McGregor Says Hold On to Your Small Town Values: McGregor Says, #3

By Jim McGregor

I live two miles from the hospital where I was born. I am one child of a family of six raised by a milkman and a stay-at-home mother. My schools were close enough to walk to and my paper route was long but easy to pedal,and I never missed a customer.I worked on farmer's fields and nailed shakes to carpenter's new homes. I pumped gasoline when you had to check the oil and clean the windshield. I was part owner of a family tire business with my uncle and progressed from an eager young volunteer firefighter to eventually retire as the Fire Chief of my community.I became a writer for a local newspaper that gave me an opportunity to share some stories and begin a new career and meet many new people.Along the way, I would never have accomplished anything without the help of family, friends, teachers, and mentors, each of them instilling in me the honesty and integrity of their small town values. That is where my stories come from.This collection of stories is for your reading pleasure. Among them, I hope you find a memory or a long forgotten lesson.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crystal Lake Press
• Release date: Oct 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9780973878363

Jim McGregor

Jim McGregor was born and raised in Langley, B.C. and retired as Fire Chief after a thirty-six year career with the Langley City Fire-Rescue Service. His writing has been published in articles, magazines, and competitions. Jim has also co-authored a fiction novel, as well as poetry and children’s books. He currently writes a weekly column for the Langley Times and Okanogan Advertiser newspapers. Hold On to Your Small Town Values is the third book in the McGregor Says Series.

Book preview

This collection of stories is dedicated to my parents, John and Peggy McGregor, who taught their six children that small town values never go out of style.

Foreword

For many years I had the opportunity to talk to the public from the pages of a local newspaper in Langley, British Columbia, usually reporting on emergencies or disasters or bringing a message of awareness or prevention.

My Dad would read these weekly reports, put the paper down and say: It always reads ‘McGregor says,’ when is it going to tell me ‘McGregor does’?

Now I have been given the exciting opportunity to share some time with you each week, usually on a lighter, more upbeat note. I believe that when someone is given a chance to speak or write that they should make the best of it, educate, entertain, enlighten.

This is the third collection of my columns, the first one titled, McGregor Says Special Days Make Lasting Memories, and the second book titled, McGregor Says, The Seasons Go Around and Around. This collection of stories is about holding on to those old tried and true values that have weathered well over the test of time.

Discussions about the good old days tend to lead down some old streets and roads that we haven’t travelled for a while. Each turn in the conversation brings about a memory or reminder of a simpler time, or at least a time that seemed simpler to kids with few worries on our minds. Recently, one of those conversation turns led down Fraser Highway and stopped on a long ago Thursday afternoon at Gibsons’ Auctions barns in downtown Langley Prairie.

In 1938 Joe Gibson opened his auction business at the far west end of town which we know now as the north east corner of 203rd and Fraser Highway in Langley City. Thursday afternoon in Langley was auction day and it was a fine day indeed for the local merchants and often provided some great entertainment as well.

Many of the farmers or market vendors that came to town for the auction took advantage of the trip to buy oil or fuel from the bulk plants, dry goods from the Five to Dollar or stock up on groceries at the Overwaitea store. Anything else they needed they could get from Buckerfields.

I used to look forward to going with Dad to the sale. My grandpa had been an auctioneer and Dad had travelled all over Saskatchewan clerking for him. I’m sure most days Dad just went to listen to the song of the auctioneers and didn’t really go to buy anything. Some days he would buy a butter box full of stuff for fifty cents and see what treasures he got when we got home. If he only knew what people are paying just for the old butter boxes now?

I loved the old farm trucks with the cattle stakes or the pick-ups full of milk cans and hay bales. It wasn’t uncommon to see a farmer pull up in the family sedan, open the back door and unload a goat, a pig or a calf. It was also commonplace to see a farmer in rubber boots and suspenders chasing a pig or a calf down Fraser Highway, rope in hand and yelling at the top of his voice. The steer running through town on the city’s 50th birthday was an amazing coincidence.

Kids could climb into pens and pet the animals and there were no hand washing stations anywhere. There were no signs about swine flu, bird flu or mad cow disease. We came home smelling like a farm with dirty hands and fingernails and nobody got sick. Today, a turkey sneezes and they shut down the industry. I can’t help but think maybe the new regulations are developed by the same scientists that told us last year that the sock-eye were gone.

The food was great. You could order a hamburger and watch the lady make the patties right in front of you and slap them on the grill where the onions were already sizzling. I don’t recall seeing any Provincial Food Safe Certificates there and I never heard of any botulism or E-coli outbreaks.

There was common trust among people that they were buying quality goods and healthy animals and that the food being prepared for the public was no different than they would prepare for their own families.

An afternoon at the auction was an important day for the farmer, an event for the city kids, and a reminder to all where our roots were.

Sharing small town memories with a friend recently, he was telling me about his first visit to Langley many years ago. He was looking to move somewhere in the lower mainland. When he was asked exactly what he was looking for he thought for a minute and replied, I want some place with trees.

