The Squamidian Report – Apr. 30 / 16
 
Issue #727

Including:
The Ontarion

Hi All,

Question: how do you bring a whole town to its knees for 3 days straight?
Answer: pave the 3 main highway intersections at the same time!

And thats just what they did. To make it worse, there is no alternate route available for the mainest, main intersection. There is only one way into and out of the down town. The other two main intersections are the ways into and out of the Highlands and each is the other's alternative route. And, given how things are done around here, no one thought to set up detour signs or routing, leading to mass confusion and congestion. Where our morning rush hour usually lasts about ¾ of an hour, during paving, rush hour lasted all morning as drivers were basically trapped. Rush hour ended because people ended up going home instead of to work, they couldn't get across or onto the highway. It was kayos. Well, small town version of kayos. I can't imagine what those of you in the KW area are enduring with your LRT fiasco.

The reason these intersections needed to be paved is because this highway was rebuilt as a showpiece for the 2010 olympics and all the provincial government was interested in was ascetics. They wanted it to look good to the VIPs that would be heading to Whistler, assuming said VIPs even bothered to look out the darkly tinted windows of their limousines. For that event, on one else was even permitted on the highway. I digress. The government and contractors cut just about every quality corner they could. They used the cheapest materials available and the cheapest and fasted construction methods available. End result, the highway has been falling apart since the day it was finished.

The paving is over for now, at least through those intersections. That was a long three days.
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I was sitting in the living room the other evening, softly strumming my guitar and letting my mind wander way, way back to my earliest days of strumming guitars. Like about 50 years or so ago. I was trying to dredge up some of the tunes we were doing back then. At the time was was playing in a little country group with my uncle. It was about as 'hick' as it gets but to me as a clueless kid in his mid teens it was pretty cool. I didn't manage to dredge up any old tunes, they are just too far buried beneath the cobwebs. However, I did totally inadvertently realize something kind of interesting. My Martin guitar is not the first Martin guitar I'd ever played. Aside from test playing them in the music stores which doesn't count, I truly though mine was my first. As I sat there strumming, a long lost memory came out from under the layers of time. Here's what happened....

We had played in some little institute hall somewhere near Shelburne (Ontario). The main members of this little band were a mother and her two daughter as well as my uncle and an old fiddle player. We were all invited back to someones house for a party. I don't remember but I doubt I was very impressed with the idea as partying in the middle of the night would not be very high on my list, now or then. These two daughters had a local reputation for very nice harmony, and they were asked to sing a song. Someone handed me a guitar to accompany them. I remember being quite taken by the fact that is was a Martin. I had never seen a Martin in real life. Lots of people had Gibson's in those days as they were less expensive than the Martins, and for someone to pull out a Martin was quite something. I also remember that guitar looking a bit beat up, indicating it was old, or oldish, because no one in their right mind would abuse a guitar like that. And that was 50 years ago. I will never know if that guitar even still exists but if it does, it would be worth a fortune now. So, if you ever find yourself invited to a party in an old house somewhere near Shelburne, check the closets and under the beds just incase its there and long since forgotten about. You could retire on what any collector or well to do musician would give you for it.

And if I had to hazard a guess as to what that song was, well, I'd say theres roughly about a 50/50 chance it was the Jack Greene version of 'There Goes My Everything'.
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello everyone!
I wonder if it’s taking as long to get into winter in Australia, as it is to get into summer here in Canada? It’s getting awfully darned tiresome putting up with this on again off again ccccold weather! I’m almost wondering if I made a mistake by putting the snow blower away in the shed for the upcoming summer! With the below zero temperatures that we are having most nights it makes me wonder if we’re going to wake up to 6” of snow again some mornings! LOL! So far it hasn’t happened but there is no doubt it is a possibility! Way back when our son Adam was born on May 31, 1976, we awoke that morning to find snow about an inch thick on the ground and on the heads of Carole’s lovely blooming tulips in the garden. We were  surprised to see that when the weather had been quite warm and everything had been in bloom for several weeks already. Oh well, it’s Canada and like they say, “If you don’t like the weather, wait 24hrs and it’ll most likely change!”.
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     Like most men, I’ve always been a bit of a car nut and have proven that by the rather large number of vehicles I’ve owned since my 16th birthday. I believe the list has reached somewhere around the 45+ vehicle mark. I started with a $100.00 1951 Morris Minor 1000 and that lasted about a year before the front suspension fell off one day as I made a right hand turn a few blocks from home. That was the end of that little beauty! For the most part, my taste in vehicles and the value and condition of all those that followed did improve as years went on. I’ve had a real variety of vehicles and I must say have only been disappointed in a few of the many. The worst of all was a 1975 Ford Pinto “Woody” station wagon that we purchased from a used car lot in Preston Ontario because Carole thought is was “cute”. It ran like a piece of s_ _t from the word go and was nothing but one problem after another. We held onto it for about 6 months and after paying $2500.00 for it and sinking an additional $1500.00 into it in repairs I finally stuck a “For Sale” sign on the front windshield at a friends “Garage Sale” one sunny Saturday and about 15 minutes later had a fellow stop and look at it. He asked how much I was asking and I said “The first person to hand me fifteen hundred bucks get’s it!” He asked if I’d be willing to deal on the price. I asked what he meant by that and he told me that he was an upholsterer by trade and he’d be willing to recover some furniture for me along with his offer of $1000.00 cash. I showed him my pick up truck sitting across the street and asked if he’d be willing to recover the bench seat in the truck along with the $1000.00 for the Pinto and he said “No problem!” and asked when I’d like it done! I told him he had a deal and he offered to do the seat two days later. I delivered the Pinto to his shop in Bridgeport on the Monday after the sale and he handed me $1000.00 in cash. I picked out the fabric I liked for the seat and picked up the truck two days afterwards. I finally felt some good had come from the Pinto as I sat comfortably on my new truck seat on the way home!

