TubaOrNotTuba

When did bottled water become a thing? No need to answer. I really don’t want to know. I just think back to the way things used to be. Like when we have one of those pumps outside the door and if you went up and down the handle enough times you got a bucket of water. Not a glass. A bucket. By the time I got to school we had a water tap in the cloakroom. Apparently that was upgrade from the good old days when you got a bucket. And you had to be there to watch 20 or 30 people line up for their chance to turn their heads sideways under running tap. We were so modern. Sometime later I moved to a new school that had a faucet, a drinking faucet out in the hallway. The water was not cold but if you could trick someone into holding the handle for long enough you could get it down to a temperature that was suitable. And then that same person had to wait until 20 or 30 people lined up for their chance to drink sideways from that water fountain. By the time I got to college we had a cafeteria and I cannot remember ever getting a glass of water. Let the record show that we had unlimited chocolate milk so who would be fools to go for a glass of water. And so life went on until I got to the workplace. In every meeting room there were supplies of water in small bottles. You would take one go to your corner like Gollum with a ring and think that you had hit the jackpot. And now I live in the country we’re having unlimited supply of water from the tap. Progress. In fact, I have not filled a bucket with water for years.

Life, at least our life, is based on a series of small mysteries. Right now the question on the table is how do we turn on the heat in the RV. Not the electric heat because we have that one figured out. Rather the one that involves propane. Now let me set the scene. We know how to turn on and off the propane supply. It does work in the kitchen stove. It probably works in the hot water supply although since the tank currently contains that funny red liquid we use for winterization we cannot test what is going on. And finally there is a proper furnace in the RV we have a propane alarm we have thermostats but the mystery remains has the propane supply been closed for the furnace or has it never functioned. And like all small mysteries we don’t know. There was a question given to that larger group. The user group. And so far we are analyzing their answers to our question. In the middle of winter the urge to go outside and play in the cold is less. Realistically, we will have to wait until the better days when heat will no longer be a true issue. Now, why the fuss? We do not plan to head off into the mountains and try to tough things out. We do not plan to add the RV as an extra sleeping space. At least not right now. We just want to know because that’s what mysteries are. A push to find an answer. Is there an owners manual that explains this? Not sure burger I have been told that that option has already been examined so now I am trying to catch flies or past time or whatever else you do in the dead of winter. I trust my sleeping bag but I am not going to leave the house and see how that works out. Probably, not having heat means that the tiny creatures of the fields will not be heading in the RV for shelter. At least, we hope so. Irish Spring soap is the answer to that question, and getting some ultrasonic noise thingies off Amazon. We might have one but it’s hard to tell whether or not the absence of mice is due to that or just the weather. Or perhaps the fox is helping. As you can tell, I just do not know.

The sun is setting. I really should go and turn on the lights. A simple task. We have fancy switches that you press I know, time to take and look, the lights are on. It was not always that simple. I am the oldest of the siblings and I can remember when you had to get the lamp out and make sure there is oil and trim the wick and remove the chimney and light that wick and put the chimney back and put everything away safely. All for a single flame, I have been told that it was better than a candle but not by much. And it required that someone took the time to go to the store and buy a can of oil as well. Kerosene. Something like what we used to make jets planes fly. Anyhow when I tell my younger sisters they learned to read by lamplight they think that I am joking. Making up the kind of stories that only an older child could tell. But I remember when we got the lights as expression went when polls came down the road and they strung wires and transformers and moved a community from the last century to the present one. A pretty big deal because it meant school could go on past sunset and a church could be lit up for service and you could get a TV. Life was more than lamplight. Now as I usually do, I took the time to watch a video on the technology of the kerosene lamp. Developments that were necessary a century ago. I have seen a lighthouse that had a row of oil lamps around the tower. That too in its time was modern technology. Let the record show that I do not own a kerosene lamp. Too much trouble when we live in a world where even a simple flashlight gives more light. I am not someone that waxes nostalgic for the good old days. As they say I have been there and done that. Growing up by the railway we still had oil lamps on all the switches. Just enough light to show whether the switch was red or green. And someone still had to go out and fill the switch lamps. That all went away when I was still young. Of course so did the railway. Something else that my siblings have missed.

I have seen a lot of odd transportation technology over the decades. That horse and buggy at my grandfathers. Curves with round fenders. My first airplane which was probably a DC3. Ships and trains. But the artist and most memorable was the car that became a boat. I can narrow it down to within a year or two and I remember exactly where it happened. Something about a festival where someone came all the way up from Halifax with their amphibious car. I watched it roll down the bank into the river and then travel slowly across the channel and then come out the other side intact. This was truly novel. I wonder why the idea never caught on. Probably because people were too set in their ways they had been told that cars were cars and boats were boats and that was all was meant to be but I know more now I wonder if the owner took his vessel out fishing. I wonder did he does off road the way people do now with their jeeps. I wonder if he spent a lot of time washing and waxing the sheet metal. I have never been someone who needed to wash his car all the time, although, I had neighbours who had that inflection. But this little car they could cross the river and keep on going that was special. It was not a home-brew. This had been manufactured I believe in Europe. And I do not know if the vessel came from Europe to North America under its own power. Seems implausible. Locally we have a lot of boats and nobody else ever drives their boat down the road although I have seen many boats on trailers at the opening and closing of the fishing season. Maybe the fishermen need to embrace the idea of an amphibious craft.

