TubaOrNotTuba

I remember a nursery rhyme that mentioned being home again in a jig. Sometimes it takes a bit longer. We’re back after a 2 day road trip over to that next province. Full of fear of a big storm that never manifested. And the RV went for  its repairs which means we now have heat. Not to be cynical but going on the hottest day in summer to get your furnace fixed must have struck the people there as odd. Getting the furnace fixed will also give us hot water and at some point I’m going to have to try taking a shower inside.For years I have found work arounds like getting lost in campgrounds but my time is coming I have worked out the physical motions necessary to shower in a very small space. No waving of arms or flailing. At least the water will be hot. Did you know the cold water can give you a heart attack? I don’t want to tempt fate on that one. So we made our trip back to the Island without any untoward stress. The road on that route is good and we just had to make up the time that we had spent waiting for parts at the repair place. It seems they missed getting one light bulb to work but it is in the shower and therefore it does not really matter. Now we’re home trying to fit all the little pieces back into their proper holes period. Charging cables mainly. Outside our foxy friends were waiting. Almost as if we had never left. And now we’re getting ready for the next round of visitors. Sometime in the next week I think. There is a calendar I just cannot see it. Title home again home again

Maybe I need a boat. I come to that conclusion after watching today’s news from Toronto where the streets are running fast. It’s only a couple of centuries since we put the canoes ashore and then get out the horse and cart. So we a century since we adopted automobiles and put roads going to roads everywhere. But the rains are back and the cities like Toronto the water is running fast not where it should. I think the rivers are fine but you’re in your car your best keep an eye ahead. You can get into deep water very quickly when the rogue was under an overpass. Just saying. Around here we have no such worries because we have an ocean but they did build that new bridge over in town a little bit higher than they used to a full three to four meters higher as near as I can tell. Maybe they know something that we don’t. Of course we have a lot of boats locally so if worse comes to worse we simply park the car and walk over and beg a ride from the neighbour. Unsure the next step. But I do keep an eye on weather. I was trained that way and I now know that what we used to do half century ago is no longer current practice. If you have a rain cup you need to get the bigger model. Same thing goes for wind veins. The wind blows longer and harder than it used to. We have been in strange weather for years and we have been warned but it is so hard to turn around the ship of government. Maybe they need a canoe. As for where I live I can see the ocean and it is not full just yet. I am not saying bring on the reins but if you do then bring on the reins.

Over the years there has been one familiar message. Received from all levels of authority. Put away your stuff when you’re through with it. I had a very important duty when I was in high school. I had to get all of the percussion stuff from its place in the music room onto the stage on the next floor. A couple of times a week. So many pieces and so much weight. What I learned was that being systematic makes a big difference. Make sure your rug landing space is clear before you try to land a big piece of equipment. And put the large stuff away before you put the small stuff. Right now I’m depending a lot on muscle memory. Something that I have not had to do for most of my life. In the basement there is a full set of drums and on the calendar there are visitors. The two do not mix well. I speak from experience. And so with that in mind this afternoon I went downstairs and put away the toys. The drums. I made sure I had a place for each module and I move them one at a time. No more of these massive take everything in one move. That was another lesson I’d learned through the years. And so within about 15 minutes all of the kit was stowed away. The visitors may be here at anytime. And I do not want to be doing this while they’re upstairs waiting to be greeted. Also, by doing it on a quiet day I can take my time to do it according to my methodology. I do not need a coach at all times. The final motion of rolling up the floor carpet served as a reminder that I had done the job properly. And now I can sit back and relax in spite of the heat. That is the other thing. Summer has returned with a vengeance I probably should turn on the cold air before going too much longer in life.

About once a month I developed a passion. I have this overpowering need to crush cardboard. I checked and it seems to match the date that the bin truck is going to pass to collect my recyclables. We are part of the new economy which means that pretty much any parcel that arrives comes with its own shipping box and you cannot keep them around for long. No house has that much space. And so I find my tools and I head out for an hour or so a very satisfying fold spindle and mutilate. If we lived back in the days when you went to the store to get things you would just bring your new purchases home but we don’t do commerce that way anymore. We depend upon vans that come in and drop packages and leave. And then it is up to us to do the rest. I have become methodical. There are rarely any boxes leftover at the end of my passion. Frenzied passion. I mean this is a renewable resource. If I need to send someone or something off to another address I can find what I need out in the garage. At least till the bin truck is passed. I have found ways to keep them folded? There is a more obvious solution. We could purchase less. We could try to stretch out how long we keep certain things alive if you will but there’s a certain pleasure that comes from unwrapping the latest parcel. Did I receive what I wanted. Do I have to navigate the field of fire involved in doing returns? On the whole we do well.

When I was still young as in single digits my parents gave me a gift that was probably worth a great deal of money. I never knew. We received a full set of encyclopedias thanks to a traveling salesman. I soon learned that even with this well of knowledge it came with a best before date. That is when we started received the yearly update books each one a condensation of what had been learned in the year before. Spoiler alert it never even came close. We do so much better now. We have search engines. As someone told me if you cannot find an answer you just have not asked the correct question. And that is the other bump in the road correct answers are not a given. In fact we are now awash in a world of knowledge that needs to be corrected as soon as possible. In the world of wiki anyone can say anything at anytime. No fact checking required. Much like some of those speeches by a certain presidential candidate. Over the years I have learned to take easy knowledge as probably not worth much. If you do not need to dig deeper you’re getting the dirt on the surface only. So how is that working out for me? Well I have stopped saying really stupid things to my friends. They understand fact checking. And my siblings no longer asked me questions since they have all learned to read. A mixed blessing. So what is next? I keep hearing the catch phrase AI for artificial intelligence and I fear that like artificial flavouring it will prove to be not so much of value. I mean ask yourself do you trust everything you hear. I extend my sympathies in that case even my dog did not go down that lonely road.

If the need should arise I am ready to provide a full inventory of every place we ever lived and every school we ever attended. This is for my siblings more than anyone else but maybe my children have the need to know. I was lucky enough to be provided with a good memory for physical locations. I can point you where the houses were and where the schools were and if you’re intrigued by the word were it’s because most of those structures are now gone. It happens. We weren’t given to building much at of bricks. Except for that one school that we attended back in the day. I do wonder what my sister remembers given that she also was a student there. As a child you tend to miss the big picture for the details. I did go looking for old photographs but they were rare. Probably because no one else actually cared. The school that I attended for my grade four and five and six and something else was built probably half a century before I got there and it stayed in place for a long time. Gone now. It might have gone when they took out the railway. As for my other schools they’re all gone. As for hospitals they’re all gone as well. When you are young you tend to believe that things will last forever. Not so. And please do not ask me to talk about the colours inside. I seem to have missed that whole side of descriptive elements. Given the time. White was probably the only colour used. As for the outside of houses believe me children do not notice. Only if you were able to say that you lived in the white house or the brown house you had already done better than most of your peers. It’s a wonder we ever found our way back home. I did mention that most of these structures are gone and that part saddens me. These were all good buildings in their time. I have to look back and say I was lucky to have been there even if I will not be returning to any of them. Even my high school which took up five full years of my life was torn down about a decade ago. I’ve seen pictures of that one at least both: before and during. There is no sense. They replaced the building with something newer and better and I know that one will also disappear probably without my ever having been inside.

Did you do your laundry recently? Was it difficult? I actually do not care about your answers I’m just making a point. Our way of doing laundry has changed dramatically. I’ve been doing the throw it in the washer and wait till it’s done method for half a century but I came along at a time when people still had a ringer washer. I was warned over and over and over again not to put my fingers in the ringer. I was also taught how to yell for help if I did so and so I never did either. But you have to wonder for the people of this age what they would do if faced with the need to wring out their clothes. We spin until we’re happy. We know that machines can do a much better job then we can of removing all the water we put in to get the wash done. We can also rinse our clothes thoroughly. That may sound like a lot of work but it is so necessary. If you have ever had to wear clothes that were still soapy you know what I mean. And we have been doing laundry in the home for centuries. Seriously I do not think that anybody that I know ever had to go out to a stream and beat their clothes against a rock. You might see that in a movie but it does not reflect our realities of life. Also we have hot water now. Do not laugh yes that is a big deal. Combined with powerful soaps and a bit of time we can wear clean clothes every day of the week unless you really get your schedule out of whack. As I said for me it has been half a century so that even in university when I had no time for anything I still could manage to get a couple of loads of laundry done in the basement of a building. Never had to wash anything in the washroom or take it home to mom. Too far to travel. We can make jokes but we live in a very clean society.

