Finally graduated from Catholic elementary school in 1964. Did seven years. Seems like a jail term in some sort of perverse way. It would have been eight but I skipped a year, grade three to grade five: Ms Upper to Ms Keller. Come to think of it now, in all of those years, I only had one male elementary school teacher. Mr Bowner. He was great: very theatrical and entertaining. Why was that? So many female teachers and so few male? Is it because youngsters in those early years still require the nurturing attention that can only be provided by the female sex? Feminists today would kill me for even suggesting such a thing. I don’t really know. Even in todays so called enlightenment school boards are trying to deal with the matrification of our Elementary School system, that boys are getting a raw deal. So they say! That they are becoming whusses, feminized, losing their religion. So they say! I don’t really think this is the case as this was the norm when I was in Elementary School some 55 years ago. If one were to check I do believe that one would find that women dominated the profession at this level for over a hundred years, two hundred maybe. I even remember reading about the explorer David Thompson and his schooling by the Grey Nuns of London back in the 1770s. Why are we so concerned about it today? Don’t know, don’t care, I don’t have an opinion on this. It seems to have worked.
Mr Bowner, our grade six teacher, decided to put together a school play. It was a musical, or more precisely, a musical revue. It was based somewhat loosely on Porgy and Bess. There we were, the entire Grade Six class in black face, singing and dancing, carousing and carrying on. Can you imagine that happening in today’s politically correct charged atmosphere? Nope, yet in those days it was all just innocent fun. People focused more on the entertainment value than the shock value. They didn’t think otherwise, or read between the lines, or over expostulate as they seem to do today on just about everything.
I do find it interesting that as one progresses through academia and the scholastic ranks, and the bolder, cockier and less enthusiastic one becomes with respect to scholarly pursuits, rebellious perhaps, that the male student requires the firm hand of discipline that only a male, Sister Mary Bernice excepted, can seem to provide. Worse yet if that male class of teacher is comprised primarily from the various religious orders of the day. Jesuits were the worst, the Oblates a close second, but tied with the Basilians. The Jesuits may have been highly intellectual but they were as firm and as dangerous in their physical and psychological prowess as their international reputation would suggest that they excelled at in the intellectual sense. No, ours were the Basilian Fathers: an order born out of the French Revolution. When it came to discipline they could give it out as bad or as good as any one religious law and order could. The only difference being was that the Basilians generally had a smile on their face as they were dishing it out. Jokingly they would say: “This, my young (insert name here), is going to hurt you a lot more than it is going to hurt me.” Then the customary whack, whack, whack and more whack. At least the Basilians were honest. The Jesuits, on the other hand, in some form of intellectual mind game or bait and switch logic, would try to convince us that the physical punishment about to be unleashed was going to hurt them a great deal more then it was going to hurt us. Intellectual existentialism perhaps, pedagogically speaking, but pure unadulterated nonsense nonetheless.
Who ever thought that a single word like “please”, in context, could be so humorous? Yet Henny Youngman made a comedic career out of four simple words and a pregnant pause: “Take my wife….. please” (Youngman). Yes, the word “timing” says it all.
Take the word “value”….please. How I hate this word. There are so many variations to the theme that surround this word that any smart minded non English speaking immigrant to our country would think twice about trying to learn or understand the English language. For example, an individual or group’s perception of worth, based upon personal or collective experiences in a shared environment can only define or measure “value.” “Value”” is illusive, as there are more perceptions of “value” out there are there are cars on the road.
Let me try to exemplify exactly what I mean here:
In 2005, I picked up my dear ole mother’s car: a 1979 Mercury Zephyr, something akin to a Falcon or Fairmont – Ford only knows. My mother could not drive anymore. She was 91 for heaven’s sake. The car had about 56,000 kilometers on the O.D. Mint condition! Lime Green with a sickly, yellowed tan interior.
Now the market “value” of that car in 1979 was $6,500.00. Twenty-six years later the book “value” was about zilch. The insured “value” – who knows, but the assessed “value” was about $3,000.00 and climbing, as long as it didn’t disintegrate during the long hard winters. Its “value” would continue to rise in “value”” as long as its condition remains, well, “valuable.”
Obviously my mother held considerable sentimental “value” in that automobile. As I pulled away from the big city for the drive back to my home town I came to understand the hereditary “value” of this gift to me and the intrinsic “value” of the trust she placed in me to take good care of Betsy.
