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10 THE RURAL VOICE
The World from Mabel's Grill
"Did you hear the one about Bill
Clinton and ..." That's as far as
Dave Winston got before Mabel
came storming out of the kitchen.
"That's enough of that!," she
warned, waving the big knife she'd
been using to
chop
vegetables.
"Bill Clinton
jokes have
been added to
my list of
forbidden
subjects."
"Sheesh,
there are soon
going to be so
many
forbidden
topics it won't
be worth
coming in
The world's
problems are
solved daily
'round the table
at Mabel's
here," Wayne Bruce said.
"You're supposed to be coming
for the food," Molly Whiteside said.
"Yeh right," said Dave.
"Bill's only a guy," said George
McKenzie. "I'd have figured you
women wouldn't have minded poor
old Bill getting ridiculed. Now if
Dave had been telling a Monica
Lewinsky joke I could see you being
so sensitive."
"Yeh," said Dave. "How come she
gets off so easy in all this?"
"Typical!" thundered George.
"Women always get treated differ-
ently. Take this whole pay equity
thing in Ottawa. Somebody comes
along and decides a file clerk has as
important a job as a fireman so she
has to get a raise. Anybody ask her if
she got burned by any hot files
lately?"
"It's just equal pay for work of
equal value," Molly said.
"I'd like some of that," Dave said.
"I'd like some commission to look at
the work I do providing the food
people need to live, then tell me I
should earn as much as a doctor
because he couldn't keep people
healthy if it wasn't for my food."
"Won't happen," George said.
"Not until farmers are all women."
"Heck, I wouldn't mind if I could
make as much as the girl who sells
my food at the supermarket," said
Cliff Murray. "With prices the way
they are this year, anyway."
"It's a funny thing," Dave said,
"that farmers have the one product
that you can't exist without, and
somehow we end up having to take
whatever price people will give us.
Then you take something like Coca-
Cola that people don't need at all, but
they managed to convince half the
world's population that their life
won't be worth living if they don't
have a Coke every day."
"I guess we're just not very good
at marketing," George said. "Those
guys at the cola companies and the
fast food companies, they know how
to get the most from what thcy have,
even if it isn't much."
"The problem is we've got no
clout," said Cliff. "Now look the way
the seed companies got us in a corner
even for a product we used to have
for free for as long as people farmed.
This new terminator gene will make
sure we have to buy new seed from
them every year."
"How do we get a terminator gene
for pork?" Dave wondered.
"You got it," Wayne said. "They
only eat it once and then it's
terminated in the toilet. It's not like
my shoes that some people can make
last for years."
"We used to have a terminator
when I was a kid," George said. "In
in the days before we had refriger-
ators if you didn't eat meat up quick
it went spoiled and you had to buy
more."
"Yeh, we're going in the opposite
direction to everybody else," said
Hank Vanderplast. "Everybody else
is into planned obsolescence. I mean
by the time I figure out how to install
a new program in my computer
they're sending me a notice saying
they've updated it. Meanwhile the
marketing board has made me have
my milk so pure it wouldn't go sour
if I left it on the kitchen counter for a
week in August."
"But the consumer is really
worried about food safety," George
said. "You've got to give the
consumer what they want."
"Unless you're a seed company
and your consumer is a farmer," said
Cliff.0