The Rural Voice, 1996-05, Page 166_
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12 THE RURAL VOICE
The World from Mabel's Grill
With income tax deadline just
past, some of the guys were
grumbling about the cheque they had
to send to the government this year.
"Ah," said Mabel, "the number of
years I heard you guys complain
about how
much money
you were
losing, you'd
think you'd be
happy to pay
income tax for
a change."
"If I could
deduct how
much money I
spent in here
in the last year
they'd owe me
money," Dave
Winston said.
"You mean
you only paid $2.95?" Molly
Whiteside, the waitress snapped.
"The thing that gets me," said
Wayne Bruce, from uptown, "is that
I send my accounts to the accountant
to do my income tax because I don't
know how to do it, then she makes
me sign this paper that I know that
everything in the tax return is correct.
If I knew that, I wouldn't have
needed her in the first place."
"Nothing can make you feel as
stupid as an income tax return," Cliff
Murray ventured.
"Unless it's a computer," said
George MacKenzie. Seems George
finally broke down and got a
computer of his own. He'd been
sending his records out for somebody
else to do but with the price of beef
being what it is, he figured he needed
one of those new management
programs handy on the farm to try to
squeeze every nickel out of every
animal. So the guy came from the
computer shop and set up the
computer then started to show him
how the programs worked.
"I kept saying `uh huh'," George
said, "but my head hurt after five
minutes. I figured I'd let him rattle
on, get him out the door then sit
down with the manual and figure it
out myself. Big mistake! I found out
either I don't speak English or the
guy who wrote the manual doesn't.
Geeze did I feel dumb!"
There were knowing nods around
the table. After two weeks trying to
get the machine going George
admitted failure and called in his 28 -
year -old -son to make it work. The
trouble was his son wasn't really up
on computers either. They finally
solved the problem by bringing in
his eight-year-old grandson to show
them how to work it.
That got guys comparing notes
and they agreed there are more
things to make you feel stupid than
any time in history. Dave said he
dreads the arrival of daylight saving
time because he's got 11 different
digital clocks in the house that have
to be changed, and every one of
them works differently.
"And of course it's fine for your
wife not to know how to do it but
you're supposed to have it in your
genes," Cliff.
Dave Winston figures it's part of a
plot to make everybody feel helpless
and have to call in an expert. "I used
to only have to pay for expertise
when I needed a vet or a lawyer.
Now I've got to bribe my kid to
program the VCR if I'm going to
miss Ross Daily's show."
"Cripes, it used to be that you
could at least feel good about
ordering a cup of coffee," said Cliff
as Molly refilled his cup, "but you
get in the wrong place in the city and
you can feel like a moron because
you don't know the difference
between the 12 kinds of coffee they
have on the menu. People are getting
to be as snobby about coffee as they
are about wine."
"That's why I drink beer," said
George.
"Yeh, but there are all these
connoisseurs of beer these days too,"
Cliff said. "Used to be it was ale or
lager, Molson's or Labatt's. Now its
ale, lager and stout and different
ways of brewing it and all these little
breweries and you say the wrong
thing in the wrong place you've got
10 people saying you have no taste."
But Dave topped them all. He says
he sends his wife to the township
dump because he's afraid his garbage
might be rejected. "If we put the No.
2 plastic in the bin for the No. 3 the
dump attendant makes me feel like a
kid with his pants on backwards."0