Posted on June 7, 2014 under Storytelling with no comments yet

Son Peter ready to attack #1

 

 

“So keep on playing those mind games together,

Doing the ritual dance in the sun”

Mind Games by John Lennon

 

I start thinking about it after a pit stop at the Wreck Cove General Store.

My love affair with Cape Breton has been life-long.  My family made regular trips to St. Peter’s to visit Janie, a relative and one of the toughest and most remarkable women I have ever met.  She did the Terry Fox walk well into her nineties.  When you stopped at Janie’s for tea, it was an all-out buffet.

I have travelled the island from tip to tip.  There are so many amazing places.  One of my favorites is Smelt Brook, for sheer beauty.  But the one that grips me like a vise and won’t let go is Ingonish.  As a teenager I played in a band at the St. Peter’s Hall for a couple of summers.  I have run in the Cabot Trail relay.  However, it is The Cape Breton Highlands Links that continues to intrigue me and mesmerize me ever since I first stepped onto those hallowed grounds nearly 50 years ago.  If you are a golfer, this is as close to paradise as you are going to get.

I have been fortunate to play golf on more than one continent and experienced some terrific layouts.  But when someone asks me my favorite course, I always come back to this golf course in the Cape Breton Highlands.

I love the scenery.  It is not unusual to encounter a moose and every other imaginable form of wildlife.  The mountains and rivers meandering through the heavily forested landscape provide the perfect backdrop for a “good walk spoiled”, as Mark Twain once opined.  Nothing can spoil a walk for me on this course.  With one exception.

The first hole at Ingonish got inside my head 50 years ago and I can’t exorcise it.

I once attended a conference where one of the speakers (a psychiatrist, I think!) put on a session about visualization and how we could train our mind to overcome fear of certain situations.  I took the opportunity, while in a semi hypnotic state, to let go of the demons that have plagued me for decades.  After the session, I was convinced that I would conquer number 1.  Fat chance.

When I stand on the first tee at this iconic course, all I see is trouble.  Forest left, forest right and a fairway that looks the width of a bowling alley lane.  With no practice area, this is your first shot of the day unless you try and brace yourself with a wee dram of single malt.  And did I mention the wind?  The prevailing wind is always in your face.

I love the drive from Antigonish to Ingonish.  When you come around the bend before reaching the Englishtown Ferry, you catch the first glimpse of the Highlands and the heart begins to race ever so slightly.

You can’t go to the Highlands without a stop at the Wreck Cove General Store.  They have the best lobster sandwiches on the planet and back in the day, Mike Crimp held court over his castle.  He was larger than life.  It is when I leave the store and stare ahead at Smokey that my hands start to sweat, just a bit.  I start thinking about the first hole and the mind games begin.

When I was younger I was a reasonably good golfer.  I always felt that I had the mental part of the game down to a tee.  But as sure as the sun rises in the east, I always got a 6 or a 7 on the first hole at Ingonish.  I have totally psyched myself out over the years.  I expect to get a double bogey on the first hole and rarely am I disappointed.  Ditto for number 2, which is no cake walk either.

If I ever play the course again, I think I will start on the 19^th hole and work my way backwards around the course, finishing at number 1.  At least the first shot of the day will be a winner.

 

Posted on June 3, 2014 under Storytelling with no comments yet

Do you have garden envy?

 

 

“Inch by inch, row by row,

Gonna make this garden grow …”

The Garden Song – John Denver

 

Back in the 1970’s I lived in Victoria, B.C.   It is easily one of Canada’s most beautiful cities.  The climate is temperate, allowing people to do outdoor activities year round.  If you are a recreation enthusiast this is practically Nirvana.  You can walk, jog, run, and hike in some of the most stunning scenery imaginable.  And if you are a gardener you are in seventh heaven.

What I remember most about Victoria is that people were crazy about their gardens.  Within the city limits flower beds were the obvious choice, but you didn’t have to go far to see some world class vegetable patches.  And if you didn’t have a green thumb, you could always drive 30 minutes outside of the city and witness the ever stunning Butchart Gardens.

My first feeble attempt at gardening was in Whitelaw, Alberta.  I was the principal of a small, rural elementary school and I lived in the teacher’s house right next door.   Whitelaw is a part of the Peace River country, with farmers renowned for their prowess in growing varieties of wheat, grains and oilseed crops.  I thought I should demonstrate my community spirit by planting a small vegetable garden behind the house.  I carefully prepared the soil in late spring and was all set to plant what would surely be a bumper crop of peas, beans and potatoes.

And then black fly season unleashed all of its fury.  Rather than risk being carted away by man sized insects, I simply went out one evening, and instead of planting seed, I planted a white flag.  I went to Hemstock’s IGA the next day and bought my veggies there.

Not long after we were married and had moved into our first house, my wife suggested that we plant some flowers and shrubs and put in a small garden.  I have always been open to new things and tend to attack novelty with zeal.  The only thing lacking was, and still is, the commensurate proficiency to carry out the task.  Early on in the game I was relegated as a helper.  I was allowed to spread manure (still doing that!) and could safely scoop mulch into bags at the local nursery.  But anything requiring imagination and competence was left to my wife.

Did I mention cutting branches off of shrubs?  I think that I overdid the pruning a few times.  Scratch that off my list of skills.

I used to do some weeding but two things have conspired that have forced me to give up this form of honest toil: I can’t distinguish weeds from non-weeds and I have a bad back.  Now I can no longer kneel in church or in the garden.   Not that I am allowed to weed anymore as the following tale will explain.

 

A few years ago our kind and talented son-in-law built us raised beds for our backyard garden.  He planted the first round of fruit and vegetables for us – an amazing array of corn, peas, beans, tomatoes, greens, onions, strawberries and even watermelon!   I was mowing the lawn one day and noticed straggly weeds hanging over the sides of one of the gardens.  I thought that I would do the gardener a favour by pulling them out as I lifted them out of the way of the mower.  Ta ta, watermelon!

I was chatting about all things gardening with one of the staff the other day.  I explained my woeful ineptitude.  When I asked her about her knack for digging in the dirt, she looked up from her computer and said, “Our plants and shrubs have to have the will to live in order to survive.”

Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad.

 

Posted on May 31, 2014 under Storytelling with 8 comments

Peek a boo. Alison sees you.

 

 

“Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find …”

Matthew Chapter 7

One of my favorite childhood games was “hide and seek”.  Do you remember the days when kids spent most of their free time outdoors?  Some would say that those were truly the good old days.  If you were “it” you hugged a tree and counted to ten while your friends ran off in all directions.  It didn’t take too much time or ingenuity to track down one of your buddies.

I recently played a slightly different version of this age old game.  We recently put our big old house on the market after realizing, once and for all, that the kids won’t be moving back in with us.   In preparation for visits from potential buyers we de-cluttered the house.  This being our third house sale, we consider ourselves somewhat experts when it comes to fooling people into thinking that we are always neat and tidy.  Like cooking a turkey dinner together, getting organized for a house viewing is a wonderful piece of choreography.  My wife and I each have separate job descriptions.  I do my thing.  She does hers.  And when I stray off course, a nod or a raised eyebrow is all it takes to get me refocused.

One of her jobs is to remove just about every vestige of well-used household paraphernalia and stash it away, lest people think we actually live in the house.  After a successful open house or private showing, things get a little testy as I play my private game of hide and seek.  Where are the aprons?  In the dining room closet, of course.  And how about the toaster?  Why, any sensible person would automatically look under the sink.  The salt and pepper shakers are carefully concealed in a cupboard, along with yesterday’s newspaper and a handful of screwdrivers.  It’s a good thing that we don’t have cats anymore – they are difficult to conceal.  It usually takes a few days of playing the Hardy Boys, but eventually normalcy returns.

There are other forms of hide and seek.  When I was single, I did my own laundry.  Still do by times.  Back then, all of my socks were white.  Nerd personified.  But I’ll tell you something really cool.  Matching socks was never a problem.  A package of 12 pairs of white socks would last me forever, and I never had to think much about finding partners for my socks.  This was BK.  Before kids.  All of a sudden, there was a sock explosion and matching socks became as difficult as figuring out how the Egyptians built the pyramids.  I was the designated “sock matcher” and once every two years or so I would round up all the singles, toss them in a bag and throw them out or take them to the Opportunity Shop.  I figured that someone else might throw in a similar bag and you might just end up with a bunch of matches.  But as surely as I did this, the mate of a recently discarded sock would suddenly show up in the laundry basket.

But if you’re really interested in driving yourself around the bend, try finding the right lid for your Tupperware containers.  It does not matter how many of these you own, finding a perfect match defies the laws of physics.  Even if the lid looks like it should fit, it won’t quite snap shut and you will tear the house apart trying the find the second half of the elusive combo.  I know some people have gone so far as to number their plastic containers and lids so that even a pre-schooler has a fighting chance of getting the perfect match.

And if this doesn’t work and you’re still trying to find the elusive lid, just try some unlikely place like the china cabinet.  It could be right beside the oven mitts that were hidden there during the open house.