Following Fibbing Friday

 

Here follows a list of words from Pensitivity101 that you may or may not know. How would you define or describe them?

 

1. Meldrop
Meldrop is Canada’s 1 company producing maple syrup, located in Quebec. While many of us Anglophones have lost our manufacturing jobs, our pet Frogs still wander around in the woods, stabbing trees, and drinking their blood.

2. Snirl
Snirl is what my watch-dog does when he has a head cold.

3. Kiffle
My dog goes ‘round and ‘round in circles before she lies down.  She’s a watch-dog, winding herself up.  Kiffle is the small, hard bits of dog food that she deigns to eat – when she’s not cutely begging for table scraps, or treats.

4. Fox’s Cough
Who do you think my dog caught her cold from?

5. Sternutament
There’s the Old Testament, and the New Testament…. and then there’s the praise book that my Fire and Brimstone, fundamentalist Baptist preacher uses.  Even God says, “Dude, chill!”

6. Awvish
Means kinda, sorta impressive – but not really.

7. Presenteeism
This is a type of behavior favoured by some politicians.  Rather than stay in his office, near the phone and computer, dealing with ongoing business for the good of his electors, he’s attending every photo opportunity for visibility, re-election, and the advancement of his career.

If the wife or I don’t kill the other before we reach 60 years of marriage – he’ll be here, smiling into the cameras, to present us with a gilt-edged certificate of congratulation.  If the city changes the contract for dustbin collector – he’ll be present at the landfill to present the new company’s Operations Manager with a signed copy of the contract.  If Works crews refurbish the washrooms in the downtown park – he’ll be there to present the Parks Commissioner with a gold key to the new loo.  Be thankful for the new LED camera flash units.  Thousands of flash bulbs died to make him what he is.

8. Headwarch

This is a timepiece favoured by nurses.  It pins to the left lapel, and hangs upside down from a strap or ribbon.  An amply-endowed nurse need only nod her head forward to see the time.  Less full-figured females need to tip it up with one hand.

9. Kink-Haust
Kink-Haust is a very popular BDSM club, here in what used to be named Berlin, Ontario.  I never joined, because I don’t want to be tied in with them.

10. Alysm
Alsym is a fictitious company which exists solely to be a Fibbing Friday prompt for Pensitivity.  Its imaginary prospectus says that it is Wayne Industry’s largest competitor, and manufactures MacGuffins.

Why The Case For God Matters

I thought “The Case For God” might be Coors Light, but what do I know?

“The best way to find out the purpose of a widget, is to ask the manufacturer.” So simple and yet so profound.

I have asked the manufacturer, many times, what the purpose of the widget is. I have received no answer from the top. I have received innumerable unbelievable claims from His many and varied sales reps, who stand to make a 10% commission.

Manufacturer: Please read the manual before inquiring. Remember…all claims are unbelievable when you don’t believe them. Most of our sales reps work for free while some do make a 10% “commission” to cover overhead costs…but since you didn’t spend a dime on anything, this is of no concern to you. As the manufacturer, so far you’ve only inquired many times and harassed the sales reps. Problems in many areas cannot be addressed if you refuse to take the necessary steps already directed by the manufacturer. Basically….it’s your fault. When you’re ready to put into action the things already directed by the sales reps….we can move forward with your request. Thank you and have a nice day!

With the best of intentions, you just don’t see the problem.  I have read the manual – carefully, intently, repeatedly, over many years.  I understand the sales reps’ confusion.  Compared to it, Ikea’s is a paragon of clarity.  I have never harassed the reps, although they often harass me.  You, and the reps, would like to believe, and have others believe, that all the claims are identical.

I would love to take the “necessary steps”.  It’s just that it is quickly clear that competing reps’ claims are contradictory, and mutually exclusive.  Even when they agree, the promised quality and delivery of the final product violates observed reality, and arrives, at the exact frequency as blind chance.  The Nigerian Prince can do that well.  How then can I, or anyone, know which claims and conditions are true, that we may follow them??

I know that I am only a potential customer, but I dare to suggest that you cut back the budget of the Promotional Department, stop offering a free, magical prize in every glitzy package, and, instead, have Production grind out solid, reliable product.

I envy your writing skills and ability to analogize so impressively. But I can only point out that our “product” came to die in order to make it possible for all of our customers who choose to accept it to enjoy an (eternal) lifetime warranty. He then left an empty grave behind. If you have a proposed explanation for how that happened that makes sense of more of the evidence for His explanation, then please submit it. Best regards, A Rep.

