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Issue #1003
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From Nova Scotia Sus
From Russ
From Sylvia & Wayne
The Ontarion

Hi All,

Beaky’s back. Well, actually Beaky and her whole family are back. We don’t really know that she is a she and I have no way of finding out but we figure she is because she seems to be the head of her family. She’s the crow that has returned off and on now for the last 3 years. We call her ‘Beaky’ because she has a deformed beak. The bottom section sticks out quite a bit further than the top. She’s figured out how to use it with no problems at all and probably doesn’t even notice that she has a disability, crow wise so to speak. I think her partner is the same one that was with her last year and the year before, but I can’t be sure. They seem to be quite close and are never very far apart. This year she has 3 kids with her, almost full grown now but still very obnoxious and loud and pushy. The stupid things will stand right on top of the food we give them as they demand to be fed. Typical for teen-agers I guess.

I seems that whenever things get a bit hard for the crows to find enough to eat, she turns up here with hubby and a given years offspring in tow. She knows we will put out enough for them to eat and she seems to know we will not threaten them in any way. I can speak quietly to her and walk right up to where she is perched on our deck rail. I can sit on a deck chair and she will sit on the rail a few feet away and we just sort of hang out together. Kinda cool.

Of course there is a problem. Like all birds, they are messy. They crap all over the deck rails, they caw loudly. They make a mess in the bird bath as they put chunks of bread in to soak. We don’t give them bread but they are finding it somewhere, and in it goes where it gets all icky and turns to sludge. Oh well. As well, it gets a bit weird when some of them look in the window to see what we are doing. Makes us feel like we are in some Hitchcock movie. But, it’s hard out there for them and if they feel they can come to us for as a safe place to find enough to eat, thats fine. They are more than welcome.

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BC is well into another rather scorching heat wave and Thursday was a very strange day. We were woken in the pre-dawn hours by the sound of howling winds. The sky was perfectly clear but the winds were intense. And, they were HOT. At 7am when I went out to put down some bird food for the Jays, (the crows come a bit later), the temperature was already 26c. By 8am it was 28c, on its way to 38c. The air smelled of parched vegetation and old smoke. Everyone we ran into on our morning walk remarked about how weird it was, spooky, scary, and so on. People were out standing in the street just looking around. No one had ever experienced anything quite like this. The winds abated somewhat during the day but the haze and smell lingered. As did the heat, it just continued to grow. Even though we are under water restriction orders due to the extreme dry conditions, I found myself out watering down the shrubs and fences and decks around the house, as were other neighbors, for all the good it would do but you have to try. It turned out not to be necessary, thank goodness, but you do what you do when there isn’t much you can do.

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Ok kids, I’m still scraping the bottom of that musical barrel but I make no apologies. You get what you pay for. This week you have apparently paid for a song called ‘The Little Old Shack Out Back’. This is another of those old numbers we used to do around the bone fire out at the homestead when we were young. I could probably find out who wrote or performed it but I’d have to look it up, Google it, whatever, and it doesn’t really matter all that much. The song is about an old outhouse out back that has been ordered removed. The singer doesn’t want it removed. It holds a lot of found memories. I can understand that. As kids we frequently used the outhouse up on the farm. They didn’t have running water and therefor no indoor facilities. I must say, as cold as winters were back then, using an outhouse in the winter was not near as bad as using one in the summer. Winters didn’t include odors, snakes, or swarms of flies etc. In summer, it was generally more preferable to put up with the mosquitoes back in the swamp somewhere where one could crouch behind an old log. And yes, the door would never shut, or at least shut properly.

Little Old Shack Out Back

doug

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From Nova Scotia Sus

My heart goes out to Vivienne and all her family after reading last week's report from Carol. I know she is an amazing girl and will learn to handle whatever comes her way. She also has so much love and support surrounding her. I wish her well.

Doug and Sue I am thinking about you dealing with forest fires, smoke, heat and reckless people. No wonder you feel like screaming. The fall can't come soon enough and hopefully with lots of rain to put out those fires. Thanks for the Billboard song to lighten the mood. Last night we were sitting outside, fooling around, with a few instruments. We have a violin or fiddle, a banjo and a guitar and both of us can't play worth a darn. So after making some noise we attracted a couple of neighbours, from down our lane, carrying a guitar. Now this guy can play, so he became our lead musician. His background in music was quite different but we convinced him to play some folk/country music. It was a delightful evening and I know it will happen again soon.

