The Brussels Post, 1980-11-26, Page 2• '..i4goctr:orid,.-vfre.-
4 001....mite,i.
Keeping a house is work
Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $12 a year
Others $25 a yeat, Single copies 30 cents each.
et,.• w 11 ,;4
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1980
Serving Brussels and the surrounding community.
Published each. Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario
By McLean Bros. Publishers Limited
Evelyn Kennedy- Editor Pat Langlois Advertising
Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and
Ontario Weekly Newspaper A4sociation
`.?4!t ji4t "IJ a<,.!!•-• s, eis•
russels Post
MUMS La
oniTASKI
Positive pride
The Grey Cup game on Tuesday was a disappointment to some as
the Edmonton Eskimoes scored an easy 47-10 victory over the
'Hamilton Ti-Cats.
One of the interesting things about the game, however, was the
show that was presented at half-time, a real tribute to Canada that
should have softened even the 'hardened hearts of those provinces
wanting to separate. • •
Especially stirring was Roger Whittaker, singing a song ,about
Canada that praised the different attractions of each province as the
crowd at the football game wildly cheered him on.
If the premiers of this country, could show some of the same type of
attitude toward Canada, instead of always looking at the negative side
of things, and attempt to correct what's wrong in a positive way, then
we could once more gain the pride we had in our country at the 1967
Centennial celebrations.
To the editor.
Larpron family has done well
A meeting was held in Melville Church on
Nov. 19 with 10 members present from the
various committees regarding the Larprom
family.
We are happy to say Suvit has found
ier'manent employment with Neil Heming-
way and Osath has secured 1 or 2 days
nursing at the Callander Nursing Home. If
any person is interested in volunteer
baby-sitting on these days it would be
greatly appreciated.
In April the family will possibly move to
Neil's second house (Devries' former house)
to be clo sear to Suvit's work.
Donations are still needed financially or in
the form of furniture and equipment when
they resettle.
M Suvit wishes to get his license for
driving we would welcome anyone willing to
help give him driving lessons. The Larprom
family has done remarkably well and we are
pleased and proud to have these. new
friends.
Contact persons
Mary TenPas or Joanne King.
There's nothing worse than having yonr
wife go off and leave you to cope all alone for
a couple of weeks Unless it's having her
arrive home a day early and finding you up
to yonr wasit in your own filth,_ that you were
going to clean up tomorrow.
That has happened' to me once, but this
time I'm going to make sure. I'm going to do
the clean-up a day earlier. First time it
happened, she was unbearable for about a
week, just because there were three or four •
bottles of sour milk, a one-inch patina of
grease on the stove, and a kitchen floor you•
could hardly walk across without getting
stuck somewhere. •
1.'11 give a hot tip to some of you
middle-aged guys who think your old lady
has a soft touch. You know: a lazy coffee and
read the paper after you've gone to work, a
little dusting and a few dishes to do; a
leisurely lunch watching a soap opera; a
little nap, and then nothing to do but get
your dinner ready.
It's not quite like that. To keep a fair-sized
house, in anything like running order, .a
woman must go like a jack-rabbit. Or a
jillrabbit if you think I'm being chauvinistic.
Migawd, I've barely time to brush my
teeth, shave and get to work in the morning,
leaving 'the breakfast dishes all tangled up •
with last night's dinner dishes, because I
was too tired to do them, and there was a
good movie on the tube.
Get home after work and there's all this•
mess of dishes, but I don't have time to do
them. I have to go shopping for my dinner - a
pizza or a turkey pie and a banana and some
pears for breakfast.
. Get home from shopping and I barely have
the energy to stick my dinner in the oven,
ppur myself a relaxer, and read the evening
paper. After dinner, I pile some more diShes
in the sink, give them a dirty look, and
toddle off to mark papers or fall asleep in ,
front of the tube, waking up at 2 a.m., cold
and stupid, to fall into my unmade bed and
nightmare away about my wife having left
me for good. WhiCh she could. Anytime.
Totter up in the morning, do my 'ablutions,
and go down to cheerless kitchen, with
nobody snapping out the orders of the day.
I'm always late for work when she's away,
because when she's home I try. to get away
early so I won't have to get into a fight about
who's going to call the plumber, why I am so
incompetent around the house, and why I
got a $28.00 fine for not 'wearing my
seat-belt.
don't deny that there have been times
when ,I wished I were a bachelor, carefree,
. sexy, dining out with beautiful women,
taking off, alone, for exotic holidays.
But boy-o-boy, when the launciroy hamper
is overflowing, your last clean shirt is a white
T-shirt with a buriihele on the helly, the
dishes are beginning to resemble the Great
Pyramid, and the only 'clean socks you have
left are white wool golf type, you begin to
appreciate the Old Battleaxe.
If I have • one more turkey pie, I'm not
• going to grow wattles. Those I already have,
the penalty of sagging jowls. But there is a
distinct 'possibility that 1 might begin, to
gobble.• One more frozen lasagna and I'll be
singing arias.. In Italian.
Actually, I can cope, I can keep myself
clean, dressed, and fed. But it's the extras of
housework that are destroying me. Like
dealing with aluminum window salesmen,
brickvvorkers, painters, • plumbers, and
electricians. My wife does all, that, normally.
I haven't a clue where she keeps her bills,
her cheque-book, and all the sundries. I was
frightfully embarrassed this week' when a .
plumber came to finish a job, and •1' couldn't
pay his bill. I dug out all my cash and was 42
cents short. He was a good type, and told me
'to forget it. My wife would have giiren him a
cheque for .the exact amount. I got a receipt,
I think, which probably lose.
