Charles Lane

            On Tuesday morning I was in that in between state that I’m usually in after finishing a school term. I was relieved that it was all over but also a little depressed and worried about my grades. 

            I finished posting my translation of “Tic tac toe” by Serge Gainsbourg. I transcribed the lyrics for his song “Yes Man" and translated the first verse. 

            Around noon I changed the G string on my Washburn guitar and then called Harold at the Remenyi House of Music to tell him I was bringing the instrument in to have it sent back to the company to look at the problem of the B string always going out of tune. I’ve had two brand new B string machines put on the guitar since I bought it last June and both of them, plus the original, all failed. The problem must be with the guitar and not three machines in a row. 

            I packed up the guitar and rode downtown. I’d thought that the guitar would be sent back to the Washburn company in California but it turns out that it's going to the Canadian distributor. I think he said it’s Jam Industries in Quebec. When I look it up it seems that Jam Industries is a Canadian company that actually owns US Music Corporation, which owns Washburn Guitars. So Washburn is corporately Canadian now even though it's a US operated subsidiary. Harold said that because of the pandemic there are only a couple of guys actually fixing guitars at the company right now and so it’s probably going to take at least a month. My warranty runs out on June 1 and so if they don't fix the guitar by then I'll probably be stuck with a dud until I buy another new one. 

            From Remenyi I headed for Yonge Street for the first time in a few months, but at Avenue Road I noticed that my back tire was getting too close to one side. I stopped, took out my wrench and made the mistake of loosening the bolts on both sides of the wheel and so my derailleur slipped off. At first I thought I was in for a major hassle that would require turning the bike upside down and reinstalling the derailleur, but I managed to slip it back into place in seconds and tightened that side. Then I pushed the wheel as far as I could toward that side and then tightened the other. The wheel stayed right in the centre and everything was fine. 

            I rode to Yonge, then down to Queen and home. On Queen West I passed a place called Mofer and underneath it said “The birthplace of coffee”. That's quite a claim, since the place is new. Maybe I'll bottle some tap water and use the slogan, "The birthplace of water." I guess the idea is that they use Ethiopian coffee and Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee. “Mofer" is apparently the name of the plough that was used before planting. The slogan still doesn't make grammatical sense in reference to the company. It’s like me calling my dick the birthplace of humanity. 

            I had a late lunch of kettle chips with salsa and sour cream. 

            I took a siesta half an hour later than usual, intending to sleep for my usual ninety minutes but ended up waking up almost two and a half hours later. 

            I weighed 88.5 kilos at 17:45 but 88.9 at 20:30. That seems like quite a jump from the two small mangoes I ate since 17:45. 

            I’ve been ignoring some of my Facebook pages for the last few months and when I tried to check in on some of them today I found out there’s no ready list like there used to be. I had to look up some instructions online to find out how to access them. When I looked at my Josephine Baker page I saw that Facebook had taken down my background image, I guess because it shows Josephine naked. What the fuck is wrong with Facebook? I had to find another image and upload it. 

            I had a potato and two small pieces of chicken while watching two episodes of Andy Griffith. 

            In the first story Opie makes friends with a new kid in town named Trey. But when Opie sees his father being extra nice to Trey he gets jealous and tries to push him away. Andy tries to demonstrate to Opie how that could hurt Trey’s feelings by being mean to Barney in front of him. This changes Opie’s mind and he becomes friends with Trey again. This seems a bit fucked up because Andy really did hurt Barney’s feelings and even though Andy apologizes to Barney afterwards and explains the situation to him, what he should have done was let Barney in on it from the start so he could play along and not feel like a victim. 

            In the second story Aunt Bee learns that her egg supplier Mr Frisby is being evicted because the county wants to run a highway through his farm. She organizes a sizeable protest against the eviction in front of the courthouse. This puts Bee and Andy on bad terms with each other because from Andy’s standpoint he’s just doing his job, but he also understands that the highway is necessary and that Frisby will be compensated. When the day comes for the bulldozers to start their work Bee and her fellow demonstrators stage a sit in front of Frisby’s home. While helping clear out the chickens Opie finds Frisby’s rooster Bo in the basement behaving erratically. Andy realizes that the cock is drunk and goes to investigate, discovering that Frisby has a still in operation in his cellar. Now Bee and the other ladies are no longer in support of Frisby. 

            One of the protestors was played by Noreen Gammill, who played Martha Conklin on the radio series “Our Miss Brooks.” 

            Another crusader was played by Gilda Oliva. 

            Frisby was played by Charles Lane, who usually played mean, conniving old men. He survived the San Francisco earthquake when he was one year old. His first film role was uncredited as a hotel clerk in 1931. He was one of the early members of the screen actors guild. He made 23 films in 1933 alone. He had a recurring role in the Ellery Queen film series in the 1940s as Doc Prouty. He acted in nine of Frank Capra’s films. He played the scheming railroad executive Homer Bedloe on Petticoat Junction. He lived to the age of 102.