The Oppenheimer Report 9/25/09

A few weeks ago, while I was in Toronto on my way down to Buffalo, I stopped at the Canadian National Exhibition for a couple of hours. I have now been to the event twice in my life and I love the carnival atmosphere. Of course, there are all sorts of exhibits I do not see, but there is something about the garish colors, the cacophony of the crowds and the rides, and the callers at the midway games that I love to experience. Years ago, when I was a boy, we used to go to Crystal Beach Amusement Park near our Canadian summer home on Lake Erie, and Crystal beach was one of the last of the old-fashioned amusement parks. So endeared was I to the place that I wrote two songs about it. These days the rides are slick and fast, but give me a rickety old roller coaster any day. The big coaster at Crystal Beach was called The Comet, and the first climb gave riders a bird’s eye view of Lake Erie, with Buffalo in the distance. Back in the early Nineties, on the last day Crystal Beach was open, I and a group of my friends made one last visit, and my friend Bob videotaped his last ride on The Comet. Within months the whole park simply disappeared. Rides were removed and the midway soon became a residential development. We still watch that video with maudlin reminiscences of that last day.

“There is a certain wisdom only fun can teach,
I think I’ll always remember Crystal Beach…”

As I write this, we have begun to chink the new house, hoping to be done in about two to three weeks, expecting, as we do, consistently unpredictable weather. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, chinking is the material used to fill in between logs in a log home. In the old days, it was mortar, or clay or mud. These days, the material is a high tech, very effective and easy-to-apply, elastic, caulk-like substance, but with a much greater durability than caulk. First, we lay in thin strips of foam backer rod, meant to displace some of the gap between logs and allow for a thinner bead of chinking to be applied, then we use a bulk caulking gun to apply the chinking. Finally, the chinking is spread into the space with a special tool to create an even seal across the logs. Once applied and cured, it provides a weatherproof seal for the house. Logs typically insulate quite well, and we’re hoping that now that the house has done most of its “moving” and checking (cracking), it will stand solid against whatever the Northern Ontario climate can throw at it. Last winter was a bit drafty in sections of the house, and there are places where rather large gaps have opened up. Logs are very unpredictable in the ways that they move. Some will twist, some will warp. The new chinking is designed to move and flex with the movement of the logs. We purchased the Neville Log Home package because they sold us on the idea that their dead standing logs had done most of their shifting and drying out. Now that Neville has gone bankrupt, I’m beginning to wonder if we were told the whole truth. The amount of sap coming out some of these logs and the severe checking leads me to believe that they were greener than we were led to believe.

“Roller Coaster reservations, you’ve got them, so do I
But this love deserves consideration, and I think this love can fly
On this hot and humid summer night, the sun closes down a blood orange sky

The lights go in in the amusement park; electricity that lovers spark

Cho: Come on decide be mine decide tonight/ Come on get on that roller coaster ride

Put unspoken fears aside decide tonight

Come on decide be mine decide tonight, cause it’s a midway night….”

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED