Help Me Make It Through the Night---The backstory

HERE IS THE BACKSTORY TO THE SONG

With pen and paper in hand, Kris, anguished and tormented, head down and teary eyed, entered the tavern and sat down in a dark remote corner and ordered a double. He needed something to relieve his pain.

Hours earlier, a sympathetic and kindly Salvation Army Officer who was hoping to negotiate the beginning of a reconciliation had driven him up to the house of his long estranged wife.

Obviously, Kris had confided his pain to the Officer.

The uniformed Officer approached the door of the house while Kris waited hopefully in the car for a face-to-face meeting with his wife whom he had not seen for many years.

His wife angrily rejected any thought of reconciliation. And who could blame her?

By 20, she had mothered three of Kris’s four children. Despite this, Kris spent most of his wages virtually every night having a good time in the pub and coming home most evenings only after last call. Once home, usually in a drunken state, if indeed he did come home at all, he would beat his wife, often for rejecting his advances.

She was the classic abused wife and her beatings would earn Kris jail time these days. Unfortunately, spousal abuse was not treated seriously in those days of sexual inequality. Then, man ruled the roost as king of his castle.

Until recent times, divorce was uncommon and difficult. The only ground for divorce was infidelity, and embarrassment at that becoming public in the Victorian 40’s and 50’s deterred divorce for many on those grounds. The other ground for a legal end to a marriage was the death of a spouse. In the absence of evidence of death, this ruling was made following seven years of separation during which time the spouse could not be located. But Kris kept surfacing just before the seven years, each time denying his wife’s freedom.

After the birth of her fourth child at 24, Kris’s wife escaped the abuse by running away with her newborn son to work somewhere...anywhere, as a domestic. Painfully, she had to leave her other three children who came under the care of the Children’s Aid.

All this gnawed at Kris’s tormented mind as he cleared his tears and started to write.

“Dear Rose....”

Kris was spent and broken and words didn’t come easily. He found it difficult to express his remorse for the hell he’d brought his family.

“I think of you constantly,” he wrote. “I’ve brought only pain to you and our children. I regret this with all my heart. But yesterday is left and gone. It can’t be changed. But, I promise, I won’t let the devil take any tomorrows if we can share some time together. It’s so sad to be alone," he added in self pity.

Thinking of his shameful past was painful. He put his pen and paper aside and bowed his head to hide the tears again welling in his eyes. Kris’ emotions overcame him making it impossible to continue.

Shortly, a stranger, a busty scantily dressed woman with her hair tied up with a bright red ribbon approached his table.

“You’re all alone,” she said. “You look like you need some company.”

“Sure, sit down. Let me get you a drink,” Kris replied.

They drank until the place closed and then left arm in arm...together.

WRITER'S NOTE---This story is mostly factual with Kris portraying the character of my father and his estrangled wife my mother.  It is doubtful though that my father ever displayed any of Kris' remorse or tears until his end as a broken, lonely, and forgotten soul.

You Couldn’t Dream Up A Comedy Like This ©

Bill Longworth
November 2, 2011

Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, the three stooges, Curly, Larry, and Moe, and even Laurel and Hardy were never this good!

It was an impromptu slapstick comedy act. Bicyclists peddling down the street knee deep in water with tons of floating garbage catching their spokes, seizing their wheels, and tumbling countless riders into the rushing water.

Too bad there weren’t judges around to hold up cards judging the dives...5.6, 6.0, 5.8, to make a real competition out of the pratfalls....and audiences to cheer the level of their approval. Instead there were only howls of laughter and derision at those unfortunate victims of the situation.

The speed of some of the bigger and heavier chunks of garbage rushing down the road collided with the bicycles crashing their riders into the flood.

In the face of colliding with the bigger debris, some nimble riders jumped off their bikes and took off as best they could into the drink to escape the bombardment.

You couldn’t plan such a comedy routine as rider after rider fell victim to the garbage strewn water.

Slapstick was never as good as this!

If I didn’t think I was in such a desperate predicament, I would have joined all of the other onlookers laughing their heads off at the ridiculous and bizarre buffoonery we were witnessing in the rapidly rising water.

With a few spare hours to kill, I had ventured out into a sunny China afternoon for a bike ride to a nearby rural neighbourhood when an unexpected rainstorm suddenly arose. Rapidly drenched, I quickly pulled my bike up under a canopy to avoid getting more soaked than I already was.

Without storm water control systems, the water rushed overland and was soon a torrential river roaring down the road that only a few minutes earlier had been a dusty broken road between the open-fronted shops lining the road.

The rain water flooded the street as I watched helplessly from higher ground wondering if I could get back to Kunming’s Yunnan Finance and Trade Institute in SW China to deliver my 7 o’clock lecture.

I shivered in my wet clothes as the river flooded higher and higher as I perched precariously atop the biggest boulder I could find. If I lost my footing or the water rose much higher, its strong current surely would have floated me downstream in the torrent, along with the many other comedic river rats and garbage.

Such a spectacle would probably have been the highlight of the show as most ordinary Chinese saw all white North American big noses like me as wealthy, coming as we did, from a place where all the streets were paved in gold. So being swept away in the current and garbage would be a just comeuppance for me.

While this flooding was a surprise and a fright to me as the water continued to rise, the native inhabitants of the place had obviously seen this before and saw humour where I saw danger, and they saw a cleansing of their neighbourhood where I saw pollution.

The eighteen inch water became a flushing system for all of the garbage and dirt of the community. To add to the mayhem, shopkeepers threw all of their garbage into the rushing water so that the flood become a sea of flotsam rushing downhill to Lord knows where. While the garbage was sure to end up as someone’s problem down the line, it was a welcome saviour for those on higher ground to get rid of litter that had probably been piling up since the last storm. Eco concerns were the last thing on anyone’s mind.

