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Clinton News-Record, 1983-01-12, Page 4PAGE 4—CLINTON NEWS -RECORD, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 12, 1 B L OWE 's ' RI;B8ON.! AWARD o, Vise C00rston 60uws.®oewd Oa fieabAAoaood acerb ettereletarodaw of ®.®. Mom 80, Canton, Oat/torte Cemredo. Beard nets. for mea -sees. sobsarioa.. ®oto: Sr. Getman "15!.60 pot woos U.S.A. fc reOBr `00.00perp or ee 80 regAmeorod es =coed deem omen 0.0 vete west efface undo.. veto worvo0v uuvaa22ur 001515. Veto Sem ra-Ateierrd areureorotod 0a, VOSS veno Perron r0ows-Aosocd. forae©ed An fel, morel fee COOnson Meer @.e. faauuo4817 ro, 10.98. Hever prom nn ®.ale. corpora On TUE MMMTH STANDARD SHi<LLlEV i d'HffE - Editor 'PERRY MARR9R - Reporter GARY HAISY - Ativertisires Messenger JANICE ALL - Advertising PEGGY GIRD - Office M©rtngyer i1fiARRY ANN HOLLR:R' MEO (- Subscriptions J. HOWARD AITKE . Publisher A MEana3ER MEMBER O iselog osivert1sOns rotes er®PPesble on request. Asa. for Rote Cord No. bd effective Oct. 1. 1®01 Time for trees It may seem like an unusual time to be talking about trees. Generally we think of trees, their beauty and cool shade during the summer months. However trees are a necessary part of our comfortable existence 12 months of the year. Winter is a particularly good time to think about trees, planting programs and care, for it is during the harsh winter months that we can see two of the most im- portant areas where trees can benefit and preserve our land. - As cold, strong winds blow across our countryside, they carry away acres of valuable, rich Huron County farmland to fill and pollute streams and lakes. With the winds often come blinding snowstorms that result in snow clogged roadways that have proven dangerous and life threating. Through planned use of trees we can help to reduce soil erosion and weather hazards. Trees can be strategically placed on marginal farmland to prevent ero- sion, and planted along roadsides to provide windbreaks. The Christian Farmers Association of Ontario (CFA), at their recent annual meeting, stated that soil erosion is a manor problem and steps must be token to combate this. The CFA noted that good soil os the heart of farming. Bill Jongean, CFA vice president pointed out that it is essential that we not on- ly plant these trees, but we also nuture and care for them to insure that their value is evident for decades to come. It os through local programs like the Norman Alexander Conservation Award that residents are encouraged to protect the soil and take part in erosion preven- tion protects. Thos year the award went to Nock and Bill Whyte for the extensive soil conservation program practiced at their Seaforth area farm. Some have said that the conservation programs are time consuming and too expensive to carry out. However many, including the town of Clinton have taken advantage of relatively inexpensive tree planting programs like those offered by the Ausuable Rayfield Conservation Authority. On the long run, the savings in snow removal and energy costs and the Voss of valuable farmland would be greatly offset with spring and fall tree planting schemes. Now is the time to start thinking about nest winter, the problems -that can be resolved and the potential losses that -can be-sbved by pinntiVng a few trees this year. -by S. McPhee inthe scenes 13a gkok blues It's almost fasonable these days to have the flu. Why, for the first time in my life, did I have to get fashionable? Oh I'm a good, loyal employee, though. 1 waited until my annual two-week vacation to get sick. I gather I had a brush with A .,,Bangkok strain although it didn't stop to introduce itself f fore it knocked me out cold. (Too bad the Prime Minister di ri 't make his trip to Thailand months ago as planned. Then we could blame this on him tool I have never handled sickness well even though I had a good bit of practice, spen- ding the biggest part of one winter recuperating from a childhood disease. One of the reasons is good old Protestant Work Ethic Guilt, which in turn is a grown up version of nine o'clock sickness which was so rampant when we were kids. I was a disgustingly moral child. If i woke up in the morning, not quite feeling up to snuff I would immediately start analysing myself: was there some sub- conscious reason I didn't' want to go to school today? Was this illness all in my head? 1 remember once or twice feeling suddenly better just about the time the school hell was ringing and being swept with enough guilt for a Clifford Olsen. Now there are certain remedies for any guilt over sickness. These generally have to da with proving to yourself and everyone else that you are indeed sick. Most definitive of the proofs is the good old upchuck but that is not a lot of fun and you'd almost as soon feel guilty all day about whether or not you're imagining il- lness as get that kind of proof. A mild fever is nice. it's so nice and clinical "I was running a fever." You can even tell people how much you were sick: "I had a fever of 105" i Woops, pardon that's 40.5 Cl. Of course it doesn't really sound very im- pressive unless the temperature is above 100 so you may not want to be exact unless it passes that magic threshold. As a child, i used