Loading...
The Brussels Post, 1981-09-09, Page 2t. t 'Mt ti 41'7 AP:4'i*:1:1P '"Pe'101 11 "2.9 01 I EST. 1872 4Brussels Post BRUSSELS op. Established 1872 519-687-6641 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community i r-Mt alt.*Vn • Box 50, Brussels, Ontario NOG 1H0 e,„ Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association and The Audit Bureau of Circulation. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1981 Authorized as second class mail by Canada Post Office, Registration. Number 0562. Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley My wife, the speedy Published at BRUSSELS, ONTARIO every Wednesday morning by McLean. Bros. Publishers Limited Andrew Y, McLean, Publisher Evelyn Kennedy, Editor 000,01,0101110324 4.,!,4,40,. Show you care' Write a letter to- the editor Today Last week I was whining about what a bum summer I'd been having. I shouldn't have. My wrenched elbow cleared up and I was able to play some golf. With my putter. If I tried to swing with any other club, it was just like having a hot poker rammed through my elbow. But my wife bore up under my pain very well. The summer ended with a burst of something or other. If I were a:farmer, I might compare it to a plague of locusts. But there were only two of them and they didn't strip my crops. They just ground me to the bone. physcially and emotionally. My two grand- boys, who are this generation's answer to the perpetual motion machine. From 7 a.m. to about 9 a.m., they're delightful. They play with their complicated toys, scarcely fight at all, eat a big breakfast and generally are good little boys. But from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. they want action, novelty, excitement and constant motion. At the centre of this, rather resembling a whirling dervish, is Grandad, whom they seem to believe is about 18 years old. However, we got through it with no more than the usual amount of breakage, soilage and personal outrage. But the old lady and I were so frazzled we didn't even have the strength to embrace on our 35 anniversary, which came along soon after the locusts. Holy old Moly, isn't that a long time to be marr ied to a strange woman? I've never been able to figure out what has kept us together for half a life-time. We are completely opposite in temperament, dis- agree violently and continually, and our tastes in general are almost completely: dissimilar. She does everything as though it were the last day of her life and she had to face the Lord or whoever, with everything done. That is, at top speed. By the time I have finished my morning's ablution, for example, she has glade the bed, put on a laundry, vacuumed the living-room, prepared breakfast, and probably done some ironing or cleaned a couple of windows. And then she's sitting there, impatient and even cranky, when I stroll down, pick up the morning paper, drink my tea and behave like a normal citizen. She wants to talk about. Life, or our children, or her insomnia, or some other damfool thing. All I want to do is read the paper. I rather enjoy shopping in a supermarket. By myself. I never have a list. Just poke around watching the weird people, admiring the skill and speed and stamina of the cash register girls, walking past the meat counter shaking my head dolefully, buying some cottage cheese which I invariably forget about until it goes rotten, picking up half a dozen bananas (and discovering we have another half dozen when I get home), enjoying a coffee at the coffee counter, where the waitress is like a' robot on speed. Generally, I shop in low gear. I buy things we already have or don't need (maybe a can of smoked oysters) and I forget to buy things we are out of, like toilet paper. But it doesn't bother me. I hate shopping with my wife. She goes at it as though it were the four hundred meter women's Olympic race. Sometimes she has left me three or four aisles behind as I push the cart al a civilized pace. She always has a list as long as your arm in one hand, pencil in the other for crossing things out, glasses on to read the small print, and pocket calculator in her purse to translate the metric system. The last item never proves anything except that whether it's ounces and pounds or litres and milligrams, the cost of food is going up. She plays golf the same way, hitting the ball and rushing after it as though she were going to kill it for not going where it was supposed to, while I waddle along, at about two miles an hour, looking at the trees and the clouds and the other idiots whacking their ball into the woods. She even eats fast. I have just got my first cob of corn nicely buttered and salted, and she's well through her seconds cob. She doesn't sleep well because she's always thinking about tomorrow's race against time, or a wedding present to buy , or her children, or the fact that she might not sleep and will only be able to gallop tomorrow, instead of running flat out. I sleep like a babe. When we're going somewhere, she wants to be ready an hour ahead, so we'll get a good seat, or avoid bad traffic, or whatever. Thanks to me, we usually arrive just before the bride, or just before the curtain goes up. Well, that's temperament. She's crazy. I'm normal, or a little below, if you want to get picky. We disagree. Any healthy couple does. But they "talk things out" and reach a consensus that everybody has a right to his/her peculiar ideas. We don't. I say flatly, "That's a lot of B.S.". She promptly retorts, "Well, I've been listening to your B.S. for blank years." And away we go, whether it's politics. the economy, religion, or who took the garbage out last week. And as to tastes, we're miles apart. She likes classical music. I like blues and ragtime. She doesn't like hunting or fishing or boating. I'm not mad about sewing, and I go a bit glassy-eyed when I she starts, and goes on and on aboq't nips and tucks and darts and hems and how to make button holes. I like reading, and