While this demonstration of a natural flushing system was probably a godsend to the upstream people, it brought considerable anguish to me with my concern with world pollution problems...such a contrast to this culture where garbage is simply strewn about.

This event, though, did provide reinforcement of lessons I have learned numerous times in my international work experience. And that is to not judge customs in foreign lands by my North American standards, which may be equally perplexing to them.

But my experience with this flash flood has given me greater appreciation of the power of nature and the catastrophe’s that can erupt so quickly catching all by surprise who are in its wake....and often with disastrous results.

And by the way, I never did get to that lecture.

My Foray Into The World of Crime ©

By Bill Longworth
October 19, 2011

We pulled up to the five star Fairmont Towers Hotel near the Cairo Airport and I slipped out of my chauffeur driven car with my backpack of money and ventured into the front passenger seat of an impeccably polished black Mercedes.

I didn’t know where I was going or who I was with, but the Mercedes driver had given my chauffeur a promise to convert my bag of Egyptian cash into real money in the form of American greenbacks.

I was returning to Canada after finishing my job assignment as Director of a “start up” International High School that paid me about as much as fifty Egyptian teachers and, despite living high off the hog, I had accumulated a healthy sum.

I had no idea how much Egyptian money I had in my bag...but it might well have been the equivalent of $15,000-$20,000US, and I knew that, if unconverted, it only had the value of last week’s newspaper once outside the country.

In retrospect, It’s frightening to contemplate the risks you’ll take when there’s money on the line.

Egypt has tightly regulated foreign exchange controls as the government attempts to lock up all internationally recognized currencies for its own use and for the use of its privileged insiders. Thus my money conversion was illegal and had to be done on the black market.

And neither my driver, nor the Mercedes driver, spoke much English so I had no idea of the specifics of the agreements or discussions they had.

I did know that my safety and security, and that of my bag of money, was in the hands of those I didn’t know and couldn’t communicate with. I was proceeding on blind faith....and a hope and a prayer.

Before hopping into the Mercedes, I had my driver write down the car’s license number, get the driver’s identification, and instructed him to wait until I returned. As if any of this would provide me security!

The Mercedes driver, a heavy-set guy with an olive Arabic complexion, was neatly dressed. His slick-backed hair and “hustler” manner distinguished him as not of the executive set. It appeared to me that his Mercedes was probably the result of criminal activity in this country where the best middle class salaries averaged $240US monthly---certainly not enough to afford these wheels.

As part of the criminal element, I wondered whether the guy was holstering a revolver under his jacket. I knew weapons were common to the Egyptian population. I once witnessed a guy sitting in broad daylight on the curb outside his residence cleaning his revolver.

And everywhere you look in Egypt, bus loads of heavily armed soldiers and police were waiting for immediate dispatch to trouble spots. Unfortunately none of these trouble-shooters were nearby. The only sense of security I got was from the hotel security guards, and who knows, they may have been in cahoots with the Mercedes driver hanging around the hotel parking lot. So it was not just my wild imagination wondering whether this stranger helping me break the law was packing some heat that might be used to do me in and steal my cash.

And I’d often heard rumours in Egypt about the proclivity of police and others to shoot first and ask questions later....a belief reinforced daily as my driver drove through heavily armed police check-points on my return from work, although we didn’t have to stop, perhaps because my car was somehow identified as “safe.”

It’s frightening how the need for practical action often causes you to throw caution to the wind...and this risky, foolhardy, and maybe even dumb-headed money exchange adventure seemed eerily similar to a perilous game of Russian roulette.

But to me, the amount of cash I had was no chicken feed, and I needed to convert it into something of value. Previous unsuccessful attempts to get the cash changed to American currency, had me shopping for Rolex watches as a last resort, but there was no guarantee even these would be real.

Anyway, despite my trepidations, I was in the Mercedes and it sped off through the streets to some unknown destination. After forty minutes or so through a section of Cairo that looked a little seedy to me, the car pulled up in a run-down high-rise apartment complex.

The driver handed me the keys to his Mercedes and gestured for my bag of money and we made the exchange.

He got out of the car and made his way to some unknown “out of sight” destination.

After what seemed like an eternity, he returned and gave me a sheaf of brand new American hundreds and I returned his keys.

Now that I had the real money and he had his keys, was he now going to drive me to some remote location to do me in and reclaim the money?

That question dominated my thinking until I saw the hotel and my chauffeur still there waiting for me. It was only then that I felt relief knowing that the transaction was complete, and I was safe.

I never even bothered counting the cash I got and didn’t care about the huge premium I probably paid, but I did applaud my alchemy at being able to convert my trash to gold.

And, oh yes, I did slip my chauffeur a few hundred for his collusion in this caper knowing that, if he was caught, it may well have resulted in jail time for him.

Now I feel better! This confession has cleansed my soul and absolved my sin! Hey! That’s so easy! Now, what other mischief can I get myself into?

It Helps to Have...a Beautiful Woman On Your Arm ©

By Bill Longworth
October 5, 2011

As I sat in London’s Lyceum theatre with the beautiful young oriental woman I was with that Saturday night, minding my own business as usual, a stodgy old man sitting alone next to me started up a “small talk” conversation.

“Where you from?” he inquired.

Unimpressed, I looked at the guy not really interested in conversing with him. He was a little overweight and had just a smidgeon of white hair haloing his head. He was dressed in an unpressed brown suit, looked every day his age of at least 80, and, as if for some kind of security, he incessantly fondled a tattered well-worn “leather bound” novel. The little bit of hair he had was pulled back eccentrically into a three inch ponytail at the back of his head.

