HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1979-12-19, Page 3THE BRUSSELS, POST, DECEMBER 19 -19TH
HI, THERE LOOK WHAT I FOUND—Tracy Mayer found this Santa
Claus doillasjone;ofttheiChristmas decorations in the Callander Nursing'
Home on Wednesday and she loves Santa so much that she gave him a
big kiss. (PhOto by Langlois)
Loads
of Cheer
For That
Lost Minute
(Shoppingfor
Appliances
• Toys
• Games
• Tools
Don't be disappointed
IT PAYS TO SHOP AT HOME
4111
BRUSSELS
MEMBER BBA 687-6525
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uloohlriwiSugar and spice attat,4
By Bill Smiley
Morris
bylaws
Morris Township 'Council
passed three by-laws relating
to the Pletch subdivision in
Belgrave at a special meeting
on Monday.
The three bylaws provided
for the township to acquire
roads, to acquire a lot for
security and to acquire
easements.
Action on the subdivision
bylaws had been delayed as
council awaited submission
of necessary subdivision
documents indicating that
legal and engineering
requirements had been met.
At a previous meeting,
Mr. Pletch had complained
of delays on the subdivision
and council had told him they
were waiting for the
easements to be registered.
At Monday's meeting Reeve
Bill Elston said the easement
had ben registered the
preceding Friday, on
December 14.
The road by-law permits
the township to accept land
in the subdivision dedicated
for use as public roadways. A
second by-law covers
easements to permit
constructing, maintaining
and repairing services and
drains.
After a discussion with
Wayne Cantelon, council
reversed a previous decision
on a severance when it was
found out he had a purchaser
interested in ; .. using the
barn. Council had earlier
objected to the severance
which was to sever land from
the house and barn because
it was felt the buildings
would become obsolete.
Council agreed also to find
Out if the severance had to be
recirculated.
. After a representation
froth Boyd Taylor of the Blyth
Cemetery hoard, council
decided to grant $450 to the
Board. -
(Continued from Page 2)
except for the occasional phone call or
Christmas card.
I find this a little sad, but it doesn't
really destroy me. The times they are
achangin'. Our once-warm, once-large,
once-close families broke into fragmenets
and we just had to accept it, as we did the
pill, deodorant and ring-around-the collar
commercials, women's lib, and other great
steps forward by mankind.
That's what I thought. In fact, I didn't
mind it that much. Families can be a pain
in the arm. An older sister who still thinks
you are 12 years old and need straight-
ening out. A younger brother who doesn't
realize that under those dull gray socks of
yours is another dull gray — clay.
That's the way I thought. But once in a
while, for some reason, or no reason, the
whole fam damily comes roaring out of the
wood-work, all at once, and your phone is
so hot the wires are melting, while Ma Bell
sits back with a satiated leer, almost
post-coital, ,,and you take out a third
mortgage on the house to pay your
telephone bill.
Families don't write any more. They
telephone. With the state of our mail
service, it's no wonder. You could send two
Christmas cards in a row to Uncle Ed,
before you got the letter from Auntie
Agnes, mailed 13 months before, telling
you that he was either dead, or had run off
with a strip tease artist,
That's What happened to us recently. My
kid brother had been taken suddenly and
rather violently ill. We had a couple of $34.
conversations from his hospital morn in
Montreal. He was to let me know of any
change. Total silence.
After a month of this, I phoned my older
sister, and asked whether he were dead.
She hadn't a clue. Said he'd just vanished.
Pair enough. I wasn't going to phone.
Then my daughter began phoning from
MOosonee, telling my wife about her
troubles with beating off the bachelors,
and telling me innocuous stuff like she was
going to buy a snow-mobile, and would we
take the kids while she attended a iyeekend
conference, and asking me how to cope
with students who threatened to shoot the
principal if she kicked them out of class.
Each of these calls was returned, almost
nightly, by my wife, who htid thought up
more piercing questions and answers in the
intervening. 24 hourS. And I had to talk to
•
the grandboys, find out what they wanted
for Christmas, who had won the latest
fight, and such-like.
Then came a call from my son, collect, as
usual, who said he was in Florida, on the
way home from South America. When he'd
arrive he didn't know. Grind, grind. Teeth.
Then a close relative jumped through the
window of a fifth-floor apartment and was
pronounced D.O.A. at the hospital. This
spewed a frenzied round of long-distance
calls to police, relatives, her son and so on.
It also elicited similar calls on the in-line
for us.
Just got over this, intermingled with
frequent calls to great-grandad, telling him
we'd be over any weekend now, a call from
a brother-in-law to ask if he could sleep at
our house on the way back from a music
festival, arriving at 3 a.m., a call from
another brother-in-law to ask if he could
help about the suicide, and a dejected call
from daughter to say her conference was
washed out and we wouldn't see them until
Christmas.
Prodigal son phones, now 100 miles from
home, collect, broke, unrepentant. He's
home now, driving his mother crazy
because he's a health-food nut and won't
eat any of the great meals she is busting to
prepare. Result, she cooks one pork chop
for me with a baked potato, some squash
and a bit of broccoli with cheese, she eats
;he saw-dust and stuff he eats, and I eat like•
a pig.. -
Kidbrother"calls front James Bay project
to tell me he'd alive, but has had serious
surgery and medication, but now feeling
great He's two years y. lounger than I, and
is going to retire next July, with a fat
pension, This goes over big, as you can
imagine.
Sixteen phone calls for prodigal son,
from friends who seem to have received
news of his arrival by tribal drum. He's
never here when they call. They all want
him to call back. On our bill,
As though Ma Bell wants to rub it in, a
Bell telephone crew, coMplete with huge
trucks, backhoes and other vile machinery,
arrives at a.M. every morning,. sounding
like Revelations will, and tears great holes
in niy lawn, to plant a Cable, Cutting the
roots of my maples, so they'll all die.
It's nice to have family, But if I'd cut the
phone line 20 years ago, and.put the money
into its stock, I'd be a major shareholder in
Bell of Canada today,
The Butcher-Boys'iwish each and everyone
a Merry Christmas and
a Happy Nevt(Year!
Istioinpson& Stephenson
Meat Market -
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