he would listen for the rattle of popcorn going into the pot. As soon as he heard that sound, he would start his race up and down the stairs, telling everyone that popcorn was being made.
Every time we have popcorn, I think of Cass’s wild races up and down the stairs, his floppy ears bouncing.
And I smile---and then sigh, as I think about how much we miss him.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe! Posting #16 will include some stories about Russia.
Return of the Robins of Virgil?
In Posting # 10 (March 8, 2009), I told about our battles last year with robins who were determined to build a nest above our front door. After many attempts to discourage them, we finally succeeded with a strip of plywood with projecting nails---the kind used by carpet layers for wall-to-wall carpets---duct-taped to the ledge above our door.
The nail strip is still there, but we have been apprehensive. Would the robins figure out a way of building a nest on top of the nails?
This week, a male landed on the ledge, to scout out the situation. He looked in at us through the transom window, looked at the nails, thought for a while and then flew off.
A short time later, a female robin landed on the ledge. We assume that her mate had told her, “Yes, we can”.
We could see that she loved the location. Sitting on a nest, hatching eggs must be pretty boring stuff but from a nest on our ledge, she could watch both us and the activities on the street and sidewalk. And be safe from cats, crows and other pests.
She gingerly tried the turn-around maneuver that robins use to shape straw and mud into a nest. We could almost hear her wince as she ran into a nail. After thinking about things for a while, she flew off.
We hope she told her hubby that if he wants a nest on the ledge, he can build it himself.
Enrolling at Queens
My wife Pat and I are preparing for our respective 50th university reunions to be held next month. Pat’s is at Smith College in Northampton Massachusetts (she started university at Trinity College, University of Toronto, went on an exchange to Smith for her third year, and decided to stay there and graduate) while mine is at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Here are some stories about Queen’s---there will be tales about Smith in a later posting.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
In September 1955, after making French fries for the summer in Port Stanley (see Posting #8, February 22, 2009), my brother Jim drove me to Kingston to register at Queen’s.
I was more than a little terrified. It wasn’t the prospect of living away from home---I had spent all my high school summers away---but the thought of being at a university. Coming from a small town and a small town high school, I wondered whether I could cope with the courses, professors, essays and examinations.
(Over the last few years, I’ve been leading tours of foreign employment officials to Canadian universities and I’ve been enormously impressed---as have the visitors---with the orientation programs now offered new students---including trips to the campus several months before enrollment. I wish they had had something like that in my day.)
Jim helped me carry my stuff to my room in the newly-finished McNeil House Residence and made sure I was settled in before he took off for the long trip to his home in Guelph.
Jim and his wife, Fannie, encouraged and supported me in so many ways during my years at Queen’s. I will always be grateful to them!
Padre Laverty
As I adjusted to life at Queen’s, I gradually figured out who did what---the Principal, the Deans, the Departmental Chairs, and the professors in various shades: full, associate, assistant, and lowly lecturers.
But I had trouble understanding the role of Padre Laverty.
The formal duties of the Padre, who was in his early 40’s, dark hair, with some gray, a mustache and a military bearing, seemed to include conducting a church service on Sunday mornings in Grant Hall and providing prayers and invocations at official functions.
But he appeared to me to spend most of his time wandering around the campus, chatting with students. Later on, I realized that he was trying to ensure that the 2800 full-time students had a successful stay at Queen’s.
In a sense, he was trying to provide the advice and assistance that today’s well-staffed and trained Student Services departments offer.
By himself.
To establish a rapport with students, he tried to memorize the surnames and home towns of all the 2800 on campus.
Walking along the street, he would sort through his mental index cards and greet a student, “Well Jones, how are things in Gananoque?” Or, “Well Smith, how are things in Guelph?”
You just had to look at a student’s face to know that the greeting meant a great deal. The student wasn’t just a file in the Registrar’s office, he or she was SOMEONE.
Unfortunately, the good Padre had trouble with my name and home town. We had met at one of the home gatherings that he and his gracious wife, Frances, held for new students. As the books on memory recommend, the Padre had made sure he used my name (Hunter) and hometown (Arthur) a couple of times during the gathering.
However, when we ran into each other a few weeks later on the street, his greeting came out:
“Well Arthur, how are things in Hunter?”
I explained that I was Hunter from Arthur. He looked embarrassed and a little surprised that his system had let him down.
Whenever we met later on, I could see his eyes moving from side to side as he tried to figure out which name came first.
