Rolled into Wiarton this morning to fork over five bucks to The Korean for my Saturday Globe. Ya, I know, I can get the whole damn thing online, but I'm one of those old-school guys who just prefers to turn pages, even at that extortionate rate. Hell, I remember having the Globe and Mail delivered to my door every morning for twenty-five cents per.
Times have changed, and not for the better.
As luck would have it, the line-up at Timmies was way shorter than you'd expect in tourist season, so I ducked in for a medium with milk.
The folks who run this franchise made what is to me an incomprehensible decision recently; they spent a couple hundred thousand dollars on putting a second order board in the drive-thru. There's still only one drive-thru window, but now two cars can place their orders at the same time. Overall, this doesn't improve service or speed up your trip through the drive-thru, but it does provide the illusion that the line-up is shorter than it actually is.
It also makes a trip through the drive-thru far more stressful than it used to be. I don't care what kind of a peace-loving pacifist fairy you might be, you'll be pissed off when that car that pulled in after you makes it to the window before you. Frankly, I'd give up Tim Hortons altogether, but I'm addicted to whatever it is they put in their coffee. (Rumours were rife not long ago that the magic ingredient is nicotine, but corporate HQ denies this.)
Stopped at the Wiarton International Airport on the way home. They were having their second annual cars, planes and motorcycles show. Unfortunately, the cars, planes and motorcycles were far fewer in number than what I was promised in the promo piece the Farm Manager read me out of the local paper yesterday. Three hundred cars? It was more like three dozen.
Must have been the weather... or maybe I just showed up too early.
But at least I got to go home and tuck into my Saturday Globe earlier than I'd expected.
The most jarring thing about today's paper was that I read Southey's column just before I read the style section. Southey's dad was my economics prof in one of my past lives, and he used to bring little Tabatha to campus from time to time, so I feel a certain affinity.
Little Tabatha became a writer for the Globe, and apparently she's currently on a tour of Madagascar. Her reporting from Madagascar is bleak in the extreme. That's why the promos for $700 sandals in the "Style" section left me feeling somewhat discombobulated. Seven hundred bucks for a pair of sandals? Really? Most people who live in Madagascar do so on less than that. For a year.
I must say I really appreciate that automotive writer Pete Chenney has got his car column into the style section. Today he had a fine article about the hardtop version of the Shelby Cobra. Well worth a look. His column is generally the most interesting thing in Globe Style.
But let's get on to the Drumpfobia, shall we!
Today's Globe and Mail Trump-bashing is left to the husband and wife team of Elizabeth Renzetti (page two of the main news section) and Doug Saunders ( page seven in the Focus section).
Liz has a nice piece on view about how a couple of grannies are gonna put the boots to grandpa Donald Trump. It's kind of pleasant in a vapid way if you're a Clinton fan, which I'm not. But at the end of the day, I'd say if American politics comes down to Grannies bashing Grandpas, maybe America is really a gerontocracy, and not the plutocracy or oligarchy that so many sentient observers claim.
HRC getting the endorsement of Elizabeth Warren does do wonders for Clinton of course. It's almost as important as Trump getting the endorsement of establishment GOP guys like Newt or Chris Christie. Hillary is so far to the right of Trump that most of the PNAC crowd has no compunction whatsoever about supporting her, which tells you everything you need to know about Hillary. Getting the nod from one of the few genuine "progressives" in the Dem camp means the world to her campaign.
So Renzetti's story about the grannies getting together to take out the evil grandpa has at least some element of human interest.
Husband Doug's column, on the other hand, is just plain silly. Yup, time to erect a "cordon sanitaire" around the buffoon. After all, that's how they've been side-lining the radical right in Europe...
Really?
Perhaps Saunders' analysis had some legitimacy a couple of years ago. But the so-called anti-immigrant radical right has been radically on the up-tick since the refugee trickle became a flood. And whether that influx is a trickle or a flood depends entirely on the whims of Sultan Erdogan, our erstwhile anti-democratic NATO ally, who alone has his hands on the refugee taps. Europe has been busy trying to buy him off, but the wily Erdogan knows when he's got his adversaries over a barrel... and does he ever!
Yup, it's a mess, and it's gonna get way messier, especially if HRC's greedy grasping hands ever seize the levers of power. Which is not to say that things would be better with Trump at the helm. Trump is an unknown quantity. He might be better; he might not. At least with Trump there is a glimmer of possibility that America might change the disastrous course it's been on. With Hillary it will be full steam ahead.
So even though there were only a few dozen cars on view when I got to the Wiarton International Airport, a couple of them were very nice. There was a very pretty 1970 Cyclone GT. Unfortunately it had the 351 two barrel. That's not gonna stir up a lot of wind, nevermind a cyclone. The Mustang 50 I drove to the airport would probably have ten lengths on it over the quarter mile.
There was also a lovely '68 Impala SS with a 396 and four speed. I'm a sucker for the full size Chevy's from that era. Drove a '67 Impala SS for awhile, with the 327 and a powerglide. Also had a '67 Belair wagon for a few years, with a 283 and the powerglide. Paid two hundred for it, drove it for a couple of years, and sold it for two hundred.
That's cheap driving!
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