August 4 th 2018

I was hoping to post on the first, but Deanie and I were headed up to Wakaw Lake for the Labour Day weekend show. It was her siblings annual reunion. We're off the grid up there, well, not really, we just don't have wi-fi. Anyways, I thought, come Tuesday it would be all right.

Episode 6

The Big Catch

Don't ask why I was fishing. I never had any luck fishing, I would be 23 before I would catch my first fish, and 65 before catching my second. The first time my daughter Heather went out she caught five, that's not from my DNA. She was ice fishing though. I tried ice fishing once, I was too tired too fish after cutting the hole for the canoe. 

It was summer, we were all at the cabin at Regina Beach, I was fishing from the shore of the little beach. If at first you don't succeed. I was at around my hundredth try, I hadn't even had a nibble, I had caught about 20 pounds of weeds. This try again business had run its course. My little sister had come down to get me for lunch. We made our way up the trail to the road. As luck would have it, bad luck that is, my line let out enough to have the hook catch in some bushes. I only realized it after walking another 20 yards or so, I was too tired to go back so I figured if I tugged it, it  might release, good news, it released, bad news, the hook came out so fast it imbedded itself in my leg. Darn it. Now, I wasn't complaining, I simply said, calmly, I might add, "Look at that, I've got a fish hook stuck in my leg". Being a redhead, my little sister never really tanned, but her little face was especially white when she saw the hook in my leg. She panicked and took off like an Olympic sprinter, well, not exactly like an Olympic sprinter, she was screaming at the top of her lungs, Olympic sprinters are generally fairly quite. It sounded like maybe the earth had caught fire, folks started pouring out of their cabins to examine the reason for the commotion. I stopped and looked around hoping they would think I was doing the same. It didn't work, their attention focused on me, I looked for a hole to crawl into, all there was was a rabbit hole and I had been told it was best to stay out of them. I thought about hiding in the grass but it was only two inches high. Next thing I know one of my great older sisters has scooped me up and is carrying me to the cabin. Dad happened to know a doctor who had a cabin up the hill, the doctor was more than happy to look at his little boy. The doctor told me I was foolish to walk with the hook in my leg because it caused it to embed deeper in the muscle. I was about to tell the doctor where he could put the hook when I heard dad say...

 

Have a great day

 

 

Loved

August 1, 2018

PRONE

Episode 5

Hammerheads

Often times, it is customary to change the name of participants in a story to protect the innocent. In this particular incident there was certainly no innocence involved. However, to keep with the custom I will change the name of the other party in this case. 

I was playing with my cousin Matt Looper behind their house when they lived on 15 block Angus. It was a warm summer morning. We were playing in the lane and for some reason we had hammers. Obviously, we were pretending we were carpenters. We had tried working with wood and nails before but our fingers had not faired well so it was just hammers this day. We were adjusting telephone poles. We had straightened out half a dozen of them when we discovered a garage wall that had been used as target practice with what looked to be eggs. The fascinating thing was, upon closer examination, it appeared that a large group of flies were having breakfast of egg omelettes. We didn't particularly like flies, so we decided to swat ourselves a few. Of course, we didn't have any fly swatters with us but...we did have those hammers. You'll have to cut us some slack here, hammer heads are not that big, add to that, the fact that we're just little kids wielding oversized tools and, not only that, those little flies are really fast. Frustration set in quite early in our quest to get at least one fly, but our determination grew. I was focusing on one fly, he looked a bit sluggish, maybe he had over eaten, I was just about to nail him...and... someone turned off the sun. When I woke I could taste the dirt on my lips, from the tire track my face was laying in. My favourite cousin had thought he could get the fly that was struggling to free itself from my hair, back when I still had some. He gave it his best shot. Can I blame him, would I have done the same, I hope not. In his defence, he showed me the fly that was squashed on the end of his hammer, I'm pretty certain it was all my DNA. I still have a bald spot on my head where I was hit.

 

Have a great day

 

Loved

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!

and...

Episode 4

About those curtains

I had made it through the first grade. There were a number of scrapes and bruises that never really bothered me, but those broken noses left an impression. It's no wonder I never liked school. It would be a long 13 years. When I donated blood, the nurse was surprised that I would watch the needle go in my arm. She said I was lucky I didn't faint at the sight of blood. She didn't know the half of it - I would have been out through 50 of my 67 years.

It was second grade. The teacher had given us a picture to color. I'm guessing it was art class. I was working hard to stay inside the lines. Then I heard a familiar sound. What was that? It was a birthday sound. I was only seven, but I had heard it 60 or 70 times. Hah! It was the sound of one of those little match boxes being slid open and a match being scrambled out. Oh boy! My senses heightened, and I waited for the familiar scritch of the match to the side of the box. Then it happened. The little flame burst forth. I could smell the sulfur. My pulse quickened. My eyes darted down to my paper when she looked up, but they didn't stay there. I watched her closely as she lit a small candle and raised what looked like a funny shaped crayon to the flame. It dripped a couple of times. Then she blew out the candle, made some movements with her hands, and set the candle aside. At the end of class, when we took our pictures up to her desk, I scanned it thoroughly. It was stunning. The crimson wax had dripped onto an envelope, and there was a depression in it with such a fancy design. Wow. I walked home in wonder. 