“Toronto,” I responded in a civil, if not so respectful tone, “And you?”

“Chicago,” he said, “But I spend about half the year here staying at the Reform Club.”

If I’d known then what I know now about the Reform Club, I’d suspect he was trying to impress me, or more probably, the Lady I was with that evening.

“I’m Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago. Name's E. Blythe Statton Jr.,* he said, “But you can call me Blythe.”

“I’m Bill,” I said rather apologetically, realizing my “handle” was not nearly as impressive as his, but I suppose I could have jazzed it up a bit by identifying myself as William Longworth, the third.

“And the lady....what’s her name?” he continued, rather aggressively I thought, showing considerable interest in my companion so early in the conversation.

“She’s Helen and she came with me from Canada,” I responded, hoping this answer would give him the message that she was not only with me tonight but that she was also my travel mate.

At this the lecherous old man, after clearly establishing his credentials with both of us, leaned over me and started conversing more directly with Helen.

“I spend a lot of time in London,” he said, “And perhaps I could show you and Bill around the town. Dinner perhaps at the Reform Club Monday evening, as there’s a James Bond film shoot there tomorrow.”

Amazing a total stranger should offer us a dinner in what sounded like such an exclusive place...or perhaps he was arranging a date with Helen and I was merely the “third wheel” tag-along guest.

Anyway, after the theatre, we walked Blythe westward along the Strand towards Pall Mall where the Reform Club was located. We had to part company though at the Charing Cross Tube Station and head south across the Thames on the Hungerford Footbridge to the Waterloo Train station for the 40 minute train ride west to Staines, the London suburb where we lived.

Before splitting, though, we made sure to confirm our plans for the Reform Club dinner. As part of the details, Blythe cautioned me to wear a suit and tie and leather shoes, which also informed Helen of the standard of dinner dress expected of women guests.

The twenty minute walk with Blythe was interesting. He said he had a Rolls Royce in England and another in Chicago. “Women loved riding in them,” he stated, again I guessed for Helen’s enticement.

I was starting to think that Blythe, (despite his appearance, but being impressed with his two Rolls Royces), might be a quite a wealthy guy. I also became impressed with his intelligence when he said he was a Harvard Law Graduate. I wasn’t nearly as impressed when he said his great grandfather invented the elevator brake, which he demonstrated in the Crystal Palace Exposition Hall at the 1854 New York World’s Fair.

I made sure though, before the dinner, to research the Reform Club and the inventor of the elevator brake.

The Reform Club is one of five or six super exclusive by-invitation-only “Gentlemen’s Clubs” on Pall Mall, whose guests are mostly Lords and Ladies, and his great grandfather, the inventor of the elevator brake, was Elisha Graves Otis whose two sons, one Blythe’s grandfather, founded Otis Elevators and installed the world’s first public elevator in a five story Manhattan Department store. The rest, of course, is world class industrial and commercial history.

And the best part, Blythe still writes me from all over the world on his travels and when he visited me in Oshawa two years ago, he commented on how he enjoyed discussing things with me as he said there was so much to learn.

And this from a guy I considered the smartest guy I’d ever met.

I‘ll have to visit him in Chicago to see his whole collection of Rolls Royces and Bentleys going back to the early 1900s, some he said would cost millions of dollars to restore.

And, oh yes, I do credit Blythe’s interest in Helen for being the magnet for my continuing association with Blythe.

And I’ve learned beyond a doubt, It never hurts to have beautiful woman on your arm.


*Blythe’s surname, whose mother was one of the daughters of the founder of Otis Elevator Company, has been changed to protect his identity

The Frightful Tomb ©

Bill Longworth
September 28, 2011

I clambered up the steep and irregular boulder steps to the entrance high above the desert floor, for 40 centuries, the tallest structure on Earth.

I entered through the Robber’s Tunnel, a hole poked into the side of the massive structure by Persian Invaders around AD820. At that time, the main entrance was located higher up and off centre to dissuade looters, and was concealed behind slabs of polished stone covering the entire edifice.

Expending such a huge effort to rob the place, those early plunderers were sure to have left few treasures for me.



Entering this structure was not for the faint of heart. The limit of 300 daring souls admitted daily was seldom threatened, as most people refused to enter this foreboding place.

Posted signs warned of steep climbs, dark, damp, and narrow passageways, and low ceilings often requiring crawling on hands and knees. It was not at all the place for the claustrophobic, the faint of heart, or the out of shape.

But I saw entry as an opportunity of a lifetime as I enthusiastically made my way to the entrance. The reluctance of most to enter made me even more eager to explore this mysterious place.

The place? The Great Pyramid of Egypt. At 4000 years old, it is the only remaining structure of the original Seven Wonders of the World, and I was about to probe into the bowels of this place where so few humans over those 4000 years had ever been.

The inside is a honeycomb of dark mysterious stone passageways punctuated by steep climbs on inclined ramps and steep staircases and ladders. Some of the narrow passageways have been blocked by massive boulders designed to keep out intruders, or indeed, to keep those lost from escape. If lost, what a fate to be entombed and rot in this sweltering place.

Inside, every word and footstep echoes eerily, ghostlike off the solid stone walls, almost as if those from millenniums past are stalking your every step. Every whisper is amplified a thousand times by the massive stone walls comprised of millions of precision “hand cut” locomotive sized stone blocks pieced together so finely as to defy those who would want to slip an onionskin in the joints.

When you stop to listen, you are deafened by the menacing silence of the place. It seems the spirit of the ancient pharaoh entombed here, and his servants, and the workers sacrificed during construction, remain vigilant custodians tracking every movement of those who would enter this sacred place. When you stop to listen, they also silence their sounds so as to remain hidden from your view.

