Village Squire, 1980-08, Page 45McGILLICUDDY'S DIARY
Village Squire presents the exclusive
feature: the diary of Ezeldal McGWlcuddy,
police chief of the village of Hamhocks,
Ontario. Well known for his courageous
battle against the forces of evil, Chief
McGillicuddy has agreed to give exclusive
rights to his diary to Village Sguire...for a
princely sum of course. Each month we
publish a selection of entries from the
previous month,
JULY 3: Went out to see if the cherries
on my cherry tree were ripe last week.
Knew at a glance they weren't: no birds.
Went out to check again tonight to see;
knew at a glance they were now ripe. The
birds had eaten every one. Seems I can
either have sour cherries or no cherries.
Life's like that sometimes.
JULY 5: Had some parents come to me
yesterday with complaints. Seemed they
were the victims of an extortion attempt
(that's blackmail if you haven't been
watching any lawyer shows on television).
Seems they were getting letters threaten-
ing to let out some embarrassing inform-
ation if they didn't come across with some
substantial amounts of cash.
Well whenever something like this
comes up I know just where to head. I
made a raid on the clubhouse of the Hill
Street Gang on the little island down the
river. I'm afraid I made an illegal entry: I
cut the bindei-wine that was holding the
door shut even though I didn't have a
search warrant. (They deserved it though
for bobbytrapping the foot bridge to the
island. I'm not in very good humour when I
fall through loose boards and get all wet in
the river.)
Anyway, I found the information they
were holding against people. You see in
grade two or three at the school they have
this writing project in which the students
are supposed to bring some bit of news
from home and write it in a book. On the
last day of school some of the Hill Street
gang offered a nickel apiece to the kids to
buy the books. Naturally the kids went for
it and the Gang had their ammunition.
And pretty high calibre ammunition it
was too. If I was some of those parents
reading some of those tidbits in the books
I'd have paid up fast. I wonder if this could
be part of a plot on the part of the teachers
for the next time they want a pay raise.
They'll have enough dirt on enough
members of the population by then that
they won't have to threaten strike at all:
just threaten to tell all. Heck, the Mounties
keeping files on people is nothing
compared to this.
Darnit, I wish the Mayor had a kid in
grade three.
JULY 8: Tried to talk the town council
into doing something about trading in the
Cockroach for a bigger police cruiser
tonight. I pointed out that with the crisis in
the auto industry it would be an act of
patriotism to trade in that little European
mini -car for a big North American one: say
a Chrysler or something like that. Think of
how it would stimulate the national
economy, I said.
That argument got Councillor Hemple
thinking. It was terrible that the big car
makers were on the verge of bankruptcy all
right. But bringing the argument even
closer to home, she said, she knew of the
case of her next door neighbour Ham Flynn
who's also on the verge of bankruptcy.
Maybe the council should be thinking
instead of helping local business.
I knew enough to quit while I was ahead.
Ham runs a bicycle stop.
JULY 11: This recession is starting to
have its effect locally. Some of the
merchants are complaining at coffee break
about how tough times are. That's nothing
new of course but they seem to be
complaining a lot more this summer
because they haven't been able to take a
month off and go to the cottage so the rest
of us haven't had a vacation from their
complaining. We'll be as glad as them
when things improve.
Anyway the bad times have had their
good effect too. All of a sudden the
government is getting worried and starting
to spend money. They've been fixing the
bridge on the edge of town, for instance,
the one we've been afraid was going to fall
down for the last 10 years but the province
said would last as long as the country
(some of us really wondered if it would a
couple of months back at referendum
time.)
Anyway they say these projects have
spinoff effects through the whole economy
and we've certainly seen that here. Bill
Michaels who owns the drive-in restaurant
on that side of town was all smiles at coffee
break today as he's been a regulat
thundercloud in recent weeks. Cec Lander
asked him if the construction crews were
helping his business and he sort of smiled
and said "In a manner of speaking," and
left it at that.
Now I know that these construction men
get pretty hungry but there's only about 10
of them working down there and I didn't
think they could eat that much so I decided
I'd take a drive down and have a look. I
soon knew why Bill was smiling.
See they had to build this detour when
they closed the highway right? And they
had to find some convenient place for the
detour, right? So they picked Bill's parking
lot. Seems though that nobody got Bill's
permission for all this. So Bill put up a toll
booth the other morning and wouldn't let
anybody through unless they dropped a
quarter in the bucket. Now Hamhocks isn't
exactly on a throughway but there's
enough traffic to keep Bill smiling for
weeks to come no matter if he never sells
another ice cream sundae. It was ingenious,
I had to hand it to him ... A quarter I mean.
In fact two. He caught me on the way
through and on the way back and charged
me both times. All I can say is he'd better
never forget to put a dime in the meter any
time he's in town in the next 10 years.
"The place to shop in the
Festival City."
Authentic Tartans
•Woollens•
•Silks•
*Cottons*
Many fine fabrics
Come in and
browse at
your
leisure.
sew w 1ta t
88 Ontario st 271.8500
open Pally . epee. . /:,.,w frU.y, ,,,.. .,
VILLAGE SQUIRE/AUGUST 1980 PG. 39