Harley Boots

            I took advantage of the fact that I had a good wifi connection and didn’t go to bed at midnight. Stupidly I got carried away and stayed up early Saturday until almost 3:00, which is not a healthy bedtime for someone who gets up at 5:00.

            During song practice I looked out my window and finally saw why the old man in the dented grey car keeps driving slowly back and forth along Queen every morning. He pulled up ahead of a young woman in white jeans and a short black jacket who was walking east. He gestured to her as she passed and she turned her head towards him briefly but kept on walking. He made his usual u-turn and headed west. A few minutes later she came out of the alley behind the Dollarama and crossed the parking lot to Queen. I assume then that she’s a hooker and if she trades in Parkdale on a regular basis chances are the old John knows her and she him. On a Saturday or Sunday he’ll sometimes drive up and down Queen fifty times but this time he didn’t come back. I guess they both got the trades they’d been looking for. Just not from each other.

            I finished working out the chords to “Nazi Rock” by Serge Gainsbourg and started posting the song on Christian’s Translations.

            I thoroughly washed the top of my kitchen table for the first time in a long time. I threw out three pairs of beyond repair boots that I’d been holding onto for decades. Two pairs were Harley Davidson boots that were quite stylish but fell apart fairly quickly. Another was my daughter’s old pair of Kodiaks but I kept the laces. I had a clean feeling getting rid of things that took up so much space on my kitchen hallway shelf. Now everything is put away there, it doesn’t look cluttered at all and there’s still lots of room.

            I paid for my February phone plan and then rode down to No Frills. I bought five bags of black grapes, a pint of strawberries, a half pint of raspberries, mouthwash, Arm and Hammer toothpaste and three bags of skim milk.

            I had Breton crackers and cheddar and also a sliver of strawberry raspberry pie with vanilla yogourt for lunch.

            In the afternoon whole doing my exercises I listened to an episode of Amos and Andy from early 1950. In this story Andy finds an old record player and some records. Some of the albums are recordings of Eloise Walker, the “Nightingale of the South”. Andy falls in love with her voice and pictures and does nothing but lie in bed listening and periodically getting up to kiss the record player. Kingfish decides to cash in on Andy’s obsession by pretending to start a lonely heart’s club. He tells Andy that celebrities are very lonely because they can’t depend on each other. He lists several of his customers and lets drop the name Eloise Walker. Andy agrees to pay $5 for every letter he gives Kingfish to send to Eloise, but it’s really Kingfish that is responding to them. But then Andy learns that Eloise Walker is coming to perform in New York and he plans to go and meet her in real life. This would put a spanner in the works of Kingfish’s scam and so Kingfish hires somebody to pose as Eloise Walker. The other person is not attractive and can’t sing but Kingfish explains that Eloise has lost her looks. Andy is discouraged until Amos tells him that he and his wife saw Walker perform the night before and she’s as beautiful as ever. Andy goes to see her and she receives him because she thinks he’s the new piano player she’s hiring. When she finds out otherwise she kicks him out. Andy goes to get his money back from Kingfish but Kingfish refuses to pay. Suddenly a big man comes in who says he’s Eloise Walker’s husband and that Eloise was so upset by this scam that she had to cancel two shows and lost $175. He tells Kingfish to pay up or he’ll take it out in blood. All Kingfish has is the $75 Andy paid plus $25 of his own and he gives that to the husband. After he leaves Kingfish tells Andy that he still got gypped but Andy tells him that it’s the other way around. That wasn’t Eloise Walker’s husband but a friend of Andy’s.

            As far as I can tell there was no “Nightingale of the South” and no singer named Eloise Walker. I guess that’s why the character didn’t actually sing in the episode.

            I finished reading volume 1 of the six-volume document on the Indian Day Schools class action lawsuit. I had already read volume 2 and I downloaded volume 3. Volume 2 doesn’t have much new historical information but there are a couple of testimonies that aren’t in volume 2.

            I scanned the first 67 pages of volume 3. The thing that stands out so far is the oddness of one of the complaints by former students in a school in northern Saskatchewan. The complaint is that Canada did not take into account that the Cree and the Inuit do not get along before putting students of the two cultures together in one school. I can understand that it was Canada’s responsibility to prevent conflicts between cultures but if putting distinct cultures together is a wrong thing then it serves the inane arguments of white nationalists who believe that all distinct cultures should be segregated from one another.

            At another school the teacher was a serial sexual molester of children.

            I had two strips of bacon, an egg and a loaf of warmed up naan for dinner while watching Zorro. In this story the guest start was Annette Funicello, which is not a surprise, given that this was a Disney show.

            Annette plays Anita Cabrillo, who arrives in Los Angeles from Spain looking for a father she hasn’t seen in twelve years but who has written to her regularly and sent her gifts. The problem is that no one in Los Angeles has ever heard of anyone named Cabrillo living there. She is very upset to learn this. Don Diego invites her to stay with him and his father until the situation is resolved. That night as she is getting ready for bed we see the shadow of a cloaked figure with a wide brimmed hat lurking outside of her window. She turns and sees hands reaching through the window towards her and she screams. Don Alejandro thinks she is making it all up but Diego believes her. The next night Zorro watches over her and sees her sneak from her bedroom to ride out into the mountains. A note had come through her window telling her to come to this location for word of her father. The cloaked figure with his face covered calls out to her that it is better to live in Spain than to die in California and so she should forget about her father. Zorro comes forward but she does not know him and is frightened. She runs to her horse. Zorro climbs after the cloaked figure but Anita’s horse is spooked by a rattlesnake and charges off out of control. Zorro must forget about the cloaked figure and ride to rescue Anita.