Village Squire, 1978-11, Page 50McGILLICUDDY'S DIARY
Village Squire presents the exclusive
feature: the diary of Ezeklal McGillicuddy,
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 Squire...for a
princely sum of course. Each month we
publish a selection of entries from the
previous month.
OCTOBER 2: That new young reporter at
the Hamhocks Herald has been at it again.
She did a public poll one of those man in
the street interviews in the paper last week
about what people felt about law and order
in Hamhocks. Nearly everybody said they
were paying too much money and weren't
getting much law as their order. She
followed it up with an editorial in the paper
talking about the need to tighten belts at
the town hall. I told her that if they cut the
budget for the police department any more
it had better be a wide belt they bought to
tighten because the police chief wouldn't
be able to afford to buy pants. She didn't
think it was funny. I bet she didn't think it
was too funny today when I gave her
parking tickets in three different places in
town because she forgot to put money in
the parking meters.
OCTOBER 8: Thanksgiving Day, but I
could be a lot more thankful if I could have
come up with an excuse not to have gone
over to Cindy Lou's for dinner. (Make a
note to dream up a dear old aunt living in
Talbot that I can go visit on such
occasions). Cindy Lou tries her best but
whoever told her the way to a man's heart
is through his stomach should also have
told her that the way to warm up a man
isn't through giving him heartburn.
She had a real turkey of a turkey.
Actually, 1 think it was an Old buzzard that
somebody shot and pawned off on her. I
think even the buzzards would have passed
up that bird if they found it lying dead in a
field. Her pumpkin pie tasted like she left
the seeds in it. I wonder if I could book off
sick tomorrow?
OCTOBER 11: Had to pick up Harvey
Malcolmson again today. With the price of
booze the way it is these days it's hard to
make ends meet for somebody who should
get volume discounts like Harvey. He
decided to go into production for himself to
cut corners. He even checked with me to
make sure it was allright. I told him as long
as it was beer or wine and as long as it was
less than 40 gallons he was all right. He
said that wine was fine by him and even he
should be able to get by on 40 gallons.
So everything seemed to be nice and legal.
But yesterday morning I got a call from
Harriett Moneybank. Like a lot of the
bigwigs up on Golden Row, she and her
48 The Village Squire November 1978
husband Herbert had gotten into the hobby
of winemaking. Not for them your ordinary
local grapes, of course, they'd imported
special vines and cared for them for the last
three years like they were firstborn
children. This was the year when they were
to get their first bumper crop. They were
pretty proud of those grapes and were
leaving them out just a bit longer to ripen
to the fullest before picking.
Well it seems that although Harvey had
the idea for making wine and even bought
a book about it. he didn't have any grapes.
He started prowling around and saw these
grapes growing over the backyard fence at
the Moneybanks and thought those would
be great.
The Moneybanks are demanding he be
given a life in prison sentence.
OCTOBER 18: I see the police chief down
in Toronto says he won't have any part of
arresting people if they don't go back to
work at the post office now that the
government's passed a law making the
postal strike illegal. I don't blame him. I'm
lucky in that all our postal workers realize
they've got a pretty good thing here and
got back to work pretty quick but 1
remember a few years ago when I got
caught in the middle of a strike. It was
down at the Hamhocks turnip waxing plant
and some health inspector, a new guy on
the job and hell bent for leather he was
going to leave his mark. told the men that
they just weren't clean enough to be
handling food. He told them they had to
year white clothing and hair nets.
Hairnets! Well that did it. If the boys down
at the Lamplighter Hotel ever found out
that these guys wore hairnets, they'd never
hear the end of it. No sir! They'd go on
strike first!
Well poor Joe McKay who owned the
plant was in a heck of a mess. It wasn't his
fault that their men had to wear hairnets.
He wasn't to crazy about the idea anyway
(he asked the inspector if they should also
get manicures.) Still it was him that was
lossing out if the men were on strike. The
plant couldn't be opened unless the men
wore hairnets and the men wouldn't
change their minds and the inspector
wouldn't change his mind so Joe gave an
ultimatum: either the guys wore the nets or
he'd bring in people who would. They still
refused and so he went downtown and
rounded up a bunch of women who weren't
afraid of hairnets to work in the plant.
The girls, however. took one look at the
size of some of those guys on the picket line
outside the plant and said that there was no
way they'd go into that plant without some
protection. So as usual when there's a
nasty situation I got called. I took a look at
the size of some of the guys in that picket
line and I wished I could go on strike
immediately.
Well I tried to talk nice and calmly to the
guys. explain the logic of the whole
situation and they seemed to be taking it all
quite calmly. Relieved. 1 turned and told
the girls to come on in. That was when the
guys didn't like the idea so much anymore.
One of the biggest picked me up and threw
me into this big hole outside that contained
the remains of some of the old turnips from
last year's crops. You ever smelled old
turnips? I smelled them for the next two
months before I got so tired of people
making funny remarks every time they
passed me on the street that I burned the
uniform.
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