That’s a debate for another day. Why not solve these problems first?? It might lend credence to any additional claims.  While there ‘should be’ only one basic model, far too many representatives, with or without the knowledge or authorization of Head Office, take it upon themselves to create a whole customized ‘Product Line,’ adding non-standard options, and tighter lease restrictions.  They can’t all be right, but they can all be wrong.

They urge me to take their product on faith.  Faith is the excuse that people give, when they don’t have a good reason to believe.  If they had a good reason, they would give it. If and when all the infighting has ceased, and there is one reputable path to truth, then, and only then, will I consider buying into this.

No, your entire prospect for enjoying our product depends entirely upon how you respond to this specific question. We certainly hope that you will take full advantage of our product but whether or you do, depends upon your response on this question. Best regards.

Did I miss something?? Which specific unspecified question would that be?? Is Jesus Divine? Is Jesus the Son of God? Is Jesus God? Is God one part – or three – or more? And we haven’t even got to the ‘Did He actually  exist? Did He perform miracles? and, Do we have to dab Evian on our foreheads, and stick our left knee out when we go to visit him?’  The only question seems to be whether or not I will accept your specific delusion.
Even the architects of the Tower of Babel put down a solid foundation before they started building toward God. You could at least do the same.

Flash Fiction #225

PHOTO PROMPT © C.E.Ayr

ONE-WAY STREET

He gave his life to the company, or would have, if they’d let him. He joined when he was 45, and planned to retire with a full 20-year pension, just as he turned 65. Things didn’t work out.

Once upon a time, manufacturing companies made things. Nowadays, corporations made PROFITS, at all costs. 2-1/2 years before his official retirement, his plant was declared –not unprofitable – merely superfluous.

He and 450 of his co-workers were unceremoniously dumped, like so much trash, desperately searching for employment, while the Vice-President in Charge of Expense-Cutting took a two million-dollar bonus. So much for loyalty. 😦 😯

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story

Novel Shipwrecks

I read a trivia blog about shipwreck novels, and left a comment about Great Lakes shipwrecks, including Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and one that was found in the sand of my home town’s beach. When the writer asked for details, I emailed him this double-barreled story.

65 years ago, there were a couple of boards which protruded from the sand, at one spot on our lovely beach. We kids tried to pull them out, but they were obviously attached to something heavy. Eventually, they disappeared – storm damage? Town works crew cut them for tourist safety?

About twenty years ago, a couple of residents became interested in history and restoration. The abandoned lighthouse-keeper’s house on the offshore island was repaired, and little boat tours began. Someone must have remembered the boards on the beach. A group of archeologists from the University of Toronto arranged a dig. They had to design and build a coffer-dam to keep the waves out as they dug up that section of beach.

Sure that they had something physical, they began searching the written records. Soon they found the story. Once upon a time, my home-town was a bustling Lake Port. Prairie grain for bakeries, iron ore for steel mills and lumber for construction were unloaded and shipped by train below Niagara Falls.

The wreck on our beach turned out to be an 87 foot sailboat freighter. “She” was the ‘Sir Robert McAllister,’ making what might have been the last trip of the fall, before the lake iced up in 1887. Unloaded, they set sail ahead of an autumn storm. Heading back north, they barely got outside the safe harbor when the winds raged. Unloaded, top-heavy, empty and bobbing like a cork, she couldn’t maneuver, and was driven onto the beach.

No hands were lost, but the storm pounded her to flinders. Our Lake is not an ocean, but I remember body-surfing 6 and 8-foot storm waves. Little was left above the keel. She held no cargo, and what was left wasn’t worth salvaging. She was just left to rot, and subsequent storms piled sand over her.

The other local shipwreck that I wanted to tell you about – wasn’t – quite. There used to be a prosperous fishing trade out of our river harbor, until they overfished themselves out of business. Each day, six days a week, 4 forty-foot, enclosed, steel fishing boats would go out a couple of miles.

One spring, the lake ice had broken up and had moved offshore, drifting slowly down the middle of the lake, toward Detroit. Finally, two miles of ice on the river broke up, and thundered out to join it. One fish boat owner, whose craft and crew of three had been unemployed for almost 4 months, got the boat winched back into the water, with plans to go out the next day.

The weather was clear, if cold, and away they went. They set nets, waited for fish migration, and pulled the nets back in. While all this was happening, a spring gale blew up, pushing all that ice back in past them from the west. By the time they headed for home, it had piled up against the shore in a wall 15/20 feet high, a mile out from the river harbor.

As they looked for a solution, more ice piled up behind them, wedging them against the barrier, ice floes 4 – 5 – 6 feet thick, as big as the boat. Soon, the increasing pressure tilted them, to almost 45 degrees. Fearing that the boat would be crushed or capsized, they decided to unship the lifeboat, and push it like a sled across the valleys of the ice-field.

