Tidbits

Odds and Ends of Things That Come Back to Mind

as We Think of the Past

Midi Playing is Heart of My Heart

Shocked Cat!

        When we were living in McKellar, Ontario ( circa 1942) I remember scrounging an old crank type telephone from somewhere ( we did not have a phone in those days) and I lugged it out to the road and hooked it up to the party line wires that ran along the roadside on poles that were probably no higher that 10 or twelve feet. ( Geez ! I just realized that I was actually bugging the phone system there.... started young I guess)

        Anyway, I gave the crank a long windup, about 10 turns and then listened to see what went on. Well, I guess the long windup confused all the subscribers on the line. Normally each one would be assigned a distinctive call such as ...1 short 1 long ring, or 2 short rings and various combinations. Suddenly there were sounds of dozens of receivers being lifted off the hook and a number of Hello's as well. Soon there was a  lively discussion among everyone as to what may have caused the unusually long ring. Perhaps about 5 minutes later everyone had left the party line and I hung up my receiver as well. Soon there was a ring on the line and I lifted the receiver and listened in. I noted that there were sounds of several receivers being lifted as well. It was one farmer talking to another with regard to a sick cow. I learned later that it was common practice for others to listen in on calls. No Privacy Here !!!!

        I discovered that when the crank was turned on the telephone, a high voltage was generated in the wires coming from the telephone and it was sufficient to cause muscle spasms and a fair amount of pain if one held onto the wires as the crank was being turned. This discovery resulted in an experiment that wasn't too nice when I think about it now, however the story has to be told. (You wouldn't want me to stop now, would you????)  We had a grey Persian cat called Auntie ( pronounced ON TEE) that would lie around the wood stove, on some galvanized tin that was on the floor to protect the floor from any hot coals that may drop as one tended to the fire. He also had a tin dish, from which he drank  his milk at meal times.  I attached one wire to the tin dish, set it off the tin on the floor and attached the other wire to the tin. The next time the cat came to drink his milk he would have to stand on the tin while drinking from the tin dish.

        When Auntie came to drink the milk , I waited until he had drank most of it and was actually licking the bottom of the tin dish, then I gave the the crank a mighty whirl. All Hell broke loose! Auntie jumped straight up about 6 feet with a screech that would wake up the dead, landed on his feet running trying to get out of the kitchen. He ran to all three windows, pulling  down the curtains in the process, screeching like a banshee. My mother had no idea what happened and grabbed a broom to try whacking the cat gone  crazy!  She finally opened the door to the outside and Auntie was gone instantly.

        Mother was busy for a while getting the curtains back up and relating the story of how the cat went  mad that day, running around all the walls trying to get out. I don't think that mother ever knew what had happened as I was in the other room with the telephone and peering around the door to see the cat as it was drinking the milk. I also managed to remove the tell tale wires from the tin and the tin dish as well without anyone seeing me.

        It was several days before Auntie appeared at the door wanting in. He looked warily at the milk dish, would not go near it, but ate the food from another one. We had to give him another dish for his milk before he would drink any. It wasn't long before things were back to normal and Auntie lived happily for many more years.

Dispatching Unwanted Visitors

        Recall a time when one of our neighbors on Redgrave Drive, Gord was teed off at people setting up their picnic spots right in front of his cottage. Any attempt at conversation was useless as they were speaking some foreign language between themselves and just shrugged their shoulders when Gord asked them to leave.

        As the crowd grew, (it must have been a family reunion or something) Gord decided there had to be a way of getting them to move away. Ivy, his wife told us what happened next........ Gord stripped naked, grabbed an axe and went outside, started running around their cottage brandishing the axe over his head, screaming and whooping like a bunch of natives on the warpath. He didn't even look at the group, but made about 4 trips around the cottage and came back inside. Ivy told us that it was quite the sight watching a naked giant of a man (Gord was well over 6 feet tall) swinging the axe and whooping it up as he ran , but the area in front of their cottage was cleared in a matter of minutes and no one has ever tried to picnic there again!

The Buzzer!

        Just after moving to Club Road in Worthington, west of Sudbury, Keith VE3CSM came over to see how things were going and to have a look at the place. In the kitchen on the wall just above the counter top was an old round Push Button similar to the those used for ringing door bells years ago. It was connected to a buzzer out in the garage/workshop situated about 50 feet away. It caught Keith's eye immediately and he asked what it was for.......

         Without hesitation Chris says" It's there to signal Ted when he is out in the shop. One buzz means he is wanted on the telephone, two buzzes means a meal is ready and three buzzes means time for sex! " ......  Well, that was more than Keith expected and he burst out laughing and was still chuckling about it as he was leaving.

Beer Strike!

        Don't quite recall when this happened but it was in the late 60's. The Brewer's Warehouse employees went on strike without much warning and I recall that there were only a few places in Toronto that had stocked up in anticipation of it. As the strike went on all the beer drinkers, including those from the cop shop were getting a bit irritated and teed off at the lack of suds. Honest Ed's Restaurant became a favorite place for lunch as they still had a good supply of beer. I think most of the OPP from headquarters were there for lunch every day!

        One of our undercover operatives, Joe called in from Montreal and told me that the joint operation with the QPP, RCMP and OPP had gone well with many arrests carried out and he would be returning to Toronto later that day. I mentioned the plight of the beer drinkers in Special Services and he suggested that he would bring some suds back from Quebec. He wondered how much he should bring and I mentioned that there would be no problem getting rid of it.

