Tag: loneliness

Rob the Lob

Image result for pics of lobster

Here’s looking at you kid…Rob the Lobster!

The short piece about the lobsters in yesterdays post got me to remembering something that happened to my wife and I years ago.

I was stationed in Halifax NS. First time living in the Maritimes. My wife and I bought a house out in the Dartmouth burbs. One day she said to me. “Why don’t we have lobster tonight for dinner? I mean we have never had that before and it’s supposed to be a real delicacy down here.”

“Okay.” I said.”I’ll get a couple. We’ll have them tonight.”

So down I go to the local fisherman’s wharf after work and buy a couple of lobsters.

“They’re  canners the guy told me. Not as expensive as the real normal thingys, a bit smaller, but just as tasty.” I paid him and left. “Of course they are still alive,” he added “so be careful of the pincers.”

I got home and was proud of my catch. Changed, waited until about 6pm then went into the kitchen.

“So, are ya goin to cook these two babies?” I said to me wife. “Me?” she said looking at me quizzically. “I don’t know how to cook lobsters. I thought you were going to cook them.”

I looked at her dumbfounded and with a dumb look on my face. I was gobsmacked! Of course this was back in the day before the Internet so I couldn’t check on line to see what gobsmacked meant!

“Can’t be difficult.” I thought. So I took out a large pot. Got the lobsters and smeared them both with butter avoiding their pincers at all cost. They were still alive, withering and moving in slow motion as if they knew their fate. I turned on the oven and preheated it up to 450. Once that occurred I threw the lobsters into the pot and placed the pot into the oven. Done, now sit back relax have a few beers and wait.

All of a sudden all hell broke loose. The kitchen lit up in a cacophony of noise: click-ity clack, click-ity clack, clack, clack. Click, click, click, clack clack clack. “What the hell was going on.”I thought. I turned the oven light on and took a look. “Good gawd almighty.” I screamed. The two lobsters climbed out of the pot and were scurrying to and from all over the oven. Jesus, what now. What do I do now? I called my buddy and told him what was happening. He started to laugh.

“No, no, you idiot. You can’t bake lobsters. Too cruel to place them in the oven and slowly kill them” “So, what do I do then?” I asked of him. “You have to boil them alive. Its a better, quicker fate for them… Get a large pot of water then boil it to a running boil then throw the lobsters in and when their shells turn a bright red, they’re done.” “Oh, really” I thought, “okay.” But why don’t I just smash their heads in then throw them in.” “No, no, no. He said “You have to cook them alive otherwise a toxin is released that could make you really, really sick.”

I turned off the oven, got the largest pot I could find, filled it with water then waited until I had a running boil.  How do I get the lobsters out of the oven. They are surely going to be pissed off with me no doubt. Better avoid those pincers at all cost.

They were pissed. I could tell they were in such a state of click-ity clack panic. They slithered quickly out of the oven and fell onto the floor. Pissed off with me no doubt. The wife and I ran around the kitchen floor trying to nail these guys but to no avail. It was comical but not at the time. I don’t know who was scareder. The lobsters or us. Finally we cornered them in the corner of the kitchen and somehow got them up and into that pot. It took a while but we managed to capture them. Holding them I could sense their evil eye or feelers or antennae or whatever their tiny brain cells were that they were not all too happy about their fate or about me!

Into the pot they went and sure enough, after a short while their outer shells turned red. For good measure I left them in there for a few more minutes until I knew for certain that their lobster souls had gone to lobster heaven.

Okay, there they were. On our plates. But looking down at them it seemed to me that they were both looking back up at me and laughing. “Yeah,” I thought I heard them say: “you are an idiot. You may have won this battle but you have lost the war. Try eating us now idiot with your tools. It ain’t easy. And be careful of the green mush of our bodies. It’s disgusting.” Trying to get at their legs, tails and pincers with a knife and fork was a real challenge. I got frustrated for I knew I had lost this culinary war. I threw them out and made myself a couple of peanut butter sangys. It wasn’t until later that someone told me you have to eat them with a nut cracker in hand. “Who’s nuts are we going to crack.” I asked sheepishly. You know, when I threw them two canners out into the trash I thought I heard some cackling noises – directed my way. No,no,no, give your head a shake shakey.

Other stuff:

I see the UK is establishing a new government Ministry to address loneliness. The Ministry will be right beside the now well established and well respected, infamous Ministry of Silly Walks:

Image result for pics of ministry of silly walks

Another one bites the dust. Patrick Brown, leader of Ontario’s Conservative Party steps down and resigns amid allegations of sexual impropriety.

“We’ll have to get a new head,” a senior party official was want to say.

