Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2012-15

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Kate Brookfield describes the bus trip to Chandigarh in India
• Lyle Meeres begins a story about house-sitting in Arizona
• Judy Marriott composes a short poem
• Pat Moore forwards some observations on growing older
• Tom Telfer sends a picture of a trailer he plans to get
• Catherine Nesbitt forwards a story about watching TV
• This collection of jokes should make you smile
• Carol Hansen forwards a poem about personal responsibility
• Bruce Galway, Catherine Green, Catherine Nesbitt, Gerrit deLeeuw, and Pat Moore suggest sites

Kate Brookfield writes about an unusual bus trip during their stay in

INDIA

Delhi bus station was situated in Old Delhi, far from the fancy hotels and tourist areas. It was quite an experience to be suddenly thrust into the crush and rush of life in India.

The area surrounding the bus station was a teeming mass of humanity. It was almost impossible to walk through the crowd of beggars beseeching travellers for "baksheesh". The beggars represented all ages, from new borns carried by mothers, to the aged, too weak to stand.

There was hardly any ground space. There were bodies everywhere, some lying on the ground, some crouching, touching their mouths with their hands, and then holding them out. Women came up to me and the children, touching our clothes to make us look at them. Michael told us to just keep moving and not to give anyone anything, or we would be surrounded. There were just too many of them.

I felt quite sick at the overwhelming number of desperate and hungry people. Many of the women were carrying babies, some of whom looked only days old. There were small children with maimed limbs, and old men with no limbs at all, sitting on boards on wheels. We were told later that sometimes children were deliberately maimed to make more money. I have no evidence of this, of course, and would like to think it is an urban myth.

I noticed that the beggars did not bother the Indian travellers as much as they did the foreigners. On the whole, I would say that Indians are very polite and tolerant of others. The caste system maintains the status quo, with people accepting their responsibility to those "below" them and the lower caste not intruding too much on those "above". Tourists and foreigners have to fend for themselves.

Add to the scene the humid heat of pre-monsoon July, and the smells, and you get some idea of the surreal experience. It was amazing how quickly we became used to this kind of crowd in India.

Once we managed to get through the crowd, the ticket area was more organized. Michael left us in a waiting room and came back with tickets for an AC bus to Chandigarh. This was equivalent to a first- class luxury coach, thank goodness. Some of the buses pulling out of the station were packed to overflowing, not only with people, but huge containers of vegetables, food, and live animals.

Our bus had numbered seats and was very comfortable, although the upholstery was full of dust, as Caroline proceeded to show us by hitting the seat!

Unfortunately, AC coaches automatically had video, so we had a five- hour drive with dusty curtains drawn, so the passengers could watch the Bollywood movies. For a long time after, Robert and Caroline would start singing, "I love you, I love you, I love you," in imitation of the movies, which were mainly love stories with a sari- clad woman dancing in the sea or over meadows full of flowers, singing the words. Those seemed to be the only words in English.

Chandigarh is 250 kms from Delhi and we had two chay and toilet stops en route. The toilets were the usual eastern style with two footsteps in once-white tiles either side of the sunken toilet pan. Because this was an official stop for the Haryana coaches, the water flush did work. We saw worse in Russia.

The countryside we travelled through was mainly agricultural land, but I was told to close the curtain, so didn´t see much until we came to Chandigarh.

To be continued.

Lyle Meeres and his wife, Pat,

EXPERIENCE ARIZONA

Pat and I had been to Arizona briefly nearly forty years ago. How, then, could we turn down an opportunity to housesit in Tucson, Arizona?

We decided to drive, since we would want a car in Arizona, and renting a car for January and February would tax the budget.

New Year´s Day, 2012, we got on the road early, despite celebrating the arrival of the new year. We thought it didn´t matter if we didn´t get far. Just being under way would make the next day´s travel easier. We didn´t anticipate gremlins.

Near Fort McLeod, we heard a horrible scraping noise that seemed to come from the right front wheel well. I pulled over but found nothing. We chose to drive on a bit and see what happened. After a bit, nothing happened. Then we got near Lethbridge and the metal grinding gremlin struck again.

We found a motel and talked to the clerk about places where one might get a car repaired. She gave us two best bets.

The morning of January 2, I phoned both places. No answer. Since New Year´s Day was a Sunday, places had given staff Monday off. We went to Canadian Tire on the chance that it might have a mechanic on duty.

It did. The gremlin had simply put a little pebble where it would make the most noise - no damage done. We were on the road before noon.