To tell the truth, I still felt good---during that first year at Queen’s---to know that two bits of information about me were stored away in his head, even if he sometimes mixed them up.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Later on, I got involved in student government and met the Padre fairly often at different events. (By that time he had sorted out Hunter and Arthur.)
During a break in one of the events, he leaned over and whispered, “We are going to have to keep an eye on (the name of a student). I’m afraid he’s a bit of a bounder.”
I looked at him with surprise. I knew the student but he didn’t strike me as a threat to the virtue of the Queen’s coeds. He was bright, self-confident and more affluent than most of us---judging by his clothes---but he didn’t fit the image I had built up of the serial seducer.
That person was usually a jock, especially a football player, from a Toronto high school (can I make it clear that I am NOT saying that all football players from Toronto high schools fell into that category!)
I said I would keep my eyes open. When I checked with friends, they all had the same reaction as I had had---they didn’t see that student as a seducer.
But none of us dismissed the Padre’s concern. We had grown to respect his intelligence network---he knew what was going on around campus. There were things that showed up on his radar that just didn’t appear on ours. (For example, we could never figure out how he managed to include dating couples in his get-to-know-you gatherings. How did he know who was dating whom?)
Fifty years later, I am still wondering whether the student he identified was one of the most successful and secret seducers ever? Or was the Padre wrong?
I will be making discreet inquiries next month, at our class reunion.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
As I was writing the above story, Pat and I tried to recall what these Don Juans were called in our day---we certainly didn’t use ‘bounder’. Pat remembers Smith Students warning each other about fellows who were ‘operators’, or, even worse, ‘smooth operators’. Smithies also had the expression, “He has laid everything but the Atlantic Cable.”
At Queen’s, I remember people referring to someone as ‘a skin man’---graphic but a bit crude.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
I was delighted to learn some years ago that Queen’s had honoured the work of the two Lavertys, Marshall and Frances, by creating the Laverty Bursary to provide support to third or fourth year students in any faculty or discipline.
A fine tribute to a fine couple.
Moving out of Residence
In the 1950s, Queen’s turfed male students out of residence after two years to make way for incoming frosh.
Four of us decided to rent a small house but ended up renting roughly half of a large house. We had the downstairs (living room, dining room---which had three beds---and a large kitchen. We also had a small bedroom on the second floor.
There were two other tenants in the house: a retired Alcan worker who spent an astonishing amount of money on liquor; and a not-yet-retired Alcan worker who worked nights.
Finally, the landlady---who was a ‘Mrs.’ but with no husband in sight---had a large bedroom on the second floor. She was in her late forties, managed a store downtown and left the house each morning well-dressed, coiffed and made-up.
Like all successful Kingston landladies, she had perfected a ‘look-students-don’t-mess-with-me’ voice when talking to her young tenants. She could be cold and tough.
We had been in the house for a few weeks when she asked one morning if she could talk to us. We steeled ourselves for a blast about something or other.
Instead, she said she wanted a favour. She had a friend coming to see her that evening and she wondered if we could entertain him while she changed after her day at the store. She handed over a bottle of rye, and said her friend’s name was Frank.
Frank rang the doorbell at 7.30 pm. We told him that Mrs. XX was tied up but would he like to join us in the living room for a rye and coke. And then we tried to think of things to talk about. We soon exhausted the weather, where we were from and what we were studying. He clearly didn’t want to talk about himself---about all we got was that he was in Kingston on business.
The silences were getting longer and more painful. Then, the landlady came to the top of the stairs. Dressed in a frilly dressing gown, with her hair untied, she said in a sultry voice that we had never heard, “Oh, there you are Frank. Why don’t you come up?’
And as an afterthought, she added, “Could you bring the rye with you?”
Every few weeks we were asked to entertain a different friend.
Kingston landladies were---and perhaps still are---interesting, fascinating, memorable …(my thesaurus fails me) people.
The High Cost of Alcohol
I am not sure whether there is a statute of limitations for offenses under the Ontario and Federal liquor laws so I am going to have to be a little vague about the details of the next story. I hope you will understand.
There is a story that one of several students who had rented a house had a friend who liked to stay with him on weekends, especially during the football season. The visitor was a friendly and personable guy and the students enjoyed his visits.
But there were two problems---he liked to drink and he was always broke.
He would go through whatever beer or rye the students had been able to afford out of their tight budgets.
What to do?
One of the room-mates---with some knowledge of chemistry---suggested that they make some alcohol and put it in a vodka bottle. The visitor would never know the difference.
Gallon jugs were obtained and filled with water, yeast and various ingredients. The jugs fermented merrily, hidden under a blanket in a corner of the kitchen.