The trapped perspiration off every sweating visitor and the moisture exhaled through their breathing, and often exhumed as a result of their anxiety, adds to the 85% humidity to bathe each subsequent visitor with the vaporous discards of visitors past.

This build-up of humidity, in addition to being a severe discomfort for those brave enough to enter this tomb, is a giant concern to curators and conservators charged with protecting the treasure. Hence the daily limitation on visitors and recent closures for the installation of modern dehumidifier systems.

And to think this marvel of human ingenuity, unmatched even today, was built 4000 years ago with hand labour, primitive engineering, planning and complex design communicated orally or in ancient hieroglyphics written on papyri or clay tablets in the beginning stages of written language, complicated math and astronomical computations without the use of modern computing tools....a structure virtually impossible to duplicate today even in our advanced computerized and mechanized society.

It’s doubtful that any wonders of modern-day engineering will be around 4000 years into the future.

Who says we’ve come a long way in the last 4000 years in what humans have been able to accomplish.

We think of those ancient civilizations as primitive, but no person living today would be able to duplicate the mental and physical skills of the pyramid builders of that pre-biblical Egyptian society.

INTERESTING LINKS

How were the stones moved?---no one knows!

The Torment of the Educated Cabbie ©

Bill Longworth
Sept 21, 2011


“Good afternoon sir. Please get in,” said the well mannered and well dressed cabbie in impeccable English. This greeting was extraordinary for taxi drivers in Cairo where I was employed. Most were illiterate. Very few could read or write Arabic, never mind speak English.

This guy smelled of pleasant cologne which was characteristic of higher class Egyptian men who always kept a bottle of spray nearby to combat the effects of the blistering temperatures, and he was clean cut and freshly shaven---not at all your typical Cairo cabbie.

Amazingly, I had no problem at all communicating with this guy.

Usually communication was dependent upon simple gestures or the names of a few key locations I had learned to pronounce. For safety’s sake, my business card had an Arabic labeled map with my residence identified on the back. At the outset, I would hand this to the driver and most would hop out of the cab to get it read by an educated bystander.

As time passed, and I learned the way to my favourite Cairo destinations, I was able to direct drivers by gesture.

While I welcomed the invitation to get into this cab and out of the blistering 100 degree heat on this hot September day, I ‘d never get into a cab before negotiating a price for a ride to my destination.

Throughout the Middle East, there are few fixed prices and everything is open to negotiation. To an outsider, the bargaining looks and sounds like an agitated quarrel soon to get violent.

So waving a banknote in the air, “I’m going to the Khan el Khalili market,” I said to the English speaking cabbie, “and I’ll give you ten Egyptian pounds for the ride.” This was the standard price I’d pay, about a dollar and a half Canadian, to anywhere in downtown Cairo from my residence in Heliopolis, a well-to-do suburb characterized by distinctive Turkish architecture.

“Okay, it’s a deal,” said the cabbie as he reached over to open the cab door.

The cab took off and we shortly swung past Hosni Mubarak’s Presidential Compound, a Heliopolis landmark not far from my residence that I was chauffeured past on my way to work every day of the week.

Some cabbies were reluctant to accept a ten pound offer from a foreigner and would drive off in a huff making gestures that I took to mean that they thought I was crazy. Such gestures are used frequently in negotiating prices and were tools I quickly picked up in perfecting my own bargaining skills for use in Egypt. Of course, unless you were nuts, you wouldn’t think of using such tactics in Canada.

One may think fare negotiations disrespectful and impolite, but it is a way of life in the Middle East. There are no firm prices. Every seller argues for more and every buyer argues for less. Buying anything is a game of wits and you’d lose your shirt in an instant if you failed to follow this custom. What most people lack in education, they more than make up in street smarts, guile, and cunning. From an early age, mostly spent as street kids, they all learn how to close the deal!

This Cabbie’s enthusiasm in accepting my ten pound offer without the usual bickering raised questions in my mind. Why did he want me in the cab so much? Why not the usual negotiations? Why is he so different from the typical cabbie? Is there something strange going on here? Should I be concerned about my security and safety? You never know about these things in a strange country where you don’t know the lay of the land.

Price negotiation was common for everyone getting a cab in Cairo as was a cabbie’s common refusal to provide the service. While negotiations with one cab driver were ensuing, it was common for two or three cabs to join the cab lineup hoping for the job. This lineup of cabs I thought was part of the negotiation game as each cab was hoping that my frustration with a refused offer would boost up my price for the next driver. All cabbies, it seemed, were in collusion to steal foreigners blind.

Anyway, once the cab set off, it wasn’t long before conversation ensued. “Where are you from?...and…What do you do?” inquired the cabbie.

"I’m from Canada and I’m Director of a Private High School preparing students to write the SAT examinations for entrance to Professional Schools in American Universities," I responded.

He would have known immediately that the students in the school were from extremely privileged families…and destined for the highest imaginable riches.

At that, the reason for the cab driver’s lack of bargaining in getting me into his cab became obvious.

"I’m trained as a lawyer," he said. "And I wonder if you’d have any influence in getting me a good job here in Egypt."

"Amazing," I thought! "He’s wondering whether a foreigner has influence in getting him a good job in his own country!"

This brought into sharp focus judgments I’d already made in observation of the students graduating from the school I administered. At the convocation ceremony, the majority of graduates were off to medical school.

Family influence and privilege are the birthrights for wealth and success in Egypt. Hard work, education, and intelligence are not the keys. Your life journey is determined at birth.

The rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer and nothing is able to break the cycle.

And that, in a nutshell folks, is the stark reason for the recent Egyptian revolution and the strife now flooding the Middle East.