I made it back home in one piece although the water pump went out around some god forsaken country hick town. Between that and thinking about the local Elvis sightings, I was beginning to ponder the meaning of life and the mechanical “value” of the car; the emotional “value” that this machine may have had and its effect on my own sense of “value” and well being.
Arriving home I thought about its economical “value” as it had taken over a tank of gas to cover the 300 miles from the really big city to my hometown. Had I been taken for a ride? Were there aspects of this car that were known only to my mother, the parish priest, her hairdresser and the bagger at her local supermarket? I had to contemplate its utility “value” considering the other two cars I had.
Yet, thinking of my dear ole mother and somewhat excited about the possibility of getting perhaps $3,000.00 for the car’s assessed “value” I thought hmmm, but quickly shook any thought of that out of my mind for if I “valued” my life I dared not even think about selling dear ole Betsy.
Trying to define “value” can be problematic, which in itself is an extremely overused word. It’s like common sense. Something that is taken for granted yet is extremely rare in today’s world. And trying to make sense out of “value” as in “What are your values?”, as opposed to someone else’s values is like an academia nut trying to make sense out of common sense and coming up with pure nonsense.
Words can mean different things to many different people. It is how we shape them, construct them, and construe them that are key to our success in using them. Timing may be one thing but context is everything. Take my word for it. You’ll be surprised at how much fun words can be. You’ll be truly amazed at your wordiness.
Song of the day:
Or would you rather have a Prius?
Have a great weekend and Cannabis Day
It’s the law of the land. Canada, the first country to legalize marijuana.
I can’t realistically celebrate being a Canadian 01 July while we have a Prime Minister intent on destroying our country.
When I first heard the words “plethora” and “paucity” I thought, “What on earth! Speak clearly man.” It brought my mind back to my elementary school days, grade eight to be exact, where a classmate of mine by the name of Big Maxx loved to show off his literary skills with those flowery descriptive essays that we had to write from time to time and read to the entire class. He didn’t realize just how funny he could be ranting off to the class; so proud of his literary skills with words of art that reflected anything but those big flowery descriptive texts for his words were always in the wrong context or with the wrong meaning. He would write: “I had a flora of jobs when I was young but with not a fauna of ambition or get up and go.” Big Maxx wasn’t too smart back then but he did try very, very hard. And those were the days when one could fail a grade. I think Big Max had to repeat Grade 9 a plethora of times.
The writing of those words, flora and fauna, plethora and paucity, Romulus and Remus got me to thinking and brought me to the following train of thought with respect to words:
Words! What is in a word? My kingdom for a word! A horse it may be but a horse is only a word that by any other name is still a word. Words declare wars, they garner peace. Words can be hurtful, they can be playful. Words describe words as in spiteful words, hurtful words, insightful words. We can have a war of words, crosswords or them’s fightin words. Words can be theatrical: we can have a play on words. Word is the law. It is the word. Words are prophetic. Words can be the gospel truth. So sayeth the word of the Lord. Words inspire, they transpire. Words transcribe: you have my word on that. Failing that, can I have a word with you? But words are not enough. That’s why we have lawyers. Words can also be despotic, or chaotic. A single word can inspire poetry, lyricism.
And when a few words are taken together, we have a phrase. And when a couple of phrases are linked together we have, in a word, a “sentence.” And when a group of sentences are grouped together we have, in another word, a “paragraph.” And to describe or summarize a paragraph we can go right back to the beginning of this word-train of thought – to “paraphrase!”
We can combine words to make quotable quotes: some profound, some sublime, some simplistic, some stupidly clear:
“To be or not to be – that is the question.” That may be but on Jeopardy it is the answer!
“If things are good in moderation then they must be great in excess.” My favourite.
“If something is worth doing, then it is worth overdoing.” My other favourite.
“Baseball is 100% physical. The rest is mental.” (Adapted from Berra).
“A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. A woman does what she wants.”
“A consultant is someone who is adept at making the simple… complex.”
“The problem with theory is that it’s just not practical enough!”
“A wise fool is an oxy moron.”
“Those lefties are so darn righteous!”
“Militancy is great…for pacifists”
“She was at a loss for words.” a paradox for sure.
or paradoxically:
“Words cannot describe what she said.” Huh?