“Er sir, best to use the word leader instead of head.” another senior advisor proffered (How I love that word proffered – learned it at University)

“Well yes,” he went on. “We’ll have to learn to lead with our hearts instead of our heads,” he continued. Ehhhhh? PCs are doomed. 4 more years of Wynne. PCs? The party that keeps on giving.

Geesh….we’re doomed. I am deeply concerned as I once admired a woman 25 years ago! Yikes.

 

Gawd, Canada’s Free Press had a scathing piece about Trudeau’s very limited brain cells. That should guarantee him a vast majority in 2019. After all the Quebec and Ontario electorate, from the two province’s that really run Canada, is so bereft of brain cells that they all but guarantee a massive majority. “But he has nice socks, and don’t forget about the hair!” One of the voting public remarked.

 

In deference to the UK brain trust the following tune is proffered:

Almost forgot:

Scots, wha hae – Happy Burns Day! and here’s to the haggis.

 

Have a terrific Thursday.

 

 

SJ………………………………………….Out

 

Go West Young Man…2

…My sister met me at the station then took me to their abode in the downtown core. They had rented an apartment in the City’s west end, very close to the beach of a British sounding bay with water that was so cold as to render it un-swimmable. One would have an extremely difficult time finding one’s privates and taking a piss after a swim in waters such as this. And who was one anyway? Close to that were funky looking shops and high rise concourses that spread their way along narrow streets, avenues and boulevards toward a massive green expanse of a park that adorned itself with towering trees of old growth forest. But in the rain these towering, magnificent giants of nature were mostly obscured by the fog in the midst of a city that was blanketed for the most part of the year by a canopy of clouds and mist. With all of this rain the buildings of the downtown core exuded a depressed aura of doom and gloom being grey on the mind, grey on one’s thoughts with an outlook of a grey depressing world in the midst of all of this precipitation. “But at least it’s not snow, you don’t have to shovel it,” I heard over and over again. Yes, but saying this was really a defensive mechanism on one’s part, a sense of insecurity or rationalization by some idiot who chose, regrettably, to live in such a grey expanse of concrete within what is, in reality, an urban concrete rain forest. After a few days of this I wondered how anyone in their right mind could live here. The dampness of the place was bone chilling and mould worthy. But then again I guess home is where the heart is.

I don’t want to dwell too much on this place; needless to say I got a job at a paper, cardboard packaging company that had an international flavour to it. My sister and her partner welcomed me with open arms and made me feel at home. In their old beater, they took me on day trips around the city and surrounding country side. I must admit that when the sun did come out on those rare occasions, the city’s natural, geographical setting was spectacular. Only problem was that these occasions were as remote as a west coast hippy’s tendency to find a job. Me, I worked…

Go West Young Man…

My employment prospects, while numerous, were never really career worthy. In between jobs, or between a period of steady employment I would sometimes hit the road and do some travelling.

My first bit of travel occurred just after working for A.C. Wickman. Working there, polishing the fat wide ends of the tiny drill bits, I was let go just one day before my three month probation period ended. All of us rookies, who had all started at this factory on the same day, were all released, terminated, let go, made redundant, superfluous, surplus, unused, outmoded, unnecessary….fired. It didn’t matter how or why or what you said to describe your circumstances, situation or bit of bad luck. It all meant the same damn thing. Pogey! And how I love that word redundant!  Code for fired.  A nice English bit of linguistic mumbo jumbo, confusion-speak to tell someone that they’re sacked.

“You’re being made redundant” someone once told me. Great! I thought I was getting a promotion. Redundant… wow.

I decided to head to the west coast. By train! The Transcontinental…all the way to the Pacific coast. All by myself. Well not really by myself because when I got there I stayed with my penultimate oldest sister who was shacked up with a Japanese fellow. Her best girlfriend, my next door neighbour’s daughter, was also out there. You see, this was 1968, the year prior to the summer of love.  Yet 1966-69 was, in reality, the longest summer of love in history.  In the day, go west young man was hippie-speak for the wider, greener pastures of acid rain, or West Coast Bud. And I could stay with them until I got settled.

“Why not just stay here and be a stoner” someone once said. “Why go all the way out there?”

“Well, man, sunsets are really, really weird out there.”

“How so?” they queried. “You can’t see them anyway cause it’s always raining out there.

“Well man… because man, it’s like, wow man, out of site…there is no land anywhere west of there. Don’t you think that is soo cool. Soo out of site. Land I mean. You can’t see any land man. It’s out of site”

“Well yes” they thought of this stupid idiot. “Land is out of site west of there cause it’s all Pacific Ocean from there on in. Until you hit Japan.”

“Japan? Like wow man! Japan? Really? Man, that is so weird, so cool, that is so profound man.”

