Watch Dog

He came into my life slowly, almost by assimilation. When I first met him he belonged to my boss, Nigel. He was in his prime, a fully grown Golden Retriever, though you might have been forgiven if you mistook him for an Irish setter; from a distance at least. He was very dark; which is, so I am told, not uncommon in the breed. His name was Seiko. “He’s a watch dog; get it?” Nigel told me when I looked at him askance when he told me the name. “More people would get the joke if you named him Timex.” I said and over the years when I explained the name to others the joke had spawned at least four dogs named Timex. But Seiko he was. Tall and proud and immensely strong; he was gorgeous. I was new to the north and a long way from home and loved ones. The transition was made a little easier by the fact that Nigel’s wife Anne and I were from the same home town and I knew her family. We had attended the same high school but did not know one another. It was made easier too by this gregarious Golden Retriever.
We struck up a bond right away. Golden Retrievers are notoriously friendly and Seiko was the rule not the exception. He followed me everywhere. When I was working in the warehouse he would come in to get some attention and I was always glad to see him. On my days off I took to asking Nigel if I could “borrow” his dog. Seiko went fishing and hunting with me. We went on long walks together on every trail and back road that there was in the surrounding area. He was good company. If I ever had to go somewhere without him he would follow my vehicle for miles. The speeds he could reach and the length of time he could follow were prodigious. Three kilometers from home I could still see him in my rearview mirror. I spent a happy year and a half in Wabasca but then was transferred in the spring of 1987. I bid Seiko a sad goodbye and thought I would never see him again.
Happily that was not the case. A few months later Nigel called to say they were moving and they would not be able to take a full grown Golden Retriever with them. Would I be interested in taking him? It took about ten seconds to make the decision. I was about to own my first dog. I only had to get him there. Wabasca is over 500 km away but fortunately Nigel was coming to Fort Vermilion. Fort Vermilion was only a short flight away by Cessna 206. I just had to find a pilot willing to fly an eighty pound bundle of muscle and energy in a cockpit the size of a loveseat. I thought I’d better talk to the pilot in person so the next day I met the mail plane and when we’d finished loading my truck I said offhandedly “By the way I wonder if you could help me out. My dog will be in the Fort on Monday and I need to get him in here.” I looked at the pilot with my most pathetic look. “Eighty Pounds!” he exploded when I answered him how big the dog was. “Is he part horse?” I decided to go all in and play my trump card., I pulled a photo of Seiko from my pocket, one taken on one of our many walks. The pilot took it dubiously but a smile crossed his face as he looked at it. “A Golden Retriever; well why didn’t you say? My daughter raises them. He’s a beauty. Look how red he is! Is he a good flyer?” The question caught me flat footed. It hadn’t even occurred to me to ask Nigel if the dog had ever flown. Of course I couldn’t tell him I didn’t know so I stammered “S-S-S-S-rue he loves to fly!” I had to lie as anybody up here who owned a dog any length of time would have had to have flown with him. I called Nigel that night to let him know that arrangements had been made. “How’s Seiko in an airplane?” I asked “I guess we’ll know next week.” Nigel answered. He had never flown before. I was waiting with baited breath the next Monday when the little plane taxied to a stop, I waited for the prop to stop spinning then I ran over and opened the passenger door. “How was the flight?” I asked when the engine noise died down. “He was my Copilot.” Said the pilot with a smile. “He never moved, just sat in the copilot’s seat and stared out the windscreen.” I was worried that he might not recognize me after so long apart but once out of the plane he planted his hind feet on the gravel runway and put his front feet on my chest and licked my face. He was not a dog who did this often so I knew he was saying “Hello; sure I remember you!”
We embarked on a new life together both off us adjusting to a changed existence. I could not have been happier, I know he felt the same. As before we went everywhere together. He slept by my side. He seldom slept on the bed but when he did he took the whole bed, lying diagonally across it stretched out to his full length; I was forced to sleep diagonally too. Usually he slept on the floor by my head. Occasionally I would hear him vocalizing in his sleep his legs would twitch like he was dreaming of chasing rabbits. I would hang an arm over the side of the bed and pet him. His tail would thump, thump thump against the floor in his sleep. I wonder what he was dreaming and was he picturing me petting him? In the mornings when he was ready to go out he would stand between the bed and the wall and his tail would make an arc from the two objects. It would whack the bed frame and then the wall in a whack, ting, whack ting that became my alarm. I woke up every day to his smiling face. No one could roll over and go back to sleep after looking into those brown eyes.
