KIPLING AND KRECSYS

            I’ve got a couple of milestone anniversaries coming up in 2015. On July 1^st of this year it will have been 45 years since Mom and Dad and their three youngest children, Gordon, Perry and our little sister Michelle, (Shelly), moved to Kipling from Marquis, SK, where we had been residing since 1965. That move to Kipling was in 1970 and, as it turns out, it would have a large impact on my life.

            July 2015 also marks the 30^th year since my own little family moved back to Kipling after an eight year absence. I had kicked around Kipling for a few years after high school living with Mom and Dad and working in construction before heading to do the Alberta experience, or experiment, if you prefer, for a year or so. By 1979 I had returned to Saskatchewan, or more specifically, to Regina, sharing accommodations and a workplace with my good friend, Ron Balogh.

My wife Debbie is from Windthorst and in 1985 we decided we’d like to move “home” so we packed up our stuff, our first-born daughter, Meghan, and we took up residence in Kipling as I went to work for Larry Walker at his Quality Millwork and Building Supplies retail outlet.

            It would appear that having lived in six other communities over twenty-some years took the wandering out of me. Once we moved back to Kipling in 1985 we stayed. Between my birth and my thirty-seventh birthday I had lived at twenty-two, that’s 22, different residences during that time period. I was both really good at, as well as, sick and tired of packing and moving.      

            The move from Marquis to Kipling was a bit of an adjustment for us. Marquis had a population of less than 100 and Kipling was over 1000. Being awkward teenagers and having just recently settled into a different school in Moose Jaw, Gord, Shelly and I weren’t all that happy about the move. Moving to a bigger town was kind of exciting for us but going to another new school and finding new friends was getting a little old, too.

            During one of our early bike tours to get familiar with the town we noticed a sign in the back lane leaning up against the Co-op Grocery Store at 601 Main Street and it looked to us like the sign said “KRESGE’S”, a huge store chain, WOW, this place must be pretty big because it has a “KRESGE’S”, we said. We were close, but the sign actually said “KRECSY’S”. The Co-op had recently purchased the land and building from Gerry Krecsy whose family had run a general store business since 1909 and had built the “new” store building in 1949. Gerry recently had quite a milestone of his own, you see, on June 3^rd he celebrated his 90^th birthday. 90 years! WOW again.

            The Krecsy family, like the town of Kipling, would also impact large in my life over time. It turned out it wasn’t hard to make friends in Kipling after all. Max, Gerry’s son, and I became friends in 1970 and were business partners at one time and we remain best friends to this day. His older brother Ward and my brother Gord were best friends through high school and while their lives have taken each of them in different directions whenever they do get together the years fall back easily to their old high school days. I served on town council with Gerry in the late ‘90s and early 2000’s. When Gerry and his wife Maxine’s oldest son, Mark, married my sister Margo in 1976 it really cemented the family connection.

            Gerry and Maxine and my Mom and Dad, Lowell and Rose Hubbard, had a great relationship and they were great friends who had a lot of good times together. Gerry, as life would have it, is the only one of the four still celebrating birthdays.

            Gerry’s family put on a community tea for him this past weekend and they followed it up with a little shindig at Gerry’s house. He celebrated in style. A lot of stories were circulated about Gerry’s life and the Krecsy family history and their legacy in Kipling and area. Stories were told about the Krecsy family’s compassion for families suffering through hard times, their commitment to King and Country and about how Gerry’s father Louis had been a hard-working community builder and how he passed that down to his sons and grandsons with Louis, Gerry and Max all having served terms on town council. And, I must say, Kipling is all the better for it.

90 years and counting! Thanks for everything Gerry. Happy Birthday!

             “The greatest legacy one can pass on to one's children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one's life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.”-Bill Graham (1918-).

$400 MILLION DOLLARS!!??

I guess you could classify me as a casual boxing fan. I'll watch some amateur boxing, PanAm games and Olympic Games' matches and I'll watch some of the big pro fights but that's about it. I did follow the lengthy storyline as the two best pound-for-pound fighters in recent boxing history, multi-weight division Champions Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao, finally agreed to meet in the ring after squabbling for years over the terms of a fight to determine who the best really is or was or whatever. Mayweather's 38 years old and Pacquiao is 36.


