An Incurable UnRomantic

Posted on January 7, 2015 by dperras56

No man is perfect.
Just ask his wife.
After 27-and-a-half years of wedded bliss my wife can roll out an extensive catalogue of my sins, transgressions, errors and bungles as well as a man of the cloth reciting the Sermon On the Mount.

“Do you remember my first pregnancy, with Liam, when my labour went on for twenty four hours with him turned the wrong way, and how much pain I was in ?”
I nod, neutrally, but I know where this is going.
“And what did you get for me, after all that… a pot of chrysanthemums ?”
I nod, blankly. I forgot that I had bought her anything at all.

My wife Brenda’s main problem is that she married an incurable unromantic. I’ve never understood women very well, let alone their apparent passion for receiving a bouquet of flowers. Roses… potted mums; really I couldn’t see much difference. Except that the mums lasted a heckuva lot longer, not to mention that you received a lot more for your money.

In my own defense, Brenda knew what she was getting before she tied the nuptial knot. I remember early on when she hinted that women liked to receive flowers from time to time. Eager to please, I visited some kind of store; I don’t remember which one exactly, and the next day proudly presented her with a tiny cactus.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” was her response. She didn’t act as pleased as I had hoped after my prompt compliance to her wishes.

“Well, not much, and that’s the point.” I was a little put out. “You hardly have to water the thing, and it lasts practically forever. But don’t handle it too much. Those bristles are prickly.”

Not as prickly as her behaviour for the next few minutes. “Roses are more what I meant,” she suggested to her slow-witted suitor.

Roses were the answer, then. The next afternoon I unwrapped twelve of the most perfect-looking roses that I had ever seen.
“But they’re plastic !” Again Brenda didn’t seem as thrilled as I thought she’d be.
“Yes, well, look at how good they look, you never have to water them and they last even longer than a cactus.” I couldn’t understand her lack of enthusiasm. Alright then; those would be the last beautiful flowers she’d ever see from me.

Flowers weren’t the only letdown in Brenda’s pre-nuptial romantic life. There was a staff Christmas party that was a formal, dress-up affair and Brenda hinted that it would be fun to attend.
“Is that the Friday or Saturday before Christmas?” I wanted to know.
“Friday. Why?”
“You know I play hockey Friday nights.” I couldn’t believe her forgetfulness.
“Couldn’t you miss it for one night?”
“I’m going for the league scoring championship.” I thought that would be self-explanatory.
“All right then. If you don’t go, then I’m going to ask Tony.”
She must have thought she had me cornered. But Lindsay, Ontario, where we were living at the time, was not large, and I hadn’t rode into town on a load of watermelons. “He’s gay, isn’t he?”

If Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings warned mamas not to let their babies grow up to be cowboys, I’m going to caution men not to let themselves be married to Capricorns. They’re the ones born between December 19 and January 22. My wife happens to be born on January 5. It’s too soon after Christmas, I’m all shopped-out and sick of celebrating and to top it all off for a lifelong schoolteacher it always seems to be the first day back. And the event is usually distinguished by a coldsnap or a blizzard.
I’ve hated that day for twenty seven years.

Not that I haven’t always tried my best. Well, maybe not my best. I’m only human, after all.
“Do you know what you can get me for my birthday this year?”, I remember Brenda asking me one New Year’s Day.
Jeezus Murphy. I was lying on the living room floor after getting up early with one of our three kids and I was also more than a little hungover. I just hoped flowers weren’t on the list.
“I don’t want to tell you. I want to be surprised.”

You know, I smiled to myself, you have to give full credit to a wife who still wants to be surprised by a husband like me !

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Joy To the World

Posted on December 19, 2014 by dperras56

I saw a kid throwing a snowball the other day. Good thing the fun police weren’t in the vicinity. The only thing considered worse in the Year of Our Lord, 2014 (oops – we don’t say that now either) would be to sing Christmas carols in public.

Which is exactly what happened later that evening. A group of four Filipinos appeared on our doorstep, singing Christmas carols in exchange for a small donation to the Pentecostal Missionary Church of Christ. I thought I’d been caught in a time warp. I was so happy with what I was seeing and hearing that I uncharacteristically handed over a rather large donation. Without even asking for a tax receipt.