The story is that after the fermentation had ended, the brew was poured into a large pressure cooker, a coil of copper tubing was connected to the spout on top of the cooker, and the tube was circled down through a basin of ice water. After some heating of the fermented mix, a little stream of clear liquid emerged from the end of the copper tube.
“We have to test it”, someone said.
A match was brought close to a tablespoon of the liquid. It burned with a satisfying blue flame.
At his next visit, the friend complimented the students on their fine taste in vodka---as he poured a generous quantity into some orange juice.
I am told that the students felt great satisfaction from having solved a problem.
If only---they thought---essays and exams could be mastered so easily.
NOTE: I have to say that this story may well be apocryphal. It is hard to imagine that Queen’s students would ignore the country’s liquor laws in such a blatant fashion. I also have to say that there are real dangers in distilling spirits, dangers that range from explosions to the production of toxic liquids. Today’s Queen’s students should stick to the good old LCBO.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Another story about, Cassidy, our golden cocker spaniel.
We had a tradition when the children were young of having popcorn during the television program ‘All in the Family’.
Cass adored popcorn. He would be lying on the floor of the television room asleep but as soon as he heard the opening bars of the program’s theme song, his head would come up and he would do a count of who was in the room. If anyone were missing he would go on what we called his ‘Paul Revere’s ride’---up to the third floor, down to the ground floor and the basement rounding up his people.
We would all watch the opening segment of the program, and then someone--- accompanied by Cass---would go to the kitchen and make the popcorn.
Bowls of the warm popcorn would be passed around. Cass sat close to whomever he thought was the softest touch. He would get a handful of popcorn, wolf it down and then wait for another handful. If the wait became too long, he would gently scratch the person’s arm with his paw---don’t forget the dog.
After ‘All in the Family’ went off the air, we still made popcorn but Cass had lost his trigger, his Pavlovian stimulus.
He soon found another.
He would listen for the heavy popcorn pot being taken from the cupboard in the kitchen. Once he heard that sound, his head would pop up. With his ears cocked, he would listen for the rattle of popcorn going into the pot. As soon as he heard that sound, he would start his race up and down the stairs, telling everyone that popcorn was being made.
Every time we have popcorn, I think of Cass’s wild races up and down the stairs, his floppy ears bouncing.
And I smile---and then sigh, as I think about how much we miss him.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe! Posting #16 will include some stories about Russia.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
POSTING # 14
The Welland Canal is Open; The Hunter Family and the ‘Gypsy Gene’; The Hunter Family Goes from Wales to Australia; From Australia to Wales and then to Canada; The Hunters in Toronto; Uncle Syd and the Hangman; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
The Welland Canal is Open
The St. Lawrence Seaway, which is 50 years old, officially opened this year on March 20, tying 2007 for the earliest opening.
This means that the Welland Canal is open and the boats are back.
We have missed standing by the locks and watching the behemoths enter and leave. We have also missed the awesome optical illusion that occurs when one sees the ships from a distance appearing to sail through vineyards and fields.
We are glad to have the boats back!
The Hunter Family and the Gypsy Gene
A psychologist friend argues that some families have a ‘gypsy gene’. According to the theory, persons with this ‘gene’ love to take off for what seem to be greener pastures, while neighbours who lack the ‘gene’ are happy to stay put.
At the one extreme of ‘staying put’, there is the example of Adrian Targett who lives in Cheddar, England. Researchers discovered a 9000 year-old skeleton in a cave near Cheddar and when they compared the DNA in the bones of the remains with that of some of today’s residents of Cheddar, they concluded that Mr. Targett was a direct descendant of that prehistoric person. Some 300 generations later, Mr. Targett’s family is still living in the same location!
On the other hand, there are the Hunters---or, at least, the Hunters to whom I’m related---who must have acquired this ‘gypsy gene’ at some point in the 1800s.
As far as we know, my ancestors lived for centuries in the Scottish Lowlands, baking bread and getting along.
(A colleague in the government, Bill Stewart, who was Scottish-born---and had the accent to prove it---, told me I should be proud to know that the Clan Hunter was a sept of Clan Stewart. When I asked him what in heaven’s name a ‘sept’ was he explained that the Hunter Clan belonged to the Stewart Clan although it didn’t share the name. Apparently this meant that the Hunters fought with the Stewarts whenever the Stewarts felt it was necessary to crack some skulls, or whatever.)
Then, around 1830, the ‘gypsy gene’ seems to have come into the Hunter genetic makeup. My ancestors moved to northern Wales to bake bread for the workmen who were employed in a huge infrastructure boom, as companies rushed to build canals, aqueducts and railways.
