‘st strictly

ill,

Co .
bed .

I have been giving my teenage son his first
driving lessons and naturally I have tried to 1m-
press upon him the importance of being prepared
for all emergencies, thinking ahead, and not

doing anything stupid.

The lessons have been
very basic: affairs so far. We
climb into the 1967 Valiant
and drive a mile down the
hill to an empty lot behind
the old schoolhouse where
there is nothing fie can crash
into except a wooden fence.

‘Remember, kid,’ I say
every time, ‘you've gotta use
your brain. Don’t be a
dummy. There's too many of
them on the road already.’

The other night, we had
only been going at it for five
minutes when the back tire
on the driver's side blew.

‘Now you're gonna learn
the dark side of driving,’ I
chuckled. “You fix it.’

Well, he laboured mightily
but it was a winter tire that
had been put on at a garage
where some mechanical
maniac had used one of
those power thingumajigs
that puts the nuts on so tight
you couldn't get them off
with Luke Skywalker's light
sabre.

“What do we do now?’ my
son asked, evidently ex-
pectng me to be prepared

for this. 1

The truth was, I hadn't
even brought a dime with me
for a_ telephone. The
‘solution,’ I announced, was
for him to walk the mile
back up the hill to the house
to get my wife to jump in our
1971 Volkswagen van and
drive back down with extra
tools, like axes and
sledgehammers and
crowbars.

Done.

Within {5 minutes, the
two of them showed up in
the Volks. The kid and I
threw ourselves at the
wretched tire, but the nuts
were immovable. Panting
and drooling, we finally had
to give up.

By this time, I was in a
pretty foul mood. 'm one of
those people who can
tolerate big mistakes — I'll
be philosophical about
World War Three — but a
string of little ones can cause
me to ‘fragment,’ as we
jokingly call it.

Now you have to un-
derstand that my wife and I

yersonal
b y Bob Hunter -

uphill

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WEST VANCOUVER S

feeling in my pocket to make FWONG ed

sure the keys to the Volks GOURMET CANTONESE CUISINE:

were there. a ‘ 7 ‘A "
‘Have you got the keys to aj . e233
the Valiant as well, dear?’

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my wife asked absent-
mindedly, busy reading a
pamphlet on tax exemptions.

‘Sure, got it all under
control,’ I growled, heading
out the door.

a

1

are normally precision tag-
team urban guerrillas, but I
guess our heads weren't
really into it.

Instead of immediately
calling a tow truck — an
admission of defeat in front
of the kid — I decided we
should try going back up the
hill to borrow special socket
wrenches from the neigh-
bours.

So that’s what we did. Up
the hill. Down the hill again.
But nothing worked.

‘Let’s face it,”) my wife
said, ‘we're going to have to

call a tow truck.’

I could tell by now that the
kid wasn’t all that impressed
with our state of
preparedness, or how far
we'd thought ahead. It
turned out my wife had
forgotten her purse, too, so
there still wasn’t a dime
available for the telephone.

Back up the hill in the
Volks to the house, all three
of us this time. While we
brewed coffee, my wife
phoned a garage and
arranged for the tow truck.
It would take twenty minutes
to get to the school, so we
had time to sit around and
sip our coffee.

Twenty minutes passed.
‘Time to go, I guess,’ I said,

My son said later he saw
me leaving by myself and
thought he sheuld. say
something but decided
against it in view of my
mood.

As I drove down the hill
for what seemed like the
umpteenth time that night,
beginning to feel like a yo
yo, something nagged the
back of my mind. A feeling
of having overlooked some
detail or another.

When I got to the bttom of
the hill, there was the tow
truck, its bright lights
radiating like a  pin-ball
machine in the dark. The
car’s tire _was_ already
removed. Happy that the
ordeal was almost over, I got
out of the Volks and walked
over to pay the tow truck
man, jiggling the keys to the
Volks in one hand, the keys
to the Valiant in the other.

Very slowly, it dawned on
me 1! couldn't drive both

vehicles home myself.

Back up the hill. Wife
waiting sheepishly by the
door. Back down the hill.
And back up once more, her
in the Volks, me in the
Valiant.

The teenager was waiting,
but he kept real quiet. See?
He's learned to use his brain
already.

Bylaw will affect ‘1,000 to 4,000’ lots

FROM PAGE A1 |

in West-Vancouver.

The house is planned for a
strip of land 20 ft. wide and
706 ft. long. a service lot that
was never bought by the
municipality and which - at
the moment at least - 1s
zoued as residential family
property.

But the plan brought an
outcry from neighbors who
feel that whatever the
classification of the land.

They insist that the lot was
ncver meant to be built
upon.

They want the impending
sideyard bylaw = rushed
through as quickly - as
possible to outlaw the thin
house.

Koslowski says:”“Whocver
owns that site is entitled to
build something.” And he
adds that such a bylaw would

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affect between 1,000 and
4,000 other properties in
West Van which would then
become non-conforming lots
requiring a board of variance
to permit any structural
changes in them.

“Small is) beautiful,” he
says, adding that the effects
of such a bylaw would
change the whole = ap-
pearance of West Van.
couver, with housing
distncts having the ap
pearance of “a bunch of
tecth with some knocked
out.”

As for the concerns of
neighbors of the thin house
he ts planning, Koslowski
says their fears are un
warranted as the roof level
will be no bigher than the
tops of the existing fences
therc.

Meanwhile, the fight to
build the thin house ts likely
to get tougher yet, with the

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intervention of lawyers.

The architectural = firm
Torskjelvik and Koslowsk:
has obtained a legal in-
junction (o stop the
municipality going ahead
with the bylaw.

Though temporarily
stopped in thetr tracks, there
is no sign that West Van.
couver is about to reverse 1ts

earher decision and allow a
building permit for the lot
which they had also refused
“on technical grounds”. or
that the municipality ts
about to give up in its bid to
introduce the bylaw.

The subject of sideyards ts
expected to come before
West Vancouver council for
publhc heanng Monday next

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