Today, I said goodbye to my favorite employee at the local dump. She will
be retiring this week, and I’m going to miss her. She’s about my age, and over
the past ten years or so, she and I have had many a five minute conversation.
Relatively speaking, we are strangers, only socializing in this very limited
context, and yet I’ve enjoyed our brief interactions. When she wasn’t too busy
doing her job, I’d chat with her for a few minutes. She might be working the
bailing machine, or in the recycling shed, or checking people’s loads as they
entered the dump, or manning one of the many large pieces of heavy equipment
used to tame the ever-growing mound of garbage we in the local community generate.
In our conversations, we talked about her fishing trips to Northern Ontario, our
aging parents – her nonagenarian mom recently passed on – my music, my involvement
at the radio station, and whatever else people discuss in brief conversations. I
was amused to find out that her favorite television program was The Daily Show,
back when Jon Stewart was hosting. I never would have pegged her as a fan of
political satire. I probably won’t see her much now that she’s retiring, but so
it goes. Change is the only constant.
When we first moved up here full time, we didn’t know many of the local
residents. Building our house turned out to be a full time job, and most of our
socializing was done with the various contractors who were working on the house.
Now, after eight years of living up here, we are becoming more involved with
the local community, and we’ve met a lot of interesting people here from all
walks of life. As I became more involved with the musicians in this community,
and with Hunters Bay Radio, I came to appreciate the many different kinds of
people who make up this community. I don’t know why that should be surprising
to me; there are interesting and intelligent people everywhere, but up here, they are not as obvious. Sometimes, I feel as if I am living among the cast of Northern Exposure. People up here may
not wear suits, and some of them look pretty rough, but as I learned from
my Mom and Dad, never judge a book by its cover. My dad, especially, was
mindful of this, and he loved to talk to people from all walks of life. His
contention was that everyone was worth getting to know, and from his experience
as a real estate salesman, he was fairly adept at sizing people up in a five
minute conversation. If someone was boorish or ignorant, or a vexation to the
spirit, he figured it out pretty quickly and avoided them. He treated everyone
with respect until they proved they were not worthy of it. I cringe sometimes
when I hear a summer cottager treat a local resident badly. Many people come up
from the city and treat local residents as if they are simply employees, or worse
yet, stupid. The locals have an expression for those people: “citiots”. Just as
in any community, some of the residents are better than others, but it’s best
to learn about a person before you judge.
Whether it’s the plumber who was a banjo player in a great bluegrass band
thirty years ago, or the stock boy at the local supermarket who is a gifted
artist, or the stone mason who teaches survival training in his spare time, or the
many volunteers at the radio station who share a love of community radio, or
the lady at the dump who liked to watch Jon Stewart, there are plenty of
interesting people up here, and all one needs to do is ask a few questions.
Tomorrow night, I have agreed to play a short set of original music at a
local restaurant in Burk’s Falls. I’m not expecting a big turnout, but I need
the practice. My performing skills are a little rusty, and about the only venues
I play live these days is Hunters Bay Radio and the occasional open stage held
monthly at the Burk’s Falls Legion. I’ve spent much of the last four months
attending to the needs of my friend James Carroll, and have not been concentrating
on my songwriting. Unlike most of the musicians in the area, I don’t love
performing my music, but it is customary to perform some of the songs for an
upcoming CD release. My album was recorded almost a year ago, but other events
in my life took precedence, and the CD was put on the back burner. The
songs are mastered, and once the artwork is finalized, hopefully in the not
too distant future, I will send it out for duplication and move on to the next
project. That’s the plan.
-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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