In the early 1880’s, as the boom was coming to an end, my grandfather took his wife and two daughters to Australia. Then he moved his wife and four children back to Wales. And in 1907, he moved his wife and seven children to Toronto.
You can see what I mean by a ‘gypsy gene’.
Here are a few stories about the Hunter travels but I have to warn you that the stories are not backed up by much documentation. (What little we know about the Hunters is set out in a family tree website that my brother Jim and I are working on.)
There is, on the other hand, a fair bit of documentation for my mother’s family and for Pat’s family. I once told my father that I thought I would try to do some research on the Hunters, thinking he would be pleased but he said, “Do you think that’s a good idea?’ I tried to explain about the importance of documentation but he said, “Every family has skeletons in its closet. It’s better not to disturb them.”
I wasn’t sure then and I’m not sure now what kind of skeletons he was referring to.
Of course, one person’s skeleton may be another person’s amusing case of human frailty.
That reminds me of a visit I had from a genealogist when I was working in the Canadian Immigration office in Leeds, Yorkshire. He told me he had a client, a prominent Crown Attorney in Ontario, who wanted to know more about his British ancestors. My visitor told me that he had traced the family back to a man born in the early 1800s. The problem was that some of the man’s birth records were missing while others were incomplete.
The genealogist said that he had encountered that situation before and it usually meant that the person concerned had been born out of wedlock, had become prosperous and then arranged to have some of the records ‘disappear’.
The genealogist had come to see me to find out how I thought a Crown Attorney in Canada would react. “Would he be upset if I told him that it was likely that one of his ancestors was a bastard?”
I said that it would depend.
I, for example, would be amused but if the Crown Attorney was hoping to be able to tell his friends that he was descended from royalty, he might be upset.
My advice was that he should get his fees before dropping the ‘B’ bomb.
The Hunter Family from Wales to Australia
Grandfather Hunter went ahead to Australia, leaving his wife and two young children in Wales. He seems to have done well in the new country and regularly sent money home, some to be used for daily expenses and some to be banked for the eventual purchase of tickets to Australia.
Grandmother Hunter was impatient to join him but he kept arguing that he wasn’t well enough settled to welcome them properly. Finally, Grandmother, prompted probably by some understandable fears about what could happen to a ‘single’ man in a strange country, decided that the time had come. She wrote a letter telling him that she was packing, and gave him the details of the ship she and the children would be travelling on.
Unfortunately, the letter and the girls traveled on the same ship.
Grandmother and the children arrived but there was no husband or father to meet them. According to the story, it took a few days to track down Grandfather.
And shortly after that, the letter arrived.
We are not sure exactly how long they stayed in Australia, but it was probably about 6 or 7 years. Two children were born during the stay and were named after Australian cities, Sydney (Uncle Syd) and Adelaide (Aunt Ady).
From Australia to Wales and then to Canada
In the late 1880s, the Hunters returned to Wales to take over the family bakery in Cefn Mawr (the name means the top of a large hill, in Welsh) and using money made in Australia built a reasonably substantial family home with bright red, glazed terracotta bricks. Dad and my aunts and uncles would often talk about the glazed bricks---it was, they claimed proudly, the only house in Cefn Mawr with them.
Pat and I visited Cefn Mawr in 1962 and the house was still standing, with its shiny glazed bricks. We learned that the house had been taken over by the village as part of their housing for low-income persons. The council had called it Toronto House, in honour of the Hunters who had immigrated to Toronto.
In doing some research on terracotta bricks, I was fascinated to read in Wikipedia that “The colour of terracotta varies with the source of the clay. London clay gives a pale pink or buff colour, whereas the Ruabon (North Wales) clay gives a bright red.” Cefn Mawr is next door to Ruabon.
The encyclopaedia goes on to say that normal, soft-surface terracotta bricks absorbed soot and over time became permanently blackened. Glazed terracotta bricks were introduced around 1890 and soon replaced the older ones because they could be cleaned.
So Grandfather Hunter seems to have moved quickly to take advantage of the new bricks.
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On our visit to Cefn Mawr, we met a retired school teacher who had grown up in the village and knew my grandfather and some of my aunts and uncles. He said that the village children liked to visit the Hunter Bakery and watch my grandfather at work. I gather grandfather liked to put on a little show for the kids. One of his tricks was to use his elbow to make dents in pans of freshly-risen buns so he could add a raisin mixture.
