Truth in advertising, other oxymorons, and trivia

An excerpt from an email that was recently sent out to all the fire departments in the area:

Kam [fire department] has a crappy old pumper truck that is surplus to our needs. Its kiss of death was when it broke down on the Fire Chief and had to be towed. It held water fine last year although our previous deputy chief did a lot of welding repairs to the 1000 gal steel tank 4 or 5 years ago. It pumped fine last year. Heater core leaks inside the cab, probably an easy fix. Some panels are rusted through, and 1 or 2 compartment doors won’t open. If there is no interest in the coming 2 weeks it will be stripped and offered to our local residents for $500, or driven to the scrap yard as it is killing my grass. I can provide pics but a drive over to see it and to kick the tires may be best. Don’t let this deal of a lifetime pass you by.

(editor's note: I used my poetic license to omit a few of the less colourful statements, but I swear the above was cut and pasted from the original ad)

The email landed in my inbox at 4:34. At 4:57 I got another one stating that the pumper was sold. Wow. Talk about the positive effect of truth in advertising. Maybe the famously smooth-talking used car dealers could learn a thing or two from a good old-fashioned, straight-shooting volunteer fire chief.

I attended a wildland fire training session on Saturday. Great to train with the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR), seeing that they are the forest fire specialists. The only problem is that the weather gremlins are on their lopsided tangent again, and it looks like rain off and on for the foreseeable future, so we aren't going to have anymore forest fires . . .

There's always next year.

My kids are growing up:

• I now look up to Phillip, who is 15 and building a log cabin with his friends. I haven't had the heart to measure him, but I think he's pushing six foot two.
• Erinn was dismayed to find that she can no longer share shoes with Vanessa, who is 12. Vanessa tried to comfort her with, "It's okay Mom. I'll let you wear my new white sandals after you grow into them."

A local dog was mortally wounded by a lynx today, and had to be put down. This got a group of us talking about what to do if a bear attacks . . . which led to a brief discussion about Grizzly Adams. My brother, who likes to take photos, and has had opportunity to be freaked out by black bears a few times, muttered something about picking a safer nickname for himself like "Dragonfly Beebe." I know he has taken photos of both bears and dragonflies, but I couldn't find any on his Eyefetch site. You can see his non-bear and dragonfly photos here.

My rational view of black bears is that they are normally peaceful creatures that don't bother humans except when they raid their garbage. You can read my non-rational account of a black bear encounter here.