TubaOrNotTuba

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.

Back in the day I would have had to make a choice. Do I call a bus or not. Outside we had what may have been fog or haze. I can no longer tell the difference between the two but generally fog is wet. What I did notice was that the big boat that goes by down below, had to let the world know that there was fog or something with its horn. Every 90 seconds a big blast of a horn. I imagine that for someone paddling a small boat, this would be a real wake up call. In my case I was simply laying out on the deck glad the sun was not too warm. I do notice things like the foghorn or fog siren because it is not a common thing around here. We can go months with no idea that a boat has even passed except for the rumbling and vibration in the floor. I live less than a kilometre from open water and sound carries well. I would love to be on that ship, because that’s what captains call their boats, but that will have to wait for another day. Once again, when I was younger I could have found myself in the fog for days at a time. I lived on a much smaller island for a year and when the fog was too thick we stayed inside. We also had a fog alarm. I think they match them to the light houses when they can. Unlike a lighthouse the foghorn does not have its own character. Just a loud noise at regular intervals letting the world know that outside there is weather. I mean, fog does qualify as weather in this part of the world. When you have enough wind the fog just moves right on by. Although I have seen times when the wind blew hard and the fog stayed there for days. A lot more fog than here. That same ship goes by here pretty much every day and about the same time. The transit takes place in a matter of seconds and you can almost set your clock to it. Very punctual these marine types. I was thinking back to the number of different ships that I have seen on that same route over half a century. I guess that every time a boat or ship gets to be too small for the job, the government buys a new one. Sort of explains our national debt. And knowing how the government thinks they probably do that with airplanes and buses and other transportation vehicles. Even trains. Some ads on TV recently were talking about the new train cars that they purchased.

If ever I decide to write a book for children, I have the stairs of my story. I open my front door and three young foxes ran to take places just below the step, where they could watch for me and see what would happen next. Even a bit of barking to remind that they are alive and well and there for whatever comes along probably dog biscuits because that’s all I have to offer. I never had anything like this my lived in town. The best we ever managed was a lonely porcupine who wandered around like a lost soul but here, I have friends. No I have not given them names. I’m saving that for the book and they do look a lot alike probably from the same litter. Our young foxes never seem to come with their parents by the time they make it to my front door. They are already halfway to adulthood and I wonder, did their mother tell them not to bark at strangers. I should take more pictures but they look the same from year to year. I do have one preferred photo when I had a group of them doing gymnastics on top of a huge hay bale. I mean I know they were looking for mice but it seemed so natural. Yes I really should write a book and confer characters to the faces. It worked for other famous people like Disney. I’m sure I could give you a tale that will remind you that their tails are not available. We are more civilized now and they do bark almost like a dog does. Am I trying to tame them? No to be fair, small dog biscuits are not the right tool for the job. I just offer enough reward for them to keep running over to see if I am still their closest friend and neighbour and yes, they’re mainly red. A wonderful colour of red and they are just small enough for me to make them into imaginary characters for that book that I still have to write.

I want to leave behind stories for those that come after me. It is important that if someone asks a question about where they come from that there’d be a response. And not just a point on a map. I am fortunate in that the homes of my two sets of grandparents are still standing period. I can take you to the front door and point although neither home is still in the family as they say. But these homes were both similar in size and building materials and proximity to important jobs. The railway if you will when it still was here. Both homes had an upstairs in the downstairs and the number of bedrooms and in certain of these places people were born and died. A lifetime under a roof if you will. The views from the windows were similar although one set of grandparents had a river in their backyard. Teeming with trout as I remember we don’t do that sort of thing anymore. Unlike now the car was less important. People tended to keep horses and carts and they never went more than a few miles to get to anything unless they need to take the train. I was fortunate enough to live in the home of one of my grandparents when I was a fully grown working adult so my memories are quite sharp. In the other case, I remember details. Stairs. Because I tended to climb those on my hands and knees given my age. One family drank coffee and the other drank tea. I can remember the mystery of the coffee percolator. Both families eventually had small television sets but that was not an important part of the home rather having neighbours dropped by for a chat and some tea that was what made a house into a home. I know that both homes had cats because when you live in the country that’s your first defence against the invaders. I would love to have the chance to show these houses to my descendants: my sons and my nieces and nephews and in one case to a couple of my sisters because they came along after the fact. In both houses the kitchen was the most important room that was mainly where you made fresh cookies. You see, details do get affected by your age. And there were telephones. Eventually you can find the book that talks about getting the phone and the lights but those came afterwards. The houses came first in both cases around the time of the First World War or little before. It puts a date on things.

Today I’m going to try to recreate something I have not visited in many decades. We all have places that we would like to see again and in my case it would be the local Telegraph office at the Elmira Station. It was run by my father. He was a trained professional and he could handle many things at the same time including full control of a ticket office all the coming and going in the train station and the click clack of the Telegraph what I remember most of course was a chair that would rotate through a full 360° nothing like that in my home you could get on top and turn around and around and around the seats even had cushions but I digress of course. I never understood what was being sent or received on that Telegraph I learned to read code in a different era with a different system and I never had to master the idea of clicks that lasted longer than others much more difficult than you think. There was also a microphone so that my father could talk to the dispatcher. He never invited me to say hello to anyone but I knew what was going on and then all the different sizes and colours of paper after all a railway never does things simply there was a form for everything and carbon copies so that you could really get your fingers dirty. About the time that I started to be interested in this sort of thing as a profession, my father moved on to other fields and other places, and now I have to rely upon old movies and YouTube videos to try and fill in the blank spaces in my memory. Those memories go beyond the clicks. They (the government) came and took away the trains. Not that I understood why. Trains run on time hopefully and there was a big clock hanging on the wall that was accurate long before I knew the meaning of the word. I knew that the clock was the boss of everything else that happened in that office. If the clock stopped so did the trains.

