A Shower Stall Story

     The other day I blogged about how removing a broken hot water tank led to an escalating problem, resulting in me having to replace the floor and having to totally renovate our bathroom.  One of the things I had to do in that renovation was replace the old shower stall.  That was a bit of a problem because our bathroom was very small and the normal sized stalls that were available didn’t fit, but luckily we eventually did find a small one, which I installed.

    Every time I think of molded shower stalls I remember a story that my neighbor Kjell told me.  At one point, he too had to buy a new shower stall.  He shopped around in the hardware store and selected the model on the show floor that he wanted.  He paid and was told to drive over to the loading bay to pick it up.

    When he got there, a young kid employee came out and asked Kjell if he could help him load it.  Kjell followed him back into the warehouse, and the guy pointed to a bundle all wrapped up in shrink wrap, and told Kjell it was heavy.

    The two of them managed to pick up the wrapped bundle and headed to Kjell’s vehicle.  Kjell couldn’t get over how heavy the shower stall was.  It seemed a whole lot heavier than he expected. 

    Before putting it into the back of his pickup, Kjell decided to check it, because it was so heavy.  When he tore through all of the shrink wrap, he found out;  the shower stall was actually three molded shower stalls, all tightly squeezed together for shipping.

    Being an honest person and not needing three shower stalls, they removed all of the shrink wrap and Kjell loaded just one shower stall into his truck.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Ugh, Rain On Snow

     We got a lot of rain overnight, and that made a pretty good dent into what little snow we had on the ground.  I guess I shouldn’t complain too much, because moisture is moisture, and I should be happy no matter what form it takes.

    Gloomy weather does have an effect on my motivation.  I didn’t have much early this morning when Kona and I walked around the pond, and I took these photos.  Fortunately now, two hours later, as I write this blog, the rain has stopped and the sky has lightened, as has my energy level.

    One can never tell, but it sure does feel like an early spring.

    Below is a graph showing the amount of snow on our mountain tops.  The dark blue line shows this year.  It is below the pink area which is our normal.  The green line shows last year which was a record breaking low amount of snow.

   

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Visible Reminder of Summer Threats

     See the white speckled area on the mountain slopes, that is the scar left by the forest fire that we had during the summer of 2023.  Now every time we drive to McBride, I am still shocked to see those denuded slopes and in the back of my mind, I can’t help but worry that this coming summer we might get a forest fire that will be even more destructive.  

    For two summers in a row now, we have had forest fires within six miles of McBride.  Fortunately, no homes were damaged, but the Robson Valley remains drier than usual, so the threat is still there.  Our house sits below the white tongue of the fire path that angles upslope, at the far left side of the photo.

    I have done a lot of work to lessen the fire danger around our house, by clearing out bush, cutting down tall weeds, and removing the lower branches on the coniferous trees in our yard, but the blowing ash and embers created by a forest fire, can always land on some ledge or crack somewhere on the house and start it burning.  I recently heard that anywhere snow can land on your house, the wind could blow burning embers there.  That is very scary.

    Hopefully, this summer will be a wetter one than we have gotten the last two we have had.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1993: Cascading Problems

     I have been going through my 1993 diary, and it seemed that we had a lot of problems that year.  The particular run of problems I am writing about started in the middle of February in 1993, when a cold snap froze our waterline, and left us and three other families without water.  My neighbors and I hiked up to Sunbeam Creek daily after work and on weekends, trying to thaw out our 4,100 foot long waterline, without success.

    As I blogged last week, when Spring Break came along, we had already booked flights for Las Vegas and Los Angeles, so we left our frozen waterline behind and took off for our vacation, hoping that by the time we got back, the waterline would have thawed out on its own.  Sadly, when we returned home and anxiously turned on the water tap in the kitchen, we saw our waterline was still frozen.  It remained frozen for another month.  It wasn’t until a month later, on April 24th to be exact, that water finally started coming out of our taps.

    We were so happy and relieved at finally having water again, but we soon discovered that things weren’t exactly back to normal, because we had no hot water.  During our frozen water period, our hot water tank gave up the ghost.  

    “Oh well,” I thought, “I will just have to buy a new one. “  and put in an order for one from Sears, who delivered to McBride.

    Living where we did in a very rural setting, we lived the rural lifestyle; meaning we fixed our problems ourself,  Over the next few days, I began unhooking and removing the broken old hot water tank, and once it was out, I discovered something very depressing;  the wooden floor under the tank was punky and starting to rot.

