Tacoma frame inspection
October 14, 2009
When I heard about the frame warranty inspection program for 2000-2005 Tacomas, I dropped by Thousand Islands Toyota in Brockville to book an appointment. The service manager couldn’t help me because Toyota Canada had no record of my vehicle, a California-built standard cab 4X4 originally registered in Pittsburgh.
Plan B involved calling Toyota in California to ask them to adjust their records to take into account the truck’s new address. The helpful guy I talked to told me that Toyota America extends all warranty coverage to Canada, but would not send me the warranty letter which authorized the coverage. He did, however, give me a case number which would do the job.
I was lucky to speak to John Walker when I next contacted the Toyota dealer. With my case number he was able to initiate the process to get my truck’s inspection authorized. It took a couple of weeks, but John kept me posted and when it came through he arranged for a rental car to be waiting on the day. All I had to do was drop off my key and drive away in a new Corolla. Not a bad little car, that.
Anxious, I called yesterday afternoon to see how the frame was. “They didn’t find any perforation, so there’s no problem; they just have to complete the anti-corrosion treatment.” Relieved, I went in today to pick up the truck.
The frame is covered with a hard, glossy black tarry substance, but it’s smooth and looks bullet-proof. I understand the inside of the frame is covered with a white substance with a lot of parafin wax in it. Apparently they thoroughly clean the frame with a variety of chemicals and then start the coatings.
From the look of the revitalized frame, the truck should last until the warranty expires in 2017. There’s no downside to this.
Roz and Charlie discover real food
October 11, 2009
All summer when Roz came to the farm she would spend just enough time with us to be polite, and then she would disappear. Occasional searches would turn her up in the garden, sitting or lying in a row, plucking weeds from around her cherished plants. Roz had never been around a garden until she discovered Forfar.
So this year I involved her in the seed purchases and even put up with her desire to have green beans (too much work), peas (blow over in a good breeze), and beets (yuck!). Kohlrabi and butternut squash made it into the basket as well. Roz is very fit and relentless when it comes to work. Bet and I didn’t resist when Roz read the instructions on the seed packs and methodically planted the seeds in the rows I had laid out in the garden.
This task requires more than my personal capacity for patience and bending. Other years I would stuff a package of seeds into a seeding wheel, take aim down a row and walk until the seed gave out. This could occur anywhere from three feet in to halfway to the stake at the other end. So I’d start with another packet of something from the other end. The large gaps in the middle of the rows were ideal areas for melons to spread, so it usually worked out fairly well in my tangle. I also discovered that volunteer tomatoes look much less weedy than other weeds.
This year Roz showed up each week to check on the progress of her seeds. The rain wiped out the cucumbers, tomatoes and melons, but she lovingly tended the surviving root vegetables, communing for hours with her charges, plucking the weeds from their midst with a delicate, two-fingered grip.
And then came the harvests. The girl was so delighted with her first bowl of peas that I couldn’t rain on her parade. And she didn’t mind the work of picking the string beans. But the beets! Oh man, the beets! The rest of the folks at the table were raving about these bleeding red things, and Bet had shrewdly added some feta and garlic to the mix, so I ate a few slices. The horrible-taste memory of my childhood fell away in an instant and I very much enjoyed this new food.
After losing a war with the raccoons I vowed never again to grow sweet corn. But Roz had never had a corn patch, so we put in five rows. The raccoons struck on schedule, but Tony helped me build an electric fence around the patch. It worked. We saved the rest of the crop.
Roz remembered her garden: “I enjoyed it all far more than was reasonable. I don’t know why. I love picking raspberries. Maybe it has to do with pride in something you think you have created. Even though I know it’s cheaper to buy any of those foods than my time is worth, there’s something that makes me incredibly proud when I make a dish from ingredients that I’ve grown. I confess more than once I ate beets and raspberries until I made myself sick on them, especially the raspberries. But it’s because I enjoy collecting them so much.
“At Thanksgiving dinner in Ancaster when I told Papou* about my vegetables, my grandfather immediately insisted that we make the trip to his house to see his garden before the sun went down. He does so much. He gave us eggs, figs, pears, oregano. With the language barrier when I was a little kid I never really paid attention to him, but now I wonder if there is something hereditary in the pride he takes in his self-sufficiency, because I really enjoyed the garden and I have no idea why.”
Charlie and Martin’s syrup-making exploits last March continue to reverberate in the family as we work our way through their product. I asked Charlie what possessed him to take on such a project.
“The trees were there, and the stuff costs fifteen dollars a bottle. Roz makes me pancakes on Saturday morning and she kept sending me to buy the syrup.”