We used to have a junk drawer at home, and you could find, well, pretty much anything in it. I found a candle and, yeah, matches, too. It was on the window sill in the little bedroom adjacent to the bathroom where I set up my project. I was going to make an impressive picture for my mom. I had melted a few crayons before the light in the room started flickering. No big deal - lights flickered all the time back in the day. Except I hadn't turned it on. It wasn't the light that was flickering at all - it was the flames. There were a couple of little dragon caterpillars crawling up one of the curtains. I assumed they were dragons because they were on fire. Fear is a strong motivator. I mean, I wasn't so afraid of the fire - I was more afraid mom would find out I started it. I ripped the curtains from the window, rod and all, and had them in the bathroom sink in a heartbeat. Well, my heart was beating pretty fast, so maybe in a few heartbeats. Plus I kinda bent the rod going through the doorways. The water put the fire out fast, and I quickly hung them back up...after straightening the rod. Oh boy. That wasn't going to work. The curtain on the left hung lightly down with its pristinely white delicate lace pattern.  The right side, however, although it also hung down, only consisted of a couple of threads, and they were both black. I couldn't give mom the picture I made, not just because it would be evidence, but because it wasn't finished, and I kinda lost the inspiration. I got rid of the ashes and spread the other drape across the window. It was quite worrisome because it only covered half. Maybe mom wouldn't notice - she had fourteen kids you know. She noticed. I had to own up to it. After all, at the time I still felt guilty about the one I didn't start on Retallack. I told her how It started and explained how I put it out. She checked my hands, my arms, and my little face. My new nose was almost a year old now. There was so much wax on my hands they didn't get burned at all. She put her arms around me and hugged me close. Turns out she didn't care about the curtains.

June 1 2018

Episode 3

It's a hat trick

After two consecutive visits to the hospital, I was once again given the option to stay home from school. Mom was a bit reluctant to send me back right away, she would keep me home for a few days. I understand now, after being a parent myself, that you can't protect your children from every thing. I can still remember dad's voice. He'd always say, "Hey, you guys, quit horsing around." We never did though, quit "horsing around" that is. Staying home from school all day gave this little horse a bunch of energy to blow off by the time my brothers got home.

There was a little bedroom, to the left, at the top of the stairs on 1140 Garnet, it had a thin spooky closet that ran adjacent to the bathtub wall, there was a window on the north wall, with wispy curtains hanging from it, in the next episode you'll learn the truth about their disappearance. There was a dresser against the bathroom wall and a bed along the wall that separated this room from mom and dad's bedroom. I can't remember if it was Tony or Lui I was "horsing around" with, and I can't recall if the bed was a trampoline or a football field. Tony and Lui were my heroes growing up. I figured they were so smart, they had placed pillows on the floor in anticipation of a fall from the bed. The plan had worked great, the pillows had cushioned a number of falls and each time we would pat ourselves on the back for the genius of it. Then, I suppose I could say, I was bucked off the horse I was horsing around on. Should have listened to my dad, or that Mr. Burns guy, he said something about the "best laid plans of mice and men", ( there always has to be some brainiac who states something just to have some poor sucker prove the point), the "Gang aft a-gley" part is my face hitting the dresser before it hit the pillows. Maybe if he hadn't written it to a mouse. Any way, I broke my new nose, again, time to get another one. Poor mom, she held her little boy with the swollen head while we waited for the limousine.

I sat in the back on the way to the hospital, I was hoping to squeeze under the front seat so they couldn't find me, as small as I was I could only get my legs under.

The admitting staff were prepared when I was admitted. They taped my hands together when they were putting my identification bracelet on. They were full of themselves with pride, not so much when they realized they should have thought about taping my ankles. It took them 15 minutes to catch me, would have been longer, I ran out of breath...I couldn't breathe through my nose. They had me surrounded. My attempted escape had caused my eyes to swell again, I could barely see. I started torpedo punching and kicking air, I was tiring when I heard pop...pop...pop,pop. My assailants were wearing bubble wrap... very clever. After struggling to get me on the gurney, they duct taped my whole body down. I don't really blame them, they wouldn't have had enough staff to get the mask on me this time. I never did get the final count, but there were well over a hundred holes in that ceiling tile. My gurney was on the move again. From the looks on the faces of the surgery team, they were quite pleased I was immobilized. Even then, they approached me with caution, and...the lights went out. 

It had  been over a period of only six weeks that I made those three hospital visits, dad started thinking about getting me one of those cones the dogs wear, it might have been cheaper than the Dinky toys.

May 1 2018

Now that we have our Louise back, we can continue to enjoy her contributions to this blog.
Here's one of mine.


PRONE

Episode 2

 

Déjà view all over again 

I had just come through a new experience. I had spent a couple of nights in the hospital, it was the first time in my life I had spent a night without other family members milling about. It was very strange. I'm not sure if I liked it or not, it would be twelve years before I had my own room. I'm not complaining, just saying.