So there’s hope for our world yet. Maybe it’s the season. I used to love the Christmas preparations: the decorations, the anticipation and the presents; especially anticipating my presents. Adulthood and three children cured that. Now it’s my wife and her begrudging spouse putting up the lights, tree and decorations, going shopping, buying a lot of what I consider unneeded gifts, and cooking Christmas dinner.
“Since when do you help with the tree and the decorations?” asked my wife. She was reading this over my shoulder.

“You’re not going to ruin Christmas for me again this year, are you Daddy ?” my daughter Rachelle asked me the other afternoon as I hauled in another dozen bags of groceries which would probably last us until the next afternoon, when I would be out doing the same thing again. As usual the activity had left me in a fine mood. “This whole business of the grocery stores going green is a big crock of crap,” I complained to my daughter as I unhooked a couple of cloth bags from my shoulders and let them drop to the kitchen floor. I wanted my misery to have company. “Call your brothers down here to help put away the groceries,” I continued. “Now they can charge for every bag they provide and they don’t even want to help pack them up. They just stand there like a cigar store Indian when I’m fumbling around for my credit card.”
“Dad… we don’t say Indian anymore and what’s a cigar store?” Rachelle was always both aghast and curious about my expressions of speech. I rolled on, ignoring her. “They used to even have people whose job it was to pack your bags. A lot of them didn’t look too bright but they sure made our lives easier. And at gas stations you didn’t even have to get out of your car. Someone would pump your gas and even clean the windshield. Some places advertised that if they didn’t offer to do your windshield then you would get your gas for free…” I was just warming up. “I should write a letter to someone complaining about all this.”
“No one will listen to you, Daddy,” replied Rachelle.
“Who does ?” I answered, gesturing to one son not to put the potatoes in the fridge.
“They’ll think you’re crazy.”
“Who doesn’t?”
Rachelle exhaled loudly, reminding me of my late father’s signal to me that I was now skating on thin ice. “Have you even looked at my Christmas list? You know that I need a new phone this year.” I chose to ignore that.
“I bought that tin of chocolates that they had on special at Metro to give to that girl who helped you with your Chemistry unit,” I said. Despite my bluster, I am really a kind soul.
“I’m just writing out the card now, but I don’t know whether to say ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Holidays’.” Rachelle had always been more sensitive than her father to the feelings of others.
My blood pressure began to rise again. I heard my son Adam start to snicker. He knew what was coming. I have never met anyone from another faith who was the slightest bit offended about hearing the words ‘Merry Christmas’ uttered within their hearing space. It was always someone from the politically correct police, who felt the need to feel offended on the part of someone else.
“Just write ‘Merry Christmas’ and if her feelings are hurt she can always return the chocolates to us.” I am always ready to compromise. “I don’t think she’ll mind. Kids seem to be a lot more sensible about that stuff than my generation. That’s why half the people I know are on some kind of medication.”

Actually talking about Christmas with my daughter and a quick glance at the dining room table to remind me that we had once again received some Christmas cards started me feeling a bit less like Ebenezer Scrooge and more like Tiny Tim. Maybe I wouldn’t need a nocturnal visit from the three spirits this Christmas Eve after all. But I really do need to head out to Future Shop to see about that new phone. How’s my daughter supposed to keep her self-respect in the Glebe unless she can stroll across Bank Street on a red light, with her head down, either texting or scrolling through whatever they put out on InstaGram ?

As Tiny Tim once said, “God bless us everyone.” And let me quote his uncle as well: Merry Christmas, everyone!”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Don’t Call Me Coach

Posted on December 11, 2014 by dperras56

Coach Paul McLean of the Ottawa Senators was fired the other day. According to his boss, Bryan Murray, it’s McLean’s fault that the Senators suck so bad.

As an ex-coach myself, of a list of different teams in a lot of different sports, I took more than just a passing interest. Good players make good coaches. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear my mother used to say. I always hoped that she wasn’t referring to me and my prospects in life.

Like a lot of us Bryan Murray should be looking in a mirror when things go wrong in his life. This will be the fifth coach he’s hired in seven years. The Ottawa Senators made it to the Stanley Cup finals in 2007, the year before he took over as a general manager. They have won exactly one playoff round since then. He says his biggest problem is that he can’t find a coach as good as he was. A former teacher, it seems as if Murray must not have taught high school English or even a short section on Greek mythology. How many classes did I sit through where it was made plain to even the thickest pupil in the pack that too much pride, hubris, was the reason for the hero’s demise ?