My bass Andrew had a border collie named DeeDee and the two dogs became inseparable. Seiko picked up any number of habits from DeeDee including her habit of sticking her nose under your hand and kind of flipping your hand into the air when she wanted to be petted. Seiko also took to rolling in mud puddles, one of DeeDee’s favorite things. The maddening thing is that he would go for a three mile walk and stay totally clean. Then; less than a hundred meters from home he would drop into a mud puddle like a stone. I kept a garden hose at the back door. He loved the water. Being a retriever that is only natural I suppose. When we went walking by the river which was almost every day; he would plunge in and swim usually grabbing a piece of driftwood. But no matter how far from the river I stood he would inevitably walk to within ten feet of me before he shook himself dry; thus soaking me. It was a game we played and he loved doing it. I pretended to be mad but he always saw through me and I could not help but hold him he was so charming.
From Fox Lake I moved to beautiful Ft Liard. Seiko loved the river and the mountains. He loved walking the trails and chasing the rabbits. He was getting older and he began to appreciate the wood stove as he got quite arthritic, especially in his hind quarters. Golden Retrievers are prone to that. I used to take him for runs on my bike so I could tire him out better. That became less necessary. Soon our normal walks became too much for him. One night in late February I knew he was not going to see another dawn. I had been talking to a friend who was a wildlife officer. He had told me that he could give Seiko an overdose of Nembutal which he had for tranquilizing bears. I wanted to put it off until the last possible moment. The last night I called Jerry but it was too late Seiko did not make it until he arrived. With a loud sigh he passed. I let out a scream of his name and he momentarily opened his eyes and looked right at me as if to say “It is O.K. Old friend it is my time,: amd then he was gone. I wrapped him in his favorite comforter and put his favorite toy a pink “My Little Pony” that Jerry’s kids had given him,. I picked up the toy and remembered how he had gotten it. One night we ewre visiting Jerry and his family. When we got home I noticed that Seiko had the pony in his mouth. I took it back the next day but the kids were adamant that they had given it to Seiko and his tail wagged furiously when I returned it to him. It had no tail and was one the girls no longer wanted. He loved it. He carried it everywhere. Once when he lost the toy he was beside himself. I have never seen a dog so despondant. The girls again came to the rescue with a “My Little Pony” unicorn. He loved that too nut not as mush. That spring under the snow I found the original and he never touched the unicorn again.
I got my friend Rick to pick me up a pick at the hardware store and I buried him in the back yard that Sunday. Rick was going to help but I was finished before he got there. We sat and had coffee. “It was brutally cold today you should have waited for me.” He said . “It was the only trouble he ever caused me. He was worth all that and more.” I put a cross over his grave and nailed his dog tag to it. I buried him with his pony. I thought I was doing well after he died. One evening while walking home from work about a week later I met my friend Elizabeth; the social worker. She was walking her dogs. We had walked dogs together many times. She looked at me askance and asked “Wherever is Seiko?” In her British accent. I tried to get the words out but nothing would come. I stood there like an idiot and she instantly knew. She hugged me and said “I am ever so sorry. I didn’t know!” It must have been five minutes before I could tell her what had happened. Nearly twenty years later I have tears in my eyes. He still stares out at me from a thousand pet food bags. One day I walked into the store and there was a wet Golden Retriever in the porch. The smell is like no other breed. I got down on one knee and petted him. “Sorry, he’s a mess.” said one of my Mountie friends. “He is beautiful and he looks just like a Golden Retriever should look.” I said. I have had a number of dogs since; each one of them as different as each person is. The one common thread is the unquestioning love that I have had from each one of them. I never came home to find them grumpy or ungrateful or not understanding. They have only been a source of undying love. No matter how much it hurts to lose one I will never regret the commitment.

