Aboriginal Justice - Last Rites

Aboriginal Justice – Last Rites

By Victor Epp

Whatever they say about not talking religion or politics with company that you want to keep is probably true. Sooner or later though, somebody's got to say it out loud. Might as well come from one who's not all that popular with them clerics anyway - makes for a better mutual admiration atmosphere. There's a time when that whole brew that's boiling and bubbling in the cauldron is bound to spill over the top anyway. This is one of them I guess. When that happens, you might as well pour out the whole mess.

Wellsir, before you go getting all excited about speaking out against this church or that religion or the other sect, you might as well know that equal opportunity's at work here. Once you start on one you've got to provide the same service for them all. Heck, there's enough ammunition to go around for the whole dang bunch. Mind, you can see they're doing a good enough job themselves without outside help if you're a little observant.

No, all I'm trying to do is to figure it all out. See, you never think of these things until something happens to trigger your curiosity. Then one thing leads to another - and another - and another. First thing you know you've got a whole mess of questions on your hands.

It all started to unravel at a funeral I attended recently. As impressive a funeral as I ever was at. It was a traditional Ojibway ceremony held for one of their most respected Elders - truly a fine and fitting tribute. But while all this was going on, an Anglican priest was officially conducting the service. The strangest thing I ever saw, this dual dispensing of the last rites. Each culture numbly responded to the other while carrying out it's own ritual simultaneously. You got the eerie feeling that two ghost ships were passing in the night, headed to the same destination but unable to collide and meld in to one.

Well, that aside, Father Joseph was doing his level best to tend to his flock in this time of bereavement. Sizing up his audience as folks with plain, no nonsense kind of taste, he launched right into his sermon with evangelistic zeal. With a captive audience of this size, he could hardly resist the chance to make some new believers. In his big booming Jamaican voice, why, he even read out the lines of 'Amazing Grace' during the singing, just like you'd expect at a good old-fashioned revival meeting. I was half expecting him to shift into high gear and let fly with some hellfire and brimstone.

Where it started to come unglued was during the Aboriginal drum songs. Well I don't care how much theology anybody might have studied there just isn't enough to of it counteract genetic instincts. There is something very compelling about the music that flows from these drummers and singers. It inspires a definite connection to spirituality, so to speak. But the good Lord seems to have played a trick on Jamaicans in particular. It's like an invisible string connects their feet to any drumstick within their hearing. It doesn't matter what the occasion, when a drum starts to beat, the feet have got to move. From where I was sitting I couldn't help but notice the inner struggle going on under Father Joseph's robes. All I can say is that he must be one heck of a priest to be able to contain himself so admirably - well, everything but his toes. You could easily see that there was a battle of the titans going on in his head and it went on for two hours and a half.

But that wasn't the greatest trial for poor old Father Joseph. See, after the interment, everybody comes back to the hall for a big feast. Well in order to finance a feast for six hundred people, it's customary to pitch in - only natural. So what they do is take four people, one on each corner of one of them big star blankets, and go through the whole crowd taking up a collection. Wellsir, no words can describe the look on Father Joseph's face when he saw the size of that makeshift collection plate but I could have sworn he was thinking about changing religion right then and there.

By this time there wasn't much he could do about anything. It was another hour or so that he had to stand there looking reverend while everybody stopped to pay their respects to each member of a very large family and say one last good bye to the dear departed. In one last-ditch attempt to preserve the dignity of the church Father Joseph decided to invoke the Apostles Creed and the Benediction, not that anybody was particularly interested.

Well now, you'd think a person would have the decency at such a time to keep his mind on the gravity of the occasion. To a degree I did too, but the incongruity of it all got me started. Maybe if you'd known the kind of man my late friend was you'd understand, but I'm coming to that.

It was the Apostles Creed that was the trigger for me. How does that go again? Oh yeah - the last part which says ‘I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic Church -’ The holy WHAT? What's that coming out of an Anglican's mouth? - The holy CATHOLIC church? Can you imagine what good old King Henry the Eighth would do if he ever caught one of his own saying something like that? I looked around at the assembled gathering. Nobody even so much as raised an eyebrow. They were all pretty well focused on getting back from the cemetery and diving into the feast. To tell the truth, I wouldn't have paid any mind either except that I'd been down this road before myself.

A number of years ago I was at a United Church baptism where the self-same creed was recited by all and sundry. One of the grandmothers who was a Mennonite lady said after the service, ‘What was that catholic nonsense the minister was saying.’ Well, I didn’t know so I asked him. He said catholic really meant ‘universal’- that there was no connection with the Catholic Church. Well now, think about it for a minute. You can profess to believe in the holy Catholic Church without having any connection with the holy Catholic Church. How could that be? To tell the truth, I didn't believe him for one minute, so I looked it up in the dictionary. You could have knocked me over with a feather when there it was, staring me right in the face – ‘universal’. Well, I'll be -.

Now there's a stroke of marketing genius - the holy catholic Church! Wow! The guy who started up that organization sure knew his onions. He was right up there with them Xerox people, or the Kleenex makers. He knew darn well that some day there'd be competition, so he chose the name carefully. Even the most radical reformers pledge allegiance to the holy catholic Church. Only, they think they're talking about some generic universal church - even the Anglicans. In the meantime, the Catholics are smiling reverently all the way to the bank. And it's no accident that all their services and business was always conducted in Latin. Who the heck would ever know what they're talking about anyway? So long as there's a fair bit of Gregorian chanting going on, it must be more or less sacred.

Well now, it's not that some of them reformers didn't know they were being bamboozled. Heck, most of them had been part of that organization at one time or another themselves. They just cashed in their chips and tried to build a better mousetrap. Some of them did a pretty good job too. You take that Martin Luther guy - he did all right for himself. There's a whole whack of Lutherans around these days. Anglicans - well that doesn't count. I mean - if you got this king that's liable to put a broad axe in the back of your neck unless you're an Anglican, what's a person to do?

Of course there were others with other approaches. The Swiss and the Dutch had kind of a down home attitude. Fed up with the mysticism and double-dealing of the Catholics, they figured if they could get right neighborly and personal, they might get somewhere. They started to call their religions after their own first names. The Anabaptists were a particularly rancorous bunch. There was so much infighting over market share that they were splitting off left, right and center.

Probably the best known was Menno Simons' outfit - the Mennonites. See what I mean - first name religion. Old Menno was the guy who was particularly annoyed with infant baptism. He figured you should be old enough to make up your own mind just who it was that would stick your head in the river to be baptised. It turns out that he had a whole lot of other opinions too while he was at it. Well, one thing led to another and soon you had more splitting off going on. There was the Davidians for instance. Some dude named Dave didn't happen to agree with old Menno so he started his own outfit. That's the bunch that came to a fiery end in Waco, Texas a while back.