A cross-country running team that I coached at Nepean High School for several years usually placed either first or second in the City Championships. This being Canada and it being a high school sport, no one paid any attention of course. Oh, that`s not true. The principal did provide us with a shawarma lunch after one championship. I would have liked to have paraded around thumping my chest and proclaiming myself some kind of wonder coach. It wasn`t true, of course. Most of my runners were members of the Nakkertock Cross-Country ski team and trained hard with that club the year round. I also had an excellent co-coach who did all the considerable paper work that the overly-regulated Ottawa-Carleton School Board demanded. I just had to show up several times a week, pretend to know what I was doing and then plod along with the slowest runners to help keep their spirits up. When I was a kid my grandfather used to keep a few pigs around his barnyard. My pet pig Percy could have coached those teams to a championship.

Someone once said, “I’ve been rich and I`ve been poor, and believe me, it`s a lot better being rich.” I`ve had good players and I`ve had bad players and it`s a lot easier winning with good players. You can make a mule run from sunup to sundown but he ain`t ever gonna win the Kentucky Derby.

A couple of springs ago the Senators defeated the Montreal Canadiens in the opening round of the playoffs, mainly because Ottawa goaltender Craig Anderson greatly outplayed his counterpart in the Habs’ net, Carey Price. I swear I saw a kid’s balloon let loose from the stands, float by Price and into the back of his net. Anyway, all of Ottawa and even Bryan Murray was trumpeting Paul McLean as a coaching genius; Toe Blake and Scotty Bowman combined. Even when he was insulted by the Habs’ Brandon Prust as a “fat, bug-eyed walrus,” McLean handled the situation with humour and suave aplomb. He’s unemployed now but he has more than two-and-a-half years left on his contract, getting paid to do nothing.

That’s almost as good a deal as my teacher’s pension !

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Requiem For A Role Model

Posted on December 3, 2014 by dperras56

Jean Beliveau died yesterday; December 2, 2014.

A year ago my son Adam and I were watching an NHL game together. He turned to me and asked, “Who’s your favourite player , Dad?”
I didn’t hesitate. It wasn’t even close. “Jean Beliveau.”
“Still ? But didn’t he retire in 1971 ?”

It doesn’t matter. Even though my hockey hero had retired forty three years earlier no one else had ever come close. There may have been a handful of better players throughout hockey history, but only a very small handful. But no one, absolutely not anybody, combined his hockey ability with such consummate class and integrity.

Back in the days when kids actually had to wait until Christmas and hope that they would get what they wanted, I can still remember my greatest Yuletide present ever. It was a Montreal Canadiens’ sweater; not the old-fashioned woolen variety with the turtleneck that some of the kids wore on the outdoor ice, but the more modern variety with a lace at the neckline. I put it on right away and didn’t even take it off at bedtime. It was 1965. The only thing lacking was that Santa, or my mother, had not sewn the number ‘4’ on the back.

I wore it every day playing road hockey on the deadend street beside our house where all the kids would keep their road hockey sticks leaning against our outside wall and where I kept our net when we finally did get one. It prevented a lot of arguments as to whether a shot had really scored or not, because before that we had to use stones or clumps of snow as the goalposts. Before the game started we would call out what NHL team we were, and which player we would imitate as best we could.

I usually had started the game and provided the tennis ball. I would always yell out, “We’re the Montreal Canadiens and I’m Jean Beliveau.” The other kids usually conceded me that. If they didn’t I had to fight them. Besides, a lot of the boys in the neighbourhood hated the Habs, and cheered for the new young glamour stars like Bobby Hull and Bobby Orr.

Not that I ever fooled myself into thinking that I was anything like the captain of the Canadiens. He was tall and handsome, darkhaired and dignified. He never lowered himself to the level of the shenanigans that flew around him: the scrapping, swearing, pushing and shoving. I was always short and scrappy and I don’t ever remember being told I was handsome. I usually had some stitches in my face and my nose was crooked from being broken so often; I didn’t get it set until the last time it was fractured in my twenties. And I never had a fraction of his talent.

