The Squamidian Report – July 7 / 18
Issue #841
Including:
From Lorne
From Sus
From Russ
The Ontarion
Hi All,
We've had the girls here for the past week (exhaustion) and our
raspberries have been ripening daily. The girls love the fresh berries
but being as young as they are they do have a bit of trouble picking
for themselves given that raspberry stocks can and do fight back and
there is some need to pick only the ripe berries and leave the rest for
another day, a concept they don't quite get. So, I've been picking them
daily and dividing them up into two equal piles to be wolfed down
faster than the speed of light. Where this is actually going is that it
reminded me of the gruesome task of picking raspberries as a kid up on
the farm. Perhaps its just my personal memory of how it went but I can
still feel the itch and sting. Berry picking would happen on Sundays
that were too wet to do any field or barn work, so, in other words, in
the rain. Rainy week days were used for things like mending fences and
cleaning stables. There would be lots of raspberry canes along the
edges of the fields where the swamp or forest started, and were the
mosquitoes started as well, big time. Our hands would be scratched from
the prickles, both itching and stinging at the same time, and we would
be endlessly tormented by the bugs. We'd be cold from being soaked as
both the rain and the shoulder deep weeds would be drenching us. I can
still see my hands turning wrinkly white while decorated with red
welts. I can still remember tripping and falling and losing the hard
earned contents of the basket I was picking into. You couldn’t pay me
any amount of money now to pick berries in the rain, be it at the edge
of a swamp or anywhere else for that matter.
Then there was the raspberry patch up the hill from the homestead when
we were kids. It was part of the garden belonging to our neighbors, the
Schnieders. (As in the meat company). They had several long rows of the
domestic variety that grew tall and fruited with very large tasty
berries. My brothers and I would sneak up there after dark and gorge
ourselves, picking blindly by feel. No way at all of knowing what else
besides berry was ending up in our mouths but as kids we didn't really
care about such things and we did manage to survive so I don't suppose
we ingested too much none berry material.
As well, there was a market gardener just up the road from the
homestead that grew strawberries. And we did the same thing during
strawberry season. We'd sneak over under the cover of darkness and
stuff our faces, by feel of course, until we could eat no more. Seems
to me mosquitoes played a large roll in both of these endeavors as well
but not the rain, we'd forgo the endeavor if it were raining, we'd had
enough of that level of discomfort up on the farm. And, at least
strawberries don't have those tiny little prickle things. Ever try to
get them out of your fingers when they are too small to see or get
ahold of. You could feel them but not find them. Hated that.
Then there were the blueberries back in the peat swamp, again, guarded
vigilantly by those mosquitoes. (In those days the peat swamp was a
very large dark deep swamp that bordered the old roadway that the
homestead was on). We were still quite young at the time were were
going back into that swamp to where the blueberries were. They would be
growing in the cleared areas that had been where the peat moss was dug
out from (I guess). As we got older, the area grew over and we stopped
going in there for them (I'm guessing again, but for whatever reason,
they stopped being there in any volume worth going after and we stopped
going after them). I do remember being in there, trying to put the
berries into the basket and not my mouth because once you started to
eat them you could no longer successfully save them. It was impossible.
Same with any other kind of berry, once you give in to the temptation
to taste, you would loose any discipline you thought you had and would
fill your face instead of your basket. But I digress... we would head
in and pick until the mosquitoes drove us back out. Years later,
somewhere in the 70's, and long after the city had pushed River Road
through the swamp I was driving along there and had to pull over for
some reason that now escapes me. Something caught my eye along what was
now the tree line back from the road. I walked over and found
blueberries, lots of them, growing on nice big healthy plants. I was
both surprised and delighted, and decided I'd come back on the
following weekend to pick those beautiful berries that no one even knew
were there. I couldn't do it at the time as I was on work time. So,
nice and early on the Saturday morning I drove over to the same spot
along the road where it cut through the old swamp, parked, and headed
across the ditch over to where the berries were waiting in abundance.