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It is not clear why Grandfather decided, in 1907, to move the family to Canada. There were financial and economic problems in Britain about that time and these caused a huge surge in immigration to Canada. Perhaps that was the motivation for the move. But here is a story that my mother pieced together from hints and clues dropped by Dad and his brothers and sisters---who never talked openly about the reason for the move to Canada.
According to the story, two poachers from the village had been killing deer on the estate of a local squire when gamekeepers spotted them and chased them into the village. They were found hiding in Grandfather’s barn, taken before the local magistrate and found guilty of poaching. The penalty for poaching in Wales in those days was ‘birching’ in which the offender was struck with a cane until the back was covered with welts and blood. Then the offender was dipped in a vat of brine. The brine was to increase the pain of the punishment and also to make sure that the back would be covered with heavy scars.
A false rumour spread through the village that Grandfather had squealed on the poachers. Although the rumour wasn’t true, people stopped shopping at the Hunter Bakery.
According to this story, the family had no choice. They had to leave.
The Hunters in Toronto
As in the move to Australia, Grandfather went ahead but this time with three working-age sons (including my father, who was 14 at the time). They lived in rooms until my Grandmother and the girls arrived. The reunited family found a house in a low-rent area of the city.
The first summer after the family was reunited; Grandmother Hunter decided that the family should grow cabbages and store them for the winter, as they did in Wales. The growing weather was ideal and in the fall they stowed a huge crop of cabbages under the front porch of their rented house. The winter was much colder than in Wales and the cabbages froze solid.
My father loved to tell how the cabbage turned to mush in the spring and then, as the weather warmed, to sauerkraut. He said that many British immigrants made that mistake during their first year in Canada. As you walked along the street, you could tell the houses of new immigrants from Britain by the sauerkraut smell.
The part of Toronto where they first lived is now known as Cabbagetown, and is, of course, anything but a low-rent area.
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Once when I was young, I was looking through a box of books in the attic and found a book with an inscription, “To Alexander, good luck in Canada.”
I showed it to Mom and asked who Alexander was. She looked uncomfortable, and said that he was my Dad’s brother, my uncle, but that he was ‘bad’ and that he had “gone out west’. The family had no idea what had happened to him.
That was strange. I had never heard of an Uncle Alexander. Checking birth records recently I found that Alexander had been born in Wales in 1890, shortly after the return from Australia, and three years before my father was born.
He is shown in the 1911 Canadian census as living with the Hunter family on Oak Street in Toronto.
For years, I assumed that Alexander was one of the skeletons that Dad had talked about and I wondered what sins or crimes he had committed.
Recently a cousin told me there was nothing wrong with Alexander. She said she understood that he simply got fed up with the nagging of his mother and his sisters---usually about how much he could spend from his earnings, and how much he had to hand over to the family.
One day he set off for work with his lunch box, and never returned.
So, we are left with a mystery. What happened to Alexander?
My mother wondered if Tommy Hunter, the country and western singer, might be the offspring of Alexander. I sent him an email but never received a reply.
Uncle Syd and the Hangman
Uncle Syd was head of the Ontario Provincial Police detachment in Perth Ontario after the Second World. One of the people from the area had been convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. The Warden of the Lanark County Gaol asked Uncle Syd to meet the hangman who was coming on the train from Toronto.
Uncle Syd met the hangman, took him to the Gaol so he could drop off the rope he had brought in a large suitcase (he preferred to use his own rope), and check out the gallows.
Then they drove to the hotel and the hangman asked two favours. First, could my uncle have a piano moved to his room, and second could my uncle spend the evening with him. Uncle Syd agreed with both requests.
While the two men were having dinner, the hotel staff moved a piano into the hangman’s room. The hangman and my uncle went up to the room and for the next two hours the hangman played classical music. Uncle Syd said that he played well, and with feeling.
The next day, Uncle Syd drove the hangman to the courthouse. The hangman did his job and Uncle Syd drove him back to the train station.
They shook hands and the hangman climbed onto the train. Uncle Syd handed him the large suitcase, and the train pulled away.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
I mentioned in last week’s Posting (#13) that Pat loathes camping. I enjoy it and used to take the children off for a few days in the Gatineau Park, outside of Ottawa.
We camped several times in one of the ‘civilized’ sites in the Park (with flush toilets, showers and stone fireplaces). I then thought it would be fun to try one of the ‘wilderness’ sites. As usual, Pat would drive us up and drop us off.
As we drove to the Park, Pat asked whether there would be bears. I said I was sure there wouldn’t be.