Yet words are not enough when communicating. Context and understanding are crucial. Without context confusion arises to the point of ridiculousness. Let me try to illustrate this by something that I learned in school:
Take the word “nit.” The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines “nit” as a stupid person, a louse. Then add the letter “k” before the “n” and you have “knit.” Yet the word “nit” from the word “knit” is a whole different kettle of fish. And what is that anyway: a kettle of fish?
Now, let’s take the word “wit:” defined as someone with a sharp sense of humour, a player of words perhaps. As in “that man possesses wit. He has a sharp mind.” But then add the letter “t” before the “w” and you have “twit.” Or, combine the word “nit” with the word “wit” and you have a “nitwit.” But “nit” and “twit” together does not sound quite right – “nit-twit?”
Nonetheless, given that a “nit” is already defined as a stupid person, and “wit” is someone who has a sharp mind, then “nitwit” defiles all logic in a descriptive sense except perhaps to define someone who possesses a stupid “wit” – which in itself is oxymoronic. But “dimwit” already has that locked up. Yet what is really frustrating about the undercurrent of this word is that “dimwit” is the opposite of someone who has a sharp “wit.” So, that being the case, let’s call him or her a “blunt-sharp” person!
To make matters worse a “twit” could be someone who has a sharp “wit,” and is still a “nitwit” or a “dimwit.” So why can’t we call him or her a nit-twit? Or a “dim-twit”? The bottom line is that “nitwit” or “dimwit” sounds better. The other bottom line is that English words are just downright confusing without context and a shared understanding of the contextual environment we are communicating in.
I remember my Italian uncle declaring to his wife: Hey Flora, let’s go to the big city and have some fauna – hey?….Groan
(c) Excerpt for my book: I Thought I’d Died and Gone to Heaven
I worked as a busboy at an outdoor Charcoal Broiled Hamburger restaurant or stand as they sometimes referred to it during the annual fair. It was really nothing more than a “V” shaped open air concession booth that sold burgers of all sorts and sizes: hot dogs, French fries, soft drinks, coffee and other major food group worthy snacks and delectable treats.
There was this sports stadium very close to the concession stand. This stadium was quite big for the times holding about 40,000 people at a sitting. It had a large concourse that also provided various snacks and refreshments, including beer during game time. The work was mindless fluff: empty the garbage; ensure all the condiments were full; replenish supplies such as coffee cups, cold drink cups and the like; clean what few tables there were; and just be an all round gofer.
Beside our booth there was a side entrance, staff only, to the Food Building. It was in here that we stored all of our supplies. It was also my smoking room and measuring room. We diluted almost everything in there. Ketchup, mustard, pop, coffee, you name it. Yes coffee for it was also my job to gather discarded coffee grounds and add them to our tins of real coffee bean. It also housed a cold storage walk in freezer, which held our pails of our so called charcoal broiled hamburgers (BB’Q)
During the annual fair the concession did a thriving business in charcoal broiled hamburgers: hamburgers topped with cheese, with bacon, with bacon and cheese, fried onions, relish, mustard, pickles, ketchup, mayo, well… all of the major food groups of the day combined in a huge, messy calorically rich, artery busting snack. In fact their burgers were so well known across the fairgrounds that the working stiffs, old and young, migrated to this place everyday either at lunch, dinner or just before closing time of the fairgrounds itself to get their daily fix. They sold so many burgers that a ranch out west had a herd of cattle on standby just for this fast food joint. They sold hundreds of these burgers daily. How did they do it? How were they able to keep up considering it does take some time to cook one of these delicacies properly so as to ward off those nasty gastro-intestinal loving critters?
For the Hamburger joint!
It was easy as I found out. The owners had this wagon stored in the storage shed beside the concession. The wagon could hold about six of the two gallon type stainless steel kettles, two abreast: narrow at the bottom, bulging wide in the mid section then open to the air at the top, with a thin steel handle bar fastened at each side near the top rim. Every day about 2 hours before lunch it was my job to take that wagon and the kettles over to the sports stadium, up the ramps into the concourse of the stadium itself. This was a stealth operation you see for I could not make it be known to the public that I was connected to a food processing establishment while on this particular mission hence off came my white apron and hat while in transit from the concession booth to the stadium’s concourse.