Then there was a new movement called the Pietists. Now that was a confusing name. See I was still in the mindset of first name religion. Now if you know any Dutch, you'll know that the way they spell the name Peter there is Pietr - Piet for short. So naturally you would assume that Piet (or Pete) was ticked off at something and went his own way. Not so. No, this was a new trend. It was named after a way of thinking. It had to do with piety or piousness. Who would have thought it? It had to do with being as pious if not more so than your neighbor. Pretty soon it turned into a contest like something out of a Monty Python skit - you know – ‘You think you're pious? Well I'm so pious that -’. It turns out I'm not the only one that saw this as a big mistake - the name, I mean. Oh, they're still around. These days though, they call themselves Evangelists. They're a pretty successful bunch too. I guess all that energy and hype gets them all cranked up so they can go about the business of screwing everybody who isn't one. Well, it's a natural progression anyway since they're already busy watching to see who's not Evangelical; they might as well make a few more observations while they're at it.

Do you see yet what all this is about? Everybody is busy espousing one thing at the top of their lungs while in the background they're even busier doing something else. Thing is, they're all so preoccupied with their own agendas, they don't even notice when somebody puts one over on them.

Wellsir, my good friend who lay serenely in his coffin right under Father Joseph's nose wasn't quite finished yet. See, he had been one of the people in the residential school system who'd been jacked around by the church. Instead of making a federal case out of the whole affair, he just bided his time like the hunter he was. This was his moment and he made the most of it, knowing full well that his own people would give him a proper send off no matter what. It went off like clockwork too, slick as you could want, at the expense of poor old Father Joseph who was way out of his league anyway. I kind of felt sorry for him in a way. He's probably a fine upstanding guy. But the way the Anglicans looked that day reminded me of the king's new clothes. Now that's Aboriginal justice!

Well, there's just a little footnote to the whole affair. At the end of it all, I went outdoors to get a perspective on the events of the day. It's a habit for me to park myself out on the balcony of our apartment and mull things over while I'm having a smoke. There's a favorite spot out there where I can look out over the northern sky. This was kind of a cool fall evening and the northern lights were unusually active on this particular night. The way they danced was something to behold. Suddenly, they all gathered together to form a single huge crescent, just hanging there, not moving. Slowly, another group gathered together in a moon-shaped circle just below the crescent, smiling. It was like a halo over a friendly face. I knew in a moment that it was my friend, smiling down at me. He seemed to be saying ‘Now that was a party.’

Yep, Aboriginal justice.

If The Good Old Days Were So Good -

If the Good Old Days Were So Good

By Victor Epp

That’s what I’d like to know. If the good old days were so dad blamed good, why the heck aren’t we still in them? Now there's a question for you.

Of course, it’s a tad awkward to sit here at my computer and bellyache about all the new fangled ideas, ideologies and contraptions not being worth a tinker’s dam. It lends a certain air of hypocrisy to the argument. Well nothing could be further from the truth! If I had my druthers, I'd go looking for my old India ink well and nib pen, and write all this out in long hand just to prove it. The very thought sends shivers of excitement up my spine. Now don't get me started on that. I'll bet Annie Morison’s mother still hasn't forgiven me for all the ink stains she had to wash out of her daughter's pigtails, not to mention her tunic.

But that's another story. It wasn't the one I was going to talk about anyway. Come to think of it though while I'm on the topic, there's a point to be made about such activities - writing with pen and ink I mean. Here I am more than sixty years later remembering with picture perfect clarity. I usually had to pay a heavy price at the hands of this tomboy who had as much fun getting even as I did playing the prank. Why I'll bet if we met on the street somewhere, we'd be sure to recognize each other and pick up our friendship right where it left off, so to speak. Now that's got to be worth something.

See, that's what I'm talking about - something that means something. Now if you were to take pen and ink in hand for something more serious than to dunk Annie Morison’s pigtails into and sit yourself down to write somebody a letter or something; that would mean something. First thing you know; you'd be worried about spelling things right the first time because you can't rub ink out that easy. There's no pen nib I know that has a delete button on it. Then of course, you've got to write so that whoever has to read that stuff can actually make out what you scribbled. Before you know it, your pen and nib are just sailing along the paper, making little frills and curlicues in the letters that suit your personality and the mood of your missive. When you're done, you got something to be proud of. You'll have put a little piece of yourself on a sheet of paper that nobody else can duplicate. Whoever gets it will know exactly where it came from even before they read the return address. Let's see them computer geeks top that one!

Now there I go again, gumming on about the pen and ink thing. What I really want to talk about is these scientific dingbats running around their laboratories (or whatever it is they run around in) like kids in a candy store. They grab everything in sight 'cause they figure it's new and therefore has to be better and they want it before anybody else gets it. It doesn't even matter if it's got any use or not, as long as its new. Well, I've got news for these geniuses. Everything they can come up with to put on the market has a consequence - cause and effect you know.

Here's a perfect example. After the war - WWII that is, the push was on to electrify the country. Hydro dams and hydro lines were going up everywhere. Lakes were being flooded, rivers were being diverted and communities were displaced indiscriminately. Nothing mattered as long as we could develop hydroelectric power. Well, develop it we did until it got so big we couldn't manage it at a profit. So now it's being privatized and pretty soon nobody will be able to afford it.

Well, that's only half the equation. Here we are in the second largest country in the world with huge hydroelectric power resources, and nobody's living in it. The saying, “the lights are on but nobody's home” takes on a whole new meaning. On top of that after we pretty well decimated the Aboriginal population and wiped out a hundred thousand or more military types in the various wars, we've had to rely on immigration just to keep even. And now with all that terrorist activity going on, that looks pretty dicey too. Pretty soon were going to be a real good target for “Lebensraum” advocates. You still recall that one don't you? That's what got us into WWII in the first place.

Well, I can remember a fellow telling me once - he was a schoolteacher on an Indian Reserve in Northwest Ontario back in the early sixties - the minute they turned on the hydro, the birth rate on the reserve dropped by fifty percent. There you have it in a nutshell - cause and effect. Men have got no more time to cut firewood for the winter or clean the stovepipes or anything like that. Women have no more time to put up preserves and supplies in the root cellar. No, they're too busy watching television, or listening to the radio, or playing video games for that matter. They haven't even got time to sit down and write a letter in pen and ink for crying out loud! How anybody expects a person to have time for the serious business of nation building with the TV on or the radio blaring all the time, I'll never know!

Of course, these dam builders couldn't just turn off the lights and let the rivers and lakes go back to where they were meant to go anyway. Oh no, they couldn't ever do that! It seems that there's no going back once the die is cast on so called progress. What would the Americans think if they couldn't buy our hydropower? Well if they want it so all fired bad and we're the ones who’ve got it, why don't they just immigrate to Canada so they can have use of it? At least that way we'd be solving our nation building problem and not giving away our resources at bargain basement Canadian dollar prices.

And while I'm at talking about bargain basement Canadian dollar prices, what's all this yammering and jawing about this softwood lumber fooferrah about anyway? We've got to pay the American government twenty nine percent kickback to be able to sell our softwood lumber in discount Canadian dollars? Doesn't that one smell a whole lot like that airbus thing a few years back? Seems to me that a whole lot of people were doing a heap of apologizing over that one!

What I'm trying to get at here is that instead of playing the American payola game and making two by fours for California is we ought to be cutting firewood for us Canadians and just turn off the electricity. At ten cords per household, that ought to provide a few jobs in the lumber industry. If we're going to give the stuff away anyhow, why not give it to Canadians?

