Taking the time to enjoy living
My late uncle, Dale MacDonald of Bridgeville, N.S., believed in taking his time. A dairy farmer back in the day, he would milk upwards of 80 cattle. Then he would load the full cans onto his truck and haul them into the dairy in nearby New Glasgow — stopping to pick up milk from other farms. If he hustled, he could be home by noon. He rarely, if ever, made it.
And that was because he would stop to talk to everybody he encountered along the way. That could be a fellow farmer, the farmer’s wife or son, a guy walking along the road — anybody and everybody.
He had a hound dog, Mike. Mike rode in the front seat of the truck with him. If there was a dog out in a field, Dale would stop the truck and open the door so Mike could jump out and run off to play with the other dog. Then he’d sit there for 10 or 15 minutes and watch the two dogs chase each other.
When Mike got tired, he’d trot back to the truck, jump in and sit there as if to say, “I’m ready to go any time you are.”
The stops for ice-cream cones were particularly memorable. If you have never seen a hound dog, sitting up in the front seat of a truck, devour a big scoop of vanilla offered to him, plus the cone, in two bites, tops, then you have missed out on something truly special.
So the other day, I was driving in Toronto, around Moore and Bayview Aves., and there was a sign at the corner saying that if I turned north on Bayview that it would take me five minutes (or something like that) to get to Eglinton.
Everywhere you look these days, you see these signs — or signs like them. I can be westbound on Hwy. 401out near Meadowvale Rd. and a sign will tell me how many minutes it will take me to get to the Don Valley Parkway. Or I’m eastbound on the Gardiner and a sign will tell me that it will take eight minutes to reach Yonge St. and, if I use Lake Shore Blvd., it will take me 10.
I’m sure these signs are meant to be simple information. But maybe they are also inadvertently adding to the stress of daily existence in the big city.
My wife and I were in Naples, Fla., just after Christmas and were walking along 8th St. South not far from Fifth Ave. It was around 11 a.m. and already 85 F and our solitude was suddenly broken by two little boys bombing along the sidewalk on tricycles. They were being followed by a young man — apparently the father — who was talking on the phone. They whizzed across a laneway and Dad screamed THAT WAS A STREET! And then all hell broke loose. A beige van with a woman in it – the mother, apparently — pulled up at the next corner. Dad ran up to it in a fury and tried to open the sliding door. He couldn’t, because it was locked. Somehow he got it unlocked and then just about ripped it off, such was his rage.
He grabbed one child and threw the trike into the van. The kid scrambled to get in. The door closed on its own. Dad went to get the other boy and the woman driving the van pulled away. STOP THE CAR, the man shouted, which she did.
I was about to dial 911 when a tour bus happened along and diffused the situation. Using a loudspeaker, the driver/tour guide told the father he would wait while he helped the other child to cross the road. All other traffic stopped. Everybody took a deep breath. I said a prayer for those children.
There is no excuse for what that man did. But it’s 2016. Maybe the pressure of trying to generate the income needed to maintain a Naples lifestyle, or the pressure of having to be someplace in 10 minutes (and somewhere there was probably a sign telling him he could make it), or whatever, got to be too much.
My uncle Dale has been dead for many years. He would not understand this world.