About halfway to shore, the youngest crew-member, a 19-year-old nicknamed Zip, lost his footing – and his hold on the lifeboat rail – and plunged through a small gap into the freezing water. Two days later, when the weather had cleared, and the ice had moved offshore again, the owner used a motorboat to chase his fish boat two miles out, and 8 miles south, with a cargo of frozen fish. It was slightly dinged and scraped, but the rudder and propeller weren’t damaged.

Zip’s body was found a couple of weeks later. The ship didn’t even sink, but still cost a crewman’s life. The town has a small park, where the river meets the lake. They added a memorial to all those lost to the lake, and specifically, Zip.

***

Somehow, I conflated the stories of the lumber freighter that I researched for an earlier post about the decline and fall of my home-town as a Lake Port and the change from a transportation-driven economy to a manufacturing-based one, with a previous War Of 1812 warship-turned freighter, named H.M.S. General Hunter. The light-as-a-cork lumber boat was repaired and refloated. The repurposed warship, still heavy with cannon, got buried. Click above to read her story.

 

A To Z – History And Hi-Way Market

  

About 125 years ago, just at the turn of the 20^th Century, in the heyday of Ontario manufacturing, Kitchener was not yet a city.  It was still a town, a booming, industrial town, full of Germanic Mennonites and Pennsylvania Dutch, called Berlin.

A bit over a mile (a long way in those days) north of ‘City Hall’, toward Waterloo our Twin City, two companies were established, and two buildings were erected. The nearest was Kaufman Footwear, making slippers, shoes and boots.  A square, three-storey structure went up.  Over the next 50 years, three more additions produced a plant a half a block wide and a city block long, right where the main street crossed the old highway.  At its height, it employed hundreds of men (and later women).

I applied for a job as a lab assistant in 1965, when I first came here, but was turned down. I worked for Kaufman for two years, 25 years later, after they’d moved storage and most of the manufacturing to a new plant at the edge of town.

Another block further north, a rubber company was formed. This was the plant I retired from.  It began as Merchant’s Rubber, then became Dominion Rubber, then Uniroyal bought it, and later amalgamated to become Goodrich/Uniroyal, though it never produced tires.

The asshole brother-in-law worked there for almost 25 years. After he left, I joined it as Becker’s Lay-Tech, then it became Perstorp Components, and finally, Collins and Aikman drove it and its sister plant down the street where my brother worked for Dominion Textile in 1965/66, into bankruptcy.  During its Uniroyal heyday, there were 3600 people working around three shifts.  It didn’t grow as neatly as Kaufman.  Over 50 years there were 13 ‘buildings’ which became another half-block wide X block-long X 4-storey plant.

A mile further north, in the open fields and meadows between the two cities, dozens – hundreds – of stout little homes were built to house all the men who walked or biked to work at these plants. The wife was born in a sturdy brick house, three doors north of the imaginary boundary of Waterloo.

This neighborhood was once called the North Ward, home to the blue-collar families who worked in these factories. The North Ward is slipping away.  The area is called Mid-Town now, and it’s the up-and-coming place for young professionals to move to.

Of course, not everyone in the subdivision could be a mindless plant drone. Her father built a barber shop a block and a half from the Uniroyal plant, and raised 9 kids by cutting hair for men going to or from work.

Two nearby young brothers tried plant work, but found they were more interested in installing and adjusting machinery, so they started a millwrighting/rigging firm in their dad’s garage, to service the two firms. Years later they built a facility further out of town than the Kaufman plant.

I worked for them for two years, and the engineer down the hall, was the guy who didn’t hire me at Kaufman. The structure is now the plastics plant where the son works, and they rent warehouse/assembly space at the nearby ex-Kaufman building, where I once cut shoe/boot parts.

The man whose Portuguese wife sent him to work with delicious sandwiches, started providing them for a friend – or two – or more – soon dozens. He quit the company and started his own catering business, eventually stocking the vending machines, and running the three-shift, hot meal cafeteria in the plant he no longer worked at.

The greatest success story was the local grocer. He also couldn’t take the plant work, but had an inspiration.  If it was a mile walk for the men to go to work, it was a lot further trudge, dragging children, to go shopping.

He turned his front living-room into a little ‘corner store’, when such a thing didn’t exist locally, and stocked it with the essentials. GENIUS!  He had a captive audience.  Soon, he expanded the ‘living-room,’ and then added on….and added on again.