Before trying to punch each other's lights out they, or their handlers, I should say, fought about the purse split, drug testing, location of the fight, gloves they were going to use etcetera, etcetera, before the negotiations were finalized and THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY was announced. I'm not so sure if "Fight of the Century" is such a big deal anyway as we're just fifteen years into this century but whatever it takes to sell tickets, I guess.

And they certainly did that. Sell the fight, that is. This fight is estimated to generate $400+ million dollars in revenue. That's right, $400 MILLION dollars!! Between the ticket sales to the 16,800 Rich and Famous people who could afford the ridiculous seat prices at the Las Vegas MGM Grand, the pay-per-view take, the merchandising, the sponsors and the international television rights the total revenue shattered all previous revenue levels in the sport.

Mayweather's nickname is, appropriately enough, "Money" and he is set to make...I don't even want to tell you...$180 million dollars. That figure, once again,$180 million dollars. For one fight. The match went the full twelve round distance so that's $83,333.33 per second of fighting. PER SECOND! Pacquiao's take is only $120 million dollars or a measly $55,555.55 per second.

In comparison, the boxer's single fight earnings is higher than the average professional sports teams, (National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League's), complete payrolls for the entire 2014-15 season. Every player for the whole year! Wow!

Here's some more perspective for you: Canada's average annual salary...that's average...mind you, is $48,600.00. For a whole year's work. We could pay the Prime Minister's salary, at today's level, for 916 years before we'd reach $180 million dollars. 916 YEARS! You could buy 6000, 2015 Cadillac CTS Sedans at the Manufactured Suggested Retail Price. You could pay 14,590 people a year's wages at Saskatchewan's minimum wage level of $10.20/hour. You could employ 3700 people for one year on Canada's average annual salary of $48,600.00..

You might also choose to buy 18,575,851 Fatburgers (Mayweather's favourite junk food), 10,588 Golden Apple Watches, 2-Goldstream G650 Private Jets, 450,000 magnums of Dom Perignon Champaign, or 1 Mars Megayacht (valued at 165M). You could also buy 3,600,000,000, (3 billion, 600 million), 5cent candies, too.

You can't really blame the combatants here, though, it's "Whatever the market will bear" as the free market lovers will tell you. If people are lining up to pay $100.00 per pay-per-view or a few hundred thousand dollars for a ring-side seat then what the heck? There's the justification.

But, along with the exorbitantly ridiculous gate split you throw in Mayweather's domestic violence record and, if it were up to me, he'd get maybe a year's wages at the minimum level and the rest of the proceeds would go to shelters for battered women. That's my two cents on that subject.

Then again, it's not really his fault either is it? Hitting women is his fault and he shouldn't have even been allowed to fight at all but he didn't let himself go with a slap on the wrist, did he? He's not the only high profile athlete to break the law and get away with it, either.

Personally, I don't think he should be living the high life that he is and nobody should be making a zillion dollars a fight while children are starving and hospitals and schools are underfunded and people are homeless and the list is endless but...that's just the messed up world we're living in, isn't it? Exasperating as it is.

"I know the world isn't fair, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?"-Bill Watterson, cartoonist (1958-).

WHAT DAY IS IT?

            I'm not sure if it's just a Facebook thing, or what, but apparently the 16th of every month is supposed to be "Short People Appreciation Day". My wife heard that on the radio last Thursday so it has to be true. And, there's a specific Facebook page dedicated to it as well.

            It seems that nowadays every day has to have a theme or two or three. For instance, I'm writing this on the 19th of April so that makes it...take your pick...National Bicycle Day, National Garlic Day, National Amaretto Day or National Hanging Out Day. All on the 19th of April. How did this happen? Who said? I guess one should celebrate the day by eating garlic while riding your bicycle on your way to hang out with friends drinking Amaretto? I could do that, I suppose.

