Welcome to the Club - Volume 1, Issue 1

Welcome to ...
THE Club
Living life to the fullest (until about 9:00 p.m.)
Welcome to ...
Winter 2021
HOGAN
P•H•A•R•M•A•C•Y
Beautiful Gift Shop
• Wedding • Birthday
• Baby • Home Decor
4177 Petrolia Line, Petrolia • (519) 882-1840
Do not attempt to stop the blade with your hand.
…in the manual for a Swedish chain saw
We Are Here to Serve You
6-1000 Finch Drive,
Sarnia, Ontario
N7S 6G5
519-383-6600
marilyn.gladu@parl.gc.ca
www.mpmarilyngladu.ca
Full Service Pharmacy
Full Service Cosmetic Department
Full Service Home Health Care Dept.
Access hole only - not intended for use in lifting box.
…on the sides of a shipping carton, just above
cut-out openings which one would assume
were hand holds
Do not eat.
…on a slip of paper in a stereo box, referring
to the styrofoam packing
Warning: May contain nuts…on a package of peanuts
Do not dangle the mouse by its cable or
throw the mouse at co-workers.
…from a manual for an SGI computer
Warning: Do not climb inside this bag and zip it up.
Doing so will cause injury and death.
…a label inside a protective bag (for fragile objects), which
measures 15cm x 15cm x 12cm.
Mon-Fri 9-6, Sat 9-6, Sun10-5
A shop for both the modern
& classic Quilter!
4247 oil heritage rOad,
petrolia • 519-918-2226
• fabrics • patterns • classes
now an authorized Dealer for:
Open tuesday to Saturday 10 am - 5 pm
Shop on our website too... www.stitcharie.com
It was the
Best of Times
to Grow Up
So, I’m a baby boomer…I was born
on a dark and stormy night in December
1952. In the old days, I’d have been right
at the end of the baby boomers, but now
they’ve sort of extended it and there are
more baby boomers than there used to
be. Of course, the folks who are runnin’
the world these days—mostly young
folks—absolutely can’t leave anything
alone. Like I think they’ve dumped
Daylight Savings Time when I wasn’t
looking…or maybe they dumped the
other one. Anyway, we might not have
to change our clocks anymore…and I
hated changing my clocks, but it was
just something you always did…why
change it?
Of course, from the perspective of
an old guy—a gnarly old codger—most
everything on the planet seems to
be in a bit of a mess these days. Yea,
we’re overpopulated and overpolluted
and over this and over that…but we’re
strugglin’ along, careening from crisis to
crisis in the same way we always have
since the beginning of recorded history.
We’re not good at long range planning…
we just sort of fumble along, sometimes
staggering remarkably close to the edge,
but always, never quite toppling over.
Yea, I was born and raised in the
small town of Hanover and still have
the fondest regards for that community.
Growing up in Hanover back in the
really old days was sort of like growing
up in Mayberry. You know, where Andy
Griffith and Don Knotts were the police
department, every boy in town owned
a BB gun and there was roller skating
in the summer and ice skating in the
winter. We watched John Wayne and
Audie Murphy save the free world at
the Paramount Theatre every Saturday
afternoon. It surely seemed like a
simpler time when things were more
cut and dried.
You know, we spent most of our
time as young people growing up in
Hanover complaining about how bored
we were. Only now, as I watch today’s
young people on their devices, do I
realize what a richness of activity I
grew up in the middle of. We had our
ice and roller skating, there was the
bowling alley, the pool room, the show,
a couple of restaurants to act as after
school hangouts. The churches in town
By John Gardiner,
Wallaceburg
ran “coffee houses” for teens and there
were dances going on all the time. I
played in a band when I was a young
guy—and, actually, still do—and we
were busy all the time because there
were always dances and parties and
stuff.
We grew up in a golden period to
be a young person. My parents never
really got to be teenagers because they
grew up during the Great Depression
and the war; my dad always thought
he was extremely lucky because he
was just too young to actually be in the
war, but was old enough to share in
the prosperity that came after the war.
Our generation not only didn’t have to
endure a depression or a war, but really
also got to share in the prosperity of the
1950’s, 1960’s and early 1970’s, when
the world seemed filled with hope and
anything seemed possible.
These days, the world seems
enormously complicated and difficult
to navigate in. But I’m kinda thinkin’
that just might be me getting to be an
old guy. I suppose it’s only natural to
feel that your generation grew up in
the best of times—had the best music,
movies, TV shows, books and cars and
everything else. I think each generation
sort of feels like that about the times
they grew up and came of age in.
But that won’t stop me thinking
that my generation was the one that
had the absolute best of everything
as we passed along through life. I’ve
had a great run through life and have
somehow ended up with some really
old children and a whole passle of notso-old
grandchildren…not really sure
how it happened, but extremely glad it
did. It is, however, exceptionally strange
to be the same age as old people.
Anyway, be well and stay safe out
there, or as the guy on Hill Street Blues
used to say, “Be careful out there,
because life can throw some really
challenging curves at you.”
I sometimes say, “Be good, and if you
can’t be good, then be careful.”
Publisher’s note: I was born in ‘65 John
and always thought I was at the end of the
boom! I hear permanent Daylight Time
isn’t a sure thing yet, but Ontario has
greenlighted it if Quebec and New York
State agree to do the same.
P A G E
24
If you want praise, die. If you want blame, marry. (Irish Proverb)