|
The
Squamidian Report – Apr. 1 / 23
Online
Versions
Of This And Past Issues Issue
#1088 Russ Nova Scotia Sus The Ontarion
Attention Walmart Campers... You thought I was going to say ‘shoppers’ but no, I did in fact say ‘campers’. We have a Walmart in this town as do most towns, it’s not a very big store in the theme of things, it’s under staffed, and I almost never go in there. I hate the place and the kind of consumer greed it encourages. But there is something interesting about it and presumably other Walmarts like it. It lets a cast of transient people live on it’s parking lot. These ‘camper van’ dwellers live in their campers, their vans, their motorhomes and need somewhere to park. Official campgrounds are too expensive and usually full and tend to limit the amount of time a van dweller can stay but Walmart seems to let them stay as long as they want. There were around a dozen or so camper type vehicles parked on this Walmart lot all winter. Now that it is early spring that number has climber up close to twenty. Most are pretty beat up units, one has an old trailer hitched to it with an equally old beat up boat on the trailer. Others are fairly good looking units that appear to have been cared for, at least a bit. I guess as long as the store sees them as customers they don’t mind but what a disappointing way to spend your days, camped out at Walmart. If I’m coming across as judgmental, well, that’s what us old farts do and I’m as old and farty as they come. * We seem to get a few days of cold wet weather and then a few days of nice mild sunny weather, then back and forth and back and forth. Early this week one of our riding friends wanted to do a toot up to Pemberton for lunch so that gave me a good excuse to tag along for a nice ride. Our sunny days tend to start off cold, like about zero and then warm as the day wears on so you have to dress in layers. We hooked up at a local gas station about mid morning. By then it was up to about 6C but there was a strong blustery wind that made for interesting riding where ever it funneled through the various rock cuts along the highway. Otherwise the ride up was quite enjoyable. Riding through Whistler was dusty due to all the sand and winter crud still on the road, and riding along Green Late at the north end of Whistler was ‘different’ because that large lake is still totally frozen over and therefore extremely white and bright to the point of being almost blinding. From Whistler on up there is still lots of snow along the road and in the forests but the roads themselves are dry but dusty. The highway between Whistler and Pemberton is always very bumpy, always was and probably always well be. No matter how many times they fix it up, winter conditions seem to un-fix it really fast. It’s basically bump, bump, bump, and so on. My Harley Sportster suspension was never built for that so it becomes a bit of a workout but, it was a nice ride. Pemberton, for those of you who don’t know, is a small village in a long narrow valley surrounded by high steep mountains, very scenic and very nice as long as you are not there during tourist season. In fact the only time to go there, or to Whistler, is mid week and ‘out of season’. But like I said, another great and enjoyable ride. We got there, had lunch, then headed back down. Once down past Whistler the temperature started to rise which was good. Both places are north from the coast and fairly high in elevation so they stay cold longer in the spring but get very hot during the summer. When we got back to Squamish I decided to continue on down to Porteau Cove just for the fun of it, and so I did. Here we are outside the restaurant in ‘down town’ Pemberton.
Parked down at Porteau. By this point I had to remove some clothing layers, and us bikers like to part where ever we want.
Just another shot of this grumpy old man and his trusty steed.