Over the years I’ve had a lot more successful experiences with my vehicles than the Pinto one. At one point I was the proud owner of the fastest Mini Cooper “S” in Ontario. It was a ’67 “S” and from the factory it produced a paltry 72 hp from it’s 1275cc 4 cylinder engine. It just so happened I had a good friend by the name of Ron Shantz who was Ontario’s Grand Champion sedan race circuit driver and he raced in a Cooper “S” at places like Mosport Ont and Watkin’s Glenn NY. He was a Tool and Die maker by trade but was also an ace mechanic. He owned a small mechanical shop out on Victoria St N in Kitchener where he built his own racing Cooper. He offered to build my engine into something that would blow the doors off most big block “Super Cars” of the 60’s that roamed the streets of KW back then. I took him up on the offer and after three weeks he phoned me to say that my car was ready to pick up. I had my brother drive me out to pick up the Cooper S and when I first saw it it didn’t look any different under the hood than when I dropped if off at Ron’s “Auto Race Developments” shop. The only difference was that Ron had painted the engine a shiny plain grey colour and it had an “Auto Race Developments” red and white sticker on the valve cover. I asked how it turned out and he said he only made one mistake and that was that he had made my Mini faster than his race car! He said he could hardly believe how fast my Cooper was when he took it out for it’s first test drive. We hopped in and he took me out Victoria St towards Guelph and as we left the Traffic Lights at the intersection of the bottom of the Breslau hill, I couldn’t see the cars behind me for smoke! Not the kind you get when a vehicle burns oil, but the kind you get when a race car burns the tires off with sheer power! He showed me that he could floor the Cooper in third gear at 60 mph and the tires would smoke till he took his foot off the accelerator. He said even his race car wouldn’t do that. I had a ball bopping around town and cruising the drag in my newfound super car! I shocked the heck out of many hot big-block American built “Muscle Cars” just like Ron said I would and left them in the dust.

The following week, Ron called and asked if I would drive him down to Toronto to visit a fellow race driver with him. It turned out that this fellow driver was the son of one of the biggest Chevy dealership owners in Ontario. His dad had a full race-building shop as part of his dealership. In that shop he had a dynamometer, which is a machine that tells you how much horsepower a vehicle is putting out at the wheels. They use this machine to test race car engine power. Ron and his friend put my Cooper S on the dyno just to see what the horsepower was that my new engine now developed. The machine showed that the little 4-cylinder engine was now putting out 110 hp at the wheels. This meant that little guy was producing as much power in weight to horsepower ratio as most 427 cu in / 425 hp monster Chevy’s or Chrysler Hemi’s of the day! At only a mere 1000 lbs it was every bit as fast as the much bigger and more powerful machines. I loved that little car and so many big block owners that got to know my car around town were awestruck when they came up against me on the streets of KW. I would say that the Cooper S was the most fun vehicle I’ve ever owned and I wish I still had it to this day. The fellow I sold it to drove it out to Calgary when he moved out there and that was the last I heard of it. Some day I’ll own another one but I’m sure I’ll never match the fun of that vehicle!

Well, enough car-talk for this week!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report.
Bye for now … Greg

PS: Something To Think About>
If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around.
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Have a good one..
the doug
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