Shoestring High

Anyone that knows me, knows that I have an addiction with shoe string licorice laces. As far back as I can remember I have. Although I had my favorite, which was green spearmint, I also never turned away black, red and purple. Unfortunately living in the States, there is no access to this delightful and delectable treat so I have to be satisified in bringing back rather large amounts of it when I return to Canada every year. I have been known to bring back several bags and most people do not get why I would do such a thing, but it is mainly a treat that I enjoyed when I was growing up.



Living in Waseca, it was not like you could actually go to the neighborhood store and buy what you want. There was only to 2 places in the Village that you could actually buy junk food and that was the Coop grocery store and other place was the Poolroom. No idea what the business was really called but a family of French immigrants owned it Their name was Gagnon. The Poolroom was a business that had several pool tables in it, a barbers chair and a nice selection of candy. It helped that it was only across the train tracks from the school, making it really handy to tend to the desire of licorice. When it was lunch hour, we were able to go wherever we wanted and most times it was to the Poolroom to get more licorice.



When I first started buying it, you could get 2 long laces for a penny. The shoestring laces hung over a bar in a cabinet and they just pulled them off, counted them up and put them in a nice brown paper bag, just like the alcohol ! So 50 cents gave you 100 hundred laces that you could Overdose on. Today, if you can find them, it will cost you over 2 bucks for perhaps 20. Not sure how many are in a bag but not nearly enough. What a high !! So good and so bad for you.



I have to admit, I was hooked on them and have been ever since. Maybe it is a good job that I cannot get them anymore except once a year. I mean, after all - one does not want to go down in history as dieing from a licorice overdose. Or do they?

The World on Two Wheels

I have always loved bicycles. It was something that to me, always seemed like my own little bit of freedom. I could get on and ride and ride. It would take me to places known and unknown.

I remember when I got my first new bike. I believe my Grandparents bought it for me. A very shiny red 2-wheeler that rode like a dream. It was smooth riding and had no mechanical problems !! One has to remember that the Village I lived in had no pavement whatsoever. The only pavement was the busy provincial highway that skirted the very outside limits of the Village and we were under very strict instructions not to venture on to it for any reason. Something smooth and level apparently was not a good enough reason to get on it. Oh how I wanted to get on there and experience a ride without running into ruts and gravel furrows !! I cannot say with a straight face that I actually obeyed the rules, as I did take a few spins on the shoulder and yes it was everything I thought it would be !! Smooth and level, I could really crank up my speed and let the wind roar !! It was indeed a rush for a little kid.

As far as bikes go, there is often the odd flat tire and I was really not old enough or smart enough to change out a tube. The tires then came with a tube inside of them and instead of having to change out the tire, you just bought a new tube and inserted it into the tire. Sounds pretty easy, but at the age of 10 or so it was not that easy.

My Grandfather during this time had prostrate cancer. He was not doing well, in fact he was dying. Dying faster then any of us wanted. I remember having a flat tire that I really needed to have fixed so I could go riding with my friends. My Grandfather said he would fix it. I was thrilled. Here was my dying Grandfather, in his pajamas and robe, probably not more then 100 pounds, sitting in his favorite green vinyl recliner rocker in the living room. He took that tire and took it off right there in his living room and put in a new tube and put it back on the rim. I guess I never seen the significance of it at the time, but I sure see it now. A dying man, wanting to instill some pleasure in his Grandchild. An unconditional love and a selfless act. He was in no condition to be doing that, but he wanted to. And he did.

So biking to me is not only a freedom, and a time to get away and think about the things of life, but a time to reflect back on the things that stand the test of time. A time to remember and be thankful for those who came into my life early and gave me something to build upon. One spoke at a time.

Real Milk from a Real Man

Coming from the dairy industry, I think I know what milk is all about and what it should consist of. The industry of course, has made countless changes like any other industry in the world today, but basically, the cow still produces the same milk. The same butterfat, the same protein, and the same lactose. Granted there are a few growth hormones thrown in for good measure, but then there are a few extras in everything we consume today.

But really, where has the industry gone wrong? We went from glass to cardboard and then to plastic. What would you rather drink out of? And what will be next?

When I was a kid back on the prairies, the milk man stopped and actually delivered personally, milk in glass bottles. There was the full fat milk which really was milk and not this blue looking skim slop they serve today. And the chocolate milk was incredible. It was rich and dark and it tasted so good. Today it is runny, plastic looking and tasting and has so many extras in it that if I told you them all - you would head right for the commode !!

Down here in the south, the milk does not last. It does not matter what you do, it goes bad before the date that they stamp on it. And really, what does it matter because even if it borders on the good - chances are it will taste like cheap liquid plastic.

Such progress we have made !!!!

Fast Food in a Slow World

Everywhere you go today, there are fast food joints everywhere. You can have just about any kind of cholesterol coating, artery clogging junk you could ever wish for. When I was a kid it was not quite so obvious. I never experienced McDonald's until I was 19 and that was in Edmonton.

In the small town I lived in, there was a little gas station cafe that never made that much but they did create really awesome homemade chocolate shakes, that came in the metal stirring jugs that they were whipped in. Thick and cold and full of full fat ice cream, they were absolutely incredible. They did not come with straws but came with long spoons for the great experience of savoring the thick liquid going down a kid's dry parched throat.

Once in a while and I do mean once in awhile ,we would go to Lloydminster which was a city of about 10,000 that straddled the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan. There you could find two favorites, A&W and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Not KFC but Kentucky Fried Chicken. The A&W actually had it so the car hops came out to your vehicle, took your order and then delivered it. Oh it was good. So good that I still love A&W today. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately there are no A&W's down here in the far South. The closet would be Sonic Drive In's which are pretty good. Dad used to buy us something to eat and then would order a gallon of authentic root beer to go. It was a brown glass 1 gallon jug filled with the real root beer that made A&W famous. When you came back, you brought the gallon jug for the deposit and we would get another one. Of course it never lasted !!

That was pretty much the extent of fast food. Everything else was homemade. Real food not fast food.

The Day The Outhouse Died

When we moved from the farm to Waseca, we still had no services or conveniences for a few years. There was no running water and no indoor plumbing, so of course we still had to make the journey out to the little building in the back yard. Every back yard had these little creations, basically a small shack over a deep hole. I never liked the little shacks. They were not very hospitable to us, and they were an awful place to go to in the cold of the winter and the heat of the summer.

I am not saying I was a daredevil kid, but I did have my times of stupidity I am sure. Although not exactly impulsive, I wondered about a lot of things. One of the things I wondered about was what would happen if I were to throw a lit match down the open hole of the outhouse. Now under most circumstances, it should just fizzle out and that would be it. And that is exactly what happened to the first 100 lit matches that I threw down that hole !! I had one of those large eddy box of matches that holds at least a couple of hundred wooden matches. One after another I threw them down there, watching them burn out.

I was not prepared for match 101 but I dropped that lit match, it caught on some toilet tissue, sucked in some quality methane gas, and the entire hole exploded into flames. I believe I was in shock, excited that the experiment worked but wondering where it would end. The fire was so intense that it eventually engulfed the whole outhouse, letting everyone know that I was dissatisfied with it.

I ran to the house, and somehow we got some pails of water poured on it to prevent the fire from burring the whole house, garage and yard. I was the least popular person around the house. I don't remember being drawn and quartered but I had in effect shut down the family bathroom. A great start to Waseca living. Maybe why I am such a bathroom connoisseur today !!

Grandma's Great Goodies

Now that the holiday season is over, and people start to resort back to a relatively normal way of eating, I was thinking about all the incredible food that my Grandma was famous for. My Grandma came over on the boat from England in 1905. She was 5 years of age. As she grew up, she obviously set out to become one of the best cooks around. She could and did, cook and create and bake anything you could think of.

Back in Waseca, when the Village was getting the water and sewer lines put in, there were several hungry construction workers who came to my Grandmas for a daily hot meal. And a meal it was. A sheet of plywood over two saw horses was put up in the living room of the house that they lived in , and she cooked all kinds of great creations. I was also lucky enough to partakes of these great meals every day. While other kids were stuck eating stale tuna sandwiches at school, I was feasting on every delicacy known to man.

One of my favorites for the main course was the Shepherds Pie. This was no ordinary Shepherds pie. This was pie that was loaded with all kinds of things that I have tried to duplicate several times but have never ever come close. There was no recipe for this, it just came out of her head. My mouth is watering right now as I am typing this description.

Desserts were really her specialty however. And they were numerous, incredible baked apple dumplings, lemon cheese tarts, cakes, bread puddings, raisin puddings, custard pies and cinnamon buns. There was a real favorite though that I liked. It was called "an old maid". Here was what it entailed. Pie crust that lined a muffin tin, raspberry jam as filling, which was topped by a moist white cake mix of some sort. She made dozens of those tarts and put them in the freezer out in the porch.

It did not take too long for me to realize that with a little planning, I could snab a couple of those frozen old maids once in awhile and help satisfy my incredibly pathetic sweet tooth that has been my nemesis since my early years. Who was able to stop at a couple? Not me. I ate those suckers like they were candies. I even became addicted to them in the frozen state.

I have not had one of those for over 40 years. They made such an impression on me that I can still visualize tasting one. They were insanely good, a fat man's poison, a skinny man's dream.

My sister gave me the recipe to the Lemon cheese. I have made some and it was great. All the great ingredients such as sugar and butter makes it a cholesterol nightmare but what a high you get from it.

They say that memories can make you as a person. The food sure has. The longing for all of the above has started again. Now, where were those carrot sticks again?

Better Then a Toboggan Hill

I had mentioned in earlier posts about the lack of hills that we could toboggan on. My Dad had the perfect solution to it all. He would pull us around with the car !! We had a 1969 Ford Country Sedan Station wagon. It was long car, 121 inch wheelbase to be exact. I was always good with numbers ! The winters in Saskatchewan of course were nothing less then brutal so we always drove in the winter with studded tires. Underneath there was a luggage compartment, and he would stack that full of wood so that there was a lot of weight on the back tires. Man, could that car go through snow. He would tie a long rope on to the toboggan and he would pull us through all kinds of snow at a fairly high rate of speed !! He drove down snow covered roads and even onto the frozen lake surface and boy did he put the hammer down. The snow would be coming up from the backs of those tires in a flurry, pelting our faces with wet icy snow. The faster he went the worse it got. Eventually he would be going so fast that you could not see a thing but just hung on for dear life. We would go through drifts, over drifts and under drifts. It was a wild ride. I suspect that he disciplined us through the type of ride we got. There were a lot of wet tired children after those excursions.

As I got a little older, I was looking for more challenges. My grandfather had an old pair of skis, and your foot slipped into some leather loops. These skis were not state of the art. In fact, they probably came over on the ark but I thought they would work good behind the car. I convinced my Dad to take me down a snow covered back road in the country. Now that was a ride. He wound that car up and he pulled me down the road. I tried to stay straight and keep those skis from crossing over each other. For a time I did, but there was no way to tell him to slow it down. He wound it up faster and eventually I blew a ski and rolled and crashed into the ditch. I was bruised, broken, and scraped but I felt like I just got the gold medal at the Winter Olympics.

How many kids can say their Dad did that for them? There is no question that it was different culture then but it was a culture that made me realize that fun was what we thought and made up. Anyone care for a ride?