Then he had another flash of genius. In the late 1950s, more families owned cars, and the rise of shopping malls was beginning.  In order to get around an hours-of-opening bylaw, a mile outside the city limit, he built Hi-Way Market.  In the days of two-lane highways, you could just drive out to the A & W, and turn left across the road.  Today, it’s two exit ramps and an access road.

This was the Costco/Price Club of its day, 20 years before Costco was born. He erected a huge big barn of a building, as big as any Costco.  Like Costco, he sold everything, and much of it in bulk – canned and boxed goods, produce, meat, bakery, clothing, hardware, electrical.  He had a sit-down lunch bar where both the wife and her brother worked, and a postal, and a banking facility.

There were actually two floors, but much of the upstairs was used for storage and staff/administration. He put a photography department up there, which later went independent, and still exists in town.  Aside from the main-floor diner counter, he tried a slightly upscale restaurant upstairs.  It became famous in the region, as The Charcoal Steakhouse.  It built a fancy new home a block further up the street recently, when the original building was torn down.

So much history! So much local commerce emerged from the wife’s neighborhood.  The Kaufman plant is now a preppy downtown condo, and my C&A plant had a tiara added and is home to a bunch of Google gremlins.

And so, the ugly duckling has become a swan.    😉

 

Flash Fiction #91

PHOTO PROMPT © J Hardy Carroll

HOW DRY I AM

Mankind is a blight upon the face of the Earth. I believe the line in The Matrix which says Humanity is like a virus.

This was a nice little town, until someone drilled a large-bore water well. Even then, it was happiness and prosperity for thirty years – till the aquifer went dry.

Then there was no more water for drinking or manufacturing. The water-dome collapsed, the soil compacted, and entrances at ground level, now needed ladders to get up into.  People moved away, plants and animals died, and the town, with its proud history and spirit, died with them.

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

 

Mistaken Identity

I recently read a post by a young woman who is a receptionist for a small firm.  She handles the few walk-ins, directs incoming emails and deals with the constant phone calls.  She wrote of the strange and wonderful telephone calls she has to deal with.

Like being a greeter at Wal-Mart, this is a job I could not handle.  I like to talk to people, but I don’t suffer idiots well.  By about coffee-break time the first morning, I’d want to injure someone.  Since I couldn’t get at any of the fools on the phone, it would probably be the loud blonde in accounting, with the nasal, Fran Drescher voice, who snaps her gum as she chews.

The lady with the post estimates that she knows 83% (what an interesting number 😕 ) of her regular callers by their voice, even before they identify themselves.  That’s a useful ability to have, but it should not be relied on unquestioningly.

It’s only good telephone etiquette, and business sense to identify yourself on the phone.  When I worked as a Purchasing Agent, I always did so when I called someone – until that fateful day.  I had called a supplier one day, and told him who I was.  He replied, “Oh, you don’t have to tell me who you are.  You have a very recognizable voice.”

Once upon a time, my company required a small amount of…widgets, ASAP.   We needed them by 11 AM the next day, to allow assembly time, to make a 4 PM shipment.  I called a supplier, and in the excitement, merely started off with, “Hi Bill, could you do me a big favor?”

He replied, “Oh hi.  Yeah, sure!  What can I do for you?”  I told him what I needed, and how soon.  He put me on hold, and picked up again in a couple of minutes.  “You’re in luck.  The machine running that item is in production right now, and we have a bit of extra raw material.  I’ll tell the operator to run it out.  We’ll load your stuff tonight, and you’ll be the second stop for the truck tomorrow.  You should have them by 8 or 9 o’clock.”

I gave him a Purchase Order number, and promised to mail the confirmation.  The next day, when I arrived about 8, they weren’t there – no biggy.  They weren’t there at 9, when I took a washroom break – Hmmm.  They weren’t in by 10, when I called the receiver – startin’ to worry.  They hadn’t arrived by 11, when the receiver called me in a panic.

I finally got through to the supplier about 11:30.  “What happened to my widgets?  You promised they’d be here much earlier!”

“Oh, they’re there.  I knew how important they were to you, so I asked the driver to call me when they were unloaded.  He has a bill of lading, signed by your receiver at 8:37 AM.”

“But they’re not here!  The receiver just phoned me.”

“They must be there.  Maybe he unloaded them and just forgot.  Just call him back, Bob, and ask him….”

“BOB!!??  I’m not Bob!  This is Archon!”

“Oh shit.  You and Bob sound so much alike.”

He didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell.  The other company’s receiver unquestioningly unloaded parts they’d never previously ordered, on a waybill with a purchase order number not in their series.  The truck driver got paid overtime, because he had to go back and reload, and deliver to our plant.  And we still got a non-compliance late/short shipment demerit.

