The Squamidian Report – Apr. 14 / 18

Issue #829

Including:
From Lorne
From Russ
North Nova News
The Ontarion

Hi All,

The blue locktight didn't hold. Thats understandable I guess because the tiny threads in the screw hole on my glasses frames were stripped and therefore there was nothing for the screw to grip, therefore nothing for the locktight to lock. So, the lens that fell out a week ago fell out again. This time I was not sitting quietly on the couch. No. This time I was driving. Concerningly, I had just driven all the way down from Squamish, right through down town Vancouver and had pulled into a parking spot in the parking garage of the airport, YVR. Had the lens popped out while in that city traffic it could have been, well, interesting to say the least. The reason I had driven to YVR was because 'The Wife' flew home on Wednesday morning and I went there to pick her up. Which I did. Luckily for me, I never go anywhere without my prescription sun glasses. Normally not needed on a dull overcast day but rather handy to have none the less, given that I had to drive home again.

On the way home we stopped at the gondola and went up for a bite of lunch and then completed the trip home. After dropping off 'The Wife' I headed back down to the glasses place and requested that they fix said glasses again and suggested that a lens falling out while driving was not acceptable. I even suggested that they install a longer screw and simply bend it over so it couldn't pull out as a last resort if nothing else worked. The woman that had fixed them the first time plugged away at it and then asked another woman for help as she was having difficulties. This second woman, a bit more experienced, also had trouble getting a screw to bite and hold. Because I could see and hear them, I suggested that those tiny little screws were actually tiny little bolts that went into a threaded hole, too bad someone didn't make a tiny little nut to go on the end of the tiny bolt. That way stripped holes wouldn't matter as the bolt could be tightened right up. Both women looked at me, then at each other, then I could almost see the lightbulb come on as the 'experienced' one opened another little drawer and dug around, coming up with, you guessed it, a tiny little nut made just for those little screws. They had a whole box of them. Two minutes later my glasses were fixed and should stay that way. Puzzling that I had to suggest to them a solution to a stripped glasses frame hole,  but it worked and now they know. My work is done.

Getting back to driving through down town Vancouver during mid morning traffic... Not fun at all, made much worse by the pedestrians that are all over the place like maggots on a dead pig. They simply do not pay any attention to the traffic signals or the traffic. At one intersection the street I and countless other drivers were on had the green light and yet a pedestrian simply walked out against the red. He never looked either way. What he did was point his arm straight ahead as if that somehow made it all right and safe. At other intersection a woman with a kid about 3 years old in tow crossed against a red and then headed for the other side on an angle. Crazy. Its like they are asking to be hit. Perhaps they are, thinking that they will get rich on the insurance settlement or some such dumb thing. It boggles the mind.
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I wanted to make as good of use of the last few days of solitude in our house as possible, meaning as little background or accidental noise as possible, so to that end I managed to fit in one more recording session before my time ran out and 'The Wife' came home from Ontario. So, I dug out another old standby, a song written by Ian Tyson decades ago when he was still the other half of Ian & Sylvia. He wrote this song while in Vancouver and its bases, loosely, on his life as a seasonal logger, which he was for a time before making it in the music industry. Here then is my cover of Ian's song, Summer Wages.
Summer Wages

doug
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From Lorne

Hello again,  Sometime back I reported  red squirrels  had found their way into the basement and chewed  holes through the ceiling. One even came up into the sun room and chewed the window screens trying to get out. That ended up reconstructing the room downstairs at a cost close to $ 7,000.00 and another $ 200.00 for new screens. So far no further entree to the house, but there is at times a warm car just sitting there in the driveway waiting for the little bastards. And that is where they have been spending cold nights. The sound insulation under the hood has been chewed and ripped out. The car was new July 2016 with the lease running until July 2019. Without the sound barrier, it does not sound new any longer. Also, do I, or should  I get the material replaced so that they can start all over again or live with it that way, ever mindful of those F---- little red devils. In any case, I am responsible for any damage when the car is returned at the end of the 3 year lease. Makes me wish I hadn't surrendered my gun during an amnesty, protected or not.   PS, I won't  even mention the mess  and destruction in the tractor shed, green house and catch all shed.
Lorne
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From Russ