Inside the concourse one could not fathom that anything was amiss, or open. All of the vertically oriented and aluminum sliding shutters were shuttered shut. Silence, nobody there it would appear at first glance. Then, almost subliminally, the odour of a deep fryer operation wafted the senses. It became overpowering as I walked along the concourse, pulling my wagon, as if a hundred deep fryers were at work simultaneously. An exaggeration perhaps but the smell of gazillion French fries could be overwhelming to the senses. But this wasn’t about French fries frying. This smell was sweeter, pungent, salt-like in its aroma with a deep and richly textured smell. It was meat!
No French Fries here!
As instructed I banged on the penultimate shuttered booth to the main ramp of the stadium. It opened slowly.
“Yeah, what do you want.” said no one in particular.
“I’m here for the burgs”
“Okay, hold on a bit”
Suddenly the shuttered metal door opened up about half way. Inside I could make out about 3 sets of deep fryers going full tilt. The oil bubbling and boiling over it seemed. Smoke filled the air but then got caught and sucked up in a vacuumed vent. This was only one of the booths. There were three more in operation.
“Give me your kettles” he ordered. “Just two.”
I complied. He took the two kettles over to the fryers. He then lifted two baskets out of the oil tilting them up then down, then shaking each of them to drain the oil, or grease, or whatever from the baskets. He tipped them over onto a white cloth, stained by a hundred deep fried burgers past while the burgers present looked like a lump of brown, oil soaked fried “cow” pies laid out on to the white cloth towels. With tongs he then transferred these deep fried burgers into the kettles ever so carefully but ever so skill fully so as not to damage the integrity of the burgers themselves. When he was done, both kettles were full to the rim with these oil soaked cooked burgers. He then covered them up with more white cloths tucking the ends into the kettle walls.
“Here, off you go” he said
“Thanks,” I think
With that the shutter was shuttered closed again, until tomorrow.
The same was repeated at the other two booths. I now had six kettles full of delectably delicious, oily and greasy yummy burgers. Mmmm mmmm good. Off I went, careful not to give anything away as to what had just occurred. Down the ramp pulling that wagon as stealthily as one could pull a wagon stealthily that had six cloth covered kettles on it. One had to be very careful here as the exit ramps were situated in such a way that two 90 degree turns were required to navigate one’s way from the concourse level of the stadium where the fryers were located to the ground below.
The very first time I did this I courted disaster. As I turned from the bottom of the first ramp into the first 90 degree turn and its transition to the second ramp the wagon tipped over. I was going too fast. The kettles rolled and clanged and rolled and clanged, scraping metal against concrete, a sound akin to a cat’s claws scraping down a blackboard, and rolling along the concrete walkway. The burgers fell out onto the cement ramp. Some of them were so firmly cooked as to roll down the ramps on their sides, turning wildly from left to right, out of control, then twirling rhythmically like a top before collapsing and plopping face down on the concrete surface of the ramp. I was a sight to behold running after these wayward, vagabond burgers: cursing hard and picking them up, collecting them then throwing them back into the kettles while at the same time wiping my greasy, oily hands on my pants, licking my fingers in a juicy disgusting fashion. After a while it became difficult to grasp these slippery burgers. Lucky for me I was wearing dark coloured pants.
At about the same time a flock of seagulls (shit hawks), and pigeons swarmed in at the sight and smell of these juicy burgers. I had to swat, and slap my way around these birds not unlike a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds.” And what made it particularly bad was the noise from the cawing and screaching of the birds. They were in a raptured, excited state which caused them to crap all over me and some of the exposed burgers. The white creamy, liquid droppings of bird dung or guava.
Finally, after a conscious, concerted and panicky effort, I managed to collect all of the burgers and redistribute them into the respective kettles. Covering them up I continued my pace back to the concession stand but in more of a determined and deliberate manner. Returning, stealthfuly, I immediately placed the kettles into the walk in freezer, or fridge awaiting the first call of the day for more burgers. With the call from the cook they would be placed inside the concession on the floor but beside the grill but in such a manner that when they went on to the grill the paying public had no clue as to the life cycle of our delicious charcoal broiled burgers. I’m sure I saw some customers spitting or picking something out of their mouths after taking a bite or two of those burgs.
Yes, the charcoal broiled burgers at the concession stand were the best in the whole wide world!
The new math!
We don’t need no education!
For the Hamburger joint!
No French Fries here!