I don't think the environmentalists would have a leg to stand on of they started griping about air pollution and whatever else they tag on to it. Mother Nature has been doing the self-same thing for a whole lot longer than we've been making two by fours. We'd just be lending a hand that's all. In fact, if we picked the right kind of wood to burn, our forest fires wouldn't get so dad blamed out of control either. Heck, even the boys in the oil patch would turn out to be heroes. They'd have that much more crude oil to turn into fuel at reasonable prices. All we'd really need for our homes is a little bit of coal oil for our lamps and lanterns.

Too labor intensive, you say? Not at all, not at all, in fact it's labor saving if anything. Well, what do you think all them kids who seem to appear when there's no electricity are for? Finally there’s a legitimate excuse for the existence of these obnoxious little buggers again. You teach them how to swing an axe and haul water at an early age, and they get to do it all while you supervise. Why, the first thing you know there's no more youth problem. All them glue sniffing, pot-smoking hoodlums are all of a sudden too busy piling up cordwood for mischief while the parents are walking around like a pair of peacocks and giving orders. The trick is to start teaching them early. That way they'll never know there's anything different and they'll be wanting to grow up fast and have their own brood to supervise.

Well, I guess there might be a few disgruntled people like them high priced movie stars missing all that attention they get on the TV if we turned off the hydro. To listen to them go on about it though, their first love is the stage anyway. What an opportunity! On top of all that, you got another place to put all that softwood lumber - building stages! What in tarnation must we be thinking about with all this new fangled stuff anyway?

Now where was I? I haven't even found my ink well yet and already half the country's problems are solved before I even get to the point of this whole tirade.

Oh yeah, I was talking about whatever happened to the good old days and why aren't we still in them. It seems to me, if we're going to invent something new, we ought to be looking at a kind of hobble for some of them scientists and inventors. Now that might be something worth considering.

Now it's not all doom and gloom as you might think. There's always hope. You remember that Trudeau guy who kept whipping his opposition with his slogan of “a just society”. He was Prime Minister for just about as long as he felt like. A visionary, they called him. Well one of these days we’re going to get another visionary who's going to campaign on “the good old days”. He'll get elected too. See, the thing is, that he'll be able to campaign and get his hype across in time for everybody to vote for him just before he turns off the hydro.

Fatherhood

Fatherhood

by

Victor Epp

Listen, I wouldn't even be telling you this if it wasn't the absolute plain bald-faced truth! But the fact is, as painful as it might be coming straight at you out of the blue like that, is that dad's are generally about as incompetent as it's possible to get.

Now before you go off in a huff, harumphing on how some people don't know what they're talking about, just bend an ear a bit. You might just learn a thing or two. I speak from experience. You see? Right off I'm letting you know I include myself in this pathetic bunch of wannabes. Truth be known, this is probably more about me than anyone else.

Not that dads don't have the desire and affection for their offspring. No, not at all. They got lots of that! They got so much of it in fact that at the first sight of their children, the go all out of shape with pride. Sometimes they're so full of it you think they might blow up.

Wellsir, it's a good job they got that, because that's about all they got going for them. That's about the whole enchilada. Well, okay - enthusiasm then, but that's it. That's absolutely it! And don't you kid yourself, it's a lucky thing the dad's have the love and affection to hang on to. The desire and enthusiasm gets so many holes poked in it's sails so fast and so often, it usually ends up turning to raw fear - sometimes even outright terror. No more forceful was that point ever brought home to me than by my own pride and joy, my first-born number one son.

Not long after the arrival of his own pride and joy, his first-born beautiful daughter, we happened to be visiting there along with a number of friends, sort of celebrating this new addition to the family. Of course, we could have just been celebrating the fact that it was Saturday night for all I know. Anyway, we're standing out on the moonlit deck in the warmth of a summer evening, just he and I. When he turns to me with that terrified look I hadn't seen since he stepped into the bath tub with his socks on. He frankly admitted that looking back over his own life growing up had given him a glimpse of what lay ahead and he had absolutely no idea of how he was going to cope with it.

It was one of those nostalgic father and son moments and I told him that anybody could make a baby, but it takes a real man to be a father and if anybody was up to it, he was. He wasn't so sure. Secretly, I said to myself, 'What goes around, comes around' and hoped my smile didn't show.

Well, he had plenty to worry about, given the number of times he ground me into a useless piece of frustrated fatherhood. He wasn't even finished teething before I had some concept how this was going to go.

Now to be fair, I have to put this in proper context. The kid didn't really have all that easy a start in life. I mean, there's a heavy price to pay for his lofty place in the hierarchy. Here he was the first-born child, and a son to boot. That was a million-dollar start to our brood. Added to that, being first grand child on either side of the family was the crowning glory. He was going to be the patriarch of his generation some day - on both sides! With all the attention that got him, I wouldn't have been at all surprised if the three wise men had shown up at our place,

Say what you like, but celebrity like that is hard on a kid - causes severe colic from time to time. Our boy sure had his bouts on a pretty regular basis. You could never say he did anything in half measure. By the time I'd get home from work, his mother would be crying as hard as the kid was, and so would most of the neighborhood women. He could get everybody so upset they all felt like a helpless bunch of amateurs. Of course once he had everybody at the end of their wits he would drop off to sleep and leave us all ringing our hands.

You might say he went right from colic to teething. Well, that's what it seemed like anyway. These things of course, can't be helped. You have to deal with them the best you can. Quite frankly this 'best' deteriorates in direct proportion to your own sleep deprivation. And it isn't helped by all the advice from grand parents on all sides either. The point is that it's got to come to an end sooner or later. Any dad worth his salt has to step in and start building some character in the boy. After all, with the whole world at his feet, the kid has to start taking on some responsibility don't you think? He's going on two years old and if you don't start now, well - who knows?

So one night some friends are over visiting and they see this erratic sleep/cry pattern we are enduring. They've been through this before. They know the answer. Put the kid in his bed and if he acts up, don't pick him up. Take all your clothes off and go stand there over his crib and stare him down. Works every time.

Why hadn't I thought of that before? It's only natural. I've done it with angry dogs, even cattle. Well, I didn't have to take my clothes off for them, but I sure could send them into a corner with the 'Evil Eye'. Perfect, I think. At least now I have a plan, so the evening improves and we have a fine time visiting. I can't wait to try this out. In my mind I'm almost daring the kid to make a fuss. Now we'll see who's the dad around here!

Sure enough, that very night I get my chance. I rip off my pajamas and stomp noisily into the kid's room like a naked ape. Actually I'm about a foot shorter than my friend is but still I think I'm towering over the bed like a wounded bull and I stare. There is total silence but the eyes are still open so now I glare. I don't want to break the spell so I say nothing.

The kid looks at me like I'm some weird kind of apparition. It looks like it's going to work. He'll want to close his eyes just to spare himself from this alien authority. Then he starts to laugh! Can you believe that? He actually starts to laugh.

