Andy Clyde

            On Friday morning at 4:35 I was shocked awake by a news report from CP24 coming through at maximum volume on my phone. “Kevin Ash, the mayor of Pickering has stepped down!” It barely occurred to me that Pickering had anything more than nuclear reactors and a shoreline, let alone a mayor. I have never accessed CP24 on my phone and so I wonder if I got this feed because I’m on Shankar’s wifi network. Maybe he watches CP24 and uses it for an alarm clock at 4:35. 

            I worked out the chords for the intro to “L’aquoiboniste" (The Whatsthepointist) by Serge Gainsbourg and the first line. 

            I read another couple of chapters of Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. 

            For lunch I had kettle chips with salsa and yogourt. 

            In the afternoon I decided to take a short bike ride rather than doing exercises at home. I felt that I needed to get outside despite the fact that the remnants of the storm of a few days before were still on the road. I bundled up, wore my long wool socks and my snowboots and headed out with no intention of going very far. I just went up to Dundas, across to Dovercourt, down to Queen and home. There was ice on the road and I almost wiped out on Dovercourt while manoeuvring around a pothole only to slip on a patch of ice, but I said “Whoa!" and righted myself without falling. 

            My TA finally posted our paragraph assignment. It’s our choice which passage to use but we have to make a claim that is not obvious and prove it in 200-300 words. I’m glad it is my choice because I wanted to work on the sonnet "When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be” by Keats. 

            I spent the next few hours making notes on the sonnet. In the first four lines the poet talks about the abundant overflowing crop of ideas in his head that he wants to harvest before he dies but he is worried that he won’t have time. The next four lines speak of the mysteries of life beyond his understanding that he hopes to trace an inkling of before he is gone. The next four address sexual love and how fleeting it is. The final couplet concludes that while he is worried about dying and losing these things they are being lost to his worrying while he exists more so than they will be when he is dead. 

            I had boiled squash, a chicken leg and gravy while watching Andy Griffith. 

            This story begins with the mayor and the town council forcing Andy to deliver an eviction notice to old Frank Myers who is several months behind on his back taxes. Frank’s run down house is the first one seen by people driving into Mayberry and the mayor says he is giving the town a bad name. After serving the notice Andy is convinced by Opie to invite Frank to stay with them until he can find a more permanent place. When Frank arrives he brings a little box full of his personal treasures and shows the contents to Andy. Inside is a $100 bond issued to Frank a hundred years ago and worth 8.5% annual interest since then. It is discovered that Mayberry owes Frank $349,119.27. The problem is that Mayberry does not have that kind of money. Andy has the idea that the town could fix up Frank’s house for him and so the counsel, including the mayor, goes to work and turns the place into a model home. But then they discover that the bond was issued when Mayberry was part of the Confederacy and it is concluded that it is worthless. They want to evict Frank all over again but Andy convinces them that now that Frank has such a nice house it represents Mayberry positively to visitors. 

           Someone on IMD pointed out that the legal argument is flawed at the end. The bond was not issued by the Confederate States but by the town of Mayberry and so they are still obliged to pay. Also it can’t be claimed that the bond was bought with Confederate money because the Confederacy only started minting money in 1861. Also the bond could have been bought with gold or some other legitimate currency and so Mayberry would still owe him the interest. 

           Frank was played by Scotland born Andy Clyde, who played California Carson, the sidekick of Hopalong Cassidy in 36 films. He also had a series of popular comedies in which he usually played a woman-chasing old man.