If you happen by my house right now you can see my personal nod to the Yeti call it Barefoot in the snow. There is enough snow on the front step so I just had to reach out with one foot and leave my mark. Ephemeral. The step will be shovelled off but for a short moment you can see that I have been outside without my boot. I imagine it’s a Canadian moment. If I was to winter in the far South such opportunities would be rare. And I only had used one foot proof of concept. The fresh snow is also cold snow. When I was much younger, I went so far as to do some snow swimming. That’s where you dress in inappropriate clothing and jump into a drift. Leaves you tingling from tip to toe. Another one of those things that you only need to do once in your life. When I hear about folks that go for that famous New Years swim I pat myself on the shoulder and say I could have done that. I did not because I knew how uncomfortable it might be. Somehow that idea of cutting a hole in the ice and jumping in will be less and less possible. Less and less ice. It’s not only the polar bear that is faced with the results of global warming. My take on things is that we’re more than halfway through the winter and we probably will not have many opportunities to go swimming or even walking through the drifts. Maybe I should book a film crew for the next time to immortalize my efforts. Just a thought. I am much more comfortable inside thinking silly thoughts but what I could or could not do if I lost my mind. Meanwhile this was a snow day locally. For the schools.

In the bottom of a drawer I have a bag of pennies. Not worth very much. However, in effigy I can see faces of people who are named and numbered. Rather fitting because the idea of a family name does not mean very much when you talk about the royal family of Britain. Turns out, they have been reinventing themselves for centuries. When the press would turn against you you simply would choose a new family name. Not exactly that simple but close enough. And when this numbered name would pass away another would take its place. I used the pronoun “its”, only because of Liz, she may be the only queen that I will ever no in the sense of name recognition. YouTube for some reason has decided that my lack of knowledge of history is the best reason to present me with a series of documentaries. From time to time, the film makers do a reasonable job providing entertainment. No laughter but entertainment just the same. Now the last century produced some very devastating wars some very devastating financial tragedies and a few changes in who got the big chair at supper. I do like to know where they all were before they got their numbers. Also, how long did they hang around after getting their numbers. For the record I do not have any digits after my name. Nor do my children nor any dogs that have lived with. But we are not royal. And I feel quite certain that no one who is royal whatever arrive at my door to amaze me. If I live long enough I might get a very faked telegram. Today I learned about 5. The father of six. Now when I look at coins I have a better idea of which came first. Useful knowledge probably especially if the dates on the coins have faded with age. I am not going to provide a history lesson to anyone but I will let you know that the stories are not always dull. When you have too much money and too many houses your life takes on a new tint. And as an added bonus you can actually listen to a recording of five. Turns out he was the first one to do radio and that is important.

Around here we watch the weather. Actually we watch it more than anything else. Not because we need to because we believe that if we keep our eye off the goal we will get hit. We’re in midwinter outside the lawn is partially covered and the sump pump has been running for several days. A soft winter. But someone mentioned that there was a snowfall going on in Boston and we know that Boston is not really that far away. We could drive there in a day you know. And if Boston gets snow, we might too. Yes I did check the forecast. As of last evening there was nothing on the horizon but right now there is a small percentage but we could get hit. It could be a real winter storm or not. It no longer matters because I don’t have to go anywhere’s but I’ve had a lifetime of watching the weather in case school would be closed. Long after that was rational. And so, right now, I’m hoping that our milk supply will hold out and that the power will stay on and all the other things that go with living in winter. Even if we’re not really. You could walk across the lawn and leave footprints right now but that’s about it. None of that up to my waist stuff that we used to talk about. If I get around to it, I will watch the local weather forecast on TV. Trickier than you think because they wedge the little bits of weather in between little bits of bad film music. Not exactly a foregone conclusion that we will learn what the weather will be. And so I will continue to watch and wonder. Is this the moment? Will Boston send snow to us? Check back in a day or two. We should know by then. And if we get nothing then we will just wait until the next time. That’s how we have a fun winter. Waiting and wondering.