Wellsir, that's it! Now it's fight or flight. I go storming back to our bedroom with a great gaping wound in my ego, passing the mirror on my way. The obvious doesn't hit me until I see the wife laughing too. The humor of it was lost on me at the time, given my vulnerable state.

By now you see what dads are up against. The whole world is snickering while they are left alone to deal with the awesome burden of bringing up a child the right way. A dad needs every last ounce of love and dedication just to survive. I mean the kid has to behave right doesn't he? He also had to look right. All of that put together is what'll make a real man out of him.

Right along about this time, what with getting out of toddler's clothes, I notice that maybe the boy needs a haircut. I sure don't want him looking like a girl - not my boy! Well he's still too young to go to the barbershop. Nope, I can do the job myself. After all, my old man cut my hair when I was a kid. What was good enough for me will be good enough for him. So I go and borrow the hand clippers.

As usual there's a catch. I forgot that you've got to be coordinated to squeeze the clippers to a rhythm while moving over the head of hair. Otherwise you tend to pull a lot of it out and cause all kinds of discomfort. You also end the project in yet another failure. Humiliation is quickly becoming a way of life. Will I never get the hang of this dad stuff?

It helps to admit defeat, especially when it's staring you in the face. Oh, you don't have to give up the moral high ground. You just change tactics and forge ahead. Perhaps the kid is old enough for the barber after all.

Maybe 'Seven Minute' Gus wasn't quite as good as old Charlie, but then Charlie was long gone and Gus was not. Gus got his moniker in the army during WWII. He could do a little better than nine haircuts an hour, so they called him 'Seven Minute Gus'. I figured if I took the kid with me a couple of times while I got my own haircut, he'd get the idea and wouldn't make a big stink about it when he finally got around to having his own ears lowered. Gus thought it was a good idea too. He even filled the kid full of candy and gave him pennies and everything. The two of them got on like a house on fire.

Well, the moment of truth comes one day when we figure the kid is comfortable enough. With two fists full of candy, the kid lets me hoist him onto the kiddy platform on Gus' chair. Gus is yakking away so fast the kid doesn't seem to take any notice. He even lets him wrap the big towel around him. This is way too easy! Then Gus turns on the dreaded electric clippers. Wellsir, the scream that cut through the barbershop and the dry cleaners next door would have wakened the dead. I never knew a quiet electric hum could create such a ruckus.

Well, you've got to give Gus his due. He tries three more times over the next few months. After all, he's used to battle hardened infantrymen. He's not afraid of some little tousle head. But finally he gives up too. So I go home one more time with my tail between my legs. The kid in the mean time, bounces along beside me with a big lollipop in his mouth, his long blond curls blowing in the wind.

Now you'd think I'd be happy when one of the grandpas decides to take over. Let him deal with this I think. He'll never make it - probably disown the kid before the day is out. Go for it, I say and secretly laugh to myself. A couple of hours later he delivers the kid back to our house brand new haircut and all.

There is just no way to win at this game - no way at all. But I notice something else though. See I've been busting my butt at being the best dad I know how to be and failing miserably at every turn. Yet when grandpa takes over, it's as easy as pie. While that doesn't solve my immediate problem, I've suddenly got a lot more use for grandpa - in fact, both grandpas. They got tricks of the trade I never even heard of. It turns out with this haircut business that the barber, just like our boy and grandpa, is a huge wrestling fan and he's got a whole wall full of picture photos in his shop of a local ring hero. This wrestler also happens to own a restaurant in town so Grandpa says if they quickly get a haircut first they can maybe go down and meet him, maybe even have a cinnamon bun or two. No problem. Suddenly the kid just wants the barber to hurry up so he can go meet a rassler.

Lucky for me I not a sore loser. By now I've got absolutely no ego left. From now on whatever happens, happens. What doesn't, doesn't. All I can do is give it my best shot however bad my aim. But I got one ace up my sleeve. The time will come when I'm the grandpa and he gets to deal with his insecurities.

As I said, what goes around, comes around.

It was worth the wait.

Rankin Inlet Journal

This journal, submitted to us by a Dr. A.M. Biguous, was found at the Rankin Inlet medical station, apparently left behind by a patient who cannot be named because of doctor –patient confidentiality protocol. It is posted here in hope that its owner will claim it. If not; at least we’ve done our civic duty.




Rankin Inlet Journal

NOVEMBER 1, 2007 - MARCH 12, 2008





Our Winter Wonderland Experience at Rankin Inlet, Nunavut


Nov. 2: 6:00 p.m.

It was snowing when we arrived. April, Christine and I with our glass of wine sat for hours by the window watching the huge soft flakes drift down from heaven. It looked like a Grandma Moses painting. So romantic we felt like newlyweds again. I LOVE SNOW!



Nov.3

We woke up to a beautiful blanket of crystal white snow covering every inch of the landscape. What a fantastic sight! Can there be a more lovely place in the whole world? Coming here was the best thing we’ve ever done. Shoveled for the first time and felt totally invigorated. I did the driveway even though we don’t have a car, and the sidewalk all the way down the street. This afternoon the snowplow came along and covered up the sidewalks and closed in the driveway, so I’ve got to shovel again. WHAT A PERFECT LIFE!



Nov.6

The sun melted all our lovely snow. Such a disappointment. My neighbor tells me not to worry; we’ll definitely have a white Christmas. No snow on Christmas would be a terrible disappointment. Martin says we’ll have so much snow by the end of the winter that I’ll never want to see snow again. I don’t think that’s possible. Martin is such a nice man. I’m glad he’s our neighbor.



Nov.10

Snow, lovely snow! 20 cm last night. The temperature dropped to minus 40 Celsius. The cold makes everything sparkle. The 30-km/hr wind took my breath away but I warmed up by shoveling the driveway and sidewalks. THIS IS THE LIFE! The snowplow came back this afternoon and buried everything again. I didn’t realize I would have to do quite this much shoveling but I’ll certainly get back in shape this way. I wish I wouldn’t huff and puff so much.



Nov.12

50 cm forecast. Bought three pairs of snowshoes and two more snow shovels, one for Christine and the other for April. Alice sent us by greyhound bus, a fur coat, extra heavy parkas, scarves etc. We stocked the freezer. Christine insists I cut down some trees at the edge of town and drag them back on the sled for firewood in case the electricity goes out. I think that’s silly. After all we’re not at the North Pole.





Nov.14

Ice storm this morning. Fell on my ass on the ice in the driveway while putting down salt. Hurt like blazes. Christine and April laughed for an hour. I think that was very cruel.



Nov.15

Still 40 degrees below zero. Roads and sidewalks are now too icy to even walk on. Electricity was off for five hours. I had to pile on five layers of blankets to stay warm. Nothing to do but stare at Christine and April and try not to irritate them. Guess I should have bought a wood stove for the firewood I lugged home but I won’t talk about it. God I hate it when she’s right. I can’t believe I’m freezing to death in my own living room!



Nov.16

Electricity is back on but had another 50 cm of that damn stuff came down last night. More shoveling. Took all day. Goddamn snowplow came by twice. Tried to find a neighbor kid to shovel, but they all said they’re too busy playing hockey. I think they are lying. Called the only hardware store in town to see about buying a snow blower. They were sold out but might have another shipment come in March 15. I think they’re lying. Martin says I have to shovel or the town will have it done and bill me. I think he’s lying.



