Tuesday, June 14, 2016

The Oppenheimer Report 6/14/16

Saturday I drove down to Ft. Erie to spend some time with my friend Bob and his wife Laura, and to pick up some special dog food for Jasper. While it was too windy and cold to enjoy a high speed boat ride in his vintage 27’ Magnum, it did not rain, as the weatherman had threatened, and I had an opportunity to kill some time with my best friend and my partner in crime for much of my ill-spent youth. A walk on the beach of Thunder Bay brought back many happy childhood memories, but what was most astonishing was how much has changed. Old cottages have been knocked down and much larger homes have replaced them. In the relentless march of time, only our memories remain the same.

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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