TubaOrNotTuba

Here is a story with short legs. Yesterday there was a hockey game. Happens a lot I think. But in this case the president of the US took the time to make a big deal about how his team was going to win. Called the team before the game. Told the press that this was just a precursor to Canada becoming the 51st state. A total victory for his team. Which it wasn’t. In reality these were all players from the NHL. Not a team. Just a scrimmage. And those wearing the sweaters from the US last. Within hours the story had disappeared from all public view. As if the boast had never been made. As it should be. This was a nonsense moment in American history. But with a president who can do no wrong I’m sure that some people did go to their local betting shop and put money on the odds that his team was going to win. Money is so fleeting. And, hockey will go on. No countries changed hands. No borders redrawn. Just a post by someone who does nothing but boast. A sad reflection of how things are going. Meanwhile our premier has resigned. Almost without notice. And the story will not last long because we have a very tiny population. But it just does serve as a juxtaposition of how those who boast do not always express reality and those who are in place as politicians do not stay around forever and ever. You can mark the date on your calendar as just another date. Given that we will be getting a new premiere as of tomorrow we should also expect to have a few other ministers change portfolios. That might be the only news we will have on the local station. Certainly nothing about a hockey game that was last.

We had someone stopped by yesterday to watch the birds. Our version of a TV show. You see we made a choice almost a decade ago to not cut down the trees in front of our property. The birds figured it out. They can sit there in relative comfort and wait for us to feed them. A good strategy. Now what intrigued me about the conversation with our visitor had nothing to do with birds. I learned that coyotes were being cited out on the ice. The coyotes are rare sighting like the ice. Probably a short term project. Now I can remember when there were no coyotes in this part of the world. In fact they were virtually unknown to the east of Winnipeg. But things change. We have heard these animals and we have seen these animals from our kitchen window. They also realize that we offer shelter from the storm. Or the hunters. I imagine that somewheres in their DNA, coyotes have figured out that someday the seals will return. If one comes ashore these beasts will be ready. An interesting way to look at history. I did check in one of my locals books can coyotes are new to the area. I do not know how they found their way here or who passed the word that we have a preferred hunting ground. I will leave that to the biologists and the ecologists. I am just someone with trees in my front yard that gives shelter to all sorts of wildlife. A local privilege. And since we no longer have a dog my guess is that the coyotes are going to become braver and braver. That is their game.

Right about now people are celebrating the 50th anniversary of SNL. Blockbuster programming for a Saturday night. I have not seen any episodes recently but there was a time in my life when it was a staple. The best of comedy in a two-hour format. Many of the cast members have gone on to other large roles in cinema and stage. It seems only fitting that the network would try to celebrate the achievement. We do have access to a lot of the better skits. Thank you, YouTube. Where would the rest of us be without you? I cannot think of any other comedy program that has presented as many great moments for us. So many characters and so many scenes that make us giggle. Better than Hollywood at much less cost. I probably should try to find out if the program is still available in my local area. But I won’t. Much easier to put aside the calendar and simply take the humor as I find it. For sure some of the skits are based upon the current news cycle but even years later we can still take pleasure from the antics of the trained cast members. I heard numbers about how many people have appeared over the years and for the life of me I cannot remember that number. The reality is that it is not important about «the who» or «the win» or «the why». Just take your moments as they come and if this kind of humor triggers you double down. Watch some more. No need to name anyone at this point. You should do your own research. Some of the greats have already died which is normal given the length of time the program has been around. There was a time when half a century was no more than the span of a lifetime.

During a recent conversation with a family friend, the question came up. What about a career working on the passenger train? Now I have given this a lot of thought over the years. Not because I wanted to do it but because I, too, wondered. It seems that we still have trains in parts of the country. However the opportunities to get paid for traveling back and forth to the same bit of countryside occurs less and less. No need. The number of riders is down and the number of employees needed to make sure the service is comfortable is also down. The railroads have rationalized this scientifically. The question is always there. Why, if the mileage has not changed and the trains are more mechanically robust, why do trains not run on time. Because therein lies the issue. If you get on board your train at departure time you would expect to get back at something that matched reality. I cannot answer this on behalf of the rail companies but all of the videos I have watched show the trains arrive consistently after that I’m showing on the schedule. Even in cases where the tracks are not shared between freight and passengers. So what has gone wrong. The tracks are still being maintained and the idea of a certain amount of time for a certain distance has never really gone away. What has happened to passenger service. It does no good to compare rails and trails. Even if you walked on an old railbed you could say that you should arrive at the time you expect. The trains have no compunction to follow this rule of thumb. I speak from years of experience in that I often traveled across a section of the country. Rail travel was economical. And we usually arrived within an hour or two of the time we expect it. I cannot imagine what it would be like to live on a continent where the trains run on time. That does exist apparently. Not just a folk myth. But here in North America we seem to have put the idea of keeping to our schedule into the realms of fantasy. I must try to learn more about this odd rule of physics.