Good gawd I thought. The future of mankind!

My parents were fine with this although they were entirely tuned out of the reality of the drug culture. Unbeknownst to them they were letting their young son, at 17, to hit the long and winding, purple hazed road of personal freedom. I can say this now, looking back on those years, but at the time I was scared shitless.

I boarded coach on the continental at the very large cavernous platform of the enormous train station that served my hometown for over a hundred years. I could imagine then and there, at that very moment in time, how the soldiers of the Great War and World War Two felt while leaving the familiarity and warmth of families and loved ones for the trenches of France and Belgium, or the training fields of England, knowing full well that many of them would not be returning to the comforts of home. Why did I feel this way? Think this way? At this particular moment? I don’t really know but the images of troops on trains in cavernous train stations like this one just seemed to just pop into my head for no apparent reason. It was as if this thought had been ingrained into my psyche from such a young age that their individual and collective sacrifices paved the way for my very own freedom of choice at this very moment in time. As I was waving goodbye to my parents, just as the Transcontinental was slowly leaving the station, I could almost see or visualize the spectres of long lost loved souls roaming about this station waving goodbye to their friends, their families and their loved ones for the very last time, for eternity. These willowy images dissipating slowly like some mist of memory in the stillness of time.

It took over three days to reach the coast. I was dead tired as it was extremely difficult to sleep in coach. The scenery for a young lad was extremely boring. Trees, and lakes; trees and lakes; the occasional hill covered with trees then more lakes with trees around them. Muskeg, Muskox and Muskrat – it was rather musky out there with a lot of musky critters running or scampering through the musky forests of trees and lakes and streams. Then more trees and more lakes and more trees and… trees. Finally, no more trees. Just flat grassland. A sea, no an ocean of grass. More grass, then a lake, maybe a river bounded by grass on all sides, but no trees, just grass. As far as the eye could see. Grass! Sometimes a small rise would come into view, a small hill covered with grass. I dreamed of grass, of trees, of lakes of grassy knolls. It was weird man and I was no stoner.

Finally hills, as barren as Sister Mary Bernice, my elementary school principal, morphed into bigger hills which transformed into very large hills with deep, deep valleys. Valley’s covered with trees. The mountains, the Rocky Mountains: all the granite one could ever imagine. Most people see these mountains as majestic, beautiful, God’s handiwork, a reflection of his power: the very smallness of mankind in full view when measured against this spectacular backdrop. Yet all I could think of was granite. Enough granite to cover every kitchen counter top on the planet. But wait, that wouldn’t occur for another thirty years. What was I thinking?

Mountains, and more mountains, snow covered, nature’s monuments. Mountain passes that scoured a route for the early explorers: Lewis and Clark, Thompson, Fraser, Carson, DiCrapio, Morrison I thought. Unbelievable! Then darkness. What? These idiot trainers scheduled the very best transit, the transit through the mountains, to occur at night? Dopes! And they called us stoners! We would arrive at our west coast destination in the morning? Try to sleep I thought.

Waking up to a slow moving chugalug train inching its way it seemed into the outer burbs and run-down industrial sites of this so called magnificent coastal city. Magnificent in that it was a large metropolitan area surrounded be the majesty of the coastal mountain range and the Cascades: a nice name for a string of active, dormant and extinct volcanoes. Think of Mount St Helens, Rainier, Hood, Baker, Shasta and other non descript names for mountains that have the potential of reeking natural havoc, cascading death and destruction on an unsuspecting, unassuming public. These mountainous, frighteningly natural megaliths formed a formidable barrier to the north and east of the city’s metropolis but then offset by the calm waters of the Pacific Ocean bordering its northwest, west and south-western flanks. Only problem with this visual description was the curtain of rain, drizzle and mist that permeated my vision out of the coach’s dirty windows. These titans of nature and the oceanic beauty and seemingly calmness of the Pacific were really just figments of my active imagination in all of this rain, or as a described picture by some nature magazine article I read about the place.

My first impressions were not good. I found the outer fringes of this city in disarray: disorganized, third worldly in its ardour and its feel. Low rise buildings of various sizes and shapes with facades of every colour of the rainbow. Ugly purples, grotesque yellows and grim orange décor trims added to this canvass of dirty grey stucco buildings and rusted out arches and gantries of the numerous bridges that spanned the delta of a mighty river. With the dreariness of the rain and the drabness of the grey skies these colours and contours were transformed and morphed into a visual scene that reminded me of some hippy’s bad acid dream of an undulating kaleidoscope landscape of a barf induced wasteland. When we finally reached the western terminus of this national journey and could go no further, a young fellow like me could only sigh a sigh of relief that the torturous three and a half day trek in coach was finally over….