Of course Charlie and Martin had many commitments during the day so they did all of the work at night. Charlie didn’t see anything particularly unusual about that. “If you only have a two week season, odds are pretty good you’ll work most of the day on it.”
I asked him to explain the essential difference between maple syrup and corn syrup, the current nutritional public enemy #1. “Syrup is a lot more expensive and dangerous. You create it by boiling something over open flames. And inherently less is produced, so it’s less fattening. There’s also something exciting about making it.”
Roz is already making plans for next year. “I found myself thinking that the peas were more work than they’re worth, so I’ll plant more beans next year. Yesterday my grandmother dismissed rutabagas as cattle feed, but I found that you can make a rutabaga pie, and even a carrot pie. You cannot, however, make kohlrabi pie, so I think we can do with fewer of them next year and more carrots.”
*This is the simplest of five or six different spellings of the Greek term of endearment for grandfather, each of which someone on the Internet claims is correct.
Frosh Week, 1969
October 4, 2009
When the papers are full of the fuss surrounding Queen’s Homecoming each year, I can’t help but think back to Frosh Week, 1969, and one of the early moments of the Queen’s tradition.
I was a country kid, just coming off a summer bout of mononucleosis after completing grade 14. Mom had said I was too young to go to university at 17, so she made me stick around for another year. During the year I majored in Volkswagens, repeated French, my favourite course, and caused no end of grief for the teacher while sniping from the back row.
On September 7th, my parents in front and Bet beside me in the back of the family two-door Chrysler, we made our way through the crowded streets of Kingston until we came out onto Union Street. Dad took one look at the slogans printed on the bed sheets which formed a banner across University Avenue and shifted into reverse to do a three-point turn in the traffic and get his innocent son out of there. By the time he had the car half-around, though, I had escaped through the back window with my suitcase.
A hurried goodbye to Bet and I was out of my parents’ reach and into the welcoming embrace of Queen’s University. And what a welcome it was! I was immediately surrounded by more people of my own age than I had ever seen before. We quickly learned that the grinning extroverts shouting instructions were known as Gaels, and that we were expected to drop our luggage, join arms, and do a can-can dance while chanting nonsense. It was kind of fun to lock arms with a thousand people, jump up and down and yell.
The prospect of residence life caused me some apprehension as I had never had a roommate before. As fate would have it, I had no sooner arrived on the fourth floor of McNeil House than someone told me that my room had been changed: the pre-med guy who had the other half of my room had asked to live with his pal from prep school, so the university fathers had re-assigned me to a private room in Morris Hall.
I trudged across the compound to my new building, found 209, and settled into what seemed like a pretty good room. Turns out singles in Morris were usually reserved for seniors or brilliant students, so I gained instant, unearned respect as a brain. My floor-mates soon saw through that when they heard my Leeds dialect and I regaled them with a few tales of hunting and off-road driving, but the Toronto boys were still a bit uneasy around this hick who had landed the single room.
The best part of university for me quickly became evident: I was in a building with two hundred people of my own age with whom I could talk. Of course there were classes and social events and dumb team-building exercises, but what it came down to were the conversations, and I learned as much in residence in that first year as I did anywhere else during my time at Queen’s.
My most memorable night in residence was the first. Apparently the residents of Victoria Hall wanted to get to know the guys on Leonard Field right away, but the rules promised expulsion for any guy who entered women’s residence after curfew. No such rule applied to women entering men’s residence, however. So the first “fruit-of-the-loom raid” was hastily organized.
It must have been about 11:00 that night. On signal Victoria Hall emptied and a mob of young women descended upon the five residence buildings on Leonard Field. Apparently they swept through the buildings, storming into empty rooms and ransacking drawers for trophies. Legend has it one poor guy in Leonard was doing his laundry in the basement, clad only in a bathrobe. The flock of Maenads took every stitch of clothing he owned except the bathrobe.
Merriment ensued, but in Morris our floor seniors had been tipped and we were ready. Crews waited in the downstairs washrooms until the ground floor was full of marauders. Then they closed and blocked the doors. Momentum had carried the raiders up the stairs, where they found all of the rooms locked, and groups of guys politely waiting to escort their visitors into tubs hastily prepared with cold water and a box of detergent in each. For more formal tubbings we used ice cubes, but this event was organized on very short notice.
There may have been some private deals arranged, but to my knowledge no girl gained passage out of the building until she was suitably festooned with wet soap flakes.