            Checkiday.com is where I went to find out what we're celebrating on any given day of the year but it doesn't tell you who decided on the themes. I clicked on my birthday, December 12, and guess what I found? It's National Ding-a-Ling Day!! Never mind. Be nice. It's also National 12-hour Fresh Breath Day, and National Poinsettia Day as well as Ginger Bread House Day. Who woulda thought?

            I put the 10th of May into the "search" box and I found out that it is National Lupus Day, National Cleanup Your Room Day as well as National Shrimp Day. No mention that May 10th happens to be Mother's Day! At least, this year it is.

            April 21st is our Grandson's 6th birthday which he will be celebrating along with, appropriately enough, National Kindergarten Day, which he is attending this year, as well as- National Chocolate Covered Cashews Day, Bulldogs are Beautiful Day and Stay Off the Grass Day! Hmmm. Odd about that last one because April 20th is International Pot Smokers Day. Get it? Haw, haw! Pot Smokers Day followed by Stay Off the Grass Day...you know... ah, never mind.

            Anyway, it's obviously an American website but it is really quite interesting to plug in a date and see what weirdness comes up. Like one of the themes on January 2nd is that it is National Personal Trainer Awareness Day? Awareness of Personal Trainers? Huh? It's not like personal trainers are like rare skin diseases or unusual blood disorders or something. I think many people know what a personal trainer is and maybe they are avoiding them like the itch but calling it an "Awareness" Day wouldn't be the term I'd use. National Personal Trainer "Appreciation" Day sounds better to me but maybe I'm just splitting hairs now.

            So, if you want to have nothing to do we have a day for you there, too. January 16th is Do Nothing Day which is just impossible because even if you wake up and get out of bed you've done something...there I go splitting hairs again, anyway, if you want to do as little as possible on Do Nothing Day you could go to the Checkiday.com website and look up every day of the year just to find something to celebrate. I think that would be quite interesting.

            I'd just like to touch base on that Small Person Appreciation Day theme for a second again here, if you don't mind? My research states that males under 5'7" and females under 5'2" qualify as official Small People. Not my rules, people, and having a personal height of 6'3" I prefer to be politically correct and not mention anyone's height to anyone, but these height parameters would take in a large number of people, I would think, so good for you short people for having your own day and Facebook page.

            Pick a day! Any day! And you, too, may find something worthwhile to celebrate!

"Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words."-Plautus (255BC-185BC).

HOW ARE YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS?

            With all of the communication tools and systems available to us these days it sure puts a lot of pressure on one, doesn't it? What is the time allowance for a return text? How about emails? Or phone messages? We are in an instant world and people expect instant answers.

            Does anyone actually answer a personal phone call anymore without knowing the caller first? Don't recognize the number?...let it go to voice mail...I'll call 'em back. If I want to or feel like it, that is. I blame the telemarketers for that one.

            But no wonder there is so much pressure to respond immediately. "Where were you? I've been trying to get a hold of you for like....minutes already! Sheesh!" We're connected 24-7-365 and there's a great deal of expectation and pressure that goes along with that.

            I was out on the golf course a few years ago while our youngest daughter was fighting a virus at home on the couch. Why I had my stupid phone turned on at the golf course in the first place I'll never know, but I did, so it was my own darn fault. She's texting and texting about medications and soup cooking and various remedies and the phone's pinging every ten minutes but now I'm hooked into the conversation so I can't turn it off or ignore it and my playing partners are getting more and more perturbed and I can't blame them and one of them says, "why don't you just phone her? We've advanced past a device that tapped out messages back and forth to people years and years ago...it was called a telegraph!!" Smarty pants. But he was right.

            I would have phoned her, too, if I hadn't thought that the last text was going to be the last text, if you know what I mean. When does the thread end? If you don't get a final response you don't think the conversation is over. Or you think the conversation is over and there's another text asking if the texting is done for now. Now I have to respond so they don't think I'm rude and around and around we go. Sound familiar?

