The Brussels Post, 1978-02-15, Page 8of the trails
by bus. It's a little bit like 16W-flying,
except that you don't have to handle the
controls and keep an eye on the altimeter.
Once you've adjusted to the hum of the
bus, there you are, morning paper on your
knee, flask of hot coffee on your lap, snug
and safe while the terrifying and magnifi-
cent white and blue and green and black
countryside peels by like a film on a
screen. *
After 40 days and 40 nights of snow and
Wind, the land was not exactly pastoral,
unless'you were breeding a herd of polar
bears.
But the Great Sculptor had been at work,
and the result was a surrealist's dream.
Vast sweeps of undulating white,
undercarved here and there, chiselled to a
cutting point elsewhere.
All this loveliness was overpowering,
and.I began to drift off into a day dream in
which I was a Russian count flying across
the snowy steppes in my troika, toward my
baronial manor in which the countess was
waiting with steaming vodka and a hot
shepherd's pie, made of a 'couple of
ground-up peasants who had got out of
line.
It was too good to be true. A hoarse voice
from across the aisle shattered the vision.
"Hey, you're Mr. Smiley, the teacher,
' aintcha?" It was some young turkey who
was on his way to Halifax, haying just
accepted the Queen's shilling, and for the
next hour he held me spellbound with a
garbled account of how he had got his
Grade 10 after only four years in high
school, the teachers he liked and didn't
like, the tremendous future he had in the
armed forces, all of it interspersed with
bad grammar and monotonous profanity.
By the time I got to the city, my mood
was sufficiently depressed for it; the filthy
slush, the bleak, biting wind, the total
absence of any of winter's beauty, the
hunched and watery-eyed pedestrians.
It was back to the ugliness of winter. But
for one brief hour there, I lived in an
enchanted world, frightening but
magnificent, where the salt-rusted
fenders, the' leaking rubbers, the
escalating oil bill, and the bloody snow
shovel could be temporarily banished to
the bottom of my bile sac.
And the city was so windy and dirty I
was glad to get Kline, walk into my own
backyard and cast a judicious, almost fond
glance at the picnic table under four feet of
white stuff, and the splendid array of
sparkling, five-foot icicles hanging directly
over my back door.
There was no countess, but theOld Lady
was there, and ,she was glad to see me-
home, so I had a steaming vodka and
believe it or not, she had prepared a hot
shepherd's pie. What more could a man
want, even if he isn't a count, on a winter's
eve in Canada?
J & K SHOES 'N _JEANS
JUST ARRIVED
Brussels
A new breed of Jeans for the new breed of lady:
It's Foxy By Corhortt
In Denim & Cords'
AGENTS R HARRISTON.
B.
A.RY. CLEANERS Member .B A Phone 887-9497
0—THE BRUSSELS POST, FEBRUARY, 15, 1970
Sugar and Spiro
by Bill Smiley
9be cDerrcSairers
vANTiegeiraw.vinmv-vmon. wiivizmusiTeizmv
Mrs. Leona Armstrong and Mrs.
Marie McTaggart. An invitation
has also been received from the
Bluevale Institute to be held
March 8 at 8 p.m. If interested
call Mrs. McCall.
The special prize of the day was
won by Miss Alieta Shantz.
Mrs. McCall closed the
meeting with the Queen and
Grace was ,sung.
LUnch was served by Mrs.D.
Hemingway, Mrs. Van Vliet,
Mrs. Ida Evans, Miss Laura
Lucas and Mrs. E. Shaw.
WI discusses Northern Ontario
The terror
the last couple of columns, you
probably think I'm a mean, shrivelled,
shrunken, toothless old man who hates
winter because he's so mean, shrivelled,
etc. etc.
You're right. But not entirely right. It's
not winter itself that I hate. How can you
hate an abstract thing like winter? You
can't punch it on the nose or spit in its face
(unless you are rich and can go south).
No, No. After all, I was an ardent curler
for a dozen or so years, working my way up
through the tortuous passages of the
curling hierarchy until I was a Vice-Skip (a
Skip in mixed doubles, already) until my
disintegrating discs suggested that there
were better ways of achieving comfort
than hoisting a 40-pound rock around and
beating the ice with a broom, bent double.
And for a few years there, I was known
as the Terror of the Trails. Ski trails, that
is. When people heard behind them a
whooping "Scheiss!" they got off the trail
pretty quickly", I can tell you. They were
well aware that Smiley had just roared
down a three-feet slope and was about to
run right over them. Mainly because he
didn't know how to stop.
In fact, for about three years, I was
forced to undergo the torture of the trails,
puffingly trying to keep up with an agile
young wife who does yoga exercises, until I
smartened up.
About last year, I discovered that, with
judicious planning, pleading the 'flu, my
arthritic foot; my bad back, and my bursitic
shoulder, I could stall the skiing until about
March.
Then, with any luck, there'd be sonic
freezing rain, a thaw, a blizzard, and
another thaw, so that skiing was
impossible. And I'd go around smacking
my right fist into my left palm, outwardly
furious that I'd missed all the best of The
winter skiing, inwardly chortling. And
people would sympathize with me, and I'd
respond "Yeah! Darn it to heck anyway."
No, No. Winter is really a wonderland
to me. I wonder how anybody in the land in
his right mind doesn't go out of it.
