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The Squamidian Report – Mar. 3/18
Issue #823 Including: From Karl Stink by Russ Hi All, Normally at this time of year I'd be chomping at the bit to get the bike out. Here we are at the first weekend of March and in past years I'd put the motorcycle back on the road on the first nice weekend of this month. That wasn't always the first, but the first nice one which was often the second or so but the point is this should be just about time to pull the cover off and check out the machine, then start her up and let her purr. But not this year. We are somehow stuck in early January. Have been since well, early January. By now the alders should be spewing pollen, the grass should be green and sunny days should be warm. Not happening. We've been getting snow and or wet snow mixed with rain. Its been snowing hard at higher elevations. Thats ok because it means a good snowpack up where its needed to supply summer water for the rivers and creeks. But come on, its early March now and we are still having January temperatures, Vancouver and area keep getting hit with snowstorms when the flowers and blossoms should be out. I guess we weren't very successful at recovering from that last ice age and are slipping back into it. Getting back to the bike, I haven't even peeked under the cover yet. I assume she's still there. I can see her two wheels sticking out at the bottom and her basic shape in the way the cover lays. But, there is no point in removing the cover. Doing so would not influence the weather in the least little way, or at least in any positive way, and only make me be grumpy. I'm hoping that when the snowblower gets back from being repaired that the very fact that it would be back will cause the weather to become more spring-like and reasonable just out of spite. Weather does that you know. Wash your car and it rains. Get a snowblower and it won't snow until it forgets you have one. Put your bike away too early in the fall and the sun comes back out. Bring a repaired snowblower home and winter suddenly is over. Thats what I'm hoping cause thats what weather does. Won't know for sure until the blower is repaired and home which should be sometime next week so I guess there could still be a glimmer of hope for later in the month. We shall see. Along this same line of thought, we headed up to the gondola Thursday morning after it had poured rain in the valley all night and throughout the day before. Well. We weren't prepared for what we found. The pouring rain had been snow up there, mountains of it. Literally. Everything was buried. We exited the gondola cabin and dawned our snowshoes. Now, in our defense, these modern high tech snowshoes are very small and do not have near the floatation ability as the old type that were big, wide, and long. Just getting off the deck at the top was difficult and then we had to trudge down to the trail head. We both knew by then that this was not going to be a walk in the park. The thing that is so tiring when snowshoeing in deep snow is that its like climbing steps that are knee high with weights on your feet. Each step must be high enough to clear the snow in front of you, then you push your foot down into the snow. As you lift your trailing foot you lift the load of snow that has fallen onto that snowshoe. Off we headed, taking turns breaking trail and taking numerous rests. By the time we got to Gully Bridge we knew we didn't have enough steam left to make it all the way to the lookout, let alone making it back. True, backtracking over the now broken trail is a lot easier as the heavy work has been done but we were now both pretty well beat. We turned back, feeling a bit defeated but at least knowing we wouldn't end up too pooped to pop, so to speak. We were almost back out to the trailhead when we met a man coming toward us, making great time as he strolled along in our tracks. As we stopped to chat he mentioned how beautiful it was out and how nice and easy the snowshoeing was. We told him we'd turned back just past the bridge and that once he was past our footsteps that he'd find out it wasn't as easy as he thought. Back at the lodge we went in for a coffee and hung out with some friends. After a while, the snowshoer we'd met on the trail came in and confessed he'd found it rather more challenging once he passed where we'd turned back. He hadn't gone on much further, but he had tried a side trail that wasn't as packed down under the new snow and found that sinking in up to his hips was a bit more than he cared to deal with. But just like us, he had found the new snow, the snow-covered trees and the mountain scenery worth every labored breath. Friday morning put on our snowshoes and headed back out to try again. As expected, lots of others had been on the trail later in the day and it was tramped all the way along. The going was easy this time. There were places people had tried to head off the trail, only to give up real quickly and get back onto the trail. And now you know. doug
**** From Karl Thanks for a great read Doug, you must have had some amazing images of the Super Moon from your neck of the woods ? I went out to capture some images that night ,there will be one more at the end of this month ,We in Melbourne have SO much to choose from cause there is lots going on ,we have this thing called White Nights which is on tonight ,the downtown will be light up with a lot of different light shows “projected” over buildings and the river ,I have entered a couple of photos in my local camera club the theme is Black & white photography I will add them to this Issue I hope you guys enjoy, I will try to post more of my photos next week ,thank’s again for great read mate..    **** More Stink “Sulphur” The Sulphur Springs Hotel in Preston immediately comes to mind. There were actually three hotels on this corner at one time; the others were Preston Springs and the Kress House, only one, the Sulphur Springs remains standing, and it’s been closed for many years. It is vacant and suffering from the attacks of vandals. There is a ‘roundabout’ being built at this intersection, being Highway #8 and the road to the Waterloo Region airport, and the future of this old landmark is in jeopardy. Bathing in the smelly water of sulphur springs was considered beneficial to one’s health, so these three hotels were built upon/nearby to take advantage of this valuable tourist attraction. My wife and I held our wedding reception at the Kress House....I don’t remember smelling any sulphur (probably because I was so in love). I’ll tell you about the smell of sulphur that was so intense, it made me sick to my stomach and gave me a severe headache! Because this essay is all about “smells that trigger memories”, let me take you back a long time when I was still single and working as an electrician’s helper on a job at the rear of St. Mary’s Hospital in Kitchener. Picture this; we were building an enclosure for some high voltage transformers, and my job was to heat solid chunks of sulphur until it was ‘liquid’. The smoke/fumes coming off the melting pot was the culprit that made me sick. As I recall, the smoke was greenish in colour, and probably carcinogenic but nobody knew that at the time. The structure consisted of heavy mesh wire fence supported by metal posts stuck into holes bored into the concrete base of the transformer station. In order to ‘seal’ the posts into the holes, liquid sulphur was poured around them, and when cooled/hardened, they were permanently secured. Good plan! But there were other materials that could have done the same job; one that comes to mind and is used everywhere this type of fence is constructed, is ‘poured’ cement. To this day, I ask myself the same question....why sulphur?! Let’s get off this technical stuff, there is also a fond, if not mystical memory connected to this event; my sister-in-law, Vivyan (Lorne’s wife), was having a baby (Gale) in this hospital, and my future wife, (Bobbie, who I hadn’t yet met) was also having a baby (Greg), while I was outside getting sick! (I’d better add, “from sulphur fumes”) Finally, on the topic of “getting sick from sulphur fumes”......while I was working for Sutherland -Schultz as an electrician’s helper at a ‘metal treatment’ factory in Preston, we were working directly over the vats of poisonous liquid (sulphuric acid used for ‘pickling’ brass)....and me, with a ‘hang-over’....I got so sick I couldn’t carry on. Bob Pugsly was my boss....he had to do the job all alone,,, he was so mad he was ‘sweating blood’. I crawled away somewhere and ‘slept it off’. Bob never liked me much after that. “Manure pile” The dictionary defines manure as, “any substance put in or on the soil as fertilizer”, but here we’ll be talking about cattle manure. We’ve all experienced it; you’re driving along some country road in the early Spring, maybe you have the car windows down to take in the “sweet smell of the Season”, and suddenly it hits you!! Some farmer is ‘spreading it’. The memories this stuff triggers are MANY; smelly feet, bad breath, BO, ripe Limburger cheese, rancid walnuts, pepperoni, post mortem (on a body that’s been ‘aging’ for weeks/months), irritating TV ads, Kingston Penitentiary, all men’s locker rooms, rotten eggs, rotten potatoes, etc. I’m reminded of the time when I asked my sheep-farming neighbour Henry Stanley, for some manure for my vegetable garden, when we lived on the Niagara Escarpment near Milton. “Yes” he replied eagerly, “you can have all you want for free...you can use my panel truck to haul it”. But there was a ‘catch’, I had to clean the poop out from the sheep’s Winter pen...... “Here’s the key for the truck, I’m off to work” ( Henry was an “Ag Rep” and worked all over the country). I found the pen***** it was 3 feet deep in manure-soaked straw. I don’t think he’d cleaned the pen in years! Undaunted, I began to fork the stuff into the panel truck....my first mistake! Panel trucks are NOT for transporting manure....they are enclosed....no way for the stink to escape! Second mistake; asking for some manure in the first place! Third mistake; after I’d painstakingly spread the stuff on my unsuspecting garden, I found out that sheep don’t digest weed seeds......they pass through the animal in perfect shape and ready to sprout......and SPROUT THEY DID! I ruined my nice garden! It was overgrown with weeds....up to my waist....and it STUNK! And Oh, yes, I had to wash out his damned panel truck...it also STUNK! Enough already! Let’s talk about nice stinks; perfume (in small applications) is ‘nice’, very nice....can even be ‘enticing/romantic’, but as our dad used to say about perfume, “A little is nice, but a LOT stinks” He also said something I’ve never believed; “Perfume is made from whale puke”. Could this be true, or is it just a “whale of a tail?” I had to know for sure, so I ‘Googled’ it, and as it turns out it’s true. “Fact: ‘Ambergris’ is a product that is still used in the manufacture of perfume. It is produced naturally in the whale, and is regurgitated (puked)” Forgive me, Pop for ever doubting you. R.I.P. Continuing with nice smells; lilacs, daisies, fresh oranges, watermelon, laundry soap, ‘pau pare’ (that stuff you gals keep in the drawers with your drawers), vanilla ice cream, new clothes (which I rarely got......usually I got ‘hand-me-downs’ from my older brothers, but this can never be proven as Howard is dead, and Lorne will deny it). My ‘first love’, Joan Blueman, smelled like vanilla ice cream (as did the inside of her home), tooth paste, Cream Soda, and real toilet paper. And now, I’ll share a ‘little secrete’ with you; as a schoolboy, when playing with other kids, I noticed that girls smelled ‘different’ than boys, different in a ‘nice’ way.....and whenever I got ‘up close and personal’ with a young girl, I always got lock-jaw. As we frolicked in the schoolyard after four PM classes, our game of “scrub” was regularly interrupted by the sweet smell of fried potatoes/onions, which wafted over the village, and everybody ran home for supper. And to this day, I can’t pass a ‘hot dog’ vendor without buying a dog smothered in fried onions. (I’m making myself hungry) This essay was given the title, IT STINKS, and there is no better way of ending it than by giving the “master of s t i n k”.... that shy little creature, Mr. Skunk, the final word. On a nature program yesterday, they were showing a skunk, and the ‘expert’ was saying that “Skunks don’t stink.....no more or less than a rabbit, racoon, or your cat or dog” They only stink when they are disturbed and “as self defence they spray a fluid from there rear end”. Strangely enough, I really don’t mind a ‘little whiff’ of a “woods pussy”. To me it smells like my coffee maker, when it first begins dripping the hot brew into the pot (maybe my pot needs cleaning?) Other smells that resemble skunk are; stinkweed, burnt rubber, stinkbugs, marihuana, and my wet dog, for MONTHS after he’d tangled with Mr. SKUNK. By Uncle Russ
(during one of his ‘episodes’) PS This is the last Segment in the essay. I hope you have enjoyed reading the stories as much as I have enjoyed remembering them. ****
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. |