Stompin Tom Connors

            On Thursday morning I memorized the first verse of “Aux enfants de la chance” (To the Children of Chance) by Serge Gainsbourg and made some adjustments to my translation. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. 

            I weighed 86.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday there was no time to paint any more black squares for my kitchen floor project. So I just finished measuring off and taping with Frog Tape the rest of the squares for the back row. I’ll paint the fifth and seventh squares black tomorrow and that will complete one row. After that the front row should be a lot easier because no measuring will be necessary and only taping along the already established lines. 

            I’ve been listening to the Stompin Tom Connors discography. Of course I’ve heard many of his songs lots of times but he certainly has a lot of Canadiana in his oeuvre. I don’t think any songwriter wrote as many songs about such a wide variety of parts of Canada and of the rich palate of Canadian culture. I think his “Sudbury Saturday Night” is a lyrical masterpiece. The Canadian Lumberjack Song” is one composition I’d never heard before and it impressed me because he sings a considerable amount of French in the verses. Another song I hadn’t heard is “The Consumer” which has a killer line: “Another sale on something, we'll buy it while it's hot/Save a lot of money spending money we don't got”. His Hockey Song is played at every Toronto Maple Leafs home game. As a child Tom was taken by Children’s Aid when his mother was in prison and then adopted. He ran away at the age of 13 and hitchhiked across Canada. He got his first guitar at 14 and wrote his first song “Reversing Falls Darling” at 15. When he was down and out in Timmins and couldn’t pay for his beer at the Maple Leaf Hotel the bartender told him to pay for it by playing his guitar. That led to a 14 month run at the hotel, radio spots and recordings. Because of his habit of stomping out the time of his songs with one foot, it caused damage to stages and so Tom began to carry a plywood plank to stomp on. He created his own record label which signed Liona Boyd and The Canadian Brass. Even though he didn’t love classical music, when he learned Canada didn’t have a classical label he decided his would be the first. General Romeo Dallaire said he played Tom’s “The Blue Berets” for his troops to keep up their moral while they were under bombardment. 

            

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before lunch.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back. I spent a lot more time there than usual as I was shopping for Christmas food and drinks too. I bought five bags of green grapes, a pack of raspberries, a pack of blueberries, some bananas, two packs of five-year-old cheddar, a box of mini-quiches (I notice they charged me for two), a pack of bacon, artichoke dip, bruschetta dip, a small bottle of pomegranate juice, a bottle of pure unsweetened cranberry juice, Miss Vickie’s regular chips and another of barbecue, a tub of It’s Not Butter, two packs of Starbucks dark coffee, two pie shells (not for pies but for snacking), and a tub of Vanilla Swiss Almond Hagen Dasz. I’ll go back tomorrow to try to get my money back for the extra pack of quiches. 

            I weighed 85 kilos at 19:00. 

           By the time I’d caught up on my journal it was time for dinner and so I didn’t have a chance to upload to YouTube the video I made of my performance of “L’accordion” by Serge Gainsbourg. Hopefully I’ll have time tomorrow. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a pork chop while watching season 6, episodes 4 and 5 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Lisa tells Lori yet another entirely different story about how she and Oliver met. She has always insisted that her father was the deposed king of Hungary, which Oliver says is not true. In this recollection we finally meet Lisa’s father who is living with Lisa in Paris and has just pawned his royal crown to pay for another two days rent. Lisa gets a job waiting tables at a sidewalk café when she meets Oliver, who is a tourist. She takes him on a tour of Paris and falls in love with him. But when she gets home her father tells her that the baron has offered to finance an army so he can win back the throne on the condition that he get to marry Lisa. She tells him Oliver might be rich but when she introduces him to her father Oliver thinks that Lisa and her father are running a con game and leaves. But later Oliver meets Lisa again and she offers to take him for a tour of city hall so they can get married. 

            The second story begins with Lori finishing her vacation and returning to New York. But after Lori is gone Lisa doesn’t know what to do with herself. She decides she’ll get a job but when the people of Hooterville see Lisa seeking employment they conclude that Oliver is broke. She can’t find a job and so Oliver suggests she volunteer as a social worker at the County Welfare Department. But when she goes there the office is not open yet and the poor people waiting for soup tell her to wait in line. When Haney sees her in the soup line it confirms for everyone that Oliver is poor. On top of that the $50 cheque that he cashed at Sam’s store bounced. But it turns out that it bounced because Sam forgot to mail the deposit that Oliver gave him to send to the bank. Meanwhile Eb believes his boss is broke and sells Oliver’s convertible for $200.