Breakfast with Kipling

Two or three times a year I have breakfast with Kipling.

That's a tradition that goes back forty years or more.

Regular readers will remember Kipling as the guy who keeps a freezer full of urine samples on hand just in case he gets called in for a surprise drug test.

He's got the whole routine nailed down... how to get those freezer samples to body temperature between your house and the lab.

But I digress...

Kipling got the farmer breakfast with white toast and eggs easy over.

I got the farmer breakfast with rye toast and a extra egg.

The thing I hate about Kipling is that he just has to reminisce.

I'll be working hard to forget all that shit that he works really hard to remember.

"Remember when you kicked that bouncer in the balls ha ha ha ?"

Well ya... I do. And I also remember running for my life down Waterloo Avenue with the footsteps of the other bouncers ringing all too loudly in my ears... I ran and ran and ran till I didn't hear no footsteps no more...

Kipling was happy to remind me that it was he who instigated that particular brouhaha.

Ya, it might be funny today, but it wasn't all that hilarious when I was hoofing it down Waterloo Ave in front of three guys determined to kill me. And when I say "down Waterloo Ave" I mean I was running down the middle of the street in the middle of traffic... a desperate fear-crazed hillbilly with three gun, club, and knife-wielding Manor bouncers in hot pursuit.

And he's got some great reminiscences of Hangin' Hank Howitt.

Seems that in his youth young Kipling more than a few times delivered his buddies to the courthouse, me included, on account of the fact that they'd be going straight to jail and would perforce be forced to leave their ride in the parking lot.

That would inevitably result in a towing charge, storage charge, and all those other charges that accumulate when you leave your vehicle in the courthouse parking lot. Trust me; I know what I'm talking about.

Hank might render you seven days and $150 for your most recent indiscretion, but when your seven days were up, getting your car out of the pound was gonna cost $1500.

And here's the other thing about reminiscing over breakfast. Kipling can stretch two eggs and four pieces of white toast into a four hour adventure! Holy Christ, he can pretty much make a day of it!

But it's worth it!

I found my baby with another man

Me and the Farm Manager were sitting on the front porch reminiscing about the old times.

The old times were pretty wild, the FM acknowledged.

I agreed.

But for some reason the FM's wild times managed to avoid the judicial system.

Mine didn't.

My wild times seemed to end up in front of Judge Henry Howitt on a regular basis.

Hangin' Hank was a Guelph legend. Word has it that he was so drunk some days on the bench, that the Guelph Police Department used to send two cruisers to assist his drive to the Country Club after a long day on the bench.

One cruiser would drive in front, the other behind. It was like NFL blockers clearing a track for a running back. Hammered Hank never had an accident between the courthouse and the Country Club.

Nor did he ever have an accident between the Country Club and his house atop the Eramosa Street hill, where those same blockers would guide him after his shift at the Club was finished.

So back in my wild years, me and Hank used to get face-to-face on a regular basis.

Nothing serious, mind you... just the usual alcohol fueled juvenile hijinx that overtakes a certain segment of the teen population, sometimes till they're well into their forties.

I remember standing in front of Hank once after having ingested a blotter tab of LSD.

And standing... and standing some more... and some more.

I was just standing there admiring the sheen on the podium in front of Hank. It was shiny.

It glowed.

Ripples of light cascaded off that podium. That light infused the entire room with its warm glow... it was an incredible thing!

I was still standing there, admiring the glow, and somewhere far away I kept hearing the words "you can go now you can go now you can go now"... repeated over and over like a mantra...

Then this dude in a uniform takes me by the arm and leads me to the exit.

What? I can go now?

Holy shit! Case dismissed!

But the most memorable time I ever had in front of Hank was the time I found my baby with another man.

Ya, I know; there's been about twenty million country songs written about that, but I was there.

Sure enough, in true country style, a brawl breaks out.

Now as to the particulars of the situation, truth is I was with another woman at the time I found my baby with another man, and in hindsight, that fact may have been at least partially responsible for her behavior that evening.

Now, I'm explaining this to Judge Howitt, and of course I'm trying to put a profitable (for me) spin on things. Bear in mind that me and Hank are, at this point, if not friends, at least acquaintances.

So Hank hears the whole sordid tale from the mouth of the person who was by then my "ex," and then it's my turn.

So tell me your side of the story, son.

Ya, he called me "son."

Well sir, I was just comforting my friend Miss ****, who had just experienced a break-up with her boyfriend, when this Camaro came along and these three people got out, one of them being my ex.
She assaulted me and I was forced to defend myself, and then the two guys who got out of that Camaro began to assault me too, and I was just forced to keep defending myself until they all got back in that Camaro and drove away.

Well Hallelujah!

That was good enough for Hank...

Case dismissed!