And that revolution would be strongly supported by the tormented cabdriver and resisted strongly by the families of every student in my school.

Frighteningly, as in Egypt, growing income disparity in North America could lead to the same kind of strife.



More Reading on this topic as it relates to Canada and the USA

Growth of income inequality in Canada

Why Occupy? It's the Inequality

Kevin O'Leary gets a smackdown over corporate greed from Journalist Chris Hedges

Occupy Bay Street---Maclean's Mag

Occupy Toronto...the G20 and now Bay Street

New York Minute: Observations and Aims in Occupy Wall Street

Mic Check....Despatches from the Occupy Wall Street

An Activist's Guide to Occupy Toronto

Objectives of the Occupy Toronto Movement

Chris Hedges smacks down CBC/s Kevin O'Leary attacking protest movement

Why should Canadians care about the "Occupy" movement?

NYTIMES--opinion piece---Why the "Occupy Movement" frightens the rich

A Little Tension in the Air ©

By Bill Longworth
February 18, 2008


“I think we need a GPS for the boat,” I said to my wife as we pulled up to the government dock to unload the car and pack the boat for the eight-mile boat ride to our secluded cottage.

“Just another expensive toy,” she responded. “There are lots of better ways to spend our money.”



“It’d be great to help us across the lake tonight,” I stated, as I surveyed the dark fall sky and the brisk wind which churned up unusually heavy waves. “Usually the light from the moon and stars is enough for me to see the sillouette of the tree line to navigate the way, but tonight it’s impossible to see anything.”

This was a night-time trip I had made hundreds of times. My strategy was always the same. Turn off all the boat lights for better night vision, and drive standing up with my head through the roof hatch to catch my bearings. I always felt, though, that traversing the lake at night was like going through the vast expanses of outer space, as the lake is large and boat traffic is minimal even in daylight hours. In any case, I always figured I would hear the noise of any boats in the vicinity and would simply turn on the navigation lights so our boat could be seen.

“That's a cold wind,” observed my wife as she helped to load the boat. “The sky is black as coal. The only colour I see are the whitecaps of those breaking waves. Perhaps we should stay in town and go over in the morning.”

Despite our second thoughts, we decided to embark on the trip across the lake, figuring we’d be there in a short time and could settle in comfortably for the night.

I always keep enough gas in the tank to get me safely across the lake as you’d never want to run out of gas, especially at night. The large, heavy boat is impossible to move anywhere with the safety paddles I always stowed in the boat. Moving the boat was difficult in still water, but nigh on impossible with any kind of wind, and this night the wind and waves were both quite angry. Perhaps they were angry at me for venturing out when mother-nature was so venomous.

While my gas tank was a little lower than normal on this night, I was confident I had plenty of gas for the trip.

Land is usually quite close for most of the trip but there is a large expanse of open water a mile or so across that has to be crossed. The north wind in this section of the lake has a sweep of about twelve miles to kick up the waves. And this night, the waves were peaking wildly. About a quarter of the way across this open water, I figured I had better slow down a bit for safety’s sake and the emotional comfort of my family, who were huddled under the roof not having any idea where we were in the trip, but, of course, having the usual confidence in my ability to get us to the cottage safely.

I ducked my head under the roof to reach for the control to slow us down a bit and for that brief moment took my eyes off my bearings. As soon as I ducked under the roof, a giant wave struck the boat portside, knocking the bow to the right and changing our direction. I searched the horizon as best I could for the right direction and confidently headed off again.

I eventually found the narrow channel that I had to navigate and headed straight for it. As I entered the channel, it funnelled narrower and narrower, and didn’t at all look like the wide channel I should be in. As I gingerly turned the boat around, hoping that I was not going to run aground or hit submerged logs or rocks, I noticed that my gas gauge was reading dangerously low…and I didn’t know where I was.

Scanning the horizon, I did see a light in the distance, and so I headed for it, figuring that someone there could identify my location. As I approached the light, I recognized that it was the marina and knew then exactly where I was…and where I had been. Good thing I turned around, I thought. We would have bottomed out had we gone much further. The wrong course, though, did burn some precious fuel and the marina was closed. Despite the precarious fuel situation, I still figured that we had enough gas barring any further mishap.

Knowing our location, I once again took my bearings and headed out into the black again, making sure that I didn’t duck down again to lose sight of where I wanted to go. Much to my relief, we finally did get to the cottage, and even to this moment, I am the only one to know of our limited gas supply that night. I saved the stress of this problem all to myself, but Lord knows what would have happened had we run out of gas.

On our arrival at the cottage, my wife, sensing the difficult situation we had been in, suggested we needed that GPS.

“But they are a lot of money,” I replied, silently thinking, “All’s well that ends well,” but strongly censuring myself for our gas shortage while making a mental note to ensure it never happened again.

And, oh yes, I did buy that GPS!

The Saga of the Flippin' Flue ©

www.storytellerbill.comBy Bill Longworth
April 29, 2009


Over 10 ½ inches of snow had fallen on January 3, 1943, one of the worst snowstorms in Toronto’s history, and most of this was still blocking the roads on that blustery Sunday night of Jan. 17, when a determined 21 year old woman in her nightclothes crawled groggily on hands and knees through the deep snow up the drifted dark laneway beside 1568 Kingston Road in Scarborough.

The frigid night air and the cold deep snow undoubtedly helped to partially clear the fog out her head, but obviously she was in deep distress.

On reaching the front of the lane, she struggled to stand, but fell unconscious against the front door of the house, attracting the attention of those inside.