But in my heart and soul we were kindred spirits. I was born in 1956 and that was the year that ‘Big Jean’ won both the Hart Trophy as the league’s MVP and the Art Ross as the leading scorer. I still swear that it was no coincidence. And in 1965 he was the first winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy as the Most Valuable Player in the Stanley Cup playoffs; that was the year I received my first Montreal Canadiens’ sweater. I also attended the seventh game of the finals that year when the captain of the Canadiens scored on Chicago Black Hawk goalie Glenn Hall after seven seconds of play. Hall picked up the puck from the back of the net and threw it into the crowd in disgust. Some lucky guy just two seats over from me was lucky enough to catch it. But I know Jean would have wanted me to have it.

Throughout the years I was lucky enough to meet a lot of my hockey heroes in my hometown of Montreal. Yvan Cournoyer and Jacques Lemaire bought houses on the West Island’s Lac St. Louis and during the winter would sometimes come out of what we considered their mansions and join us for a game of shinny on the frozen lake. Pete Mahovlich, outgoing character that he was, would sometimes pick me up when I was hitchhiking on Highway 2 and 20. Scotty Bowman lived in Dorval during his first days of coaching the Montreal Canadiens in the early 1970s and on Friday nights could sometimes be seen up in the stands, watching the Dorval Jets Junior ‘B’ team for which I played. John Ferguson, the Habs tough guy also could be seen at the suburban arenas. I played for Jimmy Moore at Bishop’s University and he often had me over to his house. There I met his brother Dickie, another Canadien Hall of Famer who later made his fortune after starting up his own rental equipment company.

But I never met my ultimate idol. I don’t know if that’s what I really wanted; it would be like being ushered into the presence of God. Ten years ago at Christmas my kids gave me a painting of Beliveau, in action. Of course he was wearing that famous Canadiens’ sweater with the ‘C’ for captain. I have it hanging on the wall where I watch all the Habs games these days.

It’s the second-greatest Christmas present I ever received.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Jury of His Peers

Posted on November 30, 2014 by dperras56

Neither the young father nor neither of his two children seemed to have a chance. The car swerved off of Main Street at close to ninety kilometres an hour, separating the two young children from their father’s grip but somehow avoiding their protector altogether. Neither the car nor the driver were harmed much at all. The father was not physically injured either, but no one who saw him lying comatose, hugging the lifeless bodies of his two young children, believed that he would ever recover from his wounds of a different nature.

The police reports had been filed, the accident site had been cleaned up, bail had been posted for the drunken driver and he was back on the street, literally. He was in a vehicle borrowed from a friend, parked on a deserted laneway in downtown Houston, smoking a cigarette and wondering how the previous day’s events would alter his carefully laid-out plans for his future. His driver-side window was fully open, both to let out his own cigarette smoke and also to let in a cooling nighttime breeze.

Lost in his own thoughts he probably never heard a sound from the approaching pedestrian nor saw a glimpse of the handgun pulled silently from a vest pocket. There must have been a silencer on the fatal weapon as no one ever came forward nor could be found who ever claimed to have heard, let alone seen anything untoward happen on that empty cul-de-sac.

There was little doubt as to who the primary suspect would be. The father was arrested that night, the police pounding on his door as he lay asleep, passed out from the sedatives his doctor had prescribed.

The investigation was thorough, but any evidence produced was only circumstantial. The coincidence, however, was too great to be ignored. No gun of any kind could be traced to the father, no weapon being found on his premises nor had any firearm ever been registered under his name. No residue of gunpowder could be traced to his person. However, the father was charged with first-degree murder and so of course his fate would be decided in a court of law by a jury of his peers.

The jury foreman’s voice was clear, steady and definitive after being called on by the judge for the decision. He declared before the court that the jury found the accused not guilty of the charges of first-degree murder.

From the files of the Houston Chronicle.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

No Retreat, No Surrender

Posted on November 22, 2014 by dperras56

Picking up the white flag and placing it on the end of my weapon, I started to wave it slowly. It meant total surrender. I wasn’t a soldier on the frontlines giving in to the ignominy of defeat. I was sitting on the bench during a hockey game in Ottawa’s R.A. Centre (Recreation Association) and the white flag was a towel draped over the blade of my hockey stick.

Are you confused enough already ? Let me backtrack a tad. I was playing in an 0ver-35 R.A. hockey game and my team had just been assessed our seventh penalty in a row. I know it was seven because I went to the official stats after the game on the website and counted them. I know you’re thinking… this guy has too much time on his hands. He also shouldn’t be taking a beer league hockey game so seriously. All true. But puppy love isn’t very important either… unless you’re one of the puppies.