After our leaders had dealt with the first onslaught, we locked up the building and formed good-natured human chains to herd any stragglers into Lake Ontario.
The morning after the raid Leonard Field was something to see: no grass was visible, or even the concrete walkways. Everything was covered with a deep layer of abandoned cotton. But in Morris Hall we had held onto our unmentionables because of informed leadership and good battle tactics. We were well started on our campaign to make Morris Hall #1.
Pinfeathers!
September 27, 2009
Saturday for the first time in thirty years I took out my shotgun for the opening day of migratory bird season. Geese had been flying over the house in increasing numbers lately, and I resolved to bring one down for dinner.
Several hundred have been feeding each day in Chant’s large field near Crosby. I watched how the flocks approached their airport, and calculated that if I stood in a clump of nannyberry bushes at the northwestern corner of our property, I’d have a reasonable chance at about ten percent of the birds on their approach.
Steel shot was the variable. I had never used it before, and Louis Burtch last week told me “It’s like throwing a handful of sand at a goose.” Nevertheless I resolved to try, keeping in mind another Louis adage: “Don’t bother shooting if you can’t see their feet.”
I quickly discovered how difficult it is to determine distance with a bird as big as a goose. All my experience wing-shooting has been with ducks, and these things look as big as an airliner by comparison. I let the first few flocks pass because they were far too high, but then I realized that I had seen the odd foot on a couple of lower flocks, so I resolved to pick a single goose and shoot at it.
Then while I was occupied with a handful of nannyberries, a silent group glided in low and my snap-shot was directly at the goose, rather than ahead of it. Strangely, the birds ignored the blast and glided the half-mile to their landing zone, unperturbed. Resolving to lead the target more carefully, I blasted at my next goose, the third from the right in a flock of twelve. It folded and dropped like a stone. O.K. fine.
My trophy didn’t seem all that big compared to other geese I had handled, so I decided to add a couple of more birds to the larder. That’s when I discovered what thirty years of idleness can do to one’s co-ordination as a shooter: I tried for a pair, missed both, but to my surprise I found myself flat on my back after the second shot.
Chastened, I made sure of my footing before the next pass, and managed to rock a large goose, then killed it with a second shot, even keeping my feet during the process.
The biggest mistake of the morning was a case of nerves when a dozen geese lifted off and flew across Chant’s field, right towards my hide. The Remington started too soon.
Canada geese are big, and I’m used to targets flashing by me without much warning. I should have waited for the feet, but instead I blasted three loads of shot up into their path (which they ignored) and stared stupidly as, somewhat later, they flew over my head.
Alerted by this ill-advised fusillade, the big flock took off and headed for Delta. Still, I had two birds. Not a bad morning for an old duffer, and there would be plenty of goose for dinner that evening.
Following the usual photographs, I started to pluck the larger goose. The bird eventually dressed 6 1/4 pounds, but I think a quarter of that must have been pinfeathers. I plucked until my hands cramped. Mom plucked until her hands cramped. The cruel irony of it was that my young friend Sean grabbed the other goose and had it cleaned in just a few minutes. No pinfeathers at all. It was a beautiful bird, dressed at 4 3/8 pounds.
An Internet site suggested holding the older bird over a propane stove and burning off the down and pinfeathers. I should have known better: the page also had a recipe for crow marinated in garlic.
The inferno approach produced a few scars on the bird, short, nubby hair roots on my left hand, and a gawd-awful stench which required a complete change of clothes and shower before I was allowed in the kitchen.
Then it was over to Bet to cook the beast, pinfeathers and all. She warned me, “You’ll just have to skin it while carving the bird, but be sure you cut it up where nobody can see it.” The cooked goose smelled great, but the pinfeathers made it easily the ugliest thing yet to come out of the oven at the farm. What’s more, I discovered I couldn’t even skin it while carving: the skin remained welded to the meat. Strange bird, indeed.
At dinner Roz and I went back for more; Bet and Charlie barely finished theirs. Mom didn’t seem to like it. The bird served five with leftovers.
I asked the biologist how she would describe the taste of a large wild goose. Roz thought about it and told us it seemed most like emu of anything she had eaten. The flesh was dark and very firm, though hardly tough, dry, but not parched. With a little applesauce I thought it was a high-quality meat, though the blackened pinfeathers were a bit hard to take.
The next carcass in a similar state will be cut up into mystery meat, and should make an outstanding ingredient in a pasta dish or casserole. Lunch today was goose tortillas, solid Canadian fare.