The door opened, and the startled woman was confronted by the collapsed bare-footed female body in nightclothes with her face mostly buried in the deep snow. Turning her over, she recognized the unconscious woman as her neighbor Dorothy, who lived in the rented quarters down the lane at the rear of the house.

“Dorothy! Dorothy!” she screamed. “What’s the matter?” Over and over, the woman called, “Dorothy! Dorothy! Dorothy! Wake up!”

Dorothy seemed completely oblivious to her surroundings and only groaned inaudible utterances in response. The woman pulled Dorothy inside and began shaking and slapping her to try to restore her consciousness.

After what seemed an eternity, she heard Dorothy mumble, “It’s my children. My three children. They’re all inside the house.”

Not fully comprehending the problem, but sensing the seriousness of it anyway, the women’s husband rushed down the lane and forced his way into the smoke-filled rooms. He felt his way around and found the children sleeping soundly, indeed too soundly, completely unaware of the emergency around them. He quickly carried each of them outside, laying them gently on the snowy mattress of the lane. Once he had accounted for all three, he carried them, two-year-old twin boys and a one-year-old baby girl, to the warm comfort of his quarters, where his wife had already alerted the police and fire department.

It wasn’t long before the emergency help arrived and oxygen resuscitators revived Dorothy and her children. Meanwhile, firemen went back to clear the smoke out of Dorothy’s house and investigate the cause of the problem, which was quickly found. The chimney flue of the kitchen cook stove was tightly closed, imprisoning all of the smoke and deadly gases inside the house.

The firemen scolded Dorothy for closing the flue. “Lady”, they exclaimed, “don’t you know that the flue has to be opened to let the coal gas escape? Your flue was tightly closed, trapping all of the deadly coal gas inside. Why was the flue closed? Were you trying to kill yourself and murder your babies?”

“I didn’t close the flue,” Dorothy countered sharply. “We’ve lived here for almost two years now and we’ve never had this problem before. Tonight, my husband was going out and he closed the flue just before he left. He said it was bitterly cold outside and that closing the flue would keep the heat in the house.”

Surely the husband knew better. The mystery of the saga is why the husband closed the flue before he left and what was he doing on that Sunday night? He did have a reputation as a “ladies man.” Was it possible that he was out gallivanting that night? Was it possible that his wife and three children were becoming a burden on his social life and he wanted to “clear the track” for another woman he was seeing that night? Who knows?

Fortunate in all of this, is that while the marriage didn’t survive, the victims of the closed flue did, and as of last count, sixteen living and breathing human beings, direct descendents of Dorothy, all owe their worldly existence to her spunky vigilance that night.

You might wonder how I know all this. Dorothy was my mother and I was one of her three babies trapped inside that gas-filled house.

Our survival, at least from my point of view, is surely a gratifying conclusion. Maybe it is to you too, dear reader. With any other outcome, it is clear, I would not have written this story…and you would never have known anything about, “The Saga of the Flippin’ Flue.”

But what is truly amazing to contemplate, everyone who exists in the world today, owes their very existence to an infinite set of equally fortuitous untold circumstances going back to the very beginnings of time.



PICTURES

1568 Kingston Road...We lived down the lane at the back of this house. The "rescuers" lived in the apartment behind the 2nd floor bow window.




The narrow lane has now been "closed off" and "roofed" and is part of the storage between the house and the former garage to the east. Both buildings and the lane between now house one business. Tow trucks used to go through this lane and one flattened my brand new tricycle parked in the lane. I never got another one since my maternal grandparents who bought the first said I should have known better than to leave it there!







Links

News story in Toronto Star, Jan 18, 1943, Pg. 8




Richard Dawkins, quote from TV appearance on CBC, "The Hour", Sept. 29/09, discussing evolution said, "The odds of me being here are infitesimally small" referring to the infinite accidents of nature going back to the beginning of time that caused his unique being to exist...a prior observation made independently as the "basic truth" in this story.

Déjà vu ©

Bill Longworth, March 11, 2009


In disembarking the plane in London Heathrow, the customs officer on checking my passport asked who I was. “Longworth”, I said, “Bill Longworth”. With that and my passport in order, I entered the country.

With my worldly, sauve, debonair, adventuresome, intelligent, quick-witted, and smooth persona, I had charmed and impressed the beautiful woman interviewer and landed a job in Cairo. As you can tell, modesty would probably not be listed among my strong suits.

On heading to the new job, I decided to do a little sightseeing on the stopovers enroute.



As I didn’t have much time in London, I went immediately to a landmark I’d heard about, Kensington Market. While there, I saw the unusual Trellick Tower and went inside. As I entered, I had the strange sensation of being familiar with the building and of having been in it before. It was a building designed by well-known architect Emo Goldfinger and gained its fame because some thought it avant-garde in design, while others considered it beastly. Some brought ridicule to the building and to its architect by calling those they despised, “Goldfinger!”

While in London, I was invited to dinner in London’s exclusive Reform Club. I once again had the strange sensation of being very familiar with the place and of being there before. As before, I found it a little stuffy eating among the prim and proper members of British nobility and felt I’d rather die another day and probably another way. I did put on my rich and cultured face though as I asked the butler for a martini, shaken not stirred. I’d feel a lot more comfortable, I thought, swashbuckling through the place with a sword in my hand, similar to the guys who’d been filming here the day before.

This strange pattern of familiarity continued to play its hand as I landed in Athens and started touring some Greek sites. While touring, I did feel a strange familiarity with Greece’s Great Meteora Monastery located on top of a rock pinnacle 300 meters above the Thessalian Plain in Central Greece. “I’ve been here before”, I said to myself, not daring to suggest this to my wife who would have thought I’d gone crazy. I had to restrain myself from swinging hand-over-hand 150 meters or so on the rope suspended high over the plain to the neighbouring Monastery of All Saints St Varlaam as I was sure I’d done in the past. Wanting to keep my foolish desires private, though, I did tease her by suggesting that I had something for her eyes only.