Just about all that I know in life I’ve learned from the classroom of hockey. From my love of exercise to the French I used to make my living; it’s all due to my abiding passion of the pursuit of the puck. But in the heat of the moment and during the stress of a game my mind often moves into mush mode and any life lessons are as dimly remembered as an Alzheimer’s patient trying to recall the morning’s breakfast menu.

What are these life lessons I’ve learned so thoroughly as to make my life as roaringly successful as it stands now ?

Don’t question anyone’s level of competence or judgement, especially in public. Particularly if they hold any kind of authority over you.
Act contrite even if you don’t mean it.
Don’t keep making the same mistakes over and over again.
And these lessons I have learned particularly from dealing with referees.

Anyone who knows me will back up my claim that I have few opinions, foibles or prejudices in my life. Well… okay. I can concede a few. And two of them are against goalies and referees. The former have thwarted me many times in one of my most extreme pleasures in life; scoring goals.(Yes, my life is that shallow.) Also, I question the sanity of that small subset of mankind that willingly thrives on the activity of finding recreation and fulfillment in letting others fire objects of vulcanized rubber at them with no chance of returning the favour. Very perplexing.

But there is a special place reserved in hell for those in the referee’s union. I find many of them arrogant, uncommunicative, incompetent and entitled. Did I already mention that I am not one to hold strong opinions ? First of all, they are getting paid to perform their admittedly essential duties, the only ones in amateur hockey so rewarded to be on the ice. And second, along with that reward comes a certain responsibility to put up with the pettiness of those frustrated, low-skilled athletes who have never been paid to perform. Hence, it is their responsibility to take all manner of abuse with the stoic aplomb and stiff upper lip of which the English so provided the example while holding out against the German blitz- bombing attacks on London during the Second World War.

My, my, you might be saying to yourself by now. That’s a lot of vitriol even by your lofty standards. But have you never heard the old adage that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned ? At the beginning of my retirement a retired cop-turned referee mentioned to me that he was supplementing his pension quite handsomely by officiating all manner of hockey games during his now freed-up daytime hours. He suggested that I might be so inclined and gave me the referee-in-chief’s phone number.

The ensuing phone call found the boss-man less than impressed with neither my sterling credentials (I had not yet taken even the Level 1 certificate) nor my experience ( I had officiated house-league on outdoor rinks back in the 1960s in my native Montreal.) I had quit even that humble beginning when I could no longer take getting slashed across the shins while dropping the puck on faceoffs.

“I’ve got too many referees already,” he grumpily informed me, before hanging up suddenly, leaving me as forlorn as a rebuffed panhandler on Bank Street.

Maybe I can volunteer my services at some point. You know, like young people ‘happy’ to work as unpaid interns to possibly secure a pinky-hold in today’s tenuous job market. Or maybe I’ll just stay aloof and continue to curse out the wretches lucky enough to wear the striped sweaters.

After all, like Groucho Marx, I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hot Dogs and Hockey Rinks

Posted on November 13, 2014 by dperras56

The sign said Sugar Land Ice Arena and Sports Center and already there was a group finishing up a tailgater party as Dave G. and I circled slowly, looking for a parking space. We didn’t want to land too close to the action and be tempted into the fleshpots of ice-cold beer and foot-long sausages before our time on the ice had even begun.

“So this is your friend from Canada ?” Donnie, a Houston cop who had become interested in hockey in the early 1970s when Gordie Howe and his two sons put Houston on the hockey map with the newly-founded WHA, was sizing me up. Donnie had put away his firearms for the post-game barbeque and had armed himself only with a hotdog and a beer. “A Canadian on your hockey team… it’s like having a black guy on your basketball team.” No one had led me to believe that this southern hockey crowd would be of the politically-correct variety, so I was not surprised to hear the guffawing laughter. Actually, some of the hockey players in this tournament were imports from the Canadian kindred spirit of Texas…Alberta. I wondered if there were heated discussions in the Houston hockey dressing rooms over the merits of oil pipelines running through pristine wilderness. The American players were mostly all transplants from the 3-M collection of states: Michigan, Massachusetts and Minnesota.