            Language is the next barrier. I'm old school. I always thought OK meant okay. You know,  that's good, we have completed our communications I will proceed with my life now...Oh...Kay. But it goes to tone doesn't it? You can't read tone or meaning with only typed words.

            My son says he hates okay. He'll text he's going to be late getting home and he only gets an "okay" back and he's going, "What does THAT mean? Okay? Okay?"

             Is it a sarcastic okay? Was it an, "okay, fine, whatever", okay? Was he just reading into it? Is there a little guilt with the text, perhaps? Again...maybe this would be a good time for a phone call. Just saying.

            Then there was the aforementioned "whatever" word. According to one college poll "whatever" was voted as the phrase that is the "most annoying in a conversation."

            Oh yeah? Who said? Did I get a vote? Did you get a vote? Pfft...whatever.

             Such a versatile, ambiguous and, yes, annoying word. Sometimes you need to hear the tone to correctly interpret the meaning of the word...sometimes you don't.

            Husband: "I know it's your birthday, so here's a card and I'm going fishing with Jimmy. See ya later. Okay?"

            Wife: "Whatever."

            No ambiguity there. "Whatever" will mean you will be coming home from fishing to an empty house with divorce papers on the counter.

            Whatever your means of communication you better hone up on the etiquette. Establish some parameters with your cohorts so you're all on the same page with the same expectations. You know, whatever works.

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."-George Bernard Shaw. (1856-1950).

 

Writer’s note: comments and questions regarding this column may be addressed to hubbs45@sasktel.net. Also, previous “In My Humble Opinion” and “Random Thoughts” columns can be found on the following website: http://pnhubbard.blogspot.com/.

 

 

EASTER EGGS AND BUNNIES

            As my wife and I were picking out some Easter treats for the grandchildren a discussion arose about how Easter eggs, Easter Bunnies and all things chocolate became symbols of the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

            It’s one of those things that, I guess, we just take for granted. Things that we did with our parents while growing up and we’ve passed the traditions on to our children and their children and we don’t really look deeply into why we do it or what they represent. We just do it.

Maybe a lot of you readers know the details behind these traditions but when I did a little research and a straw poll of relatives and acquaintances about the history of Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny many of them didn’t know either so I did what every other curious person would do and I Googled it. And here’s what I found out.

The practice of colouring eggshell is ancient, predating Christian traditions. Ostrich eggs with engraved decoration that are 60,000 years old have been found in Africa. The Christian custom of the Easter egg can be traced as far back as the early Christians of Mesopotamia, who stained eggs red in memory of the blood of Christ, shed at his crucifixion. The Christian Church officially adopted the custom, regarding the eggs as a symbol of the resurrection.

            The Easter egg tradition was also influenced by the fact that eggs were originally forbidden during Lent and since chickens wouldn’t stop producing eggs during this time hard boiling the eggs was used as a way of preserving them, then, with the coming of Easter, the eating of eggs resumes and the boiled eggs were consumed. Many Christians adopted the practice of dying and painting the eggs. Although the tradition is to use dyed or painted chicken eggs, a modern custom emerged substituting them with chocolate eggs or plastic eggs filled with candy.

            The hare was a popular motif in medieval church art. In ancient times, it was widely believed that the hare was a hermaphrodite and the idea that a hare could reproduce without loss of virginity led to an association with the Virgin Mary, with hares sometimes occurring in illuminated manuscripts and paintings of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child.

The Easter Bunny is a folkloric figure depicted as a hare bringing Easter eggs. The “Easter Hare” originated with German Lutherans. The custom of an Easter hare bringing Easter eggs for children was first recorded in writing in 1682. According to legend, only good children received gifts of coloured eggs in the nests that they made in their caps and bonnets before Easter.

The egg was also a symbol of rebirth in pre-Christian celebrations of spring. As a Christian Easter symbol the egg is likened to the tomb from which Christ arose. Protestant Christian Reformer Marin Luther is credited with starting the tradition of the Easter Egg Hunt where the men hid the eggs for the women and children went along. Christian Scholar Mary Jane Pierce Norton states that, “there’s something about going to hunt the eggs just as we might go to hunt for Jesus in the tomb. When we find them it’s that joy that the women had when they reached the tomb first and found Jesus was no longer there.”

