TubaOrNotTuba

I heard it on the news so it must be true. They were last evening busily evacuating a park. Not just any park. One of the good ones. You may have heard of it. Jasper. I even went there once. Something about a forest fire or maybe a grass fire. The report was unclear but obviously this was not something that was supposed to be going on. We get a lot of reports about big fires elsewhere but they rarely seem to be centred on places that I have ever had any reason to look for on the map or visit. All I could say was not Jasper. Two famous for allowing a fire. Don’t we keep firefighters on site all the time just in case. Apparently not. The park will have to take his chances like everywhere else. Imagine the the water bombers coming in. The part of being captive to the news is that I hear a lot of stuff that really should not catch my attention. A war in a foreign land that’s life a tidal wave you need a notion for that but a National Park one of our nation’s treasures on fire it seems wrong on all levels I guess I’ll have to listen to the news this evening to see if there has been any change in the last day. I wonder if I know anyone who is there camping right now. I know a lot of people . In other camping news we had a visit from people we met at different times over the last two decades. Fellow campers if you will. And in listening to them I realized that the clock has not stopped for any of us. We are all now mature people. In the sense of getting close to our expiration dates.

There was a time in my life when I advised people on where to go and eat. Part of my professional role. Nowadays, I would not know where to turn. For me, most of my best meals come from my local kitchen and I do not want hundreds of strangers coming in and trying to shoulder up to the table. Today I did what most people do. I turned to social media and allowed a couple of influencers to show me around town. Excuse me. City. We are bigger now. And what I’ve learned is that the addresses have not changed only the menus. Did you know they now serve curry locally? The things you learn from social media. But it turns out that my city is doing well. We have developed a reputation as a place to go and get fed. Maybe I will go out this summer and test the menus. I have no intention of advising others but if someone from my family asks I will have an answer that reflects this era. I also learned that the lobster roll is now considered to be a delicacy rather than something that your mother would do in the kitchen in a rush. Like I say, times have changed. I have no idea about the cost of things on the menu. That will require more study on my part. After all social media cannot give me all the answers. And if you come to my city come ready to enjoy. Apparently we now do food properly. Yes there are still things that people have been eating for decades. The lowly French fry is still a staple. But we have discovered other things that I have never eaten. Looking at you oyster.

There have been so many movies in my life that I no longer remember them all. One of them contained an epic line in a song. Climb every mountain. Take it from me that might not be the best strategy. I admit I am a flatlander and I live by the sea. If the terrain goes up and goes back down you end up at the same point. I ended up in a documentary world this afternoon where some young people were climbing a large mountain. I have no idea where because I have no intention to follow in their footsteps. Too many hazards. Gravity is a big one. Makes you want to go all the way down even if your intention is only to go a short piece. Another is the lack of oxygen at altitude. When someone describes the attempts to breathe as being pointless because each breath of air contained less oxygen than required my intentions were made even more firm. In the wrong place, weather will kill you; on a mountain that seems to be that place. If you want food you had better bring it with you. No door delivery. And if you want a warm night pick the right sleeping bag in advance. It seems the temperatures at altitude tend to drop below where you want to be comfortable. I will try to find out where this video was made just to satisfy my own curiosity. Nothing else about their trip made any sense. Why go up if you do not need to. Stay down where man is meant to be. And yes I have been challenged before in my life and with time I’ve learned to avoid doing things that made me highly uncomfortable. The people in this video seemed to have missed that life lesson.

Although I have not been formally tasked to do so, I feel obliged to try and record the history of my family on behalf of my children and future grandchildren. Who else can I ask? I was born in a very small village. A dozen or so houses. We were there because my father worked at the local railway station. My father had bought a small house from someone in the village just across from the station. My mother lived in another house just across from the station in the other direction. How far? Well as a very young child I could probably have gone to visit my grandparents on foot and come back again without anyone even noticing that I had left. At the speed of the local crawl if you will. The roads were very safe because almost no one owned a car and the trains blew their horns before coming to a crossing. Safety above all. My father and mother already knew each other because they had grown up in another small village about two hours away by car. Remember none of us owned cars at that point. My father was in the village to work and my mother was there because her father and mother had moved there after coming home from Boston. But spoiler alert they also knew each other because that’s how things work around here. My two grandfathers had gone to school together. As life went on I figured out that family connections were important. You needed to know who your cousins were because they were your first line of the sport and first line of defence in case you get into a fight on the playground. When my father came to work at the train station he knew who my mother was and he used to be invited over in the evening for a cup of tea by her parents. Life in a very small village. And so they married and all of my family came along after that. Two of us lived in that small house until we moved on to bigger and better things at a very young age. I do remember the house because it had an upstairs and I learned to crawl upstairs there. You see how it works. The village was so small then we kept our own cow in a little shed at the back to provide fresh milk. No dairies in those days. As I grew older I had the chance to visit with both sets of grandparents. In fact as the first grandchild I had that awesome responsibility of giving my grandmother her name. I do not know how it was chosen but it stuck with her until she died. Now my siblings did not all meet my grandparents. A couple were gone before my sisters were born. Another reason for me to record The why and the where. I could probably find old pictures but that would take the fun out of you imagining how a tiny village worked. Yes, we knew who the neighbours were. We had a post office but no home delivery. A lot of life dependent upon the coming and going of the train. Even if we did not travel. I could have gone to visit my other grandparents by train but I do not think that ever happened. We found other ways to fulfill our familial obligations. And when I reached adulthood I moved into the house of one of my sets of grandparents for a year and a half. I can easily describe the room where my father was born. I will if you ask me nicely. All this before we started to move to other provinces which we did about the time that I reached double digits in my age. I bloomed early as they say. Before I could even write. If my siblings ask I can tell them so many stories but I think the need for that has fallen away.

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.