It’s never been a traumatic experience for me to become accustomed to a new hockey dressing room and shinny in Houston proved to be no different. There had been a lot of New England Yankees at Bishop’s University and I had always appreciated their outgoing, boisterous and irreverent natures. A burnt-out buzzing sound signalled that the ice was ready for our upcoming tilt.
“Jeezus Murphy, even the buzzer for our games lacks testosterone,” remarked Rene, reminding me that our tournament was in the Over-50 age range. Rene was a horseman from Edmonton and he commuted between the racetracks of that city and Houston, managing and racing his stable of horses. He was missing all of his front teeth and I never got around to asking him if that was the result of a hockey stick or a horse’s hoof.

Luckily for me, I would not be stuck with Rene on my line anyway, as he skated like a lame gelding just before being sent to the glue factory. To be honest I probably didn’t look much better. The ice was showing the effects of its eight month shutdown due to off-ice insurance battles. I was having as little success getting the puck under control as I did with any other aspect of my life. “It’s like skating on the Rideau Canal after a thaw,” I remarked to my winger with the unlikely-sounding hockey name of Raoul, another Texas oil financier. He looked at me blankly, never having had the experience. We lost the first game by a goal, putting us behind the 8-Ball as far as moving onto the finals was concerned. So much for the Canadian ringer being brought to the southern hockey rinks. But, I comforted myself with the thought that not all was yet lost.

I had never lost my skill at handling beer and hot dogs, still being served in the parking lot.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Texas Landing

Posted on October 27, 2014 by dperras56

Checking a hockey bag with the Ottawa Airport luggage guy was a conversation starter. “Marc Messier just went through,” he said, assuming that I would recognize the name of the five-time Stanley Cup winner. I looked at him doubtfully. They say everyone has a double somewhere and this probably was just my hockey-playing lawyer buddy Rob. “Did anyone ever say that you look exactly like Marc Messier?” I asked him, making conversation as I soaped myself (not him !) down in the shower.
“All the time,” he answered. “Even when I insist I’m not they still always say… “Come on, dude, you’re Messier.” But then it hit me that airport security would be checking passports and Marc Messier probably hadn’t handed his off to Rob. Maybe I’d be able to catch Messier before he headed off to the frequent-flyer Business Class lounge to have breakfast. I wanted to question him about a dirty move he had pulled on Larry Robinson one time when the Edmonton Oilers had knocked off the Montreal Canadiens. He had raised his stick as if to take off my idol’s head. It was during the 1980 playoffs. It still bugged me.
I had to content myself with a watery concession stand coffee as we waited for our United Airlines flight. After being led back to the window seat in the plane’s last aisle, I waited for almost one-and-a-half hours before a flight attendant came by and asked me if I wanted something to drink. I felt like a Coke, and then asked if they were also distributing little packages of peanuts or crackers or anything at all. She looked down on me as if she had caught me holding a lit cigarette, frowned slightly and answered, “No.”
I’ll bet Marc Messier was getting better service up in the Business Class section.

The Old-Timers’ hockey team with whom I would be playing did not have a limo service to greet us at the Houston Airport but Dave G. had arranged for Mike, his longtime cabbie, to pick us up. Mike was a personable laidback black man who filled us in with some news from the night before, an incident in which hit-and-run drivers got into a shoot-out with the cops who had been pursuing them. I listened intently to the story, but also couldn’t help but be distracted by the neon billboards along the route. One advertised the upcoming gun sales that would be forthcoming until Christmas, while others offered the services of bail bondsmen, who would, for only a reasonable rate of interest, put up the money for you to stay out of jail until your trial. I was happy to be in a Texas cab and not a jail cell. It was October 2nd, and the afternoon thermometer registered 93 degrees Fahrenheit.

Dave’s house in Houston proved to be as welcome as an oasis in the Gobi Desert. “What are the names of those trees?” I asked, pointing out the species that lined both sides of the street of his fashionable, not-far-from-downtown neighbourhood.
“I honestly don’t know,” Dave admitted. He had lived here for eighteen years, but then I silently excused him when I thought of Dave’s line of work as a Texas oil financier. His latest project was gathering investors for an oil-fracking adventure. In Dave’s list of priorities, the name of a species of tree was far down the list.

