Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2011-12

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Terry Remin and her father start out on their trip
• Michael Gartner writes about his father´s secret to a long life
• Don Henderson claims that 60s artists are adapting songs for boomers
• Catherine Nesbitt sends a joke about a librarian
• Shirley Conlon recommends a cure for nervousness and uncertainty
• Gerrit deLeuuw´s story shows the hazards of ticking off a nurse
• Sites are recommended by Betty Felhaber, Catherine Nesbitt, Irene Harvalias, and Jay

Terry Remin and her father start their trip as part of her search for

A NEW LIFE

Dad and I headed off from Newport on our little adventure. We got on the route that was set out for us and as soon as we got on the motorway, we decided we were hungry and should have stopped for lunch. We exited off the freeway, had lunch, and after going around in circles for awhile trying to find our way back to the freeway, we stopped at a gas station. We didn´t realize that the entrances were so far apart, but fortunately I had asked for a street map of Sydney when I rented the car. While Dad went in to ask for directions, I looked it up on the street map and soon we were back on the motorway heading toward Canberra.

We decided to stop in Goulburn for our first night as it was getting late in the day and we were tired of being cooped up in the car. We stopped in the tourist information booth, but it was closed by the time we got there, so we decided to just get a motel for the night.

We got one close to downtown and when we checked in, they gave us a pint of milk and a breakfast menu. They have little boxes with two- way doors outside the rooms where they could put the breakfast in the morning and you could retrieve it from inside the room. We decided to just get a few groceries so we could make a bag lunch for the next day and supply our own breakfast of cereal. They provided coffee/tea, a kettle, toaster, plates and cutlery, and a fridge so we were set. The room was $76 dollars a night and $4.00 for two hours of internet. We also asked where we could eat, and the clerk recommended the Workman´s Club where we could get a good feed for a reasonable price.

We both like to read so we rested a bit and read our books, and when hunger came upon us we walked downtown. The Workman´s Club had really good food. Dad and I shared the entre as we both have small appetites, and found it did the job very well. On our way back we stopped at the grocery store and bought lunch, breakfast, and snacks items. We looked at the map when we got back and decided that we were not ready to drive in the city and were more interested in seeing the Snowy Mountains and national parks, so we decided to continue on the Hume Highway to Gundagi for our next stop.

The next day was Sunday but we were still able to find a few stores open so we could buy a few bits and pieces and then we headed off down the track. As we were leaving town we came across the giant Marino sheep statue, so we stopped for a photo shoot.

We headed off to Gundagi and on the motorway we saw a lot of bone piles from dead kangaroos on the road, along with a few dead carcasses, but we never saw any live ones, to our disappointment. We amused ourselves with trying to figure out how the names of the towns were pronounced. A lot of the names are of aboriginal origin and are pronounced with much differently than we expected.

We had a stop at MacDonald´s for a coffee and then proceeded onto a rest stop to enjoy it and our sandwiches. We discovered that not all the rest stops have dunnies or thunder boxes (toilets) as some people like to call them. Just before Gundagi we came across the "Dog on Tuckerbox" monument and decided to stop for a look see. It was a very tropical 33 degrees out. We read about the legend and wandered around a bit before resuming our trek.

When we arrived in Gundagi we stopped in the tourist information booth to get information on the area and accommodations. We are discovering that they are a gold mine of info and they provide you with free area maps and tell you all about what there is to see in the area. We had a great chat with the woman, who regaled us with the real tale about the Dog on Tuckerbox. She told us that the story on the sign was glorified so it sounded better. The real story is that the fellow, after slogging about to get his wagon out of the mud, and walking to town and back for repairs, returned to find that the dog had actually been sitting in his tucker (food) box and had shat in it. The Aussies love a good yarn. [Ed. note: For information on this legend, see http://arunaurl.com/44ij]

She let us into the showroom, where we saw a miniature marble building that a man had taken 30 years to build. It was pretty magnificent and very detailed, with different kinds and colors of marble, and then he built a chapel as well. It was brilliant!

We checked around for a room and decided to take the room with free internet (five hours only) and once we got settled in we headed off to the local RSL veterans club, where we had a great meal. It was a lovely evening for a stroll as we headed back to our room to read and check our e-mails. We are always knackered after the day of driving.

The next morning we stopped at the local museum. As I went through and looked at all the old things, I saw things like I had had in my collection, and I realized that I was very happy that I had finally let go of all that stuff, and that a museum was the perfect place to admire it all. I loved the little outback shed with all its bits and pieces and could imagine what it was like to live a simple but busy life in the bush, just working for survival without all the trappings and "stuff" that we feel we have to have now.