to even worry that I could, through subconscious effort., even raise my temperature a degree or two. !'here was one way of being completely guilt free though. That was to be so sick that you didn't give a darn if anybody thought you were faking it or not, in fact so sick you didn't care if you survived or not. So you can see i have enough guilt for a dozen Woody Allen movies. Rut why should 1 feel guilty about being sick on my vacation' Probably because of all the jobs I've been promising my wife I'd get done on my vacation. Probably because of all the work that's been piling up on my desk at home, the stuff I kept telling myself earlier that needed a g s s s few daiys in a row to be worth tackling. So the holidays are finally here and I'm feeling sick. Sounds like work avoidance. That kind of doubt lasted maytwo days. 1 got the first symptom, a cough, suddenly on New Year's Day evening. Sun- day there were plenty of aches and 4.,ins. Monday some more. I comforted myself by being able to get at least a little work done while lying in bed. y Tuesday it had come down that part where you di .i .'t worry about feeling guilty anymore: you just worried avfut surviving. It went on like t :::, t for five more days. It only ended, of course, when the vacation peri't4i had ended and it was time to go back to work. So i won't come back from vacation with a tan to show around the office but look on the bright side: I burn, but never !:.,n anyway. There aren't any slides of sunny beaches, swaying palm trees or even glistening ski slopes but then who wants to bore their friends with vacation slides. At least I can say I'm well rested. Illness does give a new perspective to your life, however. I think a lot of my life and personality has been shaped by that winter i spent in bed 25 years ago. During a shorter illness, you get insights. For in- stance, I could never understand people who are so ill that they want to have so- meone end it all for them. I could never understand, at least when i was disgustingly healthy.: ut after a few days lying in bed, all thoughts turned inward, beginning to wonder if you're ever going to get better, you think "If i can feel this awful with just the flu, knowing I'm bound to get better in a few days, how horrible it must be to be in bed for months with cancer or some other disease, knowing you've got little but more pain and little hope to look forward to." In a way too you can understand what people go through when they are tortured psychologically. You hear about people who are kept awake for days, even weeks on end, where lights are left burning at all times. After a few days of being awake as much at night as in the daytime, you can understand a tiny bit of the disorientation these people go through, how they're final- ly willing to do anything just to have that feeling go away. That even includes, in my case, being willing, so anxious to go back to work. 1 mean it's hardly like you had to give up the beaches of Bermuda to go back to work. There's just one thing: 1 read the other day somebody saying that A Bangkok is not a particularly virulent virus. I'd like to get my hands on the guy who said that. Winter ready rand S Th l frenzy's over IT never fails. Never fails. Every holi- day season, my wife, in desperation at what's ahead, hurls herself into some P i': OJECT that 4'. i scombobulates the household, turns her into a vixen, and drives me right out of my skull. I well remember the year she decided to have some brickwork done in December. Of course, the weather turned wild, the bricklayer coulldn't work, and we wound' up with 4,mtr wet bricks in the back kit- chen. Dripping and smelling like wet brick. Another time she decided to ve the whole family for Christmas: her parents, aunts, and assorted relatives. By the time she'd finished scouring and scourging, ti ., t old house was shining like two bubbles in a chamber pot, and groaning in every board. That's the year the kitchen floor was wax- ed so hig y, I dropped the turkey on it when I slipped en route to the dining -room. She dispeak to me until about Valen- tine's Tay. Sometimes, it's sewing. All else is forgotten as she tries to make clothes enough in three weeks for her daughter and grandboys to wear for a year. Material, tapes, is:, tterns, pins and needles everywhere. And I have the wound -marks to prove it, should I pull my pants down. If she can't dream up something to push away the thoughts of Christmas, she'll tackle it head-on, with a baking spree. Every mixing bowl in the house is ac- tivated, the oven goes full blast 18 hours a day, and if you're not stepping in butter, you're stepping in flour, while the fancy cookies, cakes and puddings pile up to the point where the inmates of a logging camp couldn't eat them all. This Christmas, she outdid herself. Back by Shelley McPhee dispensed by bill smiley in the fall, some idiot Mentioned on the air "that there were only eleventy-seven shopp- ing days until Christmas. The old lady im- mediately went into a frenzy that would make a whirling dervish look like a statue. First, she went into her mechanic's routine. She bought a caulking gun, a wood chisel, a hammer, and a key -hole saw. All the door -knobs were to be changed, because they