“We play tonight at 9 o’clock,” Dave told me as he showed me around his place. His side lawn seemed to be about half the size of a soccer field, and he had indeed provided a soccer net for his three sons to practice their free kicks. His backyard, in between his house and his office, contained a basketball court. Dave seemed to have been using his time wisely, even if it hadn’t been for memorizing the names of neighbourhood trees. “The rink has been closed down for eight months, however. Some sort of insurance battle over who was responsible for the upkeep. You know how Americans love to spend time in court. The ice might not be the greatest.”

The temperature must still have been in the high 80s as we pulled out of the driveway that night on our way to the rink. “Make sure you check out that bookstore before leaving.” Dave pointed out a funky-looking building with a ‘Kaboom Books’ sign on it. The bookseller shared space with another merchant, only his establishment was entitled ‘Set ‘Em Free Bail Bondsman.’ It didn’t take long until we were on the highway and once again my eyes were drawn to an anti-littering billboard warning everyone, “Don’t Mess With Texas.”
“We’re on the I-20,” Dave informed me. “On this freeway you can go all the way to L.A.”
In case I jumped the gun, I was soon reminded that we weren’t in L.A. yet. One more billboard advertised :
“Country Music that you love.”
redneckcountrymusic.com
Well, I thought, at least Gordie Howe and I have something in common. Playing hockey in Houston. I can compare myself to Gordie now… well, without the talent,wealth and fame, of course.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Through Hell and Half of Texas

Posted on October 20, 2014 by dperras56

“If I owned both hell and Texas, I’d rent out Texas, and live in hell.”
-General William Sherman, United States General during the American Civil War, during his famous March Through Texas.

“Going back to Houston Houston Houston…”
-Dean Martin

“Houston… it was named after Sam Houston. What’s he famous for?” I asked my friend Dave G. on the way to the airport.
Dave, who was a Canadian from Sudbury, but who had lived in the city for eighteen of the past nineteen years, shrugged his shoulders.
“I dunno… probably killing Mexicans and Indians and shit.”
Dave had been a lawyer and was now an investor in the oil industry, so I didn’t take his knowledge of Texas history too seriously. I made sure my facts would be reliable, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Seems old Sam wasn’t quite the murderous racist I had imagined a Texas hero to be : he had actually been the only American ever elected to the office of Governor in two states, (Tennessee and Texas), as well as being made an honourary member of the Cherokee Nation and to top it off was the only southern governor who had voted not to secede from the Union prior to the Civil War. That’s one version anyway, and I didn’t know if this entry had been written by one of old Sam’s descendants.

Dave had brought up the possibility of playing hockey in Houston after I had mentioned to him that I was contemplating a hockey holiday in Scandinavia for ten days in October.
“How much is that going to cost you ?” he asked. I guess that a career as a lawyer, then an oil financier and eighteen years in Texas had taught him to cut right to the chase.
“Five thousand dollars,” was my reply.
“Come to Houston,” he advised. “The plane ticket will cost about $500, you can stay at my house for free, we tailgate in the parking lot after every game without the cops asking us what the hell we think we’re doing, and after the tournament you can rent a car for a couple of days and visit San Antonio, Austin and Galveston.” I had just read on the internet where Glen Campbell, who had famously sung about Galveston, was deep in the throes of Alzheimer’s. I can’t sing, but I suspected that I was in the beginning stages of that same affliction, so at least we had something to talk about if I ran into him in that town. Half way through the conversation, we’d probably forget what it was we were talking about.

Dave had spent a good part of the past 31 years working on Wall Street and in the oilfields of Texas, but he was well aware that I was a retired pensioner. I told him that was why I could never buy him a post-game beer. My wife Brenda knew that I was eagerly anticipating my trip to Europe when I mentioned Dave G.’s alternative.
“Texas sounds like a good idea !” she said assertively. Looks like Swedish meatballs were off the menu, now replaced by crawdads.
“Okay, book your flight,” Dave advised. “There aren’t any direct ones from Ottawa. We usually go through Charlotte or Washington.”