I jotted down some thoughts I might share with our loyal readers.......
There’s not a lot going on.
Nothing much happens here in Point Clark during the winter months - -
None of my clocks run backwards.
No huge tree limbs fall onto my buildings.
Nobody forgets to pick me up and drive me to church.
Nobody forgets to drive me home again.
Nobody knows I miss my wife almost as much as I miss my dog, so
there’s not a lot going on, except:
I saw not one, but two frightened animals, running down the road in front of my ‘wee’ cottage a short time ago; at first I thought they were somebody’s pet dogs which got lost...but wait, they wore no collars! They looked something like Huskies, but had much longer legs than dogs. They were silver-gray with some brown markings; one was larger, and the smaller appeared to be bumping into, and leaning upon the larger one, biting at the other’s mouth....a mother and her nearly full-grown pup? They were moving fast, in a southerly direction, not bounding, but trotting and with their long legs, covering a lot of ground in a short time; they’d apparently been running long, as their tongues were ‘hanging out and flopping in the breeze’.
 
There had been sightings of coyotes in the area recently, but this pair didn’t quite fit the description. Could they have been coy-dogs, or coy-wolves, or wolves? Coy-dogs grow larger than coyotes, and coy-wolves grow larger than coy-dogs, while eastern timber wolves are somewhere in between. I doubt they were timber wolves, their habitat does not range this far south, but if food is scarce up north, they might come down our way, as there is plenty of bush-cover, and their food is plentiful here in Point Clark. I actually have a family of rabbits living under my deck as we speak.
 
Researching the “Authorities”, indicates; “A coy-dog is a canid hybrid from mating between a coyote and a dog. This is rare as their mating cycles do not coincide. Coyotes are usually antagonistic toward dogs. (Something like my wife was toward me at breeding time)
A coy-wolf is descended from a coyote and an eastern wolf.
A wolf-dog is a canid hybrid resulting from a “love affair”(my words) between a domestic dog and one of five other horny(my words) wolves; I) grey wolf, 2) eastern timber wolf, 3) red wolf, 4) Ethiopian wolf, or 5) arctic wolf”.
According to the photos (Google), the animals I saw most closely resemble the coy-wolf.
 
You may be interested to know, our eastern coyote has the morals of an alley cat; it’s actually a four-in-one hybrid of; coyotes, eastern wolves, western grey wolves, and dogs.....I guess you never know who you’re going to ‘run into’ in the bush on a dark night.
 
I warn everybody I see, NOT to leave their pets outside alone....and NEVER at night! Cats and dogs are “soft targets” for the predators we have seen around here.
 
Next week (if there is one), we’ll ‘talk’ about some other unusual sightings, but like I said, there’s not a lot going on.
 
Uncle Russ, your two-finger typist.

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North Nova News

It's been a long slow maple syrup season this year.  Saturday we are doing our 3rd boil down so we have collected enough sap.  Usually its all over in about 6 weeks, this year we are into our 10th week, its been so off and on.  It will be fun gathering around the fire watching the sap boil for hours and hours.  That's fun in Nova Scotia!!

We have had some spring days and then winter strikes back with cold temps and more snow.  I find spring in Nova Scotia doesn't exist, we seem to jump into summer sometime in late May or June.  Where it pays off to live here is the summer, fall and winter.  The summer has nice temps not too hot, the fall stays pretty much like the summer and the winter is a real winter where you can do your winter sports.

We are starting to see more deer around so its good to keep your eyes peeled when driving.  I always had deer whistles on my last car and luckily I never hit a deer.  I'm not really sure if they work but for ten dollars it's worth a try.  It seemed like when I saw a deer while driving they were aware of me but there is no way of knowing what they will do.  They are not street smart since they will run right into a car.  My theory is to always be looking for them and be ready.  Blowing the horn sometimes makes them dart in another direction.