As we drove out of town we came across a series of wooden train trestles and noticed a lot of grass hanging over fences and stuck in trees. As we proceeded along we saw a sign for a lookout and decided to check it out. At the top of the hill we found a sign that told the story of how the town had been built around the river originally but had been wiped out by floods, so the town had to relocate in the hills, and wooden bridges had been built for the railway. We were able to see that the highway was on one of the longest bridges I have seen for a small town. The train trestles had been standing since the 1900s. No longer used, but pretty impressive that they still stood and were not rotted away by all the water that came through when the flooding occurred.

While we were standing there I was admiring a gum tree and noticed a horse head that looked as if it was growing out of the ground. It was a steep hill, and when the horse stood up, I realized it had been lying down - but it looked so funny. I called it horse head hill.

We decided to drive back and take another look at the bridges, now that we knew the story, and we took a video of the flood plain. You could see how high the water had come up by how high the grass was on the fences and trees. Everywhere you go in Australia you see signs that tell you of flood zones, and have indicators that show the depth of the water. They even have outside air vents on their four-wheel drives so they can go through the deep water when needed. Flood seems to be fairly prevalent. Dad says it is because the ground is so rocky underneath that instead of soaking in, it runs off to the waterways.

Our next stop was Tumut, where we visited the tourist info, and they had a great stuffed animal display.

They told us that the best accommodation was out of the park, or we would have to pay fees to stay over and the cost would be very dear, so we decided to go to Adaminaby to sleep over in a pub. She also told us about the best way through the Snowy Mountains and the Yarrangabily caves and hot pools. We stopped and had lunch before we set off for the caves. As we left town we saw a different Santa display. It was made out to look as if Santa had missed the chimney and splatted on the roof!

To be continued.

This is a repeat of a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed.

NO LEFT TURNS

My father never drove a car. Well, that´s not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

"In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it, or drive through life and miss it." At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: "Oh, bull----!" she said. "He hit a horse."

"Well," my father said, "there was that, too."

So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars - the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford - but we had none.

My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines, would take the streetcar to work and as often as not, walk the three miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him, and walk home together.

My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes at dinner, we´d ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that.

But sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we´ll get one." It was as if he wasn´t sure which one of us would turn 16 first. But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown. It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn´t drive, it more or less became my brother´s car.

Having a car but not being able to drive didn´t bother my father, but it didn´t make sense to my mother. So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father´s idea. "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying more than once.

For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps - though they seldom left the city limits - and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.

Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn´t seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)

He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin´s Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish´s two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a two-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he´d take just a one-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."

After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he´d sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I´d stop by, he´d explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored."

If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out - and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream.

As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?" "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.

"No left turns," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn."

"What?" I said again.

"No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that´s a lot safer. So we always make three rights."

"You´re kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support ."No," she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works." But then she added: "Except when your father loses count."

I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing.

"Loses count?" I asked.

"Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it´s not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you´re okay again."

I couldn´t resist "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked.

"No," he said " If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can´t be put off another day or another week."

My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90.

She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.

They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom - the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)

He continued to walk daily - he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he´d fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising - and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.

One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide- ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.

A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I´m probably not going to live much longer."

"You´re probably right," I said.

"Why would you say that?" he countered, somewhat irritated.

"Because you´re 102 years old," I said.

"Yes," he said, "you´re right." He stayed in bed all the next day.

That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.

He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: "I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet."

An hour or so later, he spoke his last words: "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have."

A short time later, he died.

I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I´ve wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long. I can´t figure out if it was because he walked through life, or because he quit taking left turns.

Don Henderson claims some of the artists of the 60s are revising their hit with new lyrics to accommodate aging baby boomers:

NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES

Herman´s Hermits - Mrs. Brown, You´ve Got a Lovely Walker

Ringo Starr - I Get by With a Little Help from Depends

The Bee Gees - How Can You Mend a Broken Hip

Bobby Darin - Splish, Splash, I Was Havin´ a Flash

Roberta Flack - The First Time Ever I Forgot Your Face

Johnny Nash - I Can´t See Clearly Now

Paul Simon - Fifty Ways to Lose Your Liver

The Commodores-- Once, Twice, Three Times to the Bathroom

Marvin Gaye - Heard It Through the Grape Nuts

Procol Harem - A Whiter Shade of Hair

Leo Sayer - You Make Me Feel Like Napping

The Temptations - Papa´s Got a Kidney Stone

Abba - Denture Queen

Tony Orlando-- Knock Three Times on the Ceiling if You Hear Me Fall

Helen Reddy - I Am Woman, Hear Me Snore

Leslie Gore - It´s My Procedure, and I´ll Cry if I Want To

Willie Nelson - On the Commode Again

Catherine Nesbitt sends a story about a

NEW LIBRARIAN

The new librarian decided that instead of checking out children´s books by writing the names of borrowers on the book cards herself, she would have the youngsters sign their own names. She would then tell them they were signing a "contract" for returning the books on time.

Her first customer was a second grader, who looked surprised to see a new librarian. He brought four books to the desk and shoved them across to the librarian, giving her his name as was the custom.

The new librarian pushed the books back, smiled, and told him to sign them out. The boy carefully printed his name on each book card and then handed them to her with a look of utter disgust. Before the new librarian could even start her speech he said scornfully,

"At least that other librarian we had could write."

Shirley Conlon recommends a solution for a number of negative feelings:

WHITE WINE

Do you have feelings of inadequacy?

Do you suffer from shyness?

Do you sometimes wish you were more assertive?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, ask your doctor or pharmacist about White Wine.

White Wine is the safe, natural way to feel better and more confident about yourself and your actions. White Wine can help ease you out of your shyness and let you tell the world that you´re ready and willing to do just about anything.

You will notice the benefits of White Wine almost immediately, and with a regimen of regular doses, you can overcome any obstacles that prevent you from living the life you want to live.

Shyness and awkwardness will be a thing of the past and you will discover many talents you never knew you had. Stop hiding and start living, with White Wine.

White Wine may not be right for everyone. Women who are pregnant or nursing should not use White Wine. However, women who wouldn´t mind nursing or becoming pregnant are encouraged to try it.

Side effects may include dizziness, nausea, vomiting, incarceration, erotic lustfulness, loss of motor control, loss of clothing, loss of money, loss of virginity, delusions of grandeur, table dancing, headache, dehydration, dry mouth, and a desire to sing Karaoke and play all-night rounds of Strip Poker, Truth Or Dare, and Naked Twister.

WARNING:

The consumption of White Wine may make you think you are whispering when you are not.

The consumption of White Wine may cause you to tell your friends over and over again that you love them.

The consumption of White Wine may cause you to think you can sing.

The consumption of White Wine may lead you to believe that ex-lovers are really dying for you to telephone them at four in the morning.

The consumption of White Wine may make you think you can logically converse with members of the opposite sex without spitting.

The consumption of White Wine may create the illusion that you are tougher, smarter, faster, and better looking than most people.

Now just imagine what you could achieve with RED wine!

Gerrit deLeeuw sends this oldie but goodie:

NEVER TICK OFF A NURSE...

A big-shot attorney had to spend a couple of days in the hospital. He was a royal pain to the nurses because he bossed them around just like he did his staff. None of the hospital staff wanted to have anything to do with him.

The head nurse was the only one who could stand up to him, but finally even she had had enough. She came into his room and announced, "I have to take your temperature."

After complaining for several minutes, he finally settled down, crossed his arms and opened his mouth. "No, I´m sorry," the nurse stated, "but for this reading, I can´t use an oral thermometer."

This started another round of complaining, but eventually he rolled over and bared his behind. After feeling the nurse insert the thermometer, he heard her announce, "I have to get something. Now you stay JUST LIKE THAT until I get back!"

She left the door to his room open on her way out. He cursed under his breath as he heard people walking past his door, laughing. After a half hour, the man´s doctor came into the room. "What´s going on here?" asked the doctor.

Angrily, the man answered, "What´s the matter, Doc? Haven´t you ever seen someone having their temperature taken?"

After a pause, the doctor confessed, "Not with a carnation."

RECOMMENDED WEBSITES

Betty Fehlhaber writes: An amazing new website from google allows you not only to see some of the great works of art at an incredible fidelity, but you can also take tours around some of the best museums the world has to offer:

Recorded in happier times, Catherine Nesbitt´s recommendation shows that swing is alive and well in Japan:

Jay saw this on Market Place, which claimed that last year, Canadians spent about six billion dollars on gift cards. But they have heard many complaints from viewers about a certain kind of gift card that are issued by banks. In this Busted segment, Erica Johnson puts the Visa Gift Card to the test:

From the World Science Festival of 2009, Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale:

For a novel presentaton of Verdi´s La Traviata, go to

To check out the features of the "freedictionary", which changes daily, go to

http://members.shaw.ca/vjjsansum/freedictionarytestpageV2.html