This is the time of year when we play a game we opened the real estate listings and try to figure out what we would take if it was offered. As I said this is a game which requires a great deal of imagination. I took a few minutes to look at what is available locally and my eye was caught by two offerings. One of them; a small church, pretty building with a great view and one caveat, you don’t get to keep the building there you must move it away on the back of a truck I assume, to who knows where. Someone has other plans for that great view out over the water. In another listing a house down in town. What I found curious about this listing found over the internet, was the description a concrete foundation with a clay floor. I can imagine it but I cannot imagine why would you go to all the work of pulling in a foundation without actually putting in a seller or a basement as we like to call them. Why would you fill it full of dirt I’m going to have to find someone with more experience than I to explain the reasoning. We also have a lot of land for sale around here and the prices in every case make no sense. This is the time of year when tourists drive by and decide that this is where they would like to live or retire if they had unlimited funds. Most of those lots will still be for sale in six months time. As I said this is the time of year when people dream; not when they actually build things. You would want to know what winter looks like first.

I have realized that the only one who is responsible for recording my history is me I cannot depend upon my siblings nor my progeny they have a different set of memories and with that comes another responsibility. If I do not try to recall what I learned about my ancestors along the way it will be lost. You can say that it is not important but with that goes the idea that no history is important and we know that is not the truth let me look at what I know of my grandparents. I know their names?? I know where they were born and died and lived at least in part I have visited the homes of my grandparents. I know their relative professions and their children. A good start; all of my grandparents came from small villages very small in some cases the only house around was theirs. The family homes of my grandparents are still in place. A rare thing in an area where house fires consumed so much. I have been to their graves and I have tried to let my own children know some of the story. Their names are mentioned from time to time in the daily newspapers. No infamy, rather that they were known as members of their own community. If we go back a further decade or two I can actually tell you a little about my great grandparents. The same sort of information where they came from and where they died where they lived in part. I was asked recently if I knew anything about the home of one of my grandmothers; a question from someone that knew her when they were very young and I can tell you that the house was across that field for what that is worth, that house was gone before I had memories. I have visited the home of my great grandparents on one side and I have a very important photograph for me, that was another house consume by fire. What will my own grandchildren know of my life? Who will tell my anecdotes? This blog is in part a way of passing on memories to others. They may not know it, but this sort of thing will be important to them later in life. I will probably pass on a little of my music, too personal to be easily shared and if you ask who were my dogs I can give you that information. Although it has little importance. We all edit our identity’s for better or worse I hope that my own children will have a few details about me to be added to their memory bank. These thoughts came to me after listening to a blog about what was remembered from the days of slavery. Sound recordings were a new technology but we have snippets, important in the larger scheme of things.

Enough years have passed that I can talk about my worst job interview ever. It was not a crisis but it does bring back memories of how the corporation will lie to you. You see in those days there were lots of factories and in fact I had worked for one of those factories less than a year before had a great time working there left on good terms we’re back to school and now I needed another job I assumed that my old job was sitting there waiting for me because I didn’t know any better and so I went to the personnel office introduced myself and asked to speak to the personnel director I laid my case out that I was a returning employee that I expected to start again immediately he looked up from his papers took my resume read through it quickly and then told me that my old job was not available that year however seeing that on my resume I had listed taking sociology courses he felt he had something that would be even more interesting for me than what I had done the previous summer I could have a job in the foundry I did not know what that meant but I was game I could handle any job you could put before me so I said sure and reported to work several days later. My first task was to put big weights on top of the sand molds the weights were too large for me to even lift so they decided that that was not the proper task for me. I could have a job working on the hot cast shakeout again just meaningless words and so I said sure and was brought down past all the heavy machinery to a corner where I could stand by a moving belt; this was a foundry with an outside wall against a snow bank and the temperature went from very cold to very hot very quickly as well the machinery was not well maintained so I spent a portion of each shift with a shovel digging out around the belt. I did not require many days to figure out that this was a really terrible way to spend a summer and after a tragic accident on the shop floor, I went home spent the night awake reported to manpower the next morning looking for something or anything else and never returned to the foundry. The personnel director had lied and that was all he was getting from me.

During all those years did I spend in school there was one big lie. Quite apart from all the little lies that were told. Somebody was convinced that studying mathematics would be of value later in life. Spoiler alert, it hasn’t been other than at the most cursory level those hours that I was placed in agony trying to decode quadratic equations and exponents did not serve me not even once in sharp contrast with my hours with a dictionary trying to decipher old Latin texts was actually a value and my courses in pure science for example chemistry and physics were good but the average run-of-the-mill mathematics class was just one way to keep us in the same place for an hour so the rest of the world could go on. I hope my children escape now. You may wonder has anyone ever asked me to go back to math class? No not even for an hour. I did spend time as a substitute teacher in mathematics where I learned that all the answers were kept in a special book but that was hardly the point of the exercise. Once I learned that the answers were all known the problem seemed less obvious. In the same vein, I did not find my fortune while studying equations. I have a larger problem my phone number is being targeted. I get more than a dozen calls every couple of hours from scammers. I wonder if they can answer mathematical questions. A Turing test if you will, prove that you have intelligence but that won’t happen each time I get close to being able to query the caller, they go away. They figured out that I have no money to give them and that I am trying to waste their time like a modern day math teacher.