Another fun recipe from the Carter sisters' kookbook

Two days ago, one of my cousins who is very close to my age, asked me the following: "Is 'clown beauty sleep' really a thing?"

My response?  "I love you and I will try rilly rilly hard to not tell anyone that you asked if clown beauty sleep is really a thing. But no promises."

The reason this Halifax-based cousin asked about clown beauty sleep is, she was wondering whether I would be attending the Taylor Swift concert here in Toronto, on Saturday, Nov. 23rd.

Of course, the answer is no. 

It's not that I don't like Taylor Swift. In fact,  if her other songs are as good as the two that I am familiar with, Carolina and Mean, I totally get the fuss.

I also admit, I totally dreamt about Taylor Swift. 

Last Friday. I know because I wrote it down after I woke up, something I rarely do. 

My late brother Ed was there, too. He and I were working as funeral home assistants at Taylor Swift's funeral. And at the dress rehearsal, while her dancers practised their routine in one corner of the funeral home, other people lined up at the coffin to bid the singer goodbye. 

In true Ed fashion, he said "Pete if we don't do this, we'll regret it forever," so he and I got in line. When we arrived at Swift's casket, Ed reached over to brush some hair out of her eyes. She sat up. 

Ed was like, "Oh-oh." 

Swift proceeded to stand and dance, right there in the coffin. 

I've had a similar dream about Ed.

But never mind that. 

When my cousin asked about her concert, I said I couldn't stay up late that night because the next day, Sunday November 24, I and three of my sisters are marching in the Toronto Santa Claus parade as clowns, so we would need our clown beauty sleep.

Ha-ha.

Clown beauty sleep might not be a thing, but me, Charlene, Norma and Mary as clowns in the 120-year-old parade sure is. It's almost hard to believe this is happening but there you go.

Charlene and Norma will be upside down clowns; Mary a musical elf carrying a giant eighth note. I'll be a snowman. Wearing a top hat.

It was Charlene's idea. She was a  clown last year and persuaded us to join her this go-round. 

I am the youngest of the four but the maturest.

I'm very happy about this turn of events. It's important to celebrate happy moments.  

I just hope parade day's not too warm.  This snowman does have to go to work the next morning. 

Thanksgiving & thanksgetting

THEM APPLES:
When it comes to questions
 Michelle sure
knows how to pick’em. 

Wednesday morning two weeks ago, after I arrived at my office, Michelle Huang--one of the most important people in our company (I'm talking 35,000 people around the world)--asked, "How are you, Peter?" 

Poor Michelle. 

She is such a good sport. She probably didn't deserve my answer. And odds are good she was hoping for a "fine thanks how about you?"

What she got instead was firehosed, with an impromptu litany of all the elements that had to work seamlessly to get me from my bed to my office. 

Like the lights working in our bathroom back home. And the plumbing.

The fridge.

The toaster. 

The garage door opener.

The ignition on my motorcycle. And the clutch cable. Have you ever considered how many times the clutch cable on a motorcycle gets used? And it just keeps clutching and unclutching. 

So many things must mesh to make Peter's world work.

Michelle, who is very patient, put up with the following: "Between my house and here, there's hundreds if not thousands of traffic signals; the roads are all paved; and the other drivers all drive vehicles that are working, safely. I'm even amazed at the elevator that took me all the way to the ninth floor just now." 

Like I said. Poor Michelle. Everybody at our office is crazy about Michelle. I'm thankful I get to work with her.

Yesterday my wife Helena and I had an online appointment with a financial adviser at the TD Bank. 

His name's Mario and he's been helping us for, like, 20 years. I call him Super Mario.

Yesterday, before we started talking business, I wasted probably a dozen of Super Mario's minutes expressing my pleasure, surprise, glee and sheer astonishment that:

A: We have money;
B: We have a financial adviser:
C: We could meet with him from the comfort of my liviing room, which would not have been possible five years ago. And if you want to hear Super Mario laugh, tell him, as I did "I bet you didn't realize I'm not wearing any pants."

On Monday, we had some friends over for Thanksgiving and I read the following, citing each guest by name. 

God is great and God is good;
Let us thank him for our food:

God is great; He's not too shabby;
So thank you God for our friend Gabby.

Speaking of, thank you for Mick
Mateus, too, who's growing quick.

Listen God, don't think you owe me
 God, damn it's cool you sent Naomi.

Thanks for Frank, who came from Chad
And thanks for Gayle who's always glad.

Your tallest angel's also here:
I'm talking Doug, I think that's clear.

And Helena...you've met the missus:
She showers me with love and kisses

So thanks for her a lot, I say,
She's stuck it out both night and day.

Thanks for all the joy and luck:
Because without friends, this life would suck.

God is great and God is big;
It's dinner time so in we dig.

Amen.

I've been told sometimes people get tired of my positivity. My mom would say those people are just jealous.

Oh. Thanks for reading.

Tilt!

ARTISTIC DRIVER'S LICENCE: I just learned that the
waitress looked a lot like pinball-machine artist Paul Faris' real
girlfriend and that that's Faris himself leaning out the truck window.

So my friend Macbeth Swackhammer and I were sitting in the bar side of  the Anchor Inn in Little Current, Ont., on a Tuesday afternoon, when two guys came in to remove the pinball machine. 

They told us they were bringing it to the shop in Sudbury. I asked how much it'd cost to buy. I forget the amount but said "sold." 

The pair trucked it to my apartment, and my life hasn't been the same since. 

That was more than 40 years ago. 

What's important now is that the pinball machine--Night Rider, by the Bally company, of Chicago--has followed me through the years and sits in my basement in Toronto.

I just came upstairs after investing 45 minutes trying to win a game. (I can use the same quarter over and over again.)

Hadn't played in years but this morning, I watched a documentary called Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game, about a tall skinny brownhaired wannabe writer with a porn-star moustache who wrote the definitive history of pinball, and the movie inspired me to fire up Night Rider and doing so bro 

Sorry. 

I haven't a clue what was supposed to come after that ''bro."

My sister Norma phoned. 

While she and I were talking, I cracked a can of Sleeman's Premium Original Draft, the conversation took me away from writing, and that was five days ago. I'm only getting back to this now.

It just occured to me that this is the second blog entry since June that opens with me in the bar at the Anchor Inn.  

The "bro" could have been the first part of "brought," as in "brought back memories" or it might have had something with how my life hasn't been the same since the pinball machine. (One way it's the same? Beer in the afternoon can still yield surprising outcomes.)

But really. 

The person I'd like to meet is the person whose life hasn't changed after 40 years. That'd be a blog worth wasting your time on!

Where was I?

A letter from Peter to the Thessalonians

WHY DON'T LAUGHTER AND DAUGHTER RHYME?
Such are the things that go through a dad's head
on such an historic road trip.

In 1949, my dad, Tom, was the first person to drive the length of Highway 129, which runs north from the village of Thessalon, Ontario (population about 1,200) to Chapleau (2,000, give or take). Total distance: 220.7 kilometres. 

The trip took Tom and his friend Frank Korpela two days, and even though the car was outfitted with winter tires and chains, the snow got so heavy at some points, the guys had to dig ruts in the road to move forward. 

Their pioneering adventure made the local paper; i.e. the Chapleau Post,which quoted Tom saying 129 was "the most interesting highway" he'd ever been on.

Until a few days ago, I'd never seen Highway 129. 

But on Sunday, September 15, 2024, my daughter Ria, riding her 2003 BMW f650gs and I, on my aging Harley Sporstster 883, followed in Tom's and Frank's footsteps, except we went north to south. 

FATHER KNEW BEST: The most
interesting highway ever!

And in the days leading up to the trip, if anybody asked me why we were going, I answered: "To see if my dad was telling the truth."  

So.

Was 129 an interesting highway?

The answer is this: When I was a little kid growing up in Sudbury, before I started school, my late brother's Eddie's best friend in the world was Johnny Cosgrove, who lived a few houses north of us on the other side of Eyre Street, in a second-storey apartment with his mom, dad and kid sister Judy. 

When I was in grade two or three, Mr. Cosgrove, who worked for CN Rail, got transferred to North Bay, a two-hour drive east from Sudbury. At the time, our sister Mary lived in North Bay so sometmes when we went to see Mary, Eddie got to visit Johnny. 

A few years later, Mr. Cosgove got transferred to Chapleau.

ON THE SHOULDERS OF THOSE WHO WENT BEFORE:
Over one 100-kilometre stretch, Ria and I spotted six vehicles.

Bored yet? 

You won't be. 

When Eddie was between either grades seven and eight or grades eight and nine--definitely before high school--my dad had reason to drive to Sault Ste. Marie, which is four hours west of Sudbury. The trip required him to pass through Thessalon. 

Thoughtful dad that he was, Tom agreed to drop  Ed at Thessalon so he could thumb a ride up to to see Johnny. 

You read that right. 

My dad let his little boy Eddie hitchhike alone, 220 kilometres north, along a remote highway that was quiet even by Northern Ontario standards. 

What the hell? 

And to think my mom bought into Tom and Ed's hitchhiking scheme! 

When Ria and I were on 129 Sunday, I barely let her out of my sight! And my folks let skinny little Eddie who couldn't fight his way out of a smelt net head out on his own, up through the backwoods of Area Code 705, behind the trees of which who knew what lurked? Did they even like much less love him?

WHAT? MOM WORRY: She had 
bigger kids than me to lose sleep over.

Then again, when I was 12, those same parents put me, alone, on a 1,300-kilometre-long train trip from Sudbury to Sioux Lookout, so I could visit Clyde Donnelly, one of the kids who'd been a page with me at Queen's Park. Sioux Lookout's way farther than Chapleau. 

My parents also let me take rides astride the gas tank of my late brother Tom's friend Charlie MacMillan's Ariel Square 4 motorbike. Without a helmet.

There are times, I have this image of my mom and dad, in bed, at night. They're tired; after a busy day convincing us 10 Carters that they loved us. 

In my imagination, mom and dad are lying beside each other laughing and swapping ideas for risk-filled games of derring-do, like the people who dream up Survivor-style TV shows do; except instead of a group of contestants who didn't know one another, my folks cast us Carter kids. And if one or two of us got lost in the mix, they'd just make some more.

Ha ha. I'm only kidding. Of course my parents loved us to pieces. Right? 

They also knew that guardian angels are out and out invincible.

Turns out Highway 129 was way more interesting than I thought it was going to be when I started writing this blog.

Giddy up a oom papa oom papa meow meow!

KEYBORED: Best example of pure (or should that be purr) 
research I've ever seen

I sometimes get asked about Iris the Cat. 

Short answer? She's fine.

Professor Iris Cat's turning 16 any day now. Iris came to us on my son Michel's 16th birthday in 2008. Because Iris is a pound kitty, we don't know her exact age. 

She's still healthy, pleased with herself, and active. Iris once in a while lets fling  a random loud, omnidirectional -- how shall I put this? -- string of potty mouth invective, but who, I ask you -- at least among those living in my house -- doesn't?

Mostly, life is grand.  Just yesterday Iris sat on the bottom step of our front porch and watched a parade of tykes from a local daycare centre march past our house on the way to the park at the end of the block.  

This, incidentally, is the most adorable parade you're ever going to witness. Pride, Caribana, Santa Claus, they got nothing on the daycare kids. About 20 of them, between one and a half and three and carefully watched over by a half dozen daycare workers, march hand in hand. No two kids have the same walking style; and they all talk all the time. Loudly. Sounds like a bunch of birds and chipmunks or something. What two-and-a-half-year olds have to discuss is beyond me. It's not like they've watched a lot of Netflix or read many James Patterson thrillers. 

But they all--daycare staff included--smile when they see Iris. 

Iris smiles back.

I admit she's getting on and not as quick to jump up on tables as she used to, but are you?

IRIS AS COPY CAT: Copy cat.That's a 
journalism joke. Reporters call stories and
 headlines copy. I didn't say it was a good
journalism joke.

Whenever Iris seems to slow down or have uncertain senior cat moments, Helena and I start discussing, in euphemisms but within earshot of Iris, how our grandparents dealt with aging house pets. That livens her right up. Iris I mean. Not Helena.

Sometimes after Iris enters a room she looks around and wonders why she came in, but again, who doesn't?

She's still pretty and in fact she's aged a heck of lot better than lots of other old white cats.  

Iris also greets me, same as she has for years, every morning, and--bonus points!--she has recently inspired her own earworm, courtesy of the Oak Ridge Boys' biggest hit.

Try this at home.

Sing the opening few lines but where Duane Allen sings "Elvira," you stick in "Old Iris." Do it more than twice and you'll think it's our Iris who's got "eyes that look like heaven."

And that's what goes through my head every single freaking morning of the week. "Old Iris."

Hi Ho Silver Away!

Your one-stop source for writing, fishing and investing advice

AL ABOARD! Patent on the rocking/fishing chair pending,
and that's patently ridiculous. (Lifelike illustration by the author.)

I once read that you should never write about your dreams. 

Some writing advice; such as the following, I can live with.

• Don't write italics because nobody reads italics; 
  
• Employ lots of quotes; 
• Lists, too;
• Stick to interesting stuff.
  
  

But write off dreams?  

As my good friend the writer Rick Mayoh would put it, "Hogwash fiddlefaddle!"

Dreams are often the high point of my day. 

In the early hours of Friday, July 26, I awoke from a dream about having John Lennon and Bob Dylan at my place for a sleepover and I was surprised they were both way nicer than I expected. (I know the exact date because I told my cousin Roseanne about the encounter in a text message.)

Also, my dead parents visit me on a more than weekly basis.

This past Wednesday, my late brother Ed popped by to ask whether I wrote friction or non-friction. 

Plus dreams can serve up life-altering opportunities.

Last night, my pal Marty Seto and I visited my brother in law Al MacNevin on Manitoulin Island where Al was demonstrating his latest invention: A gas-powered twin-cylinder wicker-yet somehow seaworthy combination fishing/rocking chair.  

 If that's not a million-bitcoin idea I don't know what is. 

YOUR GUESS IS  AS GOOD
AS MINE: How'd Marty 
get here?

"But Peter!" I hear you say, "Were you or were you not this very morning laughing with your neighbour Don because his electric garage door opener cacked out and you told him about the Friday morning your  garage door broke so you underwent a hasty $750 hosing at the hands of  a couple of 24-hour emergency garage door quote unquote experts who didn't speak English and whose receipts didn't have names or addresses on them? 

"And didn't you then tell Don that in 1985, you met a young man who told you he was going into the electric garage door business and you thought, 'Ha. Electric garage doors. As if they'll catch on!'" 

I also--since you brought up the subject--didn't see a future for bottled water or portable phones.

I forget what this story was supposed to be about.

But if you need more writing and/or investment advice email me. If you'd like to get in touch with Marty or Al, I can arrange that too.

But if you'd like to reach the fish, drop them a line. 

 

This just in from the governor general's john

TOUTE LE GANGLINESS: Lily Schreyer, moi,
Governor General (at the time)  Ed Shreyer, my boss and
 Expositor Publisher RickMcCutcheon and
former GG Roland Michener.

I just got and read a newly published book called Journalism for the Common Good: The Michener Awards at Fifty, by Kim S. Kierans, because I'm in it. 

On page 75. 

Me and my wife Helena. And our friend Rick.

Get this: "In Manitoulin, the Expositor team was thrilled to be invited to the ceremony at Rideau Hall. Carter and his girlfriend Helena, who later became his wife, took the seven-hour bus trip to join publisher Rick McCutcheon for the ceremony and 'to meet all the people I looked up to,' said Carter. During a bathroom break, Carter recalled running into Ottawa journalist John Fraser, who asked if Carter had his acceptance speech ready. 'Yeah, right, Mr. Fraser.'"

I love that. 

Ms. Kierans has me talking to a famous Canadian journalist in the can at Rideau Hall, in Ottawa, where the governor-general lives.

In another paragraph: "Carter, a gangly twenty-three year old."

TEXTBOOK CASE: If all history
books were this readable, my 
marks would have soared over C.

How she knew about my gangliness is anybody's guess. Kim Kierans and I have only ever spoken on the phone. Maybe I have a gangly voice. 

I don't know.

What I do know is, I've read page 75 over and over. I can probably recite it from memory.  

Then I thought, maybe I owe it to Kierans to give the rest of the book a shot.

I was right. 

This reminded me of the time I read Cherie Dimaline's novel The Marrow Thieves. I picked up The Marrow Thieves because I knew and seriously like and admire Cherie, who I worked with at Chatelaine, even though (or maybe especially because) one afternoon our boss Rona Maynard compared my and Cherie's management style to that of the Keystone Kops. I took it as a compliment. Anyway, I started The Marrow Thieves because Cherie was the author but finished it because the story was so gripping. (The Marrow Thieves then went on to be a best-selling award winner. Feels great when that happens.)

I started Journalism For The Public Good because my name was in it then finished the book because it was so damn interesting and easy to read. Being easy to read is huge, in my books. (In my books. Get it? Never mind.) 

JFTPG would be a valuable addition to any history course in the country.

MEETING JOHN IN THE JOHN:
Kierans' ear for detail caught me
by surprise 
 

Or maybe a course called, "How to turn a wooden-sounding subject like the history of a journalism award into a marvelous story."

Kim (I think I can call her that now) couldn't  produce a boring sentence to save her life.

And JFTPG is the retelling of some of the most important journalism; and by extension, significant events in this past 50 years. 

I personally forget most stuff. Really do. At the time something’s going on I think “I’ll never forget this,” but then I do. Just like that.

JFTPG was like a trip back in time to events that were really important that I had completely forgotten about.  

I'm not going to go all boomery here, lamenting the old days of journalism when newspapers were fat and everybody watched the same three news broadcasts, because I don't do that. The newer ranks of journalists work harder, faster, smarter and more effectively than their predecessors; i.e., okay, okay,  me, ever  did.

Same thing applies to hockey players and school teachers. They get better with each generation.

Textbooks, too, are livelier than they used to be  Exhibit A: Journalism For The Public Good.

JFTPG is an overdue reminder that there’s tons of terrific Canadian journalism out there. And a morale boost for people like me who've made it our lives. 

If you're reading this, thanks Kim. And should you ever make it T.O... 

One more thing. (And this is not why I wrote this blog but a case could be made for it. When I was 11, I worked as a page in the Ontario Legislature. When I told big people about it, more than a few asked, "and which page are you?" I now have the answer.