• Perhaps this all sounds materialistic, and
not at all the sentimental nonsense a
husband should feel when his wife is away,
spoiling his grandchildren. Well, it is.
I've written her a hundred nr two
love-letters. I've _told her how beautiful she
was, on many occasions. I 'have , com-
plimented her on '• her brians, her innate
common sense, and anything else, I could
dredge up.
I have admired her good taste in clothes
and decorating. I have tried to buck her up
when she is depressed. I have listened to
her. Endlessly. In short, I have been an
almost perfect husband. I just threw in that
"almost".
But the simple fact is, she's got to get
home and get the joint running again. I can't
even find the television programmes I want,
because -she knows that channel 2 is really
channel 10 and channel 3 is channel 14 and
channel 6 is all French. I •just flip the dial
around hopefully. N.
But what really gets me is the fingernails
on myright hand. I can cut my toenails. I can
cut the fingernails on my left hand. But she
has to cut the ones on my right hand. And
they're about half an inch long. Get home,
mama.
Our priorities and our children
Behind the scenes
by Keith Roulston
One of the bewildering tendencies of
mankind is the ability to get our priorities
thoroughly mixed up.
What, for instance, could be of more
importance than doing a good job of bringing
along the generations that will replace us
and keep the world, and mankind going? Yet
childraising is not looked on with much
acceptance by society today, at least by
contemporary North American society. A
woman who stays home to look after
children, to give them a proper upbringing is
often seen as of less importance than a
woman who goes out to work serving Big
Macs at MacDonalds, A man who says he
can't work overtime because he has to get
home to his family is looked on as a shirker.
Just what a contribution the proper raising
of children can make to this world was
brought home, to me at least, this weekend
with the death of former Governor General
Jules Leger. Leger came from a small family
in Quebec in the early part of the century. It
wasn't a rich family, one with all the
resources to offer tutors and the best of
private schools and servants to help out in
the house. It was a middle class rural village
family. There were two sons in the family.
One grew up to be a diplomat, a man who
served MS country all his life in various
places around the world before coming home
to take the highest government position in
the country: the office of Governor General.
The other son, the elder, took a diffetent
route. As so many boys from Catholic
families in those days, he entered the
church. But like his brother, Paul Emile
Leger was bound for the top of his chosen
profession in Canada. He became a Cardinal
of the church, about as exalted a position as
could be attained by someone born in
Canada until the Roman Catholic Church
drastically alters its thinking in the choosing
of popes.
SOMETHING WAS RIGHT
That two sons of an ordinary middle
class family should attain such high
positions would be a sign in itself that there
must have been something very right in the
Leger family. Even more important thoUgh, I
think, is the kind of men these two sons
were. Jules Leger may not go down in the
history books as the greatest Governor-Gen-
eral Canada has ever had but he will have a
special place. , His ability to be a great
Governor General was pretty well destroyed
when he suffered a stroke only a half-year
into his term.
He could have quit • then and some would,
perhaps argue that he should have. But he
battled back. After long months of struggle
and rehabilitation he slowly began to take
over his old duties. His body would not do
everything he asked of it but he kept pushing
it to regain his former abilities. He didn't
travel as much as he once did, but he showed
instead a magnificent example to people that
suffering physical disability was nd reason to
quit. There is no telling how many people he
may have helped through his example of
courage.
His brother Paul Emile too set an example
for his fellow\t„ountrymen. Cardinal Leger
could live in all the near-regal splendor his
position as a prince of the church offered' but
he gave it all up to work in a leper colony in
Africa. Here was a man who not only
preached the gospel of Christ but followed it,
a man who left the comfortable life to help
the most downtrodden of people, people who
were the poorest of the poor.
• SUCCESS?
Most parents hope perhaps their
children will grow up to be lawyers, doctors
ot hockey stars but most of all rich. Our
society spends most of its time admiring the
materially successful people: the Conrad
Blacks, the Reggie Jackson's, the wealthy
media stars. We live in a supposedly
Christian, society and yet our heros aren't the
Please re-new the subscription to your
paper for my father. Edward Giessler
15865-14 Mile Rd.
Fraser, Michigan
48026 USA
Please send the next issue as quickly as
possible.
He is now living in a nursing home and
Was expected to die, but they pulled him
through. Now that he is mentally al ert he
told me that he misses your paper and
selfless people like Jules and Paul Emile
Leger, like Mother Theresa in India, like the
hundreds of, other people who put service to
mankind ahead of prcifit.
We have our" priorities dreadfully mixed
up when we spend our days in Canada
squabbling over who's going to get the
biggest share of the billions from oil revenue
when people in Cardinal Leger's leper
colony are so grateful just for food and
medical care. We have our priorities horribly
scrambled when we think that screwing nuts
on, bolts in a car assembly plant to make top
buck so we can buy our children the latest
gadget advertised on television as their
Christmas gift is more important than simply
raising a child with love and good
judgement.
If I could put my children out into the
world as adults who could contribute even
half. as much to this world as Mr. and Mrs.
Leger's two sons have done I think my life
would have been worthwhile.
wants it again. He does not read any of the
local papers. He enjoys reading about local
town events, and seeing photos of people.
I enjoy your paper also, and enjoy seeing
lots of photos, not just of people but of
places, and scenery, and old buildings,
stories photos of the' past. We have our
family home in Cranbrook.
Thank you. Betty Hirzel
17757 BteezewaV
Fraser, MI
To the editor:
Michigan readers enjoy Post
016,P.'0,84