    When I poked further around on the floor, I saw that the rot continued on under our shower stall which   was located beside the hot water tank.

    Yikes, I realized that I would have to tear out the shower, and then, since the hot water tank and shower together took up about half of the total bathroom floor, I figured that I might as well rip out and replace the whole floor of our tiny bathroom.  That meant also removing the toilet and bathroom sink vanity too.  

    By this time in my life, I was not totally surprised at how renovations, start cascading.  You begin thinking your will be fixing one problem, then you discover that before you can do that, you have to fix five other problems.  Sadly, I accepted my fate, and began work on our bathroom.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

    

The Winner In The 'Most Hated Country Is...

     Here is a cartoon.  I am not sure that Americans are aware of how other countries are feeling about them now and probably a lot of them don’t really care.  Trump has certainly changed the dynamics and relationships, and not in a good way.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2..ca

Has WInter's Back Been Broken?

     I am certainly not going to go out on a limb and declare that it has, because I have lived around here for too long, but with the above freezing temperatures we have been getting the last few days (and nights), and the forecasts predicting more to come, winter’s broken back does seem like a possibility.

    The fourteen inches of snow we have on the ground had gotten very soft with moisture, and I ended up having to put my snowshoes back on, even on the packed snowshoe path, so I could walk around the pond.

    Every year when all of the snow sitting on the ground and ice starts to melt, it is given the term,
“Break-Up”.   Break-Up is still in our future, but this year’s winter has been very mild, except for February, and there is not as much snow on the ground as what we usually see, so if this current weather continues, Break-up could arrive sooner than usual.  

    I have had enough winter and seeing some open water again gives me hope that spring will eventually be coming.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Fracking Earthquake

     Yesterday morning I was sitting at my desk painting, when I felt a wobble in my chair.  It lasted a short time, long enough for me to wonder if I was experiencing an earthquake.  I looked over to the cup of water I use to clean my paintbrushes, and saw that the water was swaying back and forth, which sort of confirmed that there was an earthquake happening.  It was all very gentle, but still, it was an earthquake.  I noted the time; 7:42, and wrote it and the word,  “Tremble” on a scrap of paper, thinking I would check later to see if an earthquake had indeed occurred.

    I kept painting, then blogging, and sort of forgot about it about the wobbling I had felt.  Later when I was eating my lunch while watching TV, I noticed one of the banner headlines scrolling across the bottom of the screen said there had been a 4.7 earthquake in Alberta.  Remembering my experience that morning, I went to get my iPad where I have an Earthquake App, to see exactly where the earthquake was. 

    You can see the screen I saw above.  The blue dot is where our house is.  The earthquake happened about 100 miles away, and some news reports said it was even felt in Prince George, 200 miles away.  It was caused by fracking.

    They do a lot of fracking in Alberta and also up in the Peace River area in BC.  Fracking operations pump a lot of toxic water down deep into the ground, and that often causes earthquakes in the surrounding area, but usually those earthquakes aren’t so powerful and aren’t felt in such a huge area.

    It is yet another impact of the Oil Industry.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Night Fall

     We are aged, and so our bodies aren’t as strong and spry as they used to be.  Something happened the other night that reminded that to us.  

    About 2:00 AM, Kona went in to my wife’s bedroom and urged her to get up.  My wife figured that Kona needed to go outside, so she slipped on her coat and boots, and took Kona out into the darkness.  Kona is very particular about where she does her business, so she led my wife here and there, so she could find just the right spot.  

    Over at the edge of our yard by the picket fence close to the woods, my wife tripped in the snow and fell.  When she tried to get back up, she couldn’t.  Her legs were just too weak, so she just lay there and struggled for a good while.

    In the meantime, I was still up in my bedroom snoozing away, totally unaware that my wife had even gone outside.  

    Eventually, my wife was able to move herself through the snow, over by a couple of young aspen trees.  Using the trees as a support, she was finally able to right herself.  She and Kona then came back into the house.

    Once Kona was in, she came up the stairs to my room and woke me up.  I noticed that the lights were on downstairs so came down to see what was going on.  It was then that I learned about what had happened to my wife, and it was scary and sobering

    Lying alone in the snow in freezing temperatures unable to get up, with no one around, and no way to get help, could lead to a serious situation.  Luckily, this one eventually resolved itself with no one hurt.  I told my wife, next time Kona needs to go out in the middle of the night, wake me up and I will take Kona out.  

