My father is a funny and quirky man. Now that he is in the advanced stages
of Alzheimer’s disease, he can no longer express his quirkiness and sense of
humour, so it’s up to me and others to remember the things he used to say and
do.
Here’s a list of things that he did better than anyone else:
Work hard
Find work when you’re laid off
Stay chipper when going to work, even when waking up really
early
Go to bed early
Be reliable and loyal
Neigh like a horse
Whistle like a canary
Talk like Walter Brennan
Pretend not to cry while listening to recordings of John
Gary and/or Rita McNeil
Tell us what a sexy woman his wife (our mom) is
Fix up things in the house
Sing the same lullaby (in French) to the grandbabies to calm
them down
Gather hazelnuts, find cascara bark and Easter lilies in the
‘wet’ coast bush
Love his children intensely
Mispronounce ‘worm’ as ‘warm’ much to my mother’s delight
Root for the Habs.
He often used to say these things:
Great day in the mornin’!
Another blue ribbon (after eating dinner prepared by my mom)
There’s that guy running for the ferry (seeing a jogger)
Scram gravy ain’t wavy (who knows?)
Brown as a berry from ridin’ the prairie
Sacré black (or sacré bleu, depending on his mood)
Black Jack Shellac!
Whatever turns your crank
Knee high to a grasshopper
Sodbuster
Arrivederci Roma
Fabbricimenti
Accendere la luce (he sometimes worked with Italian
bricklayers)
Hey Magnolia
He/she can hum in any language
He/she is a donkey
Well, the drought’s over now (referring to another rainy day
on the wet coast)
Hallelujah!
S.O.B.
You can take the girl out of the west, but you can’t take
the west out of the girl
Stop and smell the roses
There’s nothing more important than your health.
And finally, this is what he said to me, many times, after
visiting my grandmother who also had Alzheimer’s:
If that ever happens to me, just shoot me.