Much to my horror, between the time I'd discovered them and the
weekend, the city had sent in a big tractor mounted mower to cut back
the vegetation along the roadway and they had cut it right down to
ground level all the way to the trees, totally destroying the
blueberries. I still silently weep inside my head when I think back on
that. I, and the berry plants, were devastated. I went back about 20
years later just to see if any recovery had taken place and all I found
was choking thick weeds growing higher than I was and still am tall.
And that is perhaps why I guard my personal little back yard blueberry patch as selfishly as I do.
doug
****
From Lorne
What horrible news about our Shannon Falls. We haven't heard
where the 3 persons entered the water or where the bodies were
recovered.
(Explanation..... Higher up, above the 'visible' section of the falls
and somewhat hidden in the canyon or ravine cutting down the mountain
side, are many shorter sections of the falls where the water has carved
bowls into the rock. So, you have a falls ending in a deep bowl then
the water flows over the lip and falls again. These bowls are a popular
place for young 'locals' that know where the trails are to get to them.
Normally they would go there later in the summer when water flow is at
its lowest but right now due to snowmelt high up the falls are roaring,
and icy cold. People jumping into one of these bowls would be like
dropping an insect into a flushing toilet, they are carried away
instantly. In the case of the 3 that jumped in or fell in, they were
washed over a 100 ft drop and slammed into the bowl below where the
force of the water pinned them to the bottom of the bowl. It was a
major and very dangerous exercise for authorities to extract the
bodies. Turned out there were 4 of them but one managed to not go into
the water, and called for help. They were a group that had travelled
all over the world videoing themselves doing 'extreme' activities and
then posting the videos on line and had in fact been denied entry by
some countries because of their risky activities. They won't be doing
that again.)
*
The
following is a complete turnaround from the usual and tender viewers
may choose to read no further. Last night I dream't that I
am back in my 20s or early 30s, up North at Spanish, Ont. There, only
in my dream, is a very ornate Presbyterian church, it may have been
Anglican or it could be Methodist. Who cares? Word got out that
they needed an organist for Sunday. I may have jokingly commented
that I could play. So an attractive lady from their congregation
approached me. I replied, in my dream, I would love to play your
'organ'. She thought I meant her church organ. So as dreams go, I was
stuck! I had to show up and play Sunday morning. Being young and
full of p--- and vinegar, I decided to give it a try. First an
early morning swim in a nearby lake then off to church. While enjoying
the cool refreshing dip, someone stole my clothes, leaving me
with only my wet swimming trunks. Arriving at the church quite late,
someone ushered me in through the basement and up a back stairs,
leading directly to the pulpit and organ. There I pose, dripping
wet wearing only you know what, before a very Sunday best
congregation. P.S. If anyone want's to read how it
all turned out, let me know and if I can remember, you know how dreams
tend to fade away in time, I kind of plan to conclude in next week's
Squad.
Lorne
****
From Sus
It's going to be a busy summer with all our guests coming for a visit
this year. My niece, Michelle and her daughter Emilie will be
arriving from Switzerland on the 17th of July. A week later her
husband, Sven, is coming too. I haven't seen Michelle is over 5
years so its all very exciting. They plan on doing some whale
watching down near Digby and swimming at our nearby beaches. They
also expressed an interest in helping us with our gardening, chickens
and whatever other projects we have ongoing. They live in the
city of Zurich and do not have the luxury of being in the countryside
that much. I have been preparing for their visit since early
spring. We have a cabin on our property that was used for extra
company in the summers. It had gone downhill over the years and
its only purpose was for storage. Since buying my parents
property we have brought it back to its real purpose. We call it
the Gallery as my Dad had many of his paintings on the walls. He
used to sit in there for hours smoking and analysing his art.
So now it is a gallery and a bunk house and its beautiful once
again. I think our guests will love it. It will get lots of
use this summer as we have other guests coming before and after the
Swiss. Hugh Cameron, from Wellesley, is in Antigonish at this
moment judging at the highland games. He comes every year to
visit after the games are done. We always enjoy seeing
Hugh. We will have some great meals and the usual gin and tonic
drinks he makes for us. In August we have more company coming
from Massachusetts for a week or so.
Well I'm off to work. It's very busy this time of year, everyone
needs a haircut! I'll be off for 3 weeks starting the 17th to
spend time with my family from Switzerland who I don't see enough.
Have a great summer everyone,
Sus
****
From Russ
"exhume" " or "disinter”
Basically, both these words mean “to dig up”.
May I beg your indulgence? Please allow me to “dig up” some memories of
events long ago....what it was like being a city cop in the middle of
the last Century. What follows may be considered ‘a new slant on old
digs’.
Picture this: I was about 25, recently married to a beautiful widow
with two young sons; Mac about 8, and Greg about 5....what a time to
change careers!! I’d been working at various jobs related to
electrical construction, trying to build-up 4 year’s experience which
would entitle me to attempt the “written test for Journeyman
Electrician”...and I passed!! (barely).
It was a good Trade until the United Electrical Workers’ Union had,
through outlandish demands, obtained higher wages for us, but lowered
“skill standards”. It didn’t matter how sloppy the work looked,
as long as the job was done quickly, and (hopefully) to Code!
The Trade looked ‘shaky’, so I looked elsewhere. I applied to the OPP
and to the City of Kitchener Police Department....was accepted by the
OPP (after a long delay), but had already been accepted and hired by
the KPD.
I have to confess here, that my ‘quick success’ in being hired by KPD
was likely due to the fact that the ‘sexy young widow’ I married was
the daughter of a KCI teacher who was a close friend of the secretary
for Honourable Board of Police Commissioners, and NOT due to my
‘credentials’!!
This ‘cocky upstart’ had never worked ‘shifts’, and found himself
walking the streets of Kitchener all night long (from 11:30PM to
7:30AM), and was ‘dead-on-his-feet’ long before relieved by a day shift
cop.
Us rookies wore our ‘civies’, and were supposed to be learning the
‘challenges of a beat cop’ from our mentor (usually a 1st class
constable with “all the necessary skills”). But I never realized what
some of these so-called “skills” were; like where to get free coffee,
free baked goods, free watermelons, and even free ‘full-course meals’!
The motto of a seasoned cop is: A good cop never gets; tired, hungry, thirsty, wet, too cold or too hot, or caught short.
Endurance was something I learned very quickly. There was ‘no excuse’
for getting tired on the night shift; several commercial buildings on
King Street had offices on the second and third floors which we were
“protecting”...that is, ‘rattling’ the office doors to see if they were
locked, and if we found one ‘insecure’ we’d enter, look around for
signs of burglary, and if all was OK, we were to phone the police
station and ‘report the insecure’, following which, the cop on the
switchboard would contact someone responsible for security of said
office to come and see that nothing had been disturbed, then they would
lock same and go back home to bed/nookie. As you can see, all
this took time, but we didn’t mind as it was a break from the drudgery
of constant ‘beat-pounding’.
“Rattling doors” of the upper-floor offices took us off the street, and
temporarily relieved us of providing police protection for the
Citizenry of our beloved Kitchener. (We thought)
It’s hard to believe, but some of us cops abused this ‘relief’ by
‘catching forty winks’ while “safe from the elements, and out of the
Public eye”.
“Was there no supervision by senior officers?” you ask.
Answer: yes, but we soon learned their modus operandi, and made sure we
were ‘visible on the street’, giving us a ‘successful meet’, which
covered both our asses! These meets, or visits with a Corporal or
Sergeant were ‘recorded in our police notebooks, and were vital in
establishing where we were at a given time.
*
Next week we’ll talk about cops carrying their own ‘personal alarm clocks’.
By your old Uncle Russ.