    Getting old requires a different mindset.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

    

Sold On A Monday by Kristina McMorris

 Sold On A Monday by Kristina McMorris

    I really enjoyed reading this book, it had an unusual storyline which kept me engaged, and turning the pages to see how it would resolve.  It takes place during the Depression.  Ellis the low man on a Philadelphia newspaper is driving toward an event for an assignment in rural Pennsylvania, when his car’s radiator overheats.  To kill time while it cools, he walks down the country road and comes upon a poorly kept up house with a hand-painted sign on the porch that says, “Children for Sale”.  He is shocked by the sign and just how bad things have gotten for some people, so he asks the two small boys playing in the yard to come over by the sign and sit down, and he takes a photo of the boys by the sign.

    Ellis was taking the photo for his own photo collection, not for the newspaper, but Lily, the editor’s secretary,  sees the photo on his desk and shows it to the editor, who sees the impact such a story would have on the newspaper, then asks Ellis to write and article about the photo.  He struggles at how to approach the story and is helped along by Lily.  He completes the task, writing a very good article about the economic struggles of some people.

  Before the paper can run the story, an accident in the office destroys the photo and negative.  This creates a problem for Ellis, so he drives back out to the house to take another photo, but discovers that the house has been vacated.  The sign is still lying there, and after noticing a boy and girl in a nearby house, he goes over to see what had happened to their neighbor and is told hey have moved away.

    Desperate to get a photo for his story, he pays these children’s mother to allow him to take the photo of the sign and her children, promising he will not use their name or location.  The mother seems in great need of money so she gives her permission.   The newspaper runs the photo and article to great success. Ellis continues to give visit the mother to give her the donations that flood into the paper for the family.  Newspapers around the country pick up and use the story.  Lily and Ellis are mutually attracted to each other, but Lily is also pursued by Clayton, another reporter.  Ellis is promoted, but feels guilty for secretly staging the second photo.   

    Because of his reporting and writing skills, Ellis is offered a much better job in a New York newspaper, but doesn’t want to give up on Lily.  Just as he needs to make a decision about the New York job, he learns of Lily’s growing relationship with Clayton, so he decides to take the New York job.  There he is quickly promoted and given a big increase in salary, however it means writing more salacious articles, not those about suffering people.  His focus begins to change from writing about people suffering in the Depression to crime and corruption, but he continues to have guilt about staging the photo of children for sale.

    Lily, on a trip to New York for a wedding, brings Ellis more donations for the family he photographed, when he goes to deliver the money to them, he discovers that the family is gone and the mother has sold her girl and boy.  This is truly upsetting for Ellis and for Lily and it puts them on a search to find both the mother, and the two kids.

    The story has many twists and turns that kept me the reading and turning pages to see how the story would resolve.  It was very engaging and enjoyable.

            This book is also available as an ebook, and I was able to down load it read through Libby, the library’s app.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Oh No, A Sick Goat

     Back in the 1990’s I had a herd of Angora Goats.  Angora Goats are where mohair yard comes from.  Except when they had to be shorn, the goats were fairly easy to take care of.  Every morning before I went to work, I would open fill up a couple of buckets of water from the hydrant in the barn yard, and put out a couple of crates of hay for them to munch on.  That all done, I would swing open the barn door, and they would all come racing out, ready for a new day.

    One morning following this routine, I opened the barn door and stood aside as the herd came rushing out through the door.  Then, when I glanced inside the barn I notice that one goat remained.  It was  laying on its side on the barn floor with its eyes closed.  

    “Oh no,” I thought, “ a sick goat.”

    I went over to it to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it.  It just lay there, totally unaware of my presence.  I took my finger and poked the goat on its side.  Nothing happened.  This was concerning.  I tried once more, poking the goat.

    Suddenly, its eyes opened wide in a panic.  It quickly looked around, then jumped up and raced outside to the protection of the herd.  

    I was greatly relieved.  I guess it was just having a very deep sleep.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Artsy Winter Photos

     We’ve had a cold month of February.  Yesterday I got all excited because the afternoon temperature actually climbed above freezing (+2°C  36°F), but that excitement was misplaced because this morning our temperature was again back to a frigid -20°C  -4°F.  It is still winter.

    I measured the snow on the ground and found it to be 14 inches (35cm).  Normally we have about 24 inches on the ground at this point.  

    The cold temperatures have not stopped me from looking around for interesting things to photograph.  Here are a couple of recent ones.  

    I really liked the one above, with the bent stem of grass, buried at both ends in the snow.  The photo below shows flaky ice crystals that had formed on my pond outflow.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Leaving Las Vegas

    I have never been a gambling man.  I am one of those that prefer to have one bird in the hand, rather    I have never been a gambling man.  I am one of those that prefer to have one bird in the hand, rather than two in the bush, so I am pretty tight fisted with the money I have.  

    Back when I was working for the BC Forest Service, the workers all pooled money to buy a lottery ticket every week.  I think most of them did it, dreaming of winning great wealth.  I did for self defense.  I knew it would drive me crazy if our office won big, and every one left to retire, and I would be the only one still working there.

    On the Spring Break in 1993, we flew to Las Vegas to visit my brother Rob for a couple of days, and then flew on Los Angeles to visit visit my other brother Roy for a few days.  After those two really interesting visits, we flew back to Vegas to catch our flight back to Canada.

    Of course, one really can’t visit Vegas without going in and experiencing casino life, which I found very bizarre; all those people cemented to their stools in front of slot machines, spending their lives continually pressing the buttons to make the symbols spin around, hoping for a big payout.  The bright colored flashing lights and the constant dinging of the bells, all added to the strange chaos.  

    Naturally, despite my feeling about gambling being a mug’s game, I did try a couple of nickel slot machines.  I won $15 before I lost it, then quit.

    I found our flight home also very interesting.  When we were settling into our seats, everyone around us in the plane were talking about all the money they had lost.  The guy in the seat beside me told me his story.   He had missed his flight home, and so had to stay in Vegas for three extra days to catch another one.  During those three days, I guess time was heavy on his hands so he started gambling.  He told me he then lost “several thousands dollars”.  I guess their motto about some things “staying in Vegas” i

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

The Day I was A Beatle

         Today it is hard to conceive the cultural shift that began with the Beatles.  In 1964 midwestern North America was extremely conservative in everything, including thought, music, dress, and hairstyle.  In the Beatles, I saw something I really liked, and tried to emulate.  In doing so, I created turbulence with most of the older generation around me.

    Surprisingly, my mother helped me out in my enthusiasm over the Beatles.  She saw me standing in front of a mirror one day, trying to turn under the collar behind my neck on my sport coats, in an attempt to make it look like one of the jackets that the Beatles wore.  She had lots of experience making, and adjusting clothing on her sewing machine, and so after a discussion about what I was looking for, she walked off with my sports coat and started to work on it.

    She did a great job transforming the coat.  The result looked just like a Beatle jacket that I could button straight up to my neck, which was round, like a sweater.  It looked just like a Beatle jacket.  I was eager to wear it, any chance I got.

    Mr. Hoover, our choir director, liked to have us present ourselves in a professional manner.  Before our tour to rural high schools, he called me in and talked to me about my hair, (I think on Vice Principal Buck’s behalf), but I explained again, that I liked long hair, and my hair length wasn’t hurting anyone, and so he soon dropped the subject.

    In order to appear professional and sophisticated on these tours, female members of the choir were directed to dress in formal type long dresses, while us males were to be attired in dark trousers, white shirt and tie, and sport coats.  My “sport coat” was my Beatle jacket.

    Off we went to the rural Indiana high schools.  While Evansville, my conservative home town always seemed to me to be extremely ‘out of it’ when it came to popular culture, I was in for a shock when we entered the doors of these rural high schools.  The students from these agricultural small towns had never seen any live person that looked anything close to what I looked like.

    I was noticed, followed around, with girls were pointing and giggling, kids were coming up and to look through the cafeteria windows at me as I ate my lunch.  It was all very strange and unsettling to be getting so much overt attention.

    I had always thought it would be great to have all the adoration and attention that the Beatles received, but after that day in those rural Indiana high schools, I began to realize how much I disliked being on constant display.  It became a real dilemma for me.   I wanted to wear my hair long, but I also wanted to just be left alone and anonymous.  This wouldn’t have been too hard in a big urban center, but the two didn’t mix very well in southern Indiana.

    That episode that began in Mr. Buck’s office did change the direction of my life.  I began to feel what is like to be discriminated against, because of a physical attribute.  I hadn’t hurt anyone, so why had I been treated like I had.  I began to feel a greater empathy towards blacks, the handicapped, and others who faced overt and subtle discrimination.

    Vice Principal Buck was wrong.  My long hair hadn’t made me end up in prison, although at one point, because of the moral stand I took against the Viet Nam war, I thought that prison might just be my fate.