There is a new bird hanging out in the driveway. It might be a ring-necked and it might be a red-neck. I cannot clearly see. However given that I live among people who watch birds I’ve learned that there are some things you really should not say even in jest. For example getting out the recipes for roast pheasant do not go over well. Right up there with roast rabbit. I am unable to decide whether or not wanting to eat the animals in my area is a good or bad thing. I can remember when people kept animals around just for that reason. Be it a calf or a piglet you could imagine it as a meal. That was normal. Now not so much. To be fair I have never had to pluck a bird. There must be some trick involved and someone told me once that boiling water is involved. Again I have no direct experience. For me the bird that goes into my oven comes ready for the job. Same thing for the restaurants that sell me such products. No need to learn how to pull out the feathers before starting supper. As for the bird visitors in the driveway apparently they will eat sunflower seeds. That is almost a generalized thing around here because the fox also enjoys them and the squirrels and just what every other animal that shows up on the doorstep. Hay! even I ate some flower seeds back in the day. In small quantities. Mainly for the salt. We choose our food according to what is available. Forget the products that are common in other parts of the world. We go with that which we can find close by. For the record I will not be eating fox anytime soon. But that bird with the ring-neck had better watch where it walks. I have watched cartoons and I know that a wooden box and a piece of wood and a string will get me a meal. Based on my patience.

It may be quiet outside but I can still find other places that have winter weather. For example Toronto is doing back-to-back storms. And Ottawa. And Montreal. And even us if I can trust what the weather forecast had to say. I am not truly worried. We have had our ice on the roads. We have had our snow on the lane. In fact as I listened to the world around me I can hear young people sliding on the hill outside. Yes I have a hill even though I have never gone down it on a double runner sled. I do not own one. Nor a toboggan. In fact this hill serves only to keep the sea away. I cannot tell you how other people handle such things. In the town where I went to high school our street was a hill but it was not suitable for sliding. Instead we had some very good slopes not far away. I could even walk there with a toboggan back when I had one. I think that it has all been replaced with shopping malls because a town needs its places to shop more than it needs hills slide. The people in that area take great pride in their proximity to true ski hills. Another oddity is that I knew no one in high school that actually skied. There was that one girl from Germany or Austria but I think that she was an outlier. There only because of her family. She knew how to ski well enough to make a living at it. The rest of us were just flatlanders who could find our way down to the lake even in the dead of winter secure in the safety of a thick layer of ice. Oddly I ended up watching a documentary last evening about the good old days in that area. Ships that were used to hunt for submarines. If only we had known we would have asked much better questions of the older people in the area.

I have heard the noon cannon. Not often and not recently but it was something I witnessed at different times during my life. Mainly as a tourist. I started thinking about it and I realized that back in the day this was the best method to let people know that noon was at hand. Fire off a random canon instead of doing things that seem simpler. Things like ringing a bell or waving a flag. You can hear the big boom a lot further. And given the background that we have in Canada of keeping the military around for whatever reason almost every military base at one time or another had a noon signal. I guess someone had to synchronize to watch is. And the tradition carries on in certain cities. Coming to mind we have Halifax and I think Louisburgh and Saint Johns and Montreal and Toronto and Vancouver. The list becomes unwieldy. Each city wants to keep traditions alive mainly for visitors. After all watching someone load the gun and pull the lanyard and plug their ears fun I guess. For those in the local area it serves as a way of letting them know that it is time to go and find the lunch box. Now I have also lived in factory towns where they blew a horn or sounded a siren. Neither of those have the same month as a blast of a cannon. That might be an idea for a road trip. Go off and find out where the time signals are still used. On the railway there was a signal that came down the wire as they say at lunchtime. The station agent could then synchronize the clock that hung on the wall so that anyone coming in from the train could find out the current time. A useful way of doing things when you want the trains to be where they’re supposed to be at the right time. Collisions are so messy. And passengers like the trains to run on time without the interference of a government. But I digress. Locally we have nothing like that. I think we still use sun in the sky as a way to mark the hours.