As we drove into the wilderness site, there was a huge cage with steel bars resting on a trailer. The door of the cage was open and a large slab of raw meat was hanging from a hook attached to the roof of the cage.
A bear trap!
A good dinner was followed by a very nervous night of fitful sleep and wide 'awalkefulness'.
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On another camping excursion, we packed carefully, taking everything we could possibly need. At the site, I showed the kids how to lay a fire with dry leaves, twigs and branches and I asked one of them to get the matches. They looked at each other, and then at me. We had forgotten the matches. (We found a kind camper who shared his matches with us.)
The next time we went camping, we packed matches into every bag and box we took. And daughter Jen, who was very young at the time, coined the expression that has become one of the family’s sayings: “It’s better to have too much, than none.”
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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe! Posting #15 will include some stories from my years at Queen’s University.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
POSTING # 13
Strolling in the Park; Why a Cruise on the Thames?; Planning and Selling the Cruise; The Cruise Begins; The Proper Role of a Wife on the Thames (and in Life Generally). Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Strolling in the Park
This week Pat asked me if I would like to go for a walk and we went for a stroll in the Virgil Athletic Park.
Why am I bringing this up?
After all, a walk in the park isn’t newsworthy.
Or, is it?
Actually, it is.
Pat has had wonky knees for years and years. We first met in 1959, and I remember hearing her knees ‘pop’ whenever we went for a walk. Things got worse, what with pregnancies, ‘wiping out’ while chasing kids on a rink, arthritis, and all the stair-climbing involved in running a B&B.
A few years ago, I watched as Pat, sitting on a stool in our Grimsby kitchen, tried to decide whether the struggle to get to the fridge for an apple was worth the pain.
Finally, Pat decided the time had come to do something.
The orthopedic surgeon examining her x-rays said that she had the knees of a 95 year old person. He recommended two artificial knees.
The first knee was done in December 2006 and the second, 20 months later, in August 2008. (Each operation was followed by about two months of intensive physiotherapy.)
After our walk this week, Pat said she had enjoyed the walk, and had absolutely no pain.
It was hard to believe, after all the suffering.
When we told the children that Pat had asked me to go for a walk, each had the same response, “Mom said what?”
We are so very grateful for the extraordinary skill of our surgeon, Dr. Punthakee, and the support and care from the wonderful folks at the Hamilton Henderson Hospital, and the Hotel Dieu’s Shaver Health and Rehabilitation Centre in St. Catharines.
And, of course, for the often criticized OHIP.
Why a Cruise on the Thames?
I received a letter this week inviting members of the Jerome K. Jerome Society to its annual dinner on May 1, in Walsall, England. The letter said that this particular annual dinner “…is a unique occasion falling as it does on the eve of the 150th anniversary of JKJ’s birth---2nd May 1859.”
We won’t be able to attend, but the letter brought back memories of our 1991 cruise on the Thames from London to Oxford as we tried to replicate the journey described in JkJ’s book, “Three Men in a Boat---Not to Mention a Dog.”
When I was 13 or 14, I came across an old Ontario Reader in our attic that had an excerpt from “Three Men…” It described attempts of three young men in London in the 1880s to prepare for a boating holiday on the Thames.
I found it hilarious---and still do.
(Perhaps you are familiar with the story. If not, “Three Men…” is now available on line here
and you can check and see if you think it is funny---humour is a very individual thing. On the website, scroll down to Chapter IV, and about half way through look for a section starting, “I said I'd pack.” Don’t forget to come back to the blog!)
Later on, I read the whole book and it became one of my take-to-a-desert-island books. I used to keep it by my bed and read it when I felt blue. It worked better than any sleeping pill.
I remember once reading it to the children and laughing so hard I had to stop to catch my breath. When I looked at the children, they were studying me with sober faces, totally perplexed, wondering if I was OK.
When I was in the government, I had a friend who had seen some terrible fighting in World War II. He said that when he was lying in a foxhole, listening to artillery shells screaming overhead, he would return to the same dream: of the greenhouse he would buy after the war and the flowers he would grow. (He joined the government instead but when he retired from the public service he bought a greenhouse and grew flowers.)
During bureaucratic battles in the public service, my sanity dream was to be able to retrace the journey in “Three Men…”, ---to cruise along the Thames, visit the pubs, restaurants, and historical sites mentioned in the book. I also thought that I might be able to occupy part of my retirement life by writing about our trip. I might write some travel articles or even a book.
As the date for retirement (1991) came closer, I kept asking myself, “Why not?”