Nov. 25

Martin is right about a white Christmas because another 30 cm of the white shit fell today and it’s now so cold it probably won’t melt before August. Took me 45 minutes to get dressed warm enough to go out to shovel and then I had to piss. By the time I got undressed, pissed and dressed again, I was too tired to shovel. Tried to hire Martin who has a plow on his truck for the rest of the winter but he said he is too busy, I think the asshole is lying.



Dec. 1

Only 10 cm of snow today and it warmed up to minus 30. Christine wanted me to decorate the front of the house this morning. What is she - nuts? Why didn’t she tell me that three weeks ago on the day it warmed up to minus 25? She says she did but I think she’s damn well lying.



Dec. 24

Snow is packed so hard by the snowplow I broke the shovel. I thought I was having a heart attack. If I ever catch the sneaky weasel who drives that snowplow, I’ll drag him through the snow by his balls. I know he hides around the corner and waits for me to finish shoveling and then comes down the street at 120 km/hr. and throws snow all over where I’ve just been! Tonight Christine wanted me to sing Christmas Carols with her and open our presents, but I was busy watching for that goddamn snowplow.



Dec. 25

Merry Christmas. 50 cm more of the rotten white slop tonight. SNOWED IN. The idea of shoveling makes my blood boil. GOD I HATE THE SNOW! Then the snowplow driver came by asking for a donation and I hit him over the head with my shovel. Christine says I have a bad attitude. I think she’s an idiot. If I have to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” one more time, I’ll kill her.



Dec. 29

Still snowed in. Why the hell did I ever come to this mean-spirited wilderness? It was all Christine’s and her parent’s idea. They are all really getting on my nerves.



Jan. 15, 2008

Temperature dropped to 70 below with the wind chill. All the pipes froze.



Jan. 27

Warmed up to minus 50. Still snowed in. That bleepin wife of mine is driving me crazy!!!!



Feb. 4

25 more cm of that freakin white stuff. Martin says if I don’t shovel the snow off the roof it will cave in. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. How dumb does he think I am?



Feb. 20

Roof caved in. The snowplow driver is suing me for a million dollars for the bump on his head, Christine and April flew back to Winnipeg a couple of days ago and 20 cm more of snow is predicted.



Mar. 11

Set fire to what is left of the house. NO MORE SHOVELLING!



Mar. 12

I feel so good. I just love those little white pills they keep giving me. WHY AM I TIED TO THE BED?

Mid Life Crisis as seen by a fourteen-year old

Mid-Life Crisis and the Family

(As seen through the eyes of a fourteen-year - old)

By Victor Epp

A medical phenomenon known as 'Mid Life Crisis' has been completely overlooked by clinicians and sociologists alike. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that many of the people studying it are themselves afflicted. This study attempts to shed some light on the subject and the far-reaching effects of the disease.

To view it in context, one must first know what to look for. Three basic symptoms manifest themselves to varying degrees over the crisis period. The first and most pervasive is denial of the condition. Combined with the other two, being anger and unreasonable authoritarianism they create a deadly cocktail within the framework of any family.

This study deals only with the disease among parents since little is known about its existence in single people. The "condition", as it is known in discrete circles, is generally a parental affliction that roughly coincides with the onset of puberty among the offspring. Although the relationship between the two isn't clear, it couldn't come at a worse time. Moreover, once 'Mid Life Crisis' strikes it must run its course of about ten years.

Onset can be gradual in some, going undetected for a time. In others it may strike unpredictably with the vengeance of a hurricane. In its wake is a path of destruction and devastation visited on the offspring. Either way treatment is guesswork at best and is generally left to the young adults to deal with, the parents being rendered useless by the condition.

The most obvious symptom of the "condition" is habitual posture of denial by the parent(s) - denial of the most obvious. It is more complicated in females than males. Males are prone to hide these tendencies as if they are somewhat ashamed. Nevertheless, they still exhibit strange behavior. During formative years men prepare their charges for young adulthood. That is their mission. When that is finally achieved they suddenly become disgustingly over protective, insisting on things like chaperoning them to dances, eleven o'clock curfews, clothing of a prehistoric era causing undeserved shame and public humiliation.

The behavior they demand from their post-pubescent teens is entirely at odds with their own. During the time their children were growing up the family sedan was good enough for transportation. At the very moment that the sons and daughters are on the verge of getting their driver’s licenses a father buys himself a flashy SUV. He puts the moth eaten old beater on blocks to have for the children's "first car". He actually thinks that a sixteen-year-old would be caught dead in such a rust bucket.

The phenomenon manifests itself in other ways too. Middle-aged men begin to dress entirely out of context with their years. This act in itself provides irrefutable evidence of brainpower drainage. One must assume that at one time they did have a sense of fashion, judging by old photographs of another era and factoring in the trends of the time.

A prime example of deviance in 'Mid Life Crisis' behavior is the fifteen-dollar jeans men insist on wearing. In the first instance, that is only one tenth the minimum price one must pay for a decent pair of jeans with an acceptable label. Secondly, men cannot wear the same size pants they did at sixteen. Frightening changes in the body have taken place. The once shapely and seductive gluteus maximus muscles have moved completely around the body to settle somewhere in the vicinity of the navel. The result of course is that the pants seat sags limply over a couple of stiff, skinny pant legs while the waist is cinched up dangerously close to the crotch like a tourniquet.

If only that were the extent of it. An even more obvious sign of 'Mid Life Crisis' is the cleavage men expose in their dress. Whether they have lost the dexterity to button up their shirts or pull up their pants is not certain, but they are oblivious to the embarrassment. Without so much as even a thought, they insist on being seen in public that way with their young adult offspring, even pointing out the relationship, for God’s sake!

The signs of 'Mid Life Crisis' in women if more subtle are much more dramatic. It often starts with reading more and more poetry, taking ceramics classes and doing volunteer work. Women also network a lot with each other. It's like a swarming activity. They cry often too. One theory is that the cause is sheer desolation over the fact that they are not, and probably never were as vibrant and attractive as their young adult daughters. One is often moved to compassion over such evolutionary inadequacy.

While women are somewhat more malleable and easier for young adults to handle in this condition, their minds become addled, and gravity and bio-degradability ravage their bodies. It is widely thought that as denial of these facts can no longer be tolerated, anger sets in.

The smallest irritation will set the 'Mid Life Crisis' sufferer off. Sleeping late, unfinished homework, chores not done are all triggers for a temper tantrum. They have lost the understanding that these are perfectly natural activities for young adults. Watching television, playing video games, long conversations with peers on the telephone all have an inherent and much needed educational and social value. They must have known that at some time in their lives. Now these things have labels like 'lazy' and 'irresponsible' stamped on them.

Opinions differ on whether authoritarianism is a symptom of 'Mid Life Crisis' or simply a coping mechanism. It would not be unreasonable to assume that it is a little of both. Active denial combined with anger could easily predispose one to authoritarianism. After all, these people - men and women alike, are bigger and stronger than young adults and with a lung capacity to cause auditory damage if they so choose.