Take care everyone!

Sus

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From Russ

Zillion

I've always been fascinated by large numbers. President Biden's Infrastructure Plan, estimated to cost US taxpayers $1.1 trillion was approved. Now, he's asking approval for his $3.5 trillion Budget Resolution - in addition!!

If one were to try to count to 1 trillion, it would take roughly 31,709 years to do so! (presuming one counts at the speed of one number per second). Governments 'toss' these number$ around like they were pennies. One can always tell when there's an election brewing - just watch our prime minister as he carelessly throws millions and billions of our tax dollars around trying to buy votes with our money! Someday, the Piper must be paid - it will take us a zillion years!

Remember when homes sold for thousand$? Now, they are priced in the million$! Of course, some real estate is listed as being in the billion$.

Let's look at a 'mere' billion - it is a 1 followed by 9 zeros - 1,000,000,000.

The next highest number trillion is 1 followed by 12 zeros - 1,000,000,000,000.

If we really want to stretch our imagination, the next highest number is named quadrillion - it's 1 followed by 15 zeros.

Next, quintillion - 1 followed by 18 zeros.

Next, sextillion - 1 followed by 21 zeros.

Next, septillion - 1 followed by 24 zeros.

etc, etc. OK. What is the name of the largest number in Canada, US, and France? How about 'Googolplex'? (Where 'Google' search engine got its name). In math. it looks like this 1x10 10 100. It reads; one times ten to the 10th power, times 10 to the 10th power, times 100. Nope, there is another even LARGER number - Skewes' Number - developed by mathematician Stanley Skewes in 1933. However, Skewes has lost its distinction to Graham's Number, which is currently designated a the world's largest number. It is so large, it cannot be written with conventional notation. Developed by math. R.L. Graham.

It is so large, even if all the matter in the universe was converted to pens & ink, it still wouldn't be enough to write out the number in its entirety!!

PS Large numbers fascinate me; like my shoe size 10 and one half, my thighs 40 inches, my waist 42 inches, my fallen chest 38 inches, and finally, my head 120 square inches. And, oh yes - there is no number named 'zillion'.

PPS I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it.

Uncle Russ.

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From Sylvia & Wayne

Hi,

Just a quick note to let you all know, we have arrived in New Brunswick - made it in two days and all went very well. Sonja & Ken took three days but left earlier than we did. Then we all looked at the mountain of stuff we brought and began opening boxes, trying to find necessities, but that was and continues to be a very big chore as nothing is ever packed as per category, instead, it is a mix of what fit at the time of packaging. Sonja and Ken have their house to fill with items and try and fit all into logical places. My Mother doesn't need too much plus her room was fully furnished. So with a few tweaks, she was pretty well set up. The pets, chickens and bees all made it, with a little trauma here and there. Details to follow.

Since we have somewhat sporadic email connections and no phone other than our cells, we thought we'd better touch base. We do have an address on G-mail but won't guarantee immediate responses. Our email is: WaynSyl@gmail.com We may be changing things after August 26th when the tech guy arrives. Details to follow.

Scenery is lovely, very peaceful -so all is good. More "Details to follow!"

For those we have not sent our mailing address, it will be: 65 Boyd Loop Road, Coles Island, Queens County NB E4C 2W7

Sending Eastern wishes,
Sylvia & Wayne

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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello everyone!

Just sitting here trying to think of my most harrowing adventure from when I was a teenager and it finally came to me! I was 15 years old and was still in my young adventurous teen years. One evening I decided to take a ride on my bike down to the Dairy Queen on Lancaster St and treat myself to one of my favourites of the time, a chocolate blizzard. Many friends of mine used to hang around the DQ on warm summer nights and this was one of those nights. Upon my arrival I found an old friend of mine to sit and shoot the breeze with, his name was Robby Seip. We were sitting on one of the curb stones lining their parking lot enjoying our treats when the parking lot started to fill up. I asked Robby if he wanted to cross the street to visit another friend and neighbour of mine by the name of Jim Weber (nick named IKE!) but Robby having a girl friend that worked in the DQ wanted to hang around there for another while. ( I thought it was for the free treats he was getting from his girl but I guess it might have been for other obvious reasons such as young romance! LOL! So, I decided to cross Lancaster to visit Ike who was working at the Maple Lane Dairy bar on the corner of Lancaster and Breithaupt St. He made a very good hamburger at the grill in the Dairy Bar. I crossed and parked my bike beside the building and entered the Dairy Bar to say hello to Ike.