Go to Langley he was told so he took a drive out and liked what he saw. I went to a store and picked up the local paper to get an idea of prices and what was available. The front-page picture and story was about a woman who had achieved a perfect crib hand. I read that and decided that if a perfect crib hand was front page news in this town, that’s where I wanted to live. He raised his family here, schooled them here and volunteers here still.

I’m sure if I gave all of you a few minutes right now, you would recall your hometown and the reasons you settled there and the charm that kept you there. My parents often shared memories about late night sleigh rides home from school when the bells on the horses accented the snap of the Northern lights overhead. Simple memories of small towns stay with us.

I wonder which of today’s headlines will attract new folks. Certainly the trees are disappearing so not many new people will come here looking for that. Will it be a story about the new transit bus connections that will whisk them from their cubicle homes to their cubicle offices? Will it be a story about new developments being built and the investment opportunities they might bring? Once the trees disappear, that simple charm isn’t far behind. Gather your small town memories and hold them close to your heart.

As for my column, I try to sit down and tell you a story. I have had many great storytellers to show me how to do it. My Uncle Red, a storyteller for sure, in a kilt on the stage with a twinkle in his eye and a pipe in the corner of his mouth, keeping the crowd on their toes. My Uncle Duncan, an entertainer who could take so long to tell a joke, with so much energy, people were laughing long before the punch line whether it was funny or not. There was my Dad, his stories few and far between but they always included a lesson or a moral.

I learned to be a good story listener. Many early mornings on mist covered Caribou lakes, waiting for the sun to rise and the lines to tighten, Uncle Bob would tell his prairie or farming stories in a soft voice so he wouldn’t scare the fish. You had to listen close.

Sharing stories is an art itself. I learned to wait my turn at the Midnight Club where tales began late on a Thursday night and your turn came maybe early on Friday morning. Then there were endless hours we spent in the command van waiting for the storms to pass or the drug labs to be cleared.

The poetry gene is from my mother and as for the bad jokes and puns, they are an addiction over which I have no control and for which I have not yet found a treatment program.

You all have storytellers in your lives, in your past or present. They are the people you enjoy having over, the ones you like to have coffee or lunch with. Maybe you are their storyteller, the person they like to share their time with. We all have interesting stories that happen to us each day but computers and telephones have replaced diaries and journals and we seem to write less.

If you were to sit down and make a note of everything that happened to you today, from the time you got up until the end of the day, you will have a story, and there will be someone who would love you to share it with them. Give it a try.

I’ll see if I can come up with a few stories for you, storytelling is fun when you have great listeners. At least, that’s what McGregor says.

LESSONS FROM THE KITCHEN TABLE

Mom’s Wooden Spoon

It stirred the meat and carrots

To make a tasty dinner stew,

It could stand up straight in porridge

Or mix jams and puddings too;

But that wear tear and splinters

Didn’t come from mixing plums,

It got its shine from all the times

It polished bad boys’ bums!

Meat, Potatoes, and Simple Grace

My years in the fire service taught me that one of the most important pieces of an emergency or catastrophe was the debriefing after the incident. This was a time to discuss what went right, what went wrong, what could have been done better and, most important, a chance to assess the physical and mental state of everyone involved.

Growing up in a family of six children, dinnertime was our daily debriefing session. This valuable time of connecting and discussing the day’s events is sadly disappearing from society.

Starting with a simple Grace, we were reminded to give thanks for our meal and our health and it also brought an aspect of peace to the dinner table.

Dinner was meat, potatoes, vegetables and some dessert, usually canned fruit or cake or pie from the oven. Over dinner we discussed school, teachers, friends, sports teams and chores.

We talked about why someone didn’t make the team or if someone needed new soccer boots it was a good time to ask Dad with Mom there as a buffer. It was a good time to get up the courage to ask if you could use the family car Friday night or discuss a problem you were having with another kid at school.

By the time dinner was over, we all knew where we stood, where the family was headed for the next few days and maybe we had received bit of praise or encouragement. We always knew that we would have the opportunity to be heard, even if we always didn’t get the answer we wanted.

Washing and drying dishes, sweeping the floor and carrying in wood from the wood pile were all part of the dinner time routine and we all had our designated roles to play and we knew that we would not be allowed to do anything else until our daily duties were done.

The stories in this section could easily have come from discussions around our dinner table. Sit up straight, don’t chew with your mouth open, wait for your turn to speak, and enjoy the memories.

Food for Thought

The other night my teenage son called out from the kitchen. Dad, there’s nothing to eat in the fridge. I jumped up and ran to the kitchen ready to dial 9-1-1, surely we had been broken into! I stopped beside him and looked in.

There was a Tupperware container of spaghetti, three pieces of fried chicken, a two-liter container of milk, a one-liter container of Five Alive, three pudding cups, butter, cheese, eggs and a bowl half full of peaches. In one drawer was some Black Forest ham slices and wieners, in another a bag of apples and some lettuce and carrots. In the freezer were three packages of ground beef, turkey meat, BBQ wings, and two small pizzas. On the counter, bread, bagels, and hot dog buns.

I turned to him and said, Son, there appears to be a considerable amount of sustenance in the refrigerator. Or words to that effect.

