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PORT PERRY STAR - Tuesday, April 28, 1992 - 7 Did I mention my mother is living with me now? Did you read about it in this news- paper or are you the one who keeps refusing to accept the taxi fare and sending her and her bags back to my house every Friday afternoon? Hey, I'm kidding. Marg and I are getting along like...like two peas in a Cuisinart. Not to dwell on my mother's age but to put it in historical context, the year my mother was born Sir Wilfred Laurier was a prime minister not a university, the Kenora Thistles won the Stanley Cup and Jack Miner was standing by a pond near Kingston, Ontario feeding bread to decoys in hope that someday real geese would land on his farm. Now don't get me wrong, she looks like she's in her low seventies but the fact remains she dated Henry V. Yet at 85 the woman is fit and spry with endless energy and enthusiasm. She can wash and dry the dishes in under six minutes and that includes the time it takes to sweep up the shards of glass from my favorite Waterford brandy snifter. And she can put away silverware and china in a by William Thomas COMPLETING LIFE'S CYCLE BY CAR fraction of the time it takes me to find any one of those items when I des- perately need it. She can sort and put away laundry in under 15 minutes. This however does not include the hour and a half it takes me to find then match my socks by color design and symetric holes. As I said, we couldn't get along any better...like two fish in the same shot glass. And I've finally figured out why she's so fit. It's the Canada-wide aero- bic program in which seniors walk, run and jog from doctor, to dentist, to druggist to chiropractor, to test lab, to grocery store and home again in under four hours, three times a week. I know the procedure -- I'm the driver, the door man, the bag boy. There is no medicinal value in any of their prescription pills, they're placebos. The labs have copies of one blurry x-ray they give out to all seniors. The test results are just form letters on which only the names of the patients differ. There's nothing wrong with their upper plates or their lower lumbar regions. The whole thing is an elaborate and vigorous exercise scheme brought to you by Participaction - Celebrate Active Living. Sorry, but I don't have the energy to crack the bottle of bub- bly. Doctor/dentist/druggist/chiropractor, it's like a cross-country obstacle course to keep seniors moving every waking minute of the day. It's not doing the oil companies any harm either. And it works! My mother right now 1s a serious threat to break the indoor pole vault record of Sergey Bubla: 6.03 meters indoors. Me? I'm developing chronic fatigue syndrome. I'm listless, I nod off during meetings and I sleep in fits and starts. I have this recurring nightmare that starts out with a gasoline shortage and ends up with me on a 10 speed and Marg strapped onto the handle bars. Peddling furiously from doctor to dentist, druggist to chiropractor -- "Watch the puddles, you'll ruin my dress!" As a matter of fact, I feel so bad I've started to go to her chiropractor. I don't know how it happened. One day, there I was on Dr. Bosilac's couch look- ing up at him. He asked me where it hurt. I said it didn't, I just wanted to get some sleep. Pretty soon I'll be asking her doctor for pep pills and getting my back x- rayed for driver's curvature. I foresee a day in the not-too-dist- ant future when we'll be making the same cross-country health tour but mom will be driving the car and I'll be mumbling in a fetal position from the back seat. "Don't hit the pot holes, it makes my teeth hurt!" In my weakened state I'll age rapidly and hallucinate to the point where my mother will begin to look younger and younger. Before you know it, we'll pass each other at 65 going in opposite directions. She'll start to date one of my fraternity brothers and I'll move to Florida with the lady who won Most Improved Player on her bowling team. I'll send her postcards and write mostly about the weather. She'll send me Polaroids from the last beer swill and ask if she can borrow my backpack. I know I deserve this -- the coming full circle of the mother/son relation- ship. She spent some of her best years schlepping me from hockey games to baseball practice; from swimming in the canal to Sundays at Cedar Bay. So it's doctor, dentist, druggist, chiropractor and as the driver, now I get to say: "If you don't turn that music down you're going to go deaf one of these days." And my mother, in that coy kind of way that only mothers can, turns to me and says: "Huh?" Geez, I hope Wayne Tweedy doesn't start stealing her lunch money and then losing it in nine ball games up at Shibley's Pool Room. Oh, I used to hate it when that happened. Remember When °°? Letters io the editor HISTORIC PHOTO COURTESY OF MAC CHRISTIE | 45 YEARS AGO Thursday, April 24, 1947 Ice went out of Lake Scugog on April 23. Dr. Edgar Lovell Poctor, who practiced in this district for more than 50 years, died in Oshawa Hospital. A. J. (Johnny) Graves was the winner of a Chevrolet automobile in the subscription contest put on by the Oshawa Courier. The Saywell Locker Plant at Blackstock has started operations. 