Saturday, September 21, 2002

What a day! Should I tell you about it? Well, sure. You’re not talking much. Haven’t signed the guestbook or anything (hint, hint) so it’s up to me.
Soooo, yesterday we kicked things off by getting up at four a.m. to catch and crate chickens. Roosters. You probably don’t even have chickens around to catch; you live in a city maybe or watched Chicken Run (I haven’t seen it) and became a vegetarian. We, however, raise ’em and catch ’em and I won’t tell you what happens to them next. It is not, although we tell them it is, a nice cruise.
Chickens caught and in the truck to, um, Carnival Cruises, I drove to one town to drop off a trumpeter for band practice then backtracked to Glencoe to be at the International Plowing (they don’t spell it Ploughing) Match for the 8 a.m. bucket set-up. Buckets? Yes, a handful of us booked off the day to sell Home Hardware buckets for the Rotary Club until about 4 p.m. Sounds easy, but like the cruise story we tell the chickens, lies were involved. The Rotary organizers told us these buckets sell like hotcakes and are all gone by noon. I pictured standing in a shady tent, handing out buckets and accepting toonies with a smile. Buckets do not sell like hotcakes. Sure, some people see them, want them, but most have to be “hard sold” at carnival barker pitch. That’s a lot of work on the fuel of one corn dog. Corn dog? The church lady food tents had lines going ’round their respective blocks. The corn dog booth had no lines. For a reason…
But back to the plot thread. At four p.m. we were promised a five p.m. cold beer, but at five I was to be dressed and practising to sing with the choir in another Plowing Match tent. With just a little time lag for the practice I might have had the beer and not cared with which hand I needed to manipulate my hat during “Mr. Sandman” (bring us a dream). I might have flipped the hat into the audience like a rock star. I might have had a voice this morning so I wouldn’t be silently typing on and on just now…
Oh, while I'm here I need to add a note about my unfairness to Oastler Lake, below: Our niece was regaling the family with the story of her canoe trip in late August and when she got to the stay-at-Oastler-Lake part and we were comparing notes, she said, "Wasn't that cool that the train tracks go right through the park?"

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