have a book on every toilet top, stair landing, counter-top and under every bed, to prove it. She does, too, but she reads stuff I wouldn't touch with a six-foot Pole: Henry James, George Eliot. She's never read Catch-22, the funniest, saddest book of the century. I could go on and on. She likes poker, but doesn't like it when I play poker with the boys, even when I come home limping because my right pocket is full of quarters. ',could write a book. How can two people, one nuts and the other eminently sane, reach. a 35 anniversary?: Some kind of early Krazy Glue, I suspect. Maybe it'll hold for another 25 years, I doubt it There's five years between us. She looks 38. I look 68. It's a long time to live with a stange women. The country is coming apart at the seams and none of the politicians seem to have the leadership ability to save us:,. or so the editorial pages of our newspapers tell us day in and day out. Hereafter, then, a few possible news stories from the future when our leaders take on real leadership to meet the problems of today such as acid rain, unemployment and inflation. *** TORONTO: After one of his government's minister's called Ronald Reagan's cutbacks on pollution standards an "unfriendly act," Ontario Premier William Davis has announc- ed he is taking retaliatory measures against the United States to fight acid rain. Since . the source of acid rain that is destroying hundreds of Ontario lakes is in the United States and since. prevailing westerly winds bring the pollution into Canada Mr. Davis said that he planned to build a huge system of electric fans along the western boundary of the province,to blow the pollution back into the United States. To the outward eye of a U.S. spy satellite or a tourist from Kalamazoo Mich., (who might be in the employ of the C.I.A.) these electric fans will look much like the windmills being used experimentally use wind power to generate electricity but these will actually use electricity to generate wind. Mr. Davis also announced Ontario will build five more nuclear and 10-coal-powered electrical gen- erating stations along the shores of Lake Huron to provide the electricity needed to run the fans. *5* OTTAWA: Back from his six-moth tour of African nations Prime Mnister Pierre Tru- deau announced today that the Canadian government will institute a policy of trilingua- lism. The Prime Minister said that if Canada is to continue its leading role in the North-South dialogue it is important that Canadians be able to speak the language of the African countries. Therefore, he stated, government policies will encourage the teaching of Swahili in schools and enforce it's use in government offices. Manufacturers of breakfast cereals imme- diately protested. They said they would either have to increase the size of cereal boxes to put all three official languages on or reduce the type size of the lettering and provide a magnifying glass with each box; in either case making the cost prohibitive. Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed angrily In a story in last week's Brussels Post, a mistake was made in what the people of Grey Township were protesting about. What it should have said they were protesting was the construction and opera- tion of earthen manure pits in the township, not earthen manure tanks. As the two terms tanks and pits wre attacked the federal government for the proposal. If a new language was needed for a north-south dialogue, he argued, then the important language for Albertans to learn to talk to their southern counterparts was Texan. *** OTTAWA: Bank of Canada Governor Gerald Bouey has come up with a startling new plan to combat the shrinking Canadian dollar due to rampant inflation. Mr. Bouey announced that the size of all Canadian bills this year would be increased by 12.5 per cent to match last year's inflation rate and in the future the dimensions of the bill would be indexed to the inflation rate just like government pension plans. • * * OTTAWA: Michael Warren, head of the new post office crown corporation has revealed a new plan to speed mail delivery. Mr. Warren said that since all citizens over the age of 26 have assured him that the mail moved faster in the days when it was carried by stage coach than it does in the jet age he is bringing back mail stage coaches. Transport Minister Jean-Luc Pepin was in agreement with the scheme saying that since so many communities had been demanding a return to the good old days of rail transportation that he will do them one better by returning stage coaches travel to all communities. *5* TORONTO: Worried by the continuing decline in the Ontario economy and a shift of industry to the energy-rich west Premier William Davis has come up with a new plan to rejuvenate the Ontario economy. Mr. Davis said his experts had told him that there is tremendous potential for the generation of electricity in Ontario's north- land. They point out that with acid rain turning Ontario lakes into acid lakes Ontario Hydro can implant electrodes in the water and turn each of the hundreds of lakes into giant batteries. Mr. Davis said that the new plan would alter but not cancel his earlier announced plan to construct giant windmills to blow acid rain back into the United States. Instead of blowing the acid rain the windmills will now be reversed to suck more acid rain into Canada therby increasing the acidity of the lakes and increasing the electrical gernera- ting potential of the lakes. An American company has been given the franchise for the new scheme he said. interchanged quite frequently at the meet- ing, the mistake was easily made. The Post apologizes for this error and any inconven- ience it may have caused the residents of Grey Township. A change has since been made in Grey Township's by-law on manure storage pits in the township. See the story on page 1. Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston Mail by stagecoach? Protesting pits, not tanks