He wasn’t busy at all the evening so we sat at the bar and shot the breeze for a short while. The evening had been quiet up until about 8pm. At which time three guys came into the restaurant. They were in their early 20’s as I recall. One of them was tall with black hair and a stocky build, the other two were about 5’ 10” tall with sandy hair and average builds. They all had their hands in their wind breaker pockets and they started yelling that they were there to rob the place. They asked which one of us worked there and Jim said that he did. They made him go behind the counter and open the register, then they ordered us both to go into the small washroom at the end of the room. This was only a small snack bar style eatery with a long counter lined with stools for the customers to sit on. These guys screamed that they had guns and would shoot us if we didn’t do what they said and ordered us to go into the washroom and close the door. They heard us talking once we were in the small narrow washroom. One of them ordered us to shut up or he’d shoot through the door of the tiny room. This would have likely killed us both due to the tiny size of the room. So, we both huddled against one of the side walls rather than stand against the end wall where the bullets were sure to strike if he did shoot through the door! They ordered us to stay in the washroom for 5 minutes before coming out. Since we couldn’t hear if they were still in the store, we stayed for at least a couple of minutes before coming out to call the police.

Once we knew they were gone, I yelled to Robby at the DQ to come over in a hurry. He did and when I told him what had just happened, he said he had seen the three guys running west on Briethaupt St. He was on his bike so he took off in that direction to see if he could see where they went. In the meantime, Ike phoned the police to report the incident. The police arrived an efficient 10 minutes later. The cop that arrived didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to have responded. We told him the details of the incident and he then told Ike to lock the door and ordered us into the cruiser. He said he would drive us back to our bikes later but that we had to accompany him to the Frederick St head quarters for an interview with the detectives on duty. Once there, we were put into separate rooms for questioning about the event, just like they do on TV. I guess to see if our stories of the robbery matched up. We were kept there until almost 2:30 am going over and over the story of the evening. It was like they figured we had taken the paltry $50.00 and change from the till. They made us empty our pockets I guess to see if we had the money. After the clock hit 2am, they finally phoned our parents to say what had happened. My dad being a former cop came down to the Police station to see what was going on. By that time, it was 2:30am and the detectives finally released us. He told us to stay in touch with him and gave us a number to call if we saw any of the three robbers around the neighbourhood. He also said he’d have one of the uniform officers keep in touch with us at our homes. Dad drove us back to the Dairy Bar to get out bikes. For the next week or two a cop showed up at my house to take me for a ride around the North Ward to see if I could see any of the robbery suspects. We’d pick Ike up and the three of us cruised past the homes of the known roughneck trouble makers of the North Ward. There was a house on Blucher St that was known for it’s bad guys that lived there. We drove past there and they were sitting on the porch drinking beer but none of them looked like the robbers from the Dairy Bar! After doing this a few times (Cruising with a cop) over a couple of weeks time, I guess they just gave up on finding the Robbers. Either that or they didn’t believe us about the whole incident! The bad guys got away with the goods and were never caught! That was in the summer of 1964 and we made the paper under the “Local” section. The article was a three inch long single column write up in The Record paper. I wish I still had the article which I had cut out of the paper just for a keepsake. It got lost somewhere along the way but I remember having it in my dresser drawer for many years after the robbery. Many years later, Jim was the best man at Carole’s and my wedding. Then of course life got in the way and I’ve only seen Ike twice since the wedding in 1973. All the changes in our lives went in different directions and we lost touch for years and years. This went on until I was at a car show in Baden Ontario a couple of years ago and happened to bump into Ike as I was walking the rows of classic cars at the show. We walked together for about a half hour admiring the cars and briefly catching up on our life history. Once the car show ended that evening, we parted and I haven’t seen him at all in the past two years since. Apparently he lives on Erb St west on a farm but I don’t know exactly where. Oh well, that’s life I guess and we may not see each other for many years to come but we’ll both always have the memories of our public school years as friends, not to mention the excitement of the evening of the Dairy Bar robbery we shared!

If Uncle Russ had still been a detective at that time, the case might have been solved and those nasty “Perps” would have served their time in jail!

That’s about all I have 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 and stay Safe!

Greg

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Take Care And Be Safe
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.