Tales of my father

I am recovering at a glacial pace. It is boring and I thought I would do a little writing.

As previously mentioned on this blog I spent some of my grade school years in a very small place up in northern British Columbia below the Yukon border.

My father worked for a company that had a contract to service the mines equipment, items such as dozers, scrapers, loaders, and the like. Dad was the head guy for the branch office. He previously operated out of an office trailer. Later the company built a nice new space with an equipment bay, parts bay, and an office area. The only people that were in the office full time were my father, the parts man, and a secretary. There were heavy duty mechanics and welders that worked full time at the mine site. They did not have a big operation.

If you needed staff the talent pool was small, sometimes nonexistent. Dad once hired, and fired, the same guy six times. The guy was a great mechanic and was also a great alcoholic. My father would at times have no choice but to fire him, the guy would go on the wagon, he would get hired back and the cycle would repeat. He did not want to take him back but he was good and there was no one else available. (As an aside, one memorable time I once saw him on my way to school, there was about six inches of snow on the ground from big fluffy snowflakes falling. He had a puppy in his hands - I later found out the dog was named Woofer - standing in the middle of the road wearing pants, no shirt, no socks or shoes. He asked me if I had never seen a barefoot Karate expert in the snow). Dad did have to fire one other guy and make it permanent because after multiple attempts he could not pass the tests for his job and dad ran out of ways to keep him on the books.

Dad needed a secretary. The last one moved out of town with her husband. Only one person showed up for an interview wearing a fur coat that had long seen better days and ballet slippers on her feet. Muriel got the job as no one else applied and it turned out she could type fast enough to jam the ball on an IBM Selectric typewriter. Dad was not big on a dress code since the town was in the middle of proverbial nowhere.

I liked Muriel, she was fluent in French and helped me a little with that subject in school. She was kind of a free spirit hippy type. I do not think she had a driver’s license as she did not have a vehicle. She did not seem to be the brightest at times. She was good at her job. Once as a joke someone sprayed her ratty fur coat with Raid “to kill the fleas”. She got her own back. That about as far as office antics got.

Dad was good friends with Butch the RCMP officer. There was a detachment of two. At one time it seemed every small town had an officer called Butch. I do not know why. There was not a lot for police to do in some small towns and this was one of them. Some of the directives they got were amusing. Once Butch showed my dad a memo he got from the higher ups suggesting more foot patrols. Never mind that the town was about one thousand people surrounded by hundreds of square miles of bush. Butch did have a good sense of humour about his job. I think he had to.

For some reason the police did driving tests (as I said, it was a small town). We had a Yamaha 125cc Enduro motorcycle and dad went for his road test. Butch told him to ride to the end of the gravel road in town, turn around, and drive back. Dad was awkward as hell on a bike and by the time dad got back Butch was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes. He said to dad, “Here’s your license, I know you are only going to ride it in the bush, otherwise stay off the roads.” Thus dad got his motorcycle license that he never used.

In the months when we did not have snow Muriel rode her bike to work. One day she was riding her bike to work when she somehow hit a parked car hard enough that she ended up on the car. It was low speed and no damage since vehicles were tougher back then. No damage, no witnesses, however she was concerned that she should do the right thing. Therefore she went to the cop shop to report the accident. Butch listened to her and told her that in the interest of public safety he would impound her bike. She walked the rest of the way to work.

When she arrived at work she was late. Dad asked why she was late and she was miffed and filled him in on what happened. Dad told her not to worry about it. Dad phoned Butch and told him to quit picking on his secretary. Later that morning he drove to the RCMP detachment and told Butch he had his fun and to give her bike back. The cop just had to mention that when she was there he even had her fill out an accident report. They had a good laugh about it and Muriel got her bike back.

We eventually moved and lost track of people like Muriel. I hope she had a good life. Dad has been gone many years and I miss him. Lots of things I would like to talk to him about.

Life was more fun years ago.