If it doesn’t say Styrofoam SM®, it isn’t, but you can be sure you’re getting the real Archon, because every one of my babbles is clearly identified as “Archon’s Den. ™”

 

Autoprompt – What’s In Your Fridge?

PROLOGUE

When I saw the above autoprompt, I wondered, “Who would want to know what’s in my fridge?” Then I remembered, if we go to a party at someone else’s house and use the washroom, we always nose through the medicine cabinet. Hmm, Rogaine and hemorrhoid cream – he’s got problems at both ends. So yeah, you know you wanna know.

It is said that, the poor eat calories, the middle class eat nutrition, and the rich eat presentation.

Even when I worked in offices after we were first married, we were still only one short half-step up from being living-under-a-bridge poor, so calories were important. I always wanted to eat – well. Later, when I took off the shirt and tie, and donned the blue-collar to work in manufacturing plants, calories were important. The wife watched a lot of TV cooking shows, and bought and read a lot of cookbooks.

The wife of a couple down the street often complained about her husband’s food wants – meat and potatoes, meat and potatoes, seven nights a week. At our house, it was homemade pizza, perogies and potato pancakes, soups, stews and spaghetti, Chinese food, tacos, stroganoff, goulash, tourtière, schnitzel. One time we had menus for seven weeks in advance, with no duplicates.

To make this dizzying array of global dishes requires quite a varied supply of raw materials. This need explains the wife’s 36 place spice rack, and the 24 spot herb rack, with more in the cupboard, and a few growing fresh, on the back deck. Almost everything we have, because of personal preference, allergies and cooking options, we have multiple versions of.

Starting above the stove is a cupboard full of cooking alcohol – red wine for pasta sauce, white for chicken and turkey dishes, Chinese cooking wine, sake for a couple of Japanese recipes, and brandy to soak Christmas cake in. The only stuff that I drink is the occasional bit of Crème de Menthe on crushed ice, when I’ve overindulged in rich food.

Come the apocalypse, the basement storeroom will feed us for three months. Aside from cookies, crackers and canned goods, we have 12 sizes and shapes of pasta and noodles, 2 brands of tomato sauce, plus marinara and Alfredo sauce.

There are usually about 36 two-liter(2-quart) bottles of Pepsi, and ten or twelve 710ml(20 oz.) six-packs. We keep a 30-pack of bottled water ahead, to replace the one in use under the cats’ feeding stand upstairs, and one or two gallons of distilled, as well as a dozen cans of ginger ale.

There are 4 types of rice – long grain for plain white rice, Basmati rice for body, Jasmine rice for sticky rice dishes, and instant Minute Rice. We have all-purpose flour, cake & pastry flour, bread flour, specially-fine-ground blending flour for thickening soups, sauces and gravy, rye flour for making pumpernickel rolls, and spelt flour, which like rye, is not wheat-based, and suitable for the allergic grandson.

Currently there are 20 pounds of Superior, white potatoes for boiled and mashed, 20 pounds of Russets, which make great French fries and potato salad, and 5 pounds of new baby whites in the ‘beer fridge’ for suet roasting and skin-on salad.

Onions include, cooking, Spanish, sweet white, occasionally a red onion, a bag of perishable Vidalias in the fridge, shallots, which like leeks aren’t quite onions, and green onions, in the upstairs fridge, which I’ll get to next post, after we’ve had dinner.

Poor overworked, under-appreciated beer fridge! No actual beer in it, so BrainRants better give me at least 24 hours warning of any surprise visit. Instead, it has 4 varieties of soft drinks, several flavors of coffee creamers and salad dressings there’s no room for upstairs, three dozen eggs, two more dozen pickled, extra bags and blocks of cheeses, and sour cream and margarine, so we don’t run out upstairs.

Besides the onions and baby potatoes, there’s a cabbage and a half, a large broccoli, an extra lettuce and a multi-pack of romaine. It contains the son’s individual yogurts and rice puddings for work meals – and leftovers….Yum! Yum!

A Yankee society doyenne imperiously informed her Georgia plantation-owning host that, “Up north, we think breeding is everything.” He replied, “We like it down here too, but we got other hobbies.” I’ve never run into another home which revolves quite as much around food as ours does. It has to. It can’t escape the gravity well. We read – a lot. We watch some television, and we allow computers to suck our time and insult our intelligence.

If we’re not shopping for food, or storing food away, or cooking food, or eating food, we’re concealing evidence tucking leftover food away, often in the fridge upstairs. Come back next time, when I finally get around to describing its interior, and explain why we had to reinforce the kitchen floor.   🙄

#488