TriumphAnt

I am progressively festooning my tiny workspace with things connected to my early years as an Air Force brat. One of my cubicle shelves has three die-cast (metal) toy aircraft on it: a German Messerschmitt Me-109 (politically correct, no less. Despite its being decorated with fairly accurate fuselage markings, the manufacturers left the Luftwaffe’s swastika off its tail); an American Lockheed P-38 Lightning, painted in D-Day invasion stripes, and a British Supermarine Spitfire, whose fuselage roundels are completely missing the blue ring, resulting in a totally fictitious marking scheme that I guess I am free to name however I wish (the Royal Hogwarts Air Force, perhaps, recalling the previously unheralded contribution of the elite Wizards’ Wing to winning the Battle of Britain.) But it’s a toy and its underside is embossed “Made in China”, so my nitpickery is a desultory sigh at best.

Meanwhile, my desktop has a piston-engined-aircraft-day-by-day calendar, and I steadily clip my favourites and add them to my cubicle wall in a growing montage that now counts some 132 separate photos. My computer screen saver is a gorgeous fantasy painting (because the flight it depicts never occurred) of a CF-105 Avro Arrow and a CF-101 Voodoo climbing steeply in full-afterburner tandem into a beautiful blue sky.

Recently, a work colleague attached to a different program and with whom I’ve only ever had a “Hi” connection, was waiting by my desk when I showed up for work. As it turned out, he wasn’t waiting for me, but rather for a manager with a real office located directly beside my stall with whom he’d had an early morning meeting arranged.

When he saw me, he said he’d been admiring my models. So I chatted briefly with him about my interest and pointed out the montage, which he hadn’t yet seen. He looked closely at many of the aircraft, his fingers brushing lightly over the surface of a couple of them... “Lots of memories,” he said.

One episode he was prompted to recall was an entertaining but overly detailed (I thought) account of “losing one’s cookies” at the top of a loop while a passenger in a Spitfire converted to a two-seater for training purposes.

Then, touching a photo of a PBY Catalina Flying Boat, he proceeded to regale me with a story of his long ago days working for an ad agency on Montreal’s South Shore near the Cartierville airport. In one especially memorable recollection, he told me that the Catalina he personally recalled had often ferried him up to several remote areas in northern Quebec where the “runway” was always a lake, hence the necessity of travelling in a flying boat. But because it was a bare-bones conversion from its wartime configuration as a submarine hunter, his “passenger seat” was actually a mat on which he lay prone in the aircraft’s nose – the bomb aimer’s position.

One day, he and the pilot, just for fun, had actually loaded the bomb racks with 12 large fireplace-sized logs of just the right length to fit into the racks. En route, they passed quite low over a remote lake near their destination and noticed a small, almost fully submerged derelict rowboat. So being guys, they took the aircraft into a bomb run. In one mass release, they dropped all 12 of their log bombs at once. Despite their inexperience as bombardiers, they managed to connect with several of them, shattering the rowboat instantly into splinters.

He then told me that, a very few days later, he’d met the area’s parish priest in a local store and briefly engaged in a “How are you?” conversation with him. The parish priest said he was fine, healthwise, but was in somewhat more of an angry, disappointed mood emotionally, because someone had completely annihilated his favourite fishing platform – a rowboat anchored on a remote lake a few kilometres away. (Partially submerged, as it turned out, not because it was derelict at all, but rather because it had several days’ rain in it that the priest was going to have had to bail out before starting to fish.)

As he departed for his meeting, my story-telling colleague observed that he was not then, nor has he ever been, someone to observe the principle of confession in his faith.

A wonderfully sublime encounter that, all the more satisfying because partway through, he actually waved off a signal from the assistant to the manager with whom he had his appointed session that she was ready, and finished telling me his stories (the Catalina bomb run was just one of three) before joining the meeting.

= = = = = = = = = =

“Lucy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.”:

From an online report about a trio of terrorist bombs that exploded recently in The Philippines:

“The first bomb struck outside a busy shopping mall in General Santos city, on the island of Mindanao. Police say the bomb was hidden inside a tricycle parked near the mall's entrance.”