        Late that afternoon I received a call from Joe, saying he would be arriving at the garage in about 1/2 hour and asked for help to unload. As he arrived in a convertible, I noted that it was riding very low and shortly I saw the reason why. The back was filled to a point about 6 inches from the roof, the front seat and floor were crammed with cases of beer as was the trunk! A quick phone call to Special Services upstairs brought down the beer drinkers who quickly emptied the vehicle of its cargo. Joe became the Hero of the Day to the thirsty group!

Hot! Choking Hot!

        Recall a time in North Bay when we went out for Chinese Food with Don and Carol at the Golden Dragon on Lakeshore Dr. We had all ordered and were enjoying drinks while we chatted among ourselves.

        When the food was served, I immediately went for it with gusto and suddenly I felt a searing burning sensation down my throat, started coughing and choking in agony as I reached for my water glass, emptied it reached for Chris's glass, emptied that as well and looking for more water or anything wet to get down my throat. Tears were rolling down my cheeks. Must have emptied a couple of jugs of water that were placed on the table. I noted the concerned look on all faces except Don's who was laughing uncontrollably at my plight.

        Finally when I was able to breath normally once again I learned that Don had told the cook to make sure he really spiced up my plate as I enjoyed spicy food. Every time I enter a Chinese restaurant I think back at that experience. Thanks a lot, Don.

Garage Door Mystery!

        While living at 32 Labreche Drive in North Bay, we would hear the garage door opening at various times, did not matter whether it was in the middle of the night or during daylight hours, and when we went out to check we could never figure out what was causing it. Many times I would look up and down the street to see if there was anyone in sight with a garage door opener, or other garage doors opening or closing.   

        Our dog Brutus would not bark or cause any commotion as he normally would if someone set foot on our property, so it was a bit of a mystery as to what was going on.

        The garage door opener receiver and transmitter were checked, but nothing appeared to out of order. This was in the days of the amplitude modulated signals and tones being used to activate the receiver. One morning I happened to tune across the CB band and heard signals coming in via "skip" conditions from the southern states. There were so many signals coming in that they were heterodyning and causing a multitude of various tones as well. As I was listening, the garage door opened and suddenly it closed again. Hmmmm ... was the answer staring me in the face? As "skip" conditions were likely to  occur at random times, this would explain why the garage door openings did not follow any particular pattern.

        The simple solution to the problem was to take off the antenna wire for the receiver so it would not be able to receive those distant signals any longer. Our transmitter still worked from the driveway and not half a block away as it used to, so that was OK. The garage door never opened again by itself! Mystery solved.....

Operation Phone Tap - Distraction Needed

        This took place in the late 1960's when we ( Intelligence Branch) were chasing the bad guys. We discovered that a certain pub on Yonge St north of Eglinton was a meeting place for many of them and that a public pay phone in the lobby area was used to make contact with others as they planned their heists, etc. We decided that the phone had to be bugged as soon as possible, but being in such a exposed place, we would need some cover of some kind. It was decided that we would invite our wives out to go bar hopping that evening and use them as cover without telling them what we were up to!

        That night four of us got our wives to come out and we headed for the pub in question. Soon as we were all assembled there, we asked the wives to crowd around the said pay phone with us as we executed our plan of bugging it. The mouth piece of the phone had been glued on to prevent tampering with the mic cartridge, which John had anticipated. He swung the handset with mouthpiece leading into the brick wall with such force that the mouthpiece cover shattered with a resounding crash that caused all the wives to jump at the noise of it all. John calmly asked one of us to pick up the pieces while he removed the original mic cartridge replacing it with our FM transmitting module with  a six inch antenna which slid inside the handset itself. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a new mouth piece cover along with a tube of glue which he applies to the threaded portion to glue the new cover back into place.  The whole operation takes only 4 or five minutes and all but one of us head for the parking lot to check out to see if it works OK. Inside Frank makes a phone call on the payphone and we all hear his voice coming over our FM receiver that is connected to a tape recorder in the car that we are going to leave in the lot to do the monitoring.

        It dawns on Chris as to what just happened, that we had duped the wives into becoming the cover for our bugging operation! She immediately appoints herself as spokesperson for the wives and announces that instead of "bar hopping" they will settle for nothing less than a meal out at one of the most expensive restaurants in the city! They all decided that the Ports of Call  on Yonge Street would be appropriate compensation for being made part of our operation. All in all we enjoyed a nice meal in company of our wives that evening something that did not happen too often due to the nature of our work in the Intelligence Branch.

BIG Fish!

        Whenever fishing is mentioned, I have a vivid recollection of this story which took place when I was a young lad. I was fishing off a rock with a pole, bait and bobber while my father was about 150 feet away casting away with a spoon,  sinkers and the usual heavy green fishing line he normally used. Suddenly he yells over asking me to hurry over to where he is standing. "Come quickly now, I may need a hand here" he says. I leave my pole there and run along the shore line to where he is as quickly as I could. When I get to him, he is standing there with a knife in one hand and the end of the green fishing line with no spoon or sinkers on it, dangling from his other hand. "What happened" I ask.

        " Well, I had a strike on my lure that nearly pulled me into the water. I managed to get my balance and started pulling the line in with great difficulty as  the fish really fought hard. Finally I am getting the  best of him and his head appears as I am pulling it out of the water, but as I keep pulling there is more than 4 feet of his head showing, but I have not seen his  eyes yet. At that point I got scared and cut the line to let him go!" he says.

        Years later, I learned that he cut the line because his lure got caught on the bottom of the lake! As you can see, he used the opportunity to make up a convincing story, knife in hand to make it more believable!