A recent photograph on my Facebook page shows Bob and I sitting in the
infamous Raging African Queen, back in the early 90s. I’d owned that little
dinghy since I was about 5 years old, and I spent many a summer day putting
around in it. We did some crazy things in that little boat over the years. It
became legendary on our bay, particularly after Peter Stephens, a very talented
artist friend of mine from Buffalo, painted “The Raging African Queen” on the
transom in bright yellow Rust-O-Leum. Someone commented on the Facebook picture
that he’d seen the boat down the beach recently, and that one of the local residents
was still using it. I did not think this was possible, because that boat had
been stolen off the beach in front of our house a long time ago, but I had to know.
While I was down visiting last weekend, Bob and I paid a visit to the person
who was allegedly in possession of the infamous dinghy. I know the guy, and he
wasn’t the kind of person who would steal a boat. As I suspected, this was a blind alley,
and the whereabouts of the Raging African Queen remains an unsolved mystery. If
any one of my twelve loyal readers should find it buried away in someone’s
garage, or hear of its whereabouts, I would very much like to know about it.
I drove home yesterday afternoon from Ft. Erie, after picking up Shauna’s
mom, E.T. in Toronto to bring her up north for a visit. Hunters Bay Radio
sponsors Monday night radio bingo in this community, and of course we had to
get back up to Huntsville in time to play. You laugh, but there’s big money at stake
here! Any profits made by the radio station will go to upgrading some of the
sorely needed equipment we use to broadcast. What I had not anticipated was the
chaos which would ensue when I played Bingo with both my wife and my mother-in-law.
Concentration is the issue here; I have it, they do not. There are five games
each week, and for each game, a player has six different cards to play. Players
really need to pay attention when the numbers are called. Last night, as the
three of us played, Mom Taylor was having trouble hearing the numbers, and there
was a great deal of confusion. “Wait … what was that number?!” Then, Shauna called
in what she thought was a Bingo, when she in fact did not have a winning card. She
was very embarrassed. I take my Bingo very seriously, and these distractions
are very upsetting.
It was strange to be away from the news for only half a day and then to
learn of something as shocking as the mass shooting in an Orlando night club. Forty-nine
souls were extinguished, and many more are in the hospital in serious condition,
all because of one lunatic with two guns and a lot of ammo. There was much
discussion on the news about whether or not this was more of an attack on
homosexuals or simply a terrorist attack by one radicalized Muslim, bent on
killing any western heathens. While it was clearly an attack targeting
homosexuals, everyone is a heathen to these fundamentalist nut balls. Along with
the news about the beheading in the Philippines of a second kidnapped Canadian by
the terrorist organization Abu Sayyaf, it was a good day for bad news. Pretty
soon everybody in America will be packing, which, sadly might be more effective
than well-meaning but ill-fated gun control. Is this how the next world war
will be fought, in the streets? Hatred begets hatred, and all this Islamophobia
is playing right into the hands of fear-mongering opportunists like Trump. I am
of course saddened that there is so much hatred and ignorance in the world, but
I will never give up hope that reason and love will prevail.
-Written by Jamie
Oppenheimer c 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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