Now when I was but a lad, before acquiring the balance to enable myself to abandon three wheels in favour of two, a “tricycle” was a vehicle that, even were it to be filled chock-a-block with gunpowder, couldn’t possibly have generated an explosion of sufficient magnitude to make the nightly news. I can’t believe I’m the only one who harbours the image of tricycle-as-toy and, had I been the editor of Voice of America.com, where this paragraph appeared, I would have asked the reporter for a parenthetical insert for clarification. Because my suspicion is that a Filipino tricycle is a Monty-Pythonesque something completely different.

Aha! (From http://www.everything2.com/):

“The Philippine tricycle serves much the same purpose as the Thai tuk tuk, and is a common form of public transportation in both rural and urban areas. It consists of a motorcycle and sidecar combination, with a canvas roof stretched over a framework of metal bars, welded to the sidecar. Like its larger cousin the jeepney, tricycles are usually decorated with shiny chrome and stainless steel, with various mirrors, colorful banners, and other decorations. Tricycles can usually seat three or four people, two in the sidecar, and one or two sitting behind the driver. In rural areas, it is not uncommon to find tricycles hauling five or six people, complete with vegetables, chickens and live pigs.”

That, tragically, makes a lot more sense. A vehicle capable of accommodating five or six people plus animals and food is certainly capable of being a vastly more destructive force than the pedal-driven velocipede I raced up and down our neighbourhood sidewalks.

= = = = = = = = = =

Escalator accident update:

“NAGOYA, Japan (14 February) -- Some 13 high school students were injured when they fell like dominos on an escalator at a local subway station after one of them stopped when his bag was caught between steps, police said. The high school student had his bag caught between steps on the escalator at Shiogamaguchi Station on the subway Tsurumai Line in Nagoya at about 8:20 a.m. on Sunday. When he tried to pull his bag free, he was hit by other students following him, resulting in 13 high school students falling, officers said.”

Hey, have I got an idea for you guys! (Although on closer reading, come to think of it, a “between steps” entrapment would not have been prevented by the kind of escalator skirt recently installed in our office building. It screens the step edges from the wall. So… never mind.)

= = = = = = = = = =

There is a bar (although “trough” might be a more apt generic) in Decatur, Georgia called Mulligan’s. A recent article about their menu on the Associated Press website included the following notes:

“The [‘Hamdog’], a specialty of Mulligan's, a suburban bar, is a hot dog wrapped by a beef patty that's deep fried, covered with chili, cheese and onions and served on a hoagie bun. Oh yeah, it's also topped with a fried egg and two fistfuls of fries.”

and

"The ‘Luther Burger’ [is] a bacon-cheeseburger served on a Krispy Kreme doughnut bun.”

The AP article begins with the headline “Southern food frustrates health officials”, and ends with a hotlink to the Morehouse School of Medicine, a “historically black” medical college in Atlanta College. Some stories are, indeed, their own best punchlines.

= = = = = = = = = =

And finally… OH PLEASE!!!!

Now that it appears we have really – (“We’re not kidding this time; we really, REALLY mean it!”) – reached the so-called “drop dead” date after which the National Hockey League’s 2004-2005 season is officially declared cancelled, can we at long last see a media euthanization of “There’s nothing new to report on the NHL front” coverage? I swear to God that some variation of that line has opened every single sportscast I have heard, and probably half the Canadian hourly newscasts, going as far back as last September when the season-that-wasn’t officially didn’t begin not to happen.

When I think of the vast array of genuine news stories that probably got bumped or short-changed for the massive media play this pathetic millionaires’ sandbox duel has been given, it is to cry.

So please, to everyone in the nation’s editorial meetings with even an iota of line-up decision authority, KNOCK IT OFF! Those of us who lost interest in the damned sport about the time Bobby Hull jumped ship to join the WHA would be oh-so-grateful.

…

Update – Oh hell!

“Tuesday, February 15, 2005 Updated at 11:56 AM EST Canadian Press: (NEW YORK) More NHL labour talks were expected Tuesday in the wake of major moves by both sides…”

Damn
Damn
Damn...

(trails off in a state of advanced ennui…)