The Squamidian Report – July 16 / 16
Issue #738
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
We were trying to come up with the answers to several mysteries, all of
which took place along the Panorama Ridge trail. The first and most
obvious mystery was who, or to be more precise, what, was leaving piles
of purple poop on the trail. There were, and are, fresh piles pretty
well every morning. The poop looked very much like bear skat during
berry season except that it was too small. Whatever was leaving the
dumps of purple poo was definitely eating the ripening wild blueberries
that grow all over the place along the ridge, this deduction being
based on rather close observation of the offending plops. The first
choice of culprit was a bear cub but that left the question: where is
mom? No one has seen any sign of an adult bear in the immediate area
and if she was around, she'd be leaving much bigger deposits on the
trail because face it, bears have a rather interesting sense of humor.
If it were a raccoon, well, it would be showing up around the lodge and
basically making a nuisance of itself, and, no one has seen raccoons up
there at all. Next mystery is: where have all the chipmunks gone? By
the end of last fall the whole trail was almost over ridden with them.
They had discovered that people could be convinced to hand out treats
and had become quite proficient at mooching from the tourists. There
doesn't seem to be any at all out the trail and only a few hanging
around near the lodge deck. The same question applies to the grouse,
where are they? After an active mating season there should have been
hen grouses leading young chicks all over the place. None! And finally,
what creature was leaving those unidentified tracks in last winter's
fresh snow. The tracks started showing up about mid winter.
One of the head trail keepers finally came up with an answer. The
guilty party is a Martin. Not related at all to the guitar type Martin,
but one of those big weasily animals that eat any and everything, can
climb anywhere and can dig anywhere. This guy has pretty well cleaned
out all the wild life along the ridge. Assumably this is how nature
works and the creature will literally eat itself out of house and home
and then move on to greener pastures. Hopefully it will leave before
there is nothing left to repopulate the area. Or, perhaps a cougar will
decide that it would make a nice dinner. That too is how nature works.
There was little bit of interest in the link I included last week, the
one about the earth's orbit. So, I'm including another one this week
from the same source that clarifies our understanding of astronomical
distances. This is an area that is pretty well beyond most of us. Once
we leave Earth, distances are simply too big to grasp. Face it, space
is made up of mostly just space. If two galaxies were to collide, as
they sometimes do, there is so much empty space and distance between
the stars within those galaxies that the chances of any stars actually
hitting each other are remote. Its not really fair and is perhaps a
dirty little trick being played on us that astronomical distances
between anything 'out there' are so big because it makes going anywhere
almost impossible. The fastest thing we know of is light and it takes
light years to get anywhere beyond our little world. Our chances of
actually going anywhere past our solar system is almost none existent,
at lease based on our current understanding of physics. But then at one
time no one thought most of the things we do now would be possible so
there is always hope. Anyway, you might find this information
interesting.
http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/how-far-is-a-light-year
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello Everyone!
Just thought I’d bring you up to date on the
interesting week we’ve had since last we talked. Way back in 1975,
Carole and I bought our first new house. We had owned a semi detached
home for 6 weeks very early in our marriage in 1973 but sold it after
that short period of time at the advice of our real estate agent to
make a quick buck. We had purchased it just to do exactly that but
figured it would take a year or so to turn it over. After only 6 weeks
we received a call from the agent that sold it to us with the promise
of turning it over to make some money. He said he had a couple
that wanted our style home and would pay cash if they could have it
within two weeks. He figured we might be interested in a very quick
profit and he was right. He brought the couple over for a look through
the house and they offered us $8,000.00 more than we had paid only 6
weeks earlier. We were not interested in staying in a semi at the time
anyway so we agreed to the sale! We were out in two weeks and moved to
an apartment in Lakeshore Village. We lived there for a year and then
bought the brand new Dutchman Home in Laurentian Hills area of
Kitchener. We moved into a back split on Calmcrest Dr and lived happily
there for five years. While living there we had new neighbours around
us that were all newly married and within a year we all had new
additions to our families. We had three other couples that we struck
friendships with that lived within a house or two in either direction
from us. Since we were the second house from the corner Blackhorn Dr
and Calmcrest Dr, we had a couple named Paul and Barb that lived just
around the corner and their back yard butted into ours. We became
friends and associated almost every night with them, Ron and Jacquie
who lived beside us in the third house on Calmcrest Dr and also Fred
and Lois who lived in the fourth house on our street.
Every night after work we would gather on the front porch or in the
back yard of one of our houses and drink coffee like it was going out
of style! It was the only beverage any of us could afford in abundance
since we were all young and had mortgages and jobs that didn’t pay much
at the time. Only on special occasions could or would we afford to have
booze in the house so, coffee it was! We all had a lot in common in
those days and made our own entertainment as we laughed and joked with
each other in the evenings, especially when the weather was good. We
did things like BBQ together and gather to swim in Paul and Barb’s in
ground pool. They were the older couple by 4 years and had enough
resources to have a pool! We spent many many fun days and evenings and
special occasions together over those first five years and have said
many times since that they were the best five years of our marriages! I
guess as far as having a good time with the neighbours went anyway.
We’ve never had such a good relationship with neighbours living around
us since and the rest of our “Laurentian Hills” group has said the same!