have a habit of coming away in your hand, a new lock put on the back door, though there was nothing wrong with the old one, except that you could open it with a credit card, and all the windows were to be insulated. Now, none of the door -knobs work at all, and you have to pull doors open with your toes or fingernails, the lock is on the back door and it's a dandy, but we have to leave the door braced open with a slipper when we go out, so that we can get back in, and the wind coming in around the windows would make your hair stand on end. Halfway through this job, which is why it wasn't finished, she declared the master bedroom must be painted. She got the ceil- ing done, with the resultant chaos of mov- ing furniture and taking everything out of the closets, a half-days's job. Just then she was struck by a desire to start taking piano lessons after some years away from the machine. Any r fdy knows you can't paint and practise the piano at the same time, so she hired a chap to finish the painting. This made the bedroom so dazzling that the bathroom suddenly appeared sleezy, and it had to be painted. By some strange osmosis, this in turn made the kitchen wood work absolutely shabby, and the paint job spread downstairs. Had your kitchen painted lately? 1 wasn't against having the woodwork done, but i can see no point in painting the in- sides of cupboards. She can. After they've Within the rainbow „Did you know you can make 36 words from the word rainbow?" I asked. 'No!" "So?" and a slight turn of a head were the only responses I received. 'I heard it on TV," i continued un- daunted, "but I haven't taken time to pro- ve it." This time the only answer was a disinterested grunt, so 1 began to quietly doodle. Two minutes later I noticed that someone was watching over my shoulder. Soon hewas adding to my list. Five minutes later another pair were sit- ting at the kitchen table with pen and paper working on their own notes. Within 15 minutes, seven people were spitting out words at a furious clip, and 20 minutes after my solo start. we had 42 words listed. We could have done it. faster and we could have added many more words, if we 4 beefi.emptied and thoroughly washed. We have enough cupboards, in the front and back kitchen, to hold enough stuff to withs- tand a three -year's siege. As I write, it's all sitting in liquor boxes, on the kitchen floor, in the front hall, in the vestibule, the living -room and the base- ment. If you want to make a sandwich, you go to the basement for bread, prowl through 18 boxes to find a knife, look for the butter in the box with the winter boots, and find a slice of ham in a box on the attic stairs, in with the soap, the adhesive tape, and the thumb tacks. You'd think t: . t would be enough to keep Christmas at bay. Not at all. She suddenly decided that after 36 years of married something or other, we absolutely must get a stereo outfit, with cassette, the whole works. Simple enough. We had only two hi- fi machines and a cheap cassette recorder. For three weeks, I huddled in my chair in the livingroom, surrounded by liquor boxes, listening avidly while she ex- perimented with two different sets of speakers, various microphones and about 300 yards of wire all over the floor. Whichever speakers she liked, I eagerly agreed were the best. Then she'd change her mind. She wUnted to get perfectly clearly the mistakes she made while prac- tising the piano, in order to correct them. It made a nice change, to be tripping over wire instead of stubbing my toe on a paint can, or stepping in my sock feet. on a chisel. Of course, it all came right in the end. The turkey smelled of fresh paint, i was awakened every morning at 5 a.m. by a squeal of a microphone. and you still lock yourself in the bathroom if you pull on the knob. But the butter's back in the fridge. the grandboys have chipped all the fresh paint away, and at last everything's back to nor- mal. had not bothered with a dictionary and if we had not argued over the validity of cer- tain words. Some ground rules had to be laid. Two people wanted to use proper navies and pronouns. They were out -voted five to two. The winning argument contended that in- cluding pronouns and proper names would call for the use of capital letters, which seemed inappropriate. Slang was allowed, as long as we could find it in the dictionary. But, the dictionary didn't help all of us. For example, 1 suggested "nob", but it didn't appear in the dictionary. 