Hangin' Hank was a sucker for a good yarn!

You can't bullshit welding

Made good time getting up here.

Eleven hundred and some clicks in twelve hours. That included an hour for lunch at a lovely spot overlooking the north channel in Thessalon, and an unscheduled stop shortly thereafter while a semi-literate cop took forever to write me a speeding ticket.

I used to think that would be a great job, cop. I even applied once, the City of Guelph Police Department. On the application there was a question, "have you ever been arrested?" and then they left a two-line space. I wasn't sure the best way to handle this, so in the space I wrote "see over."

Not that I was ever much of a criminal, but there was a fair bit of your normal late adolescent alcohol-inspired assholery.

I remember the first time I stood in front of  Hangin' Hank, infamous local judge and bon vivant down at the country club.

I learned a lesson that day that Conrad Black still hasn't figured out; while you might well be the smartest guy in the room, when you're standing in front of a judge isn't the time to let the room know it.

Subsequent visits to Hangin' Hanks workplace went a lot smoother, and I think eventually, as my adolescence dragged on, we grew to have a grudging mutual respect. It wasn't till years later, when I got to know one of the bartenders at the country club, that I learned Hangin' Hank was also known in some circles as Hammered Hank, and was on most work days as shit-faced sitting there on the bench as I was when I did the stupid stuff that led to my visits there.

So the cop thing didn't work out and I was forced, more or less by default, to continue my welding career. Welding is where you take something called an electrode, made of an exotic blend of alloys than I can neither spell nor pronounce, fry it up with a few hundred amps of electricity, and in the process join other metal things together.

What also happens in the process is that giant clouds of toxic smoke are created, which were then inhaled by everyone in the shop for the rest of the eight or ten or twelve hour shift. It was the norm in a place like the General Electric plant for the toxic fog to be so thick you couldn't see from one end of the shop to the other.

In the midst of that fog you'd see guys welding away, a little cigar-hole cut in the front of their welding helmets, cheerfully puffing away on a stogie. The health and safety do-gooders eventually put an end to smoking on the job, but they haven't figured out how to make non-toxic welding rods yet.

The best welding jobs, to my mind, were always the ones that involved the least welding. Back in the early eighties I was doing maintenance welding in sawmills on Vancouver Island. Most of the mills are closed now, but it was a great gig at the time.

You'd usually have hours of planning, fitting, re-fitting, head-scratching and general dinking around before you finally got to a five minute weld. And unlike a lot of jobs; judging, teaching, politicking, writing, stock market analysis, to name a few; you can't bullshit welding.

Which is not to say you can't do the job while half in the bag. Apparently there were times when Hammered Hank had to be carried from the bench to the judges chambers after the courtroom was cleared.

There was a guy I worked with at the drydock in Saint John who coulda give old Hank a run for his money. We worked the afternoon shift together, and Buddy would already have a good glow on when he turned up.

The first half of any shift at the shipyard was always a bit of a lost cause. We were working on the Canadian Patrol Frigate program and everything was top secret, which meant the guys on the day shift had to turn in all the blueprints before the end of their shift, and then the afternoon shift foremen had to go around handing them out again. That could often take till lunchtime, so a bit of a glow when you arrived at work was neither here nor there.

One of the perks of the shipyard was the Royal Canadian Legion located in the parking lot. How that came to be there is a long story.

Over the years, as the Irving family bought and then relentlessly expanded the yards, they picked up all the properties around. The Legion refused to sell. Eventually you had this huge parking lot with the Legion right there smack dab in the middle. Needless to say this was the spot to go for lunch. We'd all be honorary Legionnaires for half an hour and most guys would have two, maybe three beers.

Not Buddy. Three triples and three beer chasers for lunch. Every  day.

Now for me, that's not the time I want to be welding anything that matters. With Buddy it wasn't like that. His eye got keener, his hand steadier. He was famous for it. If there was a tough job anywhere in the yard they'd radio over to our section, and Buddy, well past three sheets as far as I was concerned, would be dispatched to get it done. Best welder I ever knew.

You can't bullshit welding.

And now, apparently, you can't find welders. Welders in Alberta typically make anywhere from $25 to $50 an hour. There's lots of guys, and some women too, around Fort McMurray making well over a hundred grand a year. And the job isn't nearly as dirty as it used to be.

So what are we doing to retrain our dispossessed mill-workers to take those jobs? Right next to nothing, that's what.

Instead, what the employers in Alberta are doing is lobbying the government to bring in foreign workers by the tens of thousands.

Now that's bullshit.

The bar tender told me that when Hammered Hank was ready to drive home after an eight hour shift at the country club, he'd call the cops. Two cruisers would show up. One would lead the way and one would follow behind as Hank drove home.

Never had an accident.