I sounded out Pat but her reaction was definitely lukewarm. She had some good reasons. First, JKJ is not her cup of tea. Second, the trip on the boat sounded a lot like camping and Pat loathes camping. Third, there were her wonky knees---could she clamber in and out of boats and walk on wet decks. And, finally, we had absolutely no experience of boating, except for the odd trip in a rowboat on a quiet lake.
Clearly, I had a real challenge ahead of me---to plan and sell the idea of a cruise.
Planning and Selling the Cruise
The big thing was the boat. I felt sure that if Pat liked it, all the other pieces would fall into place.
In 1988, three years before my retirement, we were in Windsor, England, for a brief holiday after a conference. Earlier, I had contacted a company in Staines---a town on the Thames between Windsor and London---that rented boats. They had a boat that would sleep up to 8, in case we could persuade our children and their partners to join us for the retirement cruise.
We drove over from Windsor and the owner took us down to the dock and showed us an example of the boat I had selected. The cruiser was bright yellow (one of Pat’s favourite colours), and 39 feet long. I saw Pat’s eyes widen a bit. This wasn’t some dinky boat with a canvas top that leaked when it rained.
Pat managed the step onto the boat with no trouble, and the owner took us on a tour. There were two bedrooms and two bathrooms (OK, I know they are ‘heads’ but I don’t want to pretend that I am anything but a landlubber) with showers. There was a small but amazingly well-equipped kitchen with an eating area that converted into more beds at night.
There was also a central heating unit (propane) for cool nights on the river.
This was definitely not camping.
The owner took us to the bridge and showed us the controls. He said everything was designed so that a total novice could run the boat.
He started the engine and it purred with a satisfying sense of power.
Now, Pat loves to drive things. She learned to drive a car at 13 and has test-driven a tractor, a front-end loader, an all terrain vehicle and has always dreamed of driving an 18 wheeler.
As she stood on the bridge, it didn’t take much imagination to realize that she was seeing herself at the controls, plowing upstream under full steam (or, diesel).
We came off the boat, and Pat was sold.
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As the next step, we went to the JKJ Museum in Walsall, near Birmingham, and did some research on the writer. Much of the information we obtained is now contained in the JKJ Society website for anyone who wants more information on ‘himself’.
In preparing for the trip to Walsall, I had gone to the Windsor train station to phone the museum about directions and hours. The line was poor and as I talked two buskers moved close to me and started playing guitars and singing loudly. I put the museum person on hold and asked the buskers if they would move away.
One of them grinned at me, “What’s in it for us? It’s a market economy, man.”
They continued strumming and singing, just as loudly, or perhaps a little more loudly.
I finished the call and shook my head at the buskers in what I hoped was a show of disappointment. My old-fogey reaction was that this would not have happened in the 1960s during our time in England.
Prime Minister Thatcher and her market economy, I fumed, had made the UK more competitive but at a cost.
The Cruise Begins
The two-week cruise began in November 1991 with Pat and I and our son David, the only family member who could get away (and he could only stay with us for part of the trip).
After we had loaded our belongings and groceries onto the boat, a marina employee came on board, started the engine, and gave us instructions on how to move the boat into the river. The Thames at Staines is about 200 feet wide, enough width to give us some practice in steering, going forward and backward, under the eye of the employee. He also ran through some of the details about taking on drinking water, getting rid of sewage (at marinas), fueling and so on.
Then after about twenty minutes, he asked us to steer the boat close to the shore by the marina. I thought this was some kind of mooring practice but as we came close to the shore, he said, “There’s the first lock up there. Good luck.”
And he jumped ashore.
Wow!!
I had expected at least an hour’s coaching with lots of time for questions and answers. And suddenly, we were in charge of an expensive boat, heading for a lock, a lock that we had absolutely no idea how to get ourselves into or out of.
Luckily, the gate on the lock was open so we didn’t have to tie up and wait for it to be opened. We crept into the lock, terrified of crashing into the far-end gate, and managed to get ourselves positioned along the wall of the lock. The lockmaster shouted down for us to throw up ropes at the front and back of the boat. He slung the ropes around bollards (stubby iron posts) and, passing the ends back to us, told us to keep the ropes tight as the water filled the lock.
At that point, we began to breathe again.
The lockmaster closed the gate behind us and water began to fill the lock. As the water rose, the lockmaster gave us some advice on the stretch of river ahead of us. (We learned later that the lockmasters referred to the yellow boats from our company as ‘the yellow peril’---full of novices ‘who could be counted upon to do the damnedest things’. Looking back, I think they secretly enjoyed the arrival of a yellow-peril boat because it would break the monotony of what was a pretty boring job. With one or two exceptions, the lockmasters were great.)