Ask a stupid question...

Steve Martin the comedian once said “If you are studying geology; which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up the rest of your life.” I minored in philosophy. A light bulb is going on for a lot of my friends right now. “Ahhhh….” They are saying to themselves. “That explains a lot!” I blame Rene Descartes. “I think therefore I am!” He taught me to question everything; shook my belief system right down to it’s’ bones. I used to think I knew that I existed because I was hot or tired or hungry, “I crave a big greasy donair therefore I am!” But that wasn’t good enough for old Rene; no sir he said what if I just think I am craving a big greasy donair; the one from Revanna Pizza on Portland with the works and extra sauce on the side? In spite of the fact that I can almost taste that donair; with its’ toasted pita shell and donair meat glistening with that crusty skin on the outside. He stripped away all the unessential, all that was not pure philosophical logic. He said to himself “I might only think I am hot and tired and craving a donair! But I know this. I know that someone is thinking that they are hot and tired and craving a donair. So stripped to its’ logical essentials. I think I am hot and tired and craving a donair; therefore I am!” Existentialism in a nutshell. I just saved you three years of class time, not to mention tutorials and tuition and books and all that money spent on beer in the student lounge. I cannot however save you the cost of a large donair with the works and a can of Pepsi as they are the essential tools of the philosopher.
But now you see my dilemma. I constantly question everything. If you have to question your own very existence then what about; why do Ketchup chips have to be red they don’t have real ketchup on them and that dye gets your fingers all red. Why is suicide illegal? I mean if the guy dies what are you going to do to him? Why don’t they just lower the nets so that short people can play basketball too? If you ran a school for suicide bombers the only ones getting jobs would be failures and dropouts. What’s with those stupid commercials for automatic soap pumps? You wouldn’t want to touch a germy soap pump so it dispenses the soap automatically. You are about to wash your hands for Pete’s sake! What difference if there are germs on the pump; there are germs on your hands; that’s why you are washing them. The soap will kill all the germs, not just the ones on your hands but the ones from the pump too!That new sugarless gum, the one that brags that its’ flavor lasts forever why does it come in packs of five? Remember those deals on the packages of popsicles when you were a kid? Send in 200 wrappers and a dollar and get a Frisbee or something. Do you suppose they actually had people counting the wrappers? Imagine sitting in a room trying to prize apart 200 sodden sticky wrappers to see if some seven year old was trying to rip off some poor little multinational food corporation.
You can see what deep philosophical issues I grapple with every day. I like to share these issues with those around me too. No sense suffering in silence misery loves company. So it is for my long suffering wife and my employees at work. They get the distilled wisdom of four years of university and thirty years of experience on a daily basis. Sucks to be them. But every once in a while one of the great questions of life gets answered. One of the great mysteries of the universe is revealed; even to a pillar of dust such as I. But of course I shared it with the other human being who was there when it was revealed. It happened while in Winnipeg that center of the Canadian universe last month. I was driving along in a cab when one of those tow trucks with a flat bed on the back passed us with a brown cube van parked on it. I leaned around the Plexiglas shield and said to the cabbie “Well that answers a question I have always wondered.” He looked into the mirror and we made eye contact; in a fashion. “What question is that Sir?” he intoned politely. “Who delivers UPS trucks?” I said. Now if I could just figure out why there are no shocks in any of the cabs in Winnipeg?

Universal Remote

There were just four of us in a passenger van designed to seat ten. We were scattered through the seats; as you do when the chance presents itself. Edmonton was streaking by the tinted windows of the van. Edmonton was bathed in splendid November sunshine. Little or no snow but little or no leaves too. The woman who had joined us last was asking the rest of us where we were going. She had; apparently only half understood our driver, though his second language English was very good. “Are we going to the west end?” She asked tentatively with a southern accent. “Yes.” I replied. “We will stop at the West Edmonton Mall, among other places.” I added. “Oh good I wasn’t sure what he meant by West Ed. I’m from Sacramento.” She intoned. “Not originally, with that accent.” I added with a chuckle. “I always forget.” She laughed. “Is it that bad?” “I like it.” My wife Lina added. “It reminds me of our trip to Nashville.” The lady turned and added “Close, Tupelo.” We might have sped through Edmonton without a word, as I have done dozens of times. But a chance remark had broken the ice and soon the lady in the back of the van was speaking of her home in Edmonton with an English accent. We were all, even the driver from somewhere else. The conversation wound as conversations do through different subjects; it started with Elvis who was also from Tupelo and went on to Graceland where we had all been. Then the lady from the south revealed that she had once dated a fighter and the conversation went on to the great fighters and great fights of the past. Lina faded out a bit as this was not her forte. I love boxing and know a lot about the fighters of the late seventies and early eighties.
We remarked on how, in the old days even the great fights were carried on network TV to be enjoyed by everyone who was inclined to watch. Nowadays you have to buy a ticket to a private screening or pay per view it on cable or satellite. We lamented the loss of the universally shared experience. “I remember the day after a big fight. We would stand around the schoolyard and everyone would have an opinion.” By virtue of the fact that it was free and on network TV meant that even the poorest of us could watch. Even the poorest and most ill informed could have an opinion and could voice it to all. “Something was lost…” she agreed “when great events became pay per views.” The conversation went on until we reached our destination. We parted; not as friends but at least as friendly and wished each other well as we parted.
I never fully forgot that conversation. It dovetailed with some thoughts I’d been having for weeks. You see we have satellite TV at home. One of the big Canadian ones. We have a big package, one of the biggest. I have long since given up on sports so we don’t have a sports package. But darn near everything else. We work long hours and often six days a week so when we get to watch TV I want choice. Even so; on a Sunday night recently I was regaling Lina with the available channels from the built in guide feature on the dish. “There’s never anything on when we have time to watch TV!” I protested. I was; as my boss was fond of saying “preaching to the choir” Lina felt as I did and needed no reminder of the fact. I was seeking commiseration. I wanted to have my opinion backed up; after all misery absolutely adores company. “You aren’t kidding. Even the game sow channel shows poker, POKER!” She replied dryly. “Watching poker is like watching paint peel.” I replied. “I thought the saying was Watching paint dry?” she replied. “Nah, these are reruns of poker games, that paint was dry a long time ago.” I turned off the TV and went to sit in the room where I do my best thinking; a windowless room with a large amount of porcelain. I had Bruce Springsteen’s 57 Channels ( and nothing on) running through my head. Two hundred channels of garbage! I kept thinking. Springsteen didn’t even know the half of it when he wrote his prophetic song. I pondered in my inner sanctum for a while.
“You know what is missing in society?” I asked as I returned to the room of the living from the room of the bath. Lina put down her magazine and was; I am sure, well and truly grateful for my minor in Philosophy. She knew better than to answer this rhetorical question. “We are missing the universal experience. “ I allowed sufficient pause to befit the depth and pithiness of this statement. “When I was a kid the school ground conversation was very much dictated by what we had seen on TV the night before. Mondays meant Hockey Night in Canada. We would stand around and discuss the one game that was on TV Saturday night. When there was a Wayne and Shuster special we all retold every joke the next day. Now we all go home to an entertainment extravaganza every night. There’s a channel for everything; game shows, cooking, shopping, religion, women, men, cartoons, you name it. Everyone goes into their little world and there is no commonality of experience. We are universally remote. Distant from each other; separated by the very medium that used to unite us in a common bons!” I was in full flight now.
“So you think we should have only one channel like the old days?” Lina said with a grin. “Remember when we had only CBC North?” I asked. “What are you talking about? I was born up here! I remember when there was no TV at all. I remember when we got four hours of TV a day, taped from earlier and replayed! Don’t tell me about CBC North!” Justly chastened; I continued. “Well back when we had only one channel we would all get together at the teachers place and watch Dallas.” I retorted. “The women watched Dallas,; you guys stood around the kitchen ate snacks and talked hockey.” She replied with a sarcastic tone. “Yeah but we shared an experience, that’s my point!” Just then the house gave a sort of shudder. The furnace sighed to a stop. The TV made a popping sound and went black. The water pump stopped and there was total silence. I looked at Lina; she shrugged. “Power failure!” I said. “Looks like it.” Lina replied. I flipped the light switch just in case. “Well I guess what’s on TV is a moot point now.” Lina said moving her chair over to the window and picking up her crossword.
The next day at work Gerry walked up to me “I was right in the middle of watching an interesting show on the Discovery Network when the power went off. I thought it would never come back on.” As he was speaking Darren walked into the room. “Yeah it sure was boring with no power I wanted to watch the Riders game.” “Count on the power to go off just when a good fishing show is coming on!” Piped Danny from the next room. I guess it just goes to show; be careful what you wish for…

My memory's good but short...

“I’m going senile.” I said in disgust. My wife looked at me puzzled. I was standing in front of the office with a blank look on my face. “I just walked here from my office and I can’t remember why.” She looked at me and laughed. “Everyone does that; silly. Just walk back in your office and you will remember why you came here.” She was right; of course. I am sure everyone has those spells. You walk into a room for a specific purpose and you go blank. You cannot remember what the heck you walked in there for and that was the only reason for going into the room; whatever it was that you were supposed to do or get. A simple trick of the mind. But it certainly is frustrating. I swear sometimes I am going senile. What was I doing? What was I looking for? I walked back to my office and it hit me the minute I walked through my door. I knew instantly what I had set out to get. I was mortified.
“I can’t go out there and let them know this is what I forgot. I will never live it down.” I thought to myself. Whatever can I do? I leaned against my office door and glanced sideways at the general office. It was a beehive; as it usually was at that hour of the day. Damn; how am I going to do this? There was a lineup at the office and two people working there; my Wife and my Assistant Manager. There was a lineup at both checkouts. It never fails when you want to do something surreptitious there is always a crowd.” I should just be a man and walk boldly up and do this!” I thought. Then my cowardly alter ego said “No way dude; you are going to make a fool of yourself. Do it later.” But I had promised my boss to do this ASAP. I crept out of my office trying to avoid customers. But of course that didn’t work. “Hay Greg do we have a meeting tonight?” One of the guys on the Fire Department called out. “Yep, second Wednesday of the month.” I said as nonchalantly as I could. “You O.K.?” Roy asked, sensing my furtive movements. “Yeah; sure, fine.” I stammered. As soon as Roy was gone I worked my way closer to the general office. I tacked back and forth from one shelf to another. By now there was a lineup at the office and I took advantage of the distraction to make a dash for the showcase.
I fumbled with my keys. Why is it when you are in the biggest hurry you can never get the key to go in? There are two identical keys on my ring that fit the various showcases. Now the rules of probability state that there should be a fifty fifty chance every time I try them of getting the right key the first time. Balderdash! I have never gotten the right one first time. Finally I had my prize; now all I had to do was get through the checkout without my wife spotting me. As I stood up she was right in front of me. “Remembered what it was?” She asked. The words were like an exploding bomb. I stammered and stuttered and mumbled “Buzzerererahhhhhst” I said half under my breath hoping she would let it be. “What?” She repeated not letting it drop. “Mumble mumble wassisname.” I intoned. ”You are making no sense.” Lina said louder this time. I motioned for her to lean over and I whispered it in her ear. A grin split her face from ear to ear. “HEY EVERYBODY!” She yelled. I was making waving motions with my hands and mouthing the word NO over and over. “Greg forgot what he came out here for and had to walk back into the other room to remember it! Guess what he forgot?” She took the package from my hands and held it over her head. “A MEMORY CARD!” The whole building erupted in laughter simultaneously; both customers and staff alike. I walked to the till and paid for the memory card. There were people slapping my back and some people were holding their sides. I remember it like it was yesterday…

Just like Mom used to make

Did you ever notice that some things taste better when someone else makes them? Seriuously; I think this is one of those things where If I were sitting down with a group of friends right now they would all be nodding and agreeing. I am alone at my computer but I am betting that you are sitting out there somewhere in cyberspace nodding and going “Yep.” Well all right maybe you’re not a “Yep” person; I sure am “Yep, indeed”. My Mother once remarked that salads always taste better when someone else makes them. I rest my case. You may argue with me but my Mom is always right. In many cases the thing that always tasted better is made by our Moms. They always know how to make stuff. What I don’t know is how they know all that stuff. Is there some kind of school for Moms that they go to? Is it genetic? Do they learn at their Mom’s knee? Rest assured that it is a universal truth right up there with “We find this truth to be self evident: That all men are created equal.”
But it need not always be your Mom; it could be your partner, or a friend or even a stranger at a church supper. Now I realize that there are those who will argue that the reason that it tastes better is that you didn’t have to make it. I like to think of this as the sheer laziness argument. Sure it tastes better you didn’t have to slave over a hot stove to get it. There is some logic to this. I used to work in a fast food restaurant I was good at what I did. I took pride in turning out a tasty hot, fresh burger. But when I sat down on my break I really didn’t feel like eating what I had been cooking and smelling all day. I would go miles out of my way to prepare something different. We would scrape all the breading off the filet-o-fish™ and pan fry it on the grill. We would cook the McRib™ patty and put Big Mac™ sauce on it, anything for some variety. We even worked out a scheme to take advantage of the proximity of competitors to our restaurant. I contacted a friend who worked at KFC and one who worked at the Pizza place. We all had similar benefits where we paid little or nothing for out food while working. So we would meet surreptitiously in the parking lot with bags of food under our coats and our uniforms hidden and we would swap our lunches. By Golly, it did taste better!
This worked fine until we got caught and the management of all three businesses got involved and kyboshed the whole scheme. Thos guys have no sense of humor. So maybe there is some merit to the laziness theory but I still don’t buy it. There is something to be said obviously for the effect of not smelling what you are cooking for hours and simply being tired of it by the time you have to eat. All these factors have merit but that doesn’t cover all the facts. Case in Point: even the simple things taste better when someone else makes them; even a bologna sandwich. I made one for my wife today which is the reason why all this ink is being spilt. Alright I know that computer screens don’t have ink on them. I am not like the person in the blonde joke with white out on my screen. But you cannot argue that a bologna sandwich is so time consuming that the making of it makes the sandwich taste bad. Now my Mom makes the best potato salad. No offense to my wife or others who have made me potato salad over the years, but Mom’s rules. It wicked cool! Is that expression still in? I never know anymore. I do know that groovy is dated, right? A potato salad is complicated there are many steps and many ingredients. Each salad may not have many ingredients but there are many different ingredients you could add. My Mom adds mustard. My Wife adds pickle juice, see what I mean. But bologna sandwiches are simple. Bread and margarine, mustard and bologna; not a whole lot of ingredients. Not too much wiggle room. Albeit the amount of mustard you use or type of margarine or bread will make a difference but let’s face it not that much difference.
I think I have solved the mystery. I think I have unlocked the secret that has puzzled mankind for years. I think the missing ingredient is care. That’s right care. I think when we make a sandwich or salad for ourselves we do it haphazardly. We slap the mustard on we give no thought to presentation or getting the coverage just right. We press too hard on the bread with our thumbs. We do not use a clean plate nor do we bother to present it with a pickle (when I make sandwiches for my Wife I often add little “eyes” made of olives on tooth picks that I stick into the top of the sandwich so that the ingredients form a face with a bread crust forehead and bologna tongue). We don’t take the extra measure of care for ourselves that we would for someone we loved or a total stranger at a church dinner. In fact I will go one better. Instead of calling it care, I will call it Love. What is missing when we taste our own sandwich is the Love that Mom put in. She always added just the right amount and she never ran out and had to go next door to borrow a cup. Thanks Mom; Bon apatite!

The Blob that ate Fort Liard

No good deed goes unpunished; they say. I know it is true. I once scraped the side of my new car on a telephone pole when I was giving a friend a boost. “What’s a telephone pole doing in the middle of your driveway?” I asked as I surveyed the damage. “Holding up the telephone wires.” Eddy answered sardonically. Ask a stupid question… Another time I delivered some groceries for a customer and when I came out the company truck wouldn’t start and I had to walk back to work two miles in the pouring rain. Another time; well you get the point.
“Hey Barry; the bottom half of the pallet isn’t ours!” I said as I removed the last box of frozen foods. “What?” Barry said angrily. It was nearly midnight and he was tired. “This bread dough is for the IGA Bakery in Ft Nelson. I’m not going back that way. I am headed to Ft Simpson to drop this trailer and then I am Bob tailing it back to Edmonton. I knew his switch (the other driver who usually drives while Barry sleeps) was MIA so I knew he was tired. “Can I leave it and have the other driver pick it up on Thursday?” I looked into his eyes they were underlined by dark circles. We depend on these drivers in the north. We depend on them and we take care of them. “Sure Barry. I’ll keep it here, it will stay frozen like a rock. “Here meant the unheated loading dock at the back of the store. I could close the inside doors in winter and use it as an emergency freezer. Barry helped me pile the cases against the outside doors. At forty below they would be frozen better than in a commercial freezer. The boxes were about two cubic feet. That is to say about as big as an ottoman. There were a dozen or more of them. “Thanks man, you rule!” said Barry as we finished. “Yes.” I replied “But only here in my tiny kingdom!” I wished him goodnight as my assistant Ron and I went home for a few hours sleep. We had to be back here in less than eight hours.
“You ever hear of a comb?” I asked Ron next morning as I knocked on his door. This was our routine. Each morning I walked past his door on the way to work. Each morning I knocked d and waited for him to get ready. He never combed his hair and seldom shaved. “Only in legends” Ron added laughing. He was a cheerful kid. I say kid but in fact in calendar years he was only two years younger then me. In temperament he was light-years younger than me. He was like Peter Pan, he never grew up. We walked the short distance to the store in the crisp morning air. Ron was shivering. “How come you never wear proper clothes?” I asked for the hundredth time. “I want to look cool.” He replied. He looked very cool in a spring baseball jacket, unzipped with baggy jeans and sneakers to finish the ensemble. He was shaking like a leaf. I unlocked the deadbolt and pushed the front door in. As quickly as I had entered I ducked out and flattened against the side of the building. “What’s wrong?” Ron asked his eyes wide. “It’s as hot as the fire of hell in there!” I said loudly. Doubting me or wanting to see for himself Ron walked in. He was back out like a shot. He dropped to his knees and gasped for breath. “You weren’t kidding it’s roasting in there!” He was panting for breath. “What happened?” He looked at me like he looked at me for all things. I felt like a Father to him sometimes. I looked at him, my mind racing. “If I had to guess I would say the high limit went on the furnace.” I replied. Wait for it, I thought. “What is a high limit?” Ron asked. I knew it. “A high limit is a safety feature that shuts the furnace down when the thermostat fails.”
I was working out in my mind what to do next. The thermostat and emergency cut off switch were in the back room. To get to them I would need to shut off the alarm which was in the office. The place has very hot and the air was not breathable. “You stay here and keep the door open. I will crawl to the back down low where the air is cooler. I will shut off the alarm and kill the furnace. “I took a deep breath and made my way in. I shut off the alarm but had to make my way out immediately. I was bathed in sweat when I hit the minus forty air. I gulped huge lung full’s of air and sat on the step. “I can’t even hold the door open.” Ron said. He too was bathed in sweat. I made another dash and this time I killed the furnace. I returned outside, hugely relieved. “That’s killed the heat source. At least there is no more risk of fire.” We sat on the steps and cooled off. “It will take hours to cool down in there.” Ron said unhappily.” I have orders to do today. “I thought for a minute. “We could open the front and the back doors and turn on the fan.” I replied. The store was equipped with a huge fan that was meant to keep the place cool in summer. It didn’t but it kept the flies busy.
We waited twenty minutes for the temperature to drop a bit and walked in. It was like there had been a fire or something. I hadn’t considered what the high temperatures would do. There was a pool of molten shortening and lard on the floors in the grocery department. I picked up an Aero bar it was liquid inside the wrapper and dripped from the ends of the packaging. My mind paced. Every item in the store that had chocolate in it would have to be thrown out. Granola bars; chocolate bars, cookies lots of styuff went into the bin. But the shock I got when I opened the front door that morning was nothing compared to the shock I got when I opened the receiving doors. I had forgotten the favor we had done the night before.. I was trying to ventilate the place when I swung open the inner doors only to be confronted with what can only be described as “The blob that ate Fort Liard” for there in the previously unheated porch was a blob of bread dough eight feet high, ten feet wide and eight feet deep. As I opened the door it surged forward like a living thing. Which; because of the millions of yeast in it; it truly was. It flowed toward Ron and I; albeit it was a slow flow. We dashed back as a wall of dough slumped into the room and surged across the floor. We were up to our wastes in the stuff. The empty boxes stuck out of the mass like flotsam in some giant flood. “No one in head office is going to believe this!” I said looking at Ron. “I don’t believe this!” He said holding one foot in the air and picking dough out of his sock.
Our eyes met in one long glance and we realized how ridiculous each of us looked. We both began to laugh. We were standing up to our waists in bread dough roaring with laughter when my friend Rick, jack of all trades whom I had called to help fix the furnace, walked through the door. He looked at the two of us. He looked at the sea of bread dough. He shook his head. He turned and left. Ron and I laughed louder. Rick returned to the room. “I just had to be sure I wasn’t dreaming!” He added and he too began to laugh. Then we got snow shovels and dug a path to the receiving doors. We dug them out and opened them. The store was cooling off now. We pushed the bread dough onto the snow where it froze. Rick filled a dump truck with it using his Bobcat loader. We hauled “The Blob that ate Fort Liard” to the dump. Like I said no good deed goes unpunished. But look at it this way I am still telling that story over twenty years later, so it may have been worth it.

I am my own grandpa

Like most people I had two grandfathers, my father’s father and my mother’s stepfather. I had two very different relationships with these two men. My grandfather Turnbull, my father’s father is my own blood relative. I am named after him. My middle name Earl was his first name. I am very proud of that. I have very fond memories of him; on one knee holding his thumb between his forefingers saying “I got your nose.’” Somewhere there is a photo of us; taken on my parent’s front lawn. He is leaning on a rock hammer and I am pulling a plastic dump truck be bought me, on a string. Granddad had just demolished a boulder the size of a Volkswagen with that hammer and a bucket of water. He first built a fire around the rock (something you could never do in Halifax today) then he threw a bucket of cold water on the hot rock and it split into pieces. He broke the pieces up with the hammer and the huge rock went away. He was not a big man but he could take a big problem and make it go away with that kind of determined effort his generation took for granted. He was a gold miner so it was second nature to him to go right through solid rock.
I haven’t seen the actual photo for years. I have searched for it every year when I am home. But the image goes with me everywhere I go. We distinguished (my siblings and I) between the two men by what we called them. Grandfather Turnbull was granddad. Grandfather Lewis was grampy. Even though there is no blood between us I am proud of him too. He built boats with his bare hands. In his younger days he built thirty to forty footers. Cape Islanders they were called. He built them in shops barely big enough to hold them. I never saw him work on big boats but I watched my Uncle Andrew build similar boats and I was in awe of these me who turned living trees into living boats that would flex with the waves and bring their crews home safely on those savage north Atlantic storms.
But there was always a distance between Grampy and me and my siblings. In his old age he built little boats, many in glass cabinets. They were models of boats that he had built for real when he was young. Just like he had years before; he built the smaller models with care and patience. True; no one’s life depended on it any more, or did it… Maybe his life somehow depended on it. The detail on the good ones was incredible. He would look for tiny pieces to fashion the rigging; the davits, the life boats and the portholes. He sculpted and painted window putty the exact color green of an angry Atlantic. The models seemed to pitch and roll as their bigger brethren had. He breathed life into these tiny models as he had built flexibility into the full size boats that allowed them to survive the gale.

When I first typed the moniker “grampy” it came up in red. Windows™ did not recognize it as a word. It suggested some possibilities; the first among them was “grumpy”. Now this is particularly poignant and this was a nickname we used for grampy sometimes, under our breath of course, me and my siblings. It was not meant in mean spirits but it reflected our frustration with him as he dealt with his frustration with us. In the summers my parents would take a week and we would drive to Yarmouth; where my grampy and grammy lived. My mother’s mother was a wonderful lady. She was short and round and we loved to visit her. She always had ice cream for us from Cook’s dairy in two quart bricks that you sliced with a knife usually strawberry and served with fresh berries. In those days ice cream was still made with cream; it was wonderful. I remember her eating lemon wafers and drinking what she called “White Rose Tea” which was hot water and milk. When we stayed with them grampy would stay in the porch and build boats. We were not allowed to move. He would get agitated if we broke his concentration. In time we took to camping when we visited grammy and grumpy.
The problem with grandparents is that they tend to leave you before you are old enough to truly appreciate them and I think this was the case with grampy Lewis. I now have a hobby; an avocation (writing) that takes a good deal of concentration… Oh bother what is that noise. “Hey you kids, why don’t you play in someone else’s yard?’” Where was I … Oh yeah, writing takes a good deal on concentration, train of thought you know… “Oh for Pete’s sake… Hey you kids I’m trying to work; don’t you have parents?” I think in time I would have grown to understand grampy and his need for peace and quiet. “HEY KIDS QUIET!!!” I mean he was just a guy who had worked hard all his life who wanted to make a statement about his life and values and …

Oh my God! I am my own grandpa!