doug ****
From Russ
April Fools' Day......we can also call it "All Fools' Day". Has anyone played an April Fools' Day joke on you lately? Me neither - is it a gonner? It's been around a long time. "On April 1, 1700, English pranksters began popularizing this annual tradition of April Fools' Day by playing practical jokes on each other. Although the day, also called All Fools' Day, had been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures, its exact origin remains a mystery. Some historians speculate that All Fools' Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563. People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January1st and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1st, became the butt of jokes and hoaxes. Harmless pranks were played on these fokes> Having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as poisson d' avril (April fish), said to symbolize a young, "easily hooked fish" and a gullible person. April Fools' Day spread throughout Britain during the 18th century. In Scotland, the tradition became a two-day event, starting with "hunting the gowk," in which people were sent on phony errands (gowk is a word for Cuckoo bird, a symbol for fool) and followed by Taile Day, which involved pranks played on people's derrieres, such as pinning fake tails or "kick me" signs on them". Reference "Thunderbird". ENOUGH HISTORY ALREADY!! Have you ever been the brunt of an April Fools' Day joke? How did it make you feel? Shamed? Hurt? Maybe that is why the custom is fading into the past. With your permission, I'll relate one such prank played on my mother and me. Picture this: Around 1939 when I was 10 we lived in a small village on Highway #8 around seven miles east of Kitchener. There was one General store in Centreville owned and operated by the Forler family. We purchased most of our groceries from Forler's, so we were well-known, good friends with them. One day, I was sent to the store to buy $2.00 worth of sliced belogna (the cheapest meat available), Mrs. Forler had recently purchased a new meat-slicer (hand-cranked), and was very proud to slice things for her customers - always giving one thin slice to the purchaser (excellent advertising). She gave me a very thinly sliced piece of "chilled balogna" which we called ""Baloney" - boy! that baloney tasted good!! \ Then, when I handed her a $2.00 bill (now extinct) she said, with a straight face, "Oh, Dear - you don't have enough money! Go back home and tell mommy you need another $2.00 as bologna has gone way-up in price". Well - mom was shocked to learn the cheapest meat available had gone up so much. But because the balogna was what she'd planned for supper, she mumbled something as she dug deeply into her purse and took out every *penny, nickle, dime, quarter, and one *50 cent piece (pennies and 50 cent pieces now extinct). I returned to the store with a pocketful of heavy change, and as I dumped it all on the counter I said mom had scraped-together every last cent to make up another $2.00. Yup! You guessed it! Mrs. Forler was playing an April Fools' joke on us. She laughed (her big, fat belly bouncing up & down - she was a very short woman, as big around as she was tall). She gave me something (a treat?) and sent me home with $2.00 worth of sliced Balogna AND all the change I'd brought!! Mom was not amused. Russ. PS I couldn't find either "balogna" or "baloney" in my 1973 Dictionary so if they are misspelled el tougho shito. PPS Think it's time for a new dictionary!! ****
From Nova Scotia Sus
It may be spring but it looks like winter is going to give us one more blast of snow. Up here in the hills the snow has not left yet. Those who live in the lower parts are totally bare for quite a while. My clients are always surprised when they come for haircuts and see the snow banks. We leave our snow tires on well into April. Our springs tend to be sluggish and our summers and falls are wonderful. Before I moved here I made sure to visit my family in Nova Scotia after June. My sister Michelle and I would build a shelter from the wind while trying to get a suntan. The beaches here are beautiful and the water too cold before July. Then it was jellyfish time and trying to avoid them while swimming. When their tentacles touch you it's like a sunburn. The salt water helps to kill the pain. As you can see I'm not much of a swimmer. I love the view and a walk on the beach. Now a days owning anything on the water costs a fortune so living only 20 minutes from the water is free to enjoy. Sus ****
The Ontarion