Following my Greek stopover, I boarded the plane for Cairo. It wasn’t long before I ventured into Cairo’s Gayer-Anderson Museum, a preserved traditional Egyptian house from the 15th century. Strange how I felt that I had also been here before. Romantic visions filled my head with the knowledge that my lover would have crouched silently in the secret overhead balcony observing everything that happened as I congregated with the men below. The Spy that loved me, I thought, as I envisioned her there.

As I left the museum and headed for the pyramids just outside Cairo and then Luxor’s Karnak Temple in the South of Egypt, I had visions of also being in these places in the past. Strange though, I had no sensation of ever being in King Tut's tomb in the Valley of the Kings before now, nor of sunbathing on Christmas Day on a Nile Cruise boat just north of the Sudan Border until now.

I couldn’t understand why all these places were so familiar to me. Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower and the Reform Club in London, the Great Meteora in Greece, and the Gayer-Anderson Museum and the Pyramids in Cairo. Was it possible that I was the re-incarnation of someone who went before. Certainly, my science background taught me that energy could neither be created nor destroyed, and I was certainly a bundle of human energy. It struck me that I may have perhaps been revisiting places from a past life.

I started to analyze my Déjà vu experiences with scientific analysis worthy of a James Bond character.

I started to think of my personal characteristics….sauve, debonair, adventuresome, handsome, fastidious, calm, in control, quick witted, and the interests and pleasures that I loved…women, adventure, the world of espionage…a James Bond character if there ever was one.

As I thought of the places I’d been and the clues that had sprung to mind in each of the places, the whole thing started to become clear to me.

Camp X, key allied spy school was located in Oshawa, and Ian Fleming had been posted here to learn the craft. His experiences at Camp X and around Oshawa had laid the foundation for the James Bond Character in his writing. I lived in Oshawa for many years and shared many of the talents, interests, and characteristic Bond had.

“Eureka”, I exclaimed. “ I have been to all of these places before as they were all film locations for the James Bond movies. I am James Bond reincarnated. Ian Fleming fashioned his character after an earlier Oshawa version of me.

Links

Trellick Tower
Emu Goldfinger
Reform Club
Martini shaken not stirred
Great Meteora Monastery Ref.#1
Great Meteora Ref.#2
Gayer-Anderson Museum
Luxor
Reincarnation
Déjà vu
James Bond
Camp X
Ian Fleming
The Spy That Loved Me
Goldfinger Novel
Die Another Day
For Your Eyes Only

“Won’t you come in?” ...said the Spider to the Fly ©

Illustration©, Story© and Video© By
Bill Longworth
September 31, 2008


It all started innocently enough on that blustery January night.

As an introductory get-together, I arranged to catch a little music and a drink at a pub with a person I’d met casually a few days before. I thought that we might enjoy some light conversation between the music sets and get to know a little about each other.



With the fierce snowstorm and the dangerous driving conditions, I began to question the wisdom of driving anywhere that night and as she lived nearby and figuring I could walk home if the weather further deteriorated, I phoned and suggested that I’d bring over a movie to watch to save us the trek outdoors. She readily agreed…perhaps in retrospect, too readily!

I put her acceptance of our change in plans down to a good natured flexibility. How wrong could I be? She was way ahead of me on this one!

Drinks were dispensed shortly after my arrival at her apartment. The atmosphere was welcoming and relaxing. Aromatic candles were glistening everywhere. The lights were low. Soft romantic music was playing. Easy casual conversation helped us to get a cursory knowledge of each other.

Presently, she brought up the subject of watching the movie I had brought and explained that her television and DVD player were in the other room where we could watch the movie.

At that, she bounced gleefully into the TV room as I soldiered dutifully behind. As I entered, I noted that the TV room was also the bedroom….and there was no place to sit.

“Just make yourself comfortable on the bed,” she whispered suggestively. This should have immediately set off piercing alarm bells screaming in my head. This is strike two, I admonished myself. The first strike might have been coming here in the first place. I’d better brace myself for strike three!

Seeing no escape alternative, if at this point the devil within me really wanted one, I arranged the pillows as a back rest so I could sit comfortably to watch the movie. Once they were suitably arranged, I settled myself down ready to enjoy the video.

While I was arranging myself on the bed, she fed the DVD into the player. Despite numerous “apparent” attempts at getting the movie to play, she exclaimed, “I can’t get the damn thing to play!”

You could almost see the scheming wheels accelerating in her head. “I know I do have something that will play,” she announced, and as if by magic she produced another disk. The machine engorged this one which immediately started to play. It was a fireplace video along with its quiet audio of crackling logs combined with romantic music which, as you can imagine, immediately heated up the surroundings.

“Aren’t you warm?” she chirped teasingly as she started to remove her sweater. “I don’t want my clothing to get wrinkled. I have to wear it to work tomorrow!” This concern seemed to give her excuse to disrobe more as she slipped under the blankets and started nestling closer to me, obviously to keep warm.

“Won’t you come under the covers?” she tempted.

I should have seen all this coming. I could sense strike three rapidly approaching.



In the jungle, hungry carnivores know the habits of those they’re stalking and use this knowledge to skillfully move in for the kill. Was I the victim tonight?

Now, I’ve got to pinch myself to wake up and try to figure out whether this whole tale is fact or fiction—whether it has a figment of truth or is completely a figment of my dreamy imagination. You decide—because it shall remain a secret with me!

