Posted on September 30, 2013 under Monday Morning Musings with no comments yet

I hardly know where to start.

Unless your computer crashed on the weekend or you were at a retreat, you have probably heard something about this now famous skunk. It ended up in my brother in laws grave the day of his funeral. The burial had to be postponed for a day. With permission from the family I have documented the entire episode from start to finish. And for once, every word is true. No embellishments this time around. So, coming tomorrow evening, ” Lou’s Last Laugh.”

We now know why we didn’t get a sellout the other evening for our fundraiser. We had competition just down the hall, in the same building. Wait for this… we were going toe to toe with Sex Toy Bingo. I had to Google it . I simply could not let this one pass without a story. So, coming later this week I have a story about what may have happened if two couples, one old and one young, had each unwittingly gone to the wrong event. It’s called “Mistaken Identities.”

And I haven’t forgotten about the Goodman department store story. The skunk kind of threw everything off schedule including my stories.

I am down to the wire getting things ready for the book. It will be printed in the next three weeks.

I have my 40th. homecoming later this week and I am also attending the Georegtown Conference in P.E.I. It’s going to be another busy week but you guys are all busy too.

Have a good one!

Posted on September 28, 2013 under Storytelling with no comments yet

It is approximately 3300 kilometers from our home in Antigonish to our vacation property in Florida, a seemingly safe distance to get away from it all.  Not so.  A few years back we were visiting friends in a nearby retirement community when I decided to go out for an early morning run.  I was less than 50 yards from our friends’ front porch when I saw someone very familiar coming toward me.   It turns out that this woman lived on the next street over in my home town when we were growing up.

You often hear stories about people meeting in very unusual places and unusual circumstances.  You often bump into people you know in far off airports and sometimes at the summit of some obscure hiking trail.

And then there were the two people attending a funeral a while back.  They hadn’t seen each other in a long, long time.  The lineup was incredibly long, forcing the funeral home to create an S shaped lineup. They passed going in one direction and a short while later met again.  “Joe,” said one of the men, “I haven’t seen you in over twenty years and now I’ve seen you twice in twenty minutes.”

Recently, two women who were neighbors headed out from their respective homes on a beautiful summer morning.  One was heading to work and the other for a run. They exchanged waves as they pulled out of their driveways, seconds apart.

The runner headed to a well-known running trail while the other parked her car at work and decided to go for a run before starting work.  On the very same trail. The trail is one long continuous loop and can be approached from two different directions.

Part way through the run, one of the runners felt the call of nature and wisely heeded the call.  Fortunately there is one portable toilet on the trail as this is a well-used recreational facility.  Not the Port O Potty; the trail.  She entered; scattering away flies, and took care of business.  Feeling quite relieved, she grabbed for the handle on the door at exactly the same moment that her neighbor was planning to enter the facility.

The accompanying gasp and shriek rattled first through the portable toilet, then through an adjacent stand of trees and across the meadow, disturbing nesting waterfowl.

It was hard to determine who was more shocked at this stunning coincidence, but needless to say the experience nearly scared the crap out of both parties.

Later that day one of them decided to buy some lottery tickets, flushed with high expectations, figuring that the odds of winning were comparable to the chance meeting at the lavatory that morning.

The other was home digging through her old album collection trying to find just the right tune to capture the sentiment of the day.  She dusted off the jacket of Abbey Road and let the needle drop on the old phonograph.  She smiled as The Beatles sang her old favorite, “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.”

Posted on September 27, 2013 under Storytelling with 4 comments

THANK YOU

Phil and I would like to thank everyone who came out to our story telling show last night. We had an excellent crowd who were warm and responsive. We are pleased to report that we raised in excess of $5,000 for charity. It is not a huge sum of money these days but it will help to buy food for those who need it. So that’s it. You won’t have to listen to me go on and on about this anymore.

I do have several new stories in the works. Tomorrow’s offering is about chance encounters. You know what it’s like when you bump into someone in the most unusual of places, like an airport in some far off country or at the end of a hiking trail in the middle of nowhere. A meeting at the liquor store doesn’t quite qualify. I won’t spoil this by saying anything else . Coming tomorrow , “Johnny on the Pot.”

Another story I’m working on is about the old Goodman store here in Antigonish. Yes, it’s a local story but I suspect that just about every small town in North America had, at one time or another, a department store just like Goodmans. I got to thinking about this the other day after purchasing a new ipad mini with “square” technology. This will allow me to take your hard earned money out of your pocket when my book goes on sale. I will be able to accept credit card payment even if I meet you deep in the forest. I thought about how much technology has changed and harkened back to when Goodmans used to process payments with an elaborate in store system of tubes and vacuums. You need to be pretty old ( my age ) to remember this. The story is called ” The Shape of Business.”

Have a great weekend.