Usually it was my wife Brenda who was the driving force of my sometimes ill-fated travels. I carried the bags and drove the car. Now I was handing over control to my new-found friend Dave, whom I had just met in the past year through playing hockey. If I may use a big word here, his lifestyle can only be described as peripatetic. Raised in a small town outside Sudbury, he had attended law school at the University of Western Ontario, worked at former Prime Minister John Turner’s law firm of McMillan Binch in Toronto, (“ABC, boys… always be closing,” the great man always reminded his young recruits during his luncheon peptalks) moved with his wife to Sydney, Australia when he decided he no longer liked law, took off to work on Wall Street and live in Brooklyn and then to Houston. His three sons held a variety of passports, and spent their time between Houston and Ottawa. I guess some people are just destined to cut a wide swath through life. Mindful of his Canadian roots, he had bought a big house on Clemow Avenue in Ottawa’s Glebe neighbourhood, which had stood empty while undergoing renovations for two years. Even the well-heeled residents of the Glebe were in awe. Rumours swirled that it was the captain of the Ottawa Senators’ Daniel Alfredsson’s purchase, where he would reside upon his retirement as a player. I shared this urban myth with Dave and his wife Liz one afternoon in their resplendent kitchen. Liz, ensconced in Houston for the past eighteen years, had never heard of Alfie.
“The flight’s leaving October 2nd at 7:30 a.m,” Dave reminded me. I’ll pick you up at six.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cappadocia

Posted on September 16, 2014 by dperras56

The sign above the sink in the public washroom said it plainly:
Do we piss in your ashtray ?
Please do not throw cigarette bullets in the sink !
I guess by ‘bullets’ they meant ‘butts’; at least I hope they did. One of the charms of Turkey, as I saw it, was that war had not yet been declared on smokers. They were everywhere, and I suppose the only negative coming out of that situation was that they occasionally left their cigarette butts in bathroom sinks. I didn’t mind breathing in the carcinogenic fog at all; it reminded me of my childhood in Quebec growing up with my parents. To tell you the truth however, my parents’ smoking habits probably wreaked more havoc on me than it did on any of my siblings. I was the runt of the litter and the only one to lose his hair. My older brother, who usually never addressed me unless he was insulting me, once pointed out that quite possibly I could have been six feet tall with a full head of hair if I hadn’t inhaled so much of the vile weed.

The unique landscape of Cappadocia was exactly as the tourist brochures pictured it, except that there were Korean tourists everywhere. A volcanic area sometime in the distant past that if I had ever paid attention in geography class I could probably put a number on, Cappadocia was dominated by a landscape now known as ‘fairy chimneys’. But the intrigue of the area far surpassed some unique geographical formations. Occupied by some group known as the Hittites between 1800 and 1200 B.C. it had then become the preserve of the Persians and then the Greeks under Alexander the Great. With much of these time periods dominated by precarious political positions the locals had learned how to carve underground cities in the, well, the underground. These tunnels had become particularly developed during the early years of Christianity when the early believers had to live with more than just the threatening jeers, jokes and condescension of the more numerous non-believers, especially when the heathens had powerful armies at their disposal. Religion must have been taken very seriously in those days. I marvelled at how any one would ride way out into the desert, searching through mountainous caverns, just because you happened to disagree with their idea of the hereafter.

Tunnels were carved out in the rock and included not only living quarters but stables, water cisterns and wine cellars as well. As well as passing the time by drinking wine they had also managed to paint the walls with magnificent frescoes. It was like an underground network of Sistine Chapels. There had probably been many a conversation over the breakfast wine where someone would be asked, “And what are you planning to do today, Matthias?”
“Same thing I do every day,” would come the reply, “paint frescoes.”

During the course of my wandering and musing over the majesties of the past I had become separated from both wife and daughter. The early Christians might have been content to paint masterpieces for nothing but their descendants were more practical-minded. The charge for entering an ancient church carved into the upper levels was an extra 10 Turkish lira. Brenda, without my knowledge had purchased three of these tickets and then had sold one to an Asian guy from New York when I was slow to appear.
“Where’s your husband?” he had asked, when told that she had the extra ticket because of my disappearance. Brenda was not overly-concerned.
“He probably lay down in one of those tombs,” she replied. “By now he’s probably one of those skeletons you can see laid out all over the place.”

I was waiting for said wife and daughter at the exit when they ambled out, probably taking their time just to piss me off.
“Tomorrow I’m getting up at 4:30 a.m in order to take one of those hot air balloon rides the different hotels are offering,’ Brenda informed me upon exiting. “Do you want to come?”
It was tempting, but the hotel breakfasts didn’t serve that early, and they might be over by the time the balloon jaunt had finished. So far I hadn’t missed one of those excellent buffet feasts, no matter what hotel we were in. I paused and carefully considered the matter.
“Take lots of pictures,” I instructed.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment