For He 's a Jolly Good Fellow

 

 

There will  n 'er be a dearth of occasions wherein to praise a friend and extol his virtues ....... and thus is is with my good buddy..... Bill Donnelly...... and yes , you've guessed it..... it's his birthday .... AGAIN !! However , this one has a special twist about it because  with this one Bill officially and legally completes  the Seventh Decade........ the Big 70 !!

Right about now I would normally start roasting Bill ..... but not today !! Instead I shall simply make him squirm nervously by comparing  our friendship to the nearby sea whose inexhaustable energy I have been tapping  into every day since my return here to the Fundy Coast .... with its high , low , slack and rip tides..... still and turbulent waters . .....wavelets softly lapping the shoreline of Cranberry Head as well as  its mighty breakers pounding the rocks at Five Fathom Hole . Thanks for the last 56 years , Old Buddy...... and a humungous  Happy Birthday to you.  

P.S.1. Above picture shows the gathering of the Donnelly clan in Prince Edward Island a few years ago. The local constabulary was duly informed of their presence on that insular paradise and the appropriate precautionary measures were immediately taken to assure public safety and maintain order.

P.S. 2. My attempt at puns usually makes Bill cringe so I'll try to better my average with this one...... like the little boy who stayed awake all night trying to figure out why the sun had disappeared. Finally it dawned on him !   

 

 

Ah... The Power of the Printed Word !!

 

Reading through the local paper this week I came across the above jewel of Cartesian logic. By falling off the wagon the poor guy was simply complying with .... and not violating .....the court order as stated in the text........ and yet the judge threw him in the slammer anyways !! After all the court order forbad his abstaining from booze and drugs !! Damned if you do , and damned if you don't , I guess !!

 

 

 

 

Memories Are Made Of This ! Remember the Song ?

The ebb and flow of memories these last two months have been on even par with those of the great Fundy tides........... especially the flood tide. For example I took Fluff for a ride around the North End this morning before raiding the grocery store as a snowstorm is in the forecast for later on. We drove down Main Street to Indiantown .... my particular neck of the woods.... where she snapped the picture below showing the Saint John River .... just above the Reversing Falls.... where the old riverboats tied up in my youth. These steamers .. the Majestic and D.J. Purdy were the lifelines between the big city and rural farming communities upriver and served as pleasure boats for picknicking city folk on weekends ..... taking them out of the fog to sunnier beaches and warmer waters for swimming upstream. The electric streetcars would make a loop just below the two brick houses and return back uptown. They were retired in 1948 for busses. By the way the brick house on the left at the end of the street is called the Pidgeon House where the great Walter Pidgeon of Hollywood fame was born and raised in the early 20th century.... and the other brick building across the street housed the Mayer ( Meir ) family whose son , Louis B. , is the second M in another Hollywood institution..... MGM.... as in Metro - Goldwyn - Mayer.   

 

Then you turn right at the corner above and behold Pokiok Mountain where I was born and grew up . Our house lies just a bit below the house perched high on the cliffs..... hidden by the tall spruce. The waters below never freeze because they are tidal waters.

 

We then drove up Pokiok Road .... by the old homestead.....to dead end where I learned how to skate ..... the Twin Ponds.

From here I took Fluff out to Milledgeville ..... a bit farther upriver where two big rivers ... the Saint John and the Kennebecasis ....meet to form Grand Bay  ( see above map )........ not at all far from the Twin Ponds as the crow flies but complicated by modern roadway systems. It was here that I learned to icefish given that the Kennebecasis froze over and was not as subjected to tidal waters as the Saint John was. We could also skate for miles around during winters such as the one we are experiencing at the present moment when the river freezes up solid before the heavy snows come . I shall just add a few pics to give you some idea of the Kennebecasis at its wintry best......   a clear sheet of ice as smoothe as a bottle ! 

Goat Island above with a shear glare of ice .......and now for a few nearby icefishing shacks

And a small colony of ice fisher palaces at Renforth...

And to boot...... a small herd of deer at Ragged Point.....