    In the course of my life, the time spent in the Vice Principal’s office was of extremely short duration, but it had life-long implications for me.  It gave me some satisfaction and confidence knowing that when I was faced with threats and bullying that I felt was unjust, I had refused to cave in.  I had stood my ground and was prepared to face the consequences.  That stance, which I first took in Mr. Buck’s office, eventually led me to leave my home country of the United States, and to live the remainder of my life in more tolerable and open-minded Canada.

        I photoshopped the photo above to give you an idea of what my Beatle coat looked like.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

The Concert Choir on Tour

   I was a member of our high school’s elite concert choir.  It was recognized for having some really talented vocalists.  I wasn’t really one of the outstanding soloist, but I had a solid background from years of singing in the church choir and could sing in tune, and carry the bass harmony parts.  I was one of the handful of Sophomore students, chosen to be in the Concert Choir that was made up of junior and senior high school students.

Several times throughout the school year, the concert choir would travel around and perform.   It had been on one of our previous choir tours, that we had found ourselves up in the big capital city of Indianapolis on Nov. 22, 1963.

I don’t remember anything about those concerts, but I will always remember that when we arrived at one of the schools ready to give an afternoon concert, we were told by some of the students that were there to greet us, that President Kennedy had been shot.

    I didn’t believe them.  I figured the big city kids were just trying to put something over on us country bumpkins, but as the day progressed, I kept hearing news of the killing from different sources and I began to think that maybe it had happened.  Sometime before we left Indianapolis that the evening,  I managed to buy a newspaper and seeing the news in print, erased any doubt in my mind about the event.

Anyway, in 1964 our Concert Choir was again scheduled to tour, this time to give performances at a couple of outlying rural/regional high schools.  I didn’t really think too much about the concerts beforehand, except to revel in the prospect of getting out of classes for a day.  Because we were to perform in smaller schools in rural sections of Indiana, instead of playing the part of the “country bumpkins” as we did in Indianapolis, we would be the urban sophisticates, and our audience would be the bumpkins.

    The photo shows me, the Beatle, in the choir.  I had an interesting day ahead of me.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

February 10, 1964: The Most Extraordinary Day of High School, Part 3

             The photo above shows me with the outrage haircut that was going to “ruin my life”.

    After school, in line waiting to board the school bus, and then all the way home, my new celebrity status continued to make me the center of attention.  By this time, having told about getting called to the Vice Principal’s Office and being harassed by Mr. Buck so many times, I could repeat my story without much thought.  Of course, the day wasn’t over; there was more to come once I got home.

    Certainly, my hair did change the direction of my life that day.  That morning when I went to school, I had "long hair" just because I liked it.  By the time I climbed back on the bus to go home, it had become a matter of individual human rights and principle.  

            I was a kind, friendly, polite, and trustworthy guy, who didn't cause any trouble, and suddenly, I felt persecuted for no justifiable reason.  I thought it would be wrong just to blindly cave in to an authority, if I had done nothing wrong, and it seemed to me that they were using brute power without valid justification.

    The struggle intensified when my father got home from work.  Naturally, Mr. Buck had called my parents and told them of their son’s deviant behavior.  That night, I felt the beginnings of a chasm that began to open up in the relationship I had with my father.  Since I felt completely innocent of doing anything wrong and being unjustly persecuted, I had assumed that my father would support me, but I was mistaken.

    My crewcut father in his younger years had taken a stand that had gone against popular opinion.  During World War II, he was a non-combatant conscientious objector, and because of his moral stand, he had spent his military service working in an Army medical laboratory.  Since then however, he seemed to shy away from taking controversial stands.  He was a quiet, honest, law-abiding loving man, and when he heard that the school’s vice principal wanted me to get a haircut, that was what he wanted too.   

    It was a fractious evening of argument and loud debate.  In the end, my father drove me down to the barbershop at North Park shopping center and I allowed my hair to be trimmed in the back.  That was as much as I was willing to compromise.  

    First thing the next day, I did as I did as I had been commanded to do, I reported to Mr. Buck's office.  When Mr. Buck saw me, he was livid, and he escorted me back into his office again.  

    “I thought I told you to get your hair cut,” he snorted.

    “I did,” I replied.

    “It doesn’t look cut to me.” he said.

    “I got it trimmed in the back,”  I told him.

    Then, Mr. Buck, started in again on the mantra of how I was “ruining my life”, by not conforming to the norm, and that I was going to “end up in jail” because of my deviant behavior.  Finally in frustration, and having run out of threats and bluster, he told me to go back to class which I was more than happy to do.