Hello everyone! I’m not sure if any of you have ever heard of a southern Ontarion town called Hagersville but a few years ago it was quite famous for having the largest Tire Fire in history! That fire burned for a whole week and then some before they finally extinguished it! This past couple of months their branch of the Canadian Legion has been cconducting what they called a “catch the ace” fund raising lottery. It was a new one on me too but I finally got involved today along with our son Adam. The lottery was one where you would buy a ticket for $5.00 or three for $20.00. When you purchased a ticket you would print your name on the ticket along with your phone number and then you would also print your choice of one of the 52 numbered envelopes posted on a board at the legion. Each envelope had a playing card inside and if your ticket was drawn, you would win 20% of that weeks ticket sales money. Then they would take the envelope number that you had also printed on your ticket and open it and take the playing card out of that envelope. IF that card was the Ace then you would also win Half of the total ticket sales money as your grand prize. This lottery has been going on so long and became so popular that they were making the news each week to see if anybody won! The ticket sales were done at the legion only every Thursday so once a week someone won the weekly prize and possibly the grand prize of half the total take of ticket sales. It went on for so long that the sales reached into the hundreds of thousands each week! The news showed the huge line ups of people each week that gathered and stretched for blocks around the town! The prize was listed last Thursday as being 1.5 million so after seeing that on the nightly news, I decided that I would go to Hagersville today and buy a three ticket package. I talked Adam into going along with me today to pick up my tickets. Since the line up was so large each week I phoned the local grocery store there and asked the girl who answered the phone if she knew the best time to join the line. She was kind enough to give me advice on the best time she thought to make the trip to Hagersville to hit the shortest line. She told me that they lined up from 3am so the best time to attend was between 5pm and 7pm when the line was shorter to her knowledge from her observations on previous weeks. SO Adam and I got into his truck today at 1pm for the hour drive to Hagersville. We arrived shortly after 2pm and finally found a parking spot about two blocks from the legion. When we walked to the Legion, we found that the OPP were there keeping order of the traffic and the line up for tickets. We walked down the street in front of the Legion for a long block with what looked to be about 500 people along that stretch. Then we turned right at the next block to be faced with another long block of people in line. Then there was a left turn onto a third long block of people lined up. Then there was a fourth and a fifth block lined with literally several thousand people hungry for tickets. At that point we debated giving up and buying some store bought Lotto Max and 6/49 tickets in stead of the Legion Tickets. Finally I said to Adam “oh well, we’re here now so lets just stand in line for a while and see how quickly it moves along!” Well, it didn’t take long for the line to form behind us by a few hundred people so we stuck it out! We figured it would take about three hours in line for us to reach the Legion but to our surprise it only took 1 hour and 49 minutes and we were in the door of the Legion and had our tickets. They were still allowing the members of the Legion to gather inside and drink and eat so we were herded into a back room where there were volunteers selling the tickets. It only took us about 10 minutes to buy and fill out our tickets and get out the door to the street once more. We then walked the two blocks to Adam’s truck and headed for home. We were home by 6pm and enjoying our supper and telling Carole all about our adventure of the day! We had purchased three tickets for each of us including Carole and decided to watch the draw live at 8pm on Facebook! We settled in to the family room with great anticipation that we might win when the odds were so much better than those of the huge weekly lotteries I buy tickets for on a regular basis! We waited with baited breath and the ticket was finally drawn! To our dismay, the winner was a man named Richard something or other. He was the winner of the weekly prize of $172,000.00 and when they opened the envelope that matched one of Adam’s chosen numbers it happened to be the Ace and so he also won the grand prize that totalled two million and three dollars or some such giant amount! Had they drawn Adam’s name on the ticket, then his choice of envelope number 51which was the same as this Richard guys Adam would be a millionaire at this very moment! SHUCKS!!!! So close and yet so far! Oh well, it made for an exciting day and a fun evening! It only cost the money for the tickets each and some gas for Adam’s truck to make the trip to Hagersville! The chances were much better than in most draws but for most draws we don’t have to drive 65kms to get a ticket! LOL! It was a fun day but my poor old knees were aching by the time the day was over! I think I’ll stick to my weekly draws from now on and I only have to walk up the street to the plaza to buy them! LOL! Before leaving for home we went into the Foodland grocery store where I had talked to the woman about the line ups and I purchased my weekly Lotto 6/49 and Lotto Max tickets! Maybe they’ll bring me more luck from Hagersville this week! Fingers crossed! I hope you all enjoyed my adventure for this week! That’s it for now and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next time in The Ontarion Report! Bye for now…..stay safe and keep well!
Greg. ****
Take
Care |