We drove into flat Montana, decorated with the occasional oil pump. Gas was cheap in the U.S. The four-lane seemed basically empty, so we made good time on a clear, dry road. At Butte, when it was threatening to get dark, we ran into a few streaks of ice that were not a problem, but we decided to stay there overnight.

Monida Pass was the one that sometimes posed problems with blowing snow and ice, so the next morning we approached the road with some trepidation. The day dawned with bright sunshine and clear skies, and it stayed that way. We drove over the pass on bare, dry highway.

Driving through Salt Lake was the problem. The road seemed to be about ten lanes with four shut down and construction on the others - for what seemed to be fifty miles. Later we heard that construction on that segment is eternal.

When it came time to stop, we were not near any of the places we had been told about but we found accommodation at a town called Beaver, which we thought sounded Canadian enough to suit us.

The next day we drove to Las Vegas, wandered through some casinos, had a good dinner, and in the town that never sleeps, we went to sleep early.

London Bridge (click to enlarge)

We were back on the road early, making our way to Lake Havasu to see the transported London Bridge. Imagine taking a bridge apart, sending it across an ocean, and putting it back together near a desert. The idea is breathtaking. The bridge is not.

It was dark when we arrived at Tucson, but our GPS that had been useless in Canada got us to the best accommodation we had on the whole trip. Our house-sit was full so we were to hotel it for two nights. We would use the next day to see the house and to be shown how things worked.

The second day in the house, a Sunday, neighbours from home who were in Tucson drove over for a visit and we agreed to do some sightseeing together.

Monday, Pat and I walked part of 4th Avenue which has some interesting shops. We found a good bookstore where we bought a guide to desert life forms, wandered touristy shops, and ate lunch at a place that served sandwiches so large that one would serve four people.

Saguaro (click to enlarge)

The next day´s goal was the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. The road over Gates Pass was twisty, narrow in places, and busy with bicycles, but we saw crowds of saguaro cacti. We had gone early, but the museum parking lot was busy. The museum has about 2500 visitors and 200 students per spring day. We had been told that we would likely want to return often enough to make it worthwhile to buy a membership at $65, so that´s what we did. We ended up going there three times, and we were given three guest passes, so it was a good deal.

Prairie dogs at Arizona Sonora Desert Museum (click to enlarge)

There were about 200 volunteers called "docents" guiding people and explaining concepts about plants, animals, geology, and so on. "Museum" is a bit of a misnomer because it is a large zoo, botanical garden, and natural history museum. We spent hours walking the two miles of trails and didn´t see everything.

We had a terrific lunch there and then headed to the raptor area to see hawks in action at 2:00 o´clock. One big bird appeared and then another. Soon, two more joined, flying low over the heads of the crowd. We were warned not to raise our arms or cameras lest we confuse the swooping birds. The four birds are a family and they hunt together. When they find food, mom gets to eat first. The assistants periodically placed food which the birds would find. Finally, the birds flew over a wider area and pounced on something. It was quite a display.

To be continued.

Judy Marriott sends this short poem:

DILEMMA

A dilemma is a funny thing.
It just keeps you wondering,
Should you do it, should you not?
Gosh, you´re in an awful spot!
It just ain´t easy, that´s for sure.
If you have one, here´s the cure:
Take a chance, and go ahead,
Or just forget it all instead.

Pat Moore forwards

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON MATURING

It´s harder to tell navy from black.

Everything old is new again, but if you wore it before, you´re too old to wear it the second time around.

Your kids are becoming you, and you don´t like them ... but your grandchildren are perfect.

Going out is good. Coming home is better.

When you needed the discount, you had to pay full price. Now you get discounts on everything ... movies, hotels, flights.

The last two outfits you wore had spots on them.

The five pounds you wanted to lose is now 25 and you have a better chance of losing your keys than the 25 pounds.

Your husband is counting on you to remember things you don´t remember.

Your husband sleeps better on a lounge chair with the TV blaring then he does in bed. It´s called his "pre-sleep."

You miss the days when everything worked with just an "ON" and "OFF" switch.

You notice everything they sell in stores is sleeveless.

You´ve never heard of most of the celebs in People Magazine.

You don´t have hair under your arms and very little on your legs, but your chin needs to be plucked daily.

What used to be freckles are now liver spots.

It seems that everybody whispers.

Tom Telfer writes that he is getting one of these:

SENIOR TRAILER

Catherine Nesbitt forwards this story about

A REMOTE PROBLEM

An old married couple was at home watching TV. The husband had the remote and was switching back and forth between a fishing channel and a porn channel.

The wife became more and more annoyed and finally said: "For heaven´s sake! Leave it on the porn channel. You already know how to fish!"