Our driveway is kept clean by two brothers. Local people. And they have matching tractors. I had not thought much about that before today. I mean I never knew which one was in the lane but I did not really care because we paid to the same people. However today we had both tractors in the driveway. Not because of a heavy snow or ice accumulation. Rather something I had never considered before. Even tractors can get flat tires. The brothers lost no time. Within the hour they had raised the tractor remove that wheel down there patch and left. They know what they’re doing. Again I had never thought much about it before. So, instead, I went back to old TV. Ended up finding an episode of Cannonball which was a big favorite before I ever started school. Big rigs on the road. Now the episode left me nonchalant. No big thrills here other than hearing the Canadian references because this was early Canadian TV. In fact I wonder if that show ever made it across the border. The plotline, today, had something to do about a truck shipment being hijacked. Or not. When the thieves opened the truck it was empty. This was nothing more then the decoy. So tricky. And the big clue to let one trucker know that something else was going on was an obscur reference from a very old English poem. Education was important. There were no guns used and the theft was only an intention. More Canadian than that I do not know what it would be. Yes, I will look for other episodes. Hoping to see something that I remember from such a long time ago. Any plot lines that I did know have faded away but this is a good chance to renew my memories. You must recall that in the mid 1950s we had a TV with one channel. You either watched what was on or you went to bed. When you were four years old getting to stay up and watch TV always carried the day. Or night.

I am technically a political inactivist. That means that I tried to be informed and they do watch the polls even when election is not in progress but other than that I offer little to the candidates not even my support. I do remember the first time I came into contact with a political campaign. I forget who had the bright idea of two of us going to a local candidate and offering to be workers. I was not even old enough to vote so I was hardly on their radar. And the job that I was given was to take a large hammer and some cut pieces of wood. And then to go out and put signs on peoples lawns. With their permission of course. The reality of things is that when you go to someone’s door and ask for permission to put a sign on their lawn they will probably say yes. Hardly an activist response. I also learned that you cannot tell the colour other voters skin be it red or blue by their house. You do have to ask. Now why is this important? Well it is not. We know there will be an election federally before much longer. And if my luck holds up none of the candidates will make it to my door. I may be a known quantity. Based on how my father and grand father and great grand father voted. In the political world they keep track of such things even though I could not tell you how any of those individuals actually marked their X. For my part I have generally voted in a manner that would not bring shame to any of my ancestors. As well the political machine ignores me as just one more vote. Among millions. A very hard way to learn that you are not that important in their world. Gain one or lose one, the politicians do not really care. I have been listening to online common carry about how things may go in our next set of elections. Even the experts have no idea. What seemed like a done deed only six months ago is now not so sure. Just as bad as trying to find a new job. Being a politician is hard work. Will there be any signs of my lawn? Not likely. We have a large screen of trees so that passers by cannot tell if we are even at home. A sign would be a waste.

I would love to have one of those crystal balls. One that allows you to see where things are going to be in the future. All I have right now is my own view of history. The things I remember other things I do not. If my children or my grandchildren ever ask me how do we get around in the good old days I will have a sketchy answer. Locally we had passenger trains. We also had the trusted horse and cart. And at one point in my life I went on a sailing ship. That was unique and much noisier than I expected. We also have airplanes but given the cost I have rarely used the service. Went to a few local cities but on the whole, planes are something that goes by overhead when I am not looking. I have never taken a motorcycle to go anywhere locally. I have never got on a skateboard and gone down the hill two quickly for safety. I did use a bicycle on a regular basis until I no longer needed to. Blame that on cars. As well I have learned that most of our travel is not really necessary. I can go for weeks without any need to head into town. Or out of the province. Hence those trains and sailing ships are just an extra. I should try to find out what happened to that one ship because it was cool. And some of the trains are in a museum because that’s where trains end up. Try to imagine that the passenger cars I used half century ago are still in service somewhere. The railroads know how to keep their gear going for much longer than anyone else think about it have you ever seen a scrap yard for trains? Not sure we have one in this part of the world. Oh and we have ferry boats when they aren’t broken or Catching Fire. That is an odd way of looking at things but that is also the approach used by our local ferry service. I guess that they made the assumption that when we got the bridge we no longer needed to maintain that service. Hence my curiosity. What will be in place half century from now. What will we need to do to get from here to there.