4 — Friday, September 10, 1993 — North Shore News

And now, 2 good word

about North. Vanco

A READER who is also a colleague — Mike Kane, per- sonal money matters columnist for The Vancouver Sun —

twitted me recently for a slighting, let’s

call it sneering,

remark in this space about North Vancouver as West Van-

couver’s poor cousin.

Nice word, twitted. It suggests something vaguely between a mild allegation of marginal error and an actual gangland-style drive-by spraying of one’s house by

' machine guns fired from a 1927 black Packard sedan.

Anyway, | think Mike’s protest shaded toward the former rather than the latter end of the scale.

Still, lam keeping the driveway floodlit for the next couple of weeks and checking the firing mechanisms of the tactical nuclear weapons that surround my heuse, just in case.

Also | planned to write some- thing nice about North Van- couver, in fact right away. Like, today.

The story begins (you knew it would some time) when my wife pulled open the top drawer under the kitchen counter, which, just like the one in your house if it’s a family home, has about 225,000 miles (362,092.5 km) on the clock.

It's the one that holds the

cutlery — also just like the onc in —

your house. fo. We have three small children ou the premises, so we expect.it to-. travel further back and forth be.” fore it wears out than any Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce.” On this occasion, the drawer crazily tipped and almost fell on ‘the floor, along with the ac- cumulated crumbs from the dread

board which collect there ard are |

cleaned out as often as twice a year. in a good year.

Something had obviously broken and frankly I wasn’t too curicus about what it was.

“That has to be fixed soon,” said I, casting my eyes hcaven- ward and more or less. imploring ‘the Deity to do something about

‘it, as She so unfailingly does. . My wife stared at me. We held _a well-rehearsed conversation, the one in which I remind her that the house, like our cottage property, is entirely in her name — if I slip off this mortal coil some day, she : will be a wealthy widew for the courting of some lucky. man — and so naturally she has a strong

Trevor

Lautens

GARDEN OF BIASES self-interest in maintaining the place. Such as fixing up sagging

» kitchen drawers.

Also it is well known that I toil day and night on things of the mind, while she has had three or four years off merely raising the children and spending her very handsome allowance.

Several weeks passed. And every time any of us opened that draw- er, it almost fell out. Also, it mysteriously tended to open the drawer below it.

. Didn’t 1 tell you that super- natural forces are at work all around us?

During that period I didn’t

-mention the troublesome drawer

more than 45 times.

The other day it was fixed. Once again, my prayer had been answered,

My wife had a more worldly explanation.

“I went to a West Vancouver hardware store,” she said, though 1 may have forgotten her exact words, ‘*But they did not have the necessary piece.”’

It is called a plastic drawer run- ner end support, by the way. Or something like that.

“Then | went to a nation-wide chain of stores which | won't mention by name in case it adver- tises in one of the papers you

write for,’”’ said my wife.

The woman's discretion is leg- endary. Also she wants mc to stay wealthy enough to keep paying her that allowance.

‘“*And then?”’ said I, tense with the drama of her unfolding story.

“‘} went to Paine Hardware Ltd, at 90 Lonsdale in North Van- couver,”’ said my wife, who ob- viously can tell a gripping tale and

could make lots of side money as an ad agency copy-writer.

“When I told the man what | wanted he jumped up on a box, quick as a squirrel’? — that bit about ‘‘quick as a squirrel’? is all my own writing, like it?

“And he got the thingumajig from a box way up near the ceil- ing.”*

This will not surprise you. Paine Hardware is an institution, known way beyond North Vancouver's boundaries as a long-established hardware store that actually car- ries honest-to-God hardware that can’t be found in the glossy nouveau ones.

Speaking of the Deity, again, I gave thanks that She had provided the necessary part. Also for the admirably reasonable price.

Fifty cents,

North Vancouver will always have a soft spot in my Greater Tiddlycove heart.

Alsa because my wife is a gen- uine, Lions Gate Bridge-born North Vancouverite, and if you cleaned her up you could take her anywhere. Almost.

Turning now to a less serious matter, politics, it’s a feather in West Vancouver Mayor Mark Sager’s chapeau that he has been mentioned as a Socred leadership candidate without the slightest visible lobbying for it.

Our mayor was among the few encouraged to run for the party's top job by much-respected interim leader Jack Weisgerber, who graciously phoned him to let him know in advance of his decision not to seek the permanent lead- ership. ; | Mr. Sager’s ‘*no’’ seems to be a genuine ‘“‘no.’’ But politics is the art of the unpredictable.

ver

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