Authoritarianism is by far the most difficult manifestation for young adults to deal with. It is parental adoption of a predatory attitude toward offspring at a critical time in their development. At the very moment of emerging crucial relationships, fashion breakthroughs, awakening to the wonders of adulthood, the belligerence of parents in 'Mid Life Crisis' appears out of nowhere to burden young adults with unthinkable consequences.

We now find the parents shamelessly offloading their obligations of doing dishes; cleaning the house and maintaining the yard on these self-same busy young adults. All the while they expect young adults to be mature at all times, be prompt in their assigned duties and to be cheerful about it too. At times it appears these outbursts are deliberately designed to stifle the anticipated young lifestyles. Reasonable oppositions to these draconian measures only result in 'grounding' or other loss of privileges or allowance.

People in 'Mid Life Crisis' have a total memory loss when it comes to these activities. The famous phrase that begins with' When I was your age -' has no relevance whatever. True, they learned all these duties and values at a time when it was socially acceptable for young adults to be compliant and obedient. And they learned to do these things very well. But this was in some long past era of child labor and virtual slavery. It has no place in today's society.

A few futile attempts have been made to deal with the growing pandemic, all with disastrous results. At first it was thought that 'Valium' was the answer - the be all and end all to 'Mid Life Crisis'. Even 'Prozac', a calming agent for hyperactive children was tried. The results were relatively the same. The upshot was a trail of addicted adults who didn't care about anything at all and were rendered completely useless for any purpose whatsoever.

It becomes evident that drugs are not the answer - at least for these ailing people usually in their middle years. Until a more promising treatment is found, the most effective means of dealing with the disease is close attention to these sufferers using the 'Elder Care' model. They must be encouraged to continue doing the work, providing the housing AND the means for young adults to launch themselves into life as it was meant to be. This often calls for great intestinal fortitude and resourcefulness. The key is to call on those things that were learned in childhood to acquire one's wants with the least amount of repercussion. Gentle persistence is a powerful tool. It must be remembered that anger and belligerent authoritarianism burn great amounts of energy that can't be sustained by older people for all that long.

As stated, 'Mid Life Crisis' has an effective cycle of about ten years. By the time the young adult reaches his or her mid twenties, recovery is well underway. Not only has the 'Mid Life Crisis' survivor regained the original intelligence and demeanor, but during the time of mental hibernation, acquired a lot of wisdom obviously dispensed by the respective young adults along the way. In fact, the two generations achieve a level of near equal footing.

Once this point in the rehabilitation is reached there is very little chance of relapse. The demeanor becomes noticeably more agreeable. Even the lumpy, unfashionable old bodies take on a somewhat lovable, cuddly air. And these erstwhile troublesome sufferers become quite useful again too. Instead of their authoritarian manner, they begin to encourage their children in the latter's endeavors. They do well at babysitting too and provide a degree of excitement for their grand children.

It is evident that there is a great deal of work still to be done to overcome this anomaly of evolution. Aggressively addressed, it is possible to envision increased longevity as the solution to 'Mid Life Crisis' in future generations. There presently exists a small window of opportunity to utilize the last batch of survivors who still know how to do chores and fix things. They may be able to extend their services to their grand children in order to spare their own offspring from the stress of 'Mid Life Crisis'.

The Rite of Passage

THE RITE OF PASSAGE

by Victor Epp

 

This started out to be a tongue in cheek piece of nonsense about the time one of my buddies and I decided at the ripe old age of fourteen that we were all grown up. Our only problem was that nobody ever understood. We never ever got the respect from the adults that we figured was our due. To them we were just a bunch of ratty looking nuisances worth nothing but a bunch of trouble waiting to happen. Well that being the case, if we looked more like adults maybe they'd sit up and take notice. What we needed was a real barbershop type shave. Maybe that would help.

Any boy who's ever been fourteen will tell you that given at least one buddy and time on his hands, there's bound to be some adventure in the works. Well, Arnold and I were no different. In fact, you could pretty well count on something unusual happening when any of our group was prowling around.

Not that shaving was altogether new to us. We'd both been scraping peach fuzz off our pimply faces long enough that the novelty had all but wore off. The kind of a shave we needed though was the kind you could get at the barbershop when there was still such a thing as barbershops. That was back when haircuts were thirty-five cents, and for an extra two bits you could get a shave too. You could sit there on a Saturday morning reading Mechanics Illustrated or some other magazine at Charlie's Barbershop. You'd wait your turn to get a haircut and listen to the slap, slap, slap of his straight razor against the strop while his customer lay back under a steaming wet towel. Like a surgeon Charlie would slice lather and beard from the man in the chair, all the while maintaining a steady banter without missing a beat. In a single majestic gesture, old Charlie managed to sweep the towel from the man's neck, splash on some after-shave, and raise the chair to an upright position and voila! The grizzled old ironworker was transformed into a new man about town. Now that was a shave!

So now you know of course where our minds were headed. See the thing was, my dad still had his straight razor, and his strop. He had his shaving bowl and brush. He even had a wall cabinet we called the ‘Look Here’ to put it all in. We called it that because the guy that made it put a little sign under the mirror that said ‘Look Here’. Only by now dad had invested in one of those new-fangled electric razors, so he didn't need it anymore. The old cabinet now hung on the wall in my bedroom so I could have a mirror to brush my hair.

It was actually that very cabinet that drew us into emulating barbers. A strange thing it was, probably home made. The little mirror had certainly seen better days. Under it was a drawer containing all the necessities for shaving - the straight razor, brush and bowl, soap, and the dreaded strop. I knew about uses for that thing besides sharpening the razor.

Well, Arnold didn't really know much about such equipment. He'd lost his father as a little boy, so stuff like this was a natural curiosity for him. He saw the ‘Look Here’ on the wall in my room and naturally, he looked. There it was staring him right in the face - everything Charlie the barber had! We could do this grown up man stuff! It was high time to have a go at it anyway.

Of course there were some things we had to improvise on, seeing we didn't have a barber chair. That didn't matter though. We had the run of the house 'cause dad was at work and mom was somewhere - probably at church with her Ladies' Auxiliary. That meant we could turn the kitchen into our barbershop.

There were certain things I already knew how to do because I'd seen dad do them. For one thing, when he sharpened his razor, he'd hang the strop off the back of the kitchen chair, put his foot on the seat to steady it and slap away until he could pull a hair out of his head and slice it in two with the blade. Then he'd fold it up and lather himself before he started the scraping ritual. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. He always kept a spare packet of Zigzag cigarette papers handy in case he nicked himself. There were times he had three or four little pieces of the paper pasted to his face. That usually happened Sunday morning if he was running late for church.

Nothing would do for us but the full treatment - hot towel and all. Well, we could always hang it on the clothesline to dry. We drew lots and it was my turn to get shaved first. We made a big deal out of all the preparations. Slap, slap, slap went the razor on the strop. I pulled a hair out of my head only because Arnold wore one of those brush cuts and his was too short to work. Well, we kept on slapping and slapping but never could slice that hair. Either there was a trick to it, or the razor was too dull. We could have been slapping 'til the cows came home and still wouldn't have sliced the hair. Finally we decided to proceed with the rest of the operation anyway. We reasoned that our beards were softer than old peoples anyway so the razor was probably sharp enough.

