A Rose By Any Other Name

Many years ago, I strolled into a Manitoba restaurant with some co-workers, for breakfast and requested "Vi-co" from the waitress.  She laughed and balked, "Vodka.  For breakfast.  Yeah, right!"

Vi-Co was a term used exclusively in Saskatchewan in reference to the chocolate milk made by the Dairy Producers Company.  Everyone knew it was chocolate milk, but most still referred to it as Vi-Co.  I was never completely clear on what the name meant, entirely, but speculated that it simply referred to "Vitamins Contained".  Of course, I'm most likely mistaken about this.

In 1995, Dairy Producers was purchased by the Dairyland Corporation and the Vi-Co line was abolished.  Thankfully, the great taste has remained the same and I still drink it by the gallon, to this day.

Almost overnight, the terminology disappeared almost as quickly as the product and I doubt very many people still think about it as I do.  It's always bothered me some, although minuscule, because when Vi-Co disappeared, so did a little of Saskatchewan's identity and uniqueness.  Thankfully, we still have and frequently use the term "bunny-hug" to describe a hooded-sweatshirt.

GLOBS!!

I heard it announced on the radio this morning.  Tent Caterpillars are in season.  They seem to come in waves.  The radio claims every five to six years, but personally, I've never seen them since I was a young kid and back then, they were extremely bad.

Clumps of them were attached to the trees and it was scary to be near them, for no other reason than if they fell on you, they were really f*cking gross.  Like Fear Factor gross.  Of course, as young kids often do, killing them became somewhat of a sport, each child attempting to make a bigger mess by killing them.  Myself and a couple of friends learned a way to really gross out the girls in our class, by stepping on one half of them, forcing their innards to explode out the other end.  It was quite inhumane, by today's standards.., by any day's standards, actually.  However, they are a pest that kill trees by the acre, and apparently they get really really bad every five or six years.

According to the radio personality on the radio this morning, he'd spent the weekend out of town and the Tent Caterpillars were quite bad.  "You haven't seen bad," he explained, "Until you see about a thousand of them crawling up the side of a house."

"You p*ssy!" I thought, recalling how bad I'd seen them when I was a kid.  While a thousand on the side of a house might appear quite bad, that's a drop in a bucket compared to the shit I saw...

It was this time of year, about a month before school let out for the summer.  As I said, the Tent Caterpillars were bad.  We had a couple clumps of trees in our school yard and the caterpillars were merciless, chewing away every leaf within eye shot.  Somehow, many of them had made the long trek from the far end of the school yard to the school, itself, and began the arduous trek up the side of the building, to form it's cocoon, I'm assuming.  It was here where our paths would intertwine and what caterpillars survived being eaten by predators soaring above the playground, we students would terrorize and kill in the most grotesque of manners.  However, the caterpillars would get their revenge on us..., and how!!

Every year kids from the schools were sent home with permission slips to be signed by mom or dad, which would allow us to venture north of the city to learn about Batoche, Fort Carlton and the whole Louis Riel Rebellion bullshit.  It's something that's probably quite interesting, not for a kid barely over the age of ten.  I'd kind of like to take in the experience, now that I'm old enough to appreciate it, but I'm a little hesitant as my opinions on the matter differ greatly from the majority.  Politics, aside, we children climbed aboard a swanky tour bus, similar to a Greyhound and ventured toward Fort Carlton, by way of Duck Lake.

As we grew closer to the site of the North-West rebellion, the number of Tent Caterpillars grew larger by epic proportions.  The radio guy thought a thousand on the broadside of a building was overwhelming, but until witness a lone highway, blackened with caterpillars traversing across, moving in one motion from a sea of obliterated trees to a fresh green forest across the road, so thick that the bus that you're riding in, needs to slow it's speed, as it gently sways from side-to-side, it's wheel wells caked with the carcasses of expired worms, for us morbid children to look out the back window to see two naked grey asphalt trails slowly disappear, the blackness of millions more caterpillars replacing those freshly dead.

If we thought this sight was bad, it was going to get a f*ck of a lot worse.  Fort Carlton, itself, was under siege.  Not since Louis Riel and his menagerie of goons, had the fort experienced such distress.  Literally, GLOBS of slithering slimy worms would collect in every nook and cranny of the fort.  While presenters tried to explain the history of the fort and the Metis-uprising, no student (or teacher, for that matter) could concentrate, everyone's gaze planted on those hoards of worms.  Each ball intertwined with itself wriggling and wiggling reminiscent of the orgies put on by the infamous Roman Emperor, Caligula, only these would make even the most season cocksmith blush.  Every attempt to enter a building turned into a stunt similar to those performed by Indiana Jones.  Run, tuck and roll, practically, to avoid being sprayed by falling balls of furry caterpillars.

It was truly disgusting and while it doesn't give me nightmares, though it really should, I am reminded that no matter how bad shit seems, it can only get worse.  I don't complain about the weather, because no matter how cold it gets, it'll never equate that minus seventy-two degree Celsius storm I was in, in Manitoba.  And no matter how many hundreds or thousands of Tent Caterpillars I come across this summer, it'll never be equal to those I experienced in Fort Carlton and Batoche, when I was a kid.  That being said, I guess I'll be skipping that trip this year, as an adult too.  I'm much more squeamish in adulthood, than I was as a kid.

Fort Carlton, SK, as it is today...

There's No Place Like Home

My dad told me a joke when I was young.  He asked "Why do you think it's so windy in Saskatchewan?"  I thought for a moment and shrugged my shoulders.  "Because Manitoba blows and Alberta sucks!"  He smiled then we both shared a chuckle.  I always thought it to be a play on words, as most residents of whatever city or province, always boasts there home territory to be superior to anywhere else.  It wasn't until I was older and able to visit these other provinces, where I was able to learn that this simple joke was based more in reality than jest.

I've been to Manitoba only a hand full of times.  It was winter every time and it was cold as f*ck.  The folks were friendly, as their license plate caption implies, but god damn it was cold.  It makes sense why the movie "White Out" filmed in Manitoba, doubling it for Antarctica.  Friendliness aside, though, there was entirely too many french folks for my liking too.  I'm not saying that all French folks are bad.  I have a few friends who are of the French persuasion, and their alright.  But in my past I've roomed with a French bloke and he was quite a bastard, hence my dislike for the people.  How does that old saying go?  It only takes one rotten apple to spoil the bunch?

Alberta, on the other hand...  Oy!  Where do I start?  I had the "pleasure" (and I use that term loosely) of living in Edmonton for about six months of my younger life, and I regretted ever f*cking moment of that time. I lived in squalor, making next to no money, then had the misfortune of rooming with some really skeevy thieving motherf*ckers, which made the experience all the more worse.  That was a number of years ago, but fast forward to more recent events and the province hasn't improved much at all.  People are (seemingly) angry all over.  I met a couple of decent and friendly folks, but two "good apples can't save a basket of rotten ones", I'm afraid.

As some may know I went to the wedding of two dear friends in British Columbia, a province I might add was a real pleasure to visit.  Everyone was so freakin' nice there.  If I had to choose any other province to live in, I'd seriously consider this one.  Aside from the excessively high price of gasoline and the "scary-as-f*ck" taxi cab drivers, my experience in this place was exceptional.

My original plan was to fly out to Kelowna, British Columbia, then rent myself a sporty car, like a Camaro or Dodge Challenger, once I'd gotten there.  However, I thought I'd take some time off from work and drive myself out, stopping at a couple of touristy locations along the way.  My first stop was going to be in Drumheller, Alberta, the proclaimed Dinosaur Capital of the World, on account that such a variety of dinosaur bones were discovered in it's Red River beds in the early part of the 20th century.  I got away from my home late on Wednesday, May 22nd and never got into Drumheller until about 5pm, just in time to discover that the tourist attraction in town was closing.  "What the f*ck kind of tourist attraction, closes at 5 o'clock in the afternoon?" I thought rudely to myself.

The next day I was treated poorly at the Tyrell Museum just outside Drumheller.  I was mistreated and verbally assaulted at a Tim Horton's in Calgary.  A woman flipped me the bird in Canmore, because I failed to wait forever for her to waddle her fat 400lb ass across the sidewalk.  (That may have been my fault, but show some f*cking class.)  I never was really shown any kindness in Alberta, except for the lady at the Fossil Gift Shop in Drumheller, who stayed open later for me to buy some stuff for my nephews.  (She got a kick out of my story about the guy at my work who doesn't believe dinosaurs ever existed, but that unicorns did.)  Some gay, or at least I think he was gay, kid at McDonald's who was just too happy to serve me, and a woman working at the Esso in Canmore.  Everyone else, to my recollection, were kind o' douchie.

My stay in Kelowna rocked.  The gas, I saw at one place, was as high as $1.53 per Liter, which blows, but I never filled up there.  Everyone was super-nice.  As I said, I'd live in British Columbia, if I had to live anywhere else in Canada, rather than Saskatchewan.

Sunday was the day I was to head back.  I'd researched online and found a decent hotel to stay in Calgary.  The plan was to drive to Calgary, stay the night, go to the zoo on Monday, then drive to Drumheller to use my free pass, then home.  The TraveLodge in Calgary must've cleaned one room for the internet site, because the outside of the hotel looked shabby and I barely stepped into the lobby as the stink drove me back out to the parking lot.  I checked the weather forecast for Monday, which called for thunder and lightning showers, and I said "F*ck it!", drove to Drumheller and used my free pass to the Royal Tyrell Dinosaur Museum, which I managed to check out in about an hour, and was unimpressed.  I was always lead to believe that dinosaurs were SO FREAKIN' HUGE, but this didn't seem to be the case with the ones on display in this museum.  The dinosaurs skeletons I saw there, weren't much bigger than maybe an elephant or hippo.  The Tyrannosaurus Rex they had on display, looked like a punk-ass bitch.  Big teeth, sure, but a bitch nonetheless.

I was so happy when I was able to get a hold of my mother, instructing her to bring my cat, Monkey, back to my house, as I was heading home at that moment.  Five hours later, I was stepping into my wonderful house and hugging my beautiful little boy, Monkey.  There's no place like home, indeed.