The Citizen, 2011-05-12, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 12, 2011. PAGE 5.
Plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose
The French nailed it: The more things
change; the more they remain the same.
Take your humble jalopy – or your
Porsche Couple Targa 4S for that matter. Take
the panel of dials and needles and switches and
knobs that runs across the span of the car from
port to starboard just behind the steering
wheel.
That’s right, the dashboard. But why ‘dash’?
It’s not as if the thing is running anywhere.
Different ‘dash’. This one means, as my
dictionary puts it: “to strike or smash violently,
so as to break to pieces”. Foundering ships
get dashed upon the rocks. Hockey players
with their heads down get dashed against the
boards. Back in the days when vehicles
were quite literally driven by horse power,
occupants would have been dashed with
gravel, grit and mud hurled up by the horses’
churning hooves – but for the ‘dashboard’ that
deflected the stuff.
It’s been a few decades since most people
depended on horse-drawn carriages to get
them down to the mall or up to the cottage, but
the dashboard endures, even though it’s now
embedded with a constellation of gizmos –
tachometer, speedometer, odometer, clock,
fuel gauge, turn flashers, battery indicator,
GPS readout, AM/FM radio and CD player to
name a few.
The horn in the centre of the steering wheel
endures too – and that goes back to the
barbaric days of Visigoths and Vikings and the
like when marauders summoned their troops
or prefaced their raids by having the guy with
the hardiest lungs blow a blood-curdling solo
into the narrow end of a hollowed-out cow’s
horn.
What’s more, most automobile dashboards
still feature an inlaid lockable recess on the
front passenger seat side. We call it a ‘glove
compartment’, even though it’s usually
overflowing with roadmaps, gas station
serviettes, a car manual, a tire pressure gauge
and a handful of ancient, fossilized candies
that only a desperately famished human would
bring to his mouth. The glove compartment
has become a repository for everything but
gloves. Come on, now – when’s the last time
you packed a pair of lambskin gloves in there
to protect your hands while you’re working the
reins?
Ironically, the venerable dashboard concept
has made the leap to cyberspace. Keyboard
technogeeks routinely download and
customize a computer display that keeps them
up to date with weather reports, time zones,
news headlines, stock prices, phone numbers
and pretty well anything else they want to
check on regularly.
The name for this cutting edge computer
feature? Why, ‘dashboard’ of course.
Young’uns must be bewildered by the
terminology the rest of us grew up with.
Thankfully we no longer have to try to explain
concepts like clutches and throttles, magnetos
and spark retards.
I’m still trying to come up with a credible
story for that little round hole in the
dashboard. You know – the one you plug your
GPS unit or your cell phone or your iPod or
your laptop into.
I can hear the conversation in my head
already. “Did you have Xbox and Gameboy
when you were a kid, grandpaw?”
No, I will say.
“Then, why’dja have that adaptor on your
dashboard? What didja use it for?”
And I will explain that we called that
adapter ‘the lighter’. And that, as incredible as
it may sound, there was a time when people
voluntarily inserted dried weeds wrapped
up in a paper tube in their mouth and set fire to
one end of the tube, sucking the smoke out of
the other. The ‘lighter’ was what we used to
ignite the tube of weeds while we were
driving.
“Wouldn’t that make you sick?” he will ask.
Not only sick, I will tell him, it would
eventually kill anybody who did it long
enough.
“Did it make people happy?” he’ll ask.
Not particularly, I’ll say. In fact, if you
stopped doing it, it made you very
grouchy.
“But Grandpaw,” he’ll say, “That sounds
crazy.”
And I will have to answer, yes. Yes, it does.
Arthur
Black
Other Views What’s with the dashboard?
Try as I might to be optimistic, I think we
can all agree that I tend to use this space
to bitch and moan, not to trumpet what
is right and good in the world, probably at
about a 5:1 ratio. Maybe even more.
Everyone who knows me well knows that I
tend to be as pessimistic as they come. Last
week, however, I met a family that literally
made pessimism impossible.
Readers of The Citizen will be familiar with
Mikayla Ansley and her family. Mikayla was
diagnosed with a form of ocular cancer called
Retinoblastoma before her first birthday.
What followed were several years of difficult
medical treatments, uncertain times and days
that were too much to bear, both for Mikayla
and for her parents Katie and Mike.
In 2008 Mikayla was facing a gauntlet of
procedures and subsequent treatments and the
future was uncertain, so the Blyth Lions Club
organized a fundraiser to help the family along.
“I ask that people keep Mikayla in their
hearts and prayers,” Katie said in 2008. “She
has a long road ahead of her. She is a very
strong, happy little girl and over the next few
weeks she will have gone through more than
most in their entire life.”
Nearly three years to the day from when
Katie spoke those words about Mikayla, she
was watching her daughter smile, laugh and
dance while having the time of her life at
Disney World in Florida.
And last week when volunteers from The
Sunshine Foundation (the organization that
sent the Ansleys to Florida) came to Blyth to
meet Mikayla, a wonderful princess experience
was capped off with gifts, cupcakes and a visit
from the foundation’s Sunshine Bear.
Personally, as someone who really loves to
complain, I really had to step back and wonder
what it was that makes me kvetch so.
Sure, I had been working long hours, I had
covered an election, and I had more work due
than hours in the day to complete it, but it took
a girl small enough to headbutt my knee to
show me that maybe I should shut up.
Now of course Mikayla would never say
such a thing. She’s too nice, she’s too polite
and she just wouldn’t do it.
If anyone has the right to complain, it’s
Mikayla and her family. But they don’t do it.
So while readers seem to enjoy my rants
about automated telephone systems that leave
much to be desired, people squawking at a
movie theatre or protesters (my favourite), I’m
left to wonder if it’s worth the effort and if
complaining about these small issues is a
worthwhile endeavour.
Looking at the big picture, in a few short
years Mikayla has, as Katie predicted, been
through more than many of us ever will in the
duration of our lives. And she has done it all
with a smile.
There was indeed light at the end of the
tunnel though as Mikayla has had just one
follow-up treatment in the last 15 months and
she is set to take her place at Blyth Public
School in the fall, starting Junior Kindergarten.
So in spending just a short time with
Mikayla, she spent it dancing, laughing and
chatting about everything from her trip to what
she wants to do when she grows up, which, by
the way, is to work at the post office. “It seems
like it would be a fun job,” she says.
Mikayla’s initial request to The Sunshine
Foundation was to “see the castle that
Tinkerbell flies over” and to “be a princess in a
red dress” and in Florida she got to do both.
Her red dress, however, came back to Canada
with her, so perhaps Mikayla can now relive
that princess feeling whenever she wants.
Walk the long road
There are few raptures, few pleasures,
few situations which evoke such
incredible scent and flavour memory
than a good cup of joe.
My name is Denny and I’m a coffee addict.
No, I’m not making light of any harder
addictions out there – but I love my coffee
to the point that it has caused me bodily
harm.
When I was in school, in the third floor of a
frat house, I kept a coffee maker in my
room.
I probably spend more on flavoured coffees,
different blends, special coffee machines and
coffee mugs in a year than some debutantes
spend on clothes.
Why do I tell you this? Well it’s because I’m
searching.
Years ago I had the best coffee I had ever
tasted.
No, it wasn’t Starbucks, and it certainly
wasn’t that watered down coffee served at a
certain hockey player’s haunt (which has a
good flavour, I’ll admit, but nowhere near
enough punch).
No, it was no mainstream brew, it was
something totally and wholly different.
It had punch, it had flavour, it was dark and
hid secrets like a Stephen King novel.
Just when I thought I had it figured out, it
went M. Night Shamalyan on me and twisted
me with a strong burst of caffeine.
And then, it left me.
It happened when I was young and had just
fallen in love with caffeinated drinks.
I had dabbled with tea for years, but tea isn’t
like coffee. Tea gently nudges you awake,
gives you a nice even buzz.
Coffee... coffee grabs you by the collar and
screams for you to wake up. It’s almost to the
point where you can feel the spit from coffee’s
lips flying on to your face, aiding in the wake
up call.
And espresso, well if coffee is a scream,
espresso is like packing a caffeine grenade in
your head, pulling the pin, and saying sorry to
your taste buds all at once.
Anyways, as I was saying, it left me.
It was fair trade and organic before
they were buzz words and sold in a small
gift store somewhere in northern Huron
County.
I’ve sought for it high and low since I went
to school and found every other brand of
coffee to be lacking that punch.
Even the darkest roast can’t match the
jugular-gripping, pulse-hammering noise that
coffee caused in my head.
So I ask you, Citizen readers, to search back
in your memories.
I need to find that coffee.
Sure, my Starbucks dark roast can wake me
up in the morning and my occasional
Tim Hortons can keep me awake during the
trip home from North Huron Township
Council, but for those early Saturday mornings
sitting on my deck I need to find a special
brew.
Something that both brings you to the edge
of insanity and pulls you back, something that
gives you a dizzying high long enough to
get that second cup before the debilitating
crash.
I need to find that brew that was sold at that
little gift store somewhere on County Road 4
that I can’t find anymore, or something to take
the place of it.
Why?
Well for exactly the reason I just said.
As silly as it may sound, when I was young,
I didn’t dream of high-rise towers or wearing a
suit to work.
I dreamed of going away to the city, yes, but
for some reason that dream never completely
meshed with what I felt was right.
This all came back to me this past weekend
as I prepared for a Mother’s Day dinner, and
a semi-house warming party at my new
home.
My father had been generous enough to give
me several chairs for my deck.
The chairs are green and adirondack (or
muskoka if you prefer) style.
It took me back to a Christmas not that many
years ago.
My family does a “gift steal” instead of
buying for people.
My uncle, thinking to fool everyone who
always looks for his beautiful carpentry
creations, put a picture of an adirondack (or
muskoka) style wooden chair in a box.
I happened to be the last person giving the
opportunity to steal or pick a gift that year and,
not having it in me to steal the thing I thought
I wanted, I picked the box.
That chair is amazing.
Right now it sits in my mother’s shed,
waiting for me to retrieve it and re-assemble it,
but it will still be amazing.
I remember sitting in that chair and thinking
about drinking a coffee on a morning from my
patio or deck.
Now I have the chance to make that
thought a reality, and I just have to find that
coffee.
For some reason I don’t think the sensation
will be complete without it.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
The glory of a good cup of coffee
Always try to do something for the other
fellow and you will be agreeably surprised
how things come your way – how many
pleasing things are done for you.
– Claude M. Bristol
Final Thought