I hope I may have satisfied your curiosity as well as mine. Enjoy your Easter weekend celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ while honouring its many long-practiced traditions.

“Easter is meant to be a symbol of hope, renewal, and new life.”-Janine di Giovanni. 

REDNECK FUN!

             At work the other day a few of us were engaged in a discussion about vermin. Oh yes, a highly intellectual lot we are. But, you see, there had been reports of a weasel running loose in one of the older areas of the original building and we were wondering if it was better to let it run wild and free or try to catch and release it somewhere.

            “Better a weasel than a rat or a mouse”, said I, “and we’re not raising chickens out here so where’s the harm?”

Sidebar here: FYI-a weasel will kill a rat twice its size…just for the fun of it, too, and if you don’t believe me Google “rat vs weasel” and there’s a You Tube video showing the whole nasty ordeal. Yuck. I had to watch the whole thing, though. Sorry…I digress.

Anyway, we got to talking about which creature would make us jump up in a chair and squeal like a little gir…what’s politically correct here? Squeal like someone extremely scared of scurrying things? Whatever… “As long as it’s not a snake”, said one co-worker; “To me, it’s spiders” said another; “Bats creep ME out”, was another reply; “I’m moving to Antarctica”, said someone else, “there are no vermin there at all and I can’t stand any of them! Rat, mouse, snake, bird, lizard…whaterver…ewwww.”

I’m going to go with rats. I hate ‘em. Back in my “farmin’” days I was tasked with the duty of repairing the rat damage in the old wooden bins on my brother-in-law Maurice’s farm. I couldn’t refuse because the upside was that I got to drive his ’48 Ford ½ Ton up and down the dirt roads while I went from field to field, yard to yard, bin to bin fixing the holes and what 16-17-year-old wouldn’t jump at that kind of opportunity? I knew while I was cutting and tarring and nailing the creepy, nasty varmints were this close to me. I am shivering thinking about it now.

It wasn’t like there was a large infestation of the things but there was enough evidence around to know that they were there. One time, though, we noticed that there seemed to be a bit more activity in and around the chicken coop in the barn. Along with bin repairs I was assigned watering and feeding the stupid chickens, which also kind of creep me out, so I was getting it double when I had to go in there.

I complained that I didn’t want to go into the coop any more so Maurice and his brother, Brent, who was my age, decided that they’d take matters into their own hands and began devising a plan to eradicate the rats. Or, at the very least, make a dint in their numbers. The plan was taking shape as the level of the Lemon Hart rum bottle was being lowered and the lower the rum got the better the plan became. Or so we thought.

Out to the barn we go…three brave souls, .22 rifle in Brent’s hand…flashlight taped to the barrel, another flashlight in Maurice’s hand and me along for moral support. It’s dark and we’re going to quietly sneak into the barn and then throw the flashlights on catching the scurrying little devils by surprise and Brent’ll pick ‘em off with the gun. Great plan.

Brent is holding the gun and Maurice is supposed to click the flashlight attached to the barrel of the rifle on at the same time as the one he’s got in his hand but, being the jokester that he is, and mostly drunk, he decides it would be great fun to run his fingers up Brent’s pant leg instead. Another great plan. NOT!

Brent screams and drops the rifle and nearly tramples me running out of the barn and Maurice is laughing so hard he can’t even turn the flashlight on and I’m just screaming ‘cause I have no idea what’s going on but it can’t be good and they’re leaving me behind in the pitch black chicken/rat coop. We’re all scrambling and screaming and slipping in the hay and fleeing the barn like the Three Stooges and we don’t stop ‘til we’re at the house a few hundred yards away, huffin’ and puffin’ and laughing so hard it hurts.

Good old Red Neck fun! Firearms ‘n booze. A nasty combination. We are soooo lucky nobody took a bullet that night. The rats had a good laugh, too, I’m sure.