****
THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
Well, it’s almost the middle of July and we still don’t have the MG
back in our possession. I was down to Blair today to visit the body
shop that’s doing the work on the car and finally saw it in it’s newly
painted state! It’s looking beautiful and the owner of the shop has
promised me that we’ll have it by the end of next week. He has some
parts on order that won’t be in until late next week and we just
have to be patient until they are here and installed. Once they arrive
from California he’ll install them and the car will be complete! I
won’t post any pictures of the car unfinished. I want to wait to have
it home before showing the world the lovely job they did on it! So
until then, we’ll all just have to wait for the big reveal!
*
Last
weekend which was the Long weekend of Canada Day Carole and I went up
to Amberley to visit Doug’s uncle Russ for the very first time. We
contacted him on the Friday to see if he’d be around home on the
Saturday. He was very gracious and wrote back telling us that he would
indeed be home all day and was looking forward to meeting us for the
first time. I do think we met him and Bobby way back on the occasion of
our first visit to a Brubacher function. It was on the occasion of
Lorne and Vivyan’s wedding anniversary at the BF Goodrich club out on
Erb St W and I’m not sure which anniversary it was but it was one of
their many! Neither Russ or Carole and I remembered that meeting so
this visit was essentially our first! Carole and I left home around
10am on Saturday and began our drive to Ontario’s West Coast as they
call it. It’s actually the eastern shore of Lake Huron. Russ had given
us turn-by-turn directions to finding his home. It was easy to follow
his printed directions and they took us directly to his door. It’s
actually to his back door as his drive approaches the house from the
back of the structure. The front of the house faces the lake and there
is no driveway up to the front entrance. It took us around three
hours to arrive at his home and upon our arrival there was no answer at
the door. I guess Russ had his TV up pretty loud and didn’t hear our
knock. Carole used her cell phone and called Russ’s number and when he
answered he asked where we were and if we were lost? LOL! Carole said
no we’re not lost we’re standing on your porch! He answered the door
then and we all had a good chuckle about the situation. He graciously
invited us inside to the cool air and we chatted in his kitchen for the
first few minutes. Our intent was to visit with him for a while and
then the three of us would go out to lunch, on me of course!
We spent the first hour talking in the living room and catching up and
of course we weren’t lost for something to talk about. We yacked about
our past and with Russ being a former police officer and my being a
former Fire Fighter we had a lot in common! We seriously could have
talked all afternoon and evening I’m sure but the three of us were
beginning to get a little hungry! We decided to head to a small
restaurant not too far from Russ’s place for lunch. I had told Russ
that we were going to come to visit him and then take him out to lunch.
When it came time to go out to eat Russ insisted that we allow him to
treat us to lunch since we were technically his guests and he’d like to
treat us! With little resistance to his charm we accepted his offer and
away we went. On the way to the restaurant he gave us a bit of a tour
or the area. It was formerly a cottage settlement but is now a growing
permanent home development for quite a few people. Sounded like most of
the residents are now retirees! We entered the restaurant and were told
that the air conditioning was not working that day so as it turned out
it was quite warm in the place. We chatted for a while as we waited for
our order to arrive at the table. Of course Russ being the charmer that
he is the waitress on duty was well acquainted with him as a local
resident. This made for quick and efficient service so we didn’t have
to wait very long for our meals to arrive. As we ate at a leisurely
pace we talked more and more about our past and his. He’s quite an
interesting gentleman to converse with and we enjoyed the visit very
much.
After lunch we were happy to get back into the Jeep to the
air-conditioned comfort. The day’s temperatures were in the low to
mid-30’s range and very humid indeed. We decided to stay in the AC and
drive around the area a little more. Russ was kind enough to take us to
his church and show us where his lovely wife was interred. As he
mentioned in a previous Squamidian edition, the head stone is marked in
the reverse order to where Bobby is buried. She should be buried
beneath her name on the head stone but during the burial she was
mistakenly buried on the left side of the plot under Russ’ nameplate.
Many people have given Russ suggestions as to how this can be rectified
but he hasn’t decided what he’s going to do about it if anything. After
visiting Bobby’s gravesite we drove around the subdivision as Russ
pointed out some of the lovely homes and cottages owned by the people
he knows from living there for the past 8 years. I related a story from
my youth to him about my venturing up to that exact cottage area with a
friend by the name of Bob Baier. His dad owned a cottage in Russ’s area
and in the dead of the winter of 1965 Bob’s dad asked if he and I and
another friend by the name of David Bernhardt would take the day and
drive up to the cottage and clear the snow off the roof of their
cottage so it wouldn’t cave in from the weight! So with a sense of
adventure in our youth we of course said we would do that. Bob had just
been given a new Jeep CJ as a 16th birthday gift by his parents who
were quite well off financially. They owned a company called Baier Fuel
Oil and liked to spoil their two boys!
We spent more than four hours driving up Hwy 86 to the cottage and once
there it was indeed a challenge to drive up the tiny cottage road (that
is still there) through a ton of snow to get to the cottage. Even the
lovely red Jeep had trouble getting through the heavy snowfall that was
common in those years. Once at the cottage we found that there was no
way we’d have the job done before dark that day. So we decided to stay
for the night and do the clearing of the snow in the morning. Of course
over night there was another huge snowstorm. In the morning we
literally had to force our way out of the cottage as the door was
covered up to eye level in snow from the night before. Once we got
outside we discovered that the Jeep was also almost completely covered
in snow. We spend a good half hour digging the Jeep out of the snow
before starting on the cottage roof clearing. We worked on clearing the
snow off the cottage roof for the better part of the day and finally at
around 2pm we were finished and could head for home. Bob’s dad had
given Bob some money to buy us lunch while we were doing this task for
him and of course we were enormously hungry by the time we finished
making our way our of the cottage development. We had only eaten
chocolate bars and potato chips and drank a 6pack of Coke for
nourishment while working. It was quite an adventure and finding an
open restaurant in those days was a chore. We had to drive all the way
south on Hwy 21 to Goderch before finding a food source. It was a
second long day before we arrived back in Kitchener. Of course there
were no cell phones in those days and our parents were quite worried
about our well being when we hadn’t made it home the day before! After
the two-day trip we most certainly had a good story to tell! In fact,
it’s still a good story to tell as you can see! Funny how after all
these years this story can be tied to one of present day! Of course I
didn’t go into as much detail telling Russ the story but he got the
point. He told us that there isn’t nearly as much snow up that way in
modern winters but he still gets quite a bit each winter.
Anyway, we topped off our visit with Russ by spending another hour in
his Kitchen talking and then decided to head for home. We had taken Hwy
86 all the way from Elmira to Russ’ house but on the way home to KW I
drove south on Hwy21 to Goderich and then hopped onto Hwy 8 that took
us all the way to Stratford and then of course to Kitchener. As we
approached Kitchener, we decided to detour to St Jacob’s to visit our
favourite restaurant and partake in their delicious dish of liver and
fried onions which we have only once every six weeks or so. We
thoroughly enjoyed our meals and headed for home. I had forgotten that
a meal of Liver and Onions causes my right ankle and foot to flair up
with Gout!!! OUCH!!! By the next day I had such a sore foot that I
could hardly walk on it. I contacted the Doctor on Tuesday and it took
until Wednesday before I finally received the prescription for
medication to combat the Gout. Consequently, the Gout has taken hold
very badly and it’s taking the medication longer to calm the soreness
down! I’m still suffering and it’ll likely take a few more days before
I’m relatively back to normal when I walk (Or should I say hobble)
properly! I can’t help but think that my Liver and Onion days are over.
I truly don’t wish to have this problem occur again. That’ll learn me
not to think with my stomach! LOL!
Well, I guess that’s enough of my gabbing 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>
Make someone happy today, mind your own business!
****
Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
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