I have a new car now with all the bells and whistles and safety gadgets so I was wondering why they haven't invented a sound to avoid deer built in too.  I will suggest that to Honda!
Sus
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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello everyone!
I was just thinking the other day that the owners of such empty stores, as the Target Store on Ottawa and Strasburg Rd should do something with all that vacant space. I thought of them maybe turning that store into a roller rink! Why not? There aren’t any that I know of in the KW area at this time and when I was a kid and a teenager Kitchener Auditorium and several other large open surfaces around the twin cities were used as roller rinks and they were so popular that they were filled with skaters at least three days a week. I’m sure the owner made a bundle and it gave the kids and teens a place to be on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday night and sometimes on Wednesdays and Sundays too! It was great fun and a good source of exercise as well! I started to roller-skate when I was a young kid on the sidewalk in front of our house and a neighbour friend of mine suggested we go to the Auditorium and rent skates and give that a try. We did and we got hooked very quickly. We both went and bought roller skates at Mel Weber Sporting Goods and Hardware on Ontario St S. I was in grade 7 when I started skating and my new skates cost me $27.00 at the time and were size 11’s. I still wear the same size and the old skates still fit me to this day! I haven’t had them on in years to see if I can still skate but I’m sure I could still rock on! We used to skate from 7pm until 10pm on at least two nights a week but when I could afford it I went three times a week to the Auditorium in Kitchener.

Once I hit high school at KCI I met a fellow skater in grade nine by the name of Joe Doczi and he invited me to join his roller skating club called “The Tornados” and we bought purple jackets with a crest on the back. The crest was a large whirling tornado with a roller skate in the middle and the name Tornados across the back of the shoulders. We were COOL indeed! The main members were Joe Doczi, Ian Kuntz, Frankie Geistel and Joe’s brother Alec and of course myself. We had a great time for a couple years tearing up the rink at the Aud. Of course once I was established and familiar with the social scene at KCI I switched from being a Tornado to just skating without the club jacket. The jacket thing was no longer cool when I started skating at “The Briar”! The Briar was actually the Glenbriar Curling rink in Waterloo beside “Sonny’s” Drive In Hamburger Restaurant on Weber St N. The building is still there to this day but it’s now a Home Hardware Store. Back then it was the in place to be when it came to roller-skating. All the cool kids went to The Briar to skate and most of the RB’s from KCI were only seen at that particular rink. So to fit in with those kids and get into the Westmount area parties a few of us from the North Ward started to skate at Glenbriar too. It worked out well and I skated there all of my high school years. The thing to do was to skate there on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights and afterwards when the skate evening ended we’d all slip next door to Sonny’s for a burger and fries! It was an easy hop and a great place to hang out for the rest of the evening. The Greasers parked their cars on the South side of the parking lot and the RB’s and Wannabe’s would park on the north Glenbriar side of the lot. Sonny’s was the in spot for the go crowd as the Record reporter once called it in an article he wrote about drive-ins around KW. There was a little bit of under aged drinking that went on in the cars around the lot and of course there was the odd fight on Saturday nights as well. I can admit to being involved a few times in altercations with a couple jerks that were just asking to be punched out! I went home with sore knuckles on several occasions and I remember one doosie of a black eye but I usually had bragging rights for coming out the winner! Either the cops would show up and we’d scatter in all directions or one of the participants would say he’d had enough and call it quits! It was a lot of fun and if you lost you wouldn’t show up at Sonny’s for a few weeks after your defeat! Hahahahaa……… Those Were The Days!

Anyway, several good years were spent in that social ring and after high school it was pretty much forgotten. Roller-Skating was so much fun and it’s a shame that kids today don’t have that outlet to expend their energy in a positive way. Now they just hang around bars or well, I’m not sure what else they do for entertainment on weekends. Maybe they mostly sit at home with their eyes glued to a video game monitor and get fat or high! I’m sure there are a lot of those times happening! I was never into video games but of course they didn’t exist when I was young! It was either find a local house party or go “Roller Bootin’ “ or get in your car and cruise the drag on weekend evenings. Of course almost every evening would wind up with a cruise up to Sonny’s to see what was happening! With that as a destination even for a quick end to an evening drive, we’d have to have a burger or fries or both. I actually use to like their hot dogs better than their burgers and I wasn’t really much of a French fry person. I graduated to eating fries a little later in life but still like both their dogs and their burgers. However since that kind of food was a major contributor to my health problems later in life I’ve put an end to visiting Sonny’s or any other burger style joint in existence! LOL! I know its no laughing matter but if we had only known what we were doing to ourselves back then we might not have indulged in so many thousands of “burger-joint” products! Oh well, no sense crying over spilled milk as my mother used to say! If I ever come back as another human being I hope I’ll remember not to repeat the same mistakes food-wise!

That’s about all l have to say for this week folks!
It’s been a fun ride thinking back on those skating days and nights and I hope it brought back a lot of good memories for some of you that were once skaters as well!
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>
Good health is wealth!
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Have a good one..
the doug
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