I love learning trivia. Most of it is exactly that. Things that will never change my life. However, this week I had a deep question answered. Why did my first electronic calculator purchased back around 1980 have red digits? Really red digits. Why not some other colour? It was some years later that I saw my first green digits and all I could think was that science was evolving. I mean with red and green you could rule the world. Little did I know that, the absence of other colours, was because the technology had not yet been invented. Until someone, in Japan, managed to produce the first blue LED. Stay with me on this one. Finally having red green and blue meant you could move to the next step. Production of other colours. I do not fully understand the technology involved but apparently red green and blue allow white. And probably other colours of the rainbow. By this point the common calculator had already evolved into large multi segment digits. Colour was not quite as important. But hold on because there was more to come. Those first decent computer monitors that could do full colour could never have happened without this simple advance in technology. I know that when we purchased our first flat screen monitors for use in our office, getting rid of those big heavy screens that were essentially a television made all the difference. No more hernia for technician and a lot more desktop space for the secretary. And the reduction in the electricity bill. Try to imagine that a laptop required a television monitor to get the job done. It never would have happened. I got rid of my calculator several decades ago. A dead battery that would no longer take a charge. I also had reduced my need for simple mathematical mastery. Most of the math I needed could be done using my fingertips just like in the good old days. And as I look around the house I am fully aware that we have evolved on all over technology. No more single colour bits of light. Even my camera has a full colour display. And our TV? That’s a big screen although somewhere in the interior, the technology of the LED lives on. For what it is worth I have never owned Nixie tube calculator although have used one. That was really old school. And throughout the house we now have low current LED lights. Reduces my monthly payments to the utility company. Makes the idea of solar possible although we’re not quite there yet. But think about that. If not for a diligent scientist working in a lab somewheres in Japan, we would still be happily living in incandescent world. And paying the bill.

In the back of a drawer I found a telephone. Not my socks drawer where valuables go to hide. This was just another drawer for things that need to be kept but not found useful regularly are put away. And I thought flashed back to the day I purchased the telephone. It was a long time ago. More than a decade when I thought that such a thing might be useful. After all, I was on public transit for hours each day. During the three years that I had a valid contract I never used my allotted minutes. I did burn through the data cap often because when you were on a city bus Google is your friend seeking answers to all those questions that come up from traveling through the city. And when the contract ended I was happy. It had taken me less than a year to realize that I did not need to call people all the time or receive calls. In fact I rarely did. The phone was something else to upgrade on a regular basis because that’s the way electronics are now. Constant updates. After that one had become nothing more than a novelty I did receive another used phone kept around in case I ever needed to purchase a SIM enjoying society. For those of you who are attached to your phones buying umbilical cord I am sure that you find this hard to understand. Even in the house I have decided that a landline is still appropriate. Adequate to receive spam calls and some emergency services. In fact, we should play this another way. Why do people feel this need to be on all the time. It is new before I had children such technology was unknown. I made it through years of higher education where the only telephones were either in the interior of an office or hanging on a wall waiting to eat coins. If someone needed to contact me snail mail still worked. I should check with my own children to see if their lives have followed a similar course. As for those around me there is one phone that serves all purposes. That is, if we should go to the city, the pone will serve as our GPS and clock and price check. Every time the idea of a newer phone comes into conversation I keep my mouth shut not my circus and not my monkeys. I suppose that the need to call emergency services remains but to be fair I have never called the fire department and my only call to a local police corps force happened decades ago when I phoned in an airplane crash.

One of the staples in my diet is cold milk. I have been drinking milk forever. As a very young baby my father bought a cow. At least I assume he bought it. It could have been a loner from a neighbour but we had a small barn and a daily routine that brought milk to the kitchen. Unpasteurized with cream. It was so good I think. Anyhow as I grew older the delivery mechanism changed. There were the glass bottles that came in by train. Not everyone had that luxury. At one point after a visit from a traveling salesman we began a regime of powdered milk. Not the best product, believe me. But I survived. As we changed locations, from province to province, the delivery mutated. We had home delivery in bottles followed by huge plastic jugs. Four quarts in a red handle. And then I went off to university where milk was on constant tap in the cafeteria big boxes. I know this because when the machines would go dry I would go out back to the kitchen and look for a refill. Not going to let this supply run short because they were too busy. And so it continued. For a number of years milk came in plastic bags. If you were careless you could make the floor very wet. Something you only did once or twice. During a winter on a small island, milk came in tiny cardboard cartons. This was milk with a very long shelf life and it tasted that way. Once I escaped I never looked back. And now, here I am. Decades later milk comes in, in cartons or jugs, two liters at a time. I have never faced sour milk but on an unforgettable moment I did not read the label and discovered the buttermilk is best used for making biscuits. Anyhow, there you have it. I do not suffer from lactose intolerance obviously. Because the milk comes without cream I have not tried to make butter but I have kept a culture of yogurt very much alive for a number of seasons I probably should start that up again. Healthy option, although I would miss the fresh fruit that comes in today’s product from the store. Have I found other things to do with milk? No. I was never a great fan of powdered chocolate milk also; although finding the toy at the bottom of the box was a highlight. A small submarine.