Whether fact or fiction, however, the time-worn moral of the tale is true. Be wary of hungry cougars prowling in life’s jungles as it’s near impossible to outfox a scheming and cunning cougar which has you lined up in its sites.

An Invitation Home ©

I was attending a student social shortly after starting my first teaching job in China and was amazed at how all of the university-aged students seemed to gravitate easily to the instructors, myself included.



All of the foreign staff was kept very busy by the students accepting their invitations to chat and to dance.

This seemed like “over-the-top” attention that none of us were use to. Nevertheless, it seemed marvelous to seem to be the center of the universe.

The students seemed naively innocent and were quite forward in asking questions like, “How old are you?” “How much money do you make?” “Can I visit you in your apartment?” and so on.

One of the students, Gloria, whom I’d never met, approached and asked right up, “Would you like to come to my house in Beijing and stay with my family?”

“Great”, I said, figuring it would be wonderful to meet some people and have a place to stay when I visited Beijing.

It was arranged that we should catch the train for the four hour ride north on the upcoming Saturday, about two days hence.

Gloria seemed very excited about this arrangement, a joy that was probably unmatched by mine.

Early Saturday morning, she knocked on my door and we left to catch the early morning train. Communication was a little difficult because of her limited English, my complete lack of Chinese, and her imperfect placement of em-pha’-sis on the correct syllables in addition to her heavily accented Chinglish.

These barriers did not stop our attempts at communication which seemed to improve steadily on the adventure.

When we reached Beijing, we caught a bus and ended up in her very traditional Chinese neighborhood. We walked along roadways that seemed to narrow with every subsequent turn in the maze of brick walled roads that we followed.

She finally exclaimed, “We are here,” as she opened a large wooden door in the brick wall lining the road which by this time had become not much more than a mud floored wagon path.

Inside the door, she led me further as we meandered along and around a whole series of what seemed like little brick sheds until we got to her parent’s “house.” We pushed aside a beaded door-curtain and entered her one room brick living space filled with two bunk beds, a sewing machine between the beds, a table holding a black and white shimmering TV with rabbit ears, and a light bulb hanging overhead from an electric wire…and no washroom.

Gloria lived in a traditional Beijing hutong …and wasn’t it nice to finally arrive at her home?

Reference
hutongs
siheyuan
hutong tour
hutongs in China Daily
Pictures of Life in China
Beijing's hutongs
Description of hutongs from book, "Behind the wall"
China Daily history of hutongs

Finegan's Wake ©

Bill Longworth,
March 6, 2008

“Hi Melanie,” I said, a little surprised to see my daughter at the door. “Thanks for dropping in. It’s great that you brought over Finegan. I haven’t seen him for a while and he’s getting enormous…growing like a weed. Excuse my mess with the paint and all everywhere. I’m so excited. I’ve just been finishing up a landscape to submit to my first juried art show. It’s tough trying to choose the three to enter. Glad you’re here to help me choose.

“Well Dad,” Melanie responded, “We can’t stay long. Finegan gets a little rambunctious as you know.”



“We’ll let everything drop for a moment then,” I said, “We’ll just push the paint and sandwiches aside and spread the landscapes out on the table and put on the kettle. Surely you have time for a coffee. Maybe you can help me make my choices while the water boils.”

“Yeah! Sounds great Dad…but we really don’t have much time.”

“This one, I’ve just been painting is one of my best, I think, and I’m sure I want to enter it after a few more touch ups. I’ve got all of those paint jars open just trying to visualize the colours I want. So what do you think about the others?”



“That one with the canoes,” Melanie exclaimed, “Don’t think I’d consider that. I don’t like the colours. Besides, I like people in paintings. I think people give you someone to relate to. You’re always wondering what’s going through their mind and it has a way of drawing you into the picture.”

“Oh, too bad! I’ve always loved that picture. It doesn’t have people, but the empty canoes certainly draw me right into the picture. The area looks remote and the empty canoes indicate there must be people nearby. It’s like I’m invited right into their camp to enjoy the spot with them. I guess when it comes right down to it, I’m going to have to decide for myself. Let’s go to the other room and have the coffee.”

“Yeah Dad,” Melanie said as we moved to the kitchen, “But it will have to be quick.“

While chatting, we heard a large crash in the back room. Rushing in, we were shocked at the sight.

Finegan, Melanie’s huge dog, had jumped up on the table to grab the lunchtime sandwich I’d left. In his excitement to grab the sandwich, he had dumped most of the paint bottles, run through the paint, and over all the paintings. They were completely ruined. I was aghast. I had nothing left for the show.

My beautiful landscapes had huge random blobs of paint, the colours of which had been mixed by the stirring of the dog’s paws. It looked as if Mr. Rorschach partnered with me by highlighting my work with his colourful paint blobs. What was I going to do?

The interesting and randomly shaped blobs did seem to provide a distinctive air to the pieces and the colours I’d left open on the table provided an interesting contrast to the original colours in my paintings. I didn’t think I'd ever seen paintings like this so as a last resort, I chose three of the best of the “new” pieces and took them over to the show.

The pieces attracted a lot of attention as I was seen as a very creative visionary doing something that no one had ever seen.

The result?

“Congratulations Bill,” said the adjudicator, “Your paintings are the best in the show. You seem to have developed a new painting frontier, a blend of landscape realism with abstract surrealism something we’ve never seen. It’s like opening up a new school of art, like Picasso’s Cubism or French Impressionism. Many around the world will now be trying to emulate your work. Congratulations!”

His remarks presented me with a moral dilemma. Should I fess up to the story behind the paintings?

“No,” I rationalized to myself. “The beauty of a painting often results from happy and unforeseen accidents rather than detailed planning, and the act of being creative is seeing the value of what you, and circumstances, have done.”