Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1975-08-07, Page 2Sugar and Spice by Bill Smiley Sitting here , writing a column in Grandad's office, a pair of shorts, and nothing else, I would have to work very hard at it to be anything but peaceful, and I'm not about to. Back home, my lawn is burning to a crisp, my roses are dying for lack of water, my cat, with any' hick, has left for good, and some junkie has probably broken into the house & stolen the colour T.V. I don't care. Out there somewhere, people are hurtling along hot asphalt in the heat, cursing the obstreperous kids in the back seat, and wishing they'd never started this stupid trip. Elsewhere, guys and dolls all over the world are hustling and sweating and trying to impress each other, and pursuing the everdwindling buck with maniacal inten- sity of purpose. Everywhere, politicians are cooking up new clouts for the next session, or thinking up new ways of saying: "Maybe yes, and no, and maybe maybe." Somewhere, Arabs are killing Jews,and Jews are killing Arabs, and Christians,, in time-honoured custom, are killing other Christians. Somebody is winning 530,000 "in the Something-Or-Other-Open with a 24 foot putt, and somebody else is losing it by missing-tt four foot putt. People ate earnestly taking virtually useless summer courses whiCh will fit them for practically nothing Unexpected and unwelcome visitors are piling in on "old friends." The visitors unload two surly kids, one illmannered dog, and announce heartily: "Can't stay morena coupla days. Thought about gettin' a motel room but knew you'd be hurt 'f we didden stay 'thyou." (Sound of old friends' eyes rolling.) My son is in Paraguay, South America, swimming a piranha-infested river, or slouching through the jungle, kicking poisonous snakes out of the wasy, or lying in a native hut, wracked with by malaria. My only daughter is trapped in a box on the ninth floor of an appartment building, in,the heat, with an 18-month hell-on- wheels boy clutching her sawed-off jeans, and a little sister in the oven, ready to join him just about on his second birthday and oh, dear, isn't it awful. Imagine having two babies in two years in these times. (Sound of Gran, gnashing teeth.( And about all of these things all the hurly and the burly, all the muss and the fuss, all the Niggle and piggle, all of the ever-lasting human struggle to prove that god's in His heaven and all's wrong with the world, or the opposite, I don't. care. I just don'A give a diddley-dam'. Why not? Because, at this time and in this place. I have irrefutable proof that He is in His heaven, and there ain't nobody who could improve on the world just as it is, right now. It's a cool-hot perfect Canadian day. Hot sun, cool breeze. Whatever your thermom- eter says, it's about 83 Fahrenheit here. I raise my head from the typewriter, and roses lean toward me, a big, matronly maple ruffles her bustles in the breeze, like a lady caught in a body-rub parlor. On the top rail of the fence, 10 feet away, two retarded robins are singing, and making, overtures. A denuded lilac bush is whispering: "Yes, but wait 'til next year." Along the back fence, the hollyhocks stand, not row on row, but in little groups, muttering together, tossing their head in the breeze, and looking down their long, cool shoulders at the upstart blue delphiniums, which bear a gleam of miscegenation in their eyes. Just beyond them is a field of uncut, late, late hay, bowing an tossing and rippling and tossing and rippling like a blonde teenater- who has just discovered she just might be a beautiful woman. Raise the eyes but one more degree, and there, framed in green foliage), is the deep-blue beauty of the two-mile-wide bay, with the high, rolling shoreline on the other side, and the cottages so tiny that you can't see the squalling, grunting, sweaty humans in and around them. Ah, but it's lovely. And peaceful. .And lonely. Not lonesome, but the good kind of lonely, when you don't wnat another human Being, even a loved one, tospoil the mood. Maybe that's it. My Loved One is away down the gravel road, exchanging hyster- ical tales about their children with an old school friend. Grandad, an incorrigible 8 3-year-old, is out belting around his 40-mile mail route. This morning, I was a hawk. When I saw little, the chickens, who were all ,psyched up, would scuttle, the kids would all scream with delight: "A hawk! A hawk!" and the farmer would run •in 'for his shotgun. Nobody even noticed this guy. He looked like a skinny, ancient kite, peering down for the dead body of a Roman legionnaire, perhaps: No chickens. No legionnaires (1 haven't paid my dues). It was kind of sad. Donw in the Bay, there is a big rainbow trout just waiting to show me some tricks. Yesterday, I saw two partidge flush just outside Grandad's "office" window. To- morrow I'll see