Hunting Season
September 20, 2009
For most Canadian boys the great coming of age occurs with the driver’s permit, but for me it came a year early with my first hunting license. I remember George Curry, the licensing instructor, and his conversation with my father while he skinned three pounds of bullheads for him. “I’ll bet he’s been out around these hills with a gun ever since he could walk.” My dad nodded. “I guess he’ll be all right, then. I’ll write him a license without an exam. That’ll be $1.50 for the bullheads.”
And so I became an adult member of my clan, entitled to join Grandpa Charlie, cousin Jim, and my dad on duck hunts and legally provide meat for the table. That summer I worked at Genge’s Red and White and Drury set aside a large portion of my wages to pay for a brand new Remington 870 Wingmaster.
I don’t recall if I actually hit anything that first opening day, but over the years my success increased as I gained experience at the unique style of shooting beaver-pond hunting in Bedford Township required.
Trees hang over the ponds. The ducks drop over the trees from behind you and then glide away. Your only shot is a hurried stab at the bird before it disappears behind a dead soft maple a second or so later. You hear a little whistle of wings, and there it is! Pick it off or it’s gone!
Shooting from this position is anything but easy, but it can be done, and with practice, done well. All you need are lots of ducks, lots of shells, and a good retriever. I had Sam, a demented Chesapeake. When Sam found a duck he would retrieve it eagerly, but then he would keep going with his prize until he found an island where he could pluck it with great enjoyment.
I remember Frank Green telling Jack Dier about Sam: “The dog goes and gets the duck and then Rod has to go and get the dog.” Of course when I missed a duck, Sam would search anyway, and eventually come back to me with the look on his face of a man who had just lost his religion. If I put him on a leash he was even worse. Sam would suddenly get a chill and start to shiver. His teeth clacked when he shivered, and he could flare a flock of ducks a half mile away with his chills. Sam was a good deal worse than no dog at all, but he was my faithful hunting companion for my first nine years.
Then there was the sunny afternoon in the sugar bush of the old homestead when Bet volunteered to retrieve the ducks. A mallard soon flew by and I dumped it on the shore of the pond. Bet brought it back. A little miffed that I wasn’t paying as much attention to her as she expected, she consoled herself by petting the poor, dead duck. Then she started to scratch. I confess I had forgotten to tell her about the lice. I assured her they were harmless and would die within the hour, but I must admit it was a funny hour. That was it for Bet’s career as a retriever, but she had won my heart with her antics and we married a few years later.
Then came Jasper. Marge and Ken Bedore had given us his father, a black cocker spaniel named Smokey. Smokey wasn’t much of a hunter, largely because he had no sense of direction and kept getting lost in the woods. Jasper, on the other hand, was a natural. Once while shooting teal below Edmunds Lock, I downed two and went home with five. He had spotted two swimming cripples and brought them back, and finished the evening by tracking one I had winged into a twenty-acre corn field and bringing it back after a long search.
But Jasper was at his best flushing grouse. He was the only dog I had known who had enough sense to get on the other side of the bird and flush it back to the hunter. Mind you he only did this in the winter, after the season had ended, but it was fun to hunt with him. With Jasper I had my best season ever as a grouse hunter. I got eight. Mind you, four of those were road kills and two hit windows, but two I actually downed with birdshot. One was a hunting accident, though.
Behind Peter Myers’s shop there are some old apple trees and one afternoon Jasper put a pair of grouse up. I aimed at the one on the right, but the stock snagged in my vest and the gun went off, knocking the grouse on the left out of the air. So that left one legitimate hit for a year of grouse hunting, you ask? Yeah.
But you guys who have to realize how hard ruffed grouse are to hunt early in the season. They’re genetically programmed to avoid hawks, so a grouse never flushes except when it has a tree between itself and you. The leaves make them impossible to see. The one I actually shot somehow got confused and flew up above the canopy. I spotted it through a gap in the leaves and dumped it, the first clear shot I had had at a grouse that year.
My most memorable grouse? I was driving home from school in Carleton Place and the Honda ahead of me hit one with the tip of its antenna. The bird exploded into a cloud of feathers and dropped on the centre line of Highway 15. The driver behind him in a Mazda jammed on his brakes and started a u-turn, as did the Dodge mini-van next in line. My SUV had rear wheel drive and I could do a tighter u-turn than the other two, so I got there first, leaned out my door and picked up the bird. The other two waved and grinned, turned around again and went on their way. The grouse was delicious and I had won it with a neat bootlegger turn.
A trio of herons
September 14, 2009
These three great blue herons keep turning up in meadows around the area. This afternoon I saw them skulking across our back field. I wonder what they’re hunting? I haven’t seen many frogs. Would they catch mice? If so, they’re welcome.