1 argued that "nobby" was an adjective. Therefore, why couldn't we have one "nob"' 1 was nut -voted six to one. Later i found "nob" in MY dictionary if only 1 had known more about cribbage, i could have given a much better argument 1 was not the only person who tried to ra- tionalize an idea. Someone proposed air - horn. Three voices chimed in unison, "You can't use that! Airborne has an "e" and there's no "e" in rainbow." That's for airplanes," he retorted. "When you're talking about birds that are airborn, there's no "e". He was voted down five to one with one abstention. Someone else almost sneaked in "barn", hut the dictionary squelched the manoeuvre. Gradually' the heated discussions, the wisecracks and the snickers subsided. The flow of suggestions became a trickle and finally stopped. Seven people ended up sit- ting around a table staring at each other Then someone asked, "Why did you want to know how many words you could get out of rainbow, Elaine'" „Why? Oh. Uh Well i was just curious, i guess." Fthe readers Successful pr,°:reject Dear Eeritor: We would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to the people of Huron County for their support of another successful Huron County Christmas Bureau project. This year the Bureau pro- vided assistance to 292 families including 635 children in the county. This represents an increase of almost 30 per cent over 1 r ;1. This would not have been possible without the support of the community. The Huron County Christmas Bureau is operated as an annual project of Family and Children's Services and is designed to co-ordinate Christmas giving and ensure that no children are missed at Christmas. This project is operated totally with volunteer help and is financed by dona- tions from the community. Family and Children's Services provides co-ordination and supervision and covers operating ex- penses as our contribution. Because of this, the support of the community is essential. We continue to find that the peo- ple in Huron County help their neighbors in a kind and thoughtful way, and the 1982 Christmas Bureau supports this point of view. The total project was co-ordinated this year by Audrey Royal of Goderich. Mrs. Royal began work in September and donated countless hours to ensure suc- cessful operation of the Christmas Bureau. We are most grateful to Mrs. Royal for her generous and capable contribution. This year, under the fine supervision of Wynne Homuth, volunteer co-ordinator of the Clinton ureau, 45 families (106 children) were able to enjoy a happier Christmas. Mrs. Homuth and Helen Aitken spent many -hours arranging space, co- ordinating donations and assisting families. Without the capable assistance of people like this, we would be unable to con- duct the Christmas Bureau. We also wish to express our appreciation to the vari,pus people who were kind enough to donate space from which we could distribute goods. In Clinton, On:,.rio Street United Church allowed us use of their facility, with financial assistance towards this by the Town of Clinton. In ad- dition, various stores and individuals con- tinue to assist us by distributing wool to volunteers to knit mitts, hats, and slippers. We feel fortunate to have seen again so many examples of the kindness and generosity of people in the community. Thank you for your continued support and assistance. Yours sincerely, (Mrs.) Peggy Rivers, Co-ordinator of Volunteer Services. James Cargin, Director. Group says thanks Dear Editor: On behalf of.The Salvation Army and the scores of people who were hglped during the Holiday Season, I want to say "Thank You" to the generous Citizens who gave financial assistance to our December Ap- peal. In particular, your support in giving The Salvation Army expression through Public Service Announcements has allow- ed us to perform a service which would be extremely difficult without your help. The aggregate value of this service, while most substantial, cannot only be measured in dollars and cents, but m the final result of meeting the needs of so many. Through our Mail Appeal and the Christmas Kettles, we were able to raise an acceptable increase over last year which helped meet the comparable in- crease in the number of families needing help. Some of those funds were needed im- mediately to help families at Christmas. Sonne will help to support our year round programs for these same people whose needs continue to persist due to the economic pressures of our time. Once again, thank you for your support which will help The Salvation Army com- municate the spirit of giving and mutual concern through its ministry of compas- sion. May God bless you. Sincerely, Carson R. Janes Major PUB I_IC RELATIONS OFFICER Seeks information Dear Editor, I am seeking information from anyone in your reading area with knowledge of a type of double -ended, double -masted sail- ing skiff of about 20 feet in length, used in sailing and racing in the Lake Huron area from the turn of the century to about 1940- 1950. These boats were cedar strip, with twin gaff -rigged sails, open cockpit and centreboard. i am especially interested in any infor- mation about two specific boats, the FHOi.1C, formerly owned by Arthur E. Tatham and the KEYOSHK, once owned and sailed by F.G. Miller of Wiarton. Both boats are pictured in a book entitled The ('anadian Lake Region by Wilfred Camp - hell r Musson, Toronto: 19101. They are known to have raced in a regatta at Oliphant around 1900, and the FROLIC at least called Port Elgin her borne for many years when owned by A.E. Tatham. i would be very appreciative of contact from anyone knowing about or remember- ine these boats Sincerely, Roger Mac(;regor, R.R. 1, i.ansdowne, Ontario, K OE 11 It Dir Nrr rr /trona• ;an ryr,nr.en '' U /, rare re 1'11, us .4 lrllrr 1'' 1/7r ra%tfrrr ;trial !rl ,•s'plan, hro>r11 Ill /'•li.,• nrr inshlrsler•al. ,rraee ralr,, l/i ,;err Lr ;eulli' /One ,r1' a1, ;c,,c/ irsrur1„rib rrrs ;or, ,,//„rr,•r/ Ill I, Il, rs, hr,rr, r, r ;et, sulrlr , / 1,, ' '/114'IL' lir fine!!!