The Brussels Post, 1977-02-16, Page 10Sugar and Spice.
by Bill Smiley
Winter blues
Ah, the little ironies of life. Had a letter
from son Hugh the other day, complaining
gently about the heat in. Paraguay. Said it
was between 90 and 100 in the shade every
day and only decently livable at night.
Last night it was 30 below around this
burg. And that's real temperature:
Fahrenheit. Today it was about 20 below all
day, and is heading for another 30-plus
below as I write.
As of today, we've had 142 inches of
snow. Migawd, that's just short of 12 feet,
and winter just begun. Who says we aren't
a hardy race? Or are we just stupid?
At the moment, I'm a little short of
breath and temper. I've just come in from
.wresting-two cars to life, shovelling enough
driveway to get them, off the street, and
hitting the side of the garage another belt
when I slipped sideways,
My garage is one of those ancient
wooden structures in which those realistic
car owners of the '20's and 30's used to
jack up their Fords and Essexes and
McLaughlin-Buicks and leave them
sensibly suspended for the winter.
A _ modern-- car; , even an old
—battle-wagon like my 1967 Dodge, has
about an inch and a half clearance on each
side, if y ou want to put it in the garage.
And I do. In the summer, the birds poop all
over the windshield if I leave her out. In the
winter, Winter poops all over the whole
'-thing with ice and snow if I leave her out .
So I put her in.
But that clearance is pretty skinny. The
two-by-four that supports the joists or
whatever that supports the roof of my
garage is no longer a two-by-four. My wife
and daughter have no idea whether the car
is four feet wide or six. Accordingly, that
two -by-four is now about the thickness of
six toothpicks, and any day the whole
structure will cave in.
I have, for the moment, two cars. They
are located in one garage, and directly
behind it, one driveway just as long as a
garage. This morning, the car in the
garage, the .10-year-old, started like a
rocket heading for Mars. The new one, the
five-year-old, groaned twice, grunted once,
and died. There I am , with one perky car
humming merrily in the garage, and one
great lu, rnp of cold, dead metal sitting
right behind it. It's enough to make a saint
swear. And I ain't no saint.
But then I think of how lucky I am
compared to our ancestors. I have an oil
furnace that is practically supporing the
entire province of Alberta, but at least I
don't have to cut wood all summer to stay
warm all winter. I have a wife who wants
to drive the car that is working, the one in
the garage, when the one behind it won't
start, but at least I don't have to h ang her
washing out in this weather and have it
turn into instant white boards, as I used to
have to do for my mother back around
about, '34,
I'm a school teacher, in my spare time,
But I don't have to trudge two miles to the
school, with snow to my navel, light the fire
in the old box-stove, and sit there
shuddering with cold until the students
arrive. I just get to school as best I can, and
the students don't arrive at all. Half of
them come by bus and the buses can't get
through the storm. Half of the remaining
half look out the window, say to hell with it,
tell their mothers they have the 'flu, and
roll over and go back- to sleep.
Oh, she was rugged, in those old days, in
a winter like this, with homemade
insulation and red-hot stove pipes. No
wonder many of the oldtimers never got
out of their long johns from October to
May. That's why we modernS' feel the cold
so much. We don't have a half-inch of
'personal insulation, made up of sweat and
skin and dirt, under the underwear
What really baffles me is why the very
first settlers of Canada stayed here, after
experiencing one winter. Things must have
been pretty rotten, back in France and
England and Ireland, to m ake them tough
it out in this "few arpents of snow", as
Voltaire dismissed it so casually.
And what completely stymies me is that
the first white settlers found anybody alive
in this country, when they first arrived. I
simply cannot understand how the Indians
survived a winter like this.
You think your arthritis is bad, Aunt
Mabel, How would you like to live on corn
and sex, in a tepee or a longhouse, for five
months, with a little, smoky fire burning on
the floor and 12 feet of snow outside. And
no television!
Do you realize your great-grandfather,
when grub got low, probably had to walk
eight or 10 miles to the nearest store, and
home with a sack of flour on his shoulder
and a package of tea in his pocket?
On the worst of days, I can battle my way
four blocks to the supermarket and come
home laden with grapes and oranges and
fresh meat, and if I've had a big day on the
stock market, even a pound of coffee.
Oh, we have it soft, soft, compared with
them. Tomorrow morning, I nay be as
•,urly as my grandfather was, if the car
won't start. But tonight, I'm going to eat a
gourmet dinner (stew, I looked in the pot),
and sit in my warm house watching,
iti living color, a movie about the South
Seas. What a rotten spoiled lot we are!
Old Age
Pensioners
Guaranteed
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sure you fill in your form and return
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closed with the form, as, soon as you
possibly can,
1 Health . Sarit6 et
arid Welfare Bieh4etre 4:icial
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