I had only been out of the hospital a few days, I had exhausted my option of staying home or going to school. Supposedly there was a lot more for me to learn that first year. I reluctantly headed back to school. It was recess. One of the things I had learned in grade one was, not to stand against the south facing wall of the school, so. I strategically positioned myself on the back side of a telephone pole that faced the school yard. Not only did I feel safe, but brilliant as well. I remember standing in the midst of chaos, once again, contemplating my own existence, minding my own business. I don't know if any of you can remember the big red balls with the weird little lines all over them, they were about the size of a basketball, but quite a bit more lively, like a thick skinned beach ball. Picture one of those bouncing right to me. I know, sure, it's a "soft" ball, but I'm not letting it hit my new nose. I caught it in my arms, and, before I could examine the situation and discover where it came from and where it should go, it was driven from my arms by, I suspected, some kid who wanted it. Too bad the big fisted numpty* caught my nose before hitting the ball. Oh oh!  The little mob started to assemble again, these little nose pickers are starting to creep me out. Thanks to my brother Lou, he came to my rescue and ushered me into the school and handed me over to a grown up. The diagnosis wasn't good, Tony and his buddy would get to walk me home again, there would be another alien sighting, mom would hold her little boy with the big swollen head until dad came to chauffeur me up to the hospital again. There I was, standing on the front seat of the car on the way to the hospital. Deja view, except, I didn't have much of a view, my eyes were swelling shut. It was like looking through a Venetian blind, yeah, that only had two slats, and closed.

I hadn't marked a reference point on that ceiling tile so I had to start counting from the beginning, what can I say, I didn't expect to be back so soon. The gurney started moving again and I noticed a bunch of familiar looking faces, ones I had hoped to never see again. The voices were much more muted this time but I knew what they were up to, it had only been a week or so. It took four of them to hold me down and another two to get the mask on. Then they turned off the lights again.

Same room, same bed, new tape, more experience. The nurses were always smiling and pleasant, I hope that they remember me as polite, I'm pretty sure I wasn't pleasant. I knew the Dinky toys meant I wasn't going home, I would add them to my collection of hammer victims. It was even better leaving the hospital the second time.

*Numpty

Noun (pl) -ties

1. (Scot, informal) a stupid person

 

I like this word,  I learned it during a great visit with my sister Louise and her husband Dave at their home in St. Andrews. After an afternoon of golfing with Dave and his friends Andy and John, we ran into Andy's cousin as we were leaving the parking lot. I was sitting between the two of them as they talked to each other through the window, the thick Scottish accents were going in one ear, garbling up my brain cells, then exiting the other. I needed subtitles. Although they were very hard to understand I did surmise something about a party Andy's cousin had forgotten he was supposed to have helped his wife get ready for that very evening. I didn't have to surmise the word numpty though. He definitely used it to describe himself.

 

Have a great day

Loved

 

April 1, 2018

I have been encouraged to write a book. After a thorough examination of my abilities, I figured... not a chance. Then I considered the source of the encouragement. My older sisters. Wow! I certainly try my best not to let my sisters down, old or young. So...

                                                    PRONE
                            (The inclination toward something)
Forward

I've known Ed for as far back as my memory permits. He has been shy and rather introverted throughout his life. He likes to spend a lot of his time alone with his own thoughts. To that point, his sister Mary Ellen's husband Bob, would say he's not actually alone, but spending time with the enemy. Hmm. That would be me, and I take offence. I've been his sidekick all along, his confidant, his shadow so to speak, and I like to think I've been a pretty good guide. It's not really my fault he didn't measure up, nor his I might add, I used his dad as an example to follow, his dad was a pretty lofty target. Hey, at least it wasn't that Jesus guy. He also had sisters who helped smooth the path along the way, he got lost a few times, ok, maybe more than a few, actually, he still gets lost. He learned a kindness from his sisters that would serve to forgiveness, even toward himself. He is generous with his time and likes to live a simple life. However, a simple life is not without pitfalls.
Although the first episode is Ed's earliest memory, there was circumstantial evidence of an earlier event. It was rumoured that, while living on 15 block Retallack, Ed accidentally lit a match that started a small fire in one of the bedrooms. Ed carried the burden of guilt for many years until his mother explained to him... he was only a 13 month old baby at the time and maybe even slightly undernourished due to his baby sister needing the bulk of the nursing. She also explained, although the evidence was burned in the fire, her mother's intuition and intimate knowledge of a couple of older male siblings, who, by the way, are rumoured to have started the rumour, suggested they may have been involved. Under separate interrogation their stories were verbatim, they claimed their innocence but remain highly suspect. The following will be recollections of the author's life long experiences. The first episode takes place in the year 1957...

                                                                                            Walter E Gogh (No relation to Vincent Van)                   

Have a great day

Loved    

March 1, 2018

That's it, we're through February. Turns out it was one of the coldest Februarys Saskatchewan has ever had. That's cold because we have had some cold ones. March is coming in nicely though, whatever that means. I look at it like everyday we get through with nice weather is one less bad one. I'm hoping for a lot of good ones in March.

Have a great one today

Loved