4 35 YEARS AGO : Thursday, April 25, 1957 Mr. Storey E. Beare was re-clected as President of the Chamber of Commerce. Bruton's Farms placed 2,000 Rhode Island Red Pullet chicks on the plane at Malton for a ee ee ee mT This picture, taken June 8, 1938, shows many of the ex-Wardens of the County of Ontario. They are (front, from left) Don'd A. Brown (1912), John Fallowdown (1913), R. R. Mowbray (1893 & 1909), Lyman A. Gifford (1938), Geo. C. Sweetman (1926), Albert W. Jackson (1927), Geo. B. Johnston (1933), W. M. Letcher (1937), (middle) Dr. T. E. Kaiser (ex-MP), John Ross (1925), Geo. A. McMillan (1924), W. L. Parrish (1908), G. M. Forsyth (1928), F. L. Mason (1917), N. D. McKinnon (1918), Grant Christie (1934), (back) Fred T. Rowe (1935), and James M. Read (1930). customer near Tampa, Florida. The South and North Ontario County Federation of Agriculture unanimously decided to amalgamate at a joint meeting in the Council Chambers at Sunderland. Eleanor Hutchinson was presented with a Gold Cord in Guiding. Murray Jackson, Brooklin, was named Grand Champion Livestock Showman at the recent KAS Royal held annually at the Kempville Agricultural School. 30 YEARS AGO Thursday, April 26, 1962 The Honeydale Women's Institute presented a skit commemorating the 65th anniversary of PLEASE TURN TO PAGE 8 "A game we can't win" To The Editor: I would like to reply to the re- cent letter in the Port Perry Star from reader Peter Fallaise. First of all I think it fair to say that during the 1990 Onta- rio provincial election, the then Liberal government were out on the hustings proclaiming they had a surplus exceeding some $2 billion. The N.D.P. then the official opposition had no access to any record to dispute that claim. Following the election of the N.D.P. government, it gave them for the first time, the op- portunity to find out first hand what the surplus claimed by the Liberal's really was. As eve- ryone found out quite soon after the election, the cupboard was bare with an actual deficit ex- ceeding $2 billion. The writer suggests | stop saying that the problems we now face a a gov- ernment are due to the previous provincial government or the federal government. I only with I could, but the fact remains the present situation we find our- selves in are due in part to a drastic reduction in federal transfer payments from an agreed 50 per cent down to 28 per cent, plus the inherited, over $2 billion deficit, from the previous government. That alone totals some $7 billion, surely a fact any reasonable person must recognize as not being any fault of the N.D.P. government. And yes, Mr. Fallaise, along with the freeze on the MPP's salary, pay for added responsi- bility such as being a Parlia- mentary Assistant has also been frozen. Along with that, operating budgets and personal expense budgets have also been frozen for 1991, 1992 and 1993. Turnto Page 8 : Time flying by quickly To the Editor: Hi! Right now I am in Eng- land. Things are just flying by - I can't believe I only have three months leftin this year. I have seen so many things in North America and Europe. I will have gone to Canada, U.S.A. Finland, Sweden, Nor- way, Denmark, Netherlands, Belguim, Germany, France, England Bermuda by the end - (Canada, Belguim Germany p-- -- and France just travelled through. Still there though). We have the Easter break off and I am going to track down family to spend two or three days with them. Take care, Michael Green Editor's Note: Michael Green is a Greenbank resident currently on a one-year tour with the Up With People group. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR The Port Perry Star encourages our readers to make use of the letters to the editor column to express their opinions and viewpoints on just about any subject, as we feel a lively letters column helps make a better community newspaper. We insist, however, that all letter writers sign their name. Sorry, no anonymous letter will be printed. PE A a NO Uy Grup upp-- pa