three deer standing up by the fence, looking curious. Tomorrow care about the world again, and all the bad things and good things happening in it. BLit right now, at this time, in this place, I don't care. God may be out to lunch, as I frequently suspect. But whoever is filling in for Him at this moment is doing one helluva job, if you'll pardon the expression. Weather like we had last week makes everyone pretty hot under the collar. It seems that when the thermometer surpasses the 25 to 30 centimeters mark for days in a row. complaints and irritations abound. Friends and relatives were short tempered. People came 'into the Expositor office to let off steam about sins of omission and commission, more than usual during the heat wave. Things that normally would have been passed by With a shrug of the shoulders or a "what-do-you-expect" attitude, were suddenly too much for people to handle. A poliCe chief once said that hot summer days, are a policeman's curse because domestic quarrels and eNiten shootings and stabbings increase dramatically. We didn't (thank Heavens) have any serious incidents here but we had a lot of bad tempered people. With this in mind, It should surprise no one that some Detroiters suddenly found their plight unbearable and rioted during last week's hot spell. The' Detroit riots of 1968 also occurred.. during. The hot „summer months. The French Revolution started with the taking of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. We don't doubt that othei; major riots and revolutions also occurred during hot spells. One staff worker had the dubious pleasure of travelling last weekend and found a train more than an hour late arriving at the London station. One man was blocking the way out to the train platform when the !ast call was given. Another dressed In a suit coat came up from behind, pushing his way forward, and impatiently told the man to get out of his way; he was trying to make the train. The man on ramp, equally put out, told the man if he had come earlier, he wouldn't have to be pushing his way through. The man proceeded to catch the train, while the equally respectable man shouted abuse after him. The staff worker heard a conductor on the train tell one young man, if he had any complaints over the late train, he could take a bus from the next stop. These incidents are typical of the short-tempers and lack of diplomacy that 'occurs on hot days. Perhaps there is a solution to this dilemma. Offices all can get air conditioning but that causes other problems. People hate to go outside, like one relative who said she had to hurry home to her air-conditioning. It still doesn't prevent people travelling in and out of an air-conditioned, office from being irritable, and bad-humored, as we should know. Not only were Seaforth residents short-tempered, like the majority of people having to function in the muggy summer heat, but the Expositor staff found it hard not to be sharp with, co-workers. The only solution, we can think is that everyone put out "Gone to the Beach" signs and then go. ' When people feel their tempers rising with the temperatures, they could say to fellow workers, "See you at the beach!" Although this might not be good for busi ness, it could prevent bad feelings that last a lifetime. Does this solution, see .1 logical to you? Someone else suggested an afternoonSiesta in the Mexican style: We could take a break and work again later in the day. If these suggestions to beat, the heat, don't seem sensible, what do you expect? We thought of them on a hot summer's day. -Nancy Andrews Pickle Time I've learned a lot these last two weeks--at one of these principals' blortgiven at the universities during i he summer. Now before I go on any further, let me straighten something out. I'm not taking the course. I'm helping to give this course. I say helping because they're twelve of us on the staff. And we're conducting sessions in leadership training with ,150 school princi- pals or prospective principals. That Sunday evening when we got together for the first time; we 110 a chance, to look each other. over.. We sipped wine and nibbled at cheese. We playok a getting- to-know-you game called Breast- plate. We wrote our name on a big sheet of poster paper. And answered all kinds of questions about ourselves. We put our answers in appropriate places on the paper with our big bold printing. " We wrote down when we were born, at what age we learned to swim, when we learned the facts of life, wild our first date was, what our hobbies were, and who'd .we go to when we were in trouble. We named and number- ed all our family back home. We told what we thought we were good in. What our specialities were that we could share with the group for the coming weeks. We wore our breastplates as we mixed and socialized that evening And we ended up by putting our breatplates on the wall. Tacking them up and hanging out ourselv- es on this one piece,,,,of paper for all to see. I learned a lot from those ' breastplates. And I learned a lot more in the following days-- through all the give and take. Teaching's like that. You learn as, much--or more--than your stu- dents. As I say, I learned a, lot these last ten days. And I learned plenty these last ten nights, too. I learned I really don't need eight hours of sleep each night. --4)earned- I could get by with 'IWO, pairs of walking shorts and four tee shirts a week. I learned always to carry a glass in my suitcase. When I cam home for that first weekend, my wife thought I was eating •sensibly, when she saw three oranges in my suitcase. Then she saw the glass. The bottle, opener. The cor,Thk,scras etw. on the extra curricular program, dear", I said. We just finished week two. And as 1 say, I'm learning lots. I'm learning how to organize bus tours. How to runt a bus for an excursion to Grand Bend,,, I'm learning how. to buy block ticket seats for theatre plays. I'm learning how to sell them too. How to apply people-pressure to get everyone to go. I'm learning that a , school teacher-does get a good salary. Enough to put a swimming pool in his backyard. And I learned'that I can swim in his pool for three hours without coming out once. And I'm learning how I haven't made all that much of myself. Not stacked up against another staff man. He works full time' and on the side, runs a hundred and, fifty acre farm, operates a private tennis club, dabbles in real estate and writes novels in his spare time--and gets them published. He paints a pretty oil picture too. They're hanging all over his house. 1.-liarned that *1st e'd' I' Wag-, sixteen again when I played tennis with his son. I wanted to be skinny like him, with a good hitting arm and with a high ambition to become a tennis bum. I'm learning how not to get lost in the crowd when we go on outings. "Be sure to hang on to the rope", one of the, teachers said in a high mocking voice. - I'm learning how to plan picnics. And how to plan reunions How not to let a good relationship, die. How to arrange a two day get together next month for our first annual principals' course reunion I'm learning. I'm learttng. Maybe my, mother was right after all. She usually worried a lot. Thought I'd learn more after school than during. Dear mother! May you rest in peace. And dear me! May I rest in one' piece--when this leadership conference ends in two weeks. by Karl Schuessler Amen 1111111 xim:sitor Since *860, Serving the Community First ?Wished at SEA-FORT& ONTARIO, ever y Thursday marring by MCLEAN BROS. PUBLISHERS LTD. ANDREW Y. McLEAN, Publisher SUSAN WHITE, Editor Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association Ontat lo Weekly Newspaper Association and Audit Bureau of Circulation Subscription Rates: Canada (in advance) 510.00 a Year Outside Canada (in advance) 512.00 a Year SItIGLE COPIES — 25 CENTS EACH Seconklass`Mail. Registration Number 0696 Telephone 527-0240 •SEAFORTH, ONTARIO, AUGUST 7, 1975 to the 'Years Agone I. AUGUST 6th, 1875 Mr. O'Brien, of between Tueltersrnith and Hibbert sent us a hen's egg which measured 61/4 " one way and eight the other. Flax pulling commenced at Seaforth on the farm of Wm. Fowler, Huron Rd. Messrs, Jas. A. Cline, Thomas Duncan and John Campbell are attending the airmail meeting of the °Mellows Grand Lodge, being held in London. Two young men,•Donald Ross and Robert Sharp, residents of Stanley Township have been displaying themselves while making ties for the London, Huron and Bruce Railway. In one day they made 90 ties and the next day 10k. The work was done on the farm of Wm. Moffatt. John Patterson, of Hullett, purchased an apple tree from the Rochester Nursery and planted it. A few weeks after the tree blossomed, but the fruit frustrated its design, a few weeks ago the tree blossomed again. A little girl, daughter of Mrs. Campbell, widow; hickillop, broke her ankle while amusing herself-on a swing in the barn. The rope gave way, and she fell. A' Heat rash AUGUST 3rd, 1900 ' James Boyes of TuckeiSmith, after a thorough overhauling of his thrashing outfit started this season on Monday last. Wm. Charlesworth 'Sr. had his ankle abrased, while working at the barn raising of H. Colbert, by a large beam shoving against Ids leg- E.C. Coleman's rink composed and James McMichael, F. Hohn.sted, J. S. Roberts, and E. C. Coleman's skip, won the counsolation prizes at the London Tournament. Mr. and Mrs. Alex Stewart of town left for Goderich, where they sailed on a trip up the, lakes. James Leatherleud of town has been appointed agent of a book entitled, "Famous new and Great events of the 19th Century". Master Frank Scott, son of Robert Scott of Harpurhey, has passed a very creditable examination for the High School, although only 10 years of age. Robert Armstrong's beautiful residence at Constance was the scene of a happy event. The guests numbered upwards of X300, assembled in the barn to trip the light fantastic. The music for dancing furnished by messrs 'Staples, • Alien; Britton, Fowler and Berwick,. accompanied on the organ by Miss Britton: Mrs. Nicklson, Mrs. Sanderson and Misi Neilens . The apple packers at Kippen are now busy on their round. Edward Marchman, of St. Josephs, has taken the contract to excavate two large cellars for the St. Josephs Wine Co. Bayfield common resort is becoming more popular each -year, as is evident by the large numbers of people who come here. A gang of men have been working at Dublin putting up poles for the Bell Telephone Co., extending from the Delaney corner to the store, where the head office will be. Misses Maria and Tena Bristow who have been in Haptilton for the past winter have returned to spend the holidays with their parents. Mr. Mowat of Meaford was chosen as the Principal of the Seaforth Collegiate Institue to succeed, C. Clarkson. The Huron Football club and the 33rd Regiment Band are petitioning to have August 13 as Seaforth's Civic Holiday when they will run an excursion to Berlin where .the Hurons play the, final game for the championship of Canada. Beattie Bros. were advertising their' tea at the old price of 28 cent per pound. During the storm on Sunday afternoon, the hay' barn on the farmof J. M. Eckert was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Mr. Eckert was in the house but the fire had got a good start. John Hanis came to help him, but hey had to alert the Seaforth Fire brigade. A separator belonging to Joseph Dayman was removed. There were 10 tons of Hay in the barn. A new stunt on the 8th line of McKillop is berry-picking in the neighbours bush at five o'clock in the morning. Mr. W. D. Hopper, of Seaforth is drilling a well for James Simpson at Winthrop. T. Drover of Chiselhurst sold a fine shorthorn bull to Burns Bros. west of Hens all. Thos. Cairns of Cromarty was badly hurt by being dragged by a cow. He was taken to his sisters home; Mrs. ,D. Vivian but haS since returned hbme. On Wednesday, a stack of oats was struck by lightning on the farm of Geo Glenn and was completely burned. Mr. and Mrs. Robert Bell met with a serious accident as they were returning from Clinton and their car skidded in a pile of loose gravel andturned into the ditch. Fortunately two men extricated them. The home of Mr. and Mrs. W.G.L. Edmunds, Goderich St. W. was the scene of a quiet but pretty wedding where their daughter Mary was united in marriage to Dr. David Lloyd Curtis of Marmora . Rev. W. D. McDowel performed the ceremony and Miss^M. Scarlett played the wedding march. The death occurred in Harpurhey of Mr. Robert T. Dodds. W.T. Thompson has purchased the residence of Miss Thompson on Victoria St. Joe Eckert, Scott Howthorne and John McCowan have refitted Mr., Eckert's thrashing outfit. The death occurred at the home of her sister, Mrs. J. J. Cluff, and Mrs. Janr.s L. Murray of *Hamilton. She was the daughter of the late Alexander Scott of Seaforth and was born in Harpurhey 66 years ago. AUGUST 4th, 1950 Construction of a new hydro transformer station' is proceeding rapidly, a mile and a quarter east of Seaforth. While playing in a barn at the farm of her father, John L Malone, Sheila fell and suffered a fractured elbow. Mrs. F. W. Wigg while walking on Main St. slipped and in the fall broke her arm. Farming throughout the district at Seaforth, has came to a complete standstill as torrential rains have truned harvest fields into mires. Mrs. Mae Dorrance of town, Mrs. M.H. McKenzie of Oshawa and Jack Dorrance of St. Catharines, are off on a motor trip to the Canadian west. Mr. and Mrs. Carman Rowcliffe have moved into their new residence on Goderich St. recently purchased from Mr. E. Ironside. - Wm. Ament suffered cuts and bruises when he tipped over some boards on the floor of his garage. He war removed to Scott Memorial Hospital. Sam Pethick of Winthrop has returned home from an extended 'trip to British Columbia. Miss Shirley Bennett and Joyce Oliver have returned from a trip to Ottawa. Irwin Leonhard:t of Brodhagen had the tips and two fmgers injuted on the saw in his work shop and was treated at Stratford General Hospital. A pretty summer wedding took place at St. Patrick's Church, Dublin, where Marie Louise Evans was married to John Joseph Cleary' of Chatham, Seaforth High School girls have taken up rifle shooting and are on a par with the boys. They are Phyllis Boyes, Mary Boswell and Yvonne Bolton. Speculation that there may be oil beneath the Hay adn Stephen swamp is being put to the tat. - Friends and neighbours gathered at No. 10 Stanley School to honour Mr. R. S. ninft, who was prior to het marriage Miss Amy. Aikenhead of Btucefield, '4 k V 4 4 4 4