When the water reached the top of the lock, the lockmaster opened the upstream gate and we were off for Oxford---only 30 or so more locks away.
The Proper Role of a Wife on the Thames (and in Life Generally)
We didn’t go very far the first day, feeling jet-lagged, and finding a quiet meadow we decided to moor there for the night. We drove some iron stakes into the field and tied the boat snugly front and back. Although tired, we managed to eat a huge dinner and then went to bed.
As the days passed, we became used to the boat and the Thames. David proved to be very adept at driving the boat, so Pat and I looked after the ropes in the locks---Pat took the stern rope because the deck was flat and therefore kinder to knees, while I took the bow with its sloping deck.
Pulling into one lock---I won’t mention which one in case the lockmaster is still there--- David did a good job of guiding the boat into the lock and Pat and I did the rope trick. The lockmaster leaned over and said, “The Lord has given us a beautiful day.”
We looked at each other as much as to say, “Oh, what is this?”
During our six years in Britain in the 1960s with Canadian Immigration, it was rare to hear someone make a religious comment like that.
In fact, many people left blank the Religion box on the Immigration Application form. Our superiors in Ottawa always complained about blank boxes so we would say to the people, “C. of E.?” (Church of England). The people would generally nod as though to say, ‘whatever’. (Soon afterwards, Canada stopped asking about religion.)
To continue the digression, (JKJ loved digressions!), the Immigration Form also had a blank box labeled SEX, with no M or F to tick. I remember interviewing one older couple, and, checking the husband’s form, found that he had written in, ‘Satisfactory’. I then checked the wife’s and she had also written, ‘Satisfactory’. I would love to have been a fly on the wall as they were filling out the forms and hearing their conversation when they got to that question. (Ottawa soon added M and F boxes.)
Back to the lockmaster, he complimented David on how he had handled the boat coming into the lock.
Pat doesn’t know what possessed her, but she said to the lockmaster, “When we come back, I will be driving the boat.”
The lockmaster looked at her for a moment, and then said, “And I will run.”
Perhaps realizing that he was on shaky ground, the lockmaster attempted to bolster his position by saying, “The Good Book says, ‘Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord’” (he seems to have been quoting Colossians 3:18). In other words, God doesn’t want women in control of boats on the Thames, (or, in the view of that lockmaster, of anything else).
Now, let’s try a bit of British understatement.
Pat has strong views about any person, organization or religion that tries to tell women what they can or can’t do.
Really strong views.
Pat took over the driving responsibilities after David had to return to his studies, while I looked after the ropes. As we cruised up the river, Pat kept muttering that she would practice until she could enter that SOB’s lock perfectly. She would show him!
The day finally came, on our way back to Staines, when we had to enter the SOB’s lock. The weather was perfect, lots of sun but very little wind to blow the boat about. Pat was at the wheel, getting herself psyched up.
She confidently eased the boat into the lock until it was exactly between two bollards, and then used a bit of reverse thrust to hold it there. I did the ropes and we waited for the lockmaster to operate the machinery to close the upstream gate and open the valve to drain the lock. Then he came back to see us.
Pat looked at him, triumphantly, “See, I did it!”
He looked at her for a moment, then said, “God bless”, and walked off.
Pat is still irate that he got the last word.
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We had a British couple at our B&B in Grimsby a few years ago, and the man noticed that the wife next door was mowing the lawn. He said that would never happen in Britain and he thought it would be good to introduce that notion into their country. His wife said, “He thinks he’s so funny”.
I wonder if driving boats and mowing laws are still reserved for males in Britain. We may have to go back and conduct some research.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
First Ride on the Pony
When they got together, my dad and his brothers and sisters would sometimes bring up the arguments they had when they were young about who would have the first ride on the pony that my grandfather had hinted he might buy.
They would laugh about how silly the arguments had been, and would joke about what each of them had said and done. But after a time, the laughing diminished and the joking stopped, as they moved, imperceptibly, into a sibling fight. Soon they would be accusing each other of always wanting to be first at everything, and on and on. There would be much shouting.
I remember once saying to my mother, who always stayed well clear of Hunter arguments, “But in the end they never got a pony.”
“That’s right”, she said and shook her head as much as to say, what can you do with the Welsh?
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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe! Posting #14 will include stories about how the Hunters moved from Wales to Australia, back to Wales and then to Canada.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
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.)
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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”.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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”.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
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.
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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.
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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe!
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.
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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.
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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe!
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