Perspectives
ruminations about nothing much
15 - March - 2025
The north facing deck on my shack here in Alberta looks out over the river and down onto the Pro Shop parking lot. Nice and shady in the summer.
The other day, a nice warm March afternoon, as I sat pondering, I noticed, not for the first time, that no one seems to buy colored cars anymore. Oh, there are a few, but not many.
When I was a kid Television was black and white. Parking lots were color. Now my TV is so bright and clear and colorful I can see the little dimples on the golf ball and count the grains of sand when Jordan Spieth blasts out of a trap. Modern TV is amazing. As a contrast parking lots are now dull and lifeless. Black, grey and white. The odd silver tossed in from Germany.
In 1967 Cadillac offered an astonishing 21 various colors on its de Ville line up. Names like Capri Aqua, Pinecrest Green, Baroque Gold and Admiralty Blue. If you opted for a Pontiac Muscle car, the G.T.O. let’s say, there were almost two dozen shades for you as well: Crystal Turquoise, Expresso Brown, Carousel Red (orange) and more.
Over at Chrysler the Plymouth brand and the Dodge brand shared colors but had differing names. There was an orange that Plymouth called ‘Vitamin C’ and the Dodge boys called ‘Go-Mango’. The purple (yes, they had a purple) at Plymouth was ‘In-Violet’ and at Dodge ‘Plum Crazy. Pink (?) in Plymouth speak was ‘Moulin Rouge’ while over at Dodge you would order ‘Panther Pink’.
The Ford Pony Car, Mustang, could be covered in Grabber Green, Gulfstream Aqua, Indian Fire Red, Meadowlark Yellow and more and more and more.
Why no more colored cars? Were people happier fifty or sixty years ago? Yes, they were, but can that explain such variety of color? Is it less expensive to paint a truck black rather than blue? Do people like depressing colors? Have people become dull?
I am baffled.
29 - March - 2025
There are no new letters in my stories. I stuck with the same old 26 that most writers use. The same is true for most of the words. There may be a few you don’t recognize, ones I made up, but for the most part they are just everyday words.
Some of the sentences are borrowed as well. I doubt if I am the first person to ever write ‘She looked at Sammy’ or ‘If there was one thing most could agree on, it was the burning of the autumn leaves.’
Where I hope to add value is in the arrangement of the letters and the words and the sentences. The stories. The people.
In the ‘Somebody Else’s’ series the characters are imaginary. But they live in a real world, a world of chaos. The late sixties and the early seventies were an odd time. Much happened. The question I pose is, ‘How would an almost normal town full of almost normal people react to a changing world while going through the inevitable downs and ups of everyday life’?
The ‘Somebody Else’s’ books are not commercial in nature. There is no format, no template, no blueprint. You will not find a slightly flawed hero, along with his faithful sidekick, solving crime or questing after some personal Holy Grail. Each book is a year in the life. A set amount of time. What happens happens. That’s it.
This fictional world is interrupted every so often with the news of the day. There are riots and airplane crashes and assassinations and, the proverbial elephant in room, Vietnam. Or, as Captain Sammy’s wife Becky would say, Viet-Fucking-Nam.
Which brings me neatly to my ‘Reader Warning’. If you lived through those days, as I did, you might, if you are honest, remember the common use of homophobic and racial slurs. And foul language. We were a backward lot. But slowly, we grew.
I hope you enjoy the trip back in time.
22 - June - 2025
I find the winter Solstice exciting. For days in advance, I’ll think about it. Why? because the solstice marks the day the nights get shorter, and the daylight grows longer. I’ll even pretend to notice that extra minute. I won’t, but I’ll pretend I did. In truth it takes about ten days for any significant change. But that is A-OK. The dreariness is departing and that is all that matters.
For some reason the summer solstice, like the one just passed, has no effect on me. I may notice one day that it is nearly the end of June. Big Deal. Who cares? Not me. It will be mid-August by the time the dwindling light reminds me that Autumn is nigh.
And Autumn is darn nice anyway. Autumn reminds me of raking and burning leaves back in Niagara on the lake. What pure joy that was. The fun of the raking. The smell of the leaves as they burned. The neighbours. Up and down our street (Prideaux) the folks would all be out. Across the Street was Dr. Tranter and family. Next door, to the west, were the Ball sisters (I did their leaves). Kitty-Corner lived Mr. Allen. He was a French teacher out at the high school. He had the prettiest daughters. I remember Jennifer and I think the older one might have been named Roberta, but don’t quote me on that. Mr. Allen was also the first man in town to buy a Dodge Charger. That car was so cool!
To the east lived Mr. & Mrs. Saunders. He worked at one of the boat factories, Shepherd Boats. Next to them was the MacMillan family. The oldest boy was named Del and the daughter, maybe a year or two younger than yours truly, was Rhonda. Next door, further east, was Lord Mayor Gerry Wool. His house was huge. At the far end of our block was a guy from the radio station up in St. Catharines. No recall as to his name but he had a giant Oldsmobile Toronado. Kitty-Corner form the Oldsmobile lived the Acaster’s. Pretty sure they were rich too. They had a boy named Ben and he would have been a year older than I was.
Directly across the street from us lived the Magder’s. They owned and operated a clothing store, Magder’s Family Store. To their east was a rich lady. She wrote Romance novels. I sure wish I could remember her name. I think she hired a guy to rake and burn her leaves.
The famous Derbyshire golfing family, you may have read about them in ‘Illegal Smile’, were on Prideaux as well, off to the west about a block from the Ball sisters. So was Davy Jack and his bride Kay. Mr. Jack, a member at the club, had a 1969 De Ville. I’d bet he was no more than five-six. He looked like a little kid behind the wheel of his big Cadillac. Nice man.
Gosh, the names keep coming to me. It’s as if the memory of Autumns leaves won’t go away. I close my eyes and there it is. That wonderful smell. The government won’t allow the burning of leaves anymore. But I can still smell them.
Mixed in with the smell of the leaves was another smell, a great one, that the good folks at Greaves Jam produced. Every fall the tomatoes would come in and be turned, through some magic formula, into sauce. We could smell that sauce bubbling away during recess at Parliament Oak school four blocks away.
Autumns only problem is the company it keeps – winter. Nothing against winter really. It is pretty. But it lasts too darn long. Winter should arrive on December one and exit on Ground Hog Day. Winter is like a guest you are excited to see, to catch up with, a guest that stays one day too long.
But today, as I write this, it is summer. These perfect days will drift away like days tend to do, anonymously. Soon it will be college football time. Then, a month too soon, the advertisers will start in on Christmas.
And around and around we go. Each trip around the sun takes us further and further from our days as kids. The days where the raking of leaves and the burning of same seemed to last forever.