Again, it's not winter I hate. It's putting
on my rubber boots. It's ice on the roof. It's
driving in snow. It's my fuel bill. It's,
moving mountains of snow from here to
there, and having ; some zealous civic
employee, whose wages are paid out of my
taxes, move it back to here.
Aside from these minor and constant
irritations, winter can be a. joy, an esthetic
treat of the first magnitude. I discovered
this on a recent bus trip to the city.
We took off just as day was breaking.
And we rolled through a winter.landscape
that was stunning in its stark beauty. It
was like a trip to another planet in the
/ warm, safe cocoon of our space ship, the
bus.
That's the only way to travel in winter -
Twenty-three members
attended the February 'Majestic
Women's Institute Meeting in the
Library. Mrs. Doris McCall,
President, opened the meeting
wtih a poem. "The Busy
Battlers".
The topic Northern Ontario was
taken by Miss Laura Lucas. She
chose the Indians to speak on as
she had spent sometime where
language and culture was mostly
Cree. Many strange legends are
part of their beliefs. The native
costumes consisted mostly of
leather made from the skins of
animals they hunted. They
painted,' their bodies using
different color for different
occasions. Although the natives
love intensely all kinds of
stimulants they know their tailing
and repeatedly havel appealed to
the officers of the State to keep
liquor out of the Country. It is too
bad that this was :,notj clone.
One type of food used
consistantly was berrieS potinded
and put away in leather bags to be
by Richard Chorles 3
Your end of the pipeline
Most of us in Canada heat our homes with oil or natural
gas — and waste at least 10% of that fuel in the' process.
This means not only that valuable resources are disappear-
ing faster than need be, but a lot of people are robbing
themselves through paying for fuel that did them no good.
You can go a long way toward plugging the leak if you take
a few moments to find out how your heating system works,
and take a little trouble to see that it has proper care and
maintenance. Here's a brief introduction to the subject.
Most oil furnaces work by shooting oil droplets from a
nozzle and burning them in air. When things are. going
properly, the oil burns completely and uses a minimum of
air,, so that it makes hardly any smoke and leaves very little
soot. If You open the inspection flap in the front of the
furnace, you can see if there's smoke on the lip of the
flame, and' if soot is collecting.
Also take a look at the damper, which you will find in
the pipe between the furnace and the chimney. This
damper should open and shut freely in a draft caused by
the wind. It lets in cool air from the basement which helps
'to stop too much warm air from the furnace escaping up
the chimney.
With gas furnaces, the heat comes from a burner in the
form of a single jet or in a cluster similar to the jets on a gas
stove. The gas is ignited in air by a pilot light. If this is to
work properly, you should watch for three things in parti-
cular. First, see that the air intakes in the sides of the
furnace are not blocked. Second, make sure that the pilot
light is always burning, except in summer of course. Third,
check often to see if the flame from the burner is blue. If
there is any. yellow in the flame, it's getting too much air
and the air nozzle needs regulating.
For efficient burning, the gas flow valve and pressure
regulator need to be correctly adjusted too. All of the
adjustments that have to be made to a gas furnace need an
expert. So call your gas company.
You can save about 10% on the fuel bill if you have the
oil furnace and burner cleaned and tuned at least once a
year by a qualified serviceman. The items needing attention
include the combustion chamber, burner adjustments, oil
nozzle, oil filter and gaskets; oil pump, flue, smoke pipe,
chimney system, internal surfaces of the furnace, fan and
electrical equipment. Make sure your serviceman tests the
efficiency and reports it to you.
For gas heating, a 'serviceman should also carry out a
complete cheek once a year. The components of 'a gas fur-
nace requiring maintenance include the combustion
chamber, heat exchanger, pilot light, filters, fan, chimney
system and exterior.
Other ways to keep yourself snug while still saving
energy are by having a furnace of the right size and type for
your home — but that's another story — and by making
'sure that the heat circulates properly throughout your
home — which is yet another story. These will be discussed
in future "Energy Savers" columns.
You can learn more about furnaces and their main-
tenance by writing to,Box 350'0, Station C, Ottawa, On-
tario, MY 4G1, for a copy of The billpayer's guide to
furnace servicing. This gives up-to-date information
compiled by the Office of Energy Conservation, Depart-
ment of Energy Mines and Resources.
As you will discover, there's much you can do yourself
to keep your furnace on the top line, but don't try to take
the place of ak professional serviceman. Unless you really
know your stuff, your efforts could prove costly, and even
dangerous.
cooked in grease and eaten in the
winter. But pemmican was the
staple food of the Cree. In the
days of Buffalo, Buffalo meat, cut
into thin slices as dried meat
beef. These are just a few of the,
interesting stories that Laura
told.
Current Events were given by
Mrs. Ila McLarty.
The Secretary read a letter
from Mrs. Diamond and many
thank you notes were read. A
donation of $50 was voted to the
Irlin Lee fund. Officers
conference is to be held at the
University of Waterloo May 2 - 3 -
4..
The District Annual is to be
held at the Brussels United
Church May 9th.
A discussion • on a quilt for
display at the ploughing match
took Vide and a committee was
appointed to look into this.
The next meeting will be held
March 8th at 2 pan. Citizenship
and World Affairs converters are