But Dad, he replied, I’m talking about FOOD! Brownies, beef jerky, chips, we haven’t had chips in the house since Christmas!

Now I could start with, When I was your age... but here is my problem. I have a fifteen-year-old dog that doesn’t hear and a fifteen-year-old boy that doesn’t listen. If I say to the dog, Stay in the yard, don’t go through the fence onto the road, she actually hears, Go through the fence onto road.

If I say to my son, Mike, I am not going to go to McDonalds for you every day, he cocks his head to one side, his ears perk up and he hears, I am going to go to McDonalds for you.

Yes, I could start with, we never had between meal snacks when I was boy, for two reasons—if you had time ask for something, that meant you had nothing to do and Mom or Dad would find something for you to do. Second, dinner was always going to be ‘ready in a minute.’

Depending on the time of year, you would go outside and get an apple off the tree or pull a carrot out of the garden and wash it off in the rain barrel. Yes, the rain barrel, a metal 45-gallon drum under the down spout that collected water from the roof, and I’m still alive, because that water was probably healthier to drink than most Slurpees!

Doctors say sedentary behavior and poor diet management are the leading causes of obesity in our children today. We blame unhealthy school snacks, convenience stores and fast foods. Is it the kids fault though, or are those places fast and convenient for us parents? If we’re late getting them to practice, do coaches ever see parents show up at the park with a bowl of soup, a ham sandwich on whole wheat with carrot sticks and milk? No, because it’s just easier to ‘pick something up on the way’ and the marketing people for the fast food chains are there to help us out.

I can’t write any more today. I have to design a bracket to mount an X-Box on an exercise bike and then go shopping, there’s nothing to eat in our house. At least, that’s what young McGregor says!

Teaching Respect

I was going into my local 7-11 the other day and the young clerk was just inside the door, finishing mopping the floor. I hesitated but he said, No, don’t worry come on in. He had no idea the conflict he had created in my mind.

I was brought up not to walk on a floor that had just been mopped. As I stood there at the door I could hear my Mother’s voice, You boys go find something to do and don’t come in here; I’ve just washed this floor.

If I did go into the store I knew I would leave footprints. Should I take my shoes off? We were always taught to leave our shoes on the porch if the floor had been washed.

It seems we were always getting confusing messages as kids. We were either being told to ‘get in for dinner,’ or ‘get outside and play.’ Or else it was ‘come in for bed,’ or ‘go outside and do your chores.’

But those early lessons taught respect and if fifty years later I am still thinking about it, I was obviously well taught. It was all about respect and when I see a surprised look on a young woman’s face because I’ve held the door open for her, I feel our generations are getting farther apart.

I’m reminded of the story about the lady at church who watches her friend and her husband arriving for Sunday service. I’m always impressed when your husband comes around and opens the car door for you, she remarks. Well don’t be, replies her friend. The inside door handle broke off a year ago and the cheapskate won’t pay the $30.00 parts and labor to get it fixed.

But even that bit of chivalry is lost now. The husband can push a button and unlock the door as they walk across the parking lot and neither he nor his wife has to stop texting.

Respect for uniforms is waning as well. We were taught as kids that if it was fireman, a police officer, a mailman or a Frontiersman, we were to heed their directions, stand in line and wait our turn. You only have to stop at a car accident, walk through an airport or be confronted by a detour to see too many people today just seem to think these people are just in their way. Rude comments, honking horns screeching tires all say something about their upbringing or lack of upbringing.

Waiters and waitresses have a thankless job these days. Recently, I was one of the patrons of a restaurant who listened to a man doing business on his cell phone during lunch, all the time admonishing the waitress for her lack of service. He sent his, cold soup back to the kitchen. I couldn’t help but wonder what ingredients were added before she brought it back. I read advice recently that if you go out with someone for the first time, watch how he or she treats waitresses and dogs; it says a lot.

People that are habitually late for appointments or meetings show that they never had parents that made sure they were dressed and ready so they could get there at least fifteen minutes early. The explanation for all these teachings was simply that it was the right thing to do.

A Weekend with the Grandkids

I had a weekend with no place I had to be. Those don’t come along too often so I thought I would just follow the days and see where they led. On Friday I picked up my grandkids for a sleepover. Their backpacks contained more stuff for one night than Hannibal took to cross the Alps, and, after struggling with two car seats and their endless connections of bondage straps, we were off.

We went to the park to feed the birds and the conversation was light and entertaining. I learned that my grandson had missed five days of school with ‘ammonia.’ Now I’m sure he meant pneumonia but no doubt he gets corrected by teachers and parents on a regular basis and I’m sure if a kid actually showed up at school with ammonia he would be sent home, so I’ll let it go. The story is not affected, and the sun is shining.

We stop on the bridge to look at the ducks. I pull the little one back from the edge and I learn that the ducks with the green heads are males and the ones with the brown heads are females. Apparently that is important so they don’t get mixed up. At the risk of this conversation turning in a direction their parents should address, we move on.

There are lots of dogs of all sizes and I ask about how their dog’s leg is after his fall. I am told that the vegetarian says he is too fat and has to get some exercise. I again resist the urge to correct him because