One of the fun things we did as friends back in that time was to
purchase “Mopeds”. Ron and Jacquie had purchased theirs first and it
was a blue Peugeot. It was fun to take turns riding it on the street
out front so we all decided to see if we couldn’t find one for each
couple so we didn’t have to expect Ron to share. Carole and I bought
one out of the KW Record for $75.00. It needed a bit of work but I
finally managed to get it running well with Paul’s help as he was a bit
of a mechanical guy. He and Barb bought theirs next and not long after
that Lois and Fred found one in the local paper. We finally had four
bikes that we could ride together. What fun we had taking turns with
the girls riding the Mopeds. First they would take off through the
neighbourhood and be gone for half an hour and then the guys would jump
on the bikes and drive off into the distance. The rest of the
neighbours must have thought we were nuts as we hooted and hollered
while racing up the streets of Laurentian Hills! These mopeds would
likely only run at about 15 mph top speed but they sure were fun! After
the first week of this kind of silliness, the girls decided we should
have matching tee shirts to wear while riding our “motorcycles”! They
went out to a local print shop and bought 8 baby blue shirts and had
“HELL’S MOPEDS” printed on the backs in bold black letters! What a hoot
it was to see us terrorizing the neighbourhood as the “HELL’S MOPEDS”
biker gang!
We really did have fun for that first five years of our early
marriages. As time would have it, we all drifted apart and built
careers and homes in different parts of the city. Paul and Barb had
even moved to Florida about 10 years after our first homes. We had kept
in touch with them for sure as they had gotten Carole and I interested
in vacationing in Florida quite often. We would vacation mostly in the
Clearwater Beach area. Paul and Barb moved from Florida back to St John
NB, which was their original hometown. They kept a condo in Florida and
spent their summers in St John. They didn’t like the winters so they
would spend them in Florida. Paul had a business here in Kitchener as
well as eventually one in St John and would operate them long distance
during the winter. He still has a business in St John and now they live
back in St John permanently! They decided to move back to NB to be near
their families in their senior years. Their daughter lives and works in
Florida.
About two months ago we got a phone call from Barb saying she and Paul
would be coming to Ontario for a celebration of another couple’s 50th
anniversary in Ottawa and would like to come to Kitchener while up this
way to spend a couple of days with us! We were totally thrilled that
we’d be seeing our old friends after 12 years! The last time we had
seen them was at the funeral of a mutual friend we’d met through Paul
and Barb. He had passed away and we drove to NB to attend the funeral.
Being such a long distance away, we had drifted away from seeing each
other as you can imagine! Well, we got a phone call on Sunday night
last weekend and it was Barb saying they were in town and had taken a
motel room. We of course gave them heck for not coming to stay with us
as per our invitation but they did not want to “put us out” as Paul
said! It would have been no imposition at all of course but he was just
being his usual polite self I guess! After all, they had hosted us a
good dozen times while they were living in Florida and had always
insisted we stay with them while vacationing there! Anyway, they were
here for two days and we spent the whole time with them and taking them
around to see whatever it was they wanted to see after all these years.
We called Jacquie and told her they were in town and met her on Monday
morning at their motel restaurant for breakfast and a good gabfest! We
hadn’t seen Jacquie since the early years in Laurentian Hills. Ron had
passed away and she had remarried 28 years ago so she had a new life
and was very happy. It was amazing to see her again and the five of us
had a great morning together. She had to get back home after a couple
of hours as she helps her husband run their business and only had a
couple of hours to spare. We then drove to Paris Ontario to visit Lois
who had also lost her husband Fred. We didn’t know that Fred had died
but we had known that she had married a second time to a gentleman
named Laverne! When we arrived at her home in Paris, she told us that
Laverne had also passed away four years ago. We were saddened to hear
that but she’s doing quite well again and was very happy to see the
four of us once again as well. We went out to lunch with Lois and Paul
and Barb and once again had another good visit until late in the
afternoon. It was actually funny when Carole mentioned that this had
been the first reunion of the “HELL’S MOPEDS” in 36 years! We all had a
good chuckle out of that and vowed to make a point of getting together
on a regular basis or at least much more often that we have been doing
in the months and years to come!
The second day we spent with Paul and Barb we
visited all the houses in Kitchener that they had lived in over the
years and took pictures of them in front of each house, that was a hoot
for both them and us. We stopped at the houses we have lived in as well
and it turned out that our first semi detached was only a block away
from Paul and Barb’s first house in Victoria Hills area of Kitchener
and had we walked around the block back in 1973, we might have bumped
into them sitting on their front porch! I know, that’s a long shot but
what a coincidence that two years later we did live next to each other
and became life long friends!
This whole situation reminded me of one of my favourite Ann Murray
songs with the line “Hello my old friend, gee it sure is good to see
you again! No it doesn’t matter how long it’s been, just open up the
screen door and c’mon in!”
The fact is that no matter how long it is between visits with Paul and
Barb, when we do see them it’s like we had only seen them yesterday and
we pick up as if no time had passed at all! What a lovely feeling to
have friends that are so imbedded in our lives that it’s that easy to
continue a great relationship!
We do value all of our friends and I’ve had that
same friendship with Doug over the past 18 years and sincerely hope it
continues for another 18 or more! LOL!
So next time you and Sue make it to our neck of the woods Doug, “Just open up the screen door and c’mon in”!
That’s it for this week folks!
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
Something To Think About>
“Live a good, honorable life… Then when you get older and think back, you’ll enjoy it a second time!”
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Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.
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