The first thing to go wrong was the hot towel. We'd put it in the kitchen sink and poured boiling hot water over it out of the kettle. I was already leaning back in the kitchen chair, making out like it was Charlie's barber chair. When Arnold went to wring it out, he burned his fingers. Instead of throwing it back in the sink to cool off, he flung the steaming rag on my face. The shock of the scalding towel after about a second brought me flying out of the chair, tossing the thing across the room and onto the floor. Arnold was still blowing on his scalded hands and laughing at my dilemma.

Undaunted, he grabbed the brush and proceeded to work up the lather already in the bowl. He convinced me to sit down again and started to paint what used to be my face with the soap. By the time he got done, the foam had actually taken out some of the sting and I was able to sit still long enough to get the soap out of my nostrils. At least I was smart enough to keep my yap shut or he'd have shoved a brush full in there too. This was just not going the way we imagined, but once we started we were going to finish. Well, now for the moment of truth.

Flipping open the razor, he held it just so, with the blade between his thumb and forefinger. The handle was between his pinky and ring finger - just like Charlie.

“Careful, careful!” I yelled, in case he got too confident. That thing was sharp and I didn't want my head being separated from the rest of my body.

“Ow - that hurts!” Of course! Somebody pulls a straight razor across your first or second degree burned skin and it's bound to hurt.

Well he tried; I'll give him that. Not one nick on my tender skin. But somewhere along the way - I think it was around when he had the razor at my Adam's apple, he began to see the funny side of this disaster. Now was really not the time to start giggling. Somehow he managed not to slit my throat, and eventually got most of the lather off my sorry face. Then he went over and picked up the soggy towel off the doormat where it had landed and proceeded to wipe off the rest of the foam from my ears and nose and even my eyelids. That hurt worse than the scraping.

Thank God we didn't have any after-shave. Dad kept that with his electric razor. I went to my room and looked in the Look Here. Well, it wasn't what I'd expected. Instead of the handsome, sexy smelling man about town, there was this fourteen-year-old kid with a beet red face and just about as much peach fuzz on it as there was an hour ago. I was somewhat disappointed to say the least. Well, I could do better.

Arnold allowed that it was a pretty good job. What was I complaining about anyway? He hadn't murdered me had he? Well, the truth was, he hadn't. By now my face was starting to dry and the remnants of the soap in my skin tightened it up so that it actually felt kind of good. Maybe it wasn't too bad after all. I'd had my first barber style shave with a straight razor, hadn't I? Well, so I did and now it was my turn to return the favor. That gave my confidence a boost.

It turned out that Arnold was a whole lot less brave about his ugly mug than I was. Of course, he'd had the advantage of seeing what he'd done to me. He needed a lot of convincing to get him just to sit down in the chair. The only way he'd do it was if he could wrap the towel around his own face. You can bet he checked the temperature pretty carefully before he did it too!

I should have known something stupid would happen the way his eyes were darting around while I was lathering him up. What the heck was he so nervous about anyway? I didn't stick the brush in his eye or up his nose the way he did to me. I told him to shut up and sit there while I gave him his shave. Finally he did.

With the blade balanced ever so lightly between my thumb and forefinger and the handle between my pinky and ring finger, I looked more like Charlie the barber than Charlie himself. With the other hand I turned his head sideways to shave his cheek. Before I could make the first stroke, Arnold grabbed the razor out of my hand in a panic. Of course I wasn't hanging on tight to it so it came away a lot easier than he expected. His hand snapped back toward his face and the sharp edge of the razor landed right on the end of his nose making a beautiful long gash on the tip and right up the middle. I grabbed for the Zigzag cigarette papers.

It took most of the rest of the afternoon more or less, to clean everything up, including Arnold's wounded nose, but finally we managed to get it all done. By the time we were finished, we had started to see the humor in it and it turned out to be a worthwhile adventure - that is until my mother wanted to know what happened to my face, and what was that filthy towel doing on the clothesline? The only thing that saved my bacon was my dad killing himself laughing when I explained the whole sordid mess to him. Mom was not impressed, but she let it go.

Well I don't know about Arnold, but I've never touched a straight razor since. Even so, I've always thought of that day as the defining moment of my coming of age, even more than the next year when I was allowed to smoke in the house in spite of my mother's indignation and disgust.

In a way I suppose it was a rite of passage from childhood to manhood - our own celebration, our own claim on our identity. That got me to thinking, whatever happened to such an important ritual anyway? It seems to be as much a need of adolescents as it is a function of adult society. At one stage of our evolution when young males started to feel their oats, the Elders would perform some painful act upon them. If the young folks survived, they'd be handed a spear and told they were now hunters. The threat of starvation was always a very good incentive for them to succeed.

To put your finger on the issue, you have to once again acknowledge the ticking of a biological clock. There comes a time in every boy's life when he has to become a man. Not only that, but he has to be recognized to be a man. He has to take his place among men. Of course I can't speak for girls, but I suspect that the same principle holds true. That's where the necessary interaction between parent and child becomes critical. Only we seem to have forgotten the drill.

The days of the spear are long past, so what is a boy to become? What has he trained for all his young life? Well, let's see. There's rollerblading, there's Nintendo - oh that's a good one. It develops hand/eye co-ordination. At school he learns to read and write after a fashion, maybe even learns to count. By the time he enters high school, he's qualified to be just about absolutely nothing - pretty impressive, huh? Now his instincts tell him he's a man, but there's nothing to be a man at. Hell, he hasn't even got an identity. He's just a stupid teenager. What has his father taught him in all this time? Well, think about it. Dad's at work, or in jail, or in the detox center, or he split from the family, so what's a boy to learn from that? Mom's in about the same boat so there's strike two. Well, there's always day care and the school system. As far as I'm concerned that's strike three.

Even the so-called educators can't stop the biological clock. It surprises me that they even try. The drive for identity in the realm of adulthood is as strong and certain as puberty, old age and death. One way or another, it will be expressed.

As I said at the outset, the anecdote about Arnold and my adventures was intended as a tongue in cheek bit of entertainment, and I hope it is. At the same time it illustrates the point of what young people will do, with or without guidance from their Elders. Instead of addressing the issue and taking ownership of the deficiency that lies clearly with parents and grand parents, we white wash it by calling these the ‘teenage years’. We build community clubs and send the kids there. We have movie theatres and video game houses and we send the kids there. Whatever the case, we are always sending our kids somewhere. We send them to school and to camp and to lord knows wherever else. Everything is fine as long as we can send them somewhere. Then horror of horrors, we discover one day that they belong to a street gang of some sort, or are arrested for burning down a building or two, or doing drugs, or trying to kill somebody. How could this have happened?