The RM Pest Control Officer was called in to take care of the rats properly and I gave the chicken coop a wide birth for a few days while Maurice did the chores as penance for his shenanigans. Good times…good times.

I couldn’t find an appropriate rat quote so I’m going to go with this one-

“I hate rats.”-Perry Hubbard (1956-).

MOUNTAINS AND MOLEHILLS

            Mom and Dad met and were married in Saskatchewan but soon followed Mom’s parents to Lethbridge, Alberta, where they resided for the first twenty-three years of their marriage. In fact, eight out of Mom and Dad’s nine children were born in Lethbridge. My sister Judy was the only one of their children that wasn’t born there. She was born in Taber, Alberta, which is about 30 miles, or 50 kms, east of Lethbridge, and she lives there still, when she’s not wintering in Arizona, that is.

            She and her first husband, along with their two sons, moved to Taber in the late 1960’s and Judy has resided there ever since. Back in the day it was common practice for the younger Hubbard siblings to spend some of their summer vacation time with their older siblings so my older brother, Gordie, and my younger sister, Shelly, and I got to spend a lot of time visiting Judy’s family in Taber over the years.

            Taber’s a town of about eight thousand residents and it’s a very nice place. I always liked visiting Taber. Still do. It’s famous for its Taber Corn and the Roger’s Sugar plant and the summers are hot and dry, just the way I like them. I spent more than a few of those hot summer days with my nephews cooling off in the irrigation canals that are everywhere in the fields which produce that world famous corn, as well as the sugar beet, vegetable, cereal and oil seed crops.

            The town is located in Alberta so of course the oil industry factors large in the community and there are many thriving cattle enterprises in the area, too. The town is large enough for someone to find trouble easily and small enough so everyone will know who the trouble makers are, usually, but I wouldn’t say that it’s morally any better or worse than other communities of its size and demographic.

            Taber recently fell under the scrutiny of the national and international “24-7-365 News, News, News…All The Time News” industry, who are under immense pressure to find some new bone to chew on and this time Taber was their bone.

            You see, in a case of good intentions gone viral, the Town of Taber’s council passed a Municipal Bylaw which, according to its website would: “adopt a Community Standards Bylaw that is intended to consolidate existing municipal regulations and allow enforcement under a municipal bylaw rather than the Criminal Code.”  

            The Bylaw was intended to be a “common sense” approach giving the police and bylaw officials the ability to assess fines instead of making arrests or laying charges under the Criminal Code. Police officers would be able to issue a bylaw ticket for minor offences which would not clog up the provincial courts. Many of the infractions were already enacted in other bylaws and were simply consolidated. A side benefit would be that the fines would be paid to the Town of Taber and not paid into provincial coffers.

            But the news and social media, as per their wont, jumped on one or two sentences from the volumes of bylaws and stated that the Town of Taber had passed a bylaw that “bans public swearing, yelling and spitting”, (and only that), hinting strongly that the bylaws were infringing on Canadian Charter rights and made the town sound like the fictional dance-banning community of Bomont in the 1984 movie Footloose. The media storm was, and is, ridiculous. I’m pretty sure that if you dusted off any community’s bylaws you’d find similar laws and regulations.

Here are a few examples of outdated or silly laws and bylaws that a person could still be prosecuted for. In Windsor, ON. “you are not allowed to play a flute, recorder or mouth organ without a permit in public parks.” Or, in Quesnel, British Columbia, “you must not exercise in a manner that frightens a horse - without permission.” And there’s still a law on the British Columbia books that states “if you’re a bankrupt drunk who gets thrown in jail, the law requires the jailer to bring you a bottle of beer on demand.” Trust me, there are dozens more.

Upon closer scrutiny I don’t think that the Town of Taber’s Council were jack-boot-wearing-fascists infringing on their residents rights rather than they were just some concerned citizens trying to do some cleaning up of their old books and streamline some bylaws and they got caught up in a media frenzy. Tabor was this week’s “is the dress blue and black or white and gold”? Next week’s media target will be something new.

“Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.”-Bill Gates (1955-).