SMILES

A minister in a little church had been having trouble with the collections.

One Sunday he announced, "Now, before we pass the collection plate, I would like to request that the person who stole the chickens from Farmer Condill´s henhouse please refrain from giving any money to the Lord. The Lord doesn´t want money from a thief!"

The collection plate was passed around, and for the first time in months, everybody gave.

Late one night, a man walks into a dentist´s surgery and says, "Excuse me, can you help me? I think I´m a moth."

Dentist: "You don´t need a dentist. You need a psychiatrist."

Man: "Yes, I know."

Dentist: "So why did you come in here?"

Man: "Well, the light was on."

Teacher: Parker, what do you call a person who keeps on talking to people who are no longer interested?

Parker: A teacher.

A young mother paying a visit to a doctor friend and his wife made no attempt to restrain her five-year-old son, who was ransacking an adjoining room.

But finally, an extra loud clatter of bottles did prompt her to say, "I hope, doctor, you don´t mind Johnny being in there."

"No," said the doctor calmly, "He´ll be quiet when he gets to the poisons."

A friend took her dog to the parlour for a haircut, and asked what it would cost. Being told that it would cost her $50, she was outraged.

"I only pay 30 bucks for my own haircut!"

The groomer replied, "That may be true. But then you don´t bite, do you?!"

An engineer, a physicist, and a statistician were moose hunting in northern Canada. After a short walk through the marshes they spotted a HUGE moose 150 meters away.

The engineer raised his gun and fired at the moose. A puff of dust showed that the bullet landed three meters to the right of the moose.

The physicist, realizing that there was a substantial breeze that the engineer did not account for, aimed to the left of the moose and fired. The bullet landed three meters to the left of the moose.

The statistician jumped up and down, screaming, "We got him! We got him!"

When I go to a local discount store to get oil and filters for my car, I buy my wife a bouquet of flowers on display near the checkout counter.

During one trip, some women in line behind me were oohing and aahing about a husband getting flowers for his wife.

"How often do you do that?" one asked.

Before I could answer, the cashier, more than familiar with my routine, said, "Every three months or 3,000 miles, whichever comes first."

Carol Hansen forwards this poem by an unknown author:

TODAY

Outside my window, a new day I see,
and only I can determine what kind of day it will be.
It can be busy and sunny, laughing and gay,
or boring and cold, unhappy and grey.

My state of mind is the determining key,
for I am the person I let myself be.
I can be thoughtful and do all I can to help,
or be selfish and think just of myself.

I can enjoy what I do and make it seem fun,
or gripe and complain and make it hard on someone.
I can be patient with those who may not understand,
or belittle and hurt them as much as I can.

But I have faith in myself and believe what I say,
and I personally intend to make the best of Today.

SUGGESTED WEBSITES

Bruce Galway sends this link to a true story about a father meeting his daughter for the first time since she was given up as a child to save her from persecution in Russia. The father was conducting an orchestra in which his daughter was a violinist. During the performance, in which the woman and the orchestra knew that the conductor was her father, he finally realized that she was his daughter:

Bruce also forwards the URL for an fascinating talk about crows. Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behaviour, he came up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal and human:

Catherine Green enjoys watching this cat´s adventure with a paper bag:

Catherine Nesbitt forwards this link to "the most colourful river in the world," in Colombia, South America. During a brief span between wet and dry seasons, when the water level is just right, the many varieties of algae and moss in the river bloom in a dazzling display of colours. For pictures of these unbelievable colours, click on

Gerrit deLeeuw recommends this 360-degree panorama taken by Roderick Mackenzie, an Australian photographer and mountaineer, who was the 271st person to reach the summit of Mount Everest. This full-screen panorama was published in connection with the 50-year anniversary, to honour the first two men who reached the top of Everest on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay:

Pat Moore forwards the URL for a fascinating video of an American robin which lays her four eggs in a hanging basket. The home owners set up a camera to film the results. To see it all, click here:

From PacificWild.org, creators of the video "Oil in Eden": "It´s one of the last bastions of Canadian wilderness: the Great Bear Rainforest on BC´s north and central Pacific coast. Home to humpback whales, wild salmon, wolves, grizzlies, and the legendary spirit bear - this spectacular place is now threatened by a proposal from Enbridge.... The plan is to pump over half a million barrels a day of unrefined bitumen from the Alberta Tar Sands over the Rockies, through the heartland of BC. From there, supertankers would ply the rough and dangerous waters of the BC coast en route to Asia and the United States." To see why 80% of British Columbians are opposed to the building of this pipeline, click on

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