An Intervew with federal NDP candidate Steve Armstrong
September 13, 2009
Steve Armstrong, federal NDP candidate for Leeds and Grenville, took time this week to answer a series of interview questions for this column:
How have things changed since the last federal election?
Things have become significantly worse. Just in August of this year 22,000 jobs disappeared in Canada. In the last year we have lost hundreds of jobs in Leeds-Grenville. Manufacturing is the backbone of the Ontario economy, and it is dying.
Gord Brown boasts of $20 million of stimulus money coming to Leeds-Grenville, but ridings in Canada have received an average of $147 million dollars each! And Leeds-Grenville is one of the most hard-hit areas in the country.
Waiting times at Brockville General Hospital (BGH) are horribly long. I recently had to take a friend to Kingston because there was a seven-hour wait at BGH. At BGH the staff are doing their best, but they need more resources.
Why is it vitally important that the NDP form the next government of Canada?
The three most important programs we have in Canada were all because of the NDP – Medicare, Canada Pension Plan and EI. We look after people, especially in bad times.
The NDP is the only party that has as its central goal the helping of Canadian citizens. Our policies are for Canadians, not rich corporations and banks. We have job creation ideas that will add employment in every city and town. Check out our energy retro-fit programs, for example.
The Conservatives and Liberals have destroyed our manufacturing in Canada. They have let our health care standards drop substantially. Free trade with Mexico only benefits corporations. It allows companies to move out of Canada (ie. Hershey’s and Black and Decker). Since the last election Stephen Harper without parliamentary authority has signed free-trade deals with eight countries including Columbia, Chile, and Panama. How can this help Canadians trying to find jobs?
In the 1990’s the Liberal government cut $29 billion out of Medicare. That is the main reason why our health care system in Canada is hurting today. The NDP will restore proper funding for our public health care. This will mean shorter lineups and more doctors and nurses.
People ask where we can we get the money? Somehow Harper found billions of dollars for his stimulus plan to help bail out foreign corporations, so I think we can “find” the money. But there is an easier way: get out of Afghanistan! We spend $200 million dollars a month there! How about spending that money on Canadians?
Does Canada need another general election at this time?
People did not want an election last year. When Harper started to think about it in late August of 2008, 68% of the people said they did not want an election but he called one anyway, breaking his own law.
Everybody seems to have a policy on EI at the moment. Care to comment?
We need to increase the pay! In today’s dollars the maximum EI weekly benefit in 1996 was $607. Today the same benefit is $447! That is crazy! All of the politicians have received substantial increases in pay to cover their costs, so why have they reduced benefits to people who have lost their jobs? Even the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the big banks say the EI benefit should be increased. The current NDP bill C-280 calls for an increase in weekly pay of about $50. That is still too low but they are trying to get the bill supported and passed by all parties. The final reading is on Sept. 28, 2009.
What is one local issue in this campaign?
We are one of only three ridings in Canada without a MRI machine! That is crazy. Every hospital needs one of these. Stop the shipment of money to Afghanistan for one day and we could have an MRI in Brockville.
Why should the voters of Leeds and Grenville choose you as their Member of Parliament?
I have been fighting for worker’s rights and the protection of our Medicare system since 1995. I am not a parachute candidate. I was born and raised in Brockville. The only time I left Brockville was to go to university. I have an honours B.A. in History. I know what mistakes the Canadian government has made in the past and understand what we must do to avoid repeating them.
I am a factory worker. I know what it is like to have a feeling you may lose your job. I work at Invista and they have announced layoffs of up to 240 people. I may be one of them.
The policies of the Liberals and Conservatives have decimated our great country. What future do we have? I know what needs to be fixed – just look at the past to see what has worked before. Get rid of the free trade policies with Third World countries, renegotiate with the US, get out of Afghanistan, create jobs when needed (like the New Deal in the 1930’s), and bring Medicare and EI coverage back to where it used to be.
Life imitates art
September 1, 2009
Ex-M.P.P. Michael Bryant seems to have found himself in a situation which belongs only in a Tom Wolfe novel. It reads much better in a book than on the front page of the Globe. In the book we could sit back and enjoy Wolfe’s wit as the plot of Bonfire of the Vanities unfolded. As news, the same plot is no longer fun. Toronto doesn’t need to be New York, and Canada doesn’t need U.S.-style sensationalism. We’re at our best when our streets are safe and dull, and our “masters of the universe” are best quietly envied and loathed from afar.
the Walnut Diary 