Well hello! Welcome to reality. The light seems to be on but clearly, nobody's home. It's as simple as cause and effect. For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. Where have we heard that before? Mind you, this problem has been a long time in the making. If you backtrack through time, it has been quite a while since anybody even knew how to make a good spear, let alone teach someone else to do it. It's something that has to be learned again. There's something else that we have to re-learn. The job of teaching belongs to the parent and he/she has to be held accountable for the teaching. You don't just go around hiring a bunch of educators or social workers or corrections officers to do the job that nature itself has delegated to the parent. That's just like hiring somebody else to breathe for you because you don't feel like it.

Of course, an attitude like that will make a lot of people nervous. If everybody suddenly starts to do his or her job, there are going to be a lot of people out of work. Governments are going to have to redirect our dollars to the moms and dads instead of day care and social services and corrections all the other band-aid industries they've invented. Well, they shouldn't worry because by this time we have a lot of work to do in trying to figure out what kind of symbolic spears we need in our arsenal to be good hunters. If we can get that done, there might just be a lot of other things that will fall into line. I think we should give it a shot anyway.

Marquis of Queensbury Rules

Marquis of Queensbury Rules

By Victor Epp

By now we were moving up the social ladder. Oh yeah, a brand new bungalow in a brand new subdivision in the suburbs, that was us. Well, let me put that into a bit clearer perspective for you. This brand new subdivision was so new; it was just as surprised as anyone else that it even existed. Three new houses almost finished, in a cow pasture were the only testament to the elaborate plans on the brochure. For all intents and purposes we were back on the farm.

Truth be told, moving day should have given me a realistic appreciation for that fateful move from Teulon corner. Rain in the city wouldn't normally have been a problem. After all, you had your paved streets, covered moving vans and all that. This was true for us; well at least up to two and a half blocks of our new house. That's where everything stopped - except the rain. The developers hadn't yet paved the streets so it was shank's mare from there on in. Even with my connections in the Rotary Club I couldn't persuade the Security Storage guy to drive any further. Well, it was a long day to say the least. And as old man Krahn, the house builder was to discover over and over, the wife's 'delicate' condition at the time didn't make it any easier. In fact, I've got a notion she was the reason he finally went out of the building business.

As time went by, our neighbors established themselves as well. That is to say, the other two cow pasture dwellers, one family on either side of us. On the north side was a traveling salesman for an auto parts company. He was a tall, lean guy with a booming voice. Likeable enough, he was. His wife was very pleasant too. But his boy was another story. A couple of years older than our kid, he was given to a lot more adventure than was good for him, particularly when it came to playing with matches.

Wellsir, as is bound to happen from time to time, the two boys had a disagreement about something. Darned if I know what it was. In fact, they likely didn't know either, not that it mattered much. As can be expected, given the difference in size, ours got the worst of it. He came in the house; tearfully complaining about the kid next door, and looking somewhat the worse for wear.

The wife never did like the neighbor's brat, as she called him. She thought he was mean. She didn't like his obsession with fire either, and by God, she wasn't going to put up with her little boy being pushed around. It was time to teach the neighbors a lesson about how to bring up their delinquent kid and if I wasn't going to do it, by gum she was!

Well, she did. It was a Friday afternoon as I recall. It would have to be because Richard was home from his sales trip. He was out in the driveway firing up the barbecue and enjoying a martini or two and being a typically upwardly mobile suburbanite in his shorts and muscle shirt. The last thing on his mind was a pint sized Tasmanian devil ripping into him with a string of cuss words the like of which I hadn't heard since grade school.

The neighbor stood his ground like the man he was, all six foot two of him. The wife, maybe a foot or more shorter if she stood on tiptoes wasn't giving up either. I guess what finally took the wind out of their sails was the fact that in the middle of the screaming match they noticed that the boys had gone off in the field across the street and were having a ball chasing frogs. Nobody ever brought up anything about who was acting like adults and who was acting like children. We didn't have to. It was a mute point.

After that I made two rules, probably the best I ever thought up. I told the kid that if I ever found him starting a fight, he'd have me to deal with. That was rule number one. Rule number two was if he ever got into a fight he didn't start he'd better finish it. Otherwise rule number one would apply. It probably accounts for him not getting into too many fracases after that, although there were a couple of instances of note that are the reason I got into remembering this in the first place.

Wouldn't you know it; the first one was caused by a girl. She was a classmate in either kindergarten or grade one. Her name was Tammy and she was a character straight out of Charles Dickens - a scrawny, mousy haired little slip of a thing with a giant crush on our boy. You couldn't help but smile when she came around.

Now just think for a minute about the relationship boys and girls at the age of six and seven might have. You're not talking about mushy romantic stuff or even friendly play. What happens is that boys throw things at girls. It's kind of reverse courting - an attention getter of sorts. Unfortunately, this behavior can sometimes backfire and lead to some of the most spectacular brouhaha’s you could ever imagine. Girls have a way of triggering that sort of thing, whether by accident or by design.

That was exactly what happened one fine Sunday afternoon. It was ironically enough, Boxing Day. My folks were over at the house for dinner and the kid was down the road playing with his pal in the snow. The doorbell rings and Tammy is there all starry eyed and wiping her runny nose on her sleeve, wanting to know if our boy can come out to play. Well, he's not home I tell her, and like a dummy I point to where the boys are. Of course, I can see them in our still sparse subdivision. They're building a snow fort. Off goes Tammy, undaunted, to find her man.

You can already suspect what's coming, can't you? Poor Tammy suddenly becomes the unwitting target for lumps of snow. The two boys, one on either side of the street are pelting her left and right. I think that she was either skinny enough or fast enough that they didn't do her any harm, but what followed was the most amazing spectacle you could ever want to witness.

Both boys had a pretty good throwing arm, active as they were. It was only their aim that needed work. It just happened that one of the snow lumps our boy had picked up was more ice than snow. When he whipped it at Tammy, he missed and caught his friend right in the forehead. Well, there was enough raw pain in that chunk of ice to dissolve the friendship right then and there. At least it would have been if his friend's older brother hadn't been on hand to take charge.

Now we were inside the house all cozy and warm so we couldn't hear the conversation but near as we could tell somebody needed some satisfaction. My best guess is that the older brother had been sent out to look after his younger sibling and had to take care of matters himself. He was probably of an age where he had been reading about fair play and duels and all that stuff. I'm only speculating of course, but when I was about that old I knew all about Robin Hood and Sir Lancelot and honor in battle and all that noble fair play bumph.

In any event, what we saw from our ringside seat in our living room was these two seven year olds, all bundled up in snow suits, squaring off like two Victorian boxers while the older brother refereed. They would go at it hammer and tong until somebody threw a low blow or pushed the other one down. The older brother would make them break contact and start over again. Every once in a while the three of them would sit down in the snow bank and rest. Then they'd be at it again. It was all Marquis of Queensbury rules, right and proper. It seems to me they even shook hands when it was over.

This is how it went for a whole hour, all the way down the block until they got to our house. By then they were so tired, they'd forgotten what the fight was all about. And Tammy, having gotten her dose of attention from her seven year-old man went on to other things. In the meantime we'd had the best hour of entertainment we could possibly have hoped for. Muhammad Ali himself couldn't have done better.

Well, I've got to give the kid his due. He never did have to deal with the old man over rule number one or rule number two.