My children grew up with modern heating. In fact they probably never even thought about it because all they needed to do to get more or less temperature in a room was to touch a small control. How much things have changed from the time of my parents. My father and my mother did not grow up together. Just nearby. And during their childhood houses were heated with wood generally it was a year long process to make sure that there was enough firewood to get you through the cold spells. I helped a little bit when I was older. Went out with men to cut trees just like in the movies. In the burn where I lived we had piles of slabs which were the leftovers from the local sawmill. All meant to be burned in a stove. Since the house was rarely warm enough in winter you also learned to rely on good blankets. Local E we have never dug for coal. That came from just across the water period. But the train stations because they had access to transport brought in piles of black stones to be burned judiciously. Yes I did live in a house with a cold furnace at one point and it was also a lot more work than my children have ever had to think about in terms of heat. I suppose that if we had had the modern knowledge we would have gone for something like I don’t know solar or passive but we didn’t we burn stuff. Blame them for the current weather if you wish. They will not be here to be held accountable. Nor will I. For me that’s just history. And yes I still have some blankets around in case it ever gets really cold.

Since my request to take a time machine back to the time of my grandparents has been summarily refused I must carry on by trying to learn from other sources. One of my sets of grandparents lived on a small family farm just up the road from here and I visited them when I was young. I was quite aware that they had animals but I had never given thought to which animals and why. There were not very many. The usual mixed bag of cows and pigs and horses with an occasional chicken wandering around outside. I did with time learn that each animal gave something else to the table but I never thought about how it all comes together in a very interesting marriage throughout the year. Not every animal is to be killed at the same time. You must plan your menus ahead. For example today I learned that you needed a calf in order to make cheese and I had really not considered that possibility. It has something to do with a magical chemical called rennet which is found in the calf’s stomach. Also pigs do not like drafts of cold air. Something else I had never considered I just figured they lived in a little pen and waiting for their turn to come up. Cows of course I understood but I had not thought about the various ways that milk can be used in the diet and I had forgotten that a cow has to have a calf before there will be milk. It is all about the timing. Turns out back in the days of the family farm they had figured out all those variables they knew what to do when and nothing ever went to waste. You’ve heard of sausage? They had you’ve learned about hooves being made into glue. I do not know that my grandparents ever made glue but I will not speak for their ancestors. And the eventual hide would be made into leather. Perhaps not in the back barn but somebody knew the tricks. There are so many other little tidbits out there. I have learned a few but now I will take the time to study and try to put it all together into one big picture. Life on the family farm. After all they had no supermarkets in their day and if you did not have it at home you just did not have it. I wonder did they grow apples? All this from watching a simple video which is how most of my days get started. Take an idea and run with it.

From my kitchen window I can see a small lake. Technically not a lake. Rather a lagoon open to the sea. And that’s what makes it special because from what I can learn that lagoon is full of eels. So much so that our local museum has a whole section related to the artifacts of when people went out on the ice with spears. We no longer have that ice. I have never seen anyone standing on the shoreline trying to spear a wiggly. But I did watch a video dating back to five or six centuries ago when the eel was a valuable commodity on the average table. People ate eels. People caught eels. In small traps mainly. And now I wonder, am I missing out on something? Should I be down on the stairs near the shoreline trying to catch my supper? Not likely. I have never developed a taste for the beast although I’ve watched relatives who fried them up with glee almost and I’ve learned a little bit about the complicated lifespan. Better to let the eel keep its place in nature without my interference. I will watch the lawn just in case one of them decides to walk about. I learned that from my language exercises about fish that walk on the lawn. Anything is possible you know. What I would like is that same body of water to be filled with trout. I like trout although I haven’t gone fishing for those in the better part of a lifetime either. We have a number of very small rivers around here and when I was younger I would go after supper with a line and catch a couple. At a different time in my life I guess. But getting back to that body of water. Too small for large boats. A lower kayak would fit perfectly.