    A few weeks after my appearance in Mr. Buck’s office, all the hub-bub about my hair had died down, although my popularity, and new status remained high. I was never again to be called down to the office, but I did experience another extraordinary day because of my long hair.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

February 10. 1964: The Most Extraordinary Day of High School, Part 2

 (Continued from yesterday)  The photo shows me and my offending hair.

    This was turning out to be a really unusual day. That morning on the school bus, everyone was abuzz with talk of "The Beatles", who they had watched last night on the Ed Sullivan Show.  When I finally arrived at school and I got off the bus, there was even more excitement in the air.

    Suddenly, everybody knew about The Beatles, and just as suddenly, I was the center of attention because of my hair.  Students I had never met were coming up to me and calling me a “Beatle”.  Over night, my status at school had sky-rocketed to a level usually reserved for a star athlete after a big game.  I  felt like a celebrity.  I had suddenly become the school expert on the Beatles.

    I was beginning to suspect that maybe this whole Mr. Buck thing might be about my hair--but no, my hair was only 2 days longer than it was last week, and no one had ever said anything about it then, so there I sat, watching students, teachers, and staff come and go from the office, all giving me secret glances and whispering as they went about their business.

    So there I sat, looking at the, inspirational and the health warning posters on the wall in Mr. Buck’s outer office.  I picked at my fingernails, and looked at my shoes as I sat there for 15 minutes.  The bell rang, and through the glass, I could see the sudden hoard of kids surge by as they changed classes.  It didn’t take long for the word of my situation to spread, and some of my friends were peeking in to see what was happening to me.  By this time, I was pretty sure that my present situation did not have anything to do with some tragedy that had befallen my  family.

    After the late bell had sounded and the halls had once again emptied, I guess Mr. Buck figured the his target had been softened up enough by this time, because his secretary was buzzed and she picked up her phone, and nodded her head, looked at me and said, “Mr. Buck will see you now.”

    I grabbed my books and slowly shuffled in to Mr. Buck’s Office.  It seemed dark, and foreboding, but maybe that was just my perception.

    “Have a seat, David.” he said, motioning with his hand at a chair sitting directly in front of his desk.  I lowered myself down on the chair, looked up, to see that he was staring at me with his mouth set as he slowly shook his head.

    “What the hell are you trying to pull, David?”

    “What?” I responded.

    “What are you doing coming to school with your hair like that?" Mr. Buck countered.

    “Like what?” I replied.

    “Like a girl’s.  We are not going to allow you to come to school with that long hair.”

    “But, my hair isn’t that long.  Guys with ducktails that slick it back, have longer hair than I do.” I said.

    “Well, I don’t like it, and I want you to get it cut.” Mr Buck demanded.

    I guess I have a negative view of authority, and I replied that I didn’t really care for his hair all that much either, and then added that my hair wasn’t any different now than it had been last week, or the week before that, and no one had said anything about it then.  This whole thing was not about me, it was about the Beatles.  Everything had been okay, until they appeared on TV.

    After about 30 minutes of verbal sparing.  Mr Buck told me to go back out to the outer office, sit there and "think about things".  So, clutching my books, I rose from the chair and walked back out to my seat in the outer office.

    By now, it was time for the first lunch period, (there were 3, so that the school could get all of the students fed), when the bell sounded the halls again filled with students, and some with ‘early lunch’ were slowly walking back and forth past the office, staring at me and giving me hand signals, both the stroking of the index finger, which meant “shame on you”, and the thumbs up sign of support.

    Since the “Early Lunch Period” was my allotted time to eat, I was temporarily freed and allowed to go for a shortened lunch.  As I left the confines of Mr. Buck’s Office, I was suddenly surrounded by the curious.  I was the hottest news in the school that morning, so in between my eating, I had to repeat, over and over, the events of my morning.  Even people I didn’t know gathered around to hear about my incarceration.  I was not given a full lunch period, so I soon found myself, reporting back to my seat in the office, where I waited and thought, and waited some more.

    Then after 45 minutes or so, I was called back into Buck’s office, and he had at me again.   During this part of my interrogation the threats of being barred from school were replaced warnings of personal destruction.  The high point of this session was his remarks that I was “ruining my life,” and “if I didn’t make some changes now, I would probably end up in prison”. 

    This seemed a bit too dramatic a result for just having hair that was a bit longer than normal.  He concluded by demanding that I should go get my hair cut after school